Apple

A year after iTunes began offering music without copy protection software from EMI, Apple is in discussions with the other three top recording companies about acquiring DRM-free songs, according to two music industry sources.

The talks are still preliminary and no deals have been finalized, but one source said one of the major labels is close to a final agreement. Rumors have been swirling on the Internet for a week that Sony would soon be offering music without the controversial digital rights management software. My sources could not confirm this.

Spokespeople for Apple and the major labels declined to comment. … Read more

The largest retailer in the world could be getting the iPhone.

Wal-Mart won't have the iPhone at every location come the end of December, if a report from the Boy Genius Report is accurate. But Apple will have iPhones in 2,500 stores in the U.S. and an additional 69 Sam's Club warehouse stores on December 28, according to the report.

It's not clear what price will be charged for the iPhone inside Wal-Mart, but it would be hard to imagine Apple embracing the idea of significant discounts even though CEO Steve Jobs has talked of … Read more

Apple's iPhone jumped to the top spot on the AdMob Network for the month of October, with 4.1 percent of the mobile ads requested from the network, according to the AdMob Mobile Metrics Report released Wednesday.

Requests from advertisers for mobile ads targeted to iPhone users rose to 236 million in October, more than doubling from the 103 million requests recorded in the previous month. Worldwide, AdMob's mobile-ad requests for all device makers grew 13.8 percent in October, to 5.8 billion.

AdMob delivers banner and text ads to mobile devices, and these figures were analyzed … Read more

Apple's OS X Snow Leopard may be on tap for the start of the new year, slightly earlier than expected.

The update appears to be slated for debut in the first quarter of 2009, according to a slide presented by Jordan Hubbard, Apple's director of engineering for Unix technologies, at a conference last week.

Snow Leopard, or version 10.6 of the operating system, is expected to be optimized for multicore processors, include QuickTime X, and offer built-in support for Microsoft's Exchange 2007 software.

Apple previewed Snow Leopard in June. At that time, Apple said that Snow … Read more

A federal judge has tossed out Psystar's antitrust lawsuit against Apple, one of its most important avenues to remaining in business.

Judge William Alsup of the U.S. Federal Court for the Northern District of California rejected Psystar's argument that Apple uses anticompetitive practices to prevent companies from selling computers that run Mac OS X, according to court documents spotted by AppleInsider. Psystar can amend its complaint in order to try to convince the judge that it has a better argument, but it has only 20 days to decide whether or not it can overcome the judge's … Read more

Apple may have a real fight on its hands if it believes Mark Papermaster is the right man to nurture the iPhone.

In an age where employees move between companies as often as relief pitchers change teams, noncompete agreements seem an outdated concept. But lawyers say the noncompete agreement that Papermaster signed with IBM is serious business that demonstrates how companies are increasingly looking to enforce restrictions on their most important employees, and that could force Apple and IBM to share valuable information to make their argument stick.

IBM is suing Papermaster for violating the terms of a noncompete agreement, … Read more

Apple has released a firmware update for new MacBook and MacBook Pro owners bedeviled by their glass trackpads.

The update is designed to fix an issue with the new trackpads unveiled by Apple in October, which replace the traditional trackpad/mouse button combination with a trackpad that also serves as the button. The first few owners of those systems, however, reported a persistent problem in which clicks on the trackpad would not register.

Let us know if the firmware solves your problems or if you have any problems installing the update, which should be appearing in Software Update for owners … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Inspired by a new generation of smartphones, Adobe Systems has begun a new, higher-power effort to spread its Flash technology to mobile devices.

The company has worked for years on a lightweight incarnation of its Flash technology for mobile phones, but it now is working to bring the full-fledged Flash Player 10 to higher-end smartphones, Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch said at Adobe's Max conference here.

"We are in the midst of evolving Flash Player 10 for mobile," Lynch said. "We're taking the full Flash Player and making that run on the higher end … Read more

Even Apple may not be immune if consumers continue to sit on their wallets this holiday season.

Piper Jaffray, usually able to find the bright side of any Apple news, predicted Monday that iPhone and iPod sales are set to decline in the coming weeks amid what is expected to be the worst holiday season for the PC and consumer electronics industries in quite some time. Mac sales seem healthier thanks to Apple's latest crop of notebooks, but aren't growing as fast as they were last year.

Piper based its outlook on surveys it performed inside Apple retail … Read more