Apple recently published new information about the total environmental impact of their products — from manufacturing and usage to Apple’s own facilities:
And today’s 20-inch iMac uses 55 percent less material than its first-generation, 15-inch predecessor. That’s a material savings of 10,000 metric tons — the equivalent of 7200 Toyota Priuses — for every one million iMac computers sold.
The transparency is impressive, but the numbers are even more so.
Still, the agreement has had its benefits (larger margins, more creative freedom, better coordination, less carriers to deal with), and if Apple can find a long-term monetary justification for extending the agreement with AT&T, it will. However, as it stands today, AT&T remains the iPhone’s biggest barrier to mass adoption, and Apple knows it. So does AT&T.
That’s why Friday’s MMS launch is so important. It may very well be AT&T’s last chance to prove to Apple that it deserves to renew its extremely lucrative exclusivity contract. If AT&T slows or crashes during the influx of MMS, AT&T will have dug itself into an even deeper perception hole. It won’t have another shot to prove that it can handle the stress that more iPhones will bring, and Apple would likely bow to customer pressure and strike deals with other carriers.
We know you’ve been eager for this service so we wanted to offer a quick update on the launch plans for MMS on Friday, Sept. 25. Late morning, Pacific Time, on Friday, the new carrier settings update enabling MMS should be live and ready to download through iTunes. We’ll provide the steps and all of the details you need right here at that time.
The Scream Machine ride, once the tallest rollercoaster in the world, is all that remains visible of the popular tourist attraction after waters from the nearby Chattahoochee River in Atlanta flooded into the park.
The west Georgia theme park — the largest in America’s Southeast — has been nicknamed ‘Six Flags Under Water’ by American media.
However the park’s communications director Kendell Kelton is confident the attractions will re-open in time for the weekend if the water recedes. Damage — particularly to the all-wood Georgia Cyclone roller coaster — from the muddy waters is likely to be significant.
The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a “pocket” to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft’s tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we’ve seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.
CNET:
“AT&T has long supported the principle of an open Internet and has conducted its business accordingly,” Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior vice president of external and legislative affairs, said in a statement. “We were also early supporters of the FCC’s current four broadband principles and their case-by-case application to wired networks.”
But Cicconi went on to say that the principles and new legislation should not apply to the wireless market.
When we launched Google Sync for Contacts and Google Calendar earlier this year, an over-the-air, always-on connection to sync mail was noticeably absent. We heard your requests loud and clear, and starting today you can use Google Sync to get your Gmail messages pushed directly to your iPhone, iPod Touch, or Windows Mobile device.
With this, Google’s online services now match the major selling points of MobileMe — and are closing in on Exchange.
On September 20th, 1989, Apple released the Macintosh Portable, the first true mobile Mac and a much-maligned machine. It didn’t sell well and is very rare today–not due to any particular design failure, but because the original price was a whopping $6,500-$7,300 ($11,288 to $12,677 in 2009 dollars). It wasn’t the only Mac to cost that much, but others in that price range offered top-of-the-line performance. The Portable was both too expensive and too underpowered to catch on. Its large size didn’t help, either.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski delivered Monday on President Obama’s promise to back “net neutrality.” But he went much further than merely seeking to expand rules that prohibit ISPs from filtering or blocking net traffic — he proposed that they cover all broadband connections, including data connections for smartphones.
It’s encouraging to see the Obama administration taking this on — a tiered Internet would be a huge detriment to the United States, which is already behind other nations when it comes to not only high-speed usage, but education — which is becoming more and more dependent on the Internet.
The Mac Portable development project was launched in 1986, not long before Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple, and the product was first released for sale on September 20, 1989. It was featured on the cover of the November 1989 edition of MacUser magazine, which called it “by far the most complex piece of machinery devised by sale by Apple computer.”
While it incorporated a laptop-style foldable form factor with a front-mounted carry handle/lockdown lever, the Mac Portable weighed only about a pound less than contemporaneous Mac Compact desktops — a hefty 16 pounds, due partly to it having a robust lead-acid battery. It wasn’t cheap either, selling for a likewise heavyweight $6,500 — or $7,300 with an optional hard drive.
The App Store is believed to be the current center of Apple’s attention, as iPod sales are flattening after years of growth. The problem, says BusinessWeek, is that record labels are now more dependent than ever on Apple, as some 90 percent of US digital music sales are handled through the iTunes Store, and approximately 75 percent of all media players sold are iPods. CD sales are continuing to fall, which means that without Apple’s help, the record industry will further shrink.