More hardware acceleration in Chrome beta, dev gets latest JS

The newly-minted Chrome 18 beta expands the scope of hardware acceleration in the browser to older computers, but it's still not available to all. Meanwhile, Chrome 19 dev goes bleeding edge with JavaScript.
Released today, Google Chrome 18 beta for Windows, Mac, and Chrome Frame improves 2D Canvas support and introduces a software rasterizer. The new features are not yet available on Chrome 18 beta for Linux.
Basically, this means that games and animations based in the HTML5 Canvas tag ought to run faster and appear smoother. Google noted in its blog post announcing the changes that this was hard for them to implement because of the "numerous hardware and operating system configurations" that people use.
It's complicated enough that to display 3D content on older computers or those running Windows XP, Google went out and licensed a software rasterizer called SwiftShader from TransGaming. SwiftShader only kicks on when Chrome's built-in GPU acceleration doesn't activate.
Adventurous types can see precisely what's being accelerated by typing chrome://gpu into the location bar, or can force SwiftShader on by adding the--blacklist-accelerated-compositing and--blacklist-webgl flags to the browser's command line.
Also updated today, the developer's build of Chrome 19 (download for Windows, Mac, Linux) begins to support the latest version of JavaScript.
Code-named "Harmony" and not due until the end of 2013, Google has nevertheless decided to begin to support some of its components. These include Lexical scoping, weak maps, collections, and proxies.
Harmony support will not work by default; you must enable it by first going to chrome://flags in the location bar and activate "Experimental JavaScript features". And of course, this is more for developers than for practical application. As few of the Harmony standards have been fully baked, not many sites will have implemented them yet. This continues to push Chrome's reputation as an early adopter of many technical browser advantages, its lack of Do Not Track support notwithstanding.


Seth Rosenblatt

Apple's week filled with iPad 3 rumors, court dates

It wouldn't be a normal week in Apple news land without a healthy dose of lawsuits, rumors, and spy shots of future products. This week did not disappoint in any of those categories.
First things first, the iPad 3. Rumor has it we'll see it the first week of March, or at least a device that will succeed the iPad 2. Word of that was joined with a photo of what might just be the back casing of the new device, which when stuck next to an iPad 2 suggested we could be looking at the real deal.
If new hardware isn't your thing, there's always legal paperwork (yes I just said that). There was plenty of that to go around this week with several key court decisions and new lawsuits worth keeping an eye on. The FBI also released a nearly 200-page background check on Apple co-founder Steve Jobs from 1991.
You can catch up on these stories, and others from the past week, in this edition of Apple Talk Weekly.
Apple Talk Weekly is a collection of some of the week's top Apple news and rumors. It appears every Saturday, and is curated by CNET's Apple reporter, Josh Lowensohn.

News
FBI releases background check on Steve Jobs
The FBI this week released a heavily-redacted background check it did on late co-founder Steve Jobs back in 1991, some six years before Jobs would return as Apple's CEO and when U.S. President George H.W. Bush was considering Jobs for a position on his Export Council.

 A snippet of Jobs' FBI file, released this week.

(Credit: FBI/CNET) 



Among its findings are that there was once an attempt to extort Jobs and Apple with a bomb threat that later turned out to be false. There are also a handful of accounts from individuals interviewed by the FBI who weigh in on his personality and business style.
Apple share hit new highs
Apple set new records on Wall Street this week, reaching an all-time high in intraday trading and closing at several record highs. Apple's stock neared $500 for the first time, marking a considerable gain over the past three and a half months. The rise coincided with credible rumors that the company planned to announce a new iPad next month (more on that below).

Petitions asking for better working conditions delivered to Apple retail stores
Members from Change.org this week hand-delivered printed copies of a petition with 250,000 signatures asking Apple to improve working conditions at the overseas manufacturers where it both sources components and has its products built. The petitions, which were a combination of two separate grassroots efforts, were delivered to Apple Stores around the world, including the U.S., India, Australia and the U.K.

Letters, lawsuits, court decisions galore
This week there was no shortage of legal happenings, one of which was a letter from Apple to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, asking it to change the way it handles patents. That included setting royalty rates and keeping certain patents from being leverage to force injunctions. It was unearthed the same day Google made a pledge to set reasonable royalty rates for patents held by Motorola Mobility, which it announced plans to acquire last year.
 

In court, Motorola Mobility failed to get an injunction against Apple this week in Mannheim's Regional Court in Germany after a judge said that Motorola didn't make a strong enough case that Apple was infringing on a patent it held. Apple fired back yesterday in a U.S. court, taking aim at the company for breaching a contract it had with Qualcomm that both companies shared, saying Motorola shouldn't have been using it against other licensees.
Earlier in the week a judge for Germany's regional court in Dusseldorf sided with Samsung in a separate case brought on by Apple, which had asked for an injunction on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N--the version of Samsung's tablet that had been re-designed per Apple's request.
Separately, a China-based Proview Technology filed a restraining order against Apple in China for the use of "iPad," saying it owned the trademark in the country and was looking for a ban of sales of the tablet there. There was also a lawsuit against Apple filed by Swiss company SmtartData, accusing it of infringing on one of its patents with the iPhone, Apple TV and Remote app for iOS.

App Store rankings not something to game, says Apple

Apple this week warned developers not to use services that offer to raise the rankings of software into the company's coveted top rankings. Apple did not name names of third-party services that are able to do that, but did tell developers that they could be kicked out of its developer program if they chose to use them. In the past Apple has made a number of changes to its algorithm to combat app ranking manipulation, however this is one of the first times the company has come out against the practice outright.  

Apple holding iPad 3 event first week of March?
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Apple will once again unveil a new iPad on the first week of March--just as it did last year--a new report claimed this week. In a brief report citing anonymous sources, AllThingsD said Apple will hold an event in San Francisco that week to show off the iPad 2's successor, which the outlet believes will look much like the iPad 2, but with a higher resolution screen and a speedier processor, mirroring other reports.
15, 17-inch MacBook Airs on the way soon?
Remember that old rumor about Apple expanding its MacBook Air line to include models larger than 13 inches? Apple Insider said yesterday that Apple is cooking up an overhaul to its MacBook Pro line that involves stripping out components like the optical disc tray and hard drive in its two larger models, and replacing the latter with flash memory like it did on the MacBook Air. The report suggests Apple is focusing its efforts on making those changes to its 15-inch model first, later rolling out a similar design for its 17-inch MacBook Pro model.
Is this the housing for the iPad 3?
Do you get excited viewing photos of machined aluminum that might be future Apple products? Then you might enjoy these shots from Repair Labs that cropped up this week, which the site says is the rear housing (read: the metal part behind the screen) for an iPad 3. While unconfirmed, the cases show a few notable differences from existing iPad 2 parts, both confirming some previous rumors and suggesting that they could be the real deal.
Canadian cable operators already in possession of Apple's TV set
A report from The Globe And Mail made waves this week for its claims that Apple's in talks with Rogers and BCE in Canada to make the two companies partners for the launch of its TV venture. The chewy part of the report came with the claim that those companies already had Apple TV units in their labs for in-house testing. The news followed a survey from Best Buy that gave a wish list of specs for an Apple-made TV, a survey the electronics retailer later said was simply "hypothetical."
iPad 3 won't have quad-core chip?
Are those rumors of Apple bringing four cores to the next iPad 3 a big crock? CNET talked to two analysts to get a feel for where mobile chips are and where they're going. The short answer? Four cores may not be in the cards just yet, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Read the story to find out why.

Apple mini stores headed to Sam's Club?
Wholesale retailer Sam's Club is rumored to be in talks with Apple to bring store-within-stores to Sam's Club warehouses. A report this week said the two companies were in early discussions about just such a thing, but that no deal had been struck just yet. Sam's Club already sells a number of Apple products including iPods and the iPad. The rumored mini store deal could expand that to Apple's Mac computers too.  iOS 5.1 to coincide with iPad 3 unveiling?
Deep within the carrier profiles found inside of Apple's latest beta of iOS 5.1 are hints that the software may have a final release date of March 9, 2012. That date wouldn't be all that significant except for the fact that it's the same week Apple's now rumored to be taking the wraps off its next iPad. These release hints within developer beta versions of iOS have been wrong plenty of times, so take this one with a grain of salt. As a frame of reference, Apple's last iOS 5.1 beta was released in early January.


cnet.com



  
 

Apple seeks U.S. ban on Galaxy Nexus

    Apple has requested a ban on sales in the U.S. of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, claiming that the showcase for Google's heavily touted Ice Cream Sandwich version of the Android operating system violates four Apple patents.
According to Florian Mueller at Foss Patents, Apple brought a motion for a preliminary injunction against the device on Thursday with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. A public, redacted version of the filing was made available late Friday, and the motion was filed simultaneously with a new federal lawsuit, Mueller reports.
The motion, Mueller says, is based on four patents: a "data tapping" patent, a patent involving Siri and unified search, a new slide-to-unlock patent, and a word-completion patent for touch-screen entry of text.
The unified search patent, which involves voice assistant Siri's way of searching the Net, could be a direct threat to Google's core search business, Mueller says, and he adds that the word-completion patent may cover functionality involved in Google's mobile search app.
The "data tapping" feature, which, for example, lets users tap on a phone number in an e-mail to automatically make a phone call, got Android-handset maker HTC into hot water last year, when the International Trade Commission ruled the company had violated Apple's patent and said it would enforce a ban on HTC's products that use the feature. HTC quickly said it had developed a workaround.
Slide-to-unlock is currently at play in an Apple legal action against the Galaxy Nexus in Germany, where a resolution of some sort is expected in March.
Earlier this month, a German court rejected Apple's request to ban the Galaxy Nexus in that country. Apple had taken issue with Samsung's products for bearing resemblance to its own products. In this new case, Mueller claims, Apple "focuses completely on strong technical patents" as opposed to "softer, design-related rights."
Google and Samsung collaborated closely on the Galaxy Nexus and unveiled it in October (at which time Samsung claimed it had been Apple-proofed).
Since the first Nexus One (from HTC), Google has used its line of Nexus phones as a showcase for the latest user interface and features available with the updated version of Android, and the Nexus phones include no OS extensions from carriers. In this case, then, "stock Android itself is at issue," as Mueller puts it. "This means that Google cannot deny its undivided responsibility for any infringement findings." Meuller adds that the Galaxy Nexus' "role as a 'lead device' could also contribute to the willingness of the court to order a preliminary injunction."
Apple's Steve Jobs thought Android was a knock-off of his company's iOS operating system and famously said Apple was "going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." Since then, the battle between the two companies has only intensified, with information recently surfacing that suggests a Google home entertainment device may be in the works.
Apple and Samsung, meanwhile, have quickly become fierce competitors in recent years with a rise in popularity of smartphones and tablets. Their ongoing global legal dispute was kicked off with a U.S. lawsuit filed by Apple against Samsung in April of last year that said Samsung was violating its intellectual property in the design of its mobile devices, specifically the Galaxy series of smartphones and tablets. Samsung quickly countersued, saying Apple was infringing on multiple patents. Since then, Apple has gone after Samsung heavily in Australia and parts of Europe--particularly Italy and Germany, the latter of which is considered to be friendly to patent-holders and faster than courts in the U.S.
The loss of cutting-edge features in a mobile device due to patent issues can, of course, hamper the device's competitiveness. It's possible however, for companies to devise workarounds that avoid legal problems but approximate desired functionalities.



Edward Moyer

Electronic News

Electronic News was a publication that covered the semiconductor production equipment industry. It was originally a weekly trade newspaper, which covered all aspects of the electronics industry including semiconductors, computers, software, communications, space and even television electronics.

Fairchild Publications started the newspaper in 1957, as a complement to its other trade newspapers, including Women's Wear Daily, Home Furnishing Daily, Supermarket News, among others. At its peak in 1984, Electronic News took in $25 million in revenue with margins above 50%.^{[citation needed]} The following year, the newspaper began losing advertising and influence to rival Electronic Engineering Times, beginning a decline that eventually led to the newspaper's demise.^{[citation needed]}

In 1971, journalist Don Hoefler published a series of articles entitled "Silicon Valley, USA" in Electronic News. This is thought to be the first published use of the phrase Silicon Valley to describe the area of the southern part of the San Francisco Bay area in northern California, USA, an area known for its concentration of companies making semiconductors, among them Intel, LSI Logic, National Semiconductor.

Also in 1971, Electronic News was where Intel first advertised the Intel 4004 microprocessor, considered to be the first single-chip microprocessor.^[1]

A decade later, in 1981, when IBM's top-secret Project Acorn emerged as the IBM Personal Computer - the PC - the first reports were published in Electronic News in the weeks before the introduction, much to IBM's consternation.^{[citation needed]} Also in 1982, Electronic News communications industry reporter Frank Barbetta broke the story on the Bell System Divestiture which resulted in the break-up of American Telephone & Telegraph Company, and published the first interview with Judge Harold H. Greene.

The paper eventually grew to have a staff of three dozen full time journalists, working out of headquarters staffed by full time journalists in New York and bureaus in Boston, Washington DC, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis and Tokyo. In addition, stringers reported in from more than 100 locations around the world.

In 1967, the paper's corporate parent, Fairchild Publications was acquired by Capital Cities Broadcasting, which went on to acquire the American Broadcasting Company, now a unit of The Walt Disney Company. The publication was transferred from Fairchild to Chilton, then a division of Capital Cities/ABC, as the result of a reorganization. After barely a year as part of Chilton, the paper was in 1991 sold to the publishing house International Data Group. After a year of losses, IDG sold the paper in 1993 to an independent investor group put together by one-time publisher Zachary Dicker. In 1996 the paper was sold to its current owner Reed Business Information.

The final edition of Electronic News to be printed on paper was dated December 2, 2002. It has since that date been published exclusively online. It was later merged into EDN.