If you need more convincing before ditching your BlackBerry, Apple just posted a new page on its website that highlights the iPhone’s use in the enterprise market. The info-packed page shows how the iPhone is used in the business setting to organize days, manage projects, setup meetings, read mail, set calendar appointments, keep contacts organized, and more. In typical advertising fashion, Apple highlighted specific apps on the App Store like “MicroStrategy,” “OmniFocus” for iPhone, “GoToMeeting,” “TripIt,” and much more.

Over the last year, Apple made a dent in the enterprise market—a place formerly dominated by Microsoft and RIM. Apple has continued to offer better working tools than the competitors do. For example, Apple’s new iMessage provides BBM-like messaging, which is a service highly adored on the BlackBerry. However, the iPhone’s ease of use is starting to make it a No. 1 choice for IT departments.

Apple also provides a page showing the businesses that have chosen to use the iPhone. Lowes, for example, opted to use the iPhone for its payment service, as we exclusively told you last year. World Wide technology, GE, Gap Adventures and more are also highlighted on the page.

At the end of the day, I think more and more businesses are starting to realize where they need to put their money. Apple’s new page should help IT heads to choose the products from Cupertino, rather than the plastic phones from up north.

Apple television mockup by 9to5Mac.

“It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.” These are the exact words of Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs, as revealed in the just released authorized biography by Walter Isaacson. In his own admission prior to his death earlier this month, Jobs was working on “an integrated television set that is completely easy to use”, a solution which would be “seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud”. The quote served as the basis for Piper Jaffray’s resident Apple analyst Gene Munster, the most outspoken proponent of an Apple-branded television set. Munster wrote in a note to clients that Apple is already building prototype TV sets, according to a Fortune blog post:

A significant hurdle to a full-fledged Apple (AAPL) television set (as opposed to the Apple TV set-top box), Munster writes, is combining live television with shows previously captured on iCloud. “Perhaps this code is precisely what Jobs believed he has ‘cracked,’” Munter suggests, adding that Apple could use the new Siri voice activated system “to bolster its TV offering and simplify the chore of inputting information like show titles, or actor names, into a TV.”

If it eventually becomes a reality, the analyst speculates, the rumored product could cost up to $2,000, which is at least double the asking price for a typical 40-inch television product. In addition, Apple’s will likely require users to sign up for an iTunes TV Pass subscription service in order to enjoy bulk television programming, costing anywhere between $50 and $90 a month. It’s unclear whether the strategy stands a chance at a time when Internet providers are capping bandwidth. All told, the Apple television sounds like a pricey proposition…

Meanwhile, premium TV brands are working their way down to the sub-$1,000 mark, but that really hasn’t stopped Apple from succeeding in the past. Its iPhone wasn’t (and still is not) the cheapest smartphone on the market. The entry point for iPad is still set at $499 even with the growing number of competitors undercutting Apple’s gizmo, most notably Amazon with its $199 Kindle Fire seven-inch tablet. As a result, iPad’s market share fell to 68 percent in the third quarter.

Why would you want to pay more for a big screen television set with the shining Apple logo? Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White told BGR that Apple’s television product could delight with “unmatched aesthetics and an unrivaled user experience” stemming from tight integration with Apple’s ecosystem, namely iTunes and iCloud. White added:

In our view, features such as Siri, FaceTime, the App Store, iTunes and gaming are a natural fit for a full blown Apple TV, combined with potential new features and technologies in the future.

If enough early adopters take the plunge, Munster estimates the Apple TV project could add $2.5 billion annually to the company’s fortunes in 2012, or two percent of the company’s projected revenue in the calendar year 2012. The estimate is based on assumed sales of 1.2 million Apple television units in the flat panel TV market estimated at 220 million shipments in 2012. Taiwan-based Topology Research Institute projected (subscription required) that global shipments of Smart TV sets, which are based on the Intel Atom platform, will rise to 25.18 million units in 2011 from 7.04 million units in 2010. The platform is said to account for 10.4 percent of the overall TV market in 2011.

The market for flat panel LCD TVs plummeted in the first half of this year due to economic uncertainties causing buyers to postpone purchasing decisions. DisplaySearch values the LCD TV market at about $100 billion this year and $102 billion in 2012. Let’s not forget Google which is rolling out scheduled YouTube channels next year and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bolster premium content as they gear up to roll out an improved Google TV software to the makers of set-top boxes. Additionally, Google-owned Motorola Mobility is a major maker of standalone set-top boxes, presenting Google with an opportunity to more easily penetrate the highly fragmented television market still lacking a clear leader in sight, prompting Steve Jobs in 2009 to characterize it as being “balkanized”.

Related articles

• Jobs told biographer that he cracked the code to building an HDTV (9to5mac.com)

Keeping with its tradition of naming each version of Mac OS with a feline name, Apple chose Lion for Mac OS X 10.7. Unfortunately the company may have to change that.

A similar problem occurred with Mac OS 10.2, which was to be named Puma. Ford was then selling a car bearing that name and had threatened Apple to bring the matter before a court. Apple had then called the OS just by its number.

This time, the owners of the Zatfisher zoo next to Słupsk, a town in Poland have brought a complaint against Apple before a court, as they already have a website and an application under development bearing the same name, symbol of that zoo which houses 45 lions, a world record.
The owners have obtained an injunction enforceable in the entire European Union (27 States, including important markets for Apple), preventing Apple from using the name “Lion” for the advertising of the new OS. The case will be examined in details in a few months but until then, Apple will not be able to refer to its new OS as “Lion”, at least inside the European Union.
It nevertheless seems ridiculous that these zoo owners were able to demonstrate that Apple’s branding of an OS could harm them. On a side note and quite amusingly, the owner of the zoo declared in an interview : “I am not anti-Apple, I have an iPod, but the earbuds are broken”.

Le Figaro reports that renowned designer Philippe Starck is working with Apple on a “revolutionary” product due in eight months.

French designer Philippe Starck announced today on France Info that it is working with the U.S. computer group Apple in a project “revolutionary” that would emerge in eight months. “Indeed, there is a big project together which will be out in eight months,” said the designer in the show “Everything and its opposite.” Invoking the “religious cult of secrecy” of the California firm, he declined further detail, except to talk about a project “quite revolutionary (…) if not very”.

Interestingly, Stark reveals that he had a close collaborative relationship with Apple’s former Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs with whom he met on a monthly basis for seven years.

Philippe Starck, who has revamped hotels, restaurants, toothbrushes or even the last Parisian Navigo travel card, has revealed that he regularly met in California Steve Jobs, Apple’s legendary founder who died last October. “For seven years I came to see him once a month in Palo Alto and elsewhere I go Monday, because even though he is dead, now I will see his wife. We liked to talk all things interesting, “he said.

While this is beyond tantalizing, much can be lost in translation here. Starck already sells products in the Apple Store, and we could be talking about an iPod dock or iPad case or something less exciting than an Apple HDTV or new camera.

Update: More lost in translation/buzzkill: Remember Philippe Starck was working with Steve Jobs on his boat and that would explain the monthly meetings that are ongoing with his wife.  The 75 meter yacht is due in the same 2012-2013 timeframe. It isn’t clear if this is the revolutionary product he was speaking of.

Update 2: Apple says WTF: Reached for comment, an Apple spokeswoman said the company is not working on a new product with Starck and declined to speculate about what the designer might have been referring to when he told France Info Radio that he and Apple “have a big project together that will be out in eight months.”

As promised, Apple just released a fix to remove the Flashback malware that is reportedly affecting1 percent of all Macs.

This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware.

This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets.

This update is recommended for all Mac users with Java installed.

For details about this update see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5242

Go fire up Software Update and grab this 66.8MB update now.

Today, Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for Office for Mac 2011, which features many bug fixes and a couple of new features.

We appreciated your feedback! As the newest member of the Office for Mac family, Outlook 2011 continues to get the most requests from consumers and businesses alike; therefore, our top priority for this release was Outlook, and this service pack resolves many of the most common requests. The more notable Outlook enhancements include:
• Sync performance with Exchange server,
• Performance improvements while deleting multiple items,
• Displaying email message content, and sending email.

Outlook performance is also improved in IMAP account sync and the database rebuild utility. New capabilities include:
• Scheduling resources in the calendar,
• Distribution list expansion,
• Day number display in the calendar.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have improved performance with additional modest improvements. For example, we updated PowerPoint to take advantage of full screen view in Lion, and we improved grammar checkers for Italian and German languages. We also made it easier to work with Office documents on SkyDrive and addressed several smaller issues in response to your feedback.

You can grab the update from Microsoft on its website or through Office’s built-in updater.

The FAA is finally making things official for iPad use in cockpits, with the first round of pilots from American Airlines set to take Apple’s tablet into the skies this Friday. We told you in July that the FAA had approved the iPad as a replacement to traditional flight bags for a handful of airlines, but now a report from ZDNet claims American Airlines will be the first to get official authorization for all pilots during all phases of flight.

On Friday, American Airlines is the first airline in the world to be fully FAA approved to use iPads during all phases of flight. Pilots will use iPads as electronic chart and digital flight manual readers. The airline will begin iPad operations on B-777 aircraft, and then implement across all other fleets. By using electronic charts and manuals, the safety and efficiency on the flight deck is significantly enhanced. 

It isn’t just the iPad 2, but the original iPad as well that has been approved and other airlines including UPS, Alaska, and United are reportedly in the process of considering the device as well. The decision to authorize the iPad on American Airlines follows an extensive 6 month trial run with the device.

The iPad-based flight bags will allow pilots to shed approximately 35 pounds of weight from the traditional, physical flight bag consisting of manuals and other emergency documentation. According to Seattle Pi, that will also account for around $1.2 million in fuel savings per year. This is what First Officer Hank Putek of the APA Safety Committee had to say about the new iPad flight bags:

By eliminating bulky flight bags filled with paper, (electronic flight bags) mean less weight for pilots to carry, reducing the possibility of injury on duty. In addition, they enable pilots to immediately download updates, rather than waiting for paper versions of required documents to be printed and distributed.

At the beginning of last year, Kodak filed a suit against Apple and RIM for the alleged infringement of one their patents regarding the preview of images.
A judge of the International Trade Commission issued a negative recommendation about Kodak’s claim.
This recommendation is not the final verdict, but things are not looking so good for Kodak in this procedure.
If Kodak was to lose its claim, it would still have to face the retaliation claim that Apple filed against them, also over patent infringement. 

In a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek Chief Executive Officer of Google Larry Page talked at length about his new role as CEO and his plans for the future of Android, Motorola, and the rest of the company. Much the interview revolved around Android and Google’s relationship with other companies, and towards the end Page was asked about his relationship with Steve Jobs. He was also asked about the state of Android tablets and his thoughts on Apple’s recently announced dividend.

When the interviewer mentioned Google and Jobs had their “differences” regarding Android, presumably referring to Steve Jobs’ claims that Android is a “stolen product”, Page claimed Jobs’ anger towards Android and Google was “actually for show”:

I think the Android differences were actually for show. I had a relationship with Steve. I wouldn’t say I spent a lot of time with him over the years, but I saw him periodically. Curiously enough, actually, he requested that meeting. He sent me an e-mail and said: “Hey, you want to get together and chat?” I said, “Sure, I’ll come over.” And we had a very nice talk. We always did when we had a discussion generally… He was quite sick. I took it as an honor that he wanted to spend some time with me. I figured he wanted to spend time with his family at that point. He had a lot of interesting insights about how to run a company and that was pretty much what we discussed.

He continued when asked to elaborate on his “for show” comment:

I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.

Page’s comments are referring to Steve Jobs’ comments originally documented in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography where the Apple CEO claimed he’d spend his last dying breath and “every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank” to destroy Android. Jobs claimed Google was “using our ideas in Android”. If you believe Page, the whole thing was simply to rally the troops at Apple. Despite Page’s view of the situation, Apple is clearly still willing to spend its money on lawyers to fight Android vendors in courts across the globe. However, recent reports suggested Apple is interested in settling for as much as a $15 royalty per Android device with some of its competitors.

As for if Apple’s new dividend and share repurchase program has inspired Page to rethink his strategy:

I think Apple has more cash than we do— 

Cross-posted on 9to5Google.com