Friday, June 29, 2012

iPhone 5? Well, not exactly. Apple's iPhone turns 5.

iPhone 5? Well, not exactly. Apple's iPhone turns 5.

By Hayley Tsukayama
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Wish a happy birthday to your iPhone! June 29 marks the fifth anniversary of the day the first iPhone hit store shelves and Apple began its climb in the mobile market.
The first iPhone may have sported a metal and plastic back, but the general look of the smartphone hasn't changed all that much in the past five years -- new materials here, a nip or tuck there -- and has kept to its same general size.
What has changed, dramatically, is what the phone can do. At launch, it sported a 2 MP camera, ran on the EDGE network and touted its visual voicemail. It came in a $499 4GB version or a $699 8GB version. Users couldn't download programs from other developers, but the introduction of a more complete Web browser on a smartphone was enough to impress reviewers.
While it's hard to separate the iPhone and the App Store in our minds now, the iPhone didn't have its app ecosystem until a year after launch, in July 2008. Four years later, there are over 650,000 apps in the App Store, and the marketplace has 400 million accounts.
Looking back at Apple's press release for the original phone's debut, we're reminded that the tech giant mostly promoted the smartphone's connection to the iPod -- Apple even called it a "widescreen iPod" in its January 2007 product announcement.
At the time, there was skepticism about whether the iPhone could really take on market leaders Research in Motion and Nokia -- companies that are now struggling to hold on to their shrinking slices of the market. Both have announced job cuts: Nokia is set to cut 10,000 of its staff by the end of 2013, and Research in Motion said Thursday that it will drop 5,000 jobs.
The iPhone, however, hasn't stopped climbing -- though it has occasionally slowed -- even as Android-based competitors have crowded the field and taken the majority of the smartphone market. Demand for Apple's ubiquitous smartphone is still red-hot: It took the first iPhone 74 days to hit 1 million sales; the latest version of the iPhone hit 1 million pre-orders in its first 24 hours.
To date, Apple has sold over 217 million iPhones and has expanded to more networks and countries. According to the company's last earnings call, the iPhone is now on 230 carriers in 105 countries.
It will be interesting to see how the device evolves over the next five years, particularly with the advent of prepaid iPhones from Virgin and Cricket and the company's push for overseas expansion.
And, of course, it's almost a given that Apple fans will keep watching excitedly for any hint of what Apple plans for the iPhone's next incarnation. Top wishlist items include a bigger screen and support for 4G networks.
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iPhone anniversary marks triumph over crisis
By Robert Cyran
NEW YORK, June 29 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Apple (AAPL.O) rolled out its iconic iPhone five years ago, just as Bear Stearns subprime hedge funds sounded the alarm on a systemic trauma. Financial woe often impedes development. But the iPhone is proof that innovation can defy the odds and overcome hard times.
The advance of technology is hard to stop. R&D budgets do get slashed in downturns. The growth rate of patent filings has slowed during the recent crisis. But companies that don't invest, or that do so poorly, can suffer. Research In Motion (RIM.TO) and Nokia (NOK1V.HE) learned the lesson all too well. Their market values have plummeted over 90 percent since mid-2007.
More importantly, desired products, whether new plastics in the 1930s or smartphones now, tend to thrive regardless of the economic climate. About 40 percent of Dupont's revenue in 1937 came from products introduced during the Great Depression. Almost 60 percent of Apple's sales are now generated by the iPhone.
Apple's focus on high-end customers hasn't hurt. Even reduced disposable income at a certain level still leaves plenty left over for a new bauble. But the iPhone offers value for the considerably less affluent, too. It replaces digital cameras, personal organizers, guidebooks, dictionaries, satellite navigation systems and music players. That list isn't inclusive and is bound to grow.
The contrast with the financial crisis is a stark one. Apple's market value has increased by about $430 billion since the iPhone was introduced. The device represents a majority of the company's sales and an even greater proportion of profit, and has contributed greatly to the popularity of the iPad. That makes it safe to ascribe a healthy amount of the gain to the iPhone.
By comparison, Apple's increased capitalization isn't far off the $470 billion that was required from the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program to bail out Citigroup (C.N), AIG (AIG.N), General Motors (GM.N) and others. Real estate crashes reverse themselves and debt hangovers get worked off. In the meantime, technology relentlessly marches on and provides fresh stepping stones for the eventual recovery. That makes the iPhone a hopeful reminder for a world stewing in another five-year anniversary that isn't much worth celebrating.
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Birthday 5 for iPhone: The Device That Changed Everything
By Adam Dickter
Commenting on the iPhone's 5th birthday and the impact the iPhone has had, analyst Ken Dulaney said, "Marketing consumer electronics has changed, industrial design has reached a new level of importance, and traditional suppliers have been challenged as never before." Regarding the iPhone 5 years ago: "Easy to use reached a whole new level."
It exploded onto the scene with a burst of fanfare, a revolutionary device that, it can objectively be said, changed everything.
Five years ago today the first iPhone went on sale, six months after Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the touchscreen device, essentially a computer in the palm of your hand that displaced voice calls as the primary reason for carrying a mobile device.
"Apple's version of the iPhone is a mobile phone that combines the wizardry of smartphones with the music- and movie-playing features of the iPod," is how NewsFactor reported the story on January 9, 2007. "It features a large, 3.5" touchscreen, a 2-megapixel camera, and integrates fully with Apple's iTunes music store . It's less than half an inch wide, works on a pared-down version of Apple's OS X (which in full form powers Apple notebooks and desktops), sports WiFi, Bluetooth, and EDGE (a type of mobile broadband ), and runs on Cingular's network ."
What, No 3G ?
It took six months, however, for the much-hyped device to get into consumers' hands. Just before the consumer launch, we reported analysts' views that the phone set a new standard, but not without a few shortcomings.
Analysts at the time pointed out that the iPhone "lacked 3G capabilities and could only use the much slower EDGE technology. The compensation for this shortcoming [was] that the iPhone could automatically switch to Wi-Fi networks, when available, for Internet browsing." On Wi-Fi, it was reported, the iPhone "flies."
The original iPhone was followed in turn by the 3G, 3GS, 4 and 4S models. Today's 5-year anniversary comes as Apple is soon expected to release the sixth version of the device. While the original device was strictly tied to AT&T , the current incarnation is available via AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and a few regional carriers, with worldwide sales estimated at more than 35 million.
That number makes the iPhone by far the single most popular device. However, over the past year, devices powered by Google's Android operating system -- and offered by different manufacturers -- have seized a larger share of the market as measured by operating system.
The iPhone "has made the consumer king," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told us on Friday. "No longer is the [mobile] phone considered [just] a business tool. Data usage has exploded and it has revolutionized the distribution of software ."
Dulaney also noted that the iPhone's app-centric touchscreen experience dramatically increased user interface expectations.
"Easy to use has reached a new level," he said.
Among other impact attributed to the iPhone: "Marketing consumer electronics has changed, industrial design has reached a new level of importance, and traditional suppliers such as Intel and Microsoft, RIM and Nokia have been challenged as never before."
Challenges Overcome
In addition to the above-mentioned shortcomings, Apple also had to deal with reception issues early on, as AT&T, its sole initial carrier, struggled to keep up with the demand on its network. Later, the iPhone 4 faced a backlash over signal problems resulting from contact with its external antenna. Although these issues may have caused some to be wary about being early-adopters, they never seriously hurt sales.
"One reason the iPhone was able to push beyond these issues was because, up to that point, nobody had really launched a smartphone with a true immersive Internet experience," said Weston Henderek, principal wireless analyst for research firm Current Analysis.
Although Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices and some Nokia smartphones were out, they were taking users to abridged mobile versions of Web sites that were difficult to navigate. "The biggest reason [the iPhone] was a revolutionary device is that it put the power of a PC -like Internet experience in your hand and it was really the first device to pull that off."
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Google Gives iPhone Users Browser Choice For Phone's Fifth Birthday
Apple‘s iPhone, the iconic device from that revolutionized smart phones, turned five on Friday, June 29.
There has been no other device like iPhone in history. Thousands of developers have written thousands of apps to organize the lives of iPhone users in a manner previously scarcely imaginable.
iPhone left its competitors like Research in Motion (RIMM) and Nokia (NOK) in the dust. The mobile platform for Microsoft (MSFT) was not at all competitive. Google (GOOG) came up from nowhere to mount a serious challenge with its Android operating system.
There continues to be a bitter rivalry between Apple and Google. The late Steve Jobs accused Google of copying iPhone; he called Android a stolen system and pledged to spend his last dollar to rectify the situation.
On the fifth birthday of iPhone Google has given a surprise present. Google has announced that it is launching a new version of its Chrome browser to run on iPhone and iPad. The new Chrome app will allow users to sync all of their credentials, bookmarks, and tabs on all of their devices.
The app may gain traction as Apple users will be able to sync easily with non-Apple devices. Moreover those tired of Safari, the browser from Apple, now have a great alternative.
From an investment perspective, there should be no material impact in the short-term on the stock prices of Google or Apple.
The introduction of Chrome for Apple opens a new battle front in the war between the two companies. Google is sending a clear signal that it will do whatever it takes to keep a major presence on the Apple platform. Recently Apple ditched Google Maps. Clearly Apple does not want to share the success of its platform with Google. Let another battle begin.
About Me: I am an engineer and nuclear physicist by background. I founded two Inc. 500 companies, and have been involved in over 50 entrepreneurial ventures. I am the chief investment officer at The Arora Report, which publishes four newsletters to help investors profit from change. Follow me here and get email notification when I publish a new article.
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Why the iPhone Was Truly a Disruptive Product
Chances are, the smartphone in your pocket bears little resemblance to the cell phone you were carrying 5 years ago. That's largely because of what happened on June 29, 2007, the day the iPhone was released in North America.
As I wrote on the anniversary last year, "every major smartphone that has gone into production since the iPhone's release has, in some way, been a response to the iPhone itself."
Since 2007, I've written hundreds of thousands of words about the iPhone, iOS and the modern smartphone ecosystem. I have chronicled the impact the iPhone has had not just on Apple, but on the telecom industry, the smartphone market and computing as we know it.
Now, on the fifth anniversary, I want to home in on a few specific examples of companies and individuals that the iPhone has profoundly changed.
Rarus Technologies Inc. Receives Approval from Apple for Zngle's Version 1.1 iPhone App and will release version 1.2 with Video and VoIP Calling in July
HENDERSON, Nev., June 29, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Rarus Technologies Inc. (otcqb:RARS) ("Rarus") announced today its newly enhanced version 1.1 of the Zngle iPhone App is now available at the Apple iTunes Store.
Rarus Technologies' Zngle social media network released its first Zngle iPhone App on June 1st 2012 in the iTunes Store and then moved quickly to produce and submit version 1.1 with added features and improvements. Zngle's development team has continued gathering member feedback and this data has now been incorporated into version 1.2 which includes new and improved features like Video and VoIP calling. These two features will be free for Zngle members and users will also be able to buy the additional required storage for Video and VoIP messages through the iTunes Store.
"We're very pleased to have received great suggestions through feedback from our members and have used their suggestions in the development of Zngle version 1.2 which now includes features such as Video and VoIP calling. These features will be free for Zngle members, however due to bandwidth and addition server requirements, there will be an in-App purchase requirement in order for members to acquire additional message storage. If members redeem proximity coupons they will also receive Zngle credits which they can use to acquire additional features. Due to the complexity of these features, which will set us apart from other social media companies, we have also delayed development of the Android App. We are planning to resume development of this parallel product once we receive feedback from beta testers of the Apple version 1.2," stated Mr. Manfred Ruf, CEO of Rarus.
About Rarus Technologies Inc. and Zngle, Inc.
Rarus Technologies Inc. was incorporated in 2010 and is an emerging technology company focused on establishing an innovative business model intended to bridge cutting-edge social media and e-commerce into a marketplace that connects friends, family, consumers, and vendors in new and exciting ways. In May, 2012, Rarus Technologies Inc. incorporated Zngle, Inc. as the primary subsidiary and operations base for licensed internet platform. We are designed to be a centralized Internet portal and next-generation social media website that incorporates voice/text messaging, video email, and mobile technologies to allow consumers to access real-time information about various products and services through augmented proximity reality search features.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
Certain information contained in this press release, including any information as to our strategy, plans or future financial or operating performance and other statements that express management's expectations or estimates of future performance, constitute "forward-looking statements." All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "will," "anticipate," "contemplate," "target," "plan," "continue," "budget," "may," "intend," "estimate," "project" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, certain delays beyond the company's control with respect to its plans or operations. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.
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Apple Loop: A Hardware Update, Friending Google (Sort of) And Other News
Keeping you in the loop on some of the things happening around Apple this past week.
Bob Mansfield, Apple's head of hardware engineering, says so long.
+ Hardware update. Apple announced that the head of hardware engineering, Bob Mansfield, is going to retire and that he'll be replaced by Dan Riccio, vice president of iPad hardware engineering, in several months. The hardware engineering team is going to keep reporting to Mansfield until he leaves. Mansfield joined Apple in 1999, when it acquired Raycer Graphics, where he was VP of engineering, Apple said. He's led Mac hardware engineering since 2005, iPhone and iPod hardware engineering since 2010, and iPad hardware engineering since the tablet was introduced -- which makes him kind of an important person at the company. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a point of noting that his replacement, Riccio, who joined Apple in 1998 as VP of product design, has contributed to most of Apple's hardware during his tenure. "Dan has been one of Bob's key lieutenants for a very long time and is very well respected within Apple and by the industry," added Cook. "Our hardware engineering team is the best engineering team on earth and will not miss a beat during the transition."

Google Brings Chrome Web Browser To Apple iPhones, iPads

Tomio Geron
+ Thermonuclear war on hiatus? Remember how Steve Jobs' told biographer Walter Isaacson that he thought Google was guilty of "grand theft" when it released the Android mobile operating system to challenge Apple's iOS for the iPhone and iPad? And how Apple was ready to launch a "thermonuclear war" to defend its patents against smartphone makers like HTC, Samsung and Google? While Apple CEO Tim Cook has said repeatedly the company will continue to fight to protect its intellectual property, it seems like it can play nice too. That's why iPhone and iPad users will now find Google's Chrome browser -- a rival to Apple's Safari browser -- at Apple's App Store. (And as of this writing, Chrome is the top free app on the App Store.) Google is also offering a version of Google Drive -- its cloud-based service for storing documents, photos, music, videos etc. and a rival to Apple's iCloud -- for iOS users. Frenemies?
+ Podcasts go out on their own. Delivering on some recent rumors, Apple released a standalone Podcasts app that makes it easier to subscribe and listen to podcasts (instead of having to access them out of iTunes). Podcasts are prerecorded audio and video shows you can subscribe to and stream episodes or download and listen to them offline. Here's how Apple describes the new app in iTunes: Podcasts app is the easiest way to discover, subscribe to, and play your favorite podcasts on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Explore hundreds of thousands of free audio and video podcasts from the Podcasts Catalog, and play the most popular podcasts, organized for you by topic, with the all-new Top Stations feature. Another new feature: a Sleep Timer to "automatically stop playing a podcast while listening in bed."
+ iTunes Plays in Asia. You couldn't tell it from the press release, but Apple's news that it was opening a dozen new iTunes stores in Asia was notable because it's the first major push in the region since it opened its iTunes stores in Japan in 2005. The new iTunes stores -- selling music and movies for the most part -- are in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Of course, Apple fans in those countries already have access to the App Store, which offers more than 650,000 apps in 155 countries. How many countries does iTunes operate in? Apple couldn't tell me (why, I don't know). By my count, it's about 50. Still no word on iTunes in China, Apple's largest market. And in case you're wondering, sales of music-related products and services accounted for about 6 percent of Apple's sales in 2011 -- or about $6 billion.
+ Apple to take another gamble on Reno. Apple is looking to build a data center for its iCloud service and set up a purchasing center in Reno, Nevada, as part of a $1 billion investment it is making there over the next decade, according to the Reno Gazette Journal. (Reno, the paper noted, is also home to Apple's Braeburn Capital subsidiary, which does investments and is part of its tax planning strategy, as the New York Times reported in April.) While Apple has plans to build data centers in other states, including Oregon, Steve Hill, the director of the Nevada Office on Economic Development, said Apple "wanted to come to the Silver State to diversify its locations as well as to capitalize on Reno's vicinity to Cupertino, Calif., the home of Apple's headquarters -- about a four-hour drive away." Nevada also lured the company with $89 million in tax breaks, including an 85 percent drop in the personal property tax for 10 to 30 years, which if approved, will make Apple's effective sales tax rate will be less than 1 percent, according to the Reno Gazette Journal.
+ Apple retail employees, by the numbers. As part of its iEconomy series, the New York Times took a deep dive into Apple's retail stores. All sorts of interesting numbers to be found -- including that the average tenure of a retail employee is 2.5 years, that they make about $25,00 a year and that store employees each brought in $473,000 in sales for the company last year. Should Apple pay its employees more since Apple is making so much thanks to their efforts? Should retail employees expect that working in retail will give them a career path to corporate jobs at Apple? Should they get an annual bonus (since they don't get commissions) for selling so much stuff? Apple said it's recently given retail employees a raise, though it declined to provide specifics. As for overall working conditions in its retail ops, here's what Apple had to say: "Thousands of incredibly talented professionals work behind the Genius Bar and deliver the best customer service in the world. The annual retention rate for Geniuses is almost 90%, which is unheard-of in the retail industry, and shows how passionate they are about their customers and their careers at Apple." Here's a question for Tim Cook: would you recommend your family or friends work at the retail store? And if yes, for how long?
+ It's not the iPad 3, but still. Apple didn't name the third iteration of the iPad the iPad 3 -- instead calling it simply ‘iPad.' But that hasn't stopped the company from claiming that it should be the owner of the domain, according to Domain Name Wire. Apple has filed a case with the World Intellectual Property Organization asking that the domain name be transferred to it from its current owner, a company called Global Access in Isle of Man which was registered in Jan. 2010.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 review


Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 review

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The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 isn't out to prove a grand point. This isn't the Galaxy Note, or the dazzling Tab 7.7. However, it is one of the very best tablets you can buy for under £200. With a dual-core 1GHz processor and relatively low-density 1,024 x 600 resolution screen, it's hardly cutting edge but performance is solid and build is good.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 - Design and Connectivity
Watch the video review
The 7-inch tablet is seen as the most obvious alternative to a 10-incher like the new iPad or Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. But if you look around, there aren't that many hot contenders. The Amazon Kindle Fire isn't available here yet, the BlackBerry PlayBook was virtually stillborn and the Acer Iconia A100 had a disappointing screen. Samsung is out to change all that. Its Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has a PLS screen, expandable memory, a dual-core processor and a sub-£200 price. What's not to like?
Design
With its gaze set on the budget buyer who doesn't want to make do with a cheapo no-name tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 doesn't have a particularly dynamic or interesting design. Its inch-thick screen bezel looks chunky, it has a plastic rear and while hardly rotund at 10mm thick, its form feels designed to be comfortable rather than razor-thin.
It feels much better-made than the vast majority of budget tablets we've tested, though. In making the plastic rear plate non-removable, Samsung has been able to fashion a solid and strong-feeling slab. And while it doesn't have that cool touch of metal, it has been textured to afford it a similar feel on the finger to anodised aluminium.
The front of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is glass. It's not Gorilla Glass as far as we can tell, but feels just the same under the finger and avoids the "oil slick" effect that plagued many Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets last year.
One of the best things about a 7in tablet is that you can hold it in one hand without developing muscles in weird places within your forearm. At just 344g, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 feels right at home in one mitt - and in this situation the generous bezel comes in handy, giving you space to rest your thumb without obstructing the screen. It's almost as if professional designers produced this thing...
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Connectivity
As with the other tablets in the Galaxy range, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 keeps its on-body connections simple. It features what's arguably the most important, though - a plastic flap on its right edge covers a microSD card slot. Its 16GB of internal memory (8GB version also available) is already reasonably generous, but this slot makes upgrading quick, cheap and painless.
The 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top edge, right next to a teeny pinhole microphone. Its speakers are - sensibly - placed poles apart on the bottom edge - and there are two of them. Getting stereo sound in a tablet is a neat extra, but it's not particularly well-executed here. When held in landscape, while watching a movie for example, all sound comes from the right side, providing zero sense of stereo image.
The level of volume these teeny speakers can produce is reasonable, but sound quality is not a match for the iPad. It has decent body and scale, but little fidelity or richness.
Between the speaker duo sits the proprietary adaptor socket, used to both charge the tablet and transfer data to its brainbox. The positive side of using this dock is that it makes producing the supportive desktop and car docks (available, but not included) easy, but also ensures losing the cable is more of a problem - it proprietary sockets are a bit of an irritation generally. The tablet battery doesn't charge when you plug the cable into a computer, either.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 offers both MTP and PTP transfer modes, which tells your computer that it's either a media player or camera when plugged-in. As long as you're not running an ancient version of Windows (or any version of Mac OS) you can drag and drop files directly onto the memory using Windows Explorer. Testing with a Mac, it seems Samsung sync software Kies is needed to transfer files.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich. This is the upgraded version of Honeycomb, which was the first tablet-focused version of Google's operating system.
Samsung has dropped-in some of its own TouchWiz touches too - this is Samsung's proprietary user interface - and in all honesty it doesn't look all that different to last year's Honeycomb-based tablets.
Whatever way you hold the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 - landscape or portrait - on the home screen there's shortcut and notifications bar at the bottom of the screen, and links to Google search and the apps menu up top.
Although reasonably intuitive, this is a layout that feels more at home on a 10in tablet than a smaller one like this. When held portrait, it feels as though you should be able to access most features with your two thumbs - but you can't thanks to Google's obsession with spreading links across the screen. And having the toolbar constantly sitting at the bottom of the screen can make the display feel a little cramped - a feeling you don't get with 10.1in Android tablets.
It's almost enough to make you miss the days of Android 2.3 Gingerbread tablets running what's essentially a phone OS, like the original 7in Samsung Galaxy Tab. We say almost because the benefits of a proper tablet OS still far outweigh the niggles - key among them having tablet-optimised apps to play with.
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TouchWiz Extras
Samsung UI TouchWiz doesn't dramatically alter the DNA of the Android OS, but it does tack some neat extras on. Among the most front-facing is the screenshot-taking button on the home screen toolbar. Previous versions of Android have made it bafflingly difficult to take a screenshot, and we find it a most welcome addition.
Samsung AllShare also comes pre-installed. This is the manufacturer's own DLNA interface, and it's consistent across many home gadgets including TVs, phones and Blu-ray players. It lets you stream media over Wi-Fi and - as long as each end is AllShare compatible - takes most of the fiddliness out of the pairing process.
TouchWiz offers its own keyboard, too. It's not particularly pretty, but it makes typing quick and accurate on the 7in screen, and if you really don't like it, putting a replacement in its stead isn't difficult.
Apps and Games
Activities that benefit most from the large screen of a tablet, over a smaller smartphone display, are things like web browsing, video-viewing and email-sifting.
Enriching browsing, Adobe Flash support is in, and the 7in form is a good size for reading web pages. With a good web connection pages render fairly quickly, and the responsive capacitive touchscreen makes whizzing around them a joy. A higher-resolution display would make reading more comfortable, but it's like to be a while before we see super high pixel density tablets do the limbo under the £200 barrier.
Games and apps suffer from the lower resolution a little too, but not primarily because of a lack of pure pixel density. It's more an issue of compatibility and optimisation.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has full access to the Google Play app store and plenty of its hundreds of thousands of apps and games. However, with an unusual 1,024 x 600 pixel resolution, many apps and games are not fully optimised for the tablet, and some are not compatible at all.
For example, in the popular Unreal Engine 3-powered Dungeon Defenders Second Wave, the graphics appear to be upsized from those of a lower resolution device (most likely 800 x 480 pixels or similar). When using most 1,280 x 800 Android tablets, such as a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, they're nice 'n' crisp.
With high pixel density devices flavour of the month, it is unlikely that many more devices of this resolution will be made. And therefore developer support is unlikely to increase much. In fairness, most games look and play just fine.
It's a pity, though, because the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 packs a decent punch for an affordable tablet. In the AnTuTu benchmark it scored 5220 points. As a point of reference, last year's similarly-priced, dual-core Time2touch HC701A scored just 2870 - and that seemed pretty zippy at the time. The Tab's CPU is a TI OMAP 4430 dual-core 1GHz model with 1GB of RAM, roughly comparable with last year's top-end Android tablets.
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Screen
Using Samsung's PLS display technology, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 offers decent viewing angles and image quality. PLS is Samsung's own take on IPS, the core screen tech used in Apple's iPad tablets.
It's not quite on-par with the best of IPS though, with significant contrast shift creeping in when the display is tilted in one particular angle. As it's not an angle you'd normally view the tablet from, though, it's not a big problem.
A deficiency that's much more noticeable is screen resolution. With a 1,024 x 600 pixel screen, the Tab 2 7.0 offers the same pixel count as the original Samsung Galaxy Tab and the comparable Acer Iconia A100. Although it offers slightly higher pixel density than the first and second iPads, with 169dpi, you can easily discern individual pixels if you get reasonably up-close - when reading, for example.
Video Compatibility
It's somewhat-less noticeable with less high-contrast images, such as those of movies. And, in the Samsung tradition, video codec support is pretty good. MKV support is included - handy for video downloads - although unusually it failed to play some of our less challenging test files. It supports Xvid and DivX, but stumbled over one of our SD DivX tests, suggesting some more software optimisation is needed. A patch perhaps, Samsung?
There's not need to wait around, though, as third-party apps can use software rendering to play anything not supported natively by the tablet.
Battery Life
Tasked with playing a looping SD-quality video at 50 per cent screen brightness, with wireless turned off, the 4000mAh battery lasted for six and a half hours - pretty close to the claimed figure of seven hours. While it outlasts most tablets of its size, and most tablets under £200, this is lower performance than premium 10.1in tabs and well below the iPad's 10-plus hours.
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Cameras
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has two cameras. There's a VGA user-facing camera for video chat and a 3.2-megapixel main sensor that captures photos at up to 2,048 x 1,536 pixel resolution.
It's a basic affair. It doesn't have autofocus, lacking any control over the subject of your shots, and there's no flash. The only extras beyond the stripped-back basics of sepia/black and white filters you're treated to are Smile Shot and a panorama mode. Image quality is fairly poor and video capture maxes out at 720p.
Value
Starting at £199.99 for the 8GB version, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is much cheaper than most of Samsung's tablets. It's also much better than the vast majority of tablets we've tested selling at under £200. Lacking a flashy design and top-end specs, its higher-end models, such as the more-expensive 3G editions, don't make a great deal of sense. However, as an alternative to smaller £150-250 tablets like the BlackBerry PlayBook, HTC Flyer and Acer Iconia A100, it's the pick of the bunch.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 isn't out to prove a grand point. This isn't the Galaxy Note, or the dazzling Tab 7.7. However, it is one of the very best tablets you can buy for under £200. With a dual-core 1GHz processor and relatively low-density 1,024 x 600 resolution screen, it's hardly cutting edge but performance is solid and build is good. The one lingering concern is that the screen resolution ensures games optimisation and support isn't up there with the best.
'Mad Men' recap, 'Signal 30': Red-faced and white-knuckled
By Mark Maurer/The Star-Ledger
For Pete Campbell, the question isn't "When are things going to get back to normal?"
It's "When is copycatting early '60s Don going to earn me respect?" Or, "When does success become satisfying?" Don in his heyday didn't have nearly this many enemies.
The latest "Mad Men" - which is a bit heavy on the match cuts (that's a film editing term) - looks at business relations, masculine yearning and the scary slo-mo car collision that's come to parallel Pete's middle years.
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Don tries to dodge a dinner party at the Campbell's suburban abode that sounds about as dull as his old plans with Betty. But he appears impervious to Trudy's stamina. The party is no more than a painfully transparent paean to Don, who is practically declared the man of the house on top of receiving the finest cut of steak. Pete flaunts his new stereo by playing classical music too loud. The kitchen sink Pete thought he fixed spits water like a geyser. And he gets one-upped by handyman/everyman Don, whom it only seems fair to compare with Jon Hamm in the category of surprise talents. On the way home, Don drunkenly suggests he and Megan make a baby.
Pete takes a driver's education class, during which he develops a crush on Jenny (Amanda Bauer), a high-school girl bound for Ohio State. They're both nostalgic for simpler times, and talk about taking turns driving to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. If they got into an accident, he'd have a lot of explaining to do. Jenny, if she even saw Pete in a romantic light, falls for an athletic classmate nicknamed "Handsome" instead. The track star (Parker Young) is more her speed.
Ken is still writing depressing short stories, now under the alias of Ben Hargrove. He prefers to keep his literary passions a secret, for fear of paying the price in the cutthroat world of office politics. First, Peggy catches him with a prospective publisher, then Cynthia touts his tales at the party. (Worlds are colliding. And that's not the only construable "Seinfeld" reference. Peggy's line "I thought we had a pact!" brings to mind Jerry and George's botched agreement to mature and settle down.) After Pete spreads the word about his stories, Roger makes Ken feel like his job could be on the line if he doesn't commit to one craft only. Ken chooses to switch alias - this time, Dave Algonquin, named after New York's Algonquin Hotel, or the cocktail.
Rebecca drags Lane to a pub to cheer on the ultimately victorious British team at the televised World Cup. Dining with them is Edwin Baker (David Hunt), a Jaguar Cars public relations executive who's in the market for an advertising campaign and wants to hear from an account man. Later, Lane, the financial chief, tells the partners and wants to handle his first account. Pete bullies him about it, speculating it's a costly endeavor with measly returns. Roger steps in to mentor Lane on the art of schmoozing clients. We never thought we'd hear Roger speak of feigning drinking. He instructs Lane to obtain answers by being smooth and artificially empathetic. When Lane fails, the big boys take Edwin to dinner.
"Lane couldn't close a car door," Pete sneers. Sure, Lane lacks an account man's bravado, but at least he knows how to drive a car.
Pete, Roger and Don take Edwin to a high-end brothel, where each man gets his jollies except Don. On the cab ride home, Don makes him feel shame for cheating on Trudy. Don says he feels Pete has everything right now; only a fool would test it.
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The next day, Lane reveals to the partners they've lost the Jaguar account. Off-camera, Edwin's wife caught her husband with chewing gum on his pubic hair, Lane says. Because Pete spearheaded the tag team initiative, he's the first to be dealt Lane's wrath. He fires back a nasty, and untrue, riposte: "Our need for you disappeared the day after you fired us."
Lane engages Pete in a boxing match in the conference room. Don eagerly closes the curtains. As Joan and Peggy eavesdrop from the adjacent room, Lane gets in two clean blows that drop Pete to the table, then the floor. In Lane's office, Joan says it's good to be different. He misreads the signal and kisses her. The move is an almost startling indication that Lane, too, is one of the boys. Being the good work friend she is, Joan accepts it as one elongated faux pas.
In the elevator, Pete admits to Don "I have nothing" (no Whitney Houston tie-in) and begins to weep. That's a lesson to Don: Don't ever leave the office without Megan at your side.
NOTES
- Whose marriage is faring the best this week? Betty and Henry are out of the running, so that leaves the Drapers, the Cosgroves, the Campbells, the Sterlings and the Pryces. Pete and Roger were both unfaithful; Ken feels most alive when he's writing while his wife's asleep; and Rebecca's likely upset about the bubblegum incident, though Lane is in the clear despite minor bruising. Although Don didn't want to wear the sport jacket, it's fair to say he and Megan are going strong. Neither can seem to resist the other's seductive power. It's tough to gauge the enduring strength of Don's feelings for Megan, because, as viewers, we entered his marriage with Betty on the long way down. His words to Pete are promising, if a bit too rosy to guarantee longevity: "If I'd met (Megan) first, I'd have known not to throw it away."
- I was especially excited for tonight's episode when I saw who co-wrote it with creator Matthew Weiner. Lending the show some added period authenticity, Frank Pierson - an old hand in Hollywood who co-wrote 1967's "Cool Hand Luke" and directed 1976's "A Star is Born" - was consulting producer on the third season and now this season. "Signal 30" is the 86-year-old's first writing credit on the show. Featuring only a handful of the key players, the John Slattery-directed episode was more slow-paced than usual and another thematically strong entry this season. It's also not every day that fisticuffs enter the ad world.
- Are we getting a follow-up soon on Michael's home life?
- What did everyone take away from the beginning of Ken's story "The Man with the Miniature Orchestra"? More like the guy with the tiniest violin.

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Sunday, June 3, 2012

Will Apple's game plan beat the trustbusters?


Will Apple's game plan beat the trustbusters?
By Josh Lowensohn


The challenge for Apple's attorneys is presenting a different picture of the e-book market than the one offered by the Department of Justice, experts say.
A flag outside a European Apple retail store.
Most companies finding themselves staring at the business end of a government cannon might consider it time to talk compromise. Apple is not most companies.
One day after the Department of Justice sued Apple and several book publishers for allegedly colluding to fix e-book prices, Apple publicly dismissed the government's claims as empty and false. Instead, Apple stayed with the script and described the 2010 launch of the iBookstore as a force for "innovation and competition," one that also helped break what it called "Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry."
"Since then customers have benefited from e-books that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we've allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore," Apple declared.
Those were fighting words, and the message to the DOJ was plain: Bring it on.
Apple might regret the utterance. IBM in the 1980s and Microsoft in the 1990s got bogged down in long, hard, and inconclusive antitrust struggles with the government that distracted both companies as changes took place in the technology industry. But Apple has clearly reached the conclusion that this battle won't cost it dearly, either in time or resources. So without settling, how does Apple plan to defend itself even if this does wind up turning into a multiyear court battle?
The answer, several experts say, will be to try and present a different picture of the e-book market and play up Amazon's unassailable dominance. Obviously, it's hard to imagine Apple seriously painting itself as the underdog in the world of digital goods given its stellar success in digital music and mobile applications. But legal experts say Apple should remind a judge and jury that when it first tried its hand at e-books in 2010, Amazon had a 90 percent share in the e-books market. That offers Apple's attorneys a chance to make the case that no competitor could undercut that type of dominance.
"Apple trying to compete against Amazon is a good thing," said Gus Hurwitz, a fellow at the Center for Technology Innovation and Competition at The University of Pennsylvania Law School. "It's the sort of thing we want to encourage so long as it's in ways that are complying with the law."
The relationship of competition
Fair competition is at the very heart of the Justice Department's case against Apple and the publishers. The government accused the publishers of illegally holding private meetings to fix e-book prices, and later teaming up with Apple to crack Amazon's dominance of the market. Bundling all the companies together in one complaint has its own problems, though. Indeed, Hurwitz noted that Apple is not a competitor with e-book providers.
Apple's iBooks app, which serves as both a store and a reader.
Apple's iBooks app, which serves as both a store and a reader.
"If e-book publishers decided to collude and break the law, that's not Apple's problem. They were free to break the law and come to Apple as a cartel," he said. "That's not illegal on Apple's part."
The relationship between Apple and the publishers is crucial as far as antitrust laws are concerned, says Joseph Bauer, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. Bauer noted that under the very first section of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act -- which Apple and others are alleged to be violating -- there is a marked distinction between business relationships, which are broken into two categories: vertical and horizontal. Where horizontal covers the behavior between or among competitors, vertical is that behavior between suppliers and customers.
"Historically, the antitrust law has been much harsher in dealing with horizontal behavior," Bauer said in a phone interview Friday. "At its core, the allegations by the DOJ are against the five publishers who allegedly conspired to adopt uniform pricing policies. That might be different, and only slightly less problematic from actually having agreed on price."
Adding complexity to the situation is how antitrust law deals with e-books as a business. As the DOJ notes in its complaint, the named publishers compete with one another in a business made up of six major providers of trade books. "They publish the vast majority of their newly released titles as both print books and e-books," the filing reads. According to Hurwitz, that very factor makes e-books a so-called "multisided market," wherein two or more distinct groups of participants are brought together by an intermediate platform.
"E-books are multisided markets, and antitrust law doesn't yet have a good handle on how to deal with pricing situations in multisided markets," Hurwitz said. "It is very possible that increasing prices on one side of a multisided market can benefit the market as a whole. By increasing prices you get a wider range that will ultimately benefit everyone in the marketplace."
What happened instead was the "agency" model, where publishers set e-book prices to retailers, who get 30 percent while the publisher keeps 70 percent. While the DOJ has focused part of its complaint on the deals Apple made with publishers to assure that it would always get the lowest wholesale price given to others, the grander idea of the agency model was for the companies to compete on experience -- be it shopping for e-books, or reading them on devices.
Historical similarities
Sometimes experience isn't enough. Bauer points back to an antitrust case against retailer Toys "R" Us by the Federal Trade Commission from the late 1990s that found the toy retailer to be breaking the law after having made vertical agreements with toy manufacturers to keep them from selling to warehouse club stores, where those same goods it might be selling were being sold at a smaller markup.
"The bottom line was that Toys 'R' Us' competitive position was enhanced. And action was brought against all of them," Bauer said. "But the important part against Toys 'R' Us was for orchestrating that agreement between the toy companies."
"If the evidence shows that analogously what Apple did was help to orchestrate, organize, or implement the agreement among the publishers, then we are transforming what would be the initial, problematic horizontal agreement among the publisher competitors into something where you have another firm which is intimately involved with making that conspiracy a reality," Bauer added.
Not to be dismissed, the evidence against Apple and the named publishers could change, and potentially strengthen if the claim goes to trial.
"There's often a difference between what gets put into a complaint and what you can prove in trial," Bauer said, "The DOJ will be able to compel all of the defendants to produce documents; they will be able to take depositions of folks who were involved in this -- both the representatives of the five defendant publishers and representatives of Apple -- and presumably even third parties who might have information."
That information could then be added, or used to take away claims from the original complaint, Bauer said.
In the meantime, some of the additional publishers named in the DOJ complaint -- and even Apple -- could end up settling, according to Ronald Cass, the president at Cass & Associates, and former vice chairman and commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
"Obviously when the Department of Justice is collaborating with that many attorneys general, there is some effort on its part to try to hold a pretty big hammer over the head of the people who are accused to get them to settle quickly," Cass said. "When that doesn't happen, sometimes things don't go quite the way the Justice Department would like."

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