Rumors and Horrors! Minipalm, Apple CPU, Kindle price hike

• Palm is rumored to have a mini-Pre in development for release later this year. [TechCrunch]

• Apple is to start designing its own chips, just for iPhones and iPods. [WSJ]

• Amazon is to charge 15 cents per megabyte, rounded up to the next whole megabyte, when you transfer documents wirelessly to your Kindle. [Amazon]

• Verizon says Cablevision’s 101Mbps option is a “trick” which will fail if more than a handful of customers in any given neighborhood try to get it. [DSL Reports]

• Prophecy of the day: Google Android will cause the netbook market to splinter. [MIT Technology Review]

1. [Bloodboiler]

   Paying for uploading your own documents into already insanely overpriced gadget?

   How much is Amazon paying bloggers not to loath and make fun of Kindle?

2. [PaulR]

   Bloodboiler, the Kindle is underpriced, if you ask me.

   The business model for the Kindle is based on (relatively) cheap hardware, recouping profits from the reading material. Like the XBox’s model.

3. [dculberson]

   Bloodboiler, you don’t have to upload the stuff wirelessly. You can connect it via USB to your computer and that’s free.

   Also, “insanely overpriced” is completely relative. Name one comparable unit that’s significantly cheaper. The Sony Reader 700 is about the same price and doesn’t have the wireless radio.

4. [zuzu]

   In this case, reality is on the side of Verizon’s PR:

   Verizon’s fiber-to-the-home network has a capacity to deliver 400 Mbps to a single home, and we’ve had a 50 Mbps service available across the FiOS network for a year. Verizon’s fiber optic network has the muscle to carry the load – 2.4 Gbps downstream dedicated to no more than 32 customers.

   Don’t forget about the burgeoning need for upstream capacity. Cablevision is promising 15 Mbps upstream. Verizon already offers up to 20 Mbps upstream to all FiOS Internet markets. And our fiber has plenty of room for more.

   Cross-network speeds will increase and demands from users at home will escalate as new applications are developed for services like video, but also for services that don’t exist today.

   Competition is a key innovation driver, so in that sense FiOS along with CVC’s product and the ultra-high-speed services of others, have the potential to spur the entire industry to breed new ideas at all levels…applications, content, information as well as transport. And, of course, Verizon intends to keep our FiOS products fresh, strong and market-leading.

   p.s. Did you know that the [blockquote] tag has a cite=”" attribute (for URLs)? Death to JavaScript; long live XHTML!