New aerial images of Apple's planned NC fuel cell, solar farms emerge

Pictures of the area surrounding Apple's iCloud datacenter in Maiden, North Carolina show that progress is being made in preparing land for the company's future biogas and solar farm energy arrays.

The images, captured by Wired in March and posted on Friday, show a large swath of cleared ground in front of Apple's datacenter that will presumably house the Bloom Energy fuel cells as well as 100 acres of freshly razed land that is expected to be used for a solar farm.

Apple will employ 24 Bloom Energy Servers using natural gas supplied by Piedmont Natural Gas and a 20-megawatt solar installation to power its massive $1 billion datacenter. Once finished, both of the energy sources will be the largest privately owned systems of their kind in the nation.

Opened in early 2011, Apple server facility supports its iTunes and iCloud services and is the nerve center of the iPhone 4S' Siri virtual assistant.

Reports estimate that the alternative power sources will begin operations later this year and will provide 9.8 percent of the energy required to run the 500,000 square-foot datacenter.

Source : AppleInsider
Original Content : New aerial images of Apple's planned NC fuel cell, solar farms emerge

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Apple interested in wireless power to charge devices on store shelves

Apple has shown interest in wirelessly powering and charging its portable devices, allowing products like the iPhone and iPad to be powered up while sealed in packaging and on display at a retail store.

The concept was detailed this week in a new patent application discovered by AppleInsider entitled "Active Electronic Media Packaging." It describes an active packaging system that would supply power and data to devices, allowing them to display content and show off features to customers while on display in a store.

The proposed invention aims to replace the typical labels and other advertising that is found on the outside of product packaging. Instead, Apple's method would let the product sell itself.

"Although typical packaging for an electronic media device may be designed to adequately protect the device from shock or damage, the packaging is extremely limited in other respects," the filing reads. "For example, the ability to fully view or interact with the electronic media device while still inside the packaging is severely limited in most packaging designs. Although unobtrusive packaging designs have been developed, these designs typically do not allow electronic media devices to be interacted with while inside the packaging."

In addition, most packages do not include some sort of external power source to make sure the device can be operational for the user to see and use.

Physically connecting a power supply to each package in a store could be a difficult task, and so one of Apple's proposed solutions is to use an RF power transmitter. The packaging itself could act as a receiver, and would provide power to a device like an iPhone or iPad.

The use of packaging to receive the wireless power would also negate the need for the device itself to be able to recharge wirelessly. This would avoid the need to increase the size of the device to add such technology.

The new packaging method with an external power supply would also allow Apple to conduct functionality like firmware or software upgrades directly in the store, while the product is still sealed.

The application, made public this week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, was first filed in December of 2011. It is credited to Michael Rosenblatt, a former new technologies manager at Apple, where his team filed 42 patent applications related to the iPhone and iPod, and saw 70 percent of their innovations adopted into products over a two-year span.

Source : AppleInsider
Original Content : Apple interested in wireless power to charge devices on store shelves

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Biographer says Steve Jobs was legitimately infuriated by Android

Biographer Walter Isaacson has disputed Google CEO Larry Page's assertion that Steve Jobs only said disparaging remarks about its Android mobile operating system to rally his own employees.

Page's comments came from an interview this week in which he said he believed Jobs's hatred of Android was merely "for show." The Google CEO suggested that the comments from Jobs served the best interests of Apple in giving its employees something to fight against.

Those comments were in contrast to what Jobs told Isaacson for his biography of the Apple co-founder. In their conversations, Jobs called Android a "stolen product," and vowed to use his "last dying breath" to "destroy" it.

After hearing Page's interpretation of Jobs's words, Isaacson spoke out this week in a speech at the Royal institution of Great Britain. Isaacson said he felt that Android had ripped off many of his ideas found in the iPhone and iPad, and that his ire was very real, according to Macworld.

"It's almost copied verbatim by Android," Isaacson said. "And they license it around promiscuously. And then Android starts surpassing Apple in market share, and this totally infuriated him. It wasn't a matter of money. He said, 'You can't pay me off, I'm here to destroy you.'"

The biographer also predicted that current Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook will use a different approach than Jobs, who vowed to "go thermonuclear war" to stop Android. Isaacson instead believes that Cook will eventually settle Apple's Android-related lawsuits.

A similar take was offered in a recent cover story by Bloomberg Businessweek, which revealed that Apple has communicated recently with Samsung about potentially settling the multitude of lawsuits between the two companies. Author Paul M. Barrett said Cook doesn't share Jobs's desire to "(lay) all foes to waste," and that he instead views the courtroom as a "necessary evil."

Apple has not sued Google directly over Android, but has taken on a number of Google's partners who ship devices running the Android mobile operating system. In addition to Samsung, other companies involved in litigation are HTC and and Motorola Mobility, the latter of which is owned by Google.

Source : AppleInsider
Original Content :  Biographer says Steve Jobs was legitimately infuriated by Android

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