See How Steve Jobs Goes Gangster Against Iphone Rivals

Steve Jobs To IPhone Rivals: Say ‘ello To My Little Friend

Rumor: Apple Thinking About Buying ARM. iPhone Rivals To Sleep With The Fishes?

The following is very much a rumor, but if true, it would be absolutely huge. A UK publication is reporting that Apple is considering buying ARM Holdings — aka, the company behind most of the world’s mobile phone processors. If Apple were to buy them, it would likely reshape the mobile landscape completely.

To be clear, London’s Evening Standard is only citing “gossips” within the city’s financial district. But those gossips aren’t the only ones convinced there is something to this talk: ARM’s shares went up 8.1 points today, with more than 5 million shares changing hands by midday, the paper reports. The deal, would apparently see Apple buying ARM for something in the neighborhood of 5.2 billion British pounds, or roughly $8 billion in U.S. dollars.

Yesterday, during its earnings call, Apple revealed that it had $41.7 billion in cash in the bank — so this deal is certainly doable.

And if they did this, it would mean that almost all of Apple’s main competitors would likely have to find new chips to power their devices. While ARM doesn’t make the chips itself, it licenses out its technology to others who make the chips that go into Nokia, Sony, Samsung, HTC, and many, many other phones. This includes the iPhone and even the iPad, whose custom A4 chip is still based on ARM architecture. This also, obviously, includes phones that run Google’s Android software.

ARM architecture also is used in systems such as the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, which are also iPhone rivals of a different fashion: in gaming. Basically, if Apple did this, and cut off the ARM (funny, no?) supply, it would be a Michael Corleone-type maneuver to take out its rivals.

Apple bought chipmaker PA Semi back in 2008. That acquisition led to the development of the A4 chip. But that acquisition also led to the departure of key team members from the PA Semi team, who left to form a new company, Agnilux, which Google just purchased. Yeah, this continues to get more and more interesting.

Update: As Gary notes in the comments, according to the Wikipedia page, “The company [ARM] was founded as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology (as Advanced RISC Machines).”

[via MacRumors]

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Steve Jobs to Iphone Rivals: Say ‘ello To My Little Friend

Rumor: Apple Thinking About Buying ARM. iPhone Rivals To Sleep With The Fishes?: “

The following is very much a rumor, but if true, it would be absolutely huge. A UK publication is reporting that Apple is considering buying ARM Holdings — aka, the company behind most of the world’s mobile phone processors. If Apple were to buy them, it would likely reshape the mobile landscape completely.

To be clear, London’s Evening Standard is only citing “gossips” within the city’s financial district. But those gossips aren’t the only ones convinced there is something to this talk: ARM’s shares went up 8.1 points today, with more than 5 million shares changing hands by midday, the paper reports. The deal, would apparently see Apple buying ARM for something in the neighborhood of 5.2 billion British pounds, or roughly $8 billion in U.S. dollars.

Yesterday, during its earnings call, Apple revealed that it had $41.7 billion in cash in the bank — so this deal is certainly doable.

And if they did this, it would mean that almost all of Apple’s main competitors would likely have to find new chips to power their devices. While ARM doesn’t make the chips itself, it licenses out its technology to others who make the chips that go into Nokia, Sony, Samsung, HTC, and many, many other phones. This includes the iPhone and even the iPad, whose custom A4 chip is still based on ARM architecture. This also, obviously, includes phones that run Google’s Android software.

ARM architecture also is used in systems such as the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, which are also iPhone rivals of a different fashion: in gaming. Basically, if Apple did this, and cut off the ARM (funny, no?) supply, it would be a Michael Corleone-type maneuver to take out its rivals.

Apple bought chipmaker PA Semi back in 2008. That acquisition led to the development of the A4 chip. But that acquisition also led to the departure of key team members from the PA Semi team, who left to form a new company, Agnilux, which Google just purchased. Yeah, this continues to get more and more interesting.

Update: As Gary notes in the comments, according to the Wikipedia page, “The company [ARM] was founded as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology (as Advanced RISC Machines).”

[via MacRumors]

CrunchBase Information

Apple

Information provided by CrunchBase

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Facebook For Apple IPhone 3.0 Now Available

Facebook for iPhone 3.0 Now Available: “

Facebook for iPhone 3.0, which was submitted to Apple 11 days ago, has just been approved and is now available in the App Store.

The new version, which we reviewed in detail last week, brings a bevy of new features to Facebook’s iPhone app, including commenting and likes in the News Feed, full support for Facebook Pages, new and improved navigation, events and RSVPs, video uploading, complete photo management, notes, and more. Push notifications will not be released until version 3.1. Overall, it looks fantastic.

Now that the new version is released, we expect to see many more Facebook Page administrators updating their Pages through their iPhones, many more mobile videos posted to user profiles, and much more feed interaction (comments and likes) happening while users are on the go.

Facebook for iPhone is of the most heavily used iPhone applications ever – nearly 12 million people around the world have used it in the last month.

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Flickr Late To Apple IPhone App Party

Flickr, Late to the iPhone App Party, Now Faces a Crowded Market: ”

Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site, has launched a free iPhone application that lets you shoot, upload and share photos and videos directly from the device. Given that it’s the camera of choice for Flickr users, many will find it a welcome addition. But a number of similar apps already available on the iPhone have done a fine job filling the void left by Flickr in the meantime, notably those of social networks.

The iPhone app closely replicates the full Flickr experience, including letting users geo-tag photos before uploading them, and it only took us five quick taps on the iPhone to email a photo to friends. You can’t log directly into the app, however, but are instead directed to the Flickr site via Safari. Still, the cumbersome log-in process was the only major gripe we had with it, so hopefully future versions will address this problem.

But if you’re not plugged into the Flickr community, you may find it easier to share your mobile pics with either the Facebook or MySpace apps. Even TwitPic or TwitterFon work great in a pinch if you’re looking to quickly send out a snap to the folks that follow you on Twitter. Flickr had 26.9 million unique visitors in July, according to web analytics company Compete. But in light of the 65 million people that Facebook alone serves on mobile devices, the photo-sharing site could have a tough time catching up.

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Facebook Waits Patiently For Apple To Approve IPhone App

Facebook Still Waiting on Apple to Approve Facebook for iPhone 3.0: “

It’s been 10 days since Facebook submitted the new Facebook for iPhone 3.0 application to Apple for review, but contrary to what one might expect, Apple doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to fast-track one of the most widely used apps on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.

Frustrated with what he calls the “guilty until proven innocent” model of iPhone application approval, Facebook for iPhone developer Joe Hewitt wrote a blog post last night explaining why Apple should trust developers more.

“There are plenty of successful platforms out there which free developers to publish anything, but punish them if they do something harmful,” Hewitt writes. “This allows developers to move fast, fix bugs immediately, get feedback from users at a very low cost.”

The Facebook Platform has always operated this way, and it’s led to an incredibly rapid pace of innovation over the last couple of years. While some Facebook application developers have griped as Facebook has made changes to keep application behavior in check overall, developers have always been able to freely create and update apps on Facebook without going through any pre-screening process. However, it doesn’t appear that Apple will be changing its ways any time soon.

Last week, we gave a detailed tour of the updated app, which brings Facebook Pages, video uploading, events, photo management, and more. Overall, the upgrades should lead to even more engagement while users are on the go. Today, Facebook for iPhone has nearly 12.5 million active users.

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