News - page 2281

Apple has lost more than $450 million from App Store piracy, according to a published report Wednesday. “A conservative estimate of the average piracy rate is that for every paid application developed and sold at the App Store, three more are pirated,” a financial blog claims.

The $7 game Rally Master Pro 3D has a 95 percent piracy rate, according to publishers Fish Labs. The $1.99 game Tap-Fu has a 90 percent piracy rate, says publisher’s Neptune Interactive and Smells Like Donkey. Even developers of applications costing less than $1 suffer piracy. The 99 cent iCombat has a 75 percent piracy rate, publisher Web Scout said.

Creating an iPhone app is one thing, but making something that stands out in an increasingly deep, expansive crowd is something else entirely. And yet Tapbots have managed just that. Describing their trio of apps as “robots for your iPhone and iPod touch,” Tapbots has managed to infuse the most utilitarian of concepts with genuine personality, and this is largely down to playful and innovative interfaces. We caught up with Paul Haddad (“the programmer”) and Mark Jardine (“the designer”) to find out more about how Tapbots was born, the thinking behind its apps, and what their newest creation, Pastebot, can do for your Apple device.

Preliminary United States PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q09 (Thousands of Units)

Note: Data includes desk-based PCs, mobile PCs and X86 servers.
Source: Gartner (January 2010)

Apple’s Mac shipments grew 24% in Q4 2009, riding the industry’s strongest growth period in seven years, according to new numbers from research firm Gartner.

Worldwide, the computer market bounced back in a big way at the end of 2009, Gartner says, largely on the back of low-cost netbooks and consumer laptops, which were heavily-discounted for the holidays.

“These preliminary results indicate the recovery of the PC market on a global level,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner in a statement.

Worldwide computer shipments grew 22.1%  in Q4 (numbering 90 million units).

Hewlett-Packard displaced Dell as the biggest PC maker in the U.S., and Acer established itself as the low-price leader.

In the U.S., Apple saw gains of 23.2% compared to Q4 2008 (which was dismal). However, competitors like Toshiba led the PC pack with 70.7% growth, trailed by Acer (48.4%) and HP (45.9%). Dell lagged with only 5.5% growth, largely because it didn’t discount for the holidays. “Dell was not as aggressive on pricing as its competitors in order to protect profits,” Gartner said.

Growth was driven by the consumer market — not the business market — and the Windows 7 was did not create additional PC demand, although Gartner said “the launch was a good market tool during holiday sales.”

“It was the strongest quarter over quarter growth rate the worldwide PC market has experienced in the last seven years,” Gartner said in a statement.

Full release after the jump.

Got your iPhone ready? Great.

Go here. See the pretty animation. You just got Flash on your iPhone.

And people said it would never happen.

Maybe a Jan. 27 date where many expected Apple to announce a tablet, could center on a more powerful MacBook Pro laptops, using Intel’s latest Core i5 processor. That’s the suggestion following a promotion for retail workers offering 2 MacBook Pros powered by the i5.

The promotional January contest offers retail employees “2 chances to win one of 2 MacBook Pro laptops with the accelerated response of an Intel Core i5.” The ad was part of an e-mail sent to members of the Intel Retail Edge Program.

You can add one more Apple tablet rumor to your list. The device, which some believe could be unveiled later this month, bears a striking resemblance to an “iPhone on steroids.” The tablet and the handset are so close internally, the Cupertino, Calif. company has delayed updating the iPhone OS to prevent technical details from leaking, according to a new report.

“There hasn’t been an updated iPhone OS build because there’s too much tablet-code/references in the OS,” according to the Boy Genuis Report, citing “close Apple connects who haven’t steered us wrong.”

Keeping to the straight and narrow often sucks: bloviating co-workers, passive- aggressive clients and hobbling back to the homestead to an empty fridge after a long day.
Still, it’s not as bad as being in jail. Or arrested, for that matter.

Busted! Real Mugshots, offers some handy, much-needed schadenfreude for the working stiff, as per the description:

“Real people! Real Arrests! Real Mugshots!”

The iPhone app, gratis on iTunes, serves up police pics from around the US with full names, birthdate, age, arrest date/time of arrest as well as the offending crime. (At least in the first release, it doesn’t give location and does not appear to be searchable).

How do you help a company without officially going to work for the firm? Answer: join a private investment firm that owns a portion of it. That’s how former Apple executive Dr. Avadis ‘Avie’ Tevanian explains his move to Elevation Partners, which owns 25 percent of Apple-rival Palm.

Former Apple senior vice president Jon Rubinstein is now Palm’s CEO. Remember Rubinstein, he recently denied ever using an iPhone.

Hoping to blunt the headlines of yet another former Apple executive joining Palm, Tevanian Wednesday says he’ll spend “almost no time” dealing with Palm. Instead, he’ll help Elevation assess new investments and technology.

Apple announced it will hold its annual shareholders meeting on February 25. It will be the first since 2009, when CEO Steve Jobs didn’t appear due to health reasons. The company Tuesday urged shareholders reject several environmental-centered proposals and will amend its policy to allow greater executive compensation.

Although Jobs will take his usual $1 annual salary, he has 5.5 million Apple shares, outdistancing other executives. The Apple co-founder will receive $4,000 in compensation for using his private jet in 2009 for business. The amount is a far cry from previous years. In 2008, Jobs received $871,000 in compensation for using his Gulfstream. In 2007, the Apple leader received $776,000 for business-related private flights.

Online police reports always turn up a few interesting tidbits. Here’s one from the roster of misdeeds that took place in Elyria, Ohio on January 11:

1:46 p.m. – 3300 block Livingston Ave., iPod Touch reported stolen during a party; also, someone is using victim’s iTunes account to download songs.

My first thought: dumb thief. My second: maybe not, if they don’t keep it up for very long.

As an iTunes account holder abroad with a US credit card, I’ve managed to get locked out of my own iTunes account (shockingly simple to do, time consuming to set right again) and there are a few tales of hacked iTunes accounts with fraudulent credit card charges that took a few rounds with Apple to get straightened out. (If it happens — first step: contact your credit card company).

Thieves have been caught using emailing photos from stolen iPhones and using iPods with the victim’s playlist, but what’s the chance police might  track down the unlawful downloader via an iPod Touch?

Via The Chronicle Telegram

★-y eyed Apple commentator, Internet darling and occasional grouse John Gruber has posted an intriguing nugget about the forthcoming Apple Tablet in a post otherwise filled with routine incredulity at reports that an Orange CEO had “confirmed” Apple’s Tablet as being equipped with a webcam earlier this week.

According to Gruber: “For what it’s worth, I’m hearing there is no camera, webcam or otherwise, on The Tablet.

Excepting only the iPhone platform, Apple’s never been serious about gaming on its computers, often lagging far behind not only PCs but their own hardware in programming support for the latest graphic technologies into its operating systems. Snow Leopard’s no exception: although the OpenGL 3.0 standard was unveiled in July of 2008, and although all Macs currently shipping have graphic cards which support it, Snow Leopard 10.6.2 implements only 15 of the 3.0 standard’s 23 extensions.

Thankfully, Apple appears to be serious about finalizing support for OpenGL 3.0 in the forthcoming Snow Leopard 10.6.3 update. According to a post at netkas.org, 22 of the 23 extensions are now supported in the latest developer build, which should improve the graphics performance of all current Mac computers.

Unfortunately, these are just extensions, with most of the specific OpenGL 3.0 functions still unsupported. And OpenGL 3.0 isn’t even the most recent standard: OpenGL 3.2 was released on August 3rd of 2009. Still, progress!

An archeologically stratal cross-section of the port placement of Apple’s metal-skinned professional line of notebooks over the course of the last decade, courtesy of photographer and Mac enthusiast Robert Donovan. Fireflies dance in the background.

From top to bottom, the notebooks pictured are:

• The 13-inch Unibody MacBook Pro (2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)

• The 15-inch Titanium PowerBook (400MHz G4)

• The 15-inch Aluminum PowerBook (1.25GHz G4)

• The 15-inch MacBook Pro (2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)

For me, this is morbidly erotic. It’s like four ex-lovers stacked nakedly atop each other, two of whom were dumped for their younger, hotter sisters, one of whom ran off on me because of my drinking problems, and the last so emphysemic from passive smoking that she’s due to cough up a lung any day now… a medical emergency definitely not covered by Apple Care.

GigaOm’s been releasing a slew of admirable, Apple-oriented infographics lately, leading with a fantastic look at the money at stake if AT&T loses the iPhone, and now following with a through vivisection of the thriving App Store economy.

Here’s the jist: 28,000 developers have generated over 133,000 apps to date. Surprisingly, the average approval time is only a little under five days,which is shockingly lower than the collective complaints of Internet developers about long App Store turn-around times… although it’s worth noting that that statistic only applies to apps that are approved, not ones that have been rejected.

In general, the average iPhone or iPod Touch user downloaded 3.7 apps in December, only 25% of which were paid apps. Ninety nine cents is the most popular price for paid apps, although the average app price goes as high as $2.59. Even given the low margins on most apps, though, December saw renuews of $500MM, with $350MM of that going to developers.

As usual, it would be downright rude to just slurp up and regurgitate the whole graphic, so click through to check the full thing out.

When Shawn Ahmed travels to places such as Bangladesh to fight poverty he counts on iPhones and Macs to help him do battle.

Ahmed is the founder of a one-man global relief effort he calls the Uncultured Project and is using technology and social media in inventive ways to engage people across the globe in their common humanity.

In partnership with the Save the Children Foundation and USAID, Ahmed went last summer to a cyclone devastated village in Galachipa, Bangladesh to distribute non-food relief items to victims of the disaster. He provided individual donors to Uncultured Project real-time receipts for their generosity using his iPhone and TwitPic.

As seen in the clip above, Ahmed used his iPhone to show villagers in another Bangladeshi community videos made by the people in the west who helped bring safe, clean drinking water to their lives. “This is not a charity,” Ahmed said, “it’s an experiment in community.”

The 28 year-old native of Toronto, Canada quit his scholarship graduate studies at Notre Dame University after being inspired by Dr. Jeffery Sachs (author of The End of Poverty) to try and make the world a better place — one meaningful difference at a time.

“I’ve also been using the iPhone to report real-time in the field,” Ahmed said in an email. He makes extensive use of Twitter and YouTube to break down the distance between his supporters and the communities they support. Connecting to them with his iPhone, Ahmed said, “I hold votes on how I should help people in Bangladesh. Voting has led [to] school supply distributions to orphans and much more. And, of course, all my videos are edited on a MacBook.”

The Uncultured Project’s YouTube channel just went over 10,000 subscribers and Ahmed is hopeful for the prospects of his unpaid, unemployed, uncultured journey to help the poorest of the poor: “It’s about inspiring others to believe that we can be the generation that ends extreme poverty.”

Apple’s next iPhone could be more powerful and arrive in limited numbers as soon as April, according to Tuesday reports. Although no name was leaked, the new handset would include a dual-core processor, an OLED display, improved graphics and a better camera.

Korean carrier KT will begin offering the fourth-generation iPhone in April to corporate customers as part of a “litmus test,” The Korean Times reports. The newspaper, quoting a “high-ranking KT executive”, said the handset would be distributed locally in June. Apple traditionally has unveiled new iPhones in late June or early July.

Has Apple become a vacuum for components, first cornering the market on flash memory for its iPod and iPhone, and now emptying the shelves of OLED displays for its rumored tablet? That appears to be the implication from a report that the displays have nearly vanished. Apple “pre-ordered them all,” an anonymous designer recently complained.

OLED displays are popular with manufacturers because they eliminate the need for backlighting a display. They also consume less energy, which equals longer battery life and offer owners a better picture, a feature needed for video or reading. Although Google’s Nexus One and Microsoft’s Zune HD also use OLED displays, a report points the finger at Apple because the shortage is in 10.1-inch OLED displays. Apple’s tablet device reportedly uses a 10.1-inch display.

While smartphones have certainly upped their resolutions in recent months, Apple’s iPhone line doesn’t usually garner negative reviews based upon the quality of their display panels, at least as far as their accuracy is concerned. The guys at MOTO Labs have come up with an easily reproducible DIY test that anyone can do to see exactly how accurate their smartphone’s touchscreen is. No surprise here: the iPhone’s is best of class, when compared to the HTC Nexus One, the Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris.

The test works like this: opening a drawing program on your smartphone and slowly draw a grid of intersecting diagonal lines across the touchscreen with your finger. If the lines are smooth, the engineers of the smartphone have managed to seamlessly integrate the hardware components and software of the touchscreen display; if they are jagged, something’s off.

According to MOTO Labs, you need to go slowly because “on inferior touchscreens, it’s basically impossible to draw straight lines. Instead, the lines look jagged or zig-zag, no matter how slowly you go, because the sensor size is too big, the touch-sampling rate is too low, and/or the algorithms that convert gestures into images are too non-linear to faithfully represent user inputs.”

This is, of course, hardly a scientific test, but it’s hard to look at the comparison images between, say, the iPhone and the Motorola Droid and not see a major discrepancy in terms of quality. Apple’s flawless implementation of reliable touchscreen displays in the iPhone line is certainly a feather in their cap compared to the competition, and a great example of just how hard Cupertino works to get the details just right.

Apple announced it will release its earnings for the fiscal first quarter of 2010 on Jan. 25, two days prior to when many expect the Cupertino, Calif. company could introduce a long-rumored tablet device. The earnings report could be $11.98 billion, nearly 18 percent above last year’s.

Apple had suggested revenue for the three-month period ended Dec. 27, 2009 could range between $11.3 billion and $11.6 billion. The company often announces a conservative guidance figure ahead of actual earnings.

Over the weekend, the New York Times claimed that word from several inside sources indicated that the new Apple Tablet would have a multi-touch interfaces that required a “somewhat complex new vocabulary of finger gestures…. making use of technology [Apple] acquired in the 2007 purchase of a company called FingerWorks.”

It appears that the New York Times might have managed to pinch zoom right over the truth of the technology behind Apple’s latest product: a couple days later, and Fingerworks.com has quietly been shuttered.

Stéphane Richard, the CEO Delegate of Orange.fr has seemingly confirmed the forthcoming announcement of the much anticipated Apple Tablet in response to questions posed to him by journalist Jean Pierre Elkabbach of Radio Europe 1… but the whole interview could just as easily be the mindless corporate boasting of a mouthpiece not really listening to the question.

This video is all over Twitter this morning, and you can see why.

Never mind a rotating Lego iPhone dock – here’s one with added steering wheel, so you can use it to play all your fave tilt-to-steer racing games.

Expect crappy plastic versions of this to appear pretty much everywhere in the coming months, all of them priced 20 bucks and none of them any good. If you really want one, build your own.

Inspired.

Tyler Hall, the developer behind Nottingham is quite clear: he loved Notational Velocity so much, he wanted to make a version of his own.

LAS VEGAS — I’ve never paid much attention to laptop sleeves, but as they get fancier and fancier, they are becoming perhaps the most popular MacBook accessory out there.

At least, that’s according to one high-end sleeve and case maker from Australia.

LAS VEGAS – Pineapple Electronics’ Rumble KW Headphones have an unusual design, which makes them 100 percent waterproof. Unlike most other earbuds, the Rumble KW Headphones are good for swimming laps, snorkeling, or just taking a shower.

The in-ear style buds create sound not through sound waves, like traditional headphones and earbuds, but through bone conduction. The Rumble KWs vibrate bones in the listener’s skull, creating sound in the inner-ear.

“See, it has no holes whatsoever,” said Pineapple’s Philip Kye, as the Rumble Headphones played in a glass of water.

On the show floor of CES, the KW’s sibling headphones — Pineapple’s Rumble K Headphones, which aren’t waterproof — sounded pretty good, if a little muddy. The bass is outstanding, and they create a freaky buzzing and thumping in your ear.”The technology is tuned for lower frequencies, more bass,” Kye said.

The KWs are limited to 100 decibels, so can’t damage the listener’s hearing. They seemed well-suited for gaming — or listening to music while cleaning the hull of a boat.

Pineapple Electronics’ website.