A new licence will be established by mid-2009 as a "one-stop shop" for device makers. The licence will include all necessary Blu-ray, DVD and CD patents for selling Blu-ray players. The licensing programme will be handled by a new licensing company to be led by Gerald Rosenthal, former head of intellectual property at IBM. It will be based in the US, but will have local branches in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
The new streamlined process will reportedly cut the total cost of royalty payments by 40 percent. Apple's Steve Jobs specifically cited complicated licensing issues as one of the hurdles to adopting Blu-Ray in Apple's own computers.
Of interest, Apple's recent inclusion of HDCP copy protection in their newest laptops could also help pave the way for support of the HD disc format.
Apple has yet to reveal when the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Ultra will be announced and released, but the dates usually follow a familiar pattern.
As usual, the event is expected to take place in the first half of September.
Labor Day falls on September 7 this year. The last time the holiday was on that day was in 2020, but the iPhone event that year was delayed until October due to the...
Apple is working on camera-equipped AirPods that appear to be nearly ready to launch, based on a video MacRumors found in the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate.
In a short demo, a man holds a book up so the camera in the AirPods can see the title. "With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later," says the voiceover text.
Here ...
Tuesday August 18, 2026 9:14 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple in April announced that Tim Cook will be stepping down as CEO at the end of this month, after 15 years of leading the company.
Cook has been Apple's CEO since 2011
Effective September 1, Apple's hardware engineering chief John Ternus will become the company's next CEO, while Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board of directors. In his new role, Apple said Cook will assist...
Apple's first foldable iPhone, with a book-style design featuring a ~5.5-inch outer display and a ~7.8-inch inner display with a minimal crease down the middle.
