RIM’s BlackBerry woes continue; Apple finally releases iTunes cloud service; Google receive self-drive patent

Lee Bell
December 16, 2011
4 Comments

RIM Apple GoogleBlackBerry manufacturer, Research in Motion (RIM), must just love upsetting its customers. After a terrible autumn of denying its phone owners’ access to the much loved BlackBerry Messenger, it seems today it’s announced a delay to the launch of its new Blackberry 10 smartphone. The cheek!

Apparently it’s all down to a chip required in the phones that is so advanced it now won’t be available until the middle of next year. The proposed sale date for the devices was originally the first few months of 2012.

Things aren’t looking great for RIM are they? Especially considering that RIM’s prediction of sales of around 12 million smartphones in the current Christmas quarter were down from 14.8 million in the same period last year. It also reported a net income of $265m (£171m) for the quarter to 26 November, which guess what? Was also down from $911m in the same period of 2010. Weep.

 

Apple’s iTunes Match – the service that allows its customers to store music collection online through cloud technology – has gone live in the UK today.

The service scans your iTunes library, including songs you’ve acquired from other MP3 download sites or ripped from CDs and lets you stream them via your internet connection, saving you that much needed hard drive space. It also syncs music from a range of devices, so if you’re lucky and spoiled enough to own a Mac, PC, Macbook, iPad and iPhone, you can stream your collection of songs from which ever you want.

It won’t come free though, of course. As with all Apple products there’s a hefty price tag. iTunes Match will set you back £22 a year. Not too bad, but after you’ve spent your entire disposable income on every other Apple gadget out there, we reckon it should be free.

 

Patents patents patents, if only we could have a dollar for every time we’ve heard that word the past year. Well, at least this time, news regarding that certain word is without its usual negative connotations, with Google being awarded a US patent for self-driving cars. Say what?!

The search engine giant received intellectual property rights today relating to a method to switch a vehicle from a human-controlled mode into the state where the car’s the one in control. The patent apparently explains how the automated car would know when to take control, where it is located and which direction to drive in.

Held private until today when it went public, the parent document describes how it would work – using two sets of sensors. Sensor number one would identify a “landing strip” when the vehicle stops, which triggers a second set that receives data informing the machine where it is positioned and where it should take itself next. ”The landing strip allows a human driving the vehicle to know acceptable parking places for the vehicle,” the patent filing states.

Would you trust beigng driven around by a car with no driver?

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Tags: Article, Blackberry, car, Google, iTunes, patent, RIM, Smartphone
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