Electronic Equipment

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

Apple began its new era with a creation unlike anything it had produced in years: disappointment. Instead of a major new product, the electronics giant unveiled an updated version of the iPhone 4 that it released 16 months ago. Even the name, iPhone 4S, resembled the old phone. Most observers had expected that in the company's first unveiling without co-founder Steve Jobs, Apple would try to show it was still capable of wowing crowds with stunning new devices. Immediately after the company showed off its updated smartphone, shares of Apple plunged nearly 5%. Though they largely recovered by the time the market closed, investors agreed that Tuesday's unveiling was not Apple's best performance.

Amazon.com Inc. on Monday unveiled its second-generation electronic reader, a slimmer and faster version of the Kindle device it introduced 14 months ago with promises to revolutionize the way people read books. The average American hasn't come close to abandoning the printed page yet. Electronic books generate less than 1% of the $25-billion U.S. book publishing market. But they're a fast-growing segment of an otherwise stagnant industry.

When Apple's iPad debuted on April 3, it was greeted in some quarters of the tech world by a chorus of critiques. With no phone, no camera and no multitasking, how could it be revolutionary? And yet, when it comes to the iPad's e-reader, revolutionary is exactly what it might be. It's not just that the iPad is beautiful. Nor is it just that the touch-screen interface is more intuitive than the controls on the plastic shell of the Kindle -- which up to now has been the dominant e-reader.

Christmas came early to Denker Park Recreation Center in South-Central Los Angeles on Thursday when it received donated electronic equipment. Union Bank of California and the nonprofit community organization Operation HOPE were behind the $4,000 donation, which included two new television sets, two videotape players, a fax machine and a stove.

Electronic equipment cabinetry maker Everest Electronic Equipment has signed an agreement to be acquired by Applied Power Inc. The Milwaukee-based company said it will pay $52 million cash for Everest, which will remain in Orange County under its present management, headed by President Terry Wells. The acquisition is expected to close by early October.

Two men took a semi-trailer truck filled with electronic equipment Thursday morning after overpowering a security guard behind a Radio Shack store. Police Lt. Scott Hamilton said the guard was confronted about 2 a.m. by a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a semiautomatic handgun at the store at 12821 Knott St. The gunman and an accomplice made off with $67,000 worth of equipment, Hamilton said. No one was injured.

A scientific satellite to be launched next year will carry electronic circuits made from high-temperature superconductors for the first tests of the materials in space, researchers said Monday at a meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.

Declaring Mother Nature a far tougher foe than Saddam Hussein, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps toured this flood-ravaged base Thursday and estimated that damage will total millions of dollars. "We probably have more damage here as a result of the flood than we did during Desert Storm," said Gen. Walter E. Boomer, a Persian Gulf War commander. Boomer said 70 aircraft and other electronic equipment suffered flood damage, as well as two bridges over the Santa Margarita River.

RCA Corp. was awarded a $14.4-million Army contract for classified electronic equipment.

Amid an atmosphere of carefully cultivated euphoria, Apple fans across the country waited in lines Saturday morning, excited to get their hands on the first of Apple Inc.'s new iPad tablet computers. "It's a new member of the family," said Pat Fallis, a Burbank producer who, along with his wife and a friend, had been waiting at the Grove in Los Angeles since 2 a.m. When Fallis was finally allowed into the store, blue-shirted Apple employees greeted him and other customers as though they were football players taking the field at the Super Bowl, with choreographed whoops, applause and high-fives.

When Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs showed off the new iPad -- complete with built-in bookstore -- on Wednesday he praised Amazon.com Inc. for pioneering the electronic book business with its popular Kindle reading device. But moments later, the compliment took on an ominous tone when Jobs added, "We're going to stand on their shoulders and go a little further." At first glance, the multimedia iPad -- with its fast, colorful touch screen and built-in Web browser and video player -- would seem to outshine the slower Amazon device.

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs sat in a leather chair onstage with all the tech world watching Wednesday as he showed off his much-anticipated and talked-about design marvel. He was placing a risky bet that the company could again change the world of entertainment, but this time adding books. Jobs, clad in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, called the device "magical" and "revolutionary." He demonstrated the 1.5-pound tablet-style computer, called the iPad, that will let users download and read books, surf the Web, check e-mail, play games, and watch movies and TV shows.

Only Steve Jobs could make anticlimax seem so fascinating. After the Apple CEO unveiled his company's most fervently anticipated new product at an invitation-only media event Wednesday, most of the anticipation was left in the bottle. Despite months of hype heralding an entirely novel kind of electronic device, the reality was underwhelming. The iPad resembles a scaled-up iPhone -- without the phone. It's an iPod too big to fit in your pocket yet too small in capacity to hold your entire music collection, with a Web browser featuring excellent graphics but tied to a data network (AT&T's)

Neurosurgeon Michael Oh was watching his daughter deftly use her iPod Touch when he had an epiphany. "I figured if she can learn it so intuitively, that neurosurgeons would be able to figure it out," Oh said. He'll find out when 3,500 neurosurgeons meet in Philadelphia in May for what Oh believes might be the nation's first paperless medical convention. When attendees register at the American Assn. of Neurological Surgeons meeting, the doctors will be given Apple Inc. iPod Touches already loaded with just about everything they'll need, including the convention program (165 pages last year)

With anticipation of the new Apple Inc. tablet computer -- or whatever it is -- at a fever pitch, every tiny thing the company does is noted, analyzed and discussed with an intensity the CIA might envy. Take the abstract, paint-splatter design on the news conference invitations that went out Monday for the Jan. 27 introduction of the mystery product. The Mac faithful immediately started posting their ideas on the Appleinsider Internet forum about what the design, with the famed bite-out-of-the-apple logo in the center, could mean.

Eight iPhone owners have joined an elite clan: Their gadget is running a program that cost nearly $1,000. When the iPhone first hit the market in June 2007, those who paid the $499 entry price -- and signed the two-year AT&T contract -- owned a status symbol. A year later, we have the iPhone 3G, Apple Inc.'s speedier, sleeker and, most important, less expensive smart phone, which introduced a section for downloading third-party applications.

Northrop Corp. in Hawthorne won a $665,094 contract from the Army to supply electrical and electronic equipment components.

Three universities testing Amazon's Kindle in the classroom have agreed to shelve the electronic book readers until they are fully functional for blind students, under a deal struck Wednesday with the Justice Department. The legal settlements were made with Pace University in New York, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and Reed College in Portland, Ore. Two organizations representing the blind had sued after universities announced a pilot program to use the Kindle in classrooms.

The giants of the electronics industry made the big splashes at the Consumer Electronics Show, as usual, with towering displays, celebrity spokespeople (Taylor Swift sang for Sony, live and in 3-D) and invitation-only soirees. On the far opposite end of the scale were boutique or just plain small companies, a few of which were even of the mom-and-pop variety. Sometimes, that's where the fun stuff resided at CES, with products that varied from highly inventive to downright wacky.