News - page 2278

With the iPad’s debut, we’re all looking forward to iPhone OS 3.2, but since we can’t expect that until the iPad starts shipping in March, we’ll have to make do with the latest software update to hit iTunes. So cram your 30-pin white connector umbilical into the omphalos of your iPhone, my friends, because iPhone OS 3.1.3 is here.

It’s a small update. Here’s what has been improved:

• Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS

• Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances

• Fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard

Those first two changes may be tiny, but they are nice. Better battery life accuracy is always helpful, and that second fix looks like it might be focused on the issue where App Store apps sometimes wouldn’t launch until you downloaded a new app and installed it.

Needless to say, if you’ve jailbroken your phone, you go and see what the Dev-Team has to say about upgrading, although it looks like they’ve almost got it all sussed out.

We were a pain, I know, bugging you guys to vote for us in 2010 Golden Retrevo Awards.

But it paid off — we won a 2010 Golden Retrevo Award for outstanding achievements in the “All Things Apple” space. The awards honor the “best and brightest independent gadget blogs on the web.”

Many thanks for your support!

Our friends 9to5Mac also won in the same category, along with iPhoneography, MacYourself and The iPhone Guru.

Retrevo is an up-and-coming electronics shopping/review site, which claims more than 5 million visitors a month. Here’s the full list of Golden Retrevo Award winners.

Steve Jobs doesn’t follow a presentation template but as outlined in my new book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, he does consistently follow the same principles that have turned Apple product launches into an art form. The iPad announcement on Wednesday, January 27th was no exception: classic Steve Jobs.

Photos courtesy of Gizmodo.

The formidable Economist magazine has blessed Steve Jobs with a rare cover story examining the potential impact of the Jesus tablet.

Even rarer, the iPad story is mostly positive, even if the religious imagery is over the top.

The Economist fancies Jobs’ chances of shaking up not just one industry, but three — especially media:

Jobs’s record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three—computing, telecoms and media.

Companies in the first two businesses view the iPad’s arrival with trepidation, for Apple’s history makes it a fearsome competitor. The media industry, by contrast, welcomes it wholeheartedly. Piracy, free content and the dispersal of advertising around the web have made the internet a difficult environment for media companies. They are not much keener on the Kindle, an e-reader made by Amazon, which has driven down book prices and cannot carry advertising. They hope this new device will give them a new lease of life, by encouraging people to read digital versions of books, newspapers and magazines while on the move. True, there are worries that Apple could end up wielding a lot of power in these new markets, as it already does in digital music. But a new market opened up and dominated by Apple is better than a shrinking market, or no market at all.

Read more: Tablet computing — The book of Jobs.

Via 9to5Mac. Thanks Seth.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball is the most influential Apple pundit on the web, but readers often complain about the lack of comments on his website.

In fact, Gruber’s site is famous for not having comments. In an age when every website falls over itself to accommodate reader interactivity, Gruber stands alone. He has stubbornly resisted adding comments to his site for years.

Gruber has explained that he dislikes comments because they distract from his all-important voice. This is exactly the kind of egotistical statement that makes him unpopular with many people, especially other writers, but a must-read pundit.

But Gruber is about to get comments, whether he likes it or not.

The team behind MacHeist has just launched DaringFireballWithComments.net— a website that mirrors Gruber’s site with, you guessed it, comments.

“It’s good timing since he was gloating over his lack of comments today,” said John Casasanta, the brains behind the project, “and we’re gonna allow anonymous comments. It should be a shitstorm.”

We’ve covered a number of iPhone apps that field citizen complaints in a few different cities — Boston, Pittsburgh, San Jose — but always wondered if angry folks snapping potholes on the way to work would find their grievances fell on deaf ears.

The good news: if you live in Boston and can afford an iPhone, it’s like having a personal fix-it crew.

Some 2,500 downloaders of CitizensConnect have filed 750 complaints since October;  at least one reports swift action:

UPDATE: iMussolini Developer Luigi Marino told Cult of Mac that he discovered the lawsuit for copyright infringement by reading our story yesterday. Marino contacted the Italian state film archives, Istituto Luce, for clarifications about the video material he used from Mussolini’s speeches and they asked him to remove the app from the store to avoid a legal battle. Marino tells us he requested to pull the app and expects it to be gone from the iTunes store by 1 p.m. (CET).

UPDATE 2: iMussolini is gone. The competing Mussolini app — Mussolini’s historical speeches– — is, however, still available.

An iPhone app of Benito Mussolini’s speeches is the second-highest paid app in the Italian iTunes store a week after launching despite criticism for giving voice to Il Duce’s diehard fans and claims over copyright violations.

iMussolini, a mobile compendium of fascism, features 100 complete speeches,  plus 20 audio and video clips for €0.79 (it’s also available in the US iTunes store for $0.99, in Italian only) — without any kind of political commentary.

At about 1,000 downloads a day, iMussolini is more popular in Italy than Shazam and games like Ice Age and Dracula: the Path of the Dragon.

Comments by readers on iPhoneitalia, which broke the story, included enough pro-Mussolini sentiment  “Duce! Duce! Duce!”  and slogans (“Boia chi molla!”) to prompt complaints to the iTunes store that the app violates Italy’s 1952 Scelba law, which formally abolished fascism. The New York-based American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants  also slammed Apple over the app.

Today, the Italian state film archives, Istituto Luce, announced it will sue the developer for using archival clips and asked Apple to remove the application. At this writing, the app is still available.

iMussolini is the handiwork of 25-year-old Luigi Marino, who picked up an iPhone for the first time about six months ago and made the app in his spare time.

Cult of Mac spoke to Marino about why iMussolini is an excercise in free enterprise, getting the app approved and why his next app may feature Gandhi.

CoM: How did you start programming for iPhones?

Luigi Marino: I’ve been programming Java and C++ since high school, in July 2009 I bought my first iPhone and  in November 2009 in my first MacBook.  Programming for it is more of a passion than anything else. (NDR: Marino owns and runs an unrelated company).   In my free time, I also blog for an iPhone website called dev app.

Everyone knows your iPhone can control many items, including your TV, aerial drones – even a Mazda RX8. The iPod touch is great for your tunes, even suggesting music based on your preferences. But can your iPhone or iPod touch give you an invigorating massage? The makers of a robotic massage chair announced HT-Connect, a free iPhone app able to provide 16 auto-programmed massages.

Available in May, the HT-Connect interfaces with the AcuTouch 9500 massage chair from Human Touch. The app will “deliver a user experience that offers the same personalized and professional massage that one would receive at a spa or from a real, professional massage therapist,” said David Wood, CEO of Human Touch LLC.

Support for a bifurcation of computer sales has come from recent comments by an NPD analyst. Apple sold 90 percent of computers costing more than $1,000 during the fourth quarter of 2009 while the average Windows PC price is $475. The data illustrates Apple practically owns the “premium” U.S. computer market.

“The data is a startling confirmation — at least for the United States — about Apple’s success establishing the Mac as a premium brand,” said Betanews.

Although that $499 entry-level iPad is pretty much affordably by everyone, Apple will still be making a rather sizable profit on each one, if a bill-of-materials (BOM) breakdown conducted by BroadPoint AmTech analyst Marshall is to be trusted.

According to the BOM, the low-end $499 iPad only costs $270 to make, with the 9.7-inch touch-sensitive display being the most expensive element at around $100, with the 16GB SSD and aluminum case each costing only about $25.

As the storage jumps, so do Apple’s profits: the 32GB and 64GB iPads only see their costs rise another $25.50 and $76.50, respectively, but their suggested prices go up $100 and $200.

Apple’s most profitable BOM item? The 3G radio: it only costs them $16, but Apple’s charging over $130 for it. I personally wonder if some of that mark-up might be shared with AT&T to compensate them for assumed profit losses related to the month-by-month, cancel-anytime iPad 3G deal, but either way, Apple’s charging a premium for the functionality.

It’s all an estimate, of course — no one will know the iPad’s true cost until it’s actually vivisected after launch — but Apple knows how to put together a high-quality product that is both extremely profitable and an extremely good value. I wouldn’t be surprised if these numbers were exactly right.

Apple tends to focus its energies to making news and product announcements on its websites, but they’ve been experimenting a bit lately with integrating their PR machine with social media… mostly by putting up official iPad videos on their own YouTube channel, as well as pushing word of new Quicktime trailers through Twitter.

But 9to5Mac just noticed something interesting that may hint at Apple’s future plans for the popular Twitter micro-blogging service. Over a year ago, someone took over the twitter.com/Apple username… but now, in the wake of the iPad announcement (in which the iPad out-tweeted Obama’s state of the union address), it looks like that squatter’s been evicted.

Even better? You can’t sign up as Apple. This isn’t just a case of an account name being deleted: Twitter is clearly reserving the Apple account for Cupertino.

Of course, this could just be on Twitter’s own initiative, but it makes sense: Apple surely knows that Twitter is an amazing marketing and branding tool, and they’re presence on the site can only amplify the buzz about their company.

How does Apple compete with the inexpensive netbooks without a netbook? One analyst believes the answer is to call it an iPad. The Cupertino, Calif. company’s tablet device could take 4 percent of netbook sales this year and 7 percent in 2011, Deutsche Bank said.

The iPad, unveiled last week, will “compete very well” against netbooks, particularly where “surfing, reading, game playing and emailing dominate the usage model,” analyst Chris Whitmore said.

Is the iPhone, Apple’s iconic handset, growing a bit long in the tooth? Probably not. But that seems to be the message from researchers reporting the iPhone lost market share during the fourth quarter, accounting for 16.6 percent of the market, down from 18.1 percent of smartphone sales in the third quarter.

Although iPhone sales were up 18 percent in the quarter, the entire smartphone market increased 26 percent as Motorola’s Android phones and Nokia helped boost sales, according to ABI Research. Ironically, ABI believes Apple’s iPhone could be encountering the same slump as Motorola’s once very popular Razr.

Sharp-eyed observers have noticed what looks to be an iSight camera in the iPad Steve Jobs used in last week’s keynote.

Even though Jobs didn’t talk about a camera, and it’s not mentioned in Apple’s official tech specs, something that looks like an iSight camera can be seen when Jobs first holds the iPad up for everyone to see.

As he holds it up, the light catches the iPad’s surface, illuminating something underneath. That something looks like an iSight camera, similar to the ones built into MacBooks, under the screens.

In the official iPad podcast, it can be seen around the 1:23:40 mark.

It’s not conclusive, of course, but corroborates the prototype images published by Engadget in the run up to the event, which clearly show an iSight camera in the same position. And references to a camera have been found in both the iPad’s Address Book software and the iPad firmware.

The absence of a camera on the iPad has been one of the device’s most puzzling omissions. Although, as our own John Brownlee first noted, a camera in a tablet that’s sitting in your lap, staring up at you, doesn’t produce the most flattering camera angles.

UPDATE: A repair company called Mission Repair says the iPad’s frame clearly shows an empty spot for an iSight camera, and it is exactly the same size and shape as the iSight slot in a MacBook’s screen frame. (Mission Repair received a shipment of iPad parts on Monday, the company blog says).

Thanks NyxoLyno.

Apple has just released iTunes 9.0.3, which looks like mostly bug fixes a big upgrade with a new look, among other things. Full details of the big, fat 100MB upgrade after the jump.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZS8HqOGTbA

Here is Steve Jobs’ iPad keynote in less than 180 seconds. It’s wonderful! Amazing! Incredible!

The video sums up “all the important words,” says its creator, Neil Curtis.

“I assure you that no scene is repeated and everything was said on this keynote!” he adds. “Oh, and please don’t take it personal: it’s meant to be humor!”

Engadget has confirmed the reports of “extremely trusted sources” that the iPad’s iPhone OS 3.2 contains support for a host of long anticipated features, including video calling, file downloads and even SMS messaging.
According to their sources, the current beta of iPhone OS 3.2 includes hooks to accept and decline video conferencing, as well as flip a video-feed (for a front-mounted camera) and run the video call in either full screen mode or in a small window.

More than that, iPhone OS 3.2 currently hints at file downloads and local storage in the browser, which means you can finally slurp down a link to, say, an MP3 or eBook and use it in iTunes or iBooks. It also has hooks for iPad-specific SMS messaging.

This is preliminary code, and none of this functionality works right now, but at the very least, it implies some future developments in both the iPad and iPhone. It’s the video conferencing stuff that’s really interesting though: the iPad contains no camera, so either Apple’s already programming video conferencing support for the iPad 2G, the next iPhone is finally going to get a secondary forward mounted camera… or both.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs did some trash-talking about the company’s growing rivalry with Google. In one case, Jobs is alleged to have said Google’s famous ‘Don’t Be Evil’ standard of conduct “is a load of crap.”

Due to Apple’s infamous distaste for publicity and unauthorized leaks, a series of anonymous sources talked to the tech press about last week’s internal “town hall” style company meeting. The comments show two companies once quite close competing on several fronts.

How do you get more attention for a largely unknown netbook at a time when the tech press has the vapors for Apple’s iPad? You sue Apple and claim its new device is just a clone of your netbook, thus grabbing some headlines for a day or two. China’s Shenzhen Great Loong Brothers said it might sue Apple, claiming the iPad looks like its P88.

The Chinese company’s president Xiaolong Wu, in an interview with Spain’s El Mundo, said if Apple tries to sell the iPad in China he “won’t have any choice but to report them [Apple],” noting the device would hurt his sales.

Amazon has raised the white flag in the first skirmish over ebook pricing. The victors in this first round could be publisher Macmillan and rival ebook-reader maker Apple. After temporarily stopping selling Macmillan titles over a pricing dispute, the online book-seller said it was capitulating to the publisher’s demands.

“We will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books,” Amazon announced on its Kindle Community forums.

You can tell Jay-Z is disappointed he doesn’t have one. And then he remembers he has his own brand of vodka and millions of dollars.

Via Engadget

If you’re an Apple fanboy (or girl) and your tee shirt repertoire doesn’t include as many Apple inspired tees as it should—you’re in luck—Coty over at cotygonzales.com has come to your rescue. With much sweat and toil, he’s put together a huge list of 101 T-Shirts for Apple Fanboys and the Mac Faithful that is sure to help you get you get back on the right track.

Fanboy protocol calls for 5-6 different Apple shirts to be worn publicly per week—better stock up.

Boy Genius Report has an interesting chart of Apple’s price points. The site claims the chart shows that Apple has all the price points covered:

“From $59 to $7,000, if you want an Apple product, there’s a pretty darn good chance you’ll be able to pick something in your price range. Simply brilliant,” says the site.

But note that the chart does not show ALL Apple’s products and price points: there’a lot of products missing. But it does show that although Apple has a reputation as pricey, it does hit a lot of sub-$1,000 price points.

Here are two interesting but conflicting opinions on the iPad, pro and con.

Con: Tech author Rafe Colburn says the iPad is a scary harbringer of the closed future of consumer computing.

“General purpose computing is too complicated for most people anyway, and the iPad’s descendants along with similar competing products from other companies will offer an enticing alternative. So I see the death of the traditional, open personal computer as a likely occurrence.”

Pro: But Facebook iPhone developer Joe Hewitt is extremely positively about the iPad’s closed system. To his mind it’s a major asset:

“The one thing that makes an iPhone/iPad app “closed” is that it lives in a sandbox, which means it can’t just read and write willy-nilly to the file system, access hardware, or interfere with other apps. In my mind, this is one of the best features of the OS. It makes native apps more like web apps, which are similarly sandboxed, and therefore much more secure. On Macs and PCs, you have to re-install the OS every couple years or so just to undo the damage done by apps, but iPhone OS is completely immune to this.”

I’m with Hewitt. The IPad is a cloud computer par excellence, and we will likely be able to run almost any software we want on it, but it’ll be on a server somewhere and not on the iPad. Colburn notes this too, but thinks it’s a bad thing.

Why is there no Adobe Flash on the iPad? Adobe says it’s not because it’s buggy, as an Apple source claimed this afternoon to CultofMac.com.

It’s because Apple is protecting revenue streams derived from content like movies and games. If users could watch free TV shows on Hulu, they wouldn’t buy them through iTunes.

“It’s pretty clear if you connect the dots: the issue is about revenue,” says Adrian Ludwig, an Adobe group product manager for Flash, during a telephone interview on Friday afternoon.