24/5/2012 - Coachella 2012 is a snapshot of pop music in wonderful disarray

Coachella 2012 is a snapshot of pop music in wonderful disarray

By Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

Critic's Notebook: Coachella 2012 is a snapshot of pop music in wonderful disarray

Acts such as Azealia Banks, Radiohead, Mazzy Star, Flying Lotus and many others perform on a weekend filled with a multitude of subgenres.

Anyone who's ever been to Coachella or any music festival understands the idea of "the moment," that magical, jewel-encrusted feeling you get when everything clicks - the sound, the lights, the emotion, the music - and you feel at one with the world.

On Friday at this year's Coachella Music and Arts Festival, a chilly night where the clouds hung low after a day of rain, Mazzy Star induced one of those arm-tingling feelings when it performed its languid, drifting love song "Fade Into You" on the Outdoor Stage.

It was one of the band's first performances in 16 years, and it followed a day of nonstop music, including Sacramento band Death Grips' electrifying, hard-core punk numbers, L.A. folk pop group honeyhoney's banjo-led ode to the Los Angeles River, and Texas blues rock guitar playerGary Clark Jr.'s astounding blues riffs.

So already it was a lot to digest before Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval and guitarist David Roback embarked on the lonely "Fade Into You" melody. Fans on the periphery, recognizing it, jogged closer.

It's an amazing thing to experience, the blossoming of recognition that comes when you hear something special. And it happened over and over again during Coachella's first weekend.

I watched grown men sprint toward the main stage like kids as Brit-pop band Pulp performed its anthem "Common People" and heard a teenager giddily scream to a fan, "I know this song!" when Madness started its 1983 song "House of Fun." French house producer SebastiAn had offered magnetic beats at the Mojave tent while dancers pushed to get closer to the stage - and the music that was moving them.

On Sunday afternoon as the sun was starting to fade, L.A. bassist Thundercat brought his cosmic blend of funk, '70s fusion and modern-day beat music to the Gobi tent. Wearing a freaky leather gold and red star-man uniform and fronting a nine-piece band, he suggested a modern-day Sun Ra reincarnated with the hip-hop gene.

Coachella 2012: A visual and sonic mess that we can't resist, one with so many spoken and unspoken messages delivered in so many subgenres that you wonder how anyone in attendance can contain it all.

Other than the simple two-word answer "You can't," Coachella's first of two weekends offered a snapshot of pop music in wonderful, remarkable disarray, a Jackson Pollock of frequencies and angles, of off-shoots, reflections, of twentysomething musicians digging back to revive genres once thought extinct.

Who'd have known, for example, that alto saxophone solos and soft rock would find purchase on Coachella's stages? Destroyer did. And when singer Jeff Mangum of the indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel brought out a two-piece brass section for some of his songs, the crowd roared - for the French horn part.

But these days looking back while taking baby steps forward is the way it's done. The new normal is less about progress than about reflection.

Not that the future isn't glorious. The retro vibe was, predictably, only one aspect of the festival's expansive lineup.

Buzzing rapper Azealia Banks, in one of her first public performances, did something absolutely of the moment: An unknown a year ago, she dropped a hot song, "212," on YouTube, and millions of views and a label deal later, there she was, capping her brief set with the song - and the entire Gobi tent rapped along to every word.

It was an emotional moment. YouTube views are an abstraction; all you see is the number increasing as a clip goes viral. When Banks saw the massive crowd jumping, screaming, rapping along to her words, her voice became strained for a second and tears started rolling down her cheeks. Then, though, that voice, still young but filled with potential, grew stronger and more confident, the crowd's enthusiasm transmitting energy that seemed to fill her lungs. It felt like some sort of christening.

One of the best hours of the festival and my musical year was Saturday night at the Gobi tent, where Los Angeles beat-maker Flying Lotus pushed forth a set of deconstructed, heavy-duty bass music - while a big inflatable green alligator bounced around atop the crowd. Lotus' work as a beat producer has pushed the genre in fantastic new directions, and over the last three years he's moved from L.A. warehouse parties into an ever-expanding worldwide fan base.

And with good reason: Live, he was magnetic, bouncing before his computer and tabletop mixer and interface, creating on-the-fly remixes and freakazoid juxtapositions. At one point, he sampled an a capella version of - all things - Christopher Cross' yacht rock classic "Sailing," which he then destroyed with digital feedback. The peak was when he kicked out Jay-Z and Kanye West's already-classic "... in Paris," and remixed it into choppy, screwy confusion.

Many were hoping for a cameo by Radiohead's frontman Thom Yorke, but that didn't happen. Yorke has collaborated with Lotus, but apparently the singer had other things on his mind - like his band's headlining slot on the main stage.

He needn't have worried. Having hired the best sound technicians, an expert stage designer and expert management, Radiohead has amassed a loyal following and understands how to move it. And aside from doing something mind-bafflingly misguided such as collaborating with Scott Stapp orLady Gaga,Radiohead could keep doing this for a long time.

Over the course of two hours, the band's magnificent presentation turned a darkened dozen acres into a five-story glowing altar of images and abstractions. These images strobed and pumped through "The Gloaming," shifting with each bent Jonny Greenwood guitar line, drawing close to singer Yorke as he pushed a falsetto.

On "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi," a screen of vertical light bars created what looked like an illuminated waterfall. The band - including percussionist Phil Selway, guitarist Ed O'Brien and bassist Colin Greenwood - helped build momentum.

Radiohead's show was a blur of a lot of different things - from trippy visuals to people dancing fluidly in the open air to Yorke's moaning something about "just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there" in the song "There, There."

He may be right, but like the best music during Weekend 1 of Coachella, the stuff we felt the deepest seemed to orbit the polo fields with magnetic, invisible energy.

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14/3/2012 - Apple delays delivery of new iPad to market

Apple delays delivery of new iPad to market

NEW YORK: Smart phone manufacturer Apple announced Sunday it had posponed shipment of new iPads to market by three days, from March 16 to March 19.

No formal explanation was give when the company announced its decision on its website late Sunday.

It had been reported earlier that the new device, iPad's third version since 2010, would be available in stores on Friday, March 16.

Asked about the reasons for the postponement, Apple did not respond immediately.

The new iPad boasts a more powerful processor, eye-grabbing resolution on par with that of an iPhone 4S, and the ability to connect to the latest 4G LTE telecom networks that move data faster than their predecessors.

It is due to be released simultaneously in 10 countries: the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and China.

iPad preorders sell out, demand 'off the charts'

If you are hoping to score a new iPad from Apple, you might have to wait. Apple's website shows March 19 as the earliest ship date for online orders of its popular tablet computer. And there is a limit of two per customer on the number of tablets that can preordered.

The shipping delays affect all models and price levels on preorders, according to the website.

"Customer response to the new iPad has been off the charts and the quantity available for pre-order has been purchased," Apple said in a statement. "Customers can continue to order online and receive an estimated delivery date."

Consumers hoping to snag an iPad on its March 16 launch will have to visit one of Apple's retail stores or select Apple resellers.

While the Apple site still says models will be available in stores come Friday, there are unconfirmed reports that shipments worldwide could be delayed from three days to three weeks. And if past is precedent, there could be long waits in line at some Apple Stores when sales begin at brick-and-mortar locations.

The new iPad, the successor to the iPad 2, was unveiled with much fanfare on Wednesday at an Apple event in San Francisco. The device comes with a crisper Retina display, faster processor, voice dictation and the ability to run on the speediest 4G wireless data networks. Prices start at $499 for a Wi-Fi only model with 16 gigabytes of storage; models that can run on 4G data networks start at $629.

Apple is no stranger to sellouts of its devices within hours of their unveiling. Preorders for the iPhone 4S, for example, sold out in less than a day after the 4S debut last fall. Carrier AT&T Wireless said it sold more than 200,000 of the smartphones within the first 12 hours.

The monthly data plans for the new iPad will start at $14.99 at AT&T for 250MB and $20 at Verizon Wireless for a 1 GB plan.

Nike Releases FuelBand API at SXSW Music Hackathon

Nike will unleash the application programming interface (API) for NikeFuel - the company's metric for tracking physical activity - during a music hackathon Sunday at South by Southwest.

NikeFuel is the technology behind Nike's FuelBand, a waterproof wristband introduced in January that measures a user's movement and syncs with an iPod touch or iPhone.

The API will allow third-party music developers to infuse NikeFuel features into their apps or platforms.

"Nike will be joining the Managers Hack to open up a BETA version of the NikeFuel API for the first time to developers interested in combining music with the Nike+ FuelBand," hackathon organizer and rep at startup Backplane told Mashable Friday.

Backplane, which created Lady Gaga's new Little Monsters social network, along with music-streaming service Spotify organized the hackathon to build the future of digital music distribution.

At the event, hackers have eight hours to create and plan a demo that will be judged by a panel of music industry managers, including Lady Gaga's manager Troy Carter (who co-founded Backplane), Justin Bieber's manager Scooter Braun and Roc Nation President Jay Brown. People from Spotify, Pandora, Nike and SoundHound also will help choose a winner.

Randi Zuckerberg, who left her role as marketing director at Facebook in August to launch RtoZ Media, will provide commentary throughout the event.

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14/3/2012 - Tech Journal India Awaits New iPad

Tech Journal India Awaits New iPad

By Amit Agarwal.

It was almost midnight here in India, and while the entire family was busy preparing for Holika (the lighting of bonfires on the eve of the main Holi festival), I was glued to the laptop screen reading live updates from Apple's event. Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, was on stage and he was expected to present a new iPad to the world.

The curtains were soon lifted, but there were no big surprises this time. The eagle-eyed Apple watchers had more or less accurately predicted the various features that would be included in the new iPad.

I am sure you have gone through the specs, but to quickly recap the main points in simple English, the third-generation iPad sports a better HD camera, a higher-resolution screen (retina display) and a faster processor.

Pictures and videos will look stunning on the new display, while the various apps and games will exhibit better performance and reading on the iPad will get a significant boost as web pages and text will appear crisper. It feels a bit awkward to shoot pictures or videos with the iPad, but if you do, the improved camera should please you as it can now capture 1080p (or full HD) videos. The resolution of the front-facing VGA camera hasn't changed so your Skype video calls will still look the same.

The new iPad also includes support for 4G networks - which translates to faster Internet speed on your mobile device - but that feature is of little use to Indian consumers as none of the telecom companies here have rolled out 4G services yet. And by the time 4G becomes available in India, we could be just months (or weeks) away from the next iPad. At least you can use the 4G iPad on 3G networks as well.

The new iPad is running on iOS 5.1 which is compatible with the previous iPad releases. But one software related feature that is available exclusively on the new iPad is the microphone button on the virtual keyboard, which helps users write emails by voice. While the details are scarce, the voice dictation feature could internally be using the same speech-to-text rendering engine as Siri, and it therefore remains to be seen how well it works with Indian accents.

A gorgeous display, perhaps no other tablet or mobile device comes close, and a lot faster than its predecessor, but are these enhancements worth an upgrade? That depends.

I primarily use the iPad to browse the web, watch online videos and read e-books. Now the retina display of the new iPad will definitely help improve my overall experience but the other hardware enhancements aren't very convincing to me at this time. However if I was into gaming or was still using the older first-generation iPad, this would have made an exciting upgrade.

If you don't have a tablet yet and are planning to get one of those Android tablets not because they are better than the iPad but cheaper, there's some good news for you. Apple India has just dropped the price of iPad 2 models by around 17% and the starting 16GB Wi-Fi model is now available for around 24,500 rupees ($490). That is not a bad deal at all.

The new iPad will be available in some 35 countries by the end of March. India isn't mentioned in that first list but if the previous launch date is any indication, the new iPad should be available "officially" in early May. The waiting period will obviously be much shorter for people who don't mind paying a premium in the grey market.

Amateurs battle malware, hackers in UK cybergames

Amateur cybersleuths have been hunting malware, raising firewalls and fending off mock hack attacks in a series of simulations supported in part by Britain's eavesdropping agency.

The games are intended to pull badly-needed talent into the country's burgeoning cybersecurity sector, according to former security minister Pauline Neville-Jones, who spoke at a closing ceremony held Sunday at the Science Museum in the English port city of Bristol.

"The flow of people we have at the moment is wholly inadequate," she said, warning of a skills gap "which threatens the economic future of this country."

The exercises, dubbed the Cyber Security Challenge, are intended to help bridge that gap, drawing thousands of participants who spent weeks shoring up vulnerable home networks, cracking weak codes and combing through corrupted hard drives in a series of tests designed by companies such as U.K. defense contractor QinetiQ and data security firm Sophos.

The challenge was supported in part by British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and Scotland Yard's e-crimes unit - a sign of the government's concern with supporting a rapidly-developing field.

The government is spending 650 million pounds (about $1 billion) to boost its electronic defense capabilities. Britain's military recently opened a global cyber-operations center in the English market town of Corsham, and last month police announced the creation of three new regional cybercrime units.

Event organizer Judy Baker warned there weren't enough skilled people to work in the newly created jobs, complaining that cybersecurity was barely on the radar of high school guidance counselors and that too few universities offered degrees in the field.

"The front door into cybersecurity is not clear at all," she said.

The competition was closed to cybersecurity professionals, so many of the 4,000-odd participants - such as the 19-year-old winner, Cambridge University student Jonathan Millican - were aspiring computer scientists. Others were engineers or hobbyists.

Senior GCHQ official Jonathan Hoyle made a brief speech Sunday, inviting Millican and other prize-winners to come visit the secretive organization's headquarters in Chelthenham, about 95 miles (150 kilometers) northwest of London.

Millican was excited by the prospect, saying: "It's not somewhere many people just go."

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14/3/2012 - GCHQ-backed competition names Cyber Security Champion

GCHQ-backed competition names Cyber Security Champion

By Leo Kelion.

A 19-year-old university student has been named the UK's "Cyber Security Champion" following a competition sponsored by the intelligence agency GCHQ and several leading tech firms.

Judges said Jonathan Millican had demonstrated knowledge "years beyond his time".

The award in Bristol marks the culmination of a six-month long challenge designed to attract talented people to the cyberdefence industry.

It coincides with high-profile attacks.

Last week the FBI charged six men - including two in the UK - with computer hacking crimes which it said had affected "over one million victims".

The action prompted retaliatory attacks by the Antisec-wing of the Anonymous hacktivist movement.

On Saturday, James Jeffrey, from the West Midlands, pleaded guilty to breaking into the website of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service in a separate attack. He is accused of stealing details of people who had contacted the abortion provider.

The Sunday Times also reported that Chinese spies had stolen information of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet from BAE Systems' computers.

It said the incident had occurred three years ago and had been revealed by a BAE executive at a private dinner. The firm is not commenting. Chinese authorities denied being behind any such incident.

Sponsored degree

Mr Millican won the competition after taking part in a final series of challenges hosted by HP Labs which pitted six five-person teams against each other on Saturday.

These involved advising an online start-up company how best to protect itself against hackers during a role-playing exercise, and then reconfiguring a computer network during a 15-minute long simulated attack.

Although Mr Millican's team was beaten by a rival, judges decided he still deserved the top prize.

"He showed great leadership, strong technical abilities and also demonstrated that he understood the impact what he was doing would have on a business," said Adam Thompson, the chief judge who works for Hewlett Packard's security team.

Other judges involved were selected from sponsors, including the accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers, telecoms giant BT, defence firm Cassidian and the security technology maker Qinetiq.

Prizes were tailored towards each winner. Mr Millican - a first year computer sciences student at Jesus College, University of Cambridge - has been offered a paid follow-up masters degree at Royal Holloway, University of London.

He has also been invited to visit communications intelligence agency GCHQ's Cheltenham base.

Cyber-defenders

Jonathan Hoyle, director general for cyber security at GCHQ said: "It is through initiatives such as this that organisations, be they in the public or private sector, can continue to develop and maintain our leading edge in cyberspace by being able to recruit the right people with the right skills."

Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, the competition's patron and the Prime Minister's special representative to business on cybersecurity, added that she hoped such events would encourage children to put their computer skills to constructive use, rather than be tempted to take part in illegal activities.

"There are people who are hacking and one of the worrying things is that they are regarded as heroes," she told the BBC.

"They are involved in the betrayal of both companies and ordinary people. We've seen cases of people's personal email addresses and passwords and bank details being posted online, opening these unfortunate individuals to crime. So they are definitely not heroes."

Mr Millican said he was most interested in the challenges posed by the more complex cyber-attacks - such as the Stuxnet worm which attacked Iran's nuclear systems or the Duqu Trojan suspected of being designed to gather intelligence from industries' control systems.

"We're going into an age of cyberwarfare," he said.

"Given all the critical systems we have in this country that are connected to the internet it's very important that there are experts out there that can keep people safe."

This was the second year the Cyber Security Challenge has been held.

Organisers said they intended to make changes next time to ensure that some of the youngest entrants, who typically did not make it through to the final stage, were offered follow-up coaching.

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14/3/2012 - New iPad aimed at sharpening Apple's tablet lead

New iPad aimed at sharpening Apple's tablet lead

By Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows.

March 7 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. introduced a new version of the iPad, beefing up the two-year-old mobile computer with a sharper screen and faster chip to widen its lead over Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. in the tablet market.

The device will cost $499 to $829 and include an A5X chip that enables better graphics, Apple said today at an event in San Francisco. It will also boast a 9.7-inch screen that has more pixels than traditional high-definition televisions and run on so-called long-term evolution, or LTE, wireless networks.

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is making the most significant upgrade yet to Apple's tablet months before Microsoft introduces software that will run on competing devices. The new version is also aimed at helping the company fend off competition from Google's Android operating system, as well as Amazon.com, whose $199 Kindle Fire is gaining traction among budget-conscious buyers.

The new iPad will be available March 16, and Apple is taking orders starting today. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless will be the first U.S. wireless carriers to sell the new device. Telus Corp., Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. will carry the new iPad in Canada.

Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple were little changed at $531.05 as of 1:55 p.m. in New York after the announcement.

Apple TV

The overhaul will help draw both new customers and existing owners who want new features, said Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group.

Apple gets about 20 percent of its sales from the iPad, attracting consumers as well as business users. With the device's mix of touch-screen capabilities and computing power that puts it on par with some laptops, Apple has created a new category of consumer-electronics devices.

Cook also unveiled an update of the Apple TV set-top box with a new user interface and a so-called mirroring function that lets video from a user's mobile devices be played on TV. Photos taken from an iPhone will wirelessly synch using Apple TV. The device will cost $99 and also go on sale March 16.

According to market research firm Gartner Inc., 103.5 million tablet devices will be sold in 2012, with Apple accounting for two-thirds of those. The figure will rise to 326.3 million in 2015.

Amazon, Google Gain

The company's share will drop to 46 percent by 2015 as Google's Android gains customers and Microsoft enters the market.

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, which went on sale in November, has emerged as Apple's most credible competitor. Tablets introduced by Research In Motion Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. and Hewlett-Packard Co. haven't gained much interest.

"It's an iPad market, and then there's everybody else," Howe said. "They are going to be selling them as fast as they can make them."

Amazon has been able to make some strides in the tablet market with the Kindle Fire because of its lower price, and Amazon's website gives it a sales channel on par with Apple's retail stores, said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. Amazon's selection of movies, music and applications also is appealing to customers, she said.

Microsoft's Answer

"Tablets are about services," said Rotman Epps. "That's why Amazon has succeeded where others have failed."

A new wave of tablets will be entering the market with Microsoft's introduction of Windows 8, a remake of the company's flagship operating system intended to work more easily with smartphones and tablets. Hewlett-Packard has said it will introduce a tablet using the software, which analysts expect will be released later this year.

While Windows 8-based products are being completed, Apple may sell 11.3 million iPads in the quarter ending March 31, more than double unit sales from a year earlier, according to Brian Marshall, an analyst at ISI Group in San Francisco. The company may sell 60 million iPads in all of 2012, ISI predicts, about 50 percent more than last year.

Apple is the largest maker of personal computers if the iPad is included in the count, according to Canalys.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, will eventually become a strong competitor, though the longer Windows 8 takes to hit the market, the harder it will be to gain traction with customers, said Rotman Epps.

Most Valuable Company

The iPad has helped make Apple the world's most valuable company, worth $494 billion based on yesterday's $530.26 closing stock price. Since the device went on sale in April 2010, Apple's stock has risen 125 percent and quarterly sales have almost tripled.

One reason Apple has been able to maintain a dominant share of the tablet market is that wireless carriers don't play as prominent a role in sales as they do with smartphones, Howe said. Customers visiting a Verizon Wireless or Sprint Nextel Corp. store are often steered to a smartphone running Google Inc.'s Android software instead of an iPhone, he said.

Apple also benefits from its chain of more than 360 retail stores and the thousands of applications that are tailored specifically for the iPad, said Forrester's Rotman Epps.

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21/2/2012 - Tablets will outsell PCs, says Apple chief as he hints at TV product

Tablets will outsell PCs, says Apple chief as he hints at TV product

By Charles Arthur, VIA:guardian.co.uk.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook forecasts 'cannibalisation' of traditional PC market by iPad and similar devices, while suggesting that Apple isn't finished with TV.

Tablets such as the iPad will outsell desktop and laptop PCs within a few years and eat into their sales, says Apple chief executive Tim Cook.

He also hinted that the company could be preparing to launch into the smart TV market with a revamped version of the Apple TV set-top box, and that Apple still sees enormous potential for growth in the smartphone market, especially in China.

Speaking at a Goldman Sachs technology conference, the transcript of which has been put online by Macrumors, the head of the world's most valuable company - who took over from Steve Jobs last August when Jobs, then seriously ill, stepped aside - insisted that he would not let the "unique culture and unique company" unravel after its co-founder's death last October: "I'm not going to witness or permit the slow undoing of it. I believe in it so deeply."

He also dealt with the topic of supply conditions for workers in the company's supply chain, insisting that Apple cares about every worker and that the audit being conducted by the Fair Labor Association was probably the biggest in manufacturing in history.

He revealed too that Apple now has 100m users of its iCloud data synchronisation service, which was launched in October. "I view iCloud not as something with a year or two product life - it's a strategy for the next decade or more. It's truly profound," Cook said.

Cook suggested that the growth of tablets "will be good for the PC industry, because there will be this strong competitor and tablets will innovate like crazy and customers will decide which to buy. There will be a strong PC industry but tablets will be stronger in units."

He said he had begun using the original iPad before its launch in January 2010: "We had our [window] shades pulled so no one [else in the company] could see us, but it quickly became that 80-90% of my consumption and work was done on the iPad.

"From the first day it shipped, we thought that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market and it was just a matter of time."

Apple's iPad sales in the fourth quarter of 2011 hit 15.4m, more than double the number of the same period in 2010, while total worldwide PC sales fell by about 1% to 92.5m, based on figures from the research companies IDC and Gartner.

With rumours swirling that Apple is about to launch the next generation of its iPad device, including a higher-resolution screen, Cook said: "I don't predict the demise of the PC, I don't subscribe to that. Given what we've seen, I believe the iPad is cannibalising some Macs but more PCs. There are more of them to cannibalise than Macs so thats a plus to us. Tablets in general will cannibalise the PC."

He paid tribute to Amazon over rival tablets using Google's Android operating system: "Everybody that was in the PC industry and everybody in the phone industry decided they had to do a tablet. There was 100 tablets put on the market last year! They aimed at iPad 1 and by the time they came out with something we were on iPad 2.

"We wound up with 170,000 apps and I'm not sure there is 100 yet on the other platform. At the end of the day, people want the great product. Amazon is a different competitor. They have different strengths. They'll sell a lot of units. They have and they will."

Television hints

On the TV front, Cook described the existing Apple TV set-top box - which essentially connects to the iTunes Store to show bought or rented films and TV shows - as a hobby, the same description that Jobs used about it. Apple sold 2.8m of the devices in 2011, almost half of those in its enormous Christmas quarter.

But Cook said: "We don't want to send a message to our shareholders that we think the market for it is the size of our other businesses. The Mac, the iPad, the iPod, the iPhone. We don't want to send a signal that we think the length of that stool is equal to the others. That's why we call it a hobby.

"Apple doesn't do hobbies as a general rule. We believe in focus and only working on a few things. So, with Apple TV however, despite the barriers in that market, for those of us who use it, we've always thought there was something there.

"If we kept following our intuition and kept pulling the string, we might find something that was larger. For those people that have it right now, the customer satisfaction is off the chart. We need something that could go more main-market for it to be a serious category."

Premium pricing

Challenged on the high price of Apple's iPhone, and the price of its other products, Cook insisted that he thought people would always prefer a more expensive but higher-quality product.

"Price is rarely the most important thing," he said. "A cheap product might sell some units. Somebody gets it home and they feel great when they pay the money, but then they get it home and use it and the joy is gone.

"The joy is gone every day that they use it until they aren't using it anymore. You don't keep remembering, 'I got a good deal!' because you hate it."

Smartphones

Cook said that there is huge opportunity in the smartphone market - despite Apple's record fourth quarter in which it topped the smartphone league, selling 37m iPhones and edging ahead of Samsung.

He said: "37m is a big number. It was a decent quarter. It was 17m more than we'd ever done before. We were pretty happy with that, but let me give you the way I look at the numbers.

"As I see it, that 37m for last quarter represented 24% of the smartphone market. There's three out of four people buying something else. Nine out of 10 phone buyers are buying something else.

"Handset market is projected to go from 1.5bn to 2bn units. Take it in the context of these numbers, the truth is that this is a jaw-dropping industry with enormous opportunity. Up against those numbers, the numbers don't seem so large anymore. What seems so large to me is the opportunity."

China opportunities

Selling to China could be hugely valuable in the longer term, Cook said.

"In 2007, the revenue combined from Greater China, several other parts of Asia, India, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, was $1.4bn," he said.

"Revenue last year for that same group of countries was $22bn. We're only on the surface. That's how I feel. We focused mainly in China. Last year we began to focus increasingly more in Brazil and Russia."

Cash and Siri

Cook also tackled the issue of Apple's $98bn cash pile, the Siri language interface on the iPhone 4S.

He said that the Siri voice interface introduced on the iPhone 4S was another profound change in input [methods] which, despite being still a beta [unfinished] product, had become essential to his own life.

But despite his reputation as the leader of a tight focus on costs in Apple's supply chain - the role for which he was originally hired by Jobs in 1998 - Cook said that iCloud and Siri were not something Apple runs profit and loss analyses on.

Instead, he said: "We run the company from the top and don't worry about the iCloud team or Siri team making money. Measuring things at that level wouldn't achieve anything. Both of these things go in the profound category. They're things that you'll talk to your grandkids about that are profound changes."

Of Apple's cash pile - a large amount of which is outside the US, and would attract high taxes if it were repatriated - Cook said: "We've spent billions in the supply chain. We've spent billions in acquisition including on IP. We've spent billions on retail, the infrastructure of the company, the data centers et cetera.

"Yes, we still have a lot. I would say we're judicious and deliberate. We spend our money like it's our last pennies. I think shareholders want us to do that. They don't want us to act like we're rich.

"We've never felt that way. It may sound bizarre but that's the truth. In terms of our approach to cash, I've said since becoming CEO that I'm not religious about this. I'm not religious about holding it or not holding it. We're in very active discussions at the board level on what we should do."

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21/2/2012 - Motorola Smartphone With Intel Chip, Ice Cream Sandwich Spotted

Motorola Smartphone With Intel Chip, Ice Cream Sandwich Spotted

By: Michelle Maisto, VIA:eweek.com.

Motorola is preparing its first smartphone that will marry Intel's Medfield chips with Google's Ice Cream Sandwich Android build, according to photos that leaked online.

Motorola's first Android phone to run Ice Cream Sandwich, or version 4.0, as well as Intel's new Medfield hardware, is more understated than it is a head-turner, if leaked photos posted by PocketNow on Feb. 14 prove to be the real deal.

The Motorola smartphone is slim and gray, with a button-free, touch-screen-centric face. The device is said to run an updated version of the MotoBlur user interface and grab some extra attention with its camera, which reportedly features instant-on capabilities and 15 frame-per-second burst capture.

The smartphone, the name of which is unknown, is expected to receive a proper introduction at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain, which kicks off Feb. 27.

Motorola, which has traditionally included Texas Instruments' processors in its smartphones, announced the inking of a new deal with Intel at January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha took to the stage Jan. 10 to announce a multi-year strategic agreement in which Motorola smartphones will run Intel Atom processors based on the Z2460 platform, beginning in the second half of 2012.

"We expect the combination of our companies to break new ground and bring the very best of computing capabilities to smartphones and tablets," said Otellini, who's depending on the relationship to keep Intel competing against ARM-based processors from Qualcomm and others.

Speaking with Reuters at CES, ARM CEO Warren East called the Atom Medfield platform "good enough," though hardly a threat to ARM's dominance in the smartphone space.

"Intel has taken some designs that were never meant for mobile phones, and they've literally wrenched those designs and put them into a power-performance space which is roughly good enough for mobile phones," East told Reuters.

East added that ARM considers Intel a "serious competitor," but doesn't believe it can ever be a leader in power efficiency.

Also on stage, Paul Jacobs, CEO of ARM-partner Qualcomm, talked up the Snapdragon chip.

"People want to do more things with their phones, but battery size remains constant," said Jacobs. "It's like having a car with a fixed-size fuel tank, and you want to drive 100 more miles. You've got to make the engine more efficient. That's what we do for a living."

During the fourth quarter of 2011, Motorola shipped 5.3 million smartphones, for a 2011 total of 18.7 million smartphones.

Market leader Samsung, by contrast, shipped 36.5 million smartphones during the quarter and 97.4 million during the full year, while Apple shipped 37 million during the quarter, by Strategy Analytics' count, and 93 million over the year.

Motorola's Jha has said that, to make better use of marketing dollars, Motorola plans to make fewer but more differentiated devices. In January he told The Verge, defending Motorola's MotoBlur user interface, "Verizon and AT&T don't want seven stock [Android Ice Cream Sandwich] devices on their shelves," adding that there's no viable profit in devices that aren't differentiated.

Motorola's strategy also includes being attentive to international markets. In February alone, it has introduced its MotoLuxe and Defy Mini smartphones in Germany, two new tablets in Greece, a white version of the Motorola RAZR in Saudi Arabia and the Defy Mini in the United Kingdom.

Is this Motorola's first Intel Medfield-powered phone?

A leaked image could be our first look at Motorola's Intel Medfield-powered smartphone, which could also be its first to run Android 4.0 too.

Intel's push into the world of mobile device processors appears to be moving forward, as a new image has been leaked of what's believed to be Motorola's first smartphone to use Intel's Medfield system-on-a-chip.

A prototype phone using the Atom-based chip was revealed late last year, and although LG was rumored to be producing a device for Intel, it was Lenovo and Motorola who announced at CES 2012 they would be making use of the Medfield.

Lenovo's K800 made a brief appearance at the show, but Motorola's first efforts were nowhere to be seen. This could all change at Mobile World Congress though, as the phone you see here could take center stage.

The currently unnamed phone has been leaked to Pocket-Now.com, along with some potential features, including the use of Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich. This makes it a big deal for Motorola, as not only would it introduce Intel power to the brand, but also be the first standard implementation of Android 4.0.

As with previous Motorola phones using Android, the Motoblur user interface will be added, but in a brand-new form. The leaked picture shows the UI looking considerably less busy than previous versions, and also illustrates the use of on-screen buttons rather than hardware keys.

According to the source, the handset will be promoted as a top-end cameraphone, complete with a Windows Phone-like instant-on feature and a 15 frame burst option.

Motorola will be at Mobile World Congress, but at the time of writing the company doesn't seem to have announced any kind of press conference, however we'd expect plenty of noise about this exciting phone once the show begins.

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