Ten years ago, Steve Jobs pulled a little white box out of his pocket and promised that it would revolutionize the music world. We were not so convinced back then that this little MP3 player would sell, but Apple managed to ship more than 320 million so far.

Back on October 23, 2001, we were expecting something huge from Apple when we watched Steve Jobs discuss the digital media world in Apple’s auditorium in Cupertino, which recently was also used to unveil the iPhone 4S. A 5 GB, HDD-based music player was hardly revolutionary and I was not the only one who felt that the device had no future with an MSRP of $399. Apple gave every person in the audience a beta-release iPod, with 25 free CDs to match most popular music tastes and transferred all songs via Firewire interface within a minute or so to the player.

Back at home – the iPod software was pretty buggy – the iPod failed to impress me, but I felt that Apple had invented something special. It was the first MP3 player I was willing to actually display in public and use with my regular stereo equipment in my living room. Ten years later, Apple has sold an estimated 320 million iPods with generated more than $60 billion in revenue. Since its original introduction in 2011, Apple launched 22 different models of iPods and the original version has survived in the form of the sixth- generation iPod Classic which is offered in a 160 GB version for $249. The current iPod line starts from $49 with the 2 GB Shuffle and ends with the 64 GB iPod touch for $399.

Current shipments are slowing down significantly as sales are shifting toward iPhones. Apple said that it sold 6.6 million iPods in Q3, down from 9.1 million one year ago. However, Apple claims that it still sells more than half of the world’s MP3 players and still has 70 percent market share in the U.S. While Apple does not break out iPod model shipments from the total number, the high-end iPod touch is now the key model that secures profit margins for the iPod line and is aligned with Apple’s iOS strategy. The company said in September that it has sold more than 250 million iOS devices (iPod touch, iPhone, iPad).

Over the years, the iPod has survived several high-profile lawsuits as well as Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player, which was announced in 2006. Back then, Microsoft said that it was in the MP3 player game for the “long haul” and predicted that it could beat the iPod sometime in the future. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it will stop selling Zune players.

Surely by now you have seen dozens and dozens of music creating apps for your iOS device, but how about an apparatus that literally transforms your iPad into a musical instrument? Thanks to this innovative Kickstarter project created by Starr Labs, you will be able to live out all of your rock star fantasies!

Dubbed the iTar, this device utilizes a case along with one of Starr Labs’ patented button-based guitar fretboards to transform any iPad into an even greater music making machine. With instruments built for countless famous musicians such as the Chemical Brothers, Pendulum, Linkin Park and even several TV/film studios, Starr Labs definitely knows their way around an electronic music instrument.

With 48 days left to go, Starr Labs has $7,000 worth of contributions towards their $50,000 goal. If you’re interested in getting your hands on one of the first iTars, all you have to do is head on over to the Kickstarter page and pledge a minimum of $200.

Google gave us a peek at the new Gmail UI way back in July, but we haven’t heard much about the planned update since. However, it appears an official launch is drawing closer, as Google last night accidentally hit post on a YouTube video giving a tour of Gmail’s new look. The video has since been pulled, but it is, of course, available elsewhere. Google hasn’t yet commented on the clip and the video itself doesn’t mention anything about a launch date, so we still don’t know when we can expect to see this change put in place permanently.

It seems the answer to the question “is our Samsung learning?” is yes. Having been smacked down in Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands, and likely anticipating future such humiliations, Samsung is looking to head off Apple at the pass with its latest smartphone, the Galaxy Nexus. The new phone, the first in the world to run Ice Cream Sandwich, was reportedly designed specifically to bypass Apple’s patents entirely. At least, Samsung Mobile president Shin Jong-kyun confirmed this while unveiling Nexus on Tuesday, adding “Now we will avoid everything we can and take patents very seriously.” I doubt he intended to indicate that Samsung has previously not taken patents seriously, but you never know.

Either way, it’s a sign that Samsung is getting a little tired of constantly having to go down to the Courthouse, something Shin appeared to acknowledge when he said “I don’t think there is much gain. What we are losing is the pride in our brand.” That kind of honesty is rare, especially for a company currently suffering from a global legal bludgeoning. Unfortunately for Shin, Won-Pyo Hong, executive Vice President of Product Strategy used his time on stage during AsiaD to clarify Samsung’s position. He says he has ‘no idea’ where the ‘rumors’ that Nexus was designed to evade Apple patents came from. When someone you presumably work with daily refers to an unambiguous statement you’ve made as a ‘rumor’, well, however you say ‘ouch’ in Korean.

Whatever the truth of the matter, proactively working to make a product free of the taint of the Macness doesn’t guarantee that Apple’s ravenous legal team won’t cast a leering eye in Nexus’ direction. Even Shin was careful to add that “We will see if [the Galaxy Nexus] will be 100 percent free…. I think it is just a start and [the lawsuits] will last for a considerable time”. Maybe so, but with their recent Microsoft deal behind them, wouldn’t it just be wonderful for the news-reading public if the fight continued? Of course, while partnering with the company whose founder may have just cured malaria is an important strategic move, it really lacks the PR cachet of a black turtleneck and brilliant song-selection in ad campaigns. So look for Apple to sue and win over Nexus sometime next summer.

SOURCE via Yonhap News

Thursday OCZ Technology announced the Indilinx Everest-based Octane SATA 3.0 and SATA 2.0 series of SSDs. The company is claiming “world’s first” by offering a 1 TB capacity SSD in a compact 2.5 inch format, and “record-breaking” access times of up to 560 MB/s of bandwidth and 45,000 IOPS.

“Until now SSDs have been tailored for specific applications, forcing users into a product which maximizes performance for a narrow band of applications, but is significantly lacking in others,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. “The Octane Series solves this problem by providing the highest level of performance across varied workloads including mixed file sizes and mixed compressible and uncompressible data, all while nearly doubling NAND flash endurance.”

According to the company, the Octane series features proprietary page mapping algorithms that allow for steady mixed-workload performance. There are also a number of details unique to Indilinx including latency reduction technology which allows read access times as low as 0.06ms and write access times down at 0.09ms, enabling “fast boot” in consumer applications.

On a more technical level, the Octane version, connecting via a SATA 3 interface (6 Gb/s), will have read speeds of up to 560 MB/s and write speeds up to 400 MB/s, and the SATA 2-based Octane-S2 (3 Gb/s) will have read speeds up to 275 MB/s and write speeds up to 265 MB/s. The Octane model will also deliver up to 45,000 random read 4K IOPS and the Octane-S2 up to 30,000 random read 4K IOPS.

As for other features, the Octane series will sport up to 512 MB of DRAM cache, a dual-core controller (CPU), dynamic and static wear-leveling, background garbage collection, TRIM support, SMART reporting and more. An advanced BCH ECC engine also enables more than 70 bits correction capability per 1KB of data, the company said.

“Octane SSDs also come equipped with Indilinx’s proprietary NDurance technology, increasing the lifespan of the NAND flash memory, ensuring the most consistent and reliable performance as well as minimizing performance degradation even after the drive’s storage capacity is highly utilized,” OCZ reports. “In addition, Octane series drives support AES and automatic encryption to secure critical data.”

The OCZ Octane SSD Series will be available on November 1, 2011 in 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB capacities. Pricing is currently unavailable.

Microsoft and private equity firm Silver lake Partners have apparently been drafting plans to submit a bid to acquire Yahoo. However, there are also talks of a cross talk ban, which would require parties interested in buying Yahoo not to talk anyone else and submit joint-bids after they gain access to sensitive financial data at Yahoo.

The move seems to be designed to increase competition among bidders and drive the price for Yahoo up. However, it could also alienate potential buyers and at a market cap of $20.4 billion, Yahoo is a big piece to swallow. Microsoft remains as the only likely buyer that could swallow a company the size of Yahoo. Microsoft offered close to $45 billion for Yahoo, but could get away with far less this time, especially if there aren’t many bidders left.

So far, the acquisition talks are based on rumors and speculation. Yahoo has not publicly confirmed that it is available to be acquired. According to Comscore, Yahoo has about 17.2 percent search market share in the U.S. Google is ahead with 65.4 percent, Microsoft is behind with 13.4 percent.

SOURCE via Wall Street Journal

All things D has brought a lot of mobile news, the biggest being the arrival of the newest Nexus handset along with Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich. Today in Hong Kong, Nvidia did a little revealing of its own, as the company’s CEO revealed a few details of its Tegra roadmap.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang today sat down for an interview with Walt Mossberg and during his talk confirmed that the next generation range of Tegra chips is already being produced internally. Aside from Kal-El, which we’ve already heard plenty about, the company is working on several new chips with the superhero inspired codenames of Wayne, Logan and Stark. With Stark we should see the first taste of Nvidia’s exciting Project Denver.

While Jen-Hsun did confirm that Nvidia is currently producing all three, don’t get too excited. These chips are still a long way off. Huang said that it’s necessary to work on three at once because they take years to develop and they want to have a new one Tegra each year.

So when will we see the next Tegra? Well, as we’ve heard numerous times before, Kal-El is the next Tegra chip (or Tegra 3), and will be a quad-core affair. Asus this week showed off a quad-core tablet dubbed the Eee Pad Transformer Prime that is supposedly coming out in November. Engadget reports that when asked if it will be Tegra-powered, Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun responded ‘probably.’ Exciting stuff, eh?

SOURCE via Engadget