According to the Financial Times, Apple is in talks to acquire Beats Electronics for a price tag of 3.2 Billion. It is not clear why the company wants to acquire such a company, other then the fact that Beats had recently opened up their own streaming service.
The deal is said to be the largest since Apple purchased NeXT in 1996.
The deal is expected to be announced sometime next week.
Editor's Note:
This article is from C|Net.com, and it is real.
But it's the very daftness that makes one wonder about life, law, and technology.
I present to you today a man who tried to intervene in an ACLU lawsuit against Florida on the subject of gay marriage.
This lawsuit challenges Florida's refusal to recognize gay marriages from other states.
Chris Sevier, however, insists that this lawsuit needs his intervention on behalf of "other minority sexual orientation groups." He equates his thought process to gay couples having "the right to marry their object of sexual desire, even if they lack corresponding sexual parts."
As the Broward New Times reports, Sevier believes he should have the right to marry his "preferred sexual object." And that would be his "porn-filled Apple computer."
You might wonder why, if it is porn-filled, Sevier would like to marry this computer.
It surely wouldn't be the ideal dinner-party companion, being clearly far too rude. It certainly wouldn't appeal to one's parents on a home visit. And what if it crashes halfway through a night's clubbing?
Sevier's filing states: "Over time, I began preferring sex with my computer over sex with real women. Naturally, I 'fell in love' with my computer and preferred having sex with it over all other persons or things, as a result of classic conditioning upon orgasm."
At this point, you may recollect the name "Chris Sevier." For this may well be the same Chris Sevier who last year tried to sue Apple because his computer didn't come with an automatic porn-filter.
Let's skip to the happy ending. The U.S. District Court judge in the ACLU case, Robert Hinkle, offered a succinct summation of Sevier's most recent intervention: "Perhaps the motion is satirical. Or perhaps it is only removed from reality. Either way, the motion has no place in this lawsuit."
There's a certain poetry in the concept of a legal motion being "removed from reality."
These days, there seem to be so many tech-focused legal cases that only view reality from a peculiar distance.
The question is whether anything can be done to stop them.
“Nintendo Co. (7974) posted a fourth-quarter net loss that was greater than analyst estimates amid flagging demand for its titles and as the company struggles to lure players back from inexpensive games on smartphones,” Takashi Amano reports for Bloomberg. “The world’s largest maker of video-game machines had a net loss of 33.4 billion yen ($329 million) in the three months ended March, compared with the 27.9 billion-yen loss analysts
had estimated. Nintendo’s Germany-traded shares dropped.”
“President Satoru Iwata is struggling to revive the company’s fortunes as more people turn to games played on smartphones and tablets. Nintendo sold 2.72 million Wii U units in the year ended March, missing its own forecast set in January, which itself was lowered from before,” Amano reports. “Games played on Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPhones and handsets using Google Inc.’s Android operating system generated more sales than those on Nintendo and Sony Corp. (6758)’s handheld players for the first time last year, according to researcher App Annie Ltd. Wii U sales will recover to 3.6 million units this fiscal year as games including Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. boost demand, Iwata said at a briefing today.”
“Nintendo’s German shares fell as much as 4.6 percent to 74.79 euros in Frankfurt trading,” Amano reports. “The Kyoto-based company declined 2.7 percent to close at 10,670 yen in Tokyo trading before the announcement. The shares have dropped 24 percent this year and 76 percent since June 29, 2007, when Apple Inc. released the first iPhone.”
Read more in the full article here.
Apple is preparing to boost its presence in New York with a space in the upcoming World Trade Center site mall and a nearly century-old converted bank building, both of which are scheduled to open in 2015.
Via: AppleInsider.com
