BUSINESS
Gus G. Sentementes | March 19, 2012
Apple today announced what many were expecting, given its huge war chest of around $100 billion in cash: future stock dividends and a stock repurchasing program. The company released the news in a conference call early Monday. It's amassed a huge pile of cash in recent years thanks to the runaway successes of its iPhone and iPad, a smartphone and a tablet, respectively, that are dominant in their categories. Apple said it plans a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share sometime in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, which begins in July.
BUSINESS
By Gus G. Sentementes | gus.sentementes@baltsun.com | January 28, 2010
You would be able to play games, read electronic books, listen to music, watch movies and choose from nearly 140,000 smart-phone applications - all while on the go with Apple Inc.'s new iPad. The question is whether you would want or need such a device, and be willing to pay $499 or more for it. After months of hype that culminated in days of water-cooler speculation, Apple unveiled Wednesday the highly anticipated iPad, essentially a personal computer contained in a portable flat-panel touch screen.
BUSINESS
Gus G. Sentementes | September 10, 2012
It's looking like this Wednesday, Sept. 12, is the day that Apple will likely unveil its fifth iteration of its blockbuster iPhone mobile device. I've been largely tuned out from all the buzz in recent weeks because, really, you don't really know what Apple is going to debut. But I dipped my toes in the rumor waters today, to get up to speed, and here's what I pulled up from the depths: * The iPhone 5 will supposedly have a mini-dock connector -- not that wide port we're all used to, according to SlashGear . That could mean all of us will need to go and buy new speakers and other accessories that are compatible with our new iPhones.
BUSINESS
March 3, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO - As Apple Inc.'s iPhone faces stiffer competition in the lucrative market for smart phones, the company is going after one of its main rivals with patent lawsuits claiming theft of touch screen technology and other features. The complaints cover a slew of models made by Taiwanese phone maker HTC Corp., including the Nexus One, G1 and myTouch 3G - all using the free, rival Android mobile operating software from Google Inc. Non-Android phones include HTC's Touch series. Patent cases can take months or years to resolve.
BUSINESS
By Gus Sentementes and Baltimore Sun reporter | October 14, 2010
From the BalthTech blog: Big news for fans of Verizon's wireless network: It'll be getting the Apple iPad starting Oct. 28. You'll be able to buy the iPad at 2,000 Verizon Wireless stores nationwide. (Is this the precursor to Verizon getting the iPhone next year, as recent reports suggest?) Interestingly, consumers won't have access to the iPad 3G. Instead, if you want one from Verizon, you could buy an iPad Wi-Fi version plus a Verizon MiFi mobile hotspot. The hotspot uses Verizon's 3G network and generates a Wi-Fi hotspot that you can then use the iPad with.
FEATURES
By Dave Rosenthal | October 23, 2012
At Apple's big news conference to introduce the iPad Mini , the company also showed off changes to its iBooks app. The new version, available as a free download, will allow continuous scrolling of books, as an alternative to page-turning -- a computer-age shift in the reading experience. Standard page-turning was somehow comforting, as though deep inside the computer a book lived. So I'm not sure how much I'll like the scrolling feature. Will it seem too much like the reading I do at work?