TUAW reports that Apple’s web browser Safari has seen positive growth among users for seventeen months in a row, but this past July was the best of them all. Safari’s usage share jumped .6 percent last month, bringing its total market ownership to 8 percent of all web users. That usage spike was bigger than Google’s Chrome browser, which gained .3 percent to control 13 percent of the market.
Apples iPad and iPhone sales are certainly helping, as iOS devices made up over a third of all users last month.
Both Safari and Chrome are taking the lunch money from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, and Opera Software’s Opera browsers. Internet Explorer is still the big dog in the pack, holding onto 52 percent of the market; that hold, however, is slipping every month, having been as high as 60 percent last September. Firefox fell to 21 percent, and Opera, barely breathing, has dropped to 1.6 percent.
The data for the report came from Net Applications who tracks browser usage on a monthly basis.
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Should Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials give their approval on Wednesday, visitors to Grand Central Terminal will soon have a chance to pick up an iPad before catching the train. A couple of renderings of the new store were released today.
The proposed store for the train station would be located near the terminal’s east stair case. If officials give the go ahead, Apple plans to start construction immediately. The expected time frame for completion would take about four months.
Interestingly, not only is Apple paying Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur restaurant million to vacate its space on the terminal’s east balcony more than eight years in advance before their lease expires, but the MTA will also see much higher rent revenue. The MTA used to receive 3,997 from Metrazur, and will now net .1 million from Apple instead.
“It maintains Grand Central as the iconic structure and place that it is,” said Metro-North President Howard Permut at a meeting of the MTA board’s railroad committee. That committee covers Metro-North, which runs the terminal.
(Images courtesy of Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal)
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Patents are important for technology companies because they help protect their rights to promote and defend their brands. In an industry in which cheaper knockoffs are always just around the corner, a patent can make a huge difference in any legal battle. Apple knows this, which is why they constantly patent their ideas, even if they never actually come to market with said concepts. However, when a patent is won for something particularly market-transformative, the benefits are immediately obvious.
To wit: Apple has recently won several patents for technologies that many companies have used in various products, most notably for touchscreen devices like the iPhone. Obviously, this is a huge win for Apple, and will make any future lawsuits concerning such properties easily won, if not outright dismissed.
Other notable patents are for their Front Row software interface, the iMac’s edge-to-edge glass screen, and a MicroDVI connector.
Via PatentlyApple
(Image courtesy of MacRumors)
Most schools have been out of session for only days, and it looks like Apple is ready to get its annual sunny summer campaign underway. However, instead of the usual free iPod with your Mac purchase, it looks like Apple may be taking a different approach this year.
The above photo had been sent to MacRumors via a tipster, which indicates that the offer will instead this year be for a 0 gift card that can be used in the Mac App Store, iTunes Store, App Store or iBookstore, and it should kick off tomorrow. Within the fine print, it shows June 16 as the launch date, and the promotion will go up until September 20, 2011.
While some may scoff at the notion of no longer getting a free iPod, it is definitely a sign of the times of Apple’s continued push of the Mac App Store, which will be the distribution point of the upcoming Mac OS X Lion and Final Cut Pro X.
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Apple is a larger company now than it’s ever been, both in the public consciousness and in sheer number of employees. They are, in fact, so large that they are building a brand-new structure to accommodate the growth spurt. The building, announced on June 7 at a Cupertino City Council meeting, will hold 12,000 employees and host its own power supply. It will look like Xena’s chakram, and Jobs joked that it looks “a bit like a spaceship landed.”
However, the further announcement that the building will have its own 4,000 capacity auditorium have some wondering whether this means that all future conferences will be held there, rather than in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, which has hosted Mac events since 1985. If so, the city could lose as much as ,284,000 annually from antendee-related spending.
Obviously, it’s foolish to second-guess Apple, but there are a couple of factors worth consideration. First, the new facility won’t break ground until 2015. Second, there were over 5,200 attendees at this year’s WWDC, which is well over the expected capacity of the mothership’s auditorium. This argues in favor of WWDC continuing at Moscone, even if specific press events will not. And third, it would seem arrogant to expect a horde of journalists to make the extra 46-mile hike to Cupertino from their hotels in San Francisco. If Moscone does lose the Mac conferences and events, expect a lot of grumbling from the media.
We’ve got some time before it all shakes out, but what do you think the chances are that Apple is planning on saying goodbye to San Francisco?
Via SFWeekly
