Among the headline features are deep integration with Apple’s iCloud service, and with Twitter. And several features from iOS devices, like Messages and Reminder, are making their debut on the Mac, and will create a more unified experience among Macs, iPads and iPhones.

The release, which is coming only a year after Lion debuted last summer, might just indicate a speeding up of the cadence at which Apple does Mac software upgrades. Usually there’s an interval of 18 months to 24 months between major OS upgrades. That makes this announcement a bit of a surprise. Does that mean we can expect another one about 18 months from now? We’ll see.

Here’s a quick rundown of the 10 new features:

iCloud built in: Mountain Lion will be the first version of OS X built with iCloud fully integrated. Documents in the Cloud is a new feature that will allow documents you create and edit on the Mac to sync up and readily be available on iPhones and iPads. Changes you make in the document on one device will automatically appear on the other. You’ll be able to use iCloud from the moment you start up your Mac and sign in with an Apple ID.

Messages: It’s crazy to think about it, but iMessage users on the iPhone and iPad have sent something like 26 billion messages in only the few months it has been available. Messages is the new instant messaging application that will replace iChat. It will unify the experience between the Mac and iOS devices, and will still be compatible with services like Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Jabber, but will also bring iMessages into the Mac. Conversations stay up to date across all devices. It supports photos and videos. Also? There’s a FaceTime button.

Twitter: Twitter is also deeply integrated into Mountain Lion. You’ll be able to tweet directly from within several applications, sharing Web site addresses, photos and videos. Central to this is something Apple calls the Tweet Sheet, which you call up from the Share menu. It grabs what you want to share on Twitter and you write your tweet from directly within the Mac OS. And as cool as this is, it’s notable also for what it’s not: Facebook integration. Expect lots of speculation around that.

Share Sheets: Sharing is kind of a big deal these days, so it makes sense that the ability to do it — whether on Twitter or via email or any one of the cloud services out there — would be available on the Mac. There’s a new Share button in Safari and in other applications that makes it easy to send a photo to a friend via email or to Flickr, or a video to Vimeo or to another computer via AirDrop.

Notification Center: The dashboard of notices saying what’s going on in iOS is coming to the Mac. Similar to how you reach it on the iPhone — a swipe down along the length of the screen — it will appear on the Mac with a two-finger swipe from the right edge of the trackpad, and the list will appear on the right side of the screen. When you get a notification from an application — say, an email has arrived, or a download is finished, or a calendar reminder is going off — you can see them all in one place. Also, short messages with notifications appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and then fade away after a few seconds. It reminds me a great deal of a third-party application enhancer I use, called Growl.

Reminders: Another popular iOS app is being added to the Mac. Your to-do list remains synced across the Mac, iPhone and iPad, and you can add reminders that pop up throughout the day, so you don’t forget.

Notes: The all-purpose “take this down for later” application gets the Mac treatment. Soon you’ll be able to drag URLs into a note. And thanks to iCloud, they’ll be synced across Mac, iPhone and iPad. You’ll also be able to “pin” a note to your desktop, meaning it will stay open even if you close the main Notes application. Notes also has a Share button.

Game Center: Long a weakness on the Mac, gaming is getting stronger all the time. Games, it turns out, are the most popular software titles on the Mac App store. So it makes sense to bring the Game Center experience from iOS to the Mac. I saw a quick demo, where two people played a racing game against each other — can’t remember which game exactly — one was on the iPad, the other on the Mac. You’ll be able to challenge friends, keep track of your standings on a leaderboard and see what games your friends like. There’s also support for in-game voice chat, so you can talk trash.

Gatekeeper: Expect this feature to be controversial among Mac software developers. Basically, it’s an attempt by Apple to deal with the fact that the one serious security threat it faces is software that looks good at first but turns out to behave badly only after you’ve downloaded and installed it. The new scheme basically sets up a three-tier system, where the user can decide from where they will be allowed to download and install new software. In the most restrictive — or some will argue safest — case, you can set your Mac to allow only software from the Mac App store. As it does with the App Store on iOS devices, Apple vets the software sold there for safety. In the second case — this one not as restrictive — you can install software from sources other than the App Store, but only from developers who have signed up as a known developer. Here, Apple will not have checked the app for safety, but will at least vouch that the developer is known. Developers will have the option of signing up for a Developer ID. This is the part that I think they’ll find a little controversial. Anyway, in the third case, there are no restrictions. You can install software from any developer and any source, much as you can do today.

AirPlay Mirroring: If you have an Apple TV handy, you’ll be able to use your TV as a screen for your Mac — it’s super easy. If they’re on the same wireless network, the Mac will have a simple pulldown menu that makes your TV mirror what’s on the Mac.

Finally, Apple added a lot of new features for the Chinese market. Text input has been improved, and several popular Web services — like Baidu for search, integration with Sina Weibo for Twitter-like sharing and video-sharing with Youku and Tudou — have been built in, in order to make the Mac OS experience a lot more China-friendly than it has been before. Given the Apple madness that has struck that country in recent months, it will certainly find a happy audience.

The company said it sold 37 million iPhones, up 128 percent from a year ago, with 15.4 million iPads sold, also more than double sales of a year ago. Mac sales were up 26 percent, to 5.2 million.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

That said, Apple gave its usual extra-cautious outlook, predicting a significant dropoff in revenue and earnings. CFO Peter Oppenheimer said to expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and per-share earnings of about $8.50.

Apple shares, which had dipped a bit ahead of the earnings report, have surged in after-hours trading, changing hands recently at $458 a share, up $37.59 or nearly 9 percent.

We’ll have more when Apple’s earnings conference call starts in about 20 minutes.

Reporting first-quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday, Apple rolled out the big numbers once again, its strong financials fueled by record iPhone and iPad sales.

The company posted a profit of $13.06 billion on revenue of $46 billion. Earnings per share were $13.87, far more than the $10.08 per share analysts had been expecting.

Apple said it sold 37.04 million iPhones for the quarter, up more than 128 percent from the year prior; 15.43 million iPads, up 111 percent (so much for the Kindle Fire …); 5.2 million Macs, up 26 percent; and nearly 15.4 million iPods, down 21 percent. Big numbers — all of them. And all but one trounced estimates.

Analysts had expected Apple to report first-quarter earnings of $10.08 a share on revenue of about $38.8 billion. And, on average, they had called for iPhone shipments of nearly 30 million, iPad shipments of about 14 million and Mac shipments of around five million.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

Apple’s guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2012, as per usual, is comically low: Expected revenue of $32.5 billion and earnings per diluted share of $8.50.

Apple shares, which had slipped more than 1.6 percent to $420.31 in advance of the company’s earnings announcement, are now headed back upward in after-hours trading.

NOTES FROM THE EARNINGS CALL

• Quick observations before the call: Apple now has $97 billion in cash, short- and long-term securities on hand. Apple’s profits exceeded Google’s entire revenue — $10.6 billion.
• Q1 2012 brought with it all-time highs for quarterly iPhone, iPad and Mac sales.
• Customers have downloaded more than 100 million apps from the Mac App Store in its first year.
• iPod still claims more than a 70 percent share of the MP3 market.
• The iTunes store generated $1.7 billion in revenue. $120 million in apps and music sold on Dec. 25 alone.
• Strong iPhone growth across segments driven by iPhone 4S. Siri has “captivated consumers.”
• Almost all of the Fortune 500 support the iPhone. Many are developing mission critical iPhone apps.
• iPad is popular …
• … with all segments of the market. Unprecedented adoption in Fortune 500 and education.
• More than 600,000 copies of iBooks Author have been downloaded so far.
• 85 million iCloud customers so far.
• By the end of this month, developers will have earned $4 billion cumulatively from App Store sales.
• $6.1 billion in revenue from Apple retail stores. Each store generated an average of $17.1 million in revenue last quarter. That’s an increase of 43 percent from the year prior.
• “We are actively discussing uses of our cash balance. But we have nothing to announce at this time. … We’re not letting it burn a hole in our pocket.”
• Tim Cook: “The reception for the iPhone 4S has been breathtaking. … We made a very bold bet on demand, and it turns out we were short on supply throughout the quarter. … Actually, we ended it with a significant backlog. We’re still short in key geographies.”
• Cook: “I think we made the right decision to go with a broad range of iPhones.”
• Demand for the iPhone in China is “staggering.” Even though Apple is only selling through its Web site and retail partners, “demand is off the charts.”
• Flooding in Thailand has forced Apple to pay more for hard drives. There wasn’t a material supply or cost impact on any product lines in the December quarter, but there will likely be a cost increase in March.
• Cook: We’re really happy with the 15.4 million iPads we were able to sell. This is consistent with our long-term belief that this is a huge opportunity for Apple over time. And, as I’ve said before, there will come a day that the tablet market is larger than the PC market. IDC’s recent data shows that tablet sales exceeded desktop PC sales in the U.S. There is significant momentum in this space.
• In terms of competitiveness, the iPad ecosystem is in a class by itself. We now have 70,000 apps. … I think people really want to do multiple things with their tablets, so we don’t see these limited-function tablets and e-readers as being in the same category as iPad. We don’t think people who want an iPad will settle for a limited-function device.
• Peter Oppenheimer on Apple’s $97 billion in cash, and what the company might do with it: “We know it’s growing. We’re talking about it. … When we have something to announce, we’ll announce it.” He really doesn’t want to answer questions about this.
• Cook on Apple TV and a possible Apple Television: Apple TV is doing extremely well; we just sold a record 104 million units. But we still classify this area as a hobby. We think it’s a fantastic product, and we continue to pull strings and see where we can take it.
• Another question about that $97 billion. Did I mention that Oppenheimer really doesn’t want to answer questions about Apple’s cash?
• Cook: We’re thrilled with iCloud. The response from our customers has been incredible. We’ve signed up 80 million customers in three months. It’s not a product, it’s a strategy for the next decade.
• Nothing much to say about adding more iPhone carriers in China. Cook: “It’s an important market, and we continue to look at how to grow it further.”
• Question about Anobit acquisition, but Oppenheimer dodges.
• Cook on the iPhone in India and Russia: We’re selling in Russia through reseller and carrier partners, and we’re doing the same thing in India. … The next country on our list is Brazil — there’s a huge opportunity there. But I don’t envision Apple Retail going there in the near term.
• Cook: When I looked at the data, particularly in the U.S., after Amazon launched the Kindle Fire, there wasn’t an obvious effect, plus or minus.
• Cook: “There is cannibalization of the Mac by iPad, but there’s much more cannibalization of the PC. We love that trend. The iPad is beginning to appear everywhere. Enterprise has adopted it, education … we sold twice as many iPads into education as we did Macs. … It’s remarkable; we’ve sold 55 million iPads and we’ve only been in the business since April of 2010.”
• Cook on Android versus iPhone: I wouldn’t compare it to Mac and Windows. The Mac has outgrown the market 20 quarters in a row, but still has single-digit market share. We’ve sold over 315 million iOS devices, and over 62 million were sold in the last quarter alone. I don’t have comparable numbers for Android, as I haven’t found a way to get very crisp quarterly reporting for Android like we do, that is transparent and reliable. … Nielsen shows iPhone at 45 percent and Android at 47; comScore shows iPhone at 42 and Android at 41. It’s a very close race.
• I wouldn’t say this is a two-horse race. There’s a horse in Redmond that always suits up and runs. There are always other players. We’ll just want to focus on making great products. We ignore the number of horses on the track — we just want to be the one in the lead.

If this is the first you’ve heard the term, it refers to Windows PCs that resemble the MacBook Air — computers that are thin and light, use a flash drive rather than a traditional hard drive and can boot up rather quickly.

Intel plans to make sure that if you haven’t heard of Ultrabooks, you soon will. The chipmaker, which has trademarked the name, is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into both the manufacturing and the marketing of Ultrabooks.

Well, I have another word for them. I call them laptops.

The fact of the matter is this is just the direction that laptops are going. They are getting thinner and lighter, faster and sleeker, and booting up quicker than they did before. And that DVD drive, it’s going away to save money and weight.

This isn’t a revolution, but rather the continued evolution of a product that once had floppy drives and modem ports.

Some companies’ devices have already hit the market, while others, including Dell, are expected to introduce models at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

In many ways, the Ultrabooks are the PCs belated answer to the MacBook Air.

While netbooks offered light computers at a low cost, their cramped keyboards and small displays made them no match for the Air. Traditional laptops, meanwhile, were slow and bulky and often delivered poor battery life.

The MacBook Air has seen its sales skyrocket while the overall PC market has gained just 2 percent worldwide. According to Gartner, MacBook Air sales from October 2010 to September 2011 were five times those from a year earlier as the product moved from a high-end niche to the mainstream of Apple’s laptop lineup. That laptop alone makes up nearly 2 percent of global PC sales.

It has also picked up many of the aspects that have made the iPad a hit, including easy access to apps, multitouch gestures and the ability to nearly instantly resume from sleep.

While once it was an oddity, the MacBook Air is no longer a separate category of Mac. In fact, many outsiders think it will someday soon be the only laptop Apple makes.

PCs will probably retain a bit more diversity. People like things bigger and smaller, cheaper and pricier. Plus, the Ultrabook doesn’t meet all needs. Those with big storage needs will likely want a bigger hard drive, for example, since flash drives get prohibitively expensive over 256 gigabytes.

That’s not to say there isn’t value in what Intel is doing. First of all, it will provide a badly needed marketing boost to the PC industry, which has suffered mightily in the prestige department.

Also, Intel has a history of speeding up transitions in the computing market. Today, it is almost impossible to find a PC that doesn’t have Wi-Fi built in. But that wasn’t the case before Intel started its massive marketing push behind Centrino — introducing the notion of Wi-Fi to the masses and providing a lift to computers that packed the technology inside.

The company has big plans for the segment; it has invested $300 million in a fund to help lower the cost of the components that go into making the thin laptops, and that is just the start.

It plans ads of its own and to help fund marketing campaigns with individual PC makers. Intel isn’t saying just yet how much it will spend on the Ultrabook endeavor, but it is believed to be far more than the company spent on Centrino. Intel may well put a dollar figure to all those hundreds of millions when it talks about its Ultrabook plans at a press conference at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

For all its efforts, Intel has predicted that, come December, Ultrabooks will make up 40 percent of all consumer laptops sold. Others are less bullish about the segment.

In a forecast released on Wednesday, NPD DisplaySearch predicts Ultrabooks will make up just 8 percent of all laptops sold next year and 14 percent of total notebook shipments in 2013.

While there will be much debate over how many Ultrabooks will be sold, I have a different set of questions.

I have no doubt the PC industry will reach this level at some point. The question for me is whether the arrival of Ultrabooks helps the Windows PC win back share against Apple or grow the PC market as a whole or offer the industry higher profit margins.

Unless the answer to one of those question is yes, then the Ultrabooks will have transformed the laptop without improving life for those that make the products.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

Apple isn’t commenting and is officially treating all this as rumor and speculation (it rarely comments on acquisitions, anyway). But the deal is being reported in Israeli newspapers, and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted a welcome message to Apple today, which sure feels like confirmation. So I’ll proceed under the assumption that the reports of this acquisition are true.

Welcome to Israel, Apple Inc. on your 1st acquisition here. I’m certain that you’ll benefit from the fruit of the Israeli knowledge.

December 20, 2011 3:55 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@IsraeliPM

The PM of Israel

That makes this a cause for celebration. With the Anobit buy, Apple is now the latest member of the Flash Madness Club, which I created over the summer, in the wake of the Fusion-io IPO and other activities by notable flash-technology companies like Violin Memory, Pure Storage and Qwilt.

So why is Apple willing to throw down a reported half-billion dollars on this company? It’s because flash memory has a fundamental problem: As it ages, its ability to store data wears off. This problem is sometimes compared to the semiconductor equivalent of Alzheimer’s. Individual cells on the flash-memory chip lose their ability to store the individual ones and zeros that make up the pictures and music and other data they may be storing, especially after millions of read-and-write operations — the act of putting data on the chip and then loading it from the chip for use. After a lot of heavy use — this can vary depending on the chip — the chips begin to suffer problems with “endurance.”

As flash starts to show up in data centers and PCs and other places beyond consumer gear like iPhones and iPads, this becomes a more important problem. If your iPad gets old enough to suffer data-endurance problems, it’s a pretty simple matter to replace it. But in the more rigorous world of an enterprise data center, where millions of reads and writes will be done on a chip daily, data endurance is a potentially very expensive problem. In the enterprise, a solid-state drive is considered suitable only if it can stand up to five full-drive write cycles, where the drive is filled to capacity and then erased every day for five years.

Anobit’s solution to these problems involves techniques known as memory-signal processing and the use of some secret-sauce memory-processing error-correction algorithms, plus some management tricks for moving data around a flash chip in more efficient ways, in order to make them last longer.

It’s also the sort of problem that a company like Apple — which is the world’s largest consumer of flash memory, and has been for several years — would want to solve. Think of the many places where Apple uses flash — the iPad, iPhone, iPod, MacBook Air and Apple TV. And those are just the products we know about, so far. Flash can’t help but appear in many more products.

On top of that, flash technology plays a significant role in Apple’s data centers. Fusion-io, the company that builds flash-based insert cards that speed up garden-variety servers, has named Apple as a significant customer, so there’s plenty of flash inside Apple’s facilities in North Carolina. Flash endurance can’t help but be a problem Apple might face with its iCloud service, for example.

Israel has a big connection to the flash industry. SanDisk’s founder, Eli Harari, is Israeli; a few years back SanDisk acquired an Israeli company called Msystems, which, if my memory serves, was the first to popularize what we now call a thumb or keychain drive. So, historically, there have been a lot of useful innovations on flash memory that have come out of that country. Supposedly, the deal calls for Apple to open a research center there, so it will get the benefit of ongoing innovations on flash. Chances are it’s going to need a few.

Product strategists in the PC industry are gearing up for 2012 to be the year of the “ultrabook” — very thin, very light laptops, usually with solid-state drives (SSD), that compete with Apple’s MacBook Air — such as the Asus Zenbook and Lenovo U300s. We agree that ultrabooks’ lighter, thinner form will appeal to many consumers. Already, 21 percent of U.S. online consumers say they’re interested in owning one, according to a Forrester Research survey fielded in September. But we see the ultrabook as an evolution of the laptop rather than an entirely new form factor. So what is the next big thing in consumer computing?

The “next big thing” is likely to be many things — we anticipate accelerating form factor diversification beyond the desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones we have today, as we advance deeper into the Post-PC Era. Based on what we see in research and development labs, new products beginning to come to market and gaps in consumer computing experiences, we’ve identified these five form factors as the best candidates for what comes next:

• Wearables: Wearable devices, or “wearables” for short, are devices worn on or near the body that sense and relay information. Many wearables, like the heads-up display (HUD) contact lenses in development at the University of Washington, are years from marketability. But other wearables are already available as consumer products, for uses such as communication and health and fitness. An increasing number of wearables in the health-and-fitness space interact with Apple iOS devices, such as the Lark Technologies vibrating wristband that doubles as an alarm clock and a sleep sensor; and BodyMedia FIT Armbands, which have four sensors to track activity, sleep and calorie intake. WIMM Labs, a Foxconn-funded start-up in Los Altos, Calif., has designed multifunctional wearables, based on Google’s Android software, that it will license to other companies.
• Embedded devices: We define embedded devices as physical objects that incorporate computing processors and sensors, excluding those worn on the body, which we classify as wearables. Like wearables, embedded devices are diverse in form, ranging from devices such as Livescribe smartpens that fit into your pocket, to LG Thinq refrigerators that sit in your kitchen. Embedded devices may or may not have a display — Livescribe pens don’t; the LG Thinq appliances do. Today, embedded devices are widely used in industrial automation and automotives, and they have emerging consumer uses in home automation, entertainment and productivity.
• Surfaces: Surfaces are large interactive displays, which may incorporate multitouch, voice and gesture control, facial recognition, near field communication (NFC), quick response (QR) codes or other input/output mechanisms. Today, surfaces are found mostly in public places such as hotels (Microsoft Surface tables in Sheraton bars) and conferences and events (Obscura Digital’s custom multitouch video installations), as well as in education (interactive whiteboards) and news media (red state/blue state maps), but we see potential for additional uses, especially in retail and marketing. For example, retailers such as Victoria’s Secret have commissioned the design firm frog design to create interactive displays for their retail stores. In Seoul, South Korea, retailers use surfaces to extend their reach beyond their stores: Tesco Homeplus, the No. 2 grocery retailer in South Korea, built “virtual malls” in subway stations to reach more customers without building more stores. Commuters take pictures of QR codes under the groceries they want to buy, and the groceries are delivered to their homes.
• Flexible displays: Flexible displays are computing screens that can be rolled, folded or flexed. Flexible devices can take the form of personal devices, such as an e-reader, or larger surface displays, such as furniture or wallpaper. Flexible displays are likely the farthest from becoming commercialized products because of the lack of a defined use case or customer: Polymer Vision, a spinoff of Philips Electronics, promoted its flexible eBook Reader for years, but declared bankruptcy before bringing the device to market. HP has been developing printable Mylar displays that it imagines could be used for candy wrappers, armband computers for the military or living room wallpaper, but the displays are still several years from commercialization.
• Miniprojectors: Miniprojectors are small devices that project a larger image onto another surface or, in the case of holographic projection, into 3-D space. Miniprojectors can be combined with cameras that recognize gesture to become interactive, similar to the Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360. Today, miniprojectors such as the Brookstone Pocket Projector are gaining in popularity as iPhone accessories. But they’re still niche products, as consumers must purchase them separately. Apple has already filed a patent to embed interactive projectors into its iPhones, iPads and Macs. Embedded miniprojectors would appeal primarily to information workers, but there could be broader consumer uses as well, such as impromptu photo slide shows or YouTube viewing in a group.

It’s easy to read about computing wallpaper, or contact lenses with embedded heads-up displays, and think that these form factors have no bearing on what product strategists are doing today. But product strategists who see what’s coming can anticipate disruption — or even innovate and become disruptors themselves. As you think about what’s coming in 2012 and beyond, know that none of these devices will operate in isolation. The most successful products will work with other products — for example, wearables that talk to smartphones and TVs; surfaces that are activated by the presence of your smartphone. We’re living in a multidevice, multiconnection world, and the best experiences will be those that work across devices and platforms. In that sense, the next phase of the Post-PC Era doesn’t look so different from today.

Sarah Rotman Epps is a senior analyst at Forrester Research, serving consumer product strategy professionals. Follow her on Twitter at @srepps

AllThingsD tech-reviewer kingpin Walt Mossberg also showed off his favorite fun gadgets at the annual Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley earlier this week.

Among his picks: Tangle-resistant ear buds; an Apple iPhone beer-bottle opener and consumption tabulator; a wireless USB drive; and the latest Ultrabooks to compete with the MacBook Air.

Here’s the video of his presentation:

If you envy Apple’s sleek, speedy MacBook Air laptop, and yearn for something like it that comes with the Microsoft Windows operating system, your wish has been granted. It’s a new type of Windows laptop called Ultrabook. A handful already are available, and more are likely to arrive in the new year.

The Ultrabook concept, which is being driven by giant chipmaker Intel, is governed by a set of specs covering everything from thinness to battery life to start-up times. But it is basically an effort to emulate the MacBook Air, which has been a hot product in a challenging market despite selling for double what some bulkier, but capable, Windows laptops fetch. (Apple doesn’t disclose sales of specific Mac models.)

Ironically, the MacBook Air, which came out in 2008 and now starts at $999, uses the same Intel processors Ultrabooks do, and can, if its owner wishes, run Windows capably along with the Mac operating system. But it now will have much more competition.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, with a sturdy aluminum body, has a superb keyboard and roomy touch pad.

I’ve been testing a couple of the new Ultrabooks, from Lenovo and Toshiba, to get a feel for the category, and I’m a fan. I love the idea of a machine that combines low weight with good speed and battery life, yet doesn’t compromise on keyboard and screen size.

I found some drawbacks to both machines, and to Ultrabooks in general. For instance, like the Apple, they lack internal DVD drives and removable batteries, things that will bother some folks. And, at least for now, the Ultrabooks mostly tend to cluster at around $1,000, which rules them out for shoppers on a tight budget. But, overall, I think the advent of the Ultrabook is a good thing for consumers.

In general, I preferred the Lenovo, but the Toshiba has some advantages as well, and you won’t go wrong with either. In my tests, neither did as well as the Apple in such measures as battery life or start times. But both cost less than the comparable Apple model.

Toshiba’s Portege Z835 is lighter and has more ports, including an Ethernet port, than the comparable Lenovo IdeaPad or MacBook Air.

The idea behind the Ultrabook is to make a light, thin laptop that has a full-size screen and keyboard—unlike a cramped netbook—yet also gets strong battery life, starts up and resumes quickly, and is powerful enough to handle a wide variety of common consumer tasks. It is meant to be good enough to be your main computer, but it isn’t aimed at those who need extra horsepower for things like hard-core gaming.

To be clear, there have been thin and light Windows laptops for many years, but these machines have typically been so expensive that few people could buy them, and they often had poor battery life and other serious compromises.

I tested the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and the Toshiba Portege Z830, and also compared them with the latest, comparable MacBook Air. Both have 13-inch screens, are made of metal, weigh under three pounds, and use a solid-state drive—storage chips—instead of a hard disk. This improves speed, reliability and battery life, but limits storage capacity.

The Lenovo starts at $1,095 with a 128 gigabyte drive, 4 GB of memory, and Intel’s mid-range i5 processor. The Toshiba starts at around $900 for a model with the same specs except for the processor, which is a less powerful chip called an i3. However, both Toshiba and Best Buy have recently put this machine on sale, and I found it on Best Buy’s website for $700.

By contrast, the 13-inch MacBook Air with the same amount of solid-state storage and memory, and the i5 processor, costs $1,299.

Beyond their price and processor differences, I found each machine had its strengths and weaknesses.

The Toshiba weighs just 2.47 pounds, versus 2.91 for the Lenovo and 2.96 for the Apple. It also boasts the most ports, including three USB ports versus two for the others and an Ethernet port the others lack. But I found its magnesium body felt more fragile than the other two, which are aluminum and sturdier.

I also disliked the fact that on Toshiba’s keyboard, using the keys for common things like brightness and muting required you to hold down a second function key. And the Toshiba came in last among the three in my tests of battery life, cold start-up time and reboot time. Plus, Toshiba has pre-loaded an annoying Best Buy promotional app that pops up at launch.

The Lenovo feels sturdy and has a keyboard I found superb, and a roomy touch pad. Unlike the other two, it isn’t tapered at the edges, and my test unit sported an orange color, though it also comes in gray. Also, like the Apple, but unlike the Toshiba, Lenovo offers a roomier, 256 GB solid-state drive for extra money.

However, the Lenovo froze once during my tests; the others didn’t. And, unlike the others, it lacks a slot for memory cards.

Both Ultrabooks did fine at all the common tasks I threw at them. But their screen resolution is less than the Mac’s, meaning less material can be seen without scrolling. The Mac also felt sturdier to me than even the Lenovo.

Both Ultrabooks claim battery life of up to eight hours or so. In my battery tests, where I turn off all power-saving features, crank the screen brightness up all the way, leave the Wi-Fi on, and play a continuous loop of music, they fell well short of that. The Toshiba lasted 4 hours and 36 minutes and the Lenovo 4 hours and 50 minutes.

Still, these are respectable numbers in my harsh tests, and suggest to me that in more normal use with power-saving on, you could get six hours or so easily on these machines. However, the MacBook Air did much better, lasting 5 hours and 51 minutes on the same test—suggesting users would likely achieve Apple’s claimed seven hours of battery life in more normal use.

The two Ultrabooks booted up and rebooted much faster than most Windows laptops I’ve tested in the past, reaching a ready-to-use state, with Wi-Fi fully connected, in about 30 seconds when booting from scratch and under a minute on a reboot. They recovered from sleep in under 10 seconds. But the Mac beat them handily on all three measures.

For Windows shoppers who can afford to spend a little more this season, I believe Ultrabooks are a great choice.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111214/ultrabooks-bring-speed-and-light-to-windows/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111214/macbook-pro-could-get-a-new-years-resolution-boost/ http://allthingsd.com/20111214/macbook-pro-could-get-a-new-years-resolution-boost/#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:30:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=153802 As its MacBook Air’s specs drift into the power user realm, how will Apple differentiate its MacBook Pro line?

Better processing and graphics power, of course. And perhaps a much improved display as well. Supply chain sources tell DigiTimes that the next iteration of the MacBook Pro will feature display resolutions as high as 2880×1800 pixels.

An intriguing rumor, and one that I’ve been hearing a lot about as well, though it’s been tough to nail down.

Here’s the logic behind it, though: Ivy Bridge architecture in upcoming Intel chipsets should allow for 4K-resolution displays. Add to that all this talk about Sharp, etc., supplying LCDs for the forthcoming iPad 3, and a MacBook with a Retina-esque display begins to seem plausible.

Too much of a stretch?

DisplaySearch’s Richard Shim doesn’t think so.

“Not a stretch at all,” he said. “We’ve already started to see the impact of tablets on the notebook market with an IPS panel being used in upcoming notebooks. This is a reversal of sorts in the notebook market, where wide angle viewing has traditionally been unused. …

“[We] haven’t seen the move to higher resolution ‘Retina’ panels for notebooks yet because the panels are new and are being using mainly for tablets, specifically iPads, but I could see it happening in the future for sure.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111214/macbook-pro-could-get-a-new-years-resolution-boost/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111213/report-apple-eyeing-flash-memory-maker-anobit/ http://allthingsd.com/20111213/report-apple-eyeing-flash-memory-maker-anobit/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:17:29 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=153405 Apple is reportedly in talks to acquire Anobit, developer of a NAND flash controller technology that dramatically enhances flash chip performance. Price? $400 million to $500 million, according to Israel’s Calcalist, which broke the story.

Apple already uses Anobit’s technology in the iPhone, iPad and the MacBook Air, so the company’s interest here is clear: Own and control the technologies critical to those products, particularly if they further differentiate them from the competition.

The acquisition, if it closes, would be Apple’s first in Israel and, potentially, its largest ever, surpassing its $404 million purchase of NeXT in 1997.

Reached for comment, Apple declined, citing its policy of ignoring rumors and speculation.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111213/report-apple-eyeing-flash-memory-maker-anobit/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111212/hot-air-rises-lightest-macbook-could-bring-in-7-billion-next-year/ http://allthingsd.com/20111212/hot-air-rises-lightest-macbook-could-bring-in-7-billion-next-year/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:54:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=152960 Apple’s MacBook Air may be a more powerful revenue engine than previously thought.

Reflecting on the Air’s strong sales back in early spring, analysts predicted its annual revenues might someday hit $3 billion. But with sales growing steadily stronger and the machine clearly evolving into a meaningful growth driver for the company’s Mac business, some are revisiting that prediction, and adjusting it upward.

Significantly.

In fact, J.P. Morgan’s Mark Moskowitz theorizes today that his prediction of $3 billion in annual Air revenue could be off by a multiple of two.

“Based on the continued momentum of the product and our conversations with industry participants, our view [of the MacBook Air] has become even more constructive,” Moskowitz says. “Over the next 12 months, we believe that the average quarterly run rate could reach 1.6 million units, which implies a $7 billion-plus revenue profile.”

Moskowitz’s rationale for that rather large number? Four straight quarters of accelerating sales growth, the most recent — the third — topping out with Air sales of 923,000 units. That’s 838.6 percent year-over-year growth. That’s some serious momentum. And with demand for the Air growing in newer markets like China, where Apple is extending its reach, it’s only going to increase.

In the end, $7 billion in annual revenue may not be such a stretch.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111212/hot-air-rises-lightest-macbook-could-bring-in-7-billion-next-year/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111123/apple-drops-prices-on-ipad-macbook-air-for-black-friday/ http://allthingsd.com/20111123/apple-drops-prices-on-ipad-macbook-air-for-black-friday/#comments Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:05:25 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=147120 Apple’s annual Black Friday shopping event has never been known for its massive discounts, and this year is no exception, according to a sale flyer leaked to 9to5Mac.

Come Friday, the company will offer discounts of $101 on the iMac, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro; $21-$41 on the iPod touch; and $11 on the iPod nano. Discounts on the iPad 2 will range from $41 for the basic WiFi-only models, to $61 for the higher-end version of the device with 3G support.

Most of Apple’s deals fall in the 5 to 10 percent off range, which isn’t exactly steep. That said, they’re probably more than enough to get Black Friday shoppers flocking to the company’s stores — those who weren’t headed there already. All told, Apple’s retail stores generated $3.6 billion in revenue last quarter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111123/apple-drops-prices-on-ipad-macbook-air-for-black-friday/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111116/hewlett-packard-dons-its-ultrabook-suit/ http://allthingsd.com/20111116/hewlett-packard-dons-its-ultrabook-suit/#comments Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:11:23 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=144802 It’s been about three weeks since Hewlett-Packard announced its decision to keep its PC division, formally known as the Personal Systems Group, or PSG. Today marked the first serious batch of new PC introductions from HP since that decision.

The one getting all the attention is an offering in the Ultrabook category that’s priced at $900. It’s called the HP Folio¹³, and aside from its price, its headline feature is that it delivers a full nine hours of battery life.

The Ultrabook is a concept primarily being pushed by Intel, so much so that Intel even owns the trademark rights to the name. Inside the Folio¹³ are the latest Intel Core processors. It represents the hopes of a PC industry that has seen anemic sales with little sign of a bounceback, though that depends on whom you ask.

Major challenges have been the continued popularity among consumers of Apple’s iPad, and to a lesser extent other tablets, and the impressive sales of Apple’s MacBook Air, which now accounts for nearly a third of Apple’s notebook sales. It may not be an Ultrabook technically, but conceptually the similarities are substantial: Thin, light, sporting solid-state drives and speedy boot-up times.

And while the MacBook Air is a big winner for Apple, there’s as yet little evidence that there’s much demand for a similar product running Windows. Last month, it emerged that Acer and Asus expect to sell only 100,000 each by the of 2011, which would amount to between one third and one half of what they originally hoped.

Yes, it’s early days for Ultrabooks — machines that support Intel’s full design vision won’t be on the market for another several months. And the industry is just now starting to bang the drum seriously for the Ultrabook. Asus Chairman Jonney Shih talked about the category in an interview with Walt Mossberg at AsiaD last month.

In its press releases, HP expressed the hopes of an entire industry when it quoted IDC analyst Crawford Del Prete saying he expects PC makers — including HP — to sell 95 million Ultrabooks by 2015. At their current levels, there’s nowhere to go but up.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111116/hewlett-packard-dons-its-ultrabook-suit/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111115/how-long-before-the-macbook-air-is-half-of-apples-notebook-business/ http://allthingsd.com/20111115/how-long-before-the-macbook-air-is-half-of-apples-notebook-business/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:56:19 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=144268 Apple’s July refresh of MacBook Air has done what many predicted it would: Send sales of the device into the stratosphere. According to the latest numbers from NPD, via Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, the Air now makes up 28 percent of Apple’s notebook shipments.

That’s a 20 percent increase over the first half of the year. And, as you can see from the chart below, the spike in sales occurred with the July launch of the new hardware and has been trending upward ever since. So in four months the Air has gone from less than 10 percent of Apple’s notebook business to nearly a third of it. How much will it comprise by 2012?

Close to 50 percent? That might seem like a stretch, though some analysts have been forecasting it for a while. Back in July, Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore predicted that sales of the Air could ramp to as high as 1.5 million per quarter, which is indeed about half of Apple’s MacBook business. Obviously, they’ve still got a way to go. But we haven’t yet hit the holiday consumer binge. And 2012 could bring with it a new 15-inch Air, destined to drive sales of the machine higher still …

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111115/how-long-before-the-macbook-air-is-half-of-apples-notebook-business/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:02:27 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=142638 If you’re shopping for a laptop this autumn, you’ll find most of the capabilities and prices in the sluggish market unchanged. You’ll still likely be considering whether it’s time to get a tablet instead of a new laptop.

But if you’re focused on a Windows machine, and you look carefully, you’ll see that a new class of portable PC is beginning to appear. It’s called the “ultrabook,” and is essentially the Windows version of Apple’s popular, nearly four-year old MacBook Air—an ultraskinny, light, speedy, versatile laptop with long battery life.

The arrival of the ultrabook is a welcome development, not only because it spices up the market, but because I consider the MacBook Air the best all-around consumer laptop available, and anything that emulates it is a good idea, if done well.

There are only a few ultrabooks available this season and they aren’t for everybody. Most have limited storage and, like the MacBook Air, are priced near the $1,000 range—rich territory in a tight economy where Apple buyers seem comfortable, though not many others. Still, this new class of Windows laptop is the only fundamentally fresh choice in the laptop market.

If the price is too high, you should be able to get a capable major-brand laptop for between $500 and $800, with plenty of storage and memory.

My annual fall laptop buyers’ guide today offers tips for wading through the technobabble in computer ads, and in online and physical stores. As always, these tips are for average consumers doing common tasks, such as email, Web browsing, social networking, general office productivity, photos, music, videos and simple games. This guide isn’t meant for corporate buyers, or for hard-core gamers or serious media producers.

The recently unveiled Asus Zenbook

The tablet question: Tablets like Apple’s iPad 2 and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 can perform many, though not all, of the functions of a laptop. Most tablet lovers find themselves reaching for their laptops less often to do things like email. If your budget is limited and you’re thinking of shelling out $500 for a full-size tablet, consider whether you can put off getting a new laptop this year instead of buying both.

Future Windows: If you’re shopping for a Windows laptop, be aware that in 2012, Microsoft will offer a new version of Windows, called Windows 8, with a radical new multitouch interface that makes use of a touch screen. The software giant stresses that Windows 8 won’t require such a screen, and will still work with a mouse or touch pad. But unless you have a laptop with a multi-touch screen, you won’t be able to take advantage of the Windows 8 touch-screen features.

Ultrabooks: Four companies make this class of laptop: Acer, Lenovo, Asus and, shortly, Toshiba. These machines are under 0.8 inch thick, weigh less than three pounds, and generally claim long battery life and almost-instant startup times. All run Windows 7; none has a touch screen. Like the MacBook Air, they use solid-state drives (though some combine these with standard hard disks) and have screens of either 11 inches or 13 inches. Prices generally run from around $900 to $1,100.

Windows vs. Mac: Mac laptops cost more and offer less variety than Windows laptops. The least expensive Mac laptop is $999, while a few stripped-down Windows portables can be had for under $300. Well-equipped Windows laptops start at $500 to $600. But Apple laptops combine beauty, ruggedness and long battery life with good customer service. Macs also come with better built-in software, including the new Lion operating system, which includes some tablet-like features. And they can run Windows, at extra cost.

Finally, Mac users don’t fear viruses and other malicious software, because virtually none work on the Mac.

Memory: Get at least 4 gigabytes of memory, or RAM, on a new Windows computer. On a Mac, most consumers can get away with 2 gigabytes.

Processors: Intel’s latest chips are the i3, i5, and i7 Core models. But a laptop with chips from rival AMD, or older Intel dual-core chips, also is OK.

Graphics: Usually less expensive machines have wimpier graphics hardware, and costlier ones have more powerful graphics. Better graphics can make your whole machine faster, because more and more software is designed to offload general processing tasks onto the graphics chips.

Hard disks: A 320-gigabyte hard disk should be the minimum on most PCs. Solid-state disks, like those in the new ultrabooks or the MacBook Air, generally come in sizes of 128 GB or 256 GB. They omit moving parts and use flash memory to store your files, as on a smartphone or tablet. They are costlier, but faster, and use less power.

Ports: Many PCs now come with a port called HDMI, which makes linking to a high-definition TV easy. There is a new, much faster USB port, called USB 3.0, but few peripheral devices can use it. And Apple has introduced yet another high-speed connector that has little practical use so far, called Thunderbolt.

As always, be wary of sales pitches and don’t buy more laptop than you need.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111103/really-2-new-ipads-and-a-reboot-of-apples-entire-product-portfolio-next-year/ http://allthingsd.com/20111103/really-2-new-ipads-and-a-reboot-of-apples-entire-product-portfolio-next-year/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:00:24 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=140103 Break out the salt lick for this one, because it’ll take more than a grain …

Apple typically updates many of its products each year, sometimes extensively, sometimes less so. But in 2012 it’s got big plans for a number of them. Supply chain sources tell the occasionally reliable Taiwanese trade mag Digitimes that Apple will “completely overhaul” its product portfolios this year — everything from the iPad and iPhone to the iMac and MacBook Air. And evidently it’s already hard at work on the iPad and has requested flat panel modules and LED light bars for two prototypes.

Details beyond that are slim indeed, though in a separate report Digitimes says we can expect two next-generation iPads next year: An upgraded iPad 2 around March and a true iPad 3 late in the third or fourth quarter.

Two iPads launched between March and December? Seems dubious to me. As I said, break out the salt lick. Still, you never know.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111103/really-2-new-ipads-and-a-reboot-of-apples-entire-product-portfolio-next-year/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111102/ipad-as-cellphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20111102/ipad-as-cellphone/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:11:24 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=139720 Q:

If I buy an iPad 2 that includes Verizon or AT&T service do I need a contract, and will this allow the iPad to be used as a cellphone?

A:

The Verizon and AT&T plans for iPads are month-to-month deals, not long-term contracts. You can choose never to activate them, or to turn them on and off based on your needs. These plans are for data only, however. They don’t endow your iPad with cellular voice calling capability. More information is here.

Q:

What is the PC equivalent to a MacBook Air? I’m tempted to get an Air but virtually everything I have is on a PC.

A:

There’s a new type of Windows laptop generically called an Ultrabook that’s aimed at emulating the MacBook Air’s speed, lightness and battery life. I haven’t reviewed them yet, so I can’t recommend one. But two examples are the Acer Aspire S series and the Lenovo IdeaPad U 300s.

Q:

Is the Siri on the iPhone 4S different from the Siri app I downloaded awhile back on my iPhone 4?

A:

Apple bought Siri soon after the original small company launched that app. Apple decided to incorporate it into the phone’s base software. There are some differences, but the functionality is similar. However, the old Siri app is no longer available, and, if you have it, you can no longer connect to the servers that make it work.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111102/ipad-as-cellphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111005/delete-a-facebook-account/ http://allthingsd.com/20111005/delete-a-facebook-account/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:00:31 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=129305 Q:

How do I permanently delete a Facebook account?

A:

Facebook doesn’t make it quick or easy. The default choice is to “deactivate” your account, which allows you to change your mind and reactivate, and thus spare the company the loss of a member. Deactivated accounts can’t be seen by others, but all their data remain on Facebook’s servers. You can totally and permanently delete an account, but this isn’t a simple process. You have to submit a request, at http://on.fb.me/n5OemK, or go to the Facebook help center and search for “delete account.” Then you have to wait awhile, while Facebook hopes you change your mind. More information on both options is at: http://on.fb.me/pxjtS2.

Q:

I am generally very pleased with the MacBook Air that I recently purchased. However, when I am on the road, I find that my Air loses connectivity to the wireless network that I am using. Any thoughts or suggestions? This is frustrating.

A:

I have noticed something similar lately, on my own MacBook Air that’s been upgraded to the new Lion operating system. It doesn’t randomly drop Wi-Fi connections, but it does take too long to reestablish them when waking from sleep. In my case, this is a new and recent behavior. I asked Apple about your question and my experience, and the company conceded that it has received reports of problems with Lion-equipped Macs “sporadically” dropping Wi-Fi connections and is developing what it hopes is a fix. That fix, it says, will be part of a software update to be made available soon.

A fix is coming for MacBook Air machines with Wi-Fi problems.

Q:

I want a tablet for occasional road trips. If I get a Wi-Fi-only model do I need to worry about my passwords being stolen if I use an open network? Is it better, if cumbersome, to use my Droid X smartphone to set up a password-protected Wi-Fi hot spot and connect through it?

A:

I have long advised avoiding shared, open, public Wi-Fi networks when dealing with sensitive data. I am not a security expert, and I am sure there are ways for determined hackers to penetrate your Droid, or any smartphone. But I agree that your odds are much better with a password-protected network that you control, that only you use, and that relies on a cellular network proprietary to a wireless carrier. Just remember that your security is never guaranteed on the Internet, especially in public places.

Email Walt Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111005/delete-a-facebook-account/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110826/macbook-air-draws-crowds-in-hong-kong/ http://allthingsd.com/20110826/macbook-air-draws-crowds-in-hong-kong/#comments Fri, 26 Aug 2011 22:05:11 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=114419 The new MacBook Air went on sale in Hong Kong this week and created quite a stir when it did. Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White reports that the machine’s China debut was met with big crowds and lots of demand.

“Our checks in Hong Kong indicate the new MacBook Air was launched over the past week at local authorized resellers,” White said in a note to investors. “The launch was met with long lines and stock-outs of certain new MacBook Air models. Surprisingly, we also heard that certain resellers sold out of the iPhone 4 over the past week, along with certain models of the iPad 2.”

Promising news for Apple, which will soon bring the refreshed Air to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and elsewhere in mainland China, perhaps as early as next week.

Said White, “Based on our field checks, we believe the new MacBook Air is poised to be a big hit in the Greater China region as more consumers can increasingly afford to own a PC, Apple fever is gaining momentum in the region and there is no laptop product on the market with the characteristics of the new MacBook Air.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110826/macbook-air-draws-crowds-in-hong-kong/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/ http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:18:37 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=113653

Steve Jobs’s resignation as chief executive officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in general. Jobs is a historic business figure whose impact was deeply felt far beyond the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, and who was widely emulated at other companies.

And now, for the first time since 1997, he won’t be the company’s chief executive.

To be very clear, Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive. Extremely well-informed sources at Apple say he intends to remain involved in developing major future products and strategy and intends to be an active chairman of the board, even while new CEO Tim Cook runs the company day to day.

So, this is not an obituary. But his health is reported to be up and down, and even an active chairman isn’t the same as a CEO.

CEOs resign every day, so why is this departure so meaningful?

Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions.

He did it because he was willing to take big risks on new ideas, and not be satisfied with small innovations fed by market research. He also insisted on high quality and had the guts to leave out features others found essential and to kill technologies, like the floppy drive and the removable battery, he decided were no longer needed. And he has been a brilliant marketer, personally passionate about his products.

In his first act at Apple, the company he co-founded in 1976, he helped envision and catalyze the personal computer revolution. The Apple II computer he developed with Steve Wozniak wasn’t the only mass-market PC released in 1977, but it was the one that had the most enduring impact.

In 1984, he again upended computing by leading the development of the Macintosh, the first commercially successful computer to use a mouse and graphical user interface. It cemented the template for how every computer works today, even though Apple was handily bested in the PC sales wars by archrival Microsoft.

After being forced out of Apple in 1985, it’s well known that Jobs ran an unsuccessful computer firm called NeXT. But he also did a couple of game-changing things during that exile. First, NeXT developed an operating system that later morphed into the excellent Macintosh operating system, called OS X, and also the operating system that drives Apple’s mobile devices, called iOS.

In addition, he purchased Pixar, a small computer animation firm which he was able, over years, to turn into one of the world’s most successful movie studios and later sell to Disney for billions. It changed animation forever.

In his most recent act, he returned in 1997 to take over as CEO of Apple as part of that company’s purchase of NeXT. What he found was a diminished company which was reputedly only months from bankruptcy and saddled with mediocre products.

Fourteen years later, the company is a highly profitable behemoth, the most financially valuable and influential technology company in the world, whose every product is eagerly anticipated, snapped up quickly by consumers, and aped by competitors, even though they are often priced higher than rival devices.

While CEO of the revived Apple, he introduced the dominant digital music player, the iPod, and created the most successful digital media service, iTunes. He introduced the first super-smartphone, the iPhone, and the only truly successful tablet computer, the iPad, which is in the process of replacing the laptop, at least in part. And he built the world’s largest app store.

One almost forgets that he built a phenomenally successful chain of retail stores, too.

Apple’s devices and software services have dramatically changed the mobile phone industry, the music industry, the film and TV industries, the publishing industry and others.

Meanwhile, even while declaring that we are in the “post-PC era,” Jobs resuscitated his early baby, the Mac. While it may never become the world’s biggest selling computer, it is lusted after worldwide, and its sales have outgrown those of the overall PC industry for five years running. Plus, with models like the sleek, solid-state MacBook Air, he’s actually merging the tablet and the PC.

Now, rumors are rife that Apple is working on re-inventing another common device: the TV. The secretive company won’t say a word about that, but nobody should be surprised if it happens, just based on Jobs’s track record.

And that’s why the day Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple isn’t like the day a typical CEO resigns.

Here is a video of me taken recently, talking about Jobs’s career:

Related posts

• Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple; Cook Takes Reins
• Steve Jobs’s Resignation Letter: “I Have Made Some of the Best Friends of My Life at Apple.”
• Apple Stock Falls After Jobs Announcement
• Steve Jobs Live on Stage in 2010 (Video)
• Tim Cook as Apple CEO: A Tested and Steady Hand
• Essay: Jobs’s Departure as CEO of Apple Is the End of an Extraordinary Era
• What Happens Next at Apple?
• Mossberg on Jobs (Video)
• Analysts Confident in Apple’s Prospects
• Apple Shares Bounce Back
• Tim Cook: Apple Will Continue to Make the Best Products in the World
• Does Tim Cook Need His Own Tim Cook?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110824/who-would-buy-hewlett-packards-pc-business/ http://allthingsd.com/20110824/who-would-buy-hewlett-packards-pc-business/#comments Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:30:45 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=113321 Now that Hewlett-Packard is “considering strategic options” for its Personal Systems Group — a.k.a. its PC business — a logical list of potential buyers is starting to take shape.

While for tax reasons it’s probably more likely that HP will spin the unit out as an independent company — there are no taxes when assets are distributed to shareholders — Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu, in a note to clients issued this morning, breaks down the possible suitors should HP opt instead for a sale.

Topping the list is Samsung, which you might have guessed already. Samsung would make sense, Wu argues, given its “large size and global ambitions.” Samsung has been trying to build a PC business since 1997, when it acquired AST Research, but hasn’t gotten anywhere. But it is the world’s biggest manufacturer of DRAM memory chips, used in PCs; and the largest supplier of NAND flash memory, which forms the basis of solid-state drives that are increasingly built into notebook PCs. It’s also a big maker of LCD displays and notebook batteries. All that vertical integration, combined with HP’s consumer PC footprint — it’s the biggest supplier to Best Buy — would make Samsung the worldwide player it has always aspired to be.

Don’t ignore the other players, though. Acer, Lenovo, Sony and even Dell could all conceivably show up with a bid, Wu writes. But it will all come down to HP’s asking price, and what parts of the business are included. Wu pegs HP’s PC business as being worth $8 billion, or about $3.66 per HP share. To calculate that valuation, he assumes a premium of five times profit of $1.6 billion on $40 billion in revenue; a five percent operating margin and a 22 percent tax rate.

One potential issue to watch in a possible Samsung bid: Whether the South Korean giant asks HP to include its webOS software. Samsung is also a huge supplier of smartphones around the world, and would probably like to rely less on Google’s Android than it does now — and would want to own its own operating system. Having decided to kill the webOS hardware business, HP has indicated that it has plans to keep the software alive in some form, though enough cash from Samsung might change HP’s mind.

Wu also argues that the market has gotten too negative on the PC business in general. While it’s true that Apple’s iPad has left a historically significant mark on the PC universe, PCs aren’t dead yet — just ask Intel. Give them iPad-like touchscreens and flash drives for instant-on capability, and the market might rebound, he says. “We believe longer-term tablets and PCs are the same market. Ironically, we view Apple’s MacBook Air as the first generation of these future hybrid PCs.”

Update at 9:38 AM PDT / 12:38 PM EDT: Samsung just issued a brief statement saying it’s not interested in HP’s PC business. Such rumors are “not true,” the company says. Well it’s really not a rumor exactly, but speculation really. Somehow I don’t believe it’s the last word on the subject.

(Image, obviously, is from the sheet music of the number “Who Will Buy?” from the musical “Oliver!” Hear it below.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110824/who-would-buy-hewlett-packards-pc-business/feed/ 0