Apple Inc. - page 133

If you heard the sound of nails being driven into the PC and Mac coffin Monday, you weren’t imaging things.

Last Thursday we told our Twitter followers we would throw a weeklong giveaway party if we reached 50,000 Twitter followers by the end of the week. Well, our fans heard the call and exceeded our expectations by boosting us up to 53,000! To show our gratitude for our fans we’ll be giving away an awesome iMainGo X (along with some other stuff) every day this week, starting today. Entry into each daily contest will be varied depending on the day, so keep an eye out for the giveaway posts so that you can ensure you win. Here’s how to enter today’s giveaway:

Is your head still spinning from the smackdown of new details Steve Jobs and the Apple crew just slammed you with? Apple’s iCloud page just went live so you can get all the details on the new software that Apple is bringing to you for free later this fall. Of course, Cult of Mac will be posting all new material throughout the day breaking down iCloud and it’s features, so don’t stray too far.

It appears the end of MobileMe is now upon us… or the end of paid subscriptions to MobileMe at least: a number of subscribers to the $99 a year service are reporting that Apple is automatically refunding renewal fees, but why?

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When Steve takes the stage tomorrow morning, it’s pretty much a sure bet that he will use the words, magical, amazing, beautiful, and extraordinary a few dozen times each as he introduces the new iOS 5, iCloud and OS X Lion. We’re sure that iOS 5 is going to be great, but the iOSMagic Team has dreamed up something more amazing than even Steve Jobs can deliver.

Apple has already revealed that Steve Jobs will talk about iCloud, iOS 5 and OS X Lion during his WWDC keynote on Monday morning.

In addition, it’s rumored that Apple’s wireless Time Capsule backup/router will get a big update.

Here’s how iCloud and the new Time Capsule will work, according to a source close to the company who asked not be identified. It’s pretty surprising:

When Apple reveals iCloud at WWDC on Monday, it’ll have the kind of impact the iPod has had, predicts Kevin Fox, a Silicon Valley software veteran who’s worked at Apple, Yahoo and Google.

“The rumblings are huge,” says Fox, lead designer at Mozilla. Fox worked on Newton software before designing Yahoo’s chat service and then software for Google (including Gmail 1.0, Google Calendar 1.0, and Google Reader 2.0). He continues:

… given the complete failure of MobileMe over the last decade there’s no way Apple would introduce [iCloud] on such a pedestal unless it’s incredible. My guess is that iCloud is to MobileMe as iPhone was to Newton: a complete, deep, polished solution after an underwhelming market failure.

Apple Stock Chart by YCharts

At the close of markets on Friday, Apple had a bigger market cap than Microsoft and Intel combined — the so-called Wintel alliance that almost buried Apple a decade ago.

Here’s how much Apple, Microsoft and Intel were worth on Wall Street at the end of the week:

One of these iPhone 4s is the real thing. The other’s a fake so good that it’s actually compatible with Apple’s own 30 pin iPhone connector, as well as its headsets. Are you savvy enough to spot the fake?

With another WWDC looming on the horizon and Apple taking the unusual step of pre-announcing things like Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud, speculation turns towards what we haven’t been told. At many Apple events the most exciting announcement is often that feigned afterthought… just One More Thing.

This year, the One More Thing is rumored to be the iPhone 4S, despite the fact that Apple has set the expectation that WWDC will be all about software, not hardware.

We’re skeptical, but to keep you busy speculating over the weekend, we’ve updated Cult of Mac’s “Just One More Thing” interactive timeline to relive the excitement of the last thirteen years of Apple annoucements.

How much money did it take Apple to grease the palms of the record industry and get iCloud off the ground? Compared to the billions Apple has in the bank, Cupertino managed to convince the labels to sign onto their music streaming service by just throwing the spare change they had rattling around in their pockets at them.

Although iCloud has yet to be released, analysts are already saying that it could put the final nail in Blackberry’s coffin, eliminating the last advantage RIM has over Apple in the smartphone market: the BlackBerry Push Service.

Evidence is mounting that when iOS 5 debuts at WWDC next week, it’ll feature some deep integration with microblogging service Twitter. Not only has Twitter launched a new photo sharing service just days before Apple is expected to unveil the ability to share photos via Twitter in iOS, but now blogger and tech evangelist Robert Scoble is saying that “next week will be a huge week for those of us who have lived on Twitter for the last few years.”

We have word from a trusted source that Apple is indeed adding location and travel information to iCal alarms.

Got a flight to catch? iCal takes note of your location, combines that with the route to the airport and says, “You’ve gotta leave in ten minutes if you wanna be there in time.”

With the last remaining label having just inked a deal with Apple to launch iCloud, music industry insiders are now talking to the press about what they know about Cupertino’s upcoming music streaming service. Specifically, they’re answering the question everyone’s been asking all along: how much will iCloud’s music streaming cost?

The last major music label has finally been wooed by Apple, just in time for Steve Jobs to present iCloud at Monday’s WWDC.

When it comes to mobile, Microsoft has been caught with its pants down twice in the last four years.

The first time was when the original iPhone completely turned the smartphone industry upside down overnight back in 2007. Microsoft was so slow to respond that by the time they released their first true touch-based operating system, Windows Phone 7, in November of last year, they had gone from a dominant player in the smartphone market to losing almost all of their market share.

Before Microsoft could even get Windows Phone 7 out the door, though, it happened again. Apple released the iPad in 2010, and this time, iOS didn’t just revolutionize smartphones… it attacked the very foundations of Microsoft’s Windows empire itself, cannibalizing laptop sales and utterly destroying the netbook market.

After almost a decade of turning a blind eye to speculators squatting on domain names prominently featuring Apple’s trademarks, Cupertino is finally trying to take back iPods.com. Once it has the domain, though, what does Apple plan to do with it?

In the bizzaro land of both tech marketing and Wall Street analysis, reality can sometimes become twisted. For example, despite the long struggle to get Verizon onboard, one observer suggests Apple could leave them behind in the dust with the next iPhone by launching with 4G support on AT&T’s network only.

Making rumors that Apple would be integrating Twitter support directly into iOS’s photo sharing functionality just a little more likely, Twitter has just announced that they are baking native photo sharing into the microblogging service. Is this just the laying of groundwork for a more unified iOS/Twitter experience?

While tablets might be a revolution for everyone else, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings thinks they’re a bore. Where it’s really at? The Apple TV.

Here’s an added incentive to upgrade to Apple’s soon-to-be-released Mac OS X ‘Lion’: free iCloud services.

PC executives have seen their profits and marketshare so decimated by iPad that they now having to make the ultimate sacrifice: slightly smaller bonuses.

Apple has begun certifying components from several Taiwan-based manufacturers for its upcoming iPad 3, but could the device be launching in 2011?

Wrapping up his D9 interview, Google’s Eric Schmidt had one last piece of advice for anyone worried about online security: