An Illinois-based company and its Nevada partner have filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging that Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” treads on an interface patent that affects the operating system’s nearly universal use of tabs.
Little-known intellectual property agency IP Innovation LLC and its parent Technology Licensing Corporation this week became the latest to claim that Apple had abused a patent they hold.
Filed April 18th in a US district court in Marshall, Texas — a town frequently recognized as the preferred home for lawsuits by companies that hoard property claims — the four-page formal complaint purports that Apple has engaged in “willful and deliberate” infringement of a computer control patent by selling its current Tiger operating system.
IP Innovation is demanding a jury trial and asks for reparations for perceived damages which “exceed $20 million,” according to the suit. It also seeks an injunction that would prevent the California-based defendant from infringing on the patent, essentially blocking Apple from continuing to sell its current edition of Mac OS X and any future editions that might draw on the supposed infringements.
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Posted in Apple, Software | 1 Comment »
Tradition has it that when Microsoft releases a new operating system, hardware OEMs shift to the new platform almost immediately and phase out the old OS as soon as possible. But Dell’s customers have told it, not so fast, pardner.
For the second time since establishing IdeaStorm to solicit customer feedback, Dell is changing policy when it comes to operating system preloads. It’s already planning to add a pre-loaded Linux option, and now Dell is bringing back the choice of Windows XP.
Like most OEMs, Dell began to offer Vista as soon as it was available in January and dropped Windows XP as an option, at least for consumers. Corporate customers still had the option of purchasing XP for their systems, since corporations are often very slow and cautious in moving to a new operating system.
So, with more than 10,000 votes on IdeaStorm asking for XP as an option instead of just Vista, Dell complied. “In this particular case, it was something we could do that was relatively easy. The infrastructure was already there to offer XP on our systems, so why not?” said Kent Cook, a spokesman for Dell.
Cook said there were enough subsets of customers who wanted or needed XP to merit the decision. For instance, gamers are particularly sensitive to the issue because Windows Vista is lacking in driver support, meaning less than optimal performance out of Vista systems, and many games are not yet optimized for Vista.
Still, Cook said the “overwhelming majority” of Dell customers like the features and functionality in Vista. “There are some definite improvements in security and functionality. That’s not to say there haven’t been issues in some cases, there always are when a new OS rolls out. But it’s nothing out of line from other major OS launches.”
HP said it offers only Vista on its consumer PCs, while XP is still available for SMB and corporate customers and there are no plans to change that. Gateway is offering Vista to both consumer and corporate customers, but still offers Windows XP as an option across almost all of its consumer products.
Matt Rosoff of Directions on Microsoft expects some OEMs to sell XP for at least another year. The urgency to move to Vista isn’t as strong as it was when Windows XP came out in 2001, he said.
“There you had a transition from the DOS to NT codebase, and there was enough stability and enough of an argument for XP that consumers buying a new PC weren’t demanding Windows 9x,” he said.
He also said another reason people may hesitate in buying Vista is that even on a new PC, it has fairly steep requirements. Normally, Microsoft is about one year ahead of where critical mass is with PC hardware, but this time, Vista is a lot further ahead of current hardware configurations.
“The PCs coming out two years from now will run Vista pretty well,” said Rosoff. “Today it’s pretty steep. You need two, perhaps four gigabytes of RAM and a dual core processor to really get performance out of it.”
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Posted in Hardware, Microsoft, Software | No Comments »
One can only guess what exactly caused them to terminate their account with MySpace, but there are a large number of very obvious ones that could be tossed out. Viruses, privacy issues, lawsuits, horrendous deign(s), unreliability, competition and OpenID just to name a few.
Within the last month two of my friends have contracted viruses from MySpace, both of which I was unable to remove, and ended up formatting their machines. One of those friends claimed that would be the end of MySpace for him.
My MySpace page becomes less used everyday, and I have had a number of thoughts about deleting my own as well.
MySpace by the Numbers
Public traffic reports for MySpace show a nearly one year old trend, reporting MySpace‘s traffic at a constant level with no real fluctuation one way or the other since 2006 when MySpace became insanely popular.
This should speak volumes about where MySpace is at. No increases in traffic can mean a couple of things. It could mean that you are losing members at an even rate that you are gaining them keeping the traffic at a constant rate. It could mean that the same people are returning to MySpace over and over and you are not making significant gains in users keeping the traffic steady.
In either event MySpace’s traffic is teeter-tottering and could lurch in either direction. However given the circumstances that I have spoken about I would put my guess behind a decent sized decline over the next year.
Change is Good
One of the biggest factors leading to the demise of the ultimate teeny bopper’s playground is the inability or unwillingness to change. MySpace has given open reign on code being embedded on pages, something that next to no other social networking sites are doing. The failure of MySpace to protect it’s users from malicious chunks of code is driving users away. No one wants to shell out fifty to one-hundred bucks to have a virus removed.
The horrendous ability of users to be able to override the look of their pages is awful. How many pages have you gone to where you have a blaring red or yellow image then have to attempt to read text over the top of it? Simplicity is beauty and allowing users to create their own monstrosities is a mistake.
Rather then reinventing MySpace as a product that works well, and protects it’s users they have instead elected to patch and attempt to control the wide spread chaos, explaining that it would not be possible to re-release a MySpace application, and again ignoring the issues that MySpace creates further pushing it’s own users and supporters away.
Open Social Networks
In the near future when OpenID takes a firmer hold, open social networks will become reality. The need to use MySpace’s attempt as a Web page will become unnecessary as your friend will travel with you anywhere via your OpenID. Mashups of Social Networking sites will become more common place then the networks themselves further burying MySpace.
With open social networks your friends which are tied to your OpenID will be able to travel freely with you to any site you choose, and interaction between the social networking sites via these mashup sites will provide the ability to correspond with your friends from the safety of a professionally written social networking application.
MySpace is too Popular
I know a lot of people reading this are going to think to themselves “MySpace is too big, has too many users, and cannot be brought down”. I agree, it is a large task but I will leave you with two companies to think about. Maybe MySpace can join the club.
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