Articles by Dieter Bohn
The long-running dispute between Apple and IBM over Apple’s hire of Mark Papermaster has come to a close, according to Apple PR:
Apple® today announced that Mark Papermaster will be coming to Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, on April 24. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod® and iPhone™ hardware engineering teams. The litigation between IBM and Mark Papermaster has been resolvedThe move comes fully two months after a judge blocked Apple from going through with the Papermaster hire and although exactly how the “litigation [...] has been resolved” isn’t something that Apple is likely to disclose, TechCrunch reports that it was an out-of-course settlement rather than a “California doesn’t allow for non-compete agreements” barfight.
Papermaster will take the helm of iPhone and iPod hardware, replacing Tony Fadell (who was rumored to have pushed for Linux to be the basis for the iPhone). Odd that he’s going to have to wait until April 24th to take charge, but we suspect that won’t slow things down too much on hardware development. Got any advice for Papermaster? Would you like to seem him shephard in that iPhone HD? Think he’ll push for Quad-Core goodness?
We’re incredibly happy to announce that we’re adding another member to the Smartphone Experts family of sites: Nokia Experts! Nokia Experts will be run by the inestimable Matt Miller, also known as The Mobile Gadgeteer, host of ZDNet’s Smartphones and Cellphones blog, palmsolo, and all around mobility guru.
Matt has a ton of knowledge about a subject that the rest of us at Smartphone Experts have historically lacked, namely Nokia, S60, and the Symbian OS in general. He gives himself a brief introduction here, in the unlikely event you’re not familiar.
Nokia has, as yet, not successfully made a big smartphone push in the United States, but that’s quite likely to change as they have a slew of exciting new devices coming out and are also likely to have their E71 messaging smartphone picked up by AT&T very soon. In other words, if, like us, you’re relatively new to Nokia and S60 but want to learn more, Nokia Experts is surely going to be one of your best resources. Heck, Matt’s already published a full review of the Nokia 5800 Tube XpressMusic touch screen S60 device. The ‘Tube’ is already a best-selling device overseas and is more of a worthy contender than you might think, so the review is definitely worth a read.
Go on and head over to Nokia Experts now and give ‘em a big ol’ hello!
As it did the year before, the Smartphone Round Robin needed to go into overtime again this time around — but we’re finished now! If you haven’t been following along, here’s what you missed: Each of the editors of our five Smartphone Experts sites swapped phones for a week or so, reviewing and leanring what it’s like to wear another smarphone user’s shoes. The result is the entire series of articles you see linked on this handy page, the Smartphone Round Robin of 2008.
What will you learn there? You’ll learn that there was no single smartphone that ‘won’ the Round Robin — but that’s by design. There’s no perfect smartphone out there, but there just might be the perfect smartphone to fit your needs. If you’re looking to get a new smartphone soon, think about what you need it do to and then hit up these articles — you’ll find that depending on what each of us care about, we’ll give you a useful perspective on whether a given smartphone matches up.
Actually, we explain it all pretty well on this page. Oh, yeah, one more thing, we are giving away fabulous prizes:
- From Android Central, the T-Mobile G1, the BlueAnt Z9 Bluetooth Headset, and SPE Screen Protectors
- From CrackBerry.com, the BlackBerry Bold, Spare Battery, and Case-Mate Second Skin
- From The iPhone Blog, the iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset
- From TreoCentral, the Treo Pro, Case-Mate Clear Armor, and Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth Headset (original)
- From WMExperts, the HTC Fuze and the Celio Redfly Mobile Companion
Here we have Gathorc, Dwarf Paladin from the Skullcrusher server (Gathorc gives a big shout-out to Guild Benevolent!). Sure, he’s one of those annoying Alliance toons, but nevertheless to our eyes he’s definitely got some bragging rights: getting exalted with Stormpike takes some serious grinding time, maxing out Herbalism is nothing to sniff at, and check out the list-o-purple, below!
If you have no idea what the previous paragraph is getting at, move along, nothing to see here. If you’re proud of your World of Warcraft Toon and want to be able to show it off on the go, might we recommend our favorite of the iPhone WoW apps, Warcraft Characters (iTunes link, Free).
You can search by character name without having to specify your server, get full views of Basic info, Stats, Combat Stats, Gear, and Reputation, and of course save your favorites to more easily show them off.
Because, honestly, we know that you can’t stop thinking about WoW and are going to bring it up the next time we’re out — you may as well have the ability to explain why in the name of the Earthmother you spec’d your Tauren Hunter Marksman instead of Beastmaster. Seriously, don’t you read BigRedKitty?
Small gallery after the break! Read the rest of this entry »
You saw the epic liveblog, now see the photos.
We have the deets in photo on the new 17″ MacBook with the ridiculously large 8 hours of battery life, the fact that iTunes is going 100% DRM-Free, the new iLife with GarageBand Music Lessons, iMovie’s stunning upgrades, and iPhoto’s geo-tagging and face-recognition, and also the new iWork with Keynote — which now has an iPhone-based remote for switching slides and reading your notes.
Um, yeah, this was a huge Macworld for Mac people — and the iTunes DRM news and the Keynote news were incredibly great upgrades for iPhone owners.
Makes you weep that Apple will never go to a Macworld again, don’t it?
This week, Rene manfully takes Mike’s place in the podcast as we talk about our MacWorld predictions.
We’re coming up on MacWorld awfully quick now (TiPb will be there, natch) and so the rumors are flying. Expectations have been decidedly lower than in years past due to the absence of his Steveness, but there’s one persistent rumor that just won’t go away: the iPhone Nano.
The universal response to these rumors has pretty much been “Meh.” Engadget wants to know what the deal is. Macrumors thinks that it’s just case makers riding Apple rumor coattails. Gizmodo doesn’t believe either.
The rumor won’t die, though, so: what if it were true? What would an iPhone Nano look like?
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard anything from Pinger, creators of a service that allows you to trade voicemails like they were emails. Their previous offering was interesting but not ultimately useful for most people. Their new offering, a clever iPhone application (iTunes link) that combines a social media aggregator, a dialer, and an IM client is interesting and likely useful for most people. For me, it addresses my #1 gripe about the iPhone. It’s also free.
Read on for a review!
I’m sure that a few of you, like me, have been avoiding using the Google Search Bar in Safari in favor of the Google app. Avoiding it not because the Google App is that awesome (it is), but because the search results page in Safari that comes up when you use the Google Search Bar wasn’t optimized for Safari, but instead looked like the regular desktop page.
Well, quick tip if you’ve been avoiding that bar: it’s been mobile optimized while you were away. No need to avoid it anymore. The above search results screen shot shows what the new (to me, anyway) results page looks like. Chad emailed in (with more than a few exclamation points) showing the same.
Treat this Public Service Announcement like all PSAs — if you don’t care, move along, nothing to see here, threat-level orange, and all that. But If you’ve been keeping away from that search bar, it’s time to come back home.
