iPhone app developer quits over approval process

Paul Kafasis

(Credit: O'Reilly)

Apple's App Store boasts more than 100,000 apps and more than 2 billion downloads, but not all of its developers are as happy as some would think. One well-respected dev cheap puma shoes eloper decided to call it quits.

Citing his frustration with the App Store approval process, Rogue Amoeba's Paul Kafasis said on his company's blog last week that he is throwing in the towel on iPhone app devel suede puma sneakers opment after an exasperating three-and-a-half month app approval.

(Credit: Rogue Amoeba)

"Rogue Amoeba no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applicati cheap juicy couture necklaces ons will likely be rare," said Kafasis. "The iPhone platform had great promise, but that promise is not enough, so we're focusing on the Mac."

Kafasis' growin Jordan retro 19 g irritation with the App Store centers around an update he wanted to release for his Airfoil Speakers Touch iPhone app. The app allows users to receive audio from any Mac or Windows-based PC and the  Jordan retro 4 update fixed some issues with audio sync.

However, Apple rejected the update because it used images of Apple products in the app. The way Airfoil Speakers Touch works is that it shows you graphi adidas samoa cally what machine and application your audio is coming from on the host computer. If you are connected to an iMac running Safari, that's what will show up in the iPhone app.

This isn't s juicy couture totes omething that Kafasis hacked together--this functionality is freely available as part of Mac OS X for developers to use. In fact, Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0 was still in the App Sto jordan cp re, approved by Apple, with these images.

"The only thing Apple's process was doing was preventing a needed bug-fix from reaching the hands of our mutual customers," said Kafasis.

(Credit: Rogue Amoeba)

In o Jordan retro 8 rder to get the fixes to customers, Kafasis took out all of the offending images and replaced them with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) logo. If you tap on the logo, you will be taken to a page  nike air max tailwind explaining why the images have been removed.

Kafasis is asking users to consider donating to the EFF. While the organization isn't involved with his decision to place  air max 87 its logo in his app, "if Apple is to change, it may take such an organization to make it happen," he said.

As a developer, Kafasis also wants users to know the frustrations they have to g Jordan retro 9 o through to put out software. "We wanted to ship a simple bug fix, and it took almost four months of slow replies, delays, and dithering by Apple," said Kafasis. "All the while, our buggy, and supposedl puma mostro shoes y infringing version, was still available. There's no other word for that but 'broken.'"

This isn't the end of the road for Kafasis. A Mac developer for 11 years, he will re-focus his  puma speed cat  efforts back to his many popular Mac applications and continue developing for that platform.

Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in vario 

 us positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CN 

 ET. He currently runs The Loop. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple. Topics: iPhone Tags: iPhone, App Store, approval process Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Facebook Twitter

Intel to preview new chips on December 17

On December 17, Intel will preview new processors for laptops, among other chip technologies.

The preview is significant because it will be Intel's first chance to show off its ready-to-ship, commercially viable next-generation 32-nanometer technology. juicy couture watches  Almost all Intel processors are currently built on a 45-nanometer process. Generally, the smaller the geometry, the faster and more power efficient the processor is.

I Jordan 19 shoes ntel's Core i series of processors will be the focus of the San Francisco event that will serve as a venue to preview and demonstrate products to be rolled out at the Consumer Electronics Show in Janu Jordan retro 13 ary. The "Nehalem" microarchitecture that powers the Core i chips was introduced in November of last year and is considered a major step up in performance over previous architectures. To date, Intel h puma sneakers as shipped the high-end Core i7 for gaming machines and mid-range Core i5 processors.

Intel is expected to preview the first Core i3 processors--some, including the 2.93GHz i3 530, have appeared on retail sites alr Jordan retro 12 eady--as well as updates to the Core i5 series.

One of the most anticipated processor technologies is "Arrandale." This will be the first mainstream Intel laptop processor to put two processor Jordan retro 6  cores and a graphics function together in one chip package, resulting in better overall power efficiency. And the new built-in graphics technology is expected to offer materially better graphics perform Jordan 5 shoes ance than current Intel graphics.

Arrandale will eventually come under the Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 brands, though initial versions are expected to appear as the Core i3 and i5.

Inte Jordan 21 shoes l is also expected to make a push to get its Turbo Boost technology into more Core i5 and i7 processors--including Arrandale i5 models. Turbo Boost speeds up and slows down individual cores to meet pr puma first round ocessing and power-efficiency needs, respectively.

Separately, Intel is also getting ready to roll out new Atom chip technology for Netbooks, commonly referred to as "Pine Trail." That i puma ferrari shoes s also happening later this month.

Brooke Crothers has been an editor at large at CNET News, an analyst at IDC Japan, and an editor at The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, among other  

 endeavors, including co-manager of an after-school math-and-reading center. He writes for the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. Disclosure. Topics: Laptops, Processors, Intel Tags: Intel, Core i3, Pine Trail, integrated graphics Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Facebook Twitter

Intel to pay AMD $1

Burying a very large hatchet in the computing industry, Intel has agreed to pay Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion as part of a settlement of a long-running antitrust case.

The pact, announced Thursday, resolves the private antitrust l cheap nike air max 90 awsuit AMD filed in 2004 and extends the companies' patent cross-licensing agreement. The new patent arrangement removes hindrances to AMD's effort to spin off its chip manufacturing b nike air max skyline usiness and to have other manufacturers build its processors.

In addition, Intel has agreed to "abide by a set of business practice provisions." Check below for a full laser max 90  list.

In turn, AMD says it will drop all pending litigation, including the case in U.S. District Court in Delaware and two cases pending in Japan, and will also withdraw all of its reg mens huarache ulatory complaints worldwide.

AMD investors were delighted, sending the company's stock up 21 percent to $6.46 in morning trading. Intel's stayed flat at $19.84.

"While t huarache sneakers he relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product inno nike air max ltd vation and development," the chipmakers said in a joint statement.

Government cases unaffected
Well, it probably won't end everything exactly. The settlement between the compan huarache shoes ies doesn't stop antitrust cases brought by governments.

After AMD filed its case in 2004, European regulators brought a separate case that led to a $1.5 billion fine, which Int nike air max 90 premium el is now appealing. And last week, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed another antitrust suit against Intel.

"Those cases filed by those government regulators will  nike air max 90 leather men's continue," Intel spokesman Tom Beerman said. "We will continue at the same time to work with the regulatory bodies to work on those issues."

Added AMD's Drew Prairie, " women's nike air max 90 We've notified the regulatory authorities of the settlement. They didn't have ongoing investigations because of us...That's a snowball rolling downhill."

Intel still must rec nike air max kon with an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission, too. "Certainly we plan to review the settlement between Intel and AMD in their private litigation. The FTC has an ongoing independent investigation of Intel custom air maxes 's practices so we cannot comment further at this time," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement Thursday.

The European Commission didn't comment on whether Thursday's settlement would affect discuss nike air max 180 ions about Intel's fine, but did say the agreement doesn't affect its regulatory scrutiny of the chipmaker.

"Intel has an ongoing obligation to comply with the Commission's May 2009 nike air max shoes  decision and with EU antitrust law," said spokesman Jonathan Todd. "The Commission continues to vigorously monitor Intel's compliance with its obligations under the May 2009 decision."

The cross-license a air maxes 95 greement has been updated to reflect AMD's move to spin off its processor manufacturing business into a separate company, Globalfoundries, which currently is an AMD subsidiary. Under the updated nike air max trailbreak  agreement, AMD will be able to operate as a "fabless" processor company--one that relies on others to build its chips. In addition, Globalfoundries "is free to operate indep air classic endently and go after third-party business without issues," Prairie said.

Another change: in the earlier patent cross-license agreement, AMD had to pay Intel royalties. Now neither company makes payments, Prairi nike air max tailwind e said.

Intel: Settlement was 'practical'
Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini didn't show much in the way of contrition in a conference call.

"We have competed air max90  fairly and legally," Otellini said, including the price discounts it offered computer makers as incentives to use Intel chips. In the United States, 98 percent of private antitrust cases are sett cheap air max shoes led, he added. "It pains me to write a check at any time, but in this case it made a practical settlement. It was a good compromise between the two companies. In many ways it was a small multiple of the damage t air solas hat could be awarded in a jury trial."

And Andy D. Bryant, Intel's chief administrative officer, said the restraints Intel agreed to don't really change Intel's behavior in practice, bec nike air max wright ause it wasn't doing those things in the first place.

"AMD believes we have done business in some fashion they believe is inappropriate," such as punishing computer makers that don't buy a certain amount  air 97 of chips from Intel. "We have said we don't do the acts they say we're doing...There are no changes to pricing practices as a result of this contract."

He did add that Intel changed some pric airmax95 ing practices as a result of the European Commission case.

Intel also said that as a result of the settlement, its fourth-quarter spending will increase from its earlier projection of $2.9 b nike air max tn shoes illion to about $4.2 billion; Intel is paying cash within 30 days. However, Intel's effective tax rate should decline from 26 percent to 20 percent for the quarter, Intel said.

 airmax90 A new relationship
The companies didn't agree to become best friends, but AMD and Intel are turning over a new leaf, moving toward "fierce but fair" competition, Tom McCoy, AMD's executive vice air 95  president of legal, corporate and public affairs, said in a conference call.

"With this agreement, we are trying to reset our relationship between AMD and Intel," McCoy said. That relationshi air 90 p has been "intense, emotional, and acrimonious for all too many years...We wanted to put this behind us. We didn't want pressures to build up. We wanted a healthy, normal relationship. Therefore we  nike air max 90 vivid blue will see in the agreement, a thought-out procedure [through which] we will build trust and try to resolve our differences before spilling into the courts or into [the] public affa nike air max women irs domain."

Intel's Bryant said the agreement includes mechanisms for mediation and arbitration that provide "a very thorough ability to...resolve differences."

Th women's nike air max 97 e constraints on Intel's practices caught the attention of Richard Brosnick, an attorney at Butzel Long who focuses on antitrust law.

"In settling a suit that arose fr air max tn 360 om claims that steep discounts were anticompetitive, Intel has now agreed with its rival to a set of 'business practice provisions' that will presumably limit Intel's ability to compete with  air max87 AMD on price," Brosnick said. "Of course any analysis would depend on the details of the deal, but as a general antitrust matter, I'd call that ironic to say the least."

Intel's restraints< blue huarache br> According to AMD, Intel will refrain from these practices:

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to buy all of their microprocessor ne 

 eds from Intel, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to limit or delay their purchase  nike air max 87 of microprocessors from AMD, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to limit their engage nike air max 88 ment with AMD or their promotion or distribution of products containing AMD microprocessors, whether on a geographic, channel, market segment, or any other basis

• Offering indu nike air max tn 360 cements to customers in exchange for their agreement to abstain from or delay their participation in AMD product launches, announcements, advertising, or other promotional activities

• Offering inducements to customers or others to delay or forebear in the development or release of computer systems or platforms containing AMD microprocessors, whether on  air max plus a geographic, market segment, or any other basis

• Offering inducements to retailers or distributors to limit or delay their purchase or distribution of computer systems or platform nike air max tn 10 s containing AMD microprocessors, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis

• Withholding any benefit or threatening retaliation against anyone for their ref nike air max tn 10th anniversary edition usal to enter into a prohibited arrangement such as the ones listed above.

Those constraints will benefit the chipmakers' customers, computer makers such as  nike tn requin IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, McCoy said.

"When we aggregate all these things together, we believe we have delivered to [the] marketplace and to mutual customers something they've wa nike tn 360 nted, which is more freedom of action to choose," McCoy said.

Updated at 7:00 a.m., 7:30 a.m., 7:56 a.m., 9 a.m., and 10:50 a.m PST with further details and comments.

Stephen Shankla 

 nd writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo 

 , servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank, or contact him through Google Bu 

 zz. Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and a 

 n AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon. Topics: Corporate and legal Tags: Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, AMD, antitrust Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Facebook Twitter

Intel sees opportunities in wind, electric cars

SAN FRANCISCO--Technology giant Intel is seeing big opportunities in wind forecasting for power ge adidas scott neration, and in information management for electric vehicles, John Skinner, Intel's director of marketing for its Eco-Technology division, said Tuesday.

Intel already sells micr jeremy scott wing oprocessors to wind turbine manufacturers and this would be an expansion of that business.

Adoption of wide-scale wind power would rely on accurate forecasting, adidas rod laver  such as when the wind would blow and how fast, he said.

"There's a lot of opportunities for sensor technology and high-performance computing," he said in an interview on the si adidas nizza delines of an industry conference. "We are starting to explore it."

Intel has said it wants to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional markets and has invested  adidas country in a number of green technology companies through its venture capital arm, Intel Capital.

Wind and solar power have gained in popularity but mass adoption has been hindered by the fa adidas zx 9000 ct that neither power works around the clock. Solar panels don't work at night and wind turbines only spin when the wind blows.

"We see numerical forecasting [in wind] as very inter adidas forum esting opportunity," he said, adding that "every extra bit of granularity and predictability" on wind power is very valuable.

Another sector that Intel is eyeing is electric vehicles. < adidas tmac /p>

Skinner said that transportation industry is "very ripe" for the application of microprocessors.

"Electric vehicles are going to contain a lot of electronics," he said, adding that  adidas obyo Intel could see itself being involved certain aspects of the electric car such as energy management and range prediction.

"It would be an extension of our business in telematics," he said adidas shooting star .

Story Copyright (c) 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Additional stories from Reuters Pressure mounts on BP as Obama eyes "next steps" EPA issues rules on biggest carbon polluters Transocean aims to cap rig-related damages On doomed rig, lapses sparked catastrophe Topics: Wind, Transportation Tags: Intel, wind power, electric cars Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Facebook Twitter

Intel hopes 48-core chip will solve new challenges

Intel's 48-core Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) processor

(Credit: Intel)

SAN FRANCISCO--Pushing several steps farther in the multicore direction, Intel on Wednesday demonstrated a fully programmabl nike max shoes e 48-core processor it thinks will pave the way for massive data computers powerful enough to do more of what humans can.

The 1.3-billion transistor processor, called Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) is succe air maxs 90 ssor generation to the 80-core "Polaris" processor that Intel's Tera-scale research project produced in 2007. Unlike that precursor, though, the second-generation model is able to run the standa airmax rd software of Intel's x86 chips such as its Pentium and Core models.

The cores themselves aren't terribly powerful--more like lower-end Atom processors than Intel's flagship Nehalem models, Intel Chief Technology Of max 90 ficer Justin Rattner said at a press event here. But collectively they pack a lot of power, he said, and Intel has ambitious goals in mind for the overall project.

"The machine will be capabl air 180 retro e of understanding the world around them much as humans do," Rattner said. "They will see and hear and probably speak and do a number of other things that resemble human-like capabilities, and air max360  will demand as a result very (powerful) computing capability."

Intel is working with companies facing large-scale computing challenges that today require thousands of networked servers. airmax360  That's very much a here-and-now problem compared to the more sci-fi challenges of computer vision.

Intel's idea with the SCC and its ilk, Rattner said: "Could you replace a rack full of e max360 quipment today with one or a number of high-core count processors like the SCC?"

Intel CTO Justin Rattner holds a wafer made of Intel's 48-core experimental SCC chips.

(Credit: Screen 

 shot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The chipmaker found only one flaw with the chip so far and has booted Windows and Linux on SCC systems. The company demonstrated computers using the processor runni nike air max skyline eu ng Microsoft's Visual Studio on Windows and other tasks at the event.

No silver bullet for parallel programming
The Tera-scale project doesn't fundamentally address o air max skyline women ne of the big challenges in today's computing industry, though: getting multicore chips to run today's computing jobs that are often designed to run as a single thread of instru air max skyline si ctions rather than independent tasks running in parallel. In days of yore, processor clock frequencies got steadily faster, letting single threads execute faster, but overheating issu air max skyline eu es led chip designers instead down the multicore path for trying to increase computing power.

"This isn't a full solution," Rattner said of the programming challenge. He said  nike air max bw that from a programmer's perspective, the SCC is similar in many ways to a server with 48 cores.

While the chip may not have any silver bullets for the parallel programming c nike air trainer max hallenge, it does have the advantage of some compatibility with existing computer designs. It can run ordinary software for Intel chips, unlike the increasingly capable graphics chips touted by Intel rivals Nvi retro nike air max dia and Advanced Micro Devices.

"Our thrust is to maintain the compatibility and familiarity of the Intel architecture as we move to more and more performance," Rattner said. "That's why we could bring up nike air max sneakers  Windows and Linux environments with relatively little effort."

The system is different in some ways, though, notably in its lack of cache coherency--technology that keeps data stored in each core's hi nike air max tailwind 2008 gh-speed memory bank synchronized with the others on the chip. By contrast, Intel's Larrabee processor, a many-core x86 chip under development for graphics acceleration, is a nike air tailwind  cache-coherent design that has a large amount of real estate devoted to caching data.

100 chips for research partners
Intel hopes to encourage academics and others to tac nike air max tailwind 2010 kle programming challenges on the chip. To that end, Intel plans to share 100 SCC-based systems with various partners in industry and academia.

Microsoft is one such  nike air max tailwind 4 partner. "We're very excited about this as a research vehicle," said Jim Larus, director of cloud-computing futures at Microsoft Research.

One major feature of the SCC d nike air max tailwind 2 esign is a high-speed "mesh" network that lets each of the 48 cores communicate with others or with the four linked memory controllers. The first-generation Tera-scale chip had  nike air max dream+ such a network, but the second-generation mesh consumes only a third of the power and is accelerated with built-in hardware instructions for minimum communication delays, Rattner said.

That fast communic air max tailwind 4 ation was designed in part as a response to what Intel industry partners desired, Rattner said. "They were looking for extremely low latency--not just core to core at the chip level, nike air max tailwind 2009 women's  but interchip as well," he said.

Intel's 48-core processor debut (photos)

Each link on the chip can carry 64 gigabytes of data per second.

Better  nike women's air max tailwind power management is one element of the new design. The chip cores can be switched on or off as the chip is running.

"It's extremely clever, because it means the  air max tailwind running shoes processor could be run in an adaptive mode. Processors could be turned on and off depending on the applications," said Jon Peddie, an analyst with Jon Peddie Research. nike air max tailwind shoes p>

Overall, the chip consumes between 25 and 125 watts, Rattner said. It's built using a manufacturing process with 45-nanometer electronics features.

It consists air max 90 black white  of 24 dual-core modules linked together. A computer based on the chip can accommodate a maximum of 64GB of memory.

The SCC is the second but not last generation of Intel's Te air max bw femme ra-scale project. In the long run, Intel is telling programmers to brace themselves for computers with thousands of processing cores.

Updated at 12:20 p.m. PST

Stephen  

 Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since th 

 en also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com 

 /stshank, or contact him through Google Buzz. Topics: Emerging tech, Computer tech Tags: Intel, processor, SCC, multicore, programming, research, chip Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Facebook Twitter