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TheAppleBlog
TheAppleBlog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
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Apple Disputes Woolworth's New Logo In Australia

Here in Australia, the supermarket chain Woolworths has been freshening its look (and rebranding in some states from Safeway to Woolworths) over the last year, which includes a nice modern looking new logo. This new logo, which Woolworth have stated is a stylised “W” was submitted to IP Australia (the Australian Agency who looks after trademarks) for trademark registration in August last year. Apple has now objected to this trademark application.

On the face of it, this seems silly, but from a distance the two logo shapes are not dissimilar and Apple is not being ridiculous in this situation. While Woolworths has traditionally been a grocery supermarket chain (the largest in Australia and New Zealand), it is constantly expanding its range and increasingly selling and advertising electronic goods.

While it’s unlikely to start selling fully fledged computers in the near future, it already sells mobile phone packages & cards. Its not hard to imagine them selling small digital music players or smartphones. This is likely to bring them into a similar product space as Apple and thus it brings the situation into trademark territory. The sticking point is that Woolworth’s trademark application attempts to broadly mark any product Woolworth wants to sell in the future — which could be anything.

Its important to note that at this stage Apple has not taken any legal action. It is simply disputing Woolworth’s trademark application, which is a normal and necessary procedure within Australia’s trademark laws. Unlike copyright laws, to keep a trademark a company must make all efforts to pro-actively protect it. If a company does not protect its trademark and a likeness is then used by someone else for a long enough time, it is likely to lose it completely. Even if IP Australia ignores Apple’s dispute, Apple is now on record for protecting its trademark.

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Apple to Open New Retail Store in Paris

According to reports today on ifoAppleStore and French mac site MacPlus, Paris is getting a new Apple retail store before the end of the year.

The Carousel du Louvre retail store has been adorned with banner graphics depicting the iconic colours and white click-wheel design of the iPod Nano. The largest of the banners reads “Apple Store Carousel du Louvre. Bientôt.” (For those of us who don’t speak French, “Bientôt” means “shortly” or “in the near future”.)

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that the graphic resembles the famous La Pyramide Inversée (The Inverted Pyramid), a giant skylight in the shopping mall at the Louvre Museum. ifoAppleStore cites “a tipster” who said that in 2007, Steve Jobs himself said a store would open in Paris that same year.

OK, so, maybe it’s a little late. But combined with the Windows 7 Café, this does – finally – give me a good reason to visit Paris.

Photo courtesy of MacPlus

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Around the Forums: October 5, 2009
Here are a few threads worth checking out today in TheAppleBlog Forums. Check them out and get involved with other Apple community members!
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BumpTop for Mac is Now in Alpha

Just as BumpTop 3D is coming into its own on the Windows platform (Multi-Touch support in 7), a private Mac alpha is being circulated. It’s in Alpha for a reason too, because in its current state, it does little more than look like its Windows counterpart. But the BumpTop Mac team is looking for input and feedback as they build it out, which is where those with an Alpha version come into play.

Immediately after downloading and installing the BumpTop Alpha, I was terribly underwhelmed. Despite the Alpha team’s email-based warning, I was expecting something akin to what I’ve seen on the Windows side of the fence. But as I’ve considered the situation, I’m taking the optimistic approach.

The fact that the Mac Alpha is so bare bones leads me to the conclusion that it wasn’t simply ported over from the Windows incarnation, but rather, is being crafted from the ground up, for the OS X platform. I assume that the developers recognize the unique differences in the operating systems, and plan to build it to the strengths that Apple’s OS offers. I’m hopeful that the BumpTop Mac development team will be responsive to user input, because I’m certain there are a lot of great ideas out there for such a bit of software — especially on a possible future Mac Tablet/touch device…

If you’ve got some ideas of your own for how BumpTop for Mac could really shine, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments. I’ll of course pass them along to the Dev Team as well — who knows, maybe we’ll see some of your ideas implemented in the not too distant future.

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