There have been reports that Apple is in negotiation with their old enemy Microsoft and the issue on the agenda would appear to be the new enemy for Apple, non other than the dynamic Google. More specifically it is Google’s bread and butter, their search engine but really the issue is far wider than that.

Apple is apparently considering replacing Google as the default embedded search engine on the iPhone and slotting in Microsoft’s Bing.com instead. Of course details from either Apple or Microsoft are scarce as to the validity of these reports or more importantly why Apple may be making the jump. Which as with most things Apple leave us with only speculation which naturally we are happy to provide.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, let’s first consider the potential implications of such a move. Obviously if Apple is dropping Google on the iPhone it would surely follow then that other Apple products would follow suit. Currently Google is sitting pretty in Apple’s Safari browser for their desktop Mac’s as well so it really would be a blow for Google if they lost that business. Okay all Safari users for both desktop and mobile combined is a drop in the ocean for Google’s numbers but it would still be significant if they lost it.

It may seem a strange move for Apple, a company hell bent on making products ‘that just work’ to drop the world’s best search engine for a product from Microsoft, and let’s face it Apple and Microsoft have never really played very nicely together. In reality however discussions in the Mac Action office have for many months now predicted that 2010 would be the year of Apple and Google falling out, in fact I myself think they’ll basically go to war.

Google and Apple have been on a collision course for some time now with both of their broadening product ranges starting to encroach on each others territories. Microsoft of course will be all to happy to see these two IT giants go at it, they don’t even have to pick sides really.

So what exactly are Google doing to annoy Apple, well several things actually. One of the prime examples is Google’s drive into the mobile phone market with their Android phone and operating system. The mobile phone market for Apple is critically important, they are after all currently the most profitable mobile phone producer in the world. The two companies have for several months now also been competing on a corporate level with both acquiring other companies, the twist in the tail of that is that they have both been bidding for the same companies. Apple’s recent acquisition of a mobile ad company Lala Media which Google also reportedly had their eye on being a prime example. What happened in short was that Apple had been interested in a similar company called AdMob and were indeed in talks with them when Google swooped in and bought them. Apple then had to aggressively pursue Lala Media and Goole followed suit.

Really these are only a few examples of how Google and Apple are gradually coming into direct competition, and I for one am worried. Don’t get me wrong I am a fan of both Apple and Google but I find Google’s increased interest in behaving like a big corporation concerning. Sure they now have shareholders and need to make money but their level of integration into the digital world and by extension their level of integration into your digital life. And it is a fine line line between integration and control, and if we’re honest big corporations can never really resist control for lon

The Google Chrome internet browser has been released in beta format for Mac, finally. The browser has been very much anticipated in the Mac Action office, or at least I’ve been desperately waiting for it.

Don’t get me wrong, Safari is a brilliant browser offering blistering speed but in my experience at least is not the most stable browser out there. Safari’s instability by no means renders Safari unusable but when your browser goes down with hordes of pages open it can get annoying. This is particularly true when considering Safari doesn’t have the brilliant Firefox feature that reopens all pages that have just crashed. OK, Chrome doesn’t have that feature either but I’ve been using Chrome on my home PC for quite some time and it essentially never crashes no matter what you’re doing. The Mac version is obviously only a beta at the moment and beta software of any nature is notoriously unstable so it remains to be seen if Chrome for Mac is as good as the PC version, only time will tell.

The new beta for Chrome is the 4.0.249.30 build and requires an Intel-based Mac with Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard. Chrome for Linux is also currently floating around somewhere if you’re interested.

Download it now at www.google.com/chrome

Apple recently updated their iMac range

It was revealed not too long ago that despite having a relatively insignificant share of the mobile smartphone market that Apple was nevertheless the most profitable mobile phone manufacturer in the world. This situation has repeated itself, well almost, in the U.S desktop computer retail industry. Apple has cornered an impressive 48% of the U.S. PC industry’s retail revenue last month despite holding a far smaller market share than the competition. For a business after all how many units you sell is irrelevant if the competition sells less but still makes more money, a lesson Microsoft is finding hard to swallow.

There are several reasons for Apple’s strong revenue numbers the most prominent of course is that Apple computers average roughly three times the retail price in the states when compared to Windows based PC’s. Now that may sound like a simple problem to fix for Microsoft but the fact is that Apple can get away with their higher prices because their products are better.

There is however more to it than that, there was in a way a critical mass of several factors, the combination of which allowed Apple to achieve such impressive results. Apple tweaked their iMac line during the month which no doubt garnered some interest from consumers. Furthermore the recent release of Windows 7 served to lower Microsoft revenue in the run up to the launch, consumers delayed buying a computer with Vista and rather waited to buy one with Windows 7 installed already.

For a more in depth understanding of Google Chrome OS there is no need for me to ramble on about it, rather check out this video.

iTunes 9 ironically offers improved syncing

The war between Apple and Palm over iTunes has been raging for several months now and has been interesting both from an industry perspective as well as a comedic one. First however many readers will need a little background on this issue.

The Palm Pre is a smartphone which was released on June 6 of this year. A fitting date indeed because June 6 was D-Day in World War II, the day that battle was joined on the European mainland between Germany and the Western Allies. When it comes down to it, the Pre is a competitor to the iPhone and it critically uses Palm’s Linux-based operating system webOS. So when the Pre was launched with this OS it had this really nifty little feature, it could trick iTunes into believing it was an iPod and could thus sync with iTunes.

Apple, not content to let the competition into its precious iTunes promptly released an update which quelled the Palm threat and blocked the Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes. Palm then rather admirably fought back with webOS 1.1 which re-enabled iTunes syncing. This process of punch and counter punch continued for months with each successive update from either side undoing the others update. The most recent of these updates from Apple is iTunes 9.0.2 which naturally disabled webOS 1.2.1’s ability to sync with iTunes.

Now there is a new webOS update namely 1.3.1 and to everyone’s shock iTunes media sync is not a feature. Have they given up, have they accepted defeat, it could be but they did also try one other avenue into iTunes. Palm complained to the USB Implementers Forum. The complaint was based on Apple’s alleged misuse of USB Vendor ID’s as a tool to exclude non-Apple USB products from iTunes, which of course is exactly what they are doing. The problem with that however is that iTunes belongs to Apple and they quite frankly can exclude whoever they want however they want in my view. Secondly, misusing their assigned USB Vendor ID is exactly how Palm was breaking into iTunes. So that sort of makes their argument null and void, which is just what the USB Implementers Forum said.

Whilst I suppose Apple may be in the right about this issue I still hope Palm doesn’t give up, for no reason other than the amusing nature of the back and forth battle.

The OS at the centre of the storm

The Phone at the centre of the storm

iPod touch has a strong gaming focus

Apple is showing considerable interest in the gaming sector, although their focus does seem primarily on the iPhone and iPod touch and not their Mac’s, something I have been really hoping for. In fact the iPod touch seems to be all about the gaming, something Steve Jobs was quite candid about with the New York Times.

Jobs explained that: “ Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine, he said. We started to market it that way, and it just took off.”

Now it is clear that Apple is giving greater attention their devices in the gaming sector, it is also good to see that the gaming industry for the most part is too giving Apple products the focus they deserve as gaming devices.

One of the game development industries biggest names, John Carmack from id Software, even believes that the Apple platforms pose a serious threat to dedicated handheld gaming devices namely the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. And in the gaming industry when Carmack talks, people listen, he is after all the man behind a host of legendary games such as the Doom and Quake franchises to name but two. Doom has already been ported to the iPhone and there are plans in the pipeline to do the same with Quake.

So how exactly is Apple showing they are serious about gaming? Well they are looking for a game developer with 3-4 years of experience in the industry and said developer must have been involved in at least one high profile title. This is in addition to the recent hire of the lead designer of Halo Wars, which was certainly a high profile title.

The iPhone is also fast becoming a gaming device

Could this be what the tablet will look like?

Anyway back to the information itself, the patent is very loosely written and the technology in question is said to apply to pen-based input-only “tablets”, which I guess is quite a big hint from Apple. As with any patent application, it makes for a rather boring read so I’ll spare you the gory details. Suffice to say that the technology is focussed specifically towards handwriting recognition, and how to deal with ‘digital ink’.

For me the news in this development isn’t the details anyway but rather that yet more fuel has been thrown onto the fire that is the Tablet rumour mill. The only reason I believe this is that I am worried that the Tablet is being overhyped and that the circus surrounding it is getting a bit ridiculous. You see I am a gamer and the Tablet reminds me of a game called Duke Nukem, a legendary game that became the laughing stock of the entire industry. What happened was that an eagerly anticipated sequel was announced and for an entire decade, yes it was that long,a hype machine was constructed surrounding it, the anticipation and hype grew to epic proportions. Every tiny sniff of information was pasted all over the media globe but when the game itself didn’t appear the huge level of desire worldwide for the game actually had a negative impact. Gamers everywhere became frustrated and people became convinced the game didn’t actually exist.

What eventually happened was that the development studio died without the next Duke Nukem ever getting finished and so ended one of the biggest video gaming debacle’s of recent memory. In that case the unprecedented level of attention the developers received for their forthcoming product worked against them and they became the whipping boys of the industry. I just hope that the Tablet doesn’t suffer from the same thing because sometimes too much hype is just that-too much.

Safari 4.0.4 coverflow

Beyond the security improvements Apple has also updated Safari to enhance JavaScript and History search performance, there are also the usual stability improvements added although I challenge you to actually notice any difference. Third-party plug-ins have once again been the focus for improving stability in Safari, which has been the case since Safari 4 first launched. Third-party plug-ins have been found in the past by Apple to be the number one cause of browser crashes, Safari has always tried separate third-party plug-ins from Safari itself so when they inevitably crash they don’t take down the whole browser with them.

Safari 4.0.4 is available for free from Apple’s download page, and is available for a variety of operating systems. Apple have all the bases covered as there are versions compatible with OS X Snow Leopard, Leopard, and Tiger, as well as the Microsoft competition of Windows 7, Vista, and XP.

iPhone 3GS

The third quarter of 2009 sure was a good one for Apple, so good in fact that research firm Strategy Analytics put them at the top of the mobile phone pile. Their research found that Apple was the worlds most profitable mobile phone manufacturer with an estimated profit of $1.6 billion.

This $1.6 billion in profits easily eclipsed the previous hegemonic power Nokia, whose profits have been estimated at $1.1 billion for the quarter.

What makes these results really impressive is that Apple has broken into the mobile phone market in such a short time as well the fact that their profitability dominance has been achieved with a relatively small market share. When data from 2008 was released earlier this year it indicated that Apple and their iPhone only held a 1% unit market share. At that time their profitability share was 20%, whilst Nokia enjoyed a substantial 55% share of industry profit.

Now all these figures actually mean little, and I’m sure most readers are already bored, so here’s what you need to take out of this news. The iPhone and devices like it are the future, and it looks like the market is finally waking up to this fact.

More popular then The Queen of Talk TV… so once again, who says IT isn’t cool? Well perhaps it still isn’t, but Apples sure are!

But then again, Oprah still talks about good books, nogal printed, on paper! Jobs is busy creating the platform for the books of tomorrow.