Jobs mourners see burglary at Ark. Apple store

LITTLE ROCK, ARK.

An Arkansas couple who went to an Apple store to lay down flowers for Steve Jobs spotted the tail end of a burglary instead of a makeshift memorial.

Robert Blake and his girlfriend, Amy Parker, told The Associated Press that when they showed up at the suburban Little Rock store Wednesday night, they didn't initially realize what they were witnessing.

Blake said he thought a man running away from the store was just a fellow mourner. Then, he watched the man hop in a getaway car with another man and speed off.

Parker said she thought she could see other flowers left in honor of the man who founded and ran Apple Inc. But she soon realized she was looking at broken glass.

So, Parker pulled out her iPhone and dialed 911.

Police say the two suspects made off with more than two dozen iPhones, plus iPads and laptops on Wednesday. Authorities had not made any arrests by Thursday evening.

Snapshots taken from surveillance tapes show a maroon car driving off from the store.

Parker and Blake said they own everything the suspects stole -- plus iPods and an Apple TV.

"We both not only use the products every day," she said, "but both of our jobs are influenced every day by what he's done, too."

Parker edits video for an education company and Blake is a web developer.

After the couple talked with police, they left a bouquet of white lilies at the store.

Finding Steve Jobs' funeral will not be easy for Westboro Baptist Church

Margie Phelps of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church says her members plan to be picketing at Steve Jobs funeral, but they may have run into a little problem. They might need to find it first.

Funeral arrangements for Jobs may not be released to the public, according to Politics and Computers, due to apparently legitimate fears that the event could turn into a media circus.

Phelps announced the Westboro group’s plans to protest through her iPhone. When people pointed out the irony in that on Twitter, she answered, “Irony is powerful way to publish. By iPhone iPad & iGrace Westboro warns you about hell!”

Jobs’ biological father John Jandali had no comment on the news of his son’s death yesterday. It is not known whether Jobs’ biological parents would be invited.

ALSO

Steve Jobs’ funeral to be protested for Apple founder’s 'sins'

Politics and Computers reported that when Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955, his parents – Jandali and Joanne Schieble – gave him up for adoption. His adoptive parents, Paul and Clara Jobs, adopted the future Apple CEO, and Jobs has reportedly had little contact with Jandali.

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the Westboro Church was protected from lawsuits from its protests by the First Amendment. But the Wall Street Journal reports that an appeals court is divided about picket restrictions at a funeral service.

This week a ruling by the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit opposed restrictions in Manchester, Missouri, which limited protests to within 300 feet of a cemetery, funeral home or church, based on the right to free speech being more important.

Oracle, Salesforce and the Brewing Cloud Wars

Ejected from Oracle's (Nasdaq: ORCL) Open World. An impromptu gathering at a nearby restaurant. Fulsome explanations from PR flacks and tweets galore. The relations between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) chief Marc Benioff went from wary and grudging mutual admiration, to red hot rhetoric. How red hot? Well, for starters, Ellison referred to Salesforce.com as the "roach motel" of cloud services this week.

Not that Benioff made out badly. He was reportedly willing to pay US$1 million for the chance to deliver the OpenWorld keynote. He'll get that back -- plus all the free publicity he could ask for.
The two sides appear more than eager to give their spin on the keynote kerfuffle to any and all who will listen -- although neither company was able to produce a spokesperson to talk to the E-Commerce Times about its cloud computing services for this story.
Which is, after all, what the whole circus was really about: Oracle is encroaching on Salesforce.com's turf with its own public cloud service. Competition is seriously ramping up.
"It is important to recognize that Oracle Public Cloud is still very early -- and like any version 1.0 product, there is reason for customers to be cautious, Nucleus Research Vice President Rebecca Wettemann told the E-Commerce Times.
"However, the real winners are customers that now have more choices," she said.

A Look at Public Cloud

Oracle Public Cloud, as described by Ellison, provides customers access to Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database, all of which are managed, hosted and supported by Oracle.
Its cloud offering, which runs on Oracle systems, also includes Oracle Fusion CRM, HCM, Social Network, Java and Oracle Database Cloud service. In short, it offers several different business applications via the cloud.

The Drawbacks of Multitenancy

It is positioned as the answer for customers that do not like the drawbacks of multitenant Software as a Service applications.
"Virtualization is an effective approach -- one that Oracle is good at -- and Oracle is clearly taking advantage of that," said Wettemann.
Salesforce.com, for its part, put a stake in the ground years ago with its firm belief in the value of multitenancy, although lately it has relaxed its stance. Earlier this year, it announced a new Database.com Data Residency option that lets companies keep readable versions of data on premises.

A Java Shop

Other considerations that prospective users should factor in are the advantages and disadvantages of using a Java-based system versus a proprietary one, said Wettemann, and whether a company will need the myriad business applications Oracle has available.
Whether the system is Java-based or proprietary, in particular, will be an important distinction for a lot of customers, she said. "Certainly it raises questions about vendor lock-in."

The Hybrid Model

Oracle is also pushing its hybrid approach to computing -- that is, the ability to move users and workloads from the enterprise to the cloud and back seamlessly, noted Muneer Taskar, head of Persistent's cloud computing practice.
"This is ideal for customers that want to either test out the cloud or want to use the cloud in a limited manner," he told the E-Commerce Times.
However, only a small subset of users would be interested in this functionality, Wettemann pointed out.

Who's the Most Reliable?

Both vendors promise reliability, but this is a no-contest question, according to Taskar. "It is too early in the game to be able to speak to Oracle's reliability, whereas Salesforce is a proven platform -- multiple times over."

CRM vs. Oracle DB

Then there is the matter of a CRM-focused approach versus an ERP, database-oriented one.
"When [you] look at Oracle, you have hundreds of different modules for all areas of the business. Salesforce.com is more CRM and custom-app focused," Wettemann observed.
Here Oracle is the hands-down winner, said Taskar -- that is, if you want an Oracle DB and allied enterprise services in the cloud.
"That makes sense for enterprises that already have Oracle products installed. Salesforce has focused on the social enterprise and has the framework built in for feeds, sharing, collaboration and APIs to enable consumption via external app. Oracle has yet to elaborate on social networking support."

Opposite Directions, Same Goal

Basically, Oracle and Salesforce are heading to the same destination, Taskar concluded, but they are coming from opposite directions -- with completely different features to boot.
"Salesforce.com has been wildly successful with its flagship CRM product," he said. "With that success it is safe to say that they understand the cloud, and particularly SaaS, better than anyone else. This is Salesforce.com's edge. What remains to be seen is whether they can capitalize on this edge and replicate the success they have had in CRM as enterprises move other pieces of their IT pie to the cloud."
Oracle, on the other hand, is taking its success in enterprise IT -- and in some cases, complete dominance -- and trying to replicate it in the cloud, continued Taskar.
"The technology Oracle is moving to the cloud is already proven," he maintained, "and more importantly, widely entrenched. Not having to learn, or do, anything new or proprietary is a powerful pro in enterprise IT decision making, and this will work in Oracle's favor."

iPhone 4S cues up iOS 5, holds back iPod touch 5, iPod classic death

The good news regarding Apple’s decision to go with an iPhone 4S this month instead of finding a way to get an iPhone 5 to market in 2011 is that it hasn’t held up the launch of iOS 5. The operating system which should have come with the fifth generation iPhone has instead become a part of the iPhone 4S generation, including all of its features previewed in June along with the new Siri voice assistant feature. The bad news, at least for those who still care about the iPod, is that the entire iPod lineup appears to have been punted back by a year as a result. If there was to be an iPod touch 5 it likely would have mirrored the new hardware styling of the iPhone 5. Instead Apple has left the existing iPod touch 4 in place, spec for spec and feature for feature, with the singular exception of launching a white model. That move has in turn left the iPod touch stranded at a sixty-four gigabyte ceiling capacity (interestingly, now finally on par with the iPhone 4S and its new 64 GB ceiling), meaning that the iPod classic gets to live on another year. And there’s other fallout to the Apple lineup as well…


If it’s to be assumed that Apple product launches have been on the backburner of late as the company has had to deal with the transition to Tim Cook as CEO even as Steve Jobs was living out what Apple appears to now have known were his final days, then the company can be forgiven for serving up the iPhone 4S and very little else this month. But it’s worth pointing out that most Septembers have come with a full revamp of the iPod lineup, and this is the first year in half a decade that hasn’t happened. The iPod touch remains the same product. The iPod classic didn’t go away as a result, with its hundred and something gigabyte hard drive capacity the only reason it’s still on the market. The iPod nano, which was completely revamped last year, didn’t even get Apple’s usual off-year treatment in which the nano has traditionally seen cosmetic hardware changes in the years in which it wasn’t fully revamped. The iPod shuffle now enters its second identical year. Apple TV saw no hardware updates of any kind, a year after having seen its biggest (or smallest, based on physical shrinkage) revision to date. The iPad 3 or iPad 2S, which some expected would be spring in time for Christmas so the iPad could be positioned as a “new” generation heading into the holidays, never got a mention. Now it’s up to the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 to carry Apple’s momentum through at least the next season. And that’s actually a lot…


Siri voice recognition alone will sell a good number of iPhone 4S units, even to those who are upgrading from an identical-looking iPhone 4. Additionally, other iOS 5 features which have been extended to older iPhone models like the 4 and 3GS will run more slowly or a limited fashion on the comparatively outdated hardware, leading some to upgrade to a 4S who were quite adamant that they never would. Early iPhone 4S preorder sales figures point to a multitude of people not needing any convincing before buying. Overall, the iOS 5 feature set arguably brings more new major features and makes more fundamental changes to the iPhone experience than iOS 2 through iOS 4 combined. That makes the iPhone 4S, in a software sense, the biggest upgrade in iPhone history. And that’s a wave Apple will now attempt to ride through at least the end of the holidays, before regrouping in early 2012 with whatever comes next. Here’s more on the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5.