Tag Archives | Apple

Apple Plans New Headquarters Larger Than The Pentagon

By JacobSloan on August 18, 2011 in News 20

Apple’s monolithic new base in California will have its own power grid and looks as though it could take off into space if conditions on Earth grow too dire. Via the Mac Observer:

New architectural information has been released about Apple’s proposed, so-called spaceship headquarters in Cupertino. Apple Campus 2 building include 2.8 million square feet of space in the ring-shaped structure with room for some 13,000 employees. Apple will be building its own power center to provide electricity for the campus and will require little supplemental power from the local grid.

According to the city, Apple will be restoring some of the area’s native vegetation with the assistance of arborists from Stanford University.

… Read the rest

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Is Apple Holding More Cash Than The U.S.?

By Pelliciari on July 29, 2011 in News 17

Photo: TheIronLion

Do US companies have more money than the US government? Recent financial figures show that Apple does. Via BBC News:

Apple now has more cash to spend than the United States government.

Latest figures from the US Treasury Department show that the country has an operating cash balance of $73.7bn (£45.3bn).

Apple’s most recent financial results put its reserves at $76.4bn (£46.9bn).

The US House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill to raise the country’s debt ceiling, allowing it to borrow more money to cover spending commitments.

If it fails to extend the current limit of $14.3 trillion (£8.7tn) dollars, the federal government could find itself struggling to make payments, and risks the loss of its AAA credit rating.

[Continues at BBC News]… Read the rest

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Chinese Officials Close Imitation Apple Stores

By Pelliciari on July 25, 2011 in News 2

Photo: BirdABroad

DVD bootlegs and ripoffs have been around for awhile now, but what about whole store ripoffs? At least fives “Apple” stores, including two that have already been shut down, are nearly perfect replicas of legitimate Apple stores. Wired reports:

After an American blogger in Kunming posted photos of “a beautiful [Apple store] ripoff” last week, Chinese officials began to investigate around 300 shops in the area, finding five fake Apple stores. Two of the stores, lacking the proper business permits, must now close their doors. Despite the intellectual property concerns, the other three remain open for now.

In China, companies aren’t allowed to copy the “look and feel” of other companies’ stores. These retail outlets are impeccable replicas of Apple stores, down to the winding staircases and employee t-shirts. In fact, the stores are so convincing most staffers believed they worked for an authorized Apple retailer. All five stores sold genuine Apple products, according to a Kunming city official.

… Read the rest

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China’s Fake Apple Stores

By JacobSloan on July 20, 2011 in News 3

Fascinatingly, in is now common in China to find counterfeit branches of the Apple store.

Then again, what makes any Apple store “real” when the point is to use psychology to sell an intangible “brand”? And how can you tell a real Apple store from a fraudulent one? Paradoxically, real Apple stores never say “Apple store”. The Consumerist reports:

An American blogger living in the middle of China was amazed to stumble across a fake Apple store in her town. It was a complete counterfeit of a real Apple store, designed to look like the real thing. It had signage, and employees walking around in the iconic blue shirts with those lanyard nametags. It had the big long wooden tables with Apple products on them and the typical Apple store winding staircase. But certain details were off.

None of the employee nametags had their names on it. They just said “staff.” And Apple never writes “Apple Store” on their signs, they just put up their logo.

… Read the rest

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New Apple Technology Stops iPhones From Filming Live Events

By BananaFamine on June 18, 2011 in News 61

F@ck you, Apple (had to get that out of my system). Fox News reports:

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Fans at concerts and sports games may soon be stopped from using their iPhones to film the action —as a result of new technology being considered by Apple, The Times of London reported Thursday.

The California company has plans to build a system that will sense when a person is trying to film a live event using a cell phone and automatically switch off their camera.

A patent application filed by Apple, and obtained by the Times, reveals how the software would work. If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the iPhone to disable its camera.

Apple declined to comment.

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Happy Bloomsday, America!

By Liam McGonagle on June 16, 2011 in News 5

Hand drawing of Bloom by Joyce

June 16th is the annual celebration of Leopold Bloom’s doomed wanderings through Dublin in 1904, as chronicled in James Joyce’s classic novel “Ulysses”. And in the 21st century, reality finally catches up with and overtakes fiction.

In 1921 a U.S. court banned Ulysses on the grounds that some of its graphic depictions of nudity and sexuality constituted pornography under the Postal Code. And while that decision was reversed in 1933 by a judge who could only have failed today’s more rigorous selection processes for illiteracy and cretinism, the private sector came to the rescue of public morals when Apple banned an online illustrated version from its iStore last year.

However, that victory had an even shorter half-life. A couple months later, presumably realizing that it would lose it’s investment completely if it maintained the ban, and that nobody would likely access anything remotely smacking of literary merit anyway, Apple decided to give it a go after all.… Read the rest

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Chinese Teenager Sells Kidney For iPad

By BananaFamine on June 4, 2011 in News 4

A teenager in China has sold one of his kidneys in order to buy an iPad 2, Chinese media report. BBC News reports:

The 17-year-old, identified only as Little Zheng, told a local TV station he had arranged the sale of the kidney over the internet.

The story only came to light after the teenager’s mother became suspicious.

The case highlights China’s black market in organ trafficking. A scarcity of organ donors has led to a flourishing trade.

It all started when the high school student saw an online advert offering money to organ donors. Illegal agents organised a trip to the hospital and paid him $3,392 (£2,077) after the operation. With the cash the student bought an iPad 2, as well as a laptop.

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Brain Scans Show Apple Products Triggering The Same Parts Of The Brain As Religion

By JacobSloan on June 2, 2011 in News 50

Go figure — scans taken when Apple devotees were shown the company’s logo and products demonstrate that we literally worship our favorite brands. Digital Trends writes:

UK neuroscientists suggest that the brains of Apple devotees are stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that the brains of religious people are stimulated by religious imagery.

Alex Riley contacted the editor of World of Apple, Alex Brooks, an Apple worshipper who claims to think about Apple 24 hours a day, which is possibly 23 hours too many for most regular people. A team of neuroscientists studied Brooks’ brain while undergoing an MRI scan, to see how it reacted to images of Apple products and (heaven forbid) non-Apple products.

According to the neuroscientists, the scan revealed that there were marked differences in Brooks’ reactions to the different products. Previously, the scientists had studied the brains of those of religious faith, and they found that, as Riley puts it: “The Apple products are triggering the same bits of [Brooks'] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith.”

This suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion,” one of the scientists says.

… Read the rest

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Why Do Gadget Makers Wield A ‘Kill Switch’?

By BananaFamine on May 15, 2011 in News 4

Photo: Stahlkocher (CC)

Mark Milian writes on CNN:

When you buy a video game from Best Buy, you don’t give the retailer the right to barge into your house whenever it wants. So why do we give that permission to software companies?

Most popular smartphone operating systems and other electronic gadgets include what security researchers refer to as a kill switch.

This capability enables the company that makes the operating software to send a command over the Web or wireless networks that alters or removes certain applications from devices.

Apple, Google and Microsoft include this function in their platforms, along with a few lines in their usage agreements describing the policy. Google and Apple executives say this feature is important in order to protect against malicious software.

“Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs told The Wall Street Journal in 2008.

… Read the rest

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Department of Justice Asks for More Data from Apple and Other Smartphones

By iLL WiLL on May 10, 2011 in News 8

Today the United States Department of Justice took an alarming stance on the subject of data collection during a Senate hearing on mobile privacy. Rather than chastise Apple, Google, and other smart phone manufacturers over their data collection practices, the DOJ felt it was a better idea to encourage MORE data collection. Kashmir Hill writes on Forbes:

During a Congressional hearing today about how much privacy you deserve when it comes to your smartphone, senators made clear that they were uncomfortable with the sensitive location and personal data that iPhone and Android phones are collecting and to whom that data gets passed along.

During one panel, the senators grilled Google and Apple. During another, they had representatives from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission give the government perspective on data collection via mobile devices. While Jessica Rich of the FTC hinted that her organization would be investigating Apple soon, and urged companies to minimize the data they collect to protect the privacy of their users, Jason Weinstein a deputy assistant attorney general from the DOJ’s criminal division had a very different message: “MOAR DATA!”