Over the past eight years, Valve has perfected digital PC-game distribution through its storefront and community client, Steam. The service’s importance to Mac gamers is huge — remember when you needed a Windows rig to play Half-Life 2 or Team Fortress 2? Or try your hand at virtualization, or dual booting? Well, if recent rumors are true, the business relationship between Valve and and our favorite Cupertino company could be expanding.
According to AppleInsider, Apple CEO Tim Cook was supposedly spotted paying a visit to Valve’s Bellevue, Washington headquarters on Friday. Unfortunately, that’s also about the extent of revealing information in regards to the meeting. Was Cook interested in an acquisition? A merger of game distribution platforms? Pippin 2? (Please don’t say it’s Pippin 2).
Now, don’t jump to the conclusion Apple and Valve are necessarily holding secret meetings, conspiring to join forces into some type of digital game distribution Voltron. It’s entirely possible Cook was dropping by to eat a sandwich with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, for all anyone knows. But taking a look at the two companies’ ongoing motives in the videogame retail space, a new partnership seems entirely plausible.
First things first: Apple is probably not buying Valve. Rumors of an acquisition immediately floated to the surface this past weekend, but the concept doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Forbes recently estimated Valve’s worth at to billion, with an employee roster of only 250. Couple those staggering figures with the company’s nearly 70-percent claim in the downloadable PC games market, and it’s hard to imagine Valve selling out.
Lack of a new logo on Valve’s letterhead notwithstanding, both entities stand a lot to gain from some type of new venture. Early in its lifecycle, Steam was often referred to as “iTunes for games,” which seems funny now, given how much the App Store’s game distribution setup probably owes to Valve’s model. Apple dominates the mobile games market, a sector where Valve has no foothold, while Apple could clearly benefit from exposure to Steam’s 40-million-strong user base. Joining distribution forces seems like a safe bet.
A month ago, the internet went all aflutter over rumors Valve was developing its own home console, called the “Steam Box.” The company denied any specific hardware was under development, but a few days ago, the company posted a job ad seeking an electronics hardware engineer. On Friday, the same day Cook supposedly dropped by, Valve employee Michael Abrash posted a blog (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun) detailing his current R&D work into “wearable computing.” Google is already working on augmented reality glasses, so it’s entirely conceivable Apple is interested in Valve’s take on similar tech.
Honestly, all of this is pure conjecture, since we don’t even know who supposedly saw Tim Cook enter Valve’s offices. My money’s still on that sandwich theory. Delicious, augmented reality sandwiches.
As most know by now, normally Apple hosts the big product reveals in San Francisco. Since this year has been unusual for the company in that we still have yet to see a new iPhone and there hasn’t been the usual music event, you can add one more to the list according to a new report. Apple may be going a bit on the lighter side for the new iPhone reveal.
San Francisco has been the location of choice for the unveiling of both the iPad and iPad 2, and of course all versions of the iPhone to date. This year though, according to AllThingsD, sources say that Apple may be thinking there’s no place like home for its next event, holding it at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California.
Why the change of heart in location? Hard telling. Given the release date has been all over the map this year it seems (at least according to rumors), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts may have been a bit too hard to nail down. Or perhaps it was already taken? Regardless, if the reported unveiling date of October 4 holds true, we’ll know soon enough anyway!
Follow this article’s author, Matthew Tilmann on Twitter
(Image courtesy of techspot.com)
Nothing livens up an intellectual property dispute like a little sushi and some brazen hyperbole. In this week’s Law and Apple, Apple opens up the legal floodgates in Japan, while Samsung strikes back at ‘em with some Tolkien-esque banter.
Meanwhile, Google plays patent arms dealer in the escalating war between HTC and Apple, and a small communications company in Arizona might have bit off a little more than it could chew.
Here’s what’s Big in Japan, alright: Apple versus Samsung. According to a report from Reuters, Apple filed a suit last week with the Tokyo District Court seeking the suspension of sales of the Galaxy S and the Galaxy S II smartphones, as well as the Galaxy Tab 7 across the island. In addition to the ban, Apple is also seeking 100 million yen (.3 million) in damages.
Japan is just one of the many places that Apple and Samsung are dueling it out. Currently there are 19 lawsuits between Samsung and Apple, covering 12 courts in nine countries on four continents, including the U.S., Australia, Asia, and Europe.
Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung tells Apple to bring it on.
Samsung’s Galaxy S outsold the iPhone in Japan last year, and again during the first quarter of this year. No doubt this success has intensified Apple’s legal pressure there, as well as emboldened the Korean smartphone manufacturer. Samsung’s CEO, Choi Gee-sung, believes the legal battles with Apple are a key part to the epic “destiny” of Samsung.
“Samsung regards court battles with Apple as destiny,” Gee-sung told reporters last week. “We are clashing with Apple in certain areas. Current situations will make us stronger.” He also dismissed the possibility of any type of licensing deal with Apple, stating Samsung has no need to send such a “goodwill gesture” to Apple.
It doesn’t sound this this one is going to settle anytime soon…
Well, that didn’t take long. On September 1, Google sold nine patents to HTC. Not wasting any time, a week later HTC used four of those patents to sue Apple for infringement and five of the patents to file a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, according to a report from Bloomberg. The patents were originally acquired by Google less than a year ago from Motorola, Openwave Systems, and Palm.
Google has not commented publicly on the transfer, but the move is clearly intended to show support for HTC and other Android manufacturers in their legal disputes with Apple. Google has been attempting to stay on the sidelines as multiple international lawsuits escalate, and enjoys the perception that they are somehow morally above lawsuits and infringement claims. By arming its best customers with intellectual property weapons to use against Apple, Google is trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
Apple probably has an app for that. (Illustration: Bloomberg)
History suggests that equipping one side in a fight against another while attempting to claim neutrality just doesn’t work for long. Florian Mueller, a Munich-based consultant and intellectual property activist, commented that “Google knows that HTC is under tremendous legal pressure from Apple and clearly on the losing track” but that this latest play only “increases the likelihood of direct litigation by Apple against Google.”
HTC, still open to a sit-down with Cupertino, may be hoping this latest action strengthens their position enough to bring Apple to the bargaining table. It may end up, however, with Google into the courtroom.
In June, the Phoenix-based iCloud Communications was all “Hey! You! Get off my cloud!” to Apple, and filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Arizona. The suit sought an injunction against Apple’s use of the name iCloud, and, of course, an unspecified amount of monetary compensation. The company was fairly fired up, stating “Apple has a long and well-known history of knowingly and willfully treading on the trademark rights of others.”
As of last week, not so much. The company voluntarily dropped the lawsuit “with prejudice and without costs or attorneys’ fees to either party,” and then went and changed its own name.
Mom always said to pick your battles wisely.
If you are seeking the services of iCloud Communications in Arizona, you will now find them listed as Clear Digital Communications. Their website is under construction, and a call to the company by the Phoenix New Times was answered by an employee who admitted he didn’t know what the name of the company was anymore.
Adrian covers daily news as well as the weekly Law & Apple column for MacLife.com. You can follow him on Twitter, if you want to.
While Apple is certainly famous for their product lineup, another thing the tech giant has also become famous for is how far they go to keep their upcoming products secret. BusinessInsider recently spoke with an iPad app developer who shared some interesting insight into just what measures Apple reportedly takes to make sure nothing gets out.
In the interview, the app developer spoke about what he and his team had to go through to get an iPad before the product’s launch. Citing that it was now over a year, they felt they could talk about it.
The developer said that they were probably the sixth person to get an iPad, and had two of them flown out. Some of the criteria included needing to have a room with no windows, and that they changed the locks on the door.
Three developers and the developer mentioned were the only people that were allowed to go into the room. Apple required the names and social security numbers of all those who had access to the room.
Apple had to drill a hole in the desk and chain the devices to the desk, utilizing bicycle cables. At the desk, custom frames were built around them, so that the developers wouldn’t even be able to tell what the iPads even looked like. The group could plug into them so to be able to develop code and could touch the screen and play with it, but couldn’t see the form factor.
Apple had also taken pictures of the wood grain. That way if the worst should happen, and any pictures leaked out, the company could trace it back to which desk they came from.
The developer mentioned that he wasn’t even able to tell their CEO. He couldn’t tell his wife what they were doing either. “You’re going to get fired if this doesn’t work,” the developer recalled his wife mentioning.
He closes with, “I hadn’t thought about that, but she was probably right. Luckily, it worked out very well.”
Follow this article’s author, Matthew Tilmann on Twitter
(Image courtesy of 2ipad.org)
It must be fun to be a stock market analyst. You get to give advice to investors, based on methods that you don’t necessarily need to divulge. Because you speak with authority, people listen, and the fates of companies often rely on the results. It behooves the analyst, therefore, to be as specific as possible regarding what the market is doing, which means using language that leaves no room for doubt.
Instead, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry has noted to investors that this past weekend “was probably one of the slowest weekends for Mac sales,” and that sales were “probably down” between 35 percent and 40 percent. These are not the boldest statements an analyst can make. On top of that, Chowdhry’s words fly in direct opposition to those of UBS Investment Research’s Maynard Um, who found sales “encouraging”, particularly within the realm of back to school sales.
Before anyone begins waving flags of doom for poor, beleagured Apple, let’s keep in mind a few important things:
If you ever get worried about negative predictions toward Apple, just remind yourself of the good old Gil Amelio days. Slow sales or not, at lease we’re not in that place anymore.
Via AppleInsider
