Leander Kahney - page 57

Steve just introduced iTunes 9. Available today as a free download, the new version adds:

* iTunes LP — includes videos, lyrics, liner notes, credits, chronologies and other digital content. Tries to recreate the LPs of Steve’s youth. The images are big and colorful, and its interactive. “The photos are amazing.” Thsi doesn;t sound like the rumored “Cocktail” project, which has been tied to the tablet, and is therefore probably a multitouch app. But perhaps iTunes LP is a precursor.

* Home sharing — iTunes lets you copy songs, movies and TV shows among the five authorized computers in your house. Automatically transfers new purchases between computers. This is a nice change. Media management between computers at home is a huge pain, and one of the reasons consumers download pirate content, because there are no DRM headaches. This should make sharing a lot easier.

* Better Syncing — Set up and manage your iPhone/touch Home Screen within iTunes. You manage what Apps go where via drag and drop. Another welcome change. Should make App management a lot easier.

* Redesigned Store — “Cleaner,” says Steve. Bigger images, lots more song previews. You no longer have to drill down to hear a song preview. Store can go full screen, dispensing with the sidebar. “Looking good,” says Gdgt.

* Genius mixes — auto DJ that mixes songs from your iTunes library that it thinks will go well together. iTunes will make 12 by default. Click one, and it’ll play indefinitely.

* Social software — publish items in iTunes to Facebook and Twitter, or send them as gifts.

Steve Jobs has just taken the stage and is getting a long standing ovation. “I’m vertical, back at Apple, loving every day of it,” he said.

“I’m very happy to be here with you all. As some of you might know, I had a liver transplant,” he told reporters and Apple staffers gather at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

His voice is very soft.

He said he now has the liver of a 20 year old who died in a car crash, and he thanks him for his generosity, says Gizmodo.

“I’d like to thank everyone in the Apple community for the heartfelt support — it meant a lot. I’d also like to thank Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple team, they really rose to the occasion.”

There’s a silver Aston Martin Vantage parked around the corner from Apple’s “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it” event, which is about to kick off.

It’s in a spot where Steve Jobs has parked his Mercedes in the past, just to the side of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. There are several spots cordoned off with traffic cones, watched over by a guard with an Apple-logo shirt. I asked if it belonged to Jonatahn Ive, Apple’s head designer. He said, “Who?”

The Aston Martin is a Vantage and has a “V 007” license plate. Jonny Ive is known to drive a DB9, a $250,000 supercar imported from his homeland, Britain.

More pictures after the jump.

Basically: new iPods and iTunes, no Beatles and no tablet.

In declining order of likelihood, here’s what Apple will show off tomorrow:

On Monday, reader Abram Siegel’s iDisk showed 2TB of available storage. Yeah, that’s right — terabytes. The default iDisk storage is 20 gigabytes.

Siegel’s iDisk said 2TB when  logged on this morning and is still saying 2TB this evening. “Still showing,” he says. “Very strange.”

Even stranger, a few other people on MacRumors forums have also experienced the mystery 2TB upgrade.

Is it a common glitch, or is Apple upgrading accounts? Anyone else’s iDisk showing 2TB?

Spotify’s iPhone app has just gone live on the iTunes app store. But us poor Yankees are SOL. It’s available in Europe only — for now anyway.

The app is available here for free from Apple’s App Store, but requires a premium Spotify account to work at a cost of about £9.99 (about about $16) a month.

Neither the app nor Spotify is available in the U.S., but plans are afoot to bring the highly-rated service across the pond. It is set to come to the U.S. sometime later this year, or maybe next, pending licensing agreements with the record labels, and advertising deals that support the free service.

Because Spotify’s streaming music service is such a threat to iTunes, it was possible that Apple might somehow disable the iPhone app. Apple has disapproved of apps that replicate core iPhone functions, like Google Voice. While there is no indication yet that Apple cripples threatening apps, it doesn’t approve them. Apple perhaps doesn’t see the Spotify iPhone app as a threat while it is restricted to premium customers.

But Spotify’s app doesn’t seem to have any restrictions, except one imposed on all third-party apps — it can’t run in the background.

Spotify’s streaming music service has taken the world by storm with a music library that rivals iTunes — about 6 million tracks — and an interface to match. It’s dead easy to search, build playlists, and find new artists. It’s basically iTunes in the cloud — but free (with the occasional ad).

Spotify’s iPhone app adds a very important feature: it can cache full playlists to be played offline. You can store up to 3,333 songs — that’s 10 days constant listening — and they will play when the network goes dark. The offline caching service allows tracks to be played anywhere offline: on airplanes, in subways or even when traveling overseas to avoid roaming charges.

Official screenshots of the app and a video of it in action after the jump.

Apple is already setting up shop for Wednesday’s “It’s only rock & roll” press event that will likely see new iPods with cameras and the return of Steve Jobs to the public eye.

Apple has already hung a big banner on the front of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco — the venue of a press event next Wednesday at 10AM. The company last week sent invites to reporters with the line: “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.”

The banner out front shows a rockin’ iPod chick kicking her feet in the air as she freaks out. The company has also hung a big banner inside the front door with a white Apple logo on a silver background.

There are no other posters visible inside the venue. The center is crawling with security guards.  There are half-a-dozen security guards with Apple-logo shirts at the front, back and sides. Apple will likely have a 24-hour security detail until the event starts on Wednesday.

There’s a TV van already parked to the side on Third Street. The van is likely there to transcode video from the event for distribution via iTunes and Apple’s website, which the company typically does just after the event ends.

The event will likely see the introduction of new versions of the iPod touch and iPod nano with built-in cameras, which has all but been confirmed by dozens of cases for the new devices. There will also likely be a new version of iTunes with built-in hooks to social software like Facebook.

The event will also probably mark the return of Steve Jobs to the public stage. It’s hard to imagine he’d let the event happen without him, even if it’s just a few words at the start. But let’s hope he’s well enough to MC the whole show. He’s been missed in the last year. No one does an Apple event like Jobs.

More pictures after the jump.

All the icons for folders and apps in Snow Leopard are now drawn in glorious 512 x 512 pixels. It’s a step toward making the operating system resolution independent, and perhaps also to make Snow Leopard a touchscreen friendly OS.

But it’s also obviously done just for the art of it. These icons are real beauties. They are full of great details and little surprises. One icon contains the words to a song, visible only if you blow it up to its full size.

Hit the jump for a gallery of hardcore icon porn.

Twitter user livelovelight just posted this picture of Steve Jobs’ car in a handicapped spot at Apple’s campus. The snap was posted at 2.43 PST — about half an hour ago. Steve’s car is probably still there.

Forty minutes earlier, livelovelight tweated that he’d just missed Jobs: “At apple headquarters. Just missed steve jobs by 2 minutes,” he said.

Jobs is famous for parking in the handicapped spots (check out this hilarious gallery), but perhaps now he’s recovering from a liver transplant he has a genuine handicapped permit. I don’t see it hanging off the mirror though. He must have taken it with him.

And here he is talking to Jonny Ive. This picture was uploaded to Skitch about 33 minutes ago.

Adobe’s Flash is fixed in the Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard update that’s in the hands of a limited number of developers.

The seed updates Adobe Flash to version 10.0.32.18. Snow Leopard shipped with version 10.0.23.1, which is known to be insecure and needs to be patched to close various security holes. (If you’re running Snow Leopard and haven’t updated Flash, follow this link to download the latest version).

Apple seeded the update less than a week after shipping Snow Leopard on August 28. The other fixes seem to be relatively minor. According to World of Apple, which has published the seed notes, the 71MB update includes:

– compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
– an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
– some printer compatibility drivers not appearing properly in the add printer browser
– an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
– instances where automatic account setup in Mail might not work
– an issue where pressing cmd-opt-t in Mail brings up the special characters menu instead of moving a message
– Motion 4 becoming unresponsive

It’s not unusual for Apple to continue working on the operating system after the launch of a major OS update. In the past, the first update has typically been released in a couple of weeks.

You just installed Snow Leopard. Now what?

Here’s the best 10 tips and tricks we found for putting the beast to best use.

Multimedia Messaging Service is coming to the iPhone on September 25, AT&T just announced in a press release. The service will be available at no additional cost to iPhone customers with a text messaging plan (which start at about $20). But there’s still no word on tethering (which allows your computer to access the internet via the iPhone’s data connection).

The MMS announcement comes as AT&T draws fire for its slow, unreliable data network. MMS is likely to put more strain on the network, but AT&T claims it is ready.

“The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.”

We’re riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that’s resulted in an explosion of traffic over the AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond. The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry. We want you to know that we’re working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come.

The MMS service will allow iPhone users to send and receive messages containing images, audio, video. MMS is widely available in other countries, and can be enabled on many iPhones with a simple hack.

Tethering is not likely to be announced for several months as AT&T builds out its network with 2,100 cell towers and 100,000 new backhaul links.

The cruel but funny People of Walmart website is looking for a developer to create an iPhone app for the website.

If you’re interested in making an iPhone app to make fun of misfits — and possibly get sued for publishing their unauthorized photographs — contact People of Walmart at [email protected].

Surely you’ve seen the viral website, which publishes candid-camera style pictures of the various meth tweakers, rednecks, and other sundry weirdos that frequent the nation’s largest retailer, along with cruelly funny captions.

Just a few weeks old, the site is often down due to server overload. The developers are also looking for a new host that can cope with the traffic.

Via QuickPwn.

Now you can create tilt-shift photographs on your iPhone thanks to a new app called TiltShift Generator.

Available now for 99c (the price rises to $2.99 in two weeks), the app makes those fake miniature pictures so popular on the internet.

Created by developer Takayuki Fukatsu, the app works by selectively blurring parts of the picture to simulate a very narrow depth of field, making the subject look like a miniature.

The software can be used to create other effects, like vintage-looking photos.

If you want to try it out before plunking down your hard-earned 99c, the developer also offers a free online web app, and a free Adobe Air version. More sample pictures after the jump.

Link to TiltShift Generator on iTunes.

Developer’s website.

Coinciding with Steve Jobs return to the public eye next week, Penguin Portfolio is reissuing my book Inside Steve’s Brain with a new chapter about how Apple will cope without its dynamic CEO.

Published in April 2008, Inside Steve’s Brain was a New York Times best-seller and an international hit (translated into 15 languages and a best-seller in Brazil and Italy). But the book was written before Jobs’ recent liver transplant, so the publisher asked me to update it for a second edition.

Jobs will take the stage next week at Apple’s special press event to show off new holiday iPods to the press. He has to: If he doesn’t show up Sept. 9, there’ll be a media shitstorm and Apple’s stock will tank.

Jobs’ last public appearance happened exactly a year ago. Last Sept. 9, he presided over a similar iPod event at the same venue. Bloomberg had accidentally published Jobs’ obituary, and when he appeared onstage he flashed a slide with Mark Twain’s famous line: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Indeed. One liver transplant later, Jobs is still with us, thank God. But there will be a time when Apple will have to do without its supreme leader, and as I explain in the new chapter of Inside Steve’s Brain, the company will be both royally fucked and totally OK when the inevitable happens.

Duracell’s cheap and cheerful little rechargeable battery pack is “perfect,” Gizmodo says in a nice little review of the new gadget.

Just released, Duracell’s $20 Instant Charger is good for about half a charge of an iPhone, or a full charge of an iPod nano.

“Duracell’s Instant Charger is a perfectly executed little gadget,” Gizmodo says.

The site has seen plenty of pricey chargers with all the bells and whistles, which are usually superfluous. Gizmodo is charmed by the Instant Charger’s purity: it’s basically a rechargeable litium ion battery hooked to a USB port, and that’s it.

You plug in your own charging cables, so it’s good for iPhones, iPods, digital cameras, Bluetooth headsets and any other gadget that comes with a USB cable.

The Instant Charger ‘s bigger brother, the $50 Powerhouse Charger, stores enough juice to charge an iPhone 3G 1.2 times, or an iPod nano 4 times, Giz says. But it isn’t as compelling as the Instant Charger, which is perfectly simple and cheap.

The British security firm Intego has published a security memo that provides a clear and detailed view of Apple’s new XProtect anti-virus system in Snow Leopard.

There are several interesting tidbits: Apple’s new XProtect system cannot recognize all the variants of the Trojans it is supposed to protect against, for example.

Also, the XProtect system does not spot Trojans hidden inside .mpkg files downloaded from the internet, a major weakness, according to Intego. (Apple’s installer recognizes two types of files — .pkg files for simple packages, and .mpkg files that contain multiple packages to be installed.)

The memo is patently self-serving — Intego sells several anti-virus and privacy packages for the Mac — but nonetheless provides a clear and detailed view of what Apple’s new XProtect system does — and doesn’t do.

The full memo after the jump.

Vonage’s App has been approved for the iPhone/iPod Touch and the company is looking for volunteers to help beta test the app.

“Interested in Vonage app beta? Few spots left. Follow me & send your email address via DM. Lots of interest..cannot guarantee spot.” says the official Vonage Twitter feed.

The offer was posted at about 7.40 AM PST and should still be good — for a little while at least.

The Vonage app will allow customers to make cheap VOIP calls on the iPhone — but over Wi-Fi only, like the similar Skype app. AT&T bans VOIP on its 3G cellular network.

The more I play with Snow Leopard, the more it looks like it’s designed to run Apple’s upcoming tablet.

Look at Expose in the Dock — the new feature that reveals all an application’s open windows when you click and hold the application’s icon. It’s tailor-made for fingers. Even more convincing is Stacks in the Dock. Hit a folder icon in the dock, and up pops the folder and all its files. Each icon is a big target for your finger, and the window has a big, fat slider for scrolling up and down (no more fiddly little arrows at the top or bottom). Both of these UI tweaks scream ‘touchscreen.’

And then today I discovered an unheralded feature that the minute I saw it, I thought, “Game over! Here’s rock-solid proof that Snow Leopard is designed for touchscreens. This is a tablet operating system.”

Rockstar Games’ critically-acclaimed Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is coming to the iPhone/touch this fall, the company says.

Released last year for the Nintendo DS, the game got reave reviews and is still the highest-rated DS game on GameRankings, with an average review score of about 93%.

“Chinatown Wars is a big fat raspberry to the competition; a masterclass in not only hand-held development, but video game design as a whole, exploring exactly how to craft Liberty City around the console’s unique strengths without compromising the series’ character,” said the Daily Telegraph.

The game follows the misadventures of Huang Lee, a young Triad, as he investigates the mysterious death of his dad, kills his rivals, steals cars, deals drugs and evades the cops — all in a miniature version of the company’s infamous virtual playground, Liberty City.

Sounds fun. Here’s the trailer:

As expected, Apple is hosting a special “Rock and Roll” media event on Sept. 9 and is sending invites to members of the press.

The tag line for the event is: “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it” —  a play on the Rolling Stones song “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It).”

Some had speculated the event would be tied to the reissue of the Beatles catalog on the same day: 09/09/09. The band is re-issuing its entire remastered catalog and The Beatles: Rock Band game. But using a line from Rolling Stones now makes that seem unlikely.

The event is likely to showcase Apple’s holiday lineup of iPods, which are widely expected to get cameras, and a new version of iTunes with social networking features.

Although many are hoping the event will also see the introduction of an Apple tablet, that seems unlikely. But an appearance by Steve Jobs does not. If he hosts the event, it’ll be the first public appearance by Steve Jobs since his liver transplant earlier this year.

The event is being held at 10:00 AM PST at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the venue of several previous Apple media events.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking for insider traders of Apple stock — possibly Apple staff — who made suspicious trades of the company’s stock, according to the Huffington Post.

The SEC is asking brokerage firms for the identities of clients who made suspicious trades, HuffPost financial columnist Dan Dorfman says.

The SEC is looking at suspicious stock trades during four specific time periods, which is unusual, Dorfman says; investigations are usually limited to single time periods — not multiple.

Insider trading is the buying and selling of stock by people with access to information not available to the general public, and is closely watched by the SEC. Insider trades often revolve around news that moves the company’s stock, such as good or bad revenue reports, or the announceent of new products.

The SEC would not reveal any details of its investigation, but traders contacted by Dorfman speculated that it concerned reports about Steve Jobs health and liver transplant, and/or sales of the iPod. News about either create volatility in Apples stock, which insiders can profit from.

As Dorfman notes, Apple’s stock has been great for traders: insider or not. It’s almost doubled in 8 months, jumping from $85.35 to $170.05, just below the 52-week high of $176.25.

Extra-large Apple tablets with screen sizes measuring 13-inches and 15-inches have been spotted in China, and one was running OS X, according to Gizmodo.

Citing a “100% reliable” source, two prototype tablets were seen in a factory in Shenzuen, China. The touchscreen prototypes were made of aluminum and shaped like big iPhones, the source said.

One of them “was running Mac OS X 10.5.” When I asked, the source didn’t know if these were built for demonstration purposes, or if they were preproduction units. The company has a tight relation with Apple but “it’s not FoxConn.”

Many of the rumors surrounding the tablet have focused on a 10-inch model running the iPhone OS. But as we’ve noted before, Apple has made Snow Leopard a very touch-centric operating aystem, with scores of UI touches designed for fingers.

Of course, Apple is famous for its rigorous prototyping process and always makes hundreds of variations of upcoming products before deciding on the final form factor. But many observers think it’s only natural that Apple will eventually offer tablets with several different sizes, just like it offers different sized MacBooks, though possibly not at launch.

UPDATE: The Yankee Group also says the numbers are way high, and AdMob defends its estimates, kinda, sorta. See below.

Estimates that the iPhone App Store is worth $2.4 billion a year are utterly ridiculous, iPhone developers say.

Mobile advertising firm AdMob on Thursday got a ton of press for estimating that the iPhone App Store earns billions. The number was extrapolated from a survey of about 1,000 users — and is massively overstated, iPhone developers say.

“Do the math and that’s a ridiculous claim,” wrote developer Layton Duncan of Polar Bear Farm, an iPhone developer based in New Zealand.

Duncan did the math: $2.4 billion divided by the 65,000 apps in the App Store is $37,000 per app, per year. And while some developers earn that, many do not. Long Tail anyone?

David Barnard of App Cubby, a developer based in Austin, Texas, says AdMob’s number is at least 5x too big. The iPhone App Store is worth $250 and $500 million per year, estimates Barnard, who keeps a close, professional eye on App Store sales.

Earlier this week we took a look at how Apple’s upcoming tablet will be a paradigm shift by introducing a different kind of computing. Here in more detail is how Apple’s tablet will be great for gaming.