Latest News - Page 4218

Apple today filed its Form 10-K with the SEC that discloses information to stockholders and the commission. It also allows sites like TweakTown to perve at some of the wallet-busting numbers included. Apple currently have $81,570,000,000 in cash, marketable securities and cash equivalents. What this means is Apple raked in $37.5 billion in cash profits in fiscal 2011. This is all in a time where they "missed" industry estimates.

That is after Apple spent $2.4 billion on research and development in 2011, up from $1.8 billion for last year and $1.3 billion in 2009. Apple also forked out $4.3 billion for equipment, most likely for factory investments and the North Carolina-based data center. Apple also had purchases of $3.2 billion in 'intangible assets", which is most likely the $2.6 billion share of the Nortel patent purchase that it went in on with other companies, including Microsoft.

Winamp for Android is amazing. I love it, I use it all the time and it is wonderful. Today brings Winamp for Android updates that include a bunch of new features such as a Winamp for Mac Sync beta app that brings the same wireless freedom to Mac users that Windows users have enjoyed for a while now, access to Spinner's MP3 of the day from your Android phone, and a new premium version of the app with extended features.

The biggest feature is Winamp for Android now lets users sync their music and videos wirelessly with the Mac, the same as Windows users have been able to do. The Winamp for Mac Sync Beta app is brand new and a available as a free download. The new updated Winamp for Android also includes more streaming music for Winamp's "Listening Party" feature, where you can stream songs and listen together with friends, and more free music from Spinner.

Lastly, we have the Winamp "Pro Bundle" which will set you back $5 but includes extended features such as support for FLAC, crossfading and gapless playback, and a customizable home screen for the player and a 10-band equalizer. The free version does however include more features than before, but the extended features are just extra flavoring on an already tasty product from Winamp.

You can grab Winamp for Android here.

Do you like to have options? Enjoy portable gaming? Was looking forward to Sony's NGP, Vita? Well, games capable of saving directly to their own cartridges, won't offer gamers the option to save to an external cards. This means you will never receive a choice. Games that can save internally, will always do so.

Kotaku Japan also learned that you'll have to have a memory card in the Vita at startup to operate games that require external storage. Sony also told Kotaku Japan that in addition to save data, some games may use the memory card for DLC.

Disappointed? Hurt? Well, Sony have doen this before... but people were thinking that they might play the game differently with the Vita. People might have wanted to save a few dollars on not buying external memory, but you'll require this for DLC and the like. Frustrating? Yep!

Sony Online Entertainment's upcoming MMO/FPS hybrid, Planetside 2 is set to go insane on 'map' sizes (can we even call them maps now?). Planetside 2 is said to take a "Halo-esque" spin on its sci-fi universe, where it aims to combine the persistent world of an MMO, with the visceral, responsive mechanics of a first-person shooter. Planetside 2's creative director, Matt Higby talked about the staggering size of the new battlefields:

"We have enormous, enormous gameplay space," says Higby. Planetside 2's settings which are based on continents on the planet Auraxis, measure an insane eight kilometers square, with weapons capable of firing a full kilometer in distance. Higby continues saying "One of our largest development efforts on this project has been hand crafting every single area of those eight-by-eight kilometer continents".

In these eight-by-eight kilometer environments, three factions duke it out: The Terran Republic, The New Conglomerate and The Vanu Sovereignty. The battles are set to be epic, with Higby stating that "you're going to be fighting in battles sometimes when it's 200 people fighting against 30 people, because there's only 30 people defending that base and then suddenly 200 people log in from teh other ground and go do it".

Batman: Arkham City, one of 2011's most hyped games has done very well for itself. It was released last week for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and has since then, shipped 4.6 million copies. All in a week! This is both a surprise, and not a surprise. It's a surprise because it has only launched on the consoles and has enjoyed successful shipping numbers.

For it not being a surprise, is because the first game, Batman: Arkham Asylum was a smash hit. Batman: Arkham City has received rave reviews for both versions (PS3 and Xbox 360) and looks to be one of the biggest sellers for 2011. I haven't played it yet, as I'm waiting for the PC version which launches in a little under two weeks time. The PC launch will only expand these numbers, so too will sales between now and the end of the year.

4.6 million copies shipped is a very good milestone for Batman: Arkham City as it makes it one of the (if not the most) successful comic-book-to-game adaption ever. Now all we need is a really good Superman game, and I'll be one super happy camper. Please, please make a great Superman game. Maybe the guys behind Batman and Just Cause should get together for it?

AMD have invested an undisclosed amount of money into BlueStacks, a "venture-back firm" whose software allows Android apps to run "fast and full-screen" on Windows 7. I posted about BlueStacks earlier this month, and now we have AMD helping them. AMD aren't just helping them financially, either:

AMD and BlueStacks are collaborating to optimize the BlueStacks App Player for Windows software for use with tablet and notebook PCs powered by AMD APUs with AMD VISION technology. With this combination of BlueStacks software and AMD technology, consumers will be able to access their favorite Android apps on virtually any AMD-powered Windows-based device, including more than 200,000 apps currently available in the Android Market.

Jon Peddie Research says that the PC gaming hardware market will continue to grow at a rate of 11-percent from now until at least 2014. These figures are based on the fact that over 250 million game-capable PCs will ship in 2011 alone, compared to only 230 million PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 consoles (combined) have shipped since 2005.

The PC gaming market will generate $19 billion in sales in 2011, with estimates that half a billion people regularly play PC games. New markets such as social networking and mobile gaming on tablets and smartphones are continuing the threaten the PC's gaming reputation, a phenomenon that senior gaming analyst Ted Pollack noted in his research.

We are starting to see mobile computers dig into the sales of low end PCs a bit. Consequently this has actually increased the average gaming purchase motivation for mainstream desktops and notebooks because some people with very low computing requirements have been taken out of the denominator, and the potential customer base for desktops and notebooks is more concentrated due to their superior performance in graphically intense applications.

Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, teased the codename "Sea Ray" phone in the middle of the year, which looked just like a Nokia N9. Today, Sea Ray has been unveiled as the Nokia Lumia 800 and we get to see how Windows and Nokia gel together, according to Elop, it's the "first real Windows Phone".

Nokia's Lumia 800 sports a single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 1.4GHz processor, 16GB of internal storage, a curved 3.7-inch ClearBlack AMOLED screen framed by a black, cyan or magenta case with individually drilled speaker holes, a dedicated camera button for the f/2.2 Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, 512MB of internal memory, 12.1mm-thick frame and a 1450mAh battery that is said to be good for approximately 9.5 hours of 3G talk time. Software wise, we have Windows Phone Mango, and the Lumia 800 comes packed with a free 25GB SkyDrive account, as well as Nokia Drive, a free turn-by-turn voice navigation program, a first for any Windows Phone.

Filling out the Lumia 800 we have Nokia Music with Mix Radio, which is a global service with no subscriptions or log-ins required for "hundreds of channels of locally-relevant music", and an ESPN Sports Hub, three programs not found on any other Windows Phone 7-powered device.

For those of you in the know, you'd know that Mainstream Media is a mostly controlled medium. If they were to tell the real news, then most politicians, presidents, members of Congress and more, would all be thrown in jail. But, instead, the money from powerful people is used to gain control and influence within the power of politics. The same goes for news. This is where Anonymous steps in with something they're calling "Operation Fox Hunt".

Anonymous promise an all-out attack on the Fox News website as retaliation for the network's unjust attack on protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement. In the YouTube clip, the digitized voice says:

Since they will not stop ridiculing the occupiers, we will simply shut them down. Fox News, your time has come . . . Operation Fox Hunt. November 5th. May the hunt begin.

November 5 is already a day chosen by members of the Occupy Wall Street movement as a practical holiday, with "Operation Cashback" expected to occur on Nov. 5 across the world. Under Operation Cashback, demonstrators are asked to close bank across across the world, and move money out of large banks and into smaller, local credit unions. This has already happened in the US, with an attempt at closing accounts at a Lower Manhattan-based Citibank earlier this month which resulted in an arrest of several occupies.

LSI Corporation have just announced that they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire SandForce Inc for approximately $322 million in cash, net of cash assumed, and assume approximately $48 million of unvested stock options and restricted shares held by SandForce employees. SandForce is a leading provider of flash storage processors for enterprise and client flash solutions and solid state drives (SSDs).

SandForce controllers power most of the SSDs we all know and love, and the acquisition greatly enhances LSI's competitive position in the fast-growing server and storage PCIe flash adapter market, where the WarpDrive family of products from LSI are already SandForce-powered.

Abhi Talwalkar, LSI president and chief executive officer has a few things to say:

Flash-based solutions are critical for accelerating application performance in servers, storage and client devices. Adding SandForce's technology to LSI's broad storage portfolio is consistent with our mission to accelerate storage and networking. The acquisition represents a significant, rapidly growing market opportunity for LSI over the next several years.