Don’t take a vacation day just yet or anything, but early word has it that Apple’s iPhone 3G will actually go on sale at 8:00AM (local time, most likely) on July 11th. If you’ll recall (how could you forget, right?), the original iPhone didn’t go on sale until 6:00PM on launch day, but considering that the whole checkout process will likely be a fair bit more involved this go ’round, we’d say it’s a smart move to get the line rolling early.
Quick, what’s the best way to dress up an otherwise dry piece on how companies can register non-traditional trademarks? If you answered “mention Apple and the iPod,” you’re the big winner — and you’ve gotten yourself published in the Wall Street Journal. We’ll be the first to admit that Apple’s January registration of the three-dimensional design of the iPod strains credulity, but the simple fact is that non-traditional trademarks have been around for a while now — we seem to remember a little kerfuffle regarding magenta recently, but we can’t quite recall the exact details. Similarly, Nokia trademarked the 12 notes of its default ringtone back in September (even though they’re part of a larger piece written in 1902 called “Gran Vals”), NBC has a mark on its ding-ding-ding station ID, and Coca-Cola has registrations for basically every bottle design it sells. Still, you can bet Apple legal threw quite a pizza party when this mark was approved — and we can only imagine the kind of buttoned-down corporate lawyer jam that’ll go down if the company succeeds in getting a mark on the design of the iPhone, which it’s currently applied for. Hope you’re ready for some more funktastic control layouts.
Oh, there are plenty of bad Chinese iPhone knockoffs out there, but the HiPhone may be the reigning champion these days — so it kind of seemed like a matter of time before Apple loosed the hounds on distributors of the device. We don’t have confirmation or proper human translation of the above legal notice, but it would appear Apple’s European counsel Bird & Bird has delivered at least one notice to an unnamed distributor threatening €25,000 in damages (and €15,000 in legal fees) for HiPhone sales. Hardly the case of the century, but we’ll let you know if we hear anything.
[Thanks, Ricardo]
Update: Reader Ben W hooked us up with a translation of the letter; we can’t vouch for its veracity, but it’s posted after the break if you want to check it out. Thanks, Ben!
Continue reading Apple finally setting its legal sights on the HiPhone?
Not that we wouldn’t eventually expect a 2.6GHz MacBook, but Apple’s Hot News site is running this promo that references a new, upgraded model of the laptop (which right now only reaches 2.4GHz). Our take? We’re thinking typo, not premature announcement.
[Thanks, Matthew and fr]
Yup, another Apple store outage reveals yet another bump in product specs. This time, it’s the iMac getting the treatment just as Geeksugar and our own sources predicted — on a Monday though instead of Apple’s customary Tuesday morning approach. So what’s new? Well, for starters you’re now looking at the latest Core 2 Duo Penryn processors. For the same starting price of $1,199, you now get a 20-inch iMac with 2.4GHz proc, 128MB of ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics, 1GB of memory and a 250GB 7200RPM disk. The top of the line 24-inch model now sports a 3.06GHz processor, 512MB of NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics, 2GB of memory, and a 320GB 7200rpm disk for $2,199. Rounding out the specs across the lineup are Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11n WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet, built-in iSight cam, and 5x USB 2.0 (which includes the 2x on tethered keyboard) and 1x Firewire 400 and 1x Firewire 800. Same size, same weight and available now… yes, right now.
