While the stake of this shareholder is unknown, it is still telling that the shareholder, Jaguar Financial, is essentially telling RIM to throw in the towel before it’s too late.
The status quo is not acceptable, the company cannot sit still. It is time for transformational change. The directors need to seize the reins to maximize shareholder value before more market value is lost.
Kara Swisher has the scoop:
The situation around the departure is unclear, but Bartz has had a very rocky tenure in her 30 months at the company.
Tarun and Chris talk about Amazon’s entrance into the tablet arena; HP’s continued failings; AOL’s potential as a “buy”; the AT&T and T-Mobile marriage; Final Cut Pro 7’s triumphant return; Gamestop’s great decision to sell iOS devices. Like the podcast? Please add a comment and rate us on iTunes. Thanks for tuning in.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:28 — 67.5MB)
Sprint has previously come out and stated their displeasure with the AT&T, T-Mobile merger, but they have now officially sued to stop this deal from going through. Sprint’s actions mark yet another roadblock for AT&T in what is shaping up to be a very interesting merger.
Via 9to5 Mac. This is just further validation that the console age is dying. Hey Nintendo and Microsoft, are you reading this?
This report from NPR talks about how publishers are finding it difficult to increase profit margins during times when e-readers and cheap books are the main business model. A solution to this comes in the form of a hybrid book. These books would have a DVD packaged with the book that includes extras that the book doesn’t have:
The idea is interesting in that it provides a bridge between the e-book and print copies (both come with “Illuminations”), and gives booksellers on the frontlines more ammunition to use when trying to push physical books.
This doesn’t seem to narrow the e-reader/physical divide. People who want to buy an e-book are casual readers who typically don’t care for the extras in the first place. People who already prefer books may find this appealing, but e-reader customers probably will look past these books like the $4.99 bin of DVDs at Wal-Mart.
MG Siegler has the first look at an Amazon tablet, albiet he cannot provide pictures. Details within the article include:
As John Gruber has said and I have corroborated as well here, this tablet is possibly the only potential iPad contender because of the Ecosystem that Amazon has built over the years.
Jordan Golson, for MacRumors:
Apple has put the previous version of its Final Cut Studio video editing suite back on sale after a mixed reception to the new and completely redesigned Final Cut X. We received word that Apple had issued a memo this afternoon announcing re-availability of the product.
Took Apple long enough to make this move, but it will probably only impact a few people who don’t already have the old box set available anyway. You can expect the Mac App Store to only advertise X as the future model. This is the equivalent to having the option to turn off “reverse scrolling”. It’s only a matter of time before one product (or feature) is axed.
Competition isn’t a bad thing, but this is just too close (via Daring Fireball)
MacRumors has posted a new update, saying that the new iOS Beta 7 kills iCloud “streaming”, which was really just a cache usage, according to InsanelyGreatMac. So, if a user wants to download a song from the Cloud, this is still possible but the song will store on the device you choose to listen to the song from.
But, apparently iTunes Match on the Mac does still have a streaming behavior. Arnold Kim writes:
Even with the newest iTunes beta release from tonight, users can reportedly stream songs from iTunes Match and those songs are not saved permanently to their Mac. Mac users must explicitly press the iCloud button to download and save songs locally — of course, this could change.
Personally, I haven’t been a proponent of streaming at all, since download speeds and technology haven’t quite caught up to make this a go-to solution. Perhaps with future cellular technologies like 4G/LTE on the iPhone, streaming can be a primary listening method.
AOL owns a significant share of media sites on the web, but that’s about all the company has visibly going for them. A few incubated initiatives are mentioned in the article, but I don’t see how these provide a sustainable profit model for a company that has always had core competencies in providing internet services in a dying era of technology. AOL needs to champion some industry and let go of the past for the company to move forward in the fast-paced advertisement and media market of today.
The US Government is attempting to block the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. The merger has been highly controversial with numerous companies weighing in on the matter. AT&T recently went before Congress to explain the merger and what exactly it meant. This however marks the first attempt by the government to formally block the merger from happening. Throughout the entire process, Sprint has been very vocal about the merger being anticompetitive.
BGR reports that the Windows Phone Marketplace now has more than 30,000 applications available in it. This may seem like a decent number of apps, but comparatively, the Marketplace still lags behind…
By comparison, Apple’s iTunes App Store is populated with more than 500,000 applications and Google confirmed in May that the Android Market has more than 200,000 apps.
The Board is said to not meet until December to decide the fate of the HP PC, which means they completely will miss innovation during the critical computer buying time — Christmas. HP cannot recover from being completely off the map, especially with 3-4 months of negative press. The killing of their tablet (if it is a killing) will only make things worse.
The iTunes Match Beta was released last night and for the first time, confirmed that Apple will have streaming as well as the option to download the music. MacRumors has some screenshots and video of the service in action.
Remember, this is a beta, so it is possible streaming could be removed for some reason. When AirPrint was in beta it worked with all types of printers, but by when it was released, it was scaled back to a handful of HP printers.
I personally began using iTunes Match last night and am so far quite impressed. I freed up 14GB from my iPhone and can now listen to all of my music on my MacBook Air without having to worry about my small SSD.
DigiTimes is reporting a possible acquisition of WebOS by Samsung. The report claims Samsung is looking to compete with Google and Apple in the mobile OS world. This would make some sense given Samsung’s recent legal battles with its use of the Android OS.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors:
The general consensus, of course, is that it’s simply not realistic to expect any one person to replace Steve Jobs. From the same 2008 Fortune article, they point out that Cook will simply need people around him to make up for any weaknesses, just as Jobs had Cook around to make up for his.
An interesting argument: Had HP sold the TouchPad at $99 from the gate, the iPad would have lost a significant market share because the price point is irresistible to consumers. Bolstering this claim is the fact that the TouchPad has been sold out for some time, and Best Buy is actually receiving more of them soon.
Edit: I’ll let John Gruber represent our opinion.
An insight from Michael Gartenberg, Macworld:
The MacBook Air is really an always-on device. For the most part, the concepts of on and off are deprecated.
I was a skeptic myself, so I’m glad Mike Luttrell from TG Daily picked this up:
Comscore explained the discrepancy by saying Doubleclick relies on users’ cookie information, which is not all that accurate because many users reset their cookies during the month.
While 500 billion views is impressive, 1 trillion just sounded ridiculous — the site only has 400 million users or so.
Matt Rosoff, from SAI:
But here’s a fun thought experiment. In the last ten years, Apple’s stock has gone up to more than 40 times its starting value. If Cook were somehow to duplicate the success of his predecessor, that stock would be worth more than $15 billion.
It’s another Weekly Download with your favorite hosts, Tarun Gangwani and Chris Robbins. This follows #10 which covered Steve Jobs’ resignation. Chris and Tarun discuss Apple’s tablet incumbency and what makes a good mobile computer; the futures of Motorola and HP; Facebook’s new (borrowed) privacy features; the potential of Sprint & T-Mobile as iPhone carriers, a new start-up from Twitter execs called “Lift”; the correlation between adding a pay-wall or subscription to a site and illegal downloading. The hosts also indulge in some delicious cookies. This podcast could be exclusively sponsored by you! Visit our website for more information. Thanks for listening and please rate us!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:17 — 69.4MB)
On this special edition (patch) of Weekly Download, Tarun and Chris talk about the resignation of Steve Jobs and his new position as Chairman of the Board. Is Apple doomed in the next few years? Who is Tim Cook? Tarun and Chris also discuss what Apple and Steve Jobs meant to them. Thanks for tuning in!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:47 — 56.8MB)
HP seems to have created quite the mess for itself. No one really has any idea what is going to happen to WebOS or the PC business at this point. I’m really not sure if the CEO even gets it anymore.
Every tech blog you read today or read yesterday mentioned how Steve Jobs shaped the future of technology. Steve, as CEO at Apple, has done some incredibly powerful stuff. Steve not only changed the consumer electronics world, he changed the consumer.
By 2005, Windows XP was 4 years old and seeming rather stale to a 16 year old always looking for the latest and greatest in technology. While OS X was also 5 years old, it was something very foreign to me, someone who has never played with an Apple computer more than 10 minutes at a time. I decided I wanted expand my technology horizons and decided in early June to go buy a brand new computer, an iBook G4. For all you Apple followers at there, you’ll know that was same time Steve came out and announced the Intel transition. Watching that keynote was one of the most frustrating and awesome moments of my life as a tech enthusiast.
Within days of buying my computer, I learned it would be obsolete in a very short amount of time, but that didn’t even matter to me after watching the CEO of Apple make the presentation. The whole presentation seemed so casual yet powerful. It was really the first time I’d seen a presentation by the man in faded jeans, new balance shoes, and the black turtle neck. It seemed like such a different culture from what I was used to seeing. Before it seemed like CEOs and tech leaders were just goofy and foolish, now it seemed so cool. By the end of the keynote, I wasn’t even cranky about learning that the computer I just bought was already obsolete, all I could think about was how I wanted one of these “MacBooks”.
Admitting to being a fanboy is something I don’t think many in the tech community, especially the bloggers, are willing to do. I on the other hand, really embrace being a fanboy. Every time Steve Jobs comes out to present a new product or service, I just get excited. Seeing and using the products he’s created is half the reason I’m in the profession that I’m in. His work as CEO at Apple not just changed my life, but changed the lives of people all over the world. As Tarun mentioned in his post “A New Era” Steve will likely still be around and helping with innovations, but it will be hard to think about Apple with a new leader.