Posts by Steve Todd 2645 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2007
If they only wanted $11m for what they have planned then that's fine. There's no point in comparing other companies VC funding because of this (VCs don't just toss large sacks of cash at companies and hope, they ask how much they are looking for, what they want it for and does it look like it will pay for that.)
Your prototype (which you tested the heck out of) should match your production devices to a close degree. Computers and robots allow you to make the same mistake very quickly, but once you have the design sorted they are pretty good at making copies of that design. Motor manufacturers have known this for some time. All the welding in a modern car tends to be done by robots for this reason.
Digitimes, take anything written by them with a large grain of salt. Any article that quotes them without a large disclaimer is courting public ridicule.
There is another reason why Apple might want to use robots BTW, they produce more consistent and reliable products. Batteries less liable to problems sounds like a good move.
The Apple TV does allow mirroring of your desktop or tablet display. If you're running OS X Mavericks then you can use it to extend your desktop also. It's a more flexible solution that works with more software, but then it's more expensive and is tied in to the Apple ecosystem. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Apple are currently shifting about 50 million iPhones per quarter.
If we assume that only 1 in 5 of those sales are of the 5c (which is likely overly pessimistic), that's 10 million per quarter. That makes 3 million equivalent to about 1 month's supply, or about what they should have in transit or in channel stock at any given time. I doubt that this is overstock at all.
If you read his words he was generally quite careful not to rule out something completely. He'd say why Apple wouldn't/shouldn't get involved in a market/technology as it currently stood. When the technology/pricing improved the reasons for NOT doing it were removed. If you find a CEO of a company who won't change his mind based on changing circumstances then I recommend that you have nothing whatsoever to do with that company.
From what I hear her book is pasted together from shockingly flimsy theories and suppositions, with precious little relationship to reality. IF Apple ever get around to making a TV it will be because they have worked out a proposition that they think buyer will be prepared to pay a premium for, just like the iPhone. Even with the current batch of flat screen sets there is a huge range of prices within which they could slot (people don't just buy the cheapest model, no matter what the haters would have you believe). Also the word of Jobs was never cast in stone. He'd say something (like they weren't interested in flash based iPods), and at some later point when they had got thing to the point they were happy with, suddenly they would about face.
You don't seem to understand the difference between a tax rate and tax take. There isn't a linear relationship between the two. Increase the rate above a certain point and the take actually goes down. This works for both personal and company tax.
The US need to do two things:
1) Reduce their corporate tax rate so it isn't so much of a penalty to do business there
And
2) Close the loopholes and make it harder to avoid paying.
Those two together would increase the take, but I suspect that lobbyists would be fighting against at least the second.
The best you are likely to get these days is a Bluetooth keyboard to go with a small tablet. The only reason you can buy a (not very good) tablet for $49 these days is because they make them in the millions, and there just isn't that number of people who want a small machine you can type on.
Don't forget to scale those original prices to modern equivalents BTW, £179 in 1984's money is worth about £490 now.
You're ignoring two factors: firstly USB3 needs CPU resources to run. You can end up using a significant amount of processor power to run it. Secondly Thunderbolt lets you run multiple chained devices in parallel. When Thom's Hardware compared USB3 and Thunderbolt they found Thunderbolt to be significantly faster because of this (they were hitting speeds of up to 1GB/sec).
It depends if she'd enabled "Find my iPad" or not. If not you can wipe it clean easily enough. If she had then it demands the iTunes account password, even if wiped clean, before it will re-activate. It's an anti-theft measure as people were complaining about it being too easy to steal and sell on.
The problem was not that the DoJ wanted them to develop something, but that the spec was expanded to include a requirement that was going to be expensive to develop and there was no extra money on offer to do so. If they had retained the IP rights then they could have made money selling that. As it was the DoJ wanted this extra work for nothing, plus the IP which they could hand to competitors for nothing also.
This would be a 3G phone then? I had the same problem with Three next to Liverpool Street. The 3G networks are completely saturated in parts of London. 4G is much better. Even now that they've had plenty of time to add users it's still giving better than 3Mbit/sec download speeds and I've seen it peak at 49Mbit/sec.
Interesting how many haters have no idea what it's like going from an 80bhp front wheel drive car to a 570bhp rear wheel drive. In 3 steps I went from 80 to 235 and that was a little tricky. There are police drivers who have crashed BMW turbo diesels because they just weren't ready for the surge of power as the turbo cut in. The combination of low weight, high acceleration and the tendency of rear wheel drive to oversteer are things that need to be learned.
They invoke pedophiles and terrorists as the reason, but then write overarching powers into the bill that lets it be used for almost anything else they can think of. Given that most of them are lawyers you'd have thought they would be better at thinking through the potential of each clause they create ... or being cynical they know damned well what they are creating.
If you're going to take a jet airliner up to cruising altitude (30,000 ft +) you'd be happy to take off with a failed pitot system? All current jets have a GPS system that displays altitude and ground speed in a way easily accessible to the pilot when instrument flying? You can fly an aircraft visually to landing, even if you're in or above 8/8 cloud?
For someone who claims to have qualified you're failing to recognise that pilots are rarely killed by tigers, but more often nibbled to death by ducks (it's a combination of smaller, normally non fatal problems that get you).
You're contradicting yourself. Either Apple's slice of iPhone contracts is putting everyone's bill up (evidence please) or non-iPhone contracts are cheaper.
The examples of contracts I've seen either include the cost of the handset in the monthly price (so you can have a cheaper phone for less money, hardly surprising) or they cost the same and the only reason they have "iPhone" in the title is because they come with a nano SIM. From what I can see contracts for higher end Android phones cost about the same and you can get deals on low to mid range Android devices at lower rates.
Non of this has anything to do with the question of what evidence there is that Apple have killed off the cellco's business. Show me some evidence that this is the case.
Apple made tethering something that the cellco's could turn on or off. The rumour is this was for contractual reasons. Some operators chose to make it a chargeable option, others give you it for free. On the Android platform they don't have this level of control (and you can download apps that provide the feature anyway). The consumer gets the choice of picking a carrier that includes tethering if this is important to them, or picking a different brand of phone. How is this a problem for the consumer and not competitive?
BTW, you're an Apple fan and you don't know how to do things like copy/paste, insert a photo into an email etc that have been a standard part of the system for years now?
The point here is that the phone manufacturers get to compete with each other over what features they can cram into the phone. There's a much wider range of choices. If Apple doesn't give you what you want then look at Samsung, LG, Nokia or whoever the hell else. They aren't being restricted or homogenised by the carriers.
Android, Windows Phone et al have all benefitted by Apple breaking the cell co's lock on what features a phone would have. Before the iPhone they were shipping heavily customised, ugly (both in the case and UI) phones with only the features they wanted you to have. These days you have a huge choice and can add features after the fact in the form of apps.
You also failed to counter the argument that the cell companies weren't losing money. Show me a poor cell company that has been hurt by this move.
Last time I looked the mobile phone companies were making handsome profits. What Apple did is stopped them from dictating to their users what their phones could do and what features they would have. This has turned out to be good for both the consumer and the cell companies. The consumer gets what they actually want and the cell companies have been selling vastly more phones (and charging extra for data plans).
The reason for the 30 second delay to acquire a position lock on GPS is because that's how long it takes the GPS network to broadcast a complete set of ephemeris data, which is needed for a cold-start position lock. Hot start or AGPS can drastically reduce first fix time. The amount of actual computation done is pretty trivial, you can do that on less than 100 micro amps @3.3V, the RF subsystem takes far more power than this.
No, I'm saying that the Apple patent application covers a magnetic catch that (1) self aligns and precisely connects, (2) automatically detects when it is connected and (3) without any additional connection communicates between the two active parts (either through electrical connections included in the catch or wirelessly). Item (2) can cause the devices to wake.
The Foxconn device fails to meet the above requirements in all three regards as far as I can see. There's no keyed alignment, there's no detection that the DVD drive has clipped to the system unit and it requires manual connection to start communicating.
Now if you can find an example of something that does all three of those things prior to January 2012 then you might have a case ...
Your DVD drive has magnetic clips, but connects to the NT330i via a regular USB cable. It doesn't care if the DVD drive is clipped to it or not. To count as prior art clipping the DVD to the base unit (without ANY other connection) would have to cause both units to wake up and data to be transferred from the DVD to the system unit.
Check the patent date, January 2012, months before the Surface was announced. Apple and Microsoft have a patent cross licensing deal in place so I doubt there will be any problems there.
The other Apple item, on which this seems to be based, is the MagSafe power connector which dates back to 2006. Prior art doesn't seem to be as easy to find as you think.
They are getting more viewers of their content, unmodified and with the original adverts. It is costing them nothing extra to provide the feed to Aereo. Using this logic are they going to try to charge the manufacturers of DVRs for providing the same service?
I just checked the numbers. It was actually on Indigogo not Kickstarter (so the OP above is either mistaken or lying), the biggest project on which received just shy of $2 million. Shuttleworth wanted to raise $32 million. There was no way that was realistically going to happen and it was a fixed funding project (so if they didn't reach the target they got nothing). It was impressive to get even 1/3rd of the target but there was seriously no way that he expected to get funded.
Most cars wont need to visit a petrol station, they can refuel from the domestic grid overnight. The alternative is shipping cryogenic hydrogen about and storing it on site. That is both wildly inefficient and dangerous.
Tesla already provide two solutions to model S owners, a fast charge that basically allows time for a meal break or a battery swap. It will be a while before batteries can be standardised across all manufacturers, but the principle is still way better than hydrogen.
The best numbers I've seen are that you get only 40% efficiency using electrolysis to make liquid hydrogen, and that's after you've lost efficiency generating your electricity to start with. That and you need a hugely expensive fuel cell to convert it back to electricity. Exchangeable battery packs will work out much cheaper and more efficient.
Apple have IIRC patents on lithium battery technology that they use to get cells shaped precisely to fit the available space. Tesla could be interested in that.
Dashboard integration of entertainment functions is another possibility.
Tesla are working on cheaper offering than the Model S, which uses a (presumably very expensive) 17 inch touch screen. They could be trying the idea of replacing that with an iPad in the upcoming model.
I can't honestly see Apple wanting to go into car building though, or thinking about buying Tesla, it doesn't match up with their approach to entering new markets and car making is too far from their existing markets.
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