No Apple/Beatles today, say McCartney and EMI catalog chief
Buried somewhere across the Atlantic on a Financial Times blog is solid reportage from two major UK newspapers that refutes the rumors that Apple’s super-secret product launch on Wednesday will debut the Beatles’ music in Apple’s iTunes music store. EMI, Paul McCartney told a reporter, worries about being sued silly should the iTunes copies get widely pirated:
[Apple's] San Francisco event will come the same day as the release of the remastered Beatles catalog, although that… Continue Reading
Report: Yoko Ono says the Beatles are coming to iTunes
During all the debate about what Apple might announce at its event tomorrow in San Francisco, MediaMemo dashed hopes that the company might fill the most serious gap in its iTunes music store, namely selling the albums of The Beatles. VentureBeat writer Paul Boutin started looking at other possibilities, but it looks like Paul’s speculation may have been beside the point — at least according to Yoko Ono.
The widow of Beatle John Lennon told Sky… Continue Reading
Beatles or no Beatles? Apple rumor rundown for tomorrow’s event
Update: A prematurely published story from Sky News suggests that Yoko Ono is confirming that the Beatles are coming to iTunes. Yet Another Update: That story was wrong. Told you so!
Apple won’t say what’s going to be unveiled at Wednesday’s mystery event at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center. The tagline on the invites: “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it,” a line from a song by the Rolling Stones.
Since it’s on the same… Continue Reading
Loopt works around Apple, AT&T to add always-on location tracking for iPhone
When location-based social network Loopt debuted its early-to-market iPhone app last year, then-VentureBeat writer MG Siegler dubbed it “nifty, but crippled.” The handicap: Apple wouldn’t let Loopt’s app run in the background while you used other apps or pocketed your phone. Apple blocks apps from running in the background to keep them from running down the phone’s battery. So if you were on the move, Loopt didn’t keep up with your changing location.
Loopt’s engineers and… Continue Reading
Analyst: iPhone secure against competitors, AT&T not so much
As Palm, Google, and others roll out their smartphone platforms, you might think Apple should be worried about keeping the momentum going on its iPhone. Not so, says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster in a note sent out earlier today — the competition just drives more people to Apple.
Noting strong sales of the Apple’s latest model, the iPhone 3G S, Munster writes:
The smart phone industry has effectively crowned the iPhone and its App Store the… Continue Reading
Chinese wireless carriers, profits falling, cut deals to sell smartphones
The sales slump that’s undermined U.S. and European carriers finally made its way to China this past quarter. The world’s largest wireless carrier, China Mobile, reported its first drop in profits since 1999 last week. Yesterday, the country’s second and third largest carriers, China Unicom and China Telecom, also reported slumping business. China Telecom reported a 29 percent drop in net revenue and warned that its profitability date may be postponed by up to a… Continue Reading
Pogue: Snow Leopard crashes Word, Photoshop, printer
New York Times gadget guru David Pogue wrote in his review of Apple’s brand new operating system, Snow Leopard, that he experienced “frustrating glitches” with several applications and parts of the user interface. We asked him to stretch it out a bit and tell us what exactly the glitches were. The glitches turn out to be Windows-grade failures that could stop you from doing your job.
Hey Paul!
It’s very difficult to say whether my experiences will… Continue Reading
Apple approves Spotify’s music service app for iPhone
Popular European music streaming service Spotify has, after weeks of delay, been approved by Apple for the iPhone App Store. Spotify, whom many industry watchers consider a direct challenger to Apple’s iTunes, has been showing off its app although Apple’s reviewers had not yet approved it as a downloadable iPhone application. That roadblock has been cleared.
“The current status as of right now is it’s been approved and we hope to add the app to the… Continue Reading
Apple’s Snow Leopard may stop you from doing your job
Apple’s $29 Snow Leopard operating system is, as the name and price imply, an upgrade to the existing Leopard operating system with no major new applications. Still, Snow Leopard is a significant piece of under-the-hood work, with 90% of the 1,000 or so projects within Mac OS X upgraded in some way.
Many of the changes are low-key, in the manner of BMW’s annual revisions to its 3-series sedan. For example, nearby Wi-Fi networks are displayed… Continue Reading
AdMob finds Android app users more scarce, but just as obsessed as iPhone app users
Updated
The latest monthly report from mobile ad network AdMob, which surveyed 1,117 users, finds that consumers who download apps onto an Android handset or an iPhone behave very much alike.
The big gap between them is that only 19 percent of Android users download at least one paid application per month, compared to 40 and 50 percent for iPod Touch and iPhone owners, respectively.
“However,” AdMob writes, “users who purchase paid apps on either platform exhibit similar… Continue Reading
Roundup: Nokia Money, iPhones coming to China
Nokia announces Nokia Money, a payment-by-phone service that will launch next year — The service will let anyone send and receive money with a text message or a voice call. All you need to know to send someone money is their phone number. Nokia Money will be operated by Redwood City-based Obopay, in which Nokia invested $70 million in March. The system is blessedly simple to use: You register one or more bank accounts or credit cards… Continue Reading
Apple’s $29 Snow Leopard OS forgoes wows in favor of customer retention
Apple’s latest operating system ships on Friday. Snow Leopard, as its name implies, is a massive upgrade to the current OS, Leopard. Strategically, Apple’s goal for Snow Leopard isn’t to wow consumers with new applications, as it has with past OS upgrades. Instead, Snow Leopard makes Mac desktops and laptops faster and more reliable, and enables them to replace Windows PCs in Microsoft-centric workplaces by connecting to Microsoft’s Exchange server for email, calendars and contacts…. Continue Reading
Apple — not AT&T — holds off on Google Voice for the iPhone
AT&T-bashers should take pause. It was Apple, not the wireless carrier, that held off on approving Google Voice for the iPhone.
Apple “continues to study” the application and hasn’t approved it because it may “alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality,” according to a letter to the Federal Communications Commission.
Google Voice lets you use a single phone number to receive calls on multiple phones and reach your voicemail. It… Continue Reading
Apple TV to get long-anticipated upgrade?
For several years, Apple TV has been a mediocre product from a company that rarely accepts mediocrity. Left in the dust by a number of internet video-to-TV devices like Roku and even Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Apple’s offering has remained the same for a year and a half — and is more expensive to boot — $229 compared to Roku’s $99. But today, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster very publicly predicted that Apple TV will get… Continue Reading
Steve Jobs sought no-poaching deal with Palm
Apple’s autocratic CEO suggested a possibly illegal deal with the head of Palm two years ago, according to a report by Bloomberg, under which Palm and Apple would stop poaching each other’s employees. The two companies, five miles apart in Silicon Valley, have a history of sniping star staffers from one another.
Jobs allegedly made the proposal in August 2007, shortly after the first iPhones went on sale, to Palm’s CEO at the time, Ed Colligan… Continue Reading
Test-driving Facebook’s new iPhone app
Facebook unveiled the latest version of its iPhone app, which further orients itself around the site’s stream of user updates. We’ve tried out the app, and it’s pretty slick. It has a more graphical interface and adds more full-fledged functionality from the main site. It will come out for free whenever Apple approves it for the app store.
You can write and read your friends’ notes, upload videos from an iPhone 3GS and upload photos to any… Continue Reading
Why is simple design so hard?
On a recent business trip to Austin, I stayed at my father’s house. It’s a beautiful home – with the confounding exception of the guest bathroom. The builders, for reasons I can’t even fathom, decided to install an individual switch for every light, as well as for the vent and heat lamp. As I fumbled around for the right combination for a successful shower and shave, I found myself wondering, why is simple so hard?
Complex… Continue Reading
Roundup: Twitter attack mania, Apple tablet rumor update, down rounds beat up rounds in Q2
Nortel’s CEO will leave – Mike Zafirovski has been criticized for not doing enough and not doing it fast enough, to save the maker of aging CDMA mobile network technology from bankruptcy and to strip it down to a lean, mean machine with a future. The Wall Street Journal has the best summary.
Down rounds officially outnumber up rounds — Down rounds, in which a company gets money by agreeing to be valued lower by new investors… Continue Reading
Top Apple exec emails geek blogger on iPhone app censorship charges
Apple’s reputation as arrogantly insular, more than anything else, is what aspiring iPhone app developers say makes them afraid to commit to Apple as a business channel.
Phil Schiller is in some ways the new public face of Apple, regardless of who’s in charge. The genial head of Apple’s global marketing teams filled in for chief executive Steve Jobs at the company’s most recent keynote presentation in June. Yesterday, Schiller stepped onto the Internet to clarify… Continue Reading
BlackBerry Curve outsold iPhone 3G S in Q2
The latest smartphone market report from analysts IDC claims that despite all the buzz, attention and money thrown at iPhones and anything to do with iPhones, the new iPhone 3G S came in second to BlackBerry’s Curve as the phone most bought in America in the second quartery of 2009.
IDC’s top ten list looks like this:
1. BlackBerry Curve
2. iPhone 3G S
3. BlackBerry Pearl
4. iPhone 3G
5. BlackBerry Bold
6. BlackBerry Storm
7. HTC T-Mobile G1
8. Palm Pre
9. HTC… Continue Reading