Apple

Information Age innovators need not apply. At least that's the implied message being stretched like police tape across the door of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). The agency seems fixated on eliminating the last, true, sustainable American advantage: our capacity to innovate.

Recent moves by the USPTO have resulted in a precedent-setting legal victory that now threatens software patents with extinction, putting companies like Apple and Google at risk along with the U.S. economy.

There's more shaking in the world of high technology than budgets and IT workers. Apple lost two vice presidents to personal issues and gained an IBM executive to lead the iPhone and iPod charge. But IBM is suing Apple's new employee in a New York court.

Apple on Tuesday announced that Mark Papermaster will join the Mac maker as senior vice president of devices hardware engineering and report directly to CEO Steve Jobs. Papermaster brings 25 years of product and technology experience from IBM, where he served as an engineering executive.

Call it upgrade fatigue, or perhaps Apple's fondness for teasing its die-hard fans, but the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer manufacturer has announced it will not introduce new Mac computers this year.

In a statement first published by Macworld, Apple spokesperson Bill Evans said, "Our holiday lineup is set." The stark statement (the Apple press office offered no elaboration) puts to rest persistent rumors on Mac-related blogs that the company planned an event in November to announce upgrades to the Mac Mini and its iMac desktops.

A Busy Year

IBM is not letting go without a fight. The computer maker has filed a lawsuit against one of its former top-level executives who left the company to work at Apple.

Mark Papermaster, a server expert and vice president of IBM's blade development unit, is slated to start at Apple in just a few weeks but his knowledge of IBM trade secrets may stop him from joining the maker of Macs.

Looking for growth in new markets where it is increasingly being bypassed, Microsoft plans late next year to begin offering a new "cloud" operating system that would manage the relationship between software inside the computer and on the Web, where data and services are becoming increasingly centralized.

The company needs a new kind of operating system for a new computing world populated not by a single style of desktop computer but instead by dozens of different kinds of Internet-connected appliances ranging from smartphones to mini-laptops called netbooks.

Qik, the video-sharing site that clearly aspires to be the mobile YouTube, is jumping on the BlackBerry bandwagon. The company announced that it has created an alpha version of its video-sharing client for several BlackBerry models, including the Pearl 8120 and 8130, the Bold, and the Curve 8320 and 8330.

Once again, Apple has convincingly demonstrated that good things come in small packages. Thanks largely to a terrific sales quarter for the iPhone, Apple bucked the grim economy by posting a remarkable 26 percent increase in profits for the fourth quarter.

In a telephone conference announcing the news, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the company's entire product line is strong.

When the e-commerce giant eBay emerged from the last U.S. recession seven years ago with an aura of invincibility, its chief executive, Meg Whitman, boasted that "eBay is to some extent recession-proof."

As the online auctioneer's revenue and stock price kept climbing, one of its main rivals, Amazon.com, just limped along.

How times have changed.

The much-anticipated Apple notebook event took place Tuesday at the Apple Town Hall on the manufacturer's Cupertino, Calif., campus. Although the trendy manufacturer may not have hit every item on Mac fans' wish list, Apple clearly intends to keep the pressure on Microsoft and the universe of Windows PCs.

New laptops from Apple, maker of such advanced products as the iPhone, the iPod and the Mac, could be made from bricks. An aluminum brick, that is.

According to reports on the Web, the computer and consumer-products innovator is about to unveil a new kind of manufacturing that carves a solid-aluminum chassis for MacBooks out of an aluminum brick. With new MacBooks scheduled to be released next week, speculation has grown that it might include models made with the brick process.

'Totally Revolutionary'