pieces of the apple Bits Puzzle
While Apple’s new Magic Mouse did not seem to be well received at first, it has surprisingly helped the company achieve a twofold increase in its share of domestic mice sales, albeit for the November window period only.
This is a first for Apple, and the boost was apparently tied in with the rollout of new iMacs in October.
If you look at the graphic above, prepared by our own Heather Penman, this sees Apple move up ahead of HP and Targus, but needless to say, are way behind market leaders Logitech and Microsoft.
However…
Do you have Apple’s Magic Mouse and Bluetooth Keyboard together on your desk? Have you noticed any battery life problems with the keyboard? If you are, you’re probably not the first, as many folks out there with similar setups have been complaining of similar issues. Some folks are claiming that the Magic Mouse is preventing the keyboard from going into sleep mode, while others claim that it’s a Bluetooth driver issue.
What we do know is that users are experiencing problems, and hopefully Apple gets this sorted out fairly quick, because if the user comments are anything to go by, the keyboards are going through batteries really quick.
Meanwhile…
Could our search for Apple’s Wi-Fi software engineer be a hint that the iPhone 4G might sport 802.11n wireless?
The job posting indicates that the company is looking for a worker who can implement the 802.11a and 802.11n standards, along with the existing 802.11b/g technology.
With that in mind, do you think that the iPhone 4G and upcoming Apple tablet will be sporting 802.11n Wi-Fi, or will we have to continue waiting in order to get 802.11n Wi-Fi in the iPhone?
Speaking of the tablet (it won’t be called that shortly), the image here is not too different from the unit now in production.
And, by the way… This technology will put the Amazon Kindle, and related products, out of sight, while also changing the world in terms how you access, read and use information. You can read about my Kindle here: evil wireless empires (and their minions): a prudent and optimistic comparative analysis.
It’s true.
Peace be to my Brothers and Sisters.
Brian Patrick Cork
The iSlate will have some stiff competition from another tech-giant: Google. Partnering with HTC for the hardware, Google’s open source Chrome OS will, in all likelihood, take a bite out of the “hip-tech” market that Apple has created. Not only the tablet, but the Nexus One phone (to be announced by Google today), may give the iPhone a bit of competition. Google has promised to “turn the mobile telecom industry on its ear”. And, if it manages a game changing value proposition, it may be the one phone to challenge the iPhone. If all it offers is a speed-boost, however, I fear it will fall by the wayside, as so many other potential iPhone killers have done in the past couple of years.
Google’s potential aspires to be as big as the internet itself.
However, that ends up being it’s greatest failing. It wants to be everything – as opposed to the thing.
Apple give us products we did not know we could not live without, until they were in our hands.
Cork