iTunes 8.2.1 »behebt ein Problem bei der Verifizierung von Apple-Geräten«

Apple Blocks Palm Pre iTunes Syncing | PreCentral.net.

You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. … Think about it — if you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market. Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy.

Palm-Investor Roger McNamee zeigt sich mehr als zuversichtlich, dass der Palm Pre im Revier von Apple wildern wird.

Mike Abramsky – RBC Capital Markets

Yeah. Thanks very much. Maybe shifting to the iPhone. There’s now a number of competitors coming to the market, many who will have their own sort of variance on the sort of, say, customer experience that iPhone was famous for initiating, and that includes things like Android and Windows and the Palm Pre. I was just wondering, beyond what’s obviously been a powerful leadership in applications, how do you think about sustaining that leadership and brand in the face of these competitive developments in this sector going forward?

Tim Cook

Mike hi, it’s Tim. I would say first of all, it’s difficult to judge products that are not yet in the market. But the iPhone has sold over 17 million units thus far. It’s received the highest overall customer satisfaction of products from many different surveys. And, we’ve said since the beginning software is the key ingredient and we believe that we’re still years ahead on software. And I would include in that software umbrella, the Applications Store, and you can see the explosion that has happened in applications with over half a billion downloads.

If you look at others, I think when you think about having multiple variations of displays, multiple variations of resolutions and input methods, and many different forms of hardware, it’s a big challenge to a software developer and is not very enticing for them to build a different App for every one of these things. But, we shall see what people will do.

We approach this business as a software platform business, and so I think we approach it fundamentally different than people that are approaching it only from a hardware point of view. And so, as I’ve said before, we’re very, very confident with where we are competitively. We are watching the landscape. We like competition. As long as they don’t rip off our IP (intellectual property) and if they do we’re going to go after anybody that does.

Mike Abramsky – RBC Capital Markets

That was actually my next question because,

Tim Cook

I thought it might be. And that’s the reason I want to go ahead and get that out.

Mike Abramsky – RBC Capital Markets

Because, it seems until Palm came out, many of the other players had in fact negotiated carefully around your multi-touch IP; whereas, the Palm device particularly seems to almost directly emulate the kind of touch interfaces that you had innovated and that Steve, when he launched the phone, talked about patented. Is that to what you’re referring with regarding to ripping off IP?

Tim Cook

I don’t want to talk about any specific company. I’m just making a general statement that we think competition is good. It makes us all better. And we are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we’ll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal. I don’t know that I can be clearer than that.

Wir erinnern uns: Als Steve Jobs das iPhone im Januar 2007 auf der Macworld Expo in San Francisco präsentierte, ließ er den Nebensatz fallen: “And boy, have we patented it.” Insbesondere die Multitouch-Funktion, die u.a. Zwei-Finger-Gesten zum Zoomen im Safari-Browser oder anderen Programmen ermöglicht, hat Apple patentieren lassen.

Palm zeigte sich einen Tag später wenig beeindruckt.

Palm has a long history of innovation that is reflected in our products and robust patent portfolio, and we have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space.

Da Palm tatsächlich auch auf einem Stapel von Patenten sitzt und diese in einem möglichen Rechtsstreit auf den Tisch packen könnte, werden sich die Apple-Anwälte ein offenes Vorgehen genau überlegen.

Apple to Google, Palm: Do Not Rip Off Our iPhone IP — Seeking Alpha

FT.com | Tech Blog | Palm’s Pre catches Apple’s eye

iPhone vs. Palm’s Pre: IT’S ON | ITworld.