News - page 2042

For those on an iPhone or an iPad, the “iPod” app has been replaced with “Music”, just like on the iPod Touch. With the app comes a few new tweaks and changes.Most notable is this: if you tap and hold on a song, you’ll get some more information about it.

Right now, this functionality doesn’t do much besides show information that’s already shown, like title, album and artist. But imagine if Apple fleshes out this functionality with other information over time, like genre or bit rate. What info would you like to see there?

The nattering nabobs of negativism on Wall Street think Apple’s runaway success is over.

Apple’s stock has been in the doldrums for the last six months, and the reason is that analysts don’t think Apple can keep it up. Here’s what they’re saying:

Apple’s new iMessage simply rocks and it takes messaging on your favorite iOS device to a whole new level. It offers some new features that SMS cannot beat like multiple address support and selectable caller ID.

We’ve often remarked how important iTunes and the App Store is to Apple’s future. Begun as a way to sell digital songs, the iTunes ecosystem now touches every device from the Mac to the iPad. Turns out, the Cupertino, Calif. company pumps more than $1 billion into the service each year.

Ron Johnson, Apple’s VP of retail, is quitting to take the job as president of J.C. Penney, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The company is expected to announce Johnson’s appointment later today. It’s a surprising move.

Update: It’s official. J.C. Penney has confirmed that Johnson will become CEO on November 1. Plus, Johnson is investing $50 million of his own money!

In what sounds more like a court case between a feuding couple than two tech rivals, The notoriously-secretive Apple reportedly described Samsung’s demand to get a peak at unannounced iPhones and iPads as “attempts to harass.”

Apple Tuesday officially endorsed what hackers have already accomplished: selling an ‘unlocked’ version of the iPhone 4. The Apple Store announced Tuesday it is offering a 16GB and 32GB unlocked iPhone 4 – a day earlier than expected. However, there’s one hitch – the phone will work with only GSM carriers.

Apple has revised their support.apple.com website today. The new site has a cleaner look with most of the popular items accessible and immediately visible. I happened to run into it tonight while checking the status of an AppleCare auto-enrollment for a new iMac that was purchased last week-end.

Apple’s annual Back to School promotion is rumored to launch this week, but it may not be quite as appealing as it has been in previous years. Rather than a free iPod touch with your new Mac purchase, one report claims this year’s giveaway will be a $100 iTunes Gift Card.

Deals — that’s what we want. No doubt about it. Combine our love of cuisine with our zeal for deals and a website like BiteHunter becomes a well-worn destination. And now, they’ve got an iPhone app.

We raved about how cool the new hard button for shooting stills using the Camera app is, and we’ve even shown you how to use it. But guess what — it works with video too.

That’s right, in iOS 5, you’ll be able to start and stop shooting video just by tapping the volume up button,  the same one used for shooting stills.

One look at this vintage pic of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates from the early days of each man’s career says a whole lot about the ultimate trajectories of both their businesses and their customers, dont’cha think?

The original provenance of the photo is unknown, though it clearly predates the historic conversation the two tech titans had at the All Things D conference in 2007.

From the looks of it, we’ll hazard a guess here it’s from a visit Gates made to Jobs’ California home back when the battle between Microsoft and Apple was more of a fair fight. What do you think?

[Awesome People Hanging Out Together]

15% of all iPhone owners use one of just ten passwords on their lock screen, making it trivial for thieves with physical access to hack into their device with just some remedial trial-and-error. Is your passcode on the list?

Looking to avoid an outright banning ahead of Apple’s move to jettison all such apps from the iOS App Store, Trapster has taken the preemptive step of removing the DUI Checkpoint functionality from their popular app.

Steve Jobs wanted to build his futuristic spaceship campus thirty years ago, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Jobs wanted a “shimmery glass structure” surrounded by trees in rural San Jose. He had purchased the land and had lined up world-class architect I.M. Pei to design it.

“To me, it’s as if time hasn’t shifted — 30 years, same vision, same scope, same dream,” said real estate consultant Bob Feld, who worked with Jobs at the time.

So what happened?

To celebrate IBM’s centenary next week, the world’s leading financial magazine, The Economist, took a look at what high-tech companies might survive 100 years.

Apple made the cut, but Microsoft didn’t. And Google is looking sketchy. Why?

Apple’s iCloud may be looking to revolutionize the way consumers interact with the cloud, but that doesn’t mean Cupertino’s not drawing on its competitors expertise when it comes to actually hosting their online services.

In fact, Apple’s pushing the iCloud online with more than a little bit of help from both Microsoft and Amazon.

New to iOS will be the ability to use the volume up button on an iDevice to take a picture. Because of this, you’re also able to use the volume up button on your headphones to do the same thing.

Obviously, you’ll need a headset or pair of ear buds that support Apple’s volume-up/volume-down functionality (like Apple’s official ear buds) to get this to work.

Once it’s set up, though, this is just great additional functionality for those of us who take pictures with our iPhones using a tripod, or those of us who want to take really steady shots. Just plug in your headphones, line up your iPhone on a table, and use your headset to trigger the shutter, with no resulting wobble!

One tech reviewer has likened RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook to “the herpes of tablets.” Although the CNN writer was joking, not so funny is how consumers are shying away from the iPad rival.

Here’s another little neat trick from the latest developer beta: in iOS 5, you’ll be able to download and install more than one app at a time, even on 3G.

Need a clue to how fast the world’s changing? Apple – which has been in the phone business less than five years – is about to sell more smartphones than Nokia for the first time ever. That’s the last laurel Nokia has left.

Apple has just confirmed that they are recalling a limited number of Verizon iPad 2s, and now we know the reason why.

The bleeding just won’t stop for BlackBerry-maker RIM. A half-dozen Wall Street analysts are cutting the share’s target prices amid concern the Canadian company is in free-fall and Apple’s iMessage just cut the emergency parachute.

If you’re still hosting on iWeb and worried about what yet another year without an update means especially after the announcement of iCloud, prepare to have your worst fears confirmed.

Mobile is the future. Despite App Store integration in OS X Lion and Apple’s increased excitement about the Mac, the number of iOS developers also working on Mac applications has dwindled to single digits.