Gadget and Techno Updates
Apple
Analyst expects Apple to move further away from NVIDIA
Aug 31st
Standard & Poor’s analyst Clyde Montevirgen cast doubt on NVIDIA’s future today in an investment note that suggested it would lose business from Apple. He urged investors to sell as an “anticipated market share loss” was sure to come while Apple changed from NVIDIA to AMD for graphics. The statement reflected new iMacs that use AMD alone for graphics, though it implied more expected moves in the future.
Apple has been one of NVIDIA’s more important customers in recent years. Starting from its unibody MacBook Pro models in late 2008, its entire portable line as well as the iMac and More >
Roku cuts player prices ahead of Apple iTV, adds 1080p
Aug 31st
Roku today hedged itself against Apple’s media event by cutting prices for its Internet Player across the board. The prices drop $ 20 to $ 30, putting the Roku SD as low as $ 60 while the Roku HD costs $ 70 and the HD-XR is now just $ 100. The SD may be in clearance pricing since it’s listed as “out of stock” through Roku itself.
Owners of the HD-XR will also get an upgrade that boosts the set-top box to 1080p. The patch should be free and will launch at an unspecified point later in the year.
The cuts More >
RESCUECOM reliability ratings see Apple jump from 3rd to 2nd
Aug 31st
Apple has moved up to the second position in Rescuecom’s latest computer reliability ranking. The company scored a lower percentage of calls and almost doubled its reliability score to take second place, with a result that would have been good enough for first place in the previous quarter. Asus had a huge, 400 percent jump in score to take first in the second quarter. Apple and Asus bumped IBM/Lenovo to third despite the company’s improved numbers, while Toshiba and HP/Compaq maintained fourth and fifth, respectively, despite improved scores.
The scores are said to gauge the quality of hardware and services More >
Apple’s App Store cracks 250,000 apps
Aug 29th
Apple has quietly passed the 250,000 app mark at the App Store, new data shows. As of Saturday morning, 148Apps recorded 252,227 readily available iPad and iPhone apps. The figure is a quick climb from 225,000 in June and is likely to be held up as a milestone by Apple at its September 1 music event.
To date, Apple still has the advantage of quantity, as unofficial stats currently put the next best, Android Market, at more than 100,000 apps. Most other stores are far smaller. BlackBerry App World is estimated to have about 9,000 apps despite RIM’s phones currently having More >