In the Comment section of Thursday’s Financial Times, Richard Waters looks ahead to this weekend’s launch of the iPad:
“This launch is about much more than just another piece of personal technology hardware, no matter how desirable. For the iPad is an extension of the most significant new development in computing since the birth of the personal computer. If it takes off, it would seal Apple’s rebound to the very top of the heap in the computing world.”
Access to Google search results from within mainland China was blocked recently for many hours, then restored, even as the US company switched explanations for what was happening.
In the meantime, Yahoo email users in China specialising in politically sensitive material complained that their accounts had been compromised, while malicious software tried to install itself on computers in Vietnam used by critics of a Chinese mining investment in that country.
Helen Warrell talked with Joseph Menn in an FT podcast about all three developments and their possible connections.
Cisco Valet aims to clean up Wi-Fi mess
Setting up a Wi-Fi network in the home appears to be beyond many consumers, with retailers sometimes seeing returns of upwards of 20-25 per cent on wireless routers.
Enter the Cisco Valet – a simplified product that doesn’t even say it’s a router on the box – aimed at the two-thirds of US homes still without wireless.
Intel and AMD serve up multi-core contest
Servers, whether the tall wardrobe type or those pizza-box slices of hardware that slide into racks in data centre ovens, seem suddenly almost sexy.
We have had lavish beauty-contest launches from AMD and Intel on Monday and Tuesday of new high-performance server chips at San Francisco’s De Young Museum and the old Federal Reserve building respectively.
With less than 100 hours to launch, the rate of stories appearing per hour about the iPad is rising as fast as Apple’s share price – it hit a new all-time high on Tuesday.
Techblog has been tracking some of the main developments – from Greenpeace criticising the iPad’s carbon footprint to forecasts being raised to shipments of up to 10m units this year. Our roundup after the jump:
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