In an embarrassing turn of events, Palm has gotten the smackdown from a USB industry group over a software hack that enables Palm’s Pre smartphone to sync with iTunes.
When Palm released the Pre earlier this year, the company cleverly spoofed Apple’s unique USB identifier to fool iTunes into thinking the Pre was an Apple device, allowing it to sync songs and playlists. It was a sneaky but daring move for Palm, ensuring the Pre was compatible with the market-leading music software.
But Apple repeatedly disabled the hack with a series of iTunes updates, so Palm sent a letter to the USB Implementers Forum, an industry group that oversees the USB standard, claiming Apple is “hampering competition.”
But in a response to Apple and Palm on Tuesday, the group sided with Apple, saying Palm’s spoofing of Apple’s ID likely violates USB-IF policy.
“Under the Policy, Palm may only use the single Vendor ID issued to Palm for Palm’s usage,” “the group said in a letter obtained by Digital Daily.
“Usage of any other company’s Vendor ID is specifically precluded. Palm’s expressed intent to use Apple’s VID appears to violate the attached policy,” the letter continued.
Embarrassing. Clearly not the response Palm was hoping for.
The USB Forum asked Palm to clarify its position and respond within seven days. Palm told Digital Daily it is reviewing the Forum’s letter and will “respond as appropriate.”
The music industry is planning to introduce new laws that would require Apple to pay for music in downloaded movies and TV Shows — and iTunes’ 30-second song previews.
The move comes from the industry’s royalty-collection agencies — ASCAP, BMI and others — which collect royalties on music that’s broadcast or performed.
The agencies collect royalties on songs played on the radio or your local dive-bar jukebox, but say they are left out of the digital revolution. Artists are not being paid for music downloaded in movies and TV shows, or previews on Amazon, iTunes and other digital outlets, the agencies say. So they’re lobbying Congress to bring Apple and others in line with cable and broadcast outlets.
On the one hand, the agencies make a compelling point about the consumption of music. Music used to be public. It was broadcast on the radio of performed at concerts, and the industry had mechanisms for collecting royalties on this. But now music is private. It’s loaded onto iPods and played through computers — but there’s no mechanisms for monetizing these new consumption patterns.
“This is really a fight about the future,” one industry spokesman tells CNet. “As more and more people watch TV or movies over an Internet line as opposed to cable or broadcast signal, then we’re going to lose the income of the performance.”
This doesn’t sound unreasonable, but 30 second song previews? As CNet notes: “For many, this would also undoubtedly confirm their perception that those overseeing the music industry are greedy.”
What is it? It’s one of my all-time favourite Menu Bar apps, and was recently updated to work with Snow Leopard. I’m delighted to have just re-installed it after a spell of trying to live without it.
The app is called I Love Stars, and I prefer it over ever other iTunes helper I’ve tried. And I’ve tried quite a few.
What it is: Yahoo has released a native app for iPhone that seamlessly integrates Apple’s mobile device with Yahoo’s popular photo and video sharing platform, Flickr.
Why it’s cool: With the iPhone having recently become the most popular camera among users of the Flickr service, it should be no surprise Yahoo has produced a nifty native app that makes uploading photos and videos from the iPhone to Flickr dead easy.
The first time users launch the app they are prompted to verify a Flickr account through a Safari browser, after which uploading pics and videos to Flickr servers on-the-fly become easy and intuitive. Uploads can be geotagged, tagged with keywords, and placed into sets – and a user’s entire Flickr stream can be viewed in series or by set and tag.
Maybe you don’t want to upload pics but just want to chill with some eye candy from your own stream, the streams of your Flickr contacts, or from other Flickr users worldwide. Just open the app and it will serve up a handful of images from random users as well as from your contacts and display them in a lovely little “Ken Burns”-style slide show. You can also search your contacts, view recent activity, comment and mark images as favorites.
All in all, the app brings very tight integration between the iPhone and the web service and should make the iPhone even more popular as a Flickr upload device in the coming months.
Where to get it: Flickr for iPhone is a free application, available now on the iTunes App Store.
Whether you were disappointed or elated with the new products and services on Tuesday’s Rock n’ Roll event, you have to admit there was a lot of stuff going on.
One small, almost overlooked new-ish item: “Mayhem” the first standalone digital book is for sale on iTunes 9. (Fortune’s Jon Fortt ran into singer/actor Tyrese Gibson who produced it at the event, or he says he might have missed it, too.)
Although there are plenty of comic book apps and magazines on iTunes, this one is different. Mayhem is more like a book on steroids. For the $1.99 purchase price, you get the comic book, an iTunes LP with an exclusive track, plus storyboards, a making-of video and two freebie comic books.
This is the first digital book that Apple had a hand in designing and it shows — reports say the interface is versatile enough to work as well on a touch-screen as it does on a full-size screen.
The Mayhem iTunes LP was designed by Sam Herz, one of Apple’s user interface engineers for iTunes, and Barry Munsterteiger, creative director for rich media and Internet technologies.
iTunes 9 has neat little new feature: it will automatically import any music or videos you throw into a specific folder.
That folder is called “Automatically Add to iTunes”, and after installing iTunes 9 you’ll find it tucked away inside your “~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/” folder.
Alan Kay, the computing visionary who first envisioned the Dynabook computer concept, worked at Xerox PARC and helped make the original Mac amazing, is one of my favorite technology philosophers. Simply put, he had a way of turning a phrase when discussing the progress of technology that could bring clarity to a muddled topic.
Of all his quotes, my favorite is also one of his most casual. He said that the Macintosh was “the first personal computer good enough to criticize.” In his mind, everything else had been so crummy that to begin listing faults would pretty much convince you that PCs shouldn’t exist at all. Ever since, the mark of an emerging technology’s arrival is the point at which it becomes good enough to begin figuring out what’s wrong with it.
And of all of Apple’s announcements this morning, only the digital album format iTunes LP (also known as Cocktail) qualifies as a major improvement to a nascent technology. Simply put, though Apple long ago figured out how to sell music as digital downloads, it’s taken until now for them or anyone else to get in the ballpark of how to make those downloads feel anywhere near as special as a physical CD or LP.
Having played around with it for a bit (and watched several more demos of albums I haven’t picked up), it’s quite clear that Apple’s made a huge leap forward. And in so doing, it has made it abundantly clear how far they have to go.
Here are five steps Apple could take to make iTunes LP a competitor with your vinyl collection:
1. Get It Off My Computer and On My Devices The nice animation, visuals, video, and lyric displays offered for the first round of iTunes LP are nice and all, but I don’t actually spend a lot of time focusing on my music when playing it back off of a computer. iTunes is a background task most of the time, and even this immersive experience won’t change that — and it’s kind of weird to “page” through liner notes with mouse clicks. The entire look and feel is dramatically more suited to the iPhone or, dare I say it, a tablet computer. If Apple brings multitouch into the equation, maybe the format will restore some of the emotional connection to the tangible object of music in some way. For now, this is some nice animation I’ll never look at again.
2. Offer Lossless Audio Files At this point, the only people who are under the impression that limiting the supply of legitimate digital music actual limits the piracy of music work for record companies, yet it’s nearly impossible to buy truly CD-quality (or better) digital audio from major recording artists online. Apple should use the opportunity presented by iTunes LP to significantly up the quality of its audio to make the music itself sound more special.
3. Make it Simple for Artists to Use Do you know how many iTunes LP titles are available today, the first day of launch? Six. A 43-year-old Bob Dylan record you should already own, a greatest-hits collection from the Doors, American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, the new Norah Jones, the new Dave Matthews Band, and actor Tyrese Gibson’s way-autotuned comic book mash-up MAYHEM! Something for everyone, eh? If that somehow isn’t enough music for you, Apple is offering five (5!) additional albums for pre-order.
Yeah.
Clearly, the format is too complex for artists and labels to get behind yet. If you have the budget of Dave Matthews or Bob Dylan, you can have people make it for you, but if you’re pretty much every other artist, taking advantage of the format will take some (or a lot) or doing. If Apple wants this to become a de facto standard for digital albums, it needs to make this a blindingly easy process for artists to participate in — as easy as submitting your record to iTunes for sale. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but it’s a clear key to success.
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Again, iTunes LP is a fascinating effort. But it’s only good enough to criticize. The next year will be Apple’s opportunity to get it right or watch this concept go the way of the enhanced CD.
Singer Nick Cave has a new novel out: The Death of Bunny Munro, a light, cheery, life-affirming tale of the last days of a the eponymous traveling salesman. Just kidding — it’s dark. It’s also available as an audio book and an iPhone application.
But the best part is, guess what he used to write the first chapter?
Here’s a short screencast showing the basic function of iTunes 9’s new app management tool for iPhone and iPod touch.
It’s interesting to compare and contrast this with this app manager concept that we featured here on the Cult back in February.
Most iPhone owners I know have never bothered to sort their apps into any sort of meaningful screen-by-screen arrangement, simply because doing so was too much hassle. This tool will change that, I think, and encourage people to create screenfuls of apps sorted by category.
Have you tried re-arranging your apps yet? What do you make of it?
While some may contend the browser wars are over, Apple certainly ensured the 100,000,000 iTunes account holders Steve jobs alluded to at Wednesday’s “Rock and Roll” event in San Francisco will be downloading the latest version of Safari, whether they use Apple’s browser to surf the web or not.
They’ll download it if they want to use iTunes 9, that is.
iTunes LP — song lyrics, liner notes, photos, and more. Home Sharing — Transfer music, movies, and more between your computers at home. New iTunes Store — The Redesigned iTunes Store. With a great new look, it’s even easier to explore. iTunes Extras — Get an inside look at your favorite movies with new special features. Genius Mixes — Genius makes up to twelve perfect music mixes, automatically. Improved Syncing — Better ways to sync. And a new way manage apps on your Home screens.
Steve just introduced iTunes 9. Available today as a free download, the new version adds:
* iTunes LP — includes videos, lyrics, liner notes, credits, chronologies and other digital content. Tries to recreate the LPs of Steve’s youth. The images are big and colorful, and its interactive. “The photos are amazing.” Thsi doesn;t sound like the rumored “Cocktail” project, which has been tied to the tablet, and is therefore probably a multitouch app. But perhaps iTunes LP is a precursor.
* Home sharing — iTunes lets you copy songs, movies and TV shows among the five authorized computers in your house. Automatically transfers new purchases between computers. This is a nice change. Media management between computers at home is a huge pain, and one of the reasons consumers download pirate content, because there are no DRM headaches. This should make sharing a lot easier.
* Better Syncing — Set up and manage your iPhone/touch Home Screen within iTunes. You manage what Apps go where via drag and drop. Another welcome change. Should make App management a lot easier.
* Redesigned Store — “Cleaner,” says Steve. Bigger images, lots more song previews. You no longer have to drill down to hear a song preview. Store can go full screen, dispensing with the sidebar. “Looking good,” says Gdgt.
* Genius mixes — auto DJ that mixes songs from your iTunes library that it thinks will go well together. iTunes will make 12 by default. Click one, and it’ll play indefinitely.
* Social software — publish items in iTunes to Facebook and Twitter, or send them as gifts.
If Apple wanted to stand the world on its ear next Wednesday at the It’s Only Rock and Roll But We Like It event in San Francisco, the company would announce it is opening iPhone software development to all comers and is dropping the facade of exclusive distribution through the iTunes App Store.
Heresy, you say? Perhaps in the eyes of some, but read on to learn why those two moves would be best for the company, the platform, for developers and – most of all – consumers.
Apple is expected to announce the availability of pre-cut ringtones made from popular music tracks at next week’s media event on September 9, according to a report Wednesday at CNET News.
Despite being able to easily make their own ringtones out of any mp3 file for free, consumers have in the past shown a willingness to pay as much as $3 to hear a few seconds of a favorite song when receiving an incoming phone call.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment for the report and no details are available about what the company might charge for ringtones, but the formerly booming, high-margin source of music industry revenues saw a 24% decline from 2007 – 2008, according to a recent report from the research firm SNL Kagan.
With many expecting little more than some tweaks to iTunes and a possible refresh of the iPod line next week, Apple appears to have done a good job of setting the stage for a blockbuster announcement of some kind.
On the other hand, Apple can’t be expected to put a ding in the universe with every single press conference; maybe what we’ll get next week will only amount to “Hey, Look – Ringtones!”
If the TV industry doesn’t invent a digital business that customers want, it risks an “iTunes moment,” when Apple took hold of the online music business, a Microsoft exec said.
“Realistically. I think the industry has about two to three years to adapt or face its iTunes moment. And it will take at least that long for media brands to build credible, truly digital brands,” Ashley Highfield, managing director of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, told the Guardian.
Answering the inevitable question of how to make money from these new ventures, he said “media companies need to embrace controversial targeted advertising techniques, such as behavioral targeting based on users’ web viewing habits, with the ad inventory going into an auction-style model similar to the system Google operates.”
Interesting he didn’t name Apple TV — speculated “dead” as Sony and Microsoft entered the market last year — as a specific threat, but spoke of the success of iTunes.
In 2007, a Forrester analyst said both iTunes and Apple TV were “dead ends” that would be “eclipsed by television and cable networks will quickly shift their content to free ad-supported streaming.”
Ha. I tried out Apple TV for about a week while house sitting this summer. The interface was nice, the remote control cool. I’d still rather keep the cheapo PVR with a slightly wheezy fan a friend rigged up — because, while it’s an ugly little box and the remote control works about 40% of the time, there’s no DRM.
Boy Genius Report published Wednesday what the blog reports as screenshots of iTunes 9 sent in by a “tipster”. The screenshots, whose “authenticity cannot be confirmed”, purport to show Facebook integration as well as sync capability extended to a Samsumg mp3 player.
For what it’s worth, a source intimately knowledgeable with the production of Apple help and support documentation told Cult of Mac during a recent conversation not to expect social media integration with the release of iTunes 9, which our source described only as “coming soon”. The most interesting and useful upgrade confirmed for the next version of iTunes is going to be the ability to order and organize iPhone and iPod Touch app screens from the iTunes desktop.
With nearly three weeks until the still-rumored, not-yet-officially-announced Apple Media Event thought to be taking place in San Francisco on September 9, the Apple rumor mill will in all likelihood continue to spit and pop all kinds of interesting ideas. And in all likelihood no one will really know what’s coming until the John Mayer music (or whoever…) fades…
New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority wants to derail an independent iPhone app that publishes train schedules for violation of copyright.
Called Station Stops, the $2.99 app available on iTunes, is the work of commuter Chris Schoenfeld, who also writes the blog of the same name.
The app provides the timetable of the Metro-North Railroad for regularly-scheduled trains departing and arriving from Grand Central Station.
The MTA provides its schedules to Google Transit, but doesn’t release the data publicly.
To build his app, Schoenfeld did it the old way — by entering data manually from the published public schedule.
Schoenfeld, who has often been critical of MTA service, got a nastygram from MTA lawyers ordering him to stop presenting himself as an official service — and pay licensing fees for the schedules.
The MTA reckons the developer owes them a share of profits from the app, back pay the licensing fees. And a $5,000 non-refundable fee.
Schoenfeld’s not interested in ponying up. His sensible David versus ham-fisted Goliath story received a lot of sympathetic local news coverage — but that didn’t stop the MTA from asking Apple to take down the app on Aug. 14.
As of this writing, Station Stops is still for sale.
As one station stops blog reader, Karen Cavanaugh commented:
“I always use Station Stops to check the train schedule when I visit my daughter in Hoboken, NJ. I never think of it as an “OFFICIAL” website. I’ve been to the official website and it’s awkward.”
If you’re lucky enough to live in Pittsburgh, you can report stuff like potholes, graffiti and other everyday annoyances straight to city hall via an iPhone app called iBurgh.
Peeved Pittsburghers first download the app, gratis on iTunes. First time users need to fill in name, phone number, email and home address — stored automatically for logging future complaints.
Users snap pics of traffic gridlock, abandoned cars or whatever. The photos are geotagged and sent immediately to the city complaint hotline 311. Officials hope that if enough people use the app (they already get about 200 rants a day) they’ll have a cluster map of trouble areas to plan for future maintenance and repairs.
It’s the first app available on iTunes from a Carnegie Mellon spin-off whose other product was mobile video technology for sports events, called “yinzcam” that let users at hockey games pick what to zoom in on with their iPhones.
Citing “sources close to the company,” Paczkowski says the event will be held in San Francisco — probably at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a smaller venue which Apple has used before.
There will be upgrades to the iPod line and iTunes, which may get integration with social networks, but definitely no tablet:
“Our sources insist it will not involve any discussion whatsoever of the tablet that Apple is reportedly developing.”
Another All Things Digital report last week said Apple was was planning a media event for sometime during the week of September 7th, while the conventional wisdom is now that Apple will not introduce a tablet this year.
Apple usually holds its media events on a Tuesday (which gives the press and VIPs a work day for travel), but Monday that week is Labor day.
UPDATE: Check out purported screenshots of iTunes 9 showing social networking integration from German blogger Tobias Bischoff after the jump.
The coming version of iTunes 9 will feature social networking on steroids, and Apple may be developing a standalone social networking application as well, if an account Tuesday from Boy Genius Report proves accurate.
Citing a “a pretty reliable source” named Lindsey, the site reported over the weekend that iTunes 9 would feature “some kind of Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm integration” along with Blu-Ray and functionality to visually organize and arrange iPhone and iPod Touch applications.
The source appears to have described Apple’s plans further, saying the company is working on a separate “Social” application it plans to release at some uncertain future date. The app would integrate with iTunes to let users broadcast what music they are currently listening to, permit sharing of music with people on their network (but um, iTunes lets you do that now), connect with friend’s friends, and update all of their online statuses at the same time.
It’s not hard to imagine Apple would be working on social networking, since it’s pretty much the biggest trend on the Internet today. It will be interesting to see what the company’s take on social communications looks like, especially in the light of the fact that social networking capabilities are among the more compelling aspects of LaLa — a competing music distribution outlet CoM reported on previously.
It will also be interesting to see just how much “broadcasting” and “sharing” music labels and artists rights organizations such as ASCAP and BMI are going to stand for in the brave new social world that appears to be just over the horizon.
Apple is developing a new media file format to deliver digital music along with collateral material such as artwork, lyrics, liner notes, songs, videos, and images all from a centralized album launch page, according to a report Monday at The AppleBlog.
Citing “various whispers and rumbling around the web,” the report said the new file format is code-named “Cocktail” for the variety of ingredients it will bring to the user experience.
Apparently, major music labels including Sony, Warner, Universal, and EMI are also spearheading their own version of an enhanced file format in the hope of not being outdone by what amounts to a significant potential upgrade for iTunes.
Apple is considered by many to have effectively “saved” the music industry by inventing the iPod and iTunes, with the major labels having resented the company’s pricing power and ability to dictate distribution terms ever since.
If true, the rumored new file format could make for nice end-user eye candy while providing entertainment for those amused by the ongoing struggle for world domination among Apple and the major media distributors.
Apple is rumored to be adding Blu-Ray to the iTunes, but why would it undercut its brand new online HD rental service?
New rumors this weekend suggest that Blu-Ray may finally be coming to the Mac. But while Blu-Ray is high on many people’s wish list, the rumors just don’t make sense.
Citing a “pretty reliable source,” Boy Genius Report says Blu-Ray is coming to iTunes 9, maybe as soon as September. The rumor jibes with a particularly vague story on AppleInsider suggesting that new iMacs will get new features (yeah, it’s almost sounds like self-parody), possibly Blu-Ray.
But although Blu-Ray format is gaining popularity, it’s unlikely to come to the Mac, ever. Here’s why:
Apple has revoked the iPhone developer’s license of one prolific mobile app developer, according to a report at MobileCrunch, but the company is still taking heat for inconsistencies in its App Store approval policies.
Kahlid Shaikh and his team of 26 engineers working under the name Perfect Acumen had over 900 apps approved and selling in the iTunes App Store until July 24, when Apple terminated Shaikh’s iPhone Developer Program License due to concerns over “numerous third party intellectual property complaints concerning over 100 of [his] Applications.”
The majority of Shaikh’s apps merely aggregated content found on the web and delivered it to iPhone users under titles such as “US Army News”, “Skin Care Updates” and “Economical Crisis Updates”, as well as other questionable content under titles such as “Top Sexy Ladies” and “Top Sexy Men”.
Shaikh admitted he is not concerned about creating particularly valuable apps, according to the MobileCrunch report. Instead, he said, he’s going for “less product value” and “more monetization.” Many of his apps had been sold for $4.99, generating revenue in the range of thousands of dollars per day for Perfect Acumen, according to the report.
Despite having finally grown exasperated with fielding copyright and intellectual property claims against Shaikh, and having acted to remove what some believe was a raft of useless apps from the App Store, Apple is taken to task by the author of the MobileCrunch report for inconsistencies in its App Store review process. The entire brouhaha here is seen as evidence that “Clearly, Apple doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.”
It appears, in the eyes of some, Apple cannot win for losing, no matter what the company does with the App Store. Either its review process is too open or it’s too restrictive; the store has too many useless apps, bans products users want, or acts to cull sketchy apps — and the end result is “Apple Sucks” no matter what they do.
Apple’s is a difficult position for a company to be in. The company created an entirely new distribution model for an industry that didn’t even exist two years ago. It created opportunity and economic activity that has amounted to one of the few glimmering beacons of hope in what has been roundly described as one of the worst economic downturns in nearly a century. And yet some people seem unable to accept the fact that every single decision made at every step of the way has not resulted in clear skies, smooth sailing and endless joy for one and all.
Make no mistake: Apple is a huge company that can and will act with caprice to get and maintain whatever economic advantage it can in a ruthless marketplace. The FCC appears increasingly interested in the operational nuances among Apple, Google and AT&T, as the formerly moribund antitrust watchdogs of the federal government are starting to prick up their ears under the Obama administration.
However, when Apple acts to shed the likes of Shaikh and his questionable work product from the App Store the company ought to be praised for finally — if belatedly — doing the right thing.
Citing “an industry executive familiar with Netflix’s plans,” the trade mag says Netflix’s Watch Instantly service is headed to the iPhone, iPod Touch and the Nintendo Wii. However, because of bandwidth concerns, it will likely be available only over WiFi and not AT&T’s 3G network, MN says.
Either way, it’s great news.
I’m a subscriber and a big fan of Netflix’s service, which I find to be easier, more convenient and much, much cheaper than Apple’s iTunes. For about $20 a month, we get to stream a wide a wide variety of TV shows and movies from Netflix instead of paying a la carte for rentals or purchases from iTunes.
Indeed, Netflix’s Watch Instantly is the strongest of the online on-demand video services — the gold standard for content on demand.
The selection isn’t comprehensive, but I find it to be pretty good. There’s not the latest releases, but there’s a pretty deep and wide library of great movies, which is more than can be said for iTunes, which I find unbearably popcorn and shallow.
In addition, Netflix movies stream quickly, the quality is great, even on a big 42-inch HDTV, and we’ve never, ever encountered a problem — a rare and astonishing testament to the company’s technology. (We use the service through a Samsung Blu-Ray player which streams Netflix and Pandora).
The service is already available on a wide range of devices from Windows PCs and Macs, to the Xbox 360, TiVo and several Blu-Ray DVD players with support for streaming downloads.
Apple’s iTunes – the only online music distributor that matters, according to one well-placed music lawyer – may get additional competition before year-end, if an exclusive Wired report published Monday proves accurate.
Spotify, a music service boasting over 6 million songs that can be accessed on-demand and customized into personalized, editable, downloadable playlists, is currently available only in Europe but the company is feverishly working to sign distribution agreements with copyright holders and music labels to bring both a desktop and an iPhone application to American consumers as soon as possible, according to the report.
Spotify’s potential to compete with iTunes in the US remains speculative at this point, and the company understands that despite having created a slick iPhone app to which Wired writer Eliot Van Buskirk gives rave pre-release reviews, Apple could put the kibosh on the whole thing if it determines Spotify “replicates functionality” provided by Apple’s native iTunes application. “It’s going to be very interesting to see if Apple lets this through or sees us as competition — fingers crossed,” explained Spotify communications manager Jim Butcher.
Whether or not the iPhone app is approved, when the company gets its US distribution agreements in order it seems likely that many will check out some of the interesting features the desktop service will have to offer, such as the ability to stream playlists created by other Spotify members and to access an ad-free version of the service with a premium account.
It will be interesting, too, to see how Spotify differs from and compares with Lala, another iTunes competitor with great potential already available in the US.
Apple’s iTunes – the only online music distributor that matters, according to one well-placed music lawyer – may get additional competition before year-end, if an 
