In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Bill Gates sat down to talk, among other things, about his relationship with Steve Jobs. Gates recalled his often up and down relationship with Jobs changing somewhat after the launch of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2007: “Steve and I did an event together, and he couldn’t have been nicer…I got a fair bit of time with him in his last year.” When Gates ultimately learned of Steve’s medical condition, he wrote him a letter: “I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote...

Apple had another blowout quarter this holiday and set records across the board.  iPhones, which many estimated optimistically at 30 million, leapt to over 37 million to create the biggest quarter ever.  iPads crossed 15 million for the first time, and even Apple’s venerable Mac line crossed 5 million units for the first time (likely helped by the popular MacBook Air lineup). iPods, if you needed a downside, were off by 20-percent —which is not terrible, because Apple did not upgrade most of the iPods available last Christmas. Apple recorded revenues of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06...

Apple and its cofounder Steve Jobs certainly helped design and popularize storage devices throughout computing history. For example, the Mac mainstreamed Sony’s 3.5-inch floppy drive in the 1980s, but Apple was working on its own storage devices even before the Mac debuted. One ofour buddies discovered this eBay listing advertising for what appears to be a prototype of a previously unknown NISHA hard drive adorned with the colorful Apple logo. It comes in a translucent case, and it could easily be the first Apple product we have seen like this, even though it never shipped. It is neither a Hard Disk 20 drive Apple introduced on...

Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher of the New York Times have written an excellent article about why Apple makes iPhones and iPads in China instead of the United States.   One of the key points is this: Chinese factories are far more nimble than American factories. The story Duhigg and Bradsher used to illustrate this will only add to the iPhone lore. Just over a month before the first iPhone was to be released in 2007, the authors report, a frustrated Steve Jobs summoned his senior team. Steve had been using a prototype iPhone for a few weeks, carrying it around in his pocket. When his lieutenants...

According to a report published by AppleInsider, Apple is looking to incorporate support for the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi specification into its products this year. Dubbed as ”Gigabit WiFi”, the faster wireless technology is expected to be installed in Apple’s 2012 upgrades of AirPort base station, Time Capsule, Apple TV, Macbook and potentially in the next iPhone as well. The 5G “Gigabit WiFi” technology offers speeds 3 times as fast as existing 802.11n wireless networks with speeds of over 1 Gigabit per second. Citing from the source: “The new 802.11ac standard achieves much faster wireless networking speeds than the existing 802.11n specification (in use on the latest Mac, AirPort and iOS devices) by using 2 to 4 times...

Blackberry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) has said its co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have stepped down in a shake-up. Mr Lazaridis, who founded RIM in 1984, will become vice chairman. Mr Balsillie will continue to sit on the board but not have any operational role. Chief operating officer Thorsten Heins will replace them on Monday. Investors have called for a strategy change as the company struggles to compete with Apple and Google. Management shuffle Mr Lazaridis, speaking after the announcement, said he recognized things needed to change at the company. “There comes a time in the growth of...