As the tech world ogles at the increases of IBM and Intel, something is happening quietly but swiftly in nearby Cupertino, headquarters of Apple, Inc. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Apple is ramping up a new side to its business—designing its own semiconductor chips

Via LinkedIn and other recruiting efforts, Apple has been hiring semiconductor professionals. By now, they have assembled a team capable of designing, developing, engineering, and producing exclusively Apple chips. Obviously, thousands of applicants have submitted resumes for the jobs. Few have been selected. Apple is targeting high-potential individuals who possess promising futures along with relevant experience in the semiconductor industry.

But why does Apple need proprietary semiconductor chips? Aren’t the ones they have doing just fine? Clearly, as sales would indicate, they are. However, the potential that an Apple-only semiconductor chip could offer seem too good to pass up.

For one, it is suspected that Apple’s new chips will offer new power-saving technology. A power-miser chip combined with an ultra-dense battery life technology will allow users to go for much longer time periods without having to plug in their devices for a charge.

Furthermore, exclusive chips may give Apple hardware the edge to create higher-powered gaming machines—machines that are capable of delivering stunning graphics and ultra-quality video definition.

Another potential upside of a new chip design is handwriting recognition capability (would this confirm rumors of a forthcoming Apple tablet?). Such technology, although it already exists, would fit well into Apple’s model of improving upon already existing technology.

Currently, Apple uses chips from ARM Holdings for many of its devices. Through an acquisition move in 2008, Apple took over P.A. Semi, a chip manufacturer. Apple uses hardware from these firms, but is able to customize it to meet its own purposes. Even though official reports of the new chip may not roll out until early 2010, shareholders saw a $1.24 rise as the rumors spread on Wednesday. 

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Green IT or Green technology has become a fixated area as far as budget focus and being environmentally responsible is concerned. Companies small and large are faced with new angles on how to ‘save the environment’ and cut their own costs. The benefits are sinking into corporate mindsets as IT – the largest technology industry – has been inundated with one IT cost saving solution after another.

It is being exploited globally as solutions for a greener IT emerge from Microsoft, Dell, Cisco, HP and Sun. Though, what does this mean when someone says – embrace Green IT as you will cut costs and see a higher ROI (Return on Investment).

The gains become the focus here and are being recognized and implemented. Corporations are becoming more productive due to increased efficiency. There are obvious cost savings occurring. So in a nutshell, the reason for Green IT being recognized globally is down to the business benefits it seems, rather than a ‘save the planet’ march. ROI means everything to any company. If it’s low, turnover is low and cuts occur. Usually, it’s the staff that suffers when this happens, and right now the recession is causing redundancies worldwide.

The intentions to be environmentally friendly are not as prevalent as ROI gain, just a little lower in the pecking order. Why? Green IT is embarking on a new period of growth. The vendors like Microsoft are all seeing a rise in sales with solutions for IT departments that solve all kinds of issues and at a lower cost. Energy-efficient solutions from the top vendors are saving money for companies. This, in turn, is easing the transition to a more successful annual outlook on turnover versus costs – more profit.

The Green IT solutions thus far include:
· Virtualization - The consumption of space from physical computer hardware is solved by this innovative solution being offered by top IT vendors like Microsoft. The solution reduces the amount of computer hardware resources through abstracting various components in the network. This is achieved by operating a set of systems on one piece of hardware.
· Power usage – Data centers by example are known for high energy costs due to the sheer square foot size of many buildings. This results in an extremely high use of power. Simple changes like turning off systems not needed, idle time usage when a system is not in use and using power management features present on operating systems are helping drive cost cuts and increase energy efficiency.
· Recycling – This focuses on the process of changing the way corporations deal with their day to energy consumption levels through more efficient use of resources and materials.

Green IT Business benefits will continue to keep cost and energy savings optimized as a result of these new and emerging technologies. Virtualization alone enables:
· Energy savings due to reduced wattage throughput on equipment.
· Ease of deployment of systems within an IT network having fewer hardware parts.
Employers are now encouraging their employees to save energy with an emphasis on simply turning off computers to monitoring the number of computers running on IT network architectures. This action promotes awareness and responsibility inside the office environment that is being enforced more and more each year.

So, it means this – Green IT technology results in a higher ROI as it’s simply a huge step in the cost cutting process. The ROI increase as a result of Green IT is something that will literally save crumbling businesses that grasp the huge cost-saving business benefits.

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Unfortunately, it looks like Mac OS X users are going to have to wipe off at least one smug smile of superiority. For some time now, Mac people have touted the vastly increased security that comes from owning a Mac, and this bragging has always been backed up with one vital statistic: there are no major viruses or trojans that affect Mac OS X.

All that now is coming to an end. As has recently been reported all over the Mac blogosphere, a new trojan has created the first-ever Mac botnet, which has been actively working on the internet since infiltrating unsuspecting users computers in January via pirated iWork ‘09 installers leaked to torrent trackers and binary newsgroups.

Have you been infected? The Apple Blog shows how to check, and includes a guide to cleaning the malicious crapware off your system. The article shows a few quick terminal commands for checking if the trojan exists on your system. It also gives a link to a free utility from SecureMac for wiping the trojan away.

Of course, this particular trojan certainly relies on user intervention in order to gain access to a computer. In that regard “iworkserv” demonstrates an old truth of computer security: you can build the most reliable, secure system possible, but that system can still be compromised so long as a malicious application can persuade a user to give up his or her administrator password.

It seems that the promise of quick and free Mac warez, coupled with a false expectation of security, led to this botnet. Paying closer attention to what you download and where it’s from is a good way to maintain good system security. Also, staying away from warez is usually a good idea. So perhaps a lesson to Mac users is: be careful what you download. It’s something that the Windows world has had to live with for a long time.

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Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, is no newcomer to the world of gaming. Yet he does admit that his company, Digital Chocolate, was late to the iPhone game. He recently sat down with Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi, and announced that Nintendo and Sony should be “freaking out” about the iPhone.

Digital Chocolate is no stranger to mobile gaming, with releases for many other cell phones. But it wasn’t until last December that the company began releasing games for iPhone. It’s caught up, though — of the five games released since then, already four have hit number one on the top downloads list.

Hawkins credits Apple with selling more that 30 million units so far and gaining ground in a market — gaming — in which the company has not traditionally fared well. He cites the “genius” of the iPhone in the multi-touch display, which lets players directly manipulate action on the screen. “No one has duplicated it yet.”

Hawkins also notes that the iPhone’s centralized store makes viral, word-of-mouth marketing even more valuable. “You’re not going to tell your friends about a game unless it’s original and high quality.” This is certainly a problem many iPhone app developers have dealt with — with all games displayed in such close proximity to one another, its difficult to differentiate on anything except price.

(Via Kotaku.)

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