With all the attention on the iPhone and iPad, you might have forgotten that Apple has a computer called the Mac. Today, Apple is previewing the new Mac OS X operating system, to be released in 2011, about two years after the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, a refinement of the previous version, Leopard. The company is also previewing new versions of some its Mac software, such as iLife.
Ever since it unveiled the new mobile OS in February, Microsoft has been cagey on whether its new Windows Phone 7 would support direct synchronization with Apple's Macintosh computers. Now a spokeswoman confirms that Microsoft will offer a Mac OS X tool that syncs "selected content" between Macs and Windows Phone 7 devices.
Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS dominate the new non-BlackBerry installations in enterprises across the globe between July and September 2010, according to Good Technology's tally of what the mobility management vendor's customers are deploying. Good's mobile management tool is typically deployed in large businesses and government agencies, and so is a good proxy for overall enterprise adoption patterns. But it does not support RIM's BlackBerry or Hewlett-Packard's WebOS, so Good's results do not include data on those platforms' activations.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs today -- in the midst of a blitz of consumer-oriented announcements such as video rentals in iTunes, a new touch-based iPod music player model, and an online multiuser gaming service -- introduced a new version of its mobile OS and a new version of the iPod Touch.
Autodesk is bringing its AutoCAD architecture, design, and engineering software back to the Mac OS after an 18-year absence, the company announced this evening. But the company plans to do more than offer a Mac OS X version of AutoCAD: It says it will release a free version of the software, dubbed AutoCAD WS, for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch that lets users review, edit, and share AutoCAD files on those popular mobile devices.
Research in Motion released BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) 5.02 today, an update that, in an unusual turnabout, copies a mobile management capability from the iPhone's iOS: the ability to manage corporate data separately from personal data. That allows, for example, IT to block access to corporate email and contacts from a device if a user leaves the company or loses the BlackBerry, while leaving the user's personal data intact. Apple introduced a similar capability in its iOS 4.0 in early June.
It's time for IT to face facts: The great corporate barrier against employees using personal smartphones has been breached.
Microsoft revealed this week at its Mix 10 conference for Microsoft-oriented Web developers that its forthcoming Windows Phone 7 mobile OS will not include a clipboard capability for copy-and-paste operations -- at least not in the first version.
Friday morning, the fool's parade started. Apple is taking online "pre-orders" for its iPad tablet, which is supposed to begin shipping on April 3. Buying a new kind of product sight unseen is foolish. Especially given how mysterious Apple has been on what the iPad can do and what restrictions on capabilities and media access it will place on users and content providers.
It's never been easy to access - much less analyse - the vast amount of data available to, for example, determine changes in customer behavior or sentiment, optimize routing of telephone switches based on call patterns, or analyze financial portfolio pricing or risk. Traditional business intelligence systems rely on highly structured (and usually transactional) data stored in massive data cubes and data warehouses, which requires significant upfront work to decide what is being analyzed and to ensure all the data is consistent with that goal - that is, you know what you are looking for. But that approach isn't useful for exploring trends or patterns, especially in external data that wasn't formatted for your needs.
Last summer, it looked like Apple was finally going to make its Macs and iPhones enterprise-capable, giving hope to those who wanted a more stable, less failure-prone option at the office.
As the smoke clears from Steve Jobs launching the Apple iPad, missing details suggest there's less to Apple's tablet than meets the eye.
Very soon, we'll know whether Apple has changed the world again. The company has scheduled a press conference for 1 p.m. Eastern time today. For months now, the rumor mills and blogosphere have been abuzz with speculation that Apple will debut a new class of device based on the iPod Touch and an updated version of the iPhone OS that uses a larger screen (10 or 11 inches diagonal, perhaps 7) to provide a multitouch, gesture-based media slate for e-books, electronic magazines, Web browsing, video playback, and apps.
The writing is on the wall. Despite a major push to sell the >uch-maligned Windows Vista, customers aren't buying.
Palm has stayed very quiet since its releases of the Palm Pre and Pixi devices this summer, which debuted the WebOS that was at one point seen as a key rival to Apple's iPhone.
