Grab your parka, hat and gloves and book your tickets early for WWDC 2009, June 8 – 12 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center West.
Apple announced the dates Thursday via its Developers Connection website for the annual conference that provides developers and IT professionals with in-depth technical information and hands-on learning about iPhone OS and Mac OS X technologies from over 1000 Apple engineers who created them.
Easily one of the most eagerly anticipated Geek festivals on the calendar, this year’s conference should draw even more interest than usual due to the impending arrival of iPhone 3.0 and Mac OS X 10.6, known as Snow Leopard.
Early-bird registration for the conference is $1,295 until April 24th, after which the entrance fee goes up $300. Current ADC Student Members and student Team Members in the iPhone Developer University Program can apply for a WWDC Student Scholarship for free admission to the conference.
From the Euclid Sun Journal police blotter for the greater Cleveland Area:
FOUND PROPERTY, VOELKER AVENUE: A man found an Apple computer at 7 p.m. March 16 on the street at Babbitt Road. He believed the computer may have been mistakenly left atop someone’s car roof when the car was driven away.
Apple must have the sweetest distribution deal in the entire retail universe, if a report published Wednesday at TechCrunch is to be believed.
The AppStore refund policy allows purchasers a full refund up to 90 days from the date of download of any application purchased in the iTunes AppStore. Which seems questionable enough in the light of, say, the Android Market’s 24 hour return policy.
But a clause in the developer’s contract all iPhone developers must sign in order to have their apps sold in the AppStore indicates that in addition to a three month return policy, “Apple will have the right to retain its commission on the sale of that Licensed Application, notwithstanding the refund of the price to the end user.”
In effect this means Apple will charge 100% of the sale price to a developer for every refund given, even though the developer only got 70% of the price of the sale in the first place.
Many iPhone app developers are on the record as having no problem with Apple’s 30% sales commission for applications sold through the iTunes AppStore. The thinking goes that independent developers gain access to many more potential customers by having their products in the widely visited venue, save tons of money on marketing and transaction costs and generally benefit from being associated with the legitimacy of the Apple brand.
When consumers get wind of this policy, which may be a new development, according to the TechCrunch report, developers of some widely purchased though basically useless apps could be in for a rude awakening.
UPDATE: No developer is likely to go bankrupt in the real world, according to a level-headed explanation posted Thursday by Erica Sadun, a developer/blogger for ArsTechnica.
The reason, which makes perfect sense when you think about it, is that Apple never gives refunds, except in extreme circumstances and then, only after causing the customer many headaches.
A businessman who ran a $50 million iPod investment scam was sentenced to 17 years in prison by a federal judge in Miami.
Andres Leonel Pimstein, who pleaded guilty to a dozen wire-fraud counts in December, must also turn over 5,540 of the Apple devices and a Fidelity investment account totaling $138,522, U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan said.
It was a simple enough scheme: Pimstein bough iPods at wholesale prices and resold them to a department store chain in Chile. The chain, named Ripley, was supposedly going to buy the iPods from him at above-market rates.
But there was one slight problem: it was a Ponzi scheme.
‘In exchange for their work, Pimstein made `interest payments’ to the agents that were purportedly derived from the sale of products to Ripley,” according to the criminal information charging him with wire fraud. ‘The agents, in turn, distributed a percentage of the `interest payments’ to their investors and retained the difference as a commission.”
Pimstein was accused of creating false invoices to document the purported purchase and sale of the iPods.
No matter how many times, nor by how many ways it’s disproved, the canard that Macs are more expensive than Windows machines will just not die.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer yammered on about Apple’s price premium Thursday, speaking to BusinessWeek editor Stephen Adler at The McGraw-Hill Companies’ 2009 Media Summit. Citing February sales data indicating a pull-back in the momentum of Mac sales, Ballmer pronounced Apple’s run at market share in the PC universe all but doomed in the currrent economy.
“The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that’s a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.”
Anyone who bothers to think beyond the superficialities, however, knows the higher cost of Macs to be a myth, debunked at least as far back as the earliest years of this decade, and regularly disproved since.
On top of that, three quarters of companies in a recent survey indicated an intention to increase their Mac purchases in the coming year, citing increased productivity and lower cost of ownership as reasons underlying their purchase planning.
So when are people gong to stop paying attention to blowhards such as Ballmer, a guy who won’t even let his wife or kids have an iPod?
Apple has added HD movies to the US iTunes store, including action flicks “Transporter 3,” “Bangkok Dangerous” and “The Spirit.” HD versions cost five dollars more to buy ($14.99 regular, $19.99 HD) but rentals cost the same as regular flicks, $3.99. HD purchases also come with an iPod/iPhone compatible standard def version for viewing on smaller screens.
Upcoming titles available for pre-order on iTunes include “Quantum of Solace” and “Twilight.”
An independent iPod repairman was charged with fraud and money laundering after acquiring more than 9,000 replacement iPod Shuffles by entering serial numbers into Apple’s Web site.
Nicholas Woodhams, 23, then sold the replacement iPods for $49 each, according to court documents filed Wednesday in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Through his repair business, Woodhams knew iPod owners could get a replacement if their Shuffle had problems.
“Through trial and error, the defendant determined that he could guess valid, warrantied serial numbers and enter them into Apple’s Web site for ‘replacement’ units without ever in fact purchasing or possessing the ‘original’ units,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler wrote.
If Apple didn’t receive a defective iPod in return, the company would charge the cost of a replacement to a credit card provided by the customer. But Woodhams used credit or debt cards that rejected the transaction, the prosecutor said.
His lawyer Randall Levine told the Associated Press: “He is one of those guys who is computer-savvy. This is a very bright man who did not fully appreciate the seriousness of the situation.”
Charlie Miller, principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, used a security exploit in Safari 4 to hack into a MacBook in about 10 seconds Wednesday, winning the Pwn2own contest at the CanSecWest security conference for the second year in a row.
The security hole, which Miller said he discovered last year, allows a remote attacker to gain control of a machine by getting the computer user to click on a malicious URL, as Miller demonstrated.
“It’s not easy, but this worked with one click” from the Safari browser, he said.
The contest is sponsored by TippingPoint, which shares details on the exploit with Apple and develops a patch for it. TippingPoint offers $5,000 for each new exploit demonstrated in the major browsers and $10,000 for each successful exploit in the major smartphones.
Miller also discovered an exploit in the mobile version of Safari shortly after the iPhone was launched in 2007. In addition to the $5000 prize for his efforts Wednesday, he gets to keep the MacBook he used to win the contest.
Switcheasy has released a very cool, tiny microphone for Apple’s iPod Nano 4G and Touch 2G devices. Available in red, white and black, the little mini-mic connects to the iPod’s 3.5mm headphone jack and delivers what Switcheasy says is “outstanding” recordings from “the best quality micro-microphone in its category.”
$13 + $3 shipping and handling from the website, ThumbTacks have a gold plated, non-corrosive plug and work with third-party apps. Switcheasy recommends upgrading the iPod to latest firmware before using the ThumbTack.
Well, it’s more of an unfortunate oversight. But the iCount logo — a numbers game for the iPhone, iPod touch — looks like it’s all about something else thanks to the dropping of the “o”. Oh, my. Chalk up another one for the iTunes store censors.
