After word leaked to the Internet that AT&T was preventing residents of one of the largest and most populous metropolises in the country from buying iPhones online thanks to wide scale fraud, every hour that passed without iPhones available on AT&T’s official website was further egg-on-the-face of a carrier that has, in recent months, become synonymous with incompetence and bad customer service. There was no way it could have lasted for long, and so it didn’t: AT&T is now selling iPhones through their official site again.
Remember when forecasts of 10 million iPhones in 2009 were considered optimistic? That figure could become the new floor with Apple projected to sell 11.3 million iPhones for the fourth quarter.
Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall is telling investors he expects Apple will sell 11.3 million iPhones for the quarter, up from a previous prediction of 10 million of Cupertino’s iconic handsets. Apple “remains the best technology company on the planet,” Marshall announced.
With Microsoft’s Office 2010 suite planning to ephemerally transmutate into the digital cloud, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Apple is intending to make the same transition with their iWork suite.
In point of fact, iWork is already partially in the cloud: iWork 2009 introduced the ability for users to upload and comment on documents onto a website. It’s a natural move for Apple to want to extend that capability, as increased pressure is put upon purely native office applications by the likes of Google’s online productivity applications.
No surprise, then, that Apple seems to be readying a future version of iWork to integrate more dramatically with the cloud. According to a recent job posting, Apple’s iWork division is looking for an “energetic, highly motivated software engineer” to help them both design and develop a “scalable rich internet application.” Expertise called for is Javascript development, experience developing scalable rich internet applications and experience developing presentation, collaboration or word processing projects.
That certainly looks like iWork in the cloud, doesn’t it? Moreover, the wording suggests that Apple isn’t just looking to supplement an existing team’s developer staff, but put together a whole new one. That likely puts any new, cloud-based version of the iWork suite a couple years away, but it is a tantalizing hint on what we can expect in the future from Apple’s most ignored office suite package.
Tapulous, makers of the $1M per monthTap Tap Revenge app for the iPhone and iPod touch, received even more good news on Christmas. ‘Tap Tap Revenge 3’ was downloaded 2 million times since the app became free a week ago.
On Christmas Day alone, ‘TTR3’ had more than 700,000 downloads, more than triple the 200,000 ‘TTR’ experienced on Christmas Day 2008. TTR3 is now the most popular App Store app, reports say. As we reported last week, Tap Tap Revenge is installed on one-third of all iPhone and iPods.
Back in the day, Louis Lumière and others magically set still pictures in motion, and — voila — the motion picture was born.
Over 100 years later, unbelievably, the ability to make motion pictures still hadn’t appeared on arguably the most advanced smartphone in the world — even more absurd was the fact that phones much cheaper and less sophisticated had absolutely no problem shooting video. Yes, the 3GS has a pretty cool vidcam feature, but the Original and 3G still couldn’t shoot video.
With four overindulged kids ages nine through 13, it’s hard to find presents to keep them entertained for more than ten minutes.
UCreate Music, made by Mattel, is a battery-powered, music-making system that allows kids to mix their own music. The little plastic box rips samples from your iPod or Mac and was on several hot Holiday toy lists. Perfect for that left-over Christmas gift card, the Kahney kids have been testing it out.
As the Twitter revolution gains momentum (or hype, take your pick), a virtual smorgasbord of Twitter clients has presented itself at the App Store. One of the newest plates at the feast is Chirp Flow, which — like Twitterfall — streams tweets in real time. Except that where Twitterfall is a buck, Chirp Flow is free via ad-support.
Right now, Chirp Flow is pretty stripped-down and spartan, with a search box and the resulting never-ending, pause-able flow of tweets that match the search phrase. But the app’s website promises much more functionality, including clickable links and the ability to author tweets. Chirp Flow’s creator, Garrett Moon, told us the new features could be up-and-running in as little as a few weeks.
Besides being strangely mesmerized by watching tweets drift down my screen, I can totally see tweeple becoming attwicted to this app: tracking trending tweets (another function that might be added soon), planning the next Operation Chokehold…
On Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — who is believed to be linked to al Qaeda — attempted to ignite an explosive device made of pentaerythritol on a plane as it neared Detroit, and promptly had his ass kicked for him by fellow passengers. Hooray! Christmas was saved! But that’s not going to stop the grinches at the US Transporation Authority from making your holiday traveling a paranoid nightmare: they have just issued revised travel restrictions for all flights coming into the United States, and those restrictions mean some pretty profound inconveniences for gadget lovers.
According to the official TSA Security Directive, all passengers must now be subjected to a thorough pat-down before they board the plane. All planes must have their passenger communications systems disabled through the flight, which includes phone, GPS and internet services. Finally, starting in the last hour of the flight, passengers are not only not allowed to leave their seats… they aren’t allowed to have any personal items on their laps or in front of them. That means no iPods, no iPhones, no MacBooks… not even a book. Swell.
As usual, then, what we are looking at is totally ineffective retrograde security measures that only make traveling more inconvenient and frightening for innocent travelers, while terrorists will continue to get around them. What’s most ironic is the old security measures — if they’d been successfully implemented — would already have stopped Abdulmutallab at the gate. That means that even the new security measures wouldn’t have stopped him, because the failure was one of implementation. And Abdulmutallab didn’t even have an iPod.
Still not recovered from the sugar-laced holidays? What better way to recuperate and get ready for 2010 by perusing some great deals on gadgets? We start off with a trio of Apple products, ranging from iPods to iMacs. If you didn’t get an iPod touch for Christmas, there’s still time to nab an 8GB version of the popular touch for $180. Do you want to update your desktop? There is a deal on a 24-inch iMac (2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo) with three years of AppleCare for $1,399. Or, maybe you’re in the market for a MacBook Pro? Expercom has a 15-inch 2.93 GHz MacBook Pro laptop with three years of AppleCare for $2,099.
Along the way, there are bargains on iPhone cases, storage and assorted gadgets and services. For details on these and other items, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Over at InfoWorld, Randall C. Kennedy has posted up his thoughts on the forthcoming Apple tablet, conservatively placed under the non-confrontational headline, “Why Apple’s rumored iTablet will fail big time.”
Kennedy’s points are all good ones, if a bit petulantly phrased. First, he points out the history of the tablet PC, noting that every major computer manufacturer has experimented with tablets, with all experiments ending in failure, because tablets are underpowered and awkward to use on anything but a desk or table Kennedy then points out that for most of us, typing on a hardware keyboard is simply faster than using a pen or stylus. For regular computing, Kennedy says, a laptop or netbook is simply going to do anything a tablet can do, quicker, more efficiently and more precisely.
Those aren’t bad points, but Kennedy is ignoring the fact that all past tablets have failed precisely because they weren’t fully realized products.
Did you spend Christmas day downloading apps for that new iPod touch? If so, you weren’t alone. The volume of iPod touch downloads from Apple’s App Store skyrocketed almost 1,000 percent on December 25th, findings released Monday show. This year also marked the first Christmas where iPod touch app downloads passed iPhone downloads.
“It appears that an influx of new iPod touch devices has flooded the market over Christmas,” mobile app analytics firm Flurry Analytics announced. Additionally, the company said the mostly pre-teen and teen owners of iPod touches are “voracious downloaders.”
Gunman seems like a keen little iPhone app. Think of it like suburban Lazer Tag, replete with a healthy dash of augmented reality, but missing the cute beeyooping space guns or the likelihood of being shot to death by a trigger happy cop.
In Gunman, two iPhone-toting players square off in a suburban deathmatch arena. First, each player identifies the shirt color of their opponent; then, using their iPhone’s built-in camera as both gun barrel and sights, they take aim and shoot at one another, shaking their iPhone to reload their virtual glocks. If the Gunman app detects that the opponent’s shirt color was in the iPhone’s crosshairs when the shot was fired, it will register a kill and vibrate the iPhone of the perforated victim.
It looks like a lot of fun, and for this holiday week only, it’s on sale over at the App Store for only $0.99. You can check out Gunman’s trailer above. Matrix techno ahoy!
For the crime of selling Hackintoshed PCs with OS X pre-installed, Florida-based Psystar, Inc. got the sort of suing from Apple usually consigned to the pages of slash fiction written by the most depraved of litigation fetishists. If the word “reaming” can be used in polite society, that’s what Psystar got, and from the resulting hole agape Apple’s lawyers reamed out every last, ill-begotten penny.
Needless to say, Psystar’s now resorted to rattling around the Web 2.0 equivalent of a beggar’s tin cup as they plead for alms. Since they can no longer sell their line of Mac clones to make money, and since they appear to have decided not to risk Apple’s wrath further by selling their Rebel EFI software until the courts have clarified its legality, Psystar is now asking for $20 to $100 donations on their website.
If charity isn’t your bag, they’re also selling t-shirts for $15. The t-shit reads “I sued Psystar” on the front and “…and all I got was a lousy injunction.” on the back. It’s sort of a nonsensical slogan, unless Steve Jobs buys one of these, but it’s also flat-out misleading: Apple was awarded $2.7 million in damages from Psystar, which they have presumably yet to pay.
Finally, Psystar have announced their new business plan, taking the injunction into account. It’s smart: they’ll basically sell desktops that are built using only components that have Snow Leopard drivers available for them, leaving it to the end user to install OS X on the machine, or not, as they see fit. In other words, they are still targeting the Hackintosh community, just legally. It’s a good idea. I bet they wish they’d done that in the first place.
Has AT&T stopped online sales of the iPhone in New York City due to fraud? If you live in the NYC metro area, you may need to go to a local AT&T store to buy an iPhone.
Over the weekend, the Consumerist reported readers with NYC area codes were blocked when attempting to buy an iPhone online. At first, AT&T’s response was not enough bandwidth, as the following interaction between a company salesperson and Consumerist apparently shows:
Apple’s tablet, initially just a whisp of rumor, appears to be taking a more concrete shape. The Cupertino, Calif. company has instructed suppliers to provide glass panels and connectors ahead of a potential Jan. 26 announcement, multiple reports claim.
A subsidiary of Foxconn, Innolux, will supply Apple with the majority of 10-inch glass displays and Wintek, which provides most iPhone display panels, will handle the remainder, according to Taiwan’s DigiTimes. The publication said Apple could announce its tablet in January with major shipments by March, 2010. One report has suggested Apple has told Foxconn it needs 300,000 tablets per month. If true, the report would dovetail with recent speculation Apple booked San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Jan. 26 for a product announcement.
On the day before Christmas and all through the house, nary a deal was stirring — not even Apple’s Super Mouse.
Well, there’s still some bargains to be had even at this late date. We lead off this day with an iPhone accessory roundup with items made of everything from silicone to rhinestones. If you haven’t found that perfect iPod touch case, don’t worry – we have an 80 percent off deal with an extra 20 percent off coupon. Lastly, Tapulous, the makers of Tap Tap Revenge have made iPhone headlines and we have Tap Tap Revenge 3 for free.
For details on these and many other bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Microsoft has lost its edge to Apple and Google, becoming like IBM in the mid-1980s when the Seattle, WA. software giant unveiled its first version of the Windows operating system. “I think Microsoft today is a lot like IBM was in 1985,” ex-Microsoft employee Don Dodge told a Seattle newspaper.
Dodge, who worked with startups at Microsoft before laid off in November, was hired by Internet giant Google one week later.
The former Microsoft worker said his previous employer is now overshadowed by Apple, Google and Facebook when it comes to innovation. “Microsoft is still a powerful company – $60 billion in revenue and very profitable – but I think after 20 years they are losing the innovation edge,” Dodge told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site.
China Unicom, Apple’s first pick to break into the world’s largest cell phone market, is leaning away from the iPhone, according to new phone orders. The carrier said the iPhone will comprise just 4 percent of phones it plans to order. Instead, a mix of Symbian, Windows Mobile and BREW-based handsets are getting the majority of interest.
Phones based on the Symbian OS received 16 percent of the orders, with 8 percent going to Windows Mobile handsets, 4 percent to the iPhone and the remainder to phones using BREW or a proprietary operating system. More than half (63 percent) of the new phones are mid-priced (below $439), according to reports.
A series of patents may detail the user interface of Apple’s tablet, which could be unveiled in January. At the heart of ‘surprising‘ method for users to interact with the much-awaited device is what the Cupertino, Calif. company describes as an ‘articulated frame.’
“The articulating frame may provide key edge ridges that define the boundaries of the key regions or may provide tactile feedback mechanisms within the key regions,” according to an application entitled “Keystroke Tactility Arrangement on a Smooth Touch Surface” uncovered earlier this week.
Many of us have gumdrop iMacs sitting on our desks, too adorable to dispose of, too antiquated to be of any use. One of my New Year’s Resolutions, in fact, is to finally figure out what to do with my bondi blue iMac. My earlier thoughts tended to gravitate towards Hackintoshing the sucker into a competitive, modern machine, but tinkerer Klaus Diebel has screwed another notion into my brain: why not turn my gumdrop iMac into a coffee maker?
Of course, Diebel’s iMac CS is a lot more clever than just a coffee maker crammed into an empty iMac shell: it’s also a functional Mac, as well as a working, subwoofer-amped stereo system. It turns out that the Mac Mini’s optical disc slot lines up perfectly with the gumdrop iMac’s, with no other alteration necessary, so if you want to use the iMac CS as a desktop computer, all you need to do is hook up an external display and a mouse and keyboard. Why external? Because the iMac’s built-in screen now squirts out liquid joe. As for the JBR subwoofer, it beefs up the sound of the included Mac Mini, although if you attach an iPod to the iMac CS, it will automatically mute the Mac Mini and output your tunes through the iMac CS’s speakers, replete with sphincter-loosening bass… possibly messy funtionality, given all the coffee you’ll be drinking.
It’s a great little mod. Better yet, if you’re lazy, you can just pay Dubei to make you one, although you’d better be prepared to pony up: the raw materials of the mod cost between €300 and €400, even before you add in the price of the gumdrop iMac and the Mac Mini.
After leading his company through a year of unbridled financial success and unparalleled market share growth in both the home computer and smart phone sectors, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will finally take home his paycheck. He earned a buck this year. That’s ten thin dimes.
Of course, we’re all Apple fans here, so we know that’s Jobs’ customary salary. We also the man’s hardly hurting for money: he’s sitting on 5.5 million shares of Apple stock, which is worth a cool $1.1 billion. Additionally, he owns a 7.4 percent stake in Disney, valued at $4.5 billion. In other words, the man can afford to buy us all an iPod.
Those who know what the Apple Tablet actually is have had a circle of secrecy woven around them twice by Cupertino’s Mephistophelean lawyers, but with all the ballyhoo right now about a late January announcement, it’s still easy to forget we actually don’t really know the first thing about the forthcoming device. How big will it be? What will the hardware be like? Is it more like a Macbook without a keyboard, or is it just like a big iPod Touch? What operating system will the Apple Tablet even run?
It’s been assumed for awhile that the Apple Tablet will probably be more iPhone-like than Mac-like, since Apple wants another platform on which the App Store can shine. It now looks like that assumption is correct: Apple has reportedly told select developers to ready full screen version of their apps to demo on the Apple Tablet in January.
When it rains, it pours — and it’s pouring tablet rumors. The latest is from the NY Times, which says Steve Jobs is “extremely happy” with the upcoming tablet, and that it will have a “surprising” UI.
In a report that’s basically a rehash of tablet rumors, the Times adds a couple of tantalizing morsels.
According to the Times, a senior Apple employee said: “I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet.”
And another recently-departed Apple staffer added: “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.”
What this surprising UI is, the Times doesn’t say, unfortunately. It doesn’t even hazard a guess. Gestures? The iPhone’s already there. Voice? Same — and it doesn’t even work that well. Handwriting recognition? Remember the Newton.
What else is there? A little rubbery red button like an old ThinkPad? A virtual scroll wheel?
The company has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days in late January, according to people familiar with the plans.
Apple is expected to use the venue to make a major product announcement on Tuesday, January 26th.
The prospect of a three-day event is tantalizing, but why would Apple need three days to announce a new product — like the long-rumored the tablet, say? My guess is the company needs a day to set up and another to break down. The 26th is a Tuesday: Apple’s favorite day for new product announcements.
Note, neither Apple nor YBCA would comment to the FT, but the center’s online calendar says the venue is free on January 25, 26 and 27. IE. there are no artsy events scheduled for those three days on a calendar that is otherwise full.
Having pulled out of Macworld, these days the YBCA stage is Apple’s favorite venue for product announcements. With CES in January, and the Apple-less Macworld in February, a January 26 event would be sandwiched right between.
The rumor comes on the back of reports that Apple is wooing TV studios for a new online TV service, which conjures the Apple TV to mind, but perhaps a new TV service would be tablet-centric? In addition, the company is reportedly talking to magazine publishers about repurposing content for the upcoming tablet. Earlier this year, iLounge predicted the tablet would be announced in mid-January with a May or June sell date to build iPhone-like hype.
