Exclusive: Apple to Buy Quattro Wireless for $275 Million

Great reporting Kara.

MobileMe going to take on Google Apps in the next round of this battle?

Excellent scoop, Kara. Congratulations on the get.

Question: How do the NC server farm, PA Semi and Lala acquisitions all fit into the tablet scenario? People brighter than me can probably sketch out some possibilities.

All of this hoopla so that we can place even more advertising in the user experience- products most likely made in China.

At some point in the future (it's already true to a large degree, but not nearly as much as it will eventually be), most people might wish we'd done something to reign in advertising earlier, just as we now wish we'd reigned in Wall Street, etc. earlier (or kept them reigned in) We may eventually see even far more ads than we see now–ads in everything, in our shoes, far more attempts at persuasion, companies competing even more to sell you things, an even more generally commercialized culture, etc–it may become even more embedded into everything than it is now, and it will be a long slog to break free of it. On the other hand, maybe targeted advertising like Google is doing will keep it to a dull roar, as maybe they've been trying to do for some time, with plain-vanilla text ads on Google search pages–ideally, they may be trying to transform much of advertising into a lower-key thing, by making it more efficient, so that if companies wish to, they can do less intrusive advertising which doesn't wash over everyone, including people who don't want or have no interest in a given product–when an advertiser pays for an expensive TV ad for a car, they're taking a chance that enough of the people watching are interested, for the ad to pay off. But far more people watching are not interested–that's a wasteful spending of ad dollars, and is distracting to viewers who aren't interested, and pushes consumerism in general to all watching. Is Google trying to address some of these problems–is targeted advertising deliberately LESS intrusive, less omnipresent, than the classic advertising-to-everyone approach?

Kara Swisher's video “Obsession . . ” with AT&T service puts the focus right where it's needed. The service to my iPhone at my home office began to fail in June, to the point where it now no longer supports call for longer than a few seconds — if that long.
Dozens of calls and letters later, I still do not have service. Only responses in denial.
What can be done? Open the iPhone to Verizon? Sue AT&T?

Something in your iPhone's memory may be scrambled. If you haven't tried it already, back up your iPhone, then do a simple reset of the iPhone (look in the Settings app), then test for at least a couple days, in an area with good ATT coverage, whether you have decent phone service. If you don't, do a restore, without reinstalling your backup, in order to wipe the iPhone so that none of your data remains on it, then test again. If you still don't have decent service in an area with good ATT coverage, jump to the next paragraph. But if you do have decent phone service at this stage, do a full restore from your backup, and test again. If you still have decent service, then you've cleared whatever was in the iPhone's memory that was scrambled; but if you now have bad service again, then something about the contents of your iPhone's backup may be retaining that scrambled stuff. Do another restore/wipe, and start reinstalling apps one at a time, freshly downloaded from the App Store, testing for a few days after reinstalling each app, to see at what point poor ATT service again occurs (if it does).

If you did an original restore but still didn't get decent service in an area with good ATT coverage, ask Apple if they'll replace your iPhone, whether or not it's still under warranty. If your iPhone isn't a 3GS model, try to get that, since many (not all) people find it stays connected to ATT better than prior iPhone models. Lean on them if they balk. If they don't give in, jailbreak your iPhone, then sign up with a different carrier than ATT.

That's a big investment by apple.

Very valid points. Competition is very healthy for all of us. As long as everything that can be compatible with the available platforms stays compatible than its for the good of all of us.

-Bella :)

(APPL) is marginalizing enemy corporations and as time go's on most companies will not be able to compete in this ever broadening organism called the global market.