Consortium Acquires Nortel Patent Portfolio

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Reuters reports a consortium which includes Apple, EMC Corporation, Ericsson, and Blackberry Maker Research In Motion have acquired Nortel Network Corp’s remaining patent portfolio for $4.5 billion. Microsoft and Sony were also a part of this consortium.

Consortium Acquires Nortel Patent Portfolio

This comes after the company filed for protection from creditors in January 2009 and then in June of the same year, announced it would cease operations and sell of all of its business units.

Pending a joint hearing to be held on July 11, the companies will have access to more than 6,000 patents and patent applications in the wireless, data networking, optical, voice, internet service provider, and semiconductors fields.

Gmail’s New, Cleaner Interface

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Google has been rolling out interface updates to many of their core products, including Search, Maps, and now through Gmail. These changes are a part of a project to bring users an improved experience through a focus on the main features and across all devices. Plus, the new interfaces utilize HTML5, WebGL and the latest browser features.

Gmail's New Interface

You may not see these changes all at once, however, as they are being rolled out over several months. It is likely that Google Reader and Google Calendar will see a similar re-design in the near future to improve consistency across all the main services.

You can preview these features today through Gmail in the Themes Tab. Further improvements will be made to the interface as feedback is received. For more details, see The Official Gmail Blog.

Promise Releases Thunderbolt RAID Storage, Macworld Tests

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Promise Technology has released two new products which utilize the Thunderbolt high-speed interface found on MacBook Pros and iMacs. The four-drive model (Pegasus R4) and the six-drive model (Pegasus R6), each with 4TB and 12TB, respectively, are priced at $999 and $2000. This means Thunderbolt (along with the required cable for $50) are out of the reach of most consumers until single drives are released and within the price of USB 3.0 and FireWire 800 drives.

Thunderbolt Devices

Testing by Macworld has found the 644MBps write score 11.5 times faster than FireWire 800. Read speeds came in at 566MBps. Using the Pegagsus R6, copying a 2GB file from the internal hard drive to the RAID was 30 percent faster and twice as fast for writing back to the internal drive, compared to FireWire 800.

With a theoretical bandwidth of 10Gb/s or 1.25GB/s, Thunderbolt will be able to take advantage of modern SSDs for use as extremely fast external drives. In the case of the MacBook Pro and iMac, everyone from film editors to graphic artists utilizing animation will no longer be limited by the speed of internal drives or limited drive access.

Apple to Update Several Popular Models in Upcoming Months

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Multiple sources indicate that Apple will be refreshing a number of their popular notebook and lower-priced models in the upcoming month or so. Many retailers, from Amazon to J&R are out of stock of their MacBook, while stocks of both Mac minis and MacBook Airs are also suffering shortages.

MacBook Refresh

Apple last updated the MacBook Air in October 2010, the MacBook in May 2010 and the Mac mini in June 2010. It is likely that Apple is waiting for Lion to ship (sometime in July) before they launch new products.

It is expected that the new models will bring Thunderbolt and Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors, while the portable models bring higher-resolution FaceTime cameras and perhaps longer battery life.

There have also been rumors that an updated Mac Pro will be released, although at this point, the update will be considered minor unless a redesign occurs. 337 days have passed since last updated, representing the third-longest time between refreshes.