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Technology Stocks : Apple Tankwatch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rnsmth who wrote (20479)	7/13/2012 11:33:58 PM
From: sylvester80	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32690

Did they unglue the batteries, sucker?

To: rnsmth who wrote (20479)	7/14/2012 2:03:31 AM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 32690

Apple Brings "All Eligible" Products Back Into EPEAT Circle... the key word here is "Eligible" Saturday, July 14, 2012 - by Ray Willington hothardware.com Here's something you don't see every single day: Apple apologizing. Back when the iPhone 4's "Antennagate" scandal took off, it really boiled down to users "holding it wrong." But these days we have a new Apple, and the company obviously willing to say when it's made a misstep. Bob Mansfield, the company's outgoing (retirement) Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, has published a letter on the company's site regarding its recent decision to pull products from EPEAT's certification list. In part, the letter reads: "We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT." It's an interesting read. For one, he's saying that it was a mistake. But why pull the products to begin with? He continues on to note that Apple has learned a lot from this experience, but what happened with EPEATfrom the start that would encourage Apple to remove products from a hallowed logo? It's also telling that he points out much of EPEAT doesn't even take some of Apple's green efforts into account. Perhaps that's a backhanded slight, or perhaps he's just asking for EPEAT to update its process. Either way, all eligible Apple products are now back in the EPEAT circle, six days after they were yanked. Talk about a hasty reevaluation

To: rnsmth who wrote (20479)	7/14/2012 11:30:24 PM
From: sylvester80	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32690

This is why Apple is going berserk: Android extends US marketshare lead; Continues to outgrow Apple, Samsung tops platform’s OEMs posted on Jul 14th 2012 at 12:27pm by Raveesh Bhalla Analytics firm Nielsen statistics from their Q2 2012 subscriber data has shown Android extend its significant lead over Apple, with a 51.8% marketshare compared to iOS’s 34.3%. In Q1 2012, the scores stood at 48.5% for Android to Apple’s 32%. About a year ago ( Q3 2011, I was unable to find the Q2 2011 data for a YoY comparison) Android had a 44.2% to 28.6% lead. These are minor growths, but it shows that regardless of the injunction requests and all the legal hoopla, and despite all the “fragmentation” talk, Apple is nowhere close to closing the gap on Android. In the manufacturer’s stakes, Samsung is the leading OEM as expected, with their Android devices accounting for a 17% total marketshare. HTC is second at 14%, Motorola third at 11% and the rest accounting for 9%. Looking over at the other platforms, Blackberry has dropped from 17% in Q3 2011 to 9%. Windows Phone 7 is stagnant at a meager 1.3%, with all the money spent on marketing still unable to get them to even half of Windows Mobile’s 3% share. [via Brief Mobile]

To: rnsmth who wrote (20479)	7/15/2012 4:28:54 PM
From: sylvester80	2 Recommendations Respond to of 32690

The EPEAT fraud at CRAPple continues...How did the new MacBook Pros get Gold-level green ratings? tech.fortune.cnn.com By Philip Elmer-DeWitt July 14, 2012: 8:07 AM ET They may not stick. A recycling coalition says the notebooks flunk two key tests The glued-in batteries. Photo: iFixit FORTUNE -- Apple ( AAPL) may have thought it put the EPEAT kerfuffle behind it with the release of Bob Mansfield's mea culpa letter Friday. (See Stop the presses! Apple admits it made a mistake.) But having extricated itself from one environmental cow pie, the company may have stepped right into another. Here's what happened. On Friday, as promised in the letter, the company put "all eligible Apple products" back on the Green Electronics Council's registry -- giving them the Gold label that indicates they are okay for purchase by the schools and government agencies that are required to buy only EPEAT-approved computers. But Apple went one step further. It also gave Gold labels to all four models of its new MacBook Pro with Retina display -- devices whose batteries are famously affixed to their aluminum frames with industrial strength glue so powerful that the disassembly experts at iFixit couldn't remove them without " leaking hazardous goo all over." The Electronics TakeBack Coalition -- a pro-recycling group whose members range from the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition to the Environmental Defense Fund -- was quick to spot the sleight of hand. "We seriously doubt that these Mac Books should qualify for EPEAT at any level," wrote Barbara Kyle, the ETBC's National Coordinator, on the organization's website, "because we think they flunk two required criteria in the 'Design for End of Life' section of the standard. They are: Criterion 4.3.1.3: External enclosures shall be easily removable by one person alone with commonly available tools. While you can open up the enclosure, you can't completely remove one half of the casing from the large group of batteries. They are glued to the case with industrial strength glue. Criterion 4.3.1.5 Identification and removal of components containing hazardous materials. This criteria specifically applies to batteries, as well as circuit boards over 10 cm2 and other components, and says they must be safely and easily removable. Gluing the battery in does not quality as 'easily removable.' In fact, it's exactly the kind of design that this standard seeks to discourage." So how did the new MacBooks get those Gold label ratings? Kyle explains: "It's important to understand that the manufacturers grade themselves against the EPEAT criteria first, and then EPEAT conducts a review of this grading. That EPEAT review has not yet occurred. They can require the manufacturers to remove any product from the registry if it is not found to conform to the IEEE standard." She adds: "Apple is often a design leader in electronics, but they really blew it here." Meanwhile, the folks at Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board have shed some light on the timing Apple's initial withdrawl from EPEAT. It turns out that there's an annual fee for getting on the registry and a separate fee for each listed product. These fees are not insubstantial. In Apple's case they come to several million dollars a year, and they came due on July 1.

To: rnsmth who wrote (20479)	7/16/2012 12:01:14 AM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 32690

To all current iPad3 suckers..Apple Revamping the iPad 3 to Fix Overheating Issue theipadguide.com Submitted by Marshall Walker on Fri, 07/06/2012 - 13:46 According to the DigiTimes, Apple is revising the new iPad's battery and dual-LED bar to fix the overheating problem investigated by Consumer Reports in March. Various tests revealed that the iPad 3 runs hotter than the iPad 2, however, Apple claimed that the new iPad is operating within its requirements. Unnamed supply chain sources revealed today that Apple is revamping the iPad’s battery in an effort to reduce the heat emission. If the reports are true, the tweaked iPad will be "slightly lighter and thinner than previously designed." The DigiTimes also reported that Apple is switching back to a single-LED backlight to address the overheating problem. "The extra LED is reportedly adding to overheating and that using one LED will help solve overheating issues since more backlights along with more power to heat those backlights is causing overheating." Returning to a single-LED backlight reportedly will not affect the clarity of the Retina display. It was also reported last week that Apple has tapped Sharp to manufacture IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) panels for the new iPad design.

To: rnsmth who wrote (20479)	8/2/2012 1:21:01 AM
From: zax	1 Recommendation Respond to of 32690

More computers are running Windows 8 than OS X Mountain Lion already Author: David K — 01 August 2012 mobilitydigest.com Even as a beta Microsoft’s newly RTM’d operating system is being used more widely than Apple’s latest OS. In a post today Microsoft noted that the Windows 8 previews have been run on over 16 million PCs. That’s pretty impressive for a beta operating system. Meanwhile Mountain Lion (which was only $20) set its own record with Apple boasting 3million downloads in 4 days since it was released on July 25, “making it [their] most successful release ever” . Let’s just do the math though and assume that Mountain Lion continued that record setting trend – it would be at around 6 million downloads as of today, best case scenario. That doesn’t even best the number of users of the current Release Preview of Windows 8 which Microsoft states is over 7 million computers. When you consider that a beta is besting Apple’s best and already being more widely used it really makes you think about the user base of OS X and how it compares to Windows.

To: rnsmth who wrote (20479)	8/8/2012 10:59:15 AM
From: zax	3 Recommendations Respond to of 32690

Only 8 more posts, and I will have caught up with you. :) Just amazing. Please note the continued trend, which will be no friend to Apple longs soon. This is all predetermined by a fundamentally flawed business model. Samsung boosts Android to 68.1 percent smartphone market share in latest IDC figures By Louis Goddard on August 8, 2012 07:53 am theverge.com Some 68.1 percent of smartphones shipped in the second quarter of this year were powered by Android, a jump of more than 15 percent since last quarter, according to new figures released by research firm IDC. The increase has been driven primarily by Korean manufacturer Samsung, which shipped more Android smartphones in the quarter than the next seven vendors combined, and has cut significantly into Apple's share of the market, with iOS dropping from 23 percent to 16.9 percent over the same period. As Android and iOS expand, powering a record total of 85 percent of devices in Q2, alternatives such as BlackBerry OS, Symbian, and Windows Phone continue to be squeezed. Despite Research In Motion's (RIM) financial woes, BlackBerry OS managed to take third place, shipping on 4.8 percent of devices, but this figure is a far cry from the 11.5 percent share that the system commanded in Q2 2011. Symbian fares worse, having fallen from 16.9 percent last year to just 4.4 percent in the latest figures, a drop of almost 75 percent. Meanwhile, the combined share of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 sits at 3.5 percent, with Nokia's high-profile Lumia range having so far failed to stimulate significant interest in the platform.