Apple’s hoping to recreate the magic of what iTunes did for music with the addition of a vast selection of electronic books. Announced at Apple’s event today, the iBook store. Book pricing has been set similarly to what’s offered on Amazon.com’s Kindle platform — the first book shown at Apple’s event was priced $14.99, a Ted Kennedy book (available on Kindle for $14.78). → Read More
When Apple was demoing its new iBooks application for the iPad today during their keynote address, I just kept thinking to myself: this simply must have been designed by Delicious Monster, the shop behind the brilliant Mac app Delicious Library. I’m not the only one who thought that either. Delicious Monster founder Wil Shipley thought the same thing. The only problem? His shop didn’t make it.
In fact, Shipley was quite vocal on Twitter during the keynote today about the situation. “No, Apple didn’t license iBooks from me. They just copied me. Ah well,” he wrote. Later, he added, “I guess it’s not enough Apple has hired every employee who worked on Delicious Library, they also had to copy my product’s look. Flattery?” While Shipley tries to play it off as not that big of a deal, clearly he’s pretty upset about it. And he should be. I mean, the bookshelf view in iBooks is nearly identical to the main bookshelf view used in Delicious Library. Not only that, but it’s not like this is a little-known app that Apple may have missed: it has won the Apple Design Award twice, and been a runner-up one other time. Apple gives out those awards. → Read More
Streaming music firm we7 announced at the recent MidemNet event in Cannes that it will launch advertising-free premium services on 1 February, but today it’s released the prices for its two packages. However, the jury is out on whether revenues from premium subscriptions will cover the costs of music licensing, which remains the final ‘last mile’ in making free online music streaming services scale effectively.
We7 Premium will offer unlimited streaming of over four million songs (including personal radio, playlists and sharing) for £4.99 a month. There’s an introductory offer of £3.99 a month for the first 90 days.
We7 Premium Plus adds mobile to the element, making it a direct competitor to Spotify’s mobile offering. We7 will start with iPhone and Android apps, bringing in other smartphones later this year. Crucially they are matching Spotify’s offline mode ability to listen to your playlists without a 3G or Wifi connection. That costs £9.99 a month, the same price as Spotify’s premium product.
Now, there is a way forward here for We7 since Spotify’s free product is still invite-only. We7′s is free-to-air for anyone. But increasingly I think this battle will come down to quality of service, and just, well, user experience. → Read More
By now you’ve probably seen the videos on Apple’s site showing the iPad. But those aren’t always indicative of the way it actually works in real life. Luckily, Apple had plenty of iPads in a demo pit area after the event today and we captured some footage of a few applications actually being used.
In the video below see Apple’s new Keynote app (built specifically for the iPad), as well as the new iBooks app, in action. As you can see, the device is very fast. Also note the Apple employee talking about using the iPad to make calls. → Read More
While Apple is being lamented here and there for not supporting Flash on its shiny new iPad – boy does Cupertino have a strong dislike for the platform – Adobe has already responded to the news on the official Flash Platform blog.
The blog post, unambiguously titled “Building iPad Applications with Flash”, is mostly just to remind people of the company’s Packager for iPhone product, which will enable developers to make Flash apps function on the iPhone / iPod Touch through a work-around whereby Flash apps can be easily converted into iPhone apps using Creative Suite 5 (CS5). Adobe also published a post on its Adobe Flash Platform blog addressing the apparent lack of Flash support in the iPad. → Read More
Netflix has just reported its Q4 2009 results, and has performed pretty well as expected, although revenue was slightly below most forecasts.
What caught our eye is just how many Netflix customers are now streaming movies and TV shows online. The percentage of subscribers who watched instantly more than 15 minutes of a TV episode or movie in Q4 2009 was 48 percent, compared to 28 percent for the same period of 2008. → Read More
The suspense is over! Today, Apple unveiled its new tablet computer, aptly called the iPad, here in San Francisco. Steve Jobs positions the tablet as a third computing device between a laptop and a smartphone geared towards the “key tasks” of Web browsing, email, sharing photos, watching videos, playing games, and reading digital books. All current iPhone apps will run on the device, as well as new games and digital books designed specifically for it. Here’s a list of all our recent coverage from before, during and after the event. → Read More
All the naysayers can feel free to eat their hats. Today Apple finally revealed the device we’ve all been whispering about for a good year or more. The Sasquatch of gadgets is real. We’ll update this with all the details as they happen; in the meantime, follow our live coverage. Looks like a big iPhone to us. → Read More
[UK] Nobody generates hype better than Apple and we Brits lap it up just like everybody else.
Hitwise Intelligence, the web measurement firm, reports that the iTablet, iSlate, Apple Tablet (or whatever) was the 4th most searched for ‘laptop’ in the UK last week. A product which doesn’t even exist yet, although it’s not expected to remain a rumor for much longer. Just in case you haven’t heard, today is the day that Steve Jobs will finally let the cat out of the bag. → Read More
http://cdn.livestream.com/events/crunchgear/new/index.html This is where all of our live content for today’s Apple event will live. To make things perfectly clear, Apple won’t let us film inside the event. However, CrunchGear and a special surprise guest will offer a full play by play. Feel free to turn on your headphones at work and listen to the news as it happens or watch us live complete with coverage from San Francisco before and after the event. We will start streaming live at 12:30pm EST/9:30am PST and the event begins at 1pm EST/10am PST. Tweet us live at @crunchgear with the hashtag “#applelive.” You can read our previous tablet coverage right here. Want the traditional live blog? Rock out below at about 12:30pm EST. There is no need to refresh your screen as this system will update automatically. Let the games begin. → Read More
Ah, Bingo and high technology. They go together like peanut butter and motor oil, except for the few times each year that Apple announces something. In that spirit, please enjoy a little “Tablet Bingo” while you follow the coverage of Apple’s mood-altering gadgets.
And while you’re playing Tablet Bingo, consider the following questions: do you like Apple announcements? Do you like to drink? Do you like to drink while following Apple announcements? Whether you answered yes or no to any of those questions, here’s an Apple announcement-specific drinking game. Play along with real booze or your favorite non-alcoholic beverage. Enjoy. → Read More
Look at that. The Apple Store is still up. It’s Apple’s normal custom to shut down the store shortly before a major Apple event. Does this mean that maybe there isn’t anything new today? Oh man, wouldn’t that be the greatest? Just think of the riots. SanFran wouldn’t know how to contain so many angry nerds. It would be like District 9. All because Apple let the world down. Anyway, back to the Livestream. → Read More
Folks were a bit disappointed early on in the iPad announcement when it started to sound like it’d be WiFi only – but there was a twist! Late in the show, Steve Jobs announced that there will be 3G-enabled models. While Apple specifically named AT&T as the carrier who will offer up the 3G, he also stated that all iPads will be sold unlocked. It relies on GSM microSIMs – so while you’ll be able to take it around the world, don’t expect to take it over to Verizon or any other CDMA carrier. The pricing of 3G through AT&T is a bit strange; you can pick up 250 Megabytes of data for the stupidly expensive price of $14.99, or unlimited data for the surprisingly cheap price of $30. There is no contract whatsoever. Alas, 3G support doesn’t come built into every model. Nothing in life is free, right? Gettin’ a 3G chip thrown in will set you back an additional $130 bucks – on the most expensive model, the 64GB edition, that brings the price up to $829. The 16 and 32 gigabyte models with 3G support will cost $629 and $729 respectively. Alas, the 3G-enabled versions will take a bit longer to hit the shelves than their WiFi-only brethren; whereas the WiFi-only versions will be in stores within 60 days, Apple expects the 3G-friendly iPads to reach retail in 90. → Read More
It’s official. Yelp is raising a huge chunk of change from Elevation Partners. According to a release, Elevation will invest as much as $100 million in the startup. For now, Yelp will be raising a $25 million in a Series E round from the firm. We broke the news last week here, when talk of the round was in the $50 million range. The initial infusion is half that, but Elevation could end up investing much more over time.
Elevation co-founder Marc Bodnick will be joining Yelp’s Board of Directors. We originally hear that Bono, an Elevation Partners partner, was to be the board representative for Yelp but it looks like Bodnick got the seat in the end. → Read More
The big day finally arrived, and Apple introduced the iPad this morning (yeah, you heard that already).
Strangely, during the course of the much-anticipated event, Apple’s stock went down, as observed by many. And then, Apple finally got around to talking about pricing. → Read More
In other, non-Apple news: Ubisoft has lost its mind. Its latest DRM scheme—the first game to use it will be The Settlers 7, curently scheduled for a Marchrelease—will require that you always be online in order to play its games. That’s not a good idea for many reasons.
For example, look at poor ol’ Devin. He’s been fighting Comcast for God knows how long. Needless to say, he’d be SOL if he ever wanted to play the PC version of a Ubisoft game ever again. → Read More
Another year, another iPhone OS upgrade to get excited about. They’re not saying much about it just yet, but Apple has just announced that the new iPhone SDK (complete with support for the just announced iPad tablet) will be available today. As partially predicted by the rumor mill, iPhone applications will run on the iPad. They won’t, however, run in little floating windows, as early faked leaks assumed. Instead, they will run in “blackboxed” mode at their standard resolution, or in a simulated fullscreen mode by doubling the pixels. Everything developers (and users) have come to know and love from the iPhone — from multi-touch gestures to accelerometer support — are fully supported in the iPad. Developers (or anyone just dying to play with the included iPad simulator) can look for it in the usual spot (http://developer.apple.com/). CrunchBase Information Apple iPhone Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Today, during the unveiling of the iPad, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that you’ll be able to get an iPad that has both Wi-Fi and 3G access, meaning you can download new content from nearly anywhere. That’s great news. The not-so-good? It’s powered by AT&T, which has been absolutely notorious for already being unable to cope with the 3G data usage of the iPhone. This sure isn’t going to help things.
However, there are some upsides. For one, this internet access will not be based on a contract — you’ll sign up for the 3G access directly from the device, paying on a monthly basis. You’ll have two options for dataplans: a not-too-impressive 250 Megabytes for $15.00, or Unlimited downloads for $29.99 (though that will almost certainly have an unwritten cap as well). → Read More
Even the Daily Show is fair and balanced! Jon Stewart interview Bill Gates last night and it was pretty interesting. When Gates isn’t trying to sell his company anymore he’s very mild-mannered and delightfully polite. Plus he dances like Pauly-D. → Read More
Steve Jobs revealed the Apple iPad today, its much-awaited tablet computer (see our live notes). Jobs positions it as a third computing device between a laptop and a smartphone geared towards the “key tasks” of Web browsing, email, sharing photos, watching videos, playing games, and reading digital books. All current iPhone apps will run on the device, as well as new games and digital books designed specifically for it. An enhanced iPhone SDK released today will support both the iPhone and the iPad.
Some specs: The device has a 9.7 inch display, weighs 1.5 pounds, and is half-an-inch thick. It is powered by new chip made by Apple itself, a 1 GHz A4 and will come with 16Gb to 64 GB of storage. It supports WiFi, has an accelerometer, compass, and built-in speaker and microphone, just like the iPhone. The screen is a full capacitive multi-touch screen. Battery life is supposed to be 10 hours. In addition to WiFi, it will have a 3G option from AT&T. The Wifi-only version, with 16GB of memory, will cost $499. A 32GB version will be $599, 64 GB will be $699, and with 3G from AT&T it will cost $829.
On-stage, Apple highlighted the iPad’s use as a digital reader. The iPad comes with a new app called iBooks → Read More
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