Hardware

Oracle has released its Big Data Appliance, which it announced last year at Oracle OpenWorld. With no release date promised, the industry was surprised by its relative speed to market. Less surprising was Oracle's enlistment of Cloudera -- the leading provider of Hadoop system management tools -- to provide an Apache Hadoop distribution and tools for the appliance.

During Apple's media announcement last week, CEO Steve Jobs said two critically important things about Apple TV, the first of which was this: Apple TV owners love their Apple TVs. "They absolutely love them -- and use them a lot," he stressed. I'm one of these Apple TV lovers, and I have been for the last three-plus years. My old 40 GB Apple TV is simple, elegant and just works.

During Apple's media announcement last week, CEO Steve Jobs said two critically important things about Apple TV, the first of which was this: Apple TV owners love their Apple TVs. "They absolutely love them -- and use them a lot," he stressed. I'm one of these Apple TV lovers, and I have been for the last three-plus years. My old 40 GB Apple TV is simple, elegant and just works.

Apple on Wednesday made a host of announcements focused around music and entertainment. These included a revamped version of its Apple TV device, iTunes 10, a refreshed iPod family and new versions of its iOS mobile operating system. Overall, the announcements came as relatively little surprise, as most major points conformed with speculation and rumors that had arisen on the Web over the past few weeks.