Apple

Apple has joined Google in publicly opposing a California ballot initiative that would deny marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The company announced Friday that it would donate $100,000 to the No on Prop 8 campaign, which opposes a measure to ban gay marriage that California voters will consider a week from Tuesday. Google has also spoken out against the ballot measure.

"Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees' same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person's fundamental rights--including the right to marry--should not be affected by their … Read more

Apple's Mac Mini might be getting a reprieve after all.

A few days after Gizmodo reported that European retailers believed the Mac Mini was heading for the exits, AppleInsider says the smallest and cheapest Mac hasn't left the building. Apparently a number of casinos in Las Vegas use Mac Minis to help run the ever-present security cameras in that city, and those customers believe that an update is around the corner.

One Las Vegas-based source who runs a collocation service based on the Mac Mini told AppleInsider that there are about 10,000 Mac Minis in use in … Read more

The fake story submitted to CNN's iReport site that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack was the work of an 18-year-old, according to a report.

Bloomberg is reporting that investigators have determined that the teenager planted the story on CNN's user-generated news site. But they have found no evidence that the suspect attempted to profit from the sharp drop in Apple's stock that occurred after Silicon Alley Insider picked up the CNN posting and published it before verifying whether it was true. The suspect was not named, but the Securities and Exchange Commission has … Read more

Updated 4:30pm with additional background on the ongoing saga of Apple and Intel.

Intel issued a "correction" Thursday regarding comments one of its executives made earlier this week slamming the iPhone as incapable of working correctly with the Internet.

It's hard to see this as anything other than an formal apology to Apple and ARM for comments made by Intel's Shane Wall and Pankaj Kedia at the company's Intel Developer Forum in Taipei, as reported by our sister site ZDNet Australia. Among other things, the executives resurrected Intel's lame "ARM chips can't handle the Internet" … Read more

Members of Congress are apparently agitating for iPhones.

TheHill.com is reporting that the U.S. House of Representatives is testing a deployment of iPhones after receiving requests for the devices, according to the Chief Administrative Office.

Congress is a huge BlackBerry shop, but apparently, legislators and staff members are lobbying for the iPhone as another choice in wireless communications.

The catch is, according to TheHill, they'd have to pay for their iPhones out of their Members' Representational Allowance, the fund that each congressperson is given to hire staff members and offset the expenses of running an office. And … Read more

Apple CEO Steve Jobs danced around the idea of Apple releasing a so-called Netbook on Tuesday, but such a device might already be in the wild.

The New York Times' John Markoff reported Tuesday that anonymous sources at an anonymous Internet search company (wonder which one that is) have spotted the tracks of an Apple device with a screen larger than an iPhone, but smaller than a MacBook, in their visitor logs.

That is by no means proof that Apple plans to release a small MacBook in the Netbook vein, but could be evidence that Apple's plans for this … Read more

Apple has hired the dean of Yale's School of Management to head up a new program called Apple University.

It's not clear exactly what Joel Podolny will be working on at Apple, but a note from Yale President Richard Levin to students announcing Podolny's departure said he would be leading "educational initiatives at Apple." He'll join the company in early 2009, but Apple representatives are not commenting on what he'll have on his plate, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Apple University could encompass several things: increased marketing and distribution to college students … Read more

The objective of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android operating system may be similar--providing a rich mobile Internet experience--but the philosophy behind the two are just about as far apart as you can get in the technology realm.

That divide was illustrated Tuesday not just by Google's release of the open-source Android software but perhaps even more starkly by its gleeful horn-tooting that even before the day ended, five Android patches from outside programmers had been accepted.

"It's a small start, but knowing that we accepted our first patch from a contributor external to the Open … Read more

Intel's romance with Apple appears to have gone sour.

Company executives have decided to start including the iPhone as one of their prime examples of smartphones that don't run "the full Internet" because they don't use an Intel chip, according to a report out of the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei from our friends down under at ZDNet Australia. This specious argument--that ARM-based chips aren't man enough to run the Internet--is nothing new from Intel, but the decision to highlight the iPhone as part of that argument is.

Intel has been trying … Read more