Every gadget that graces our shelves goes through plenty of tweaks and changes during its design phase, but it isn’t too often that we get an actual glimpse of those scrapped iterations. It can be tremendously cool to see what our stuff could have looked like in some alternate timeline, and a new eBay listing reveals a peculiar iPad that may have been.
The listing is for an early first-generation iPad prototype, and unlike the final model it sports two dock connectors, allowing the iPad to be docked in either portrait or landscape mode. → Read More
It may not be the end, but the prognosis doesn’t look good. Social micro-payments platform Flattr is taking an unkind hit in terms of its future growth opportunities on mobile, the company details on its blog this morning. After being integrated into popular third-party podcast manager Instacast back in February, Apple decided at the beginning of May to reject the app from the iTunes App Store due to its Flattr integration. The result? The only way Instacast could get back into the app store was to change the user flow in the app to direct the actual “flattr” (as the micro-payment process is called) to take place in the Safari web browser instead. Not an ideal user experience, Apple admits, but it’s as required by the App Store Review Guidelines.
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The auction house Sotheby’s is selling an official memo from Steve Jobs to Atari about improving the World Cup Football game. The pages – stamped and signed by Jobs himself – describe circuit diagrams and paddle layouts. Delightfully, the stamp says “All-One Farm Design” and features a Buddhist mantra, “gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svahdl.” As you do.
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Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Apple and a number of other large U.S. publishers of conspiring to fix eBook prices and filed an antitrust lawsuit. While most of the publishers quickly settled the lawsuit, Apple decided to fight. Earlier this week, as Ars Technica reports today, Apple responded (PDF) to the government’s accusations. Apple doesn’t mince words in its response. The company’s lawyers call the case against Apple “fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law” and say that the idea that Apple tried to reduce competition and fix prices is “absurd.” → Read More
In an apparent effort to help its users find more interesting apps in its cavernous digital stores, Apple today made an interesting tweak to its iOS and Mac app stores. Both now feature a “free app of the week” and an “editor’s choice” section. As Apple’s official App Store Twitter account announced yesterday, Cut the Rope: Experiments is Apple’s choice for this week’s free app in the iOS store. Editor’s Choice apps include Extreme Skater and Facebook Camera for iPhone, Sketchbook Ink for iPad, and Cobook and Deus Ex Human Revolution in the Mac App Store. → Read More
Apple is continuing its “famous person uses Siri” commercials by bringing in famous person John Malkovich to add a soupçon of Old World weltschmerz and philosophizing to what is, in short, a way to schedule a wake-up call without unlocking your phone. The commercials feature Malkovich in what appears to be the house above the nasty places in Hostel where he muses on fine meats and the meaning of life.
I don’t quite get these celebrity appearances but, in the end, I suppose they’re good for brand awareness. Siri isn’t for the geeks – it’s for the folks who may have once been in love with BlackBerries. Siri suggests a certain ease, a certain subsumed technicality that would draw in the C-level exec and, in parallel, well-known superstars. It is, in short, a little assistant that will never talk back to you, never ask for a raise, and never request that you stop cursing. → Read More
Mobile advertising company Millennial Media, one of the biggest in the U.S., has released its quarterly ad impression report, and the results show that Apple continues to remain the single-biggest brand, and most popular phone maker, on the Millennial ad network — with the rest of the list largely dominated by Android.
Apple has a clear lead in the field of device makers based on brand: the popularity of Apple’s iPhone handsets, iPad tablets and iPod music players gave the company a share of 28.32 percent of all devices on the network, with its closest competitor, Samsung, picking up a share of 18.25 percent of the overall market impressions. Millennial also notes that non-phone devices are continuing to see a growing impact on the overall mix.
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It’s hard to underestimate how important ranking in Apple’s top 25 in the iTunes store is for mobile app developers. After all, the top 25 is what one of the most important app discovery mechanisms for iOS users. But how many downloads does it take to make it into the top 25? Mobile analytics firm Distimo today published some interesting data that answer just this question. Turns out, in the U.S. store, the answer currently is about 38,400 daily downloads for free apps and 3530 for paid apps. To rank in the top 25 per category, of course, takes significantly fewer downloads, with games unsurprisingly being the most competitive category. It takes 25,300 daily downloads to rank in the gaming top 25 for free apps and 2280 downloads for paid apps. → Read More
Almost 115 million households in the U.S. currently own at least on TV set and 36 million own four or more. That’s a huge market and as Apple, Google and Microsoft try wrestle more of this business away from the traditional content and hardware players, the old-school cable and satellite providers now suddenly have to content with this new group of challengers that, until now, barely registered on their radars. According to Forrester analyst James McQuivey, it’s Microsoft that’s winning this platform war so far. → Read More
Here’s hoping that you already managed to get your hands on an HTC One X, because it may be a while before they appear on store shelves again.
According to a release put out by HTC last night, U.S. Customs has blocked shipments of AT&T’s HTC One X and Sprint’s Evo 4G LTE thanks to an ITC ruling handed down last year.
The news may come as an especially large bummer for Sprint customers looking to upgrade to the new EVO, as a new report from the Wall Street Journal indicates that device will miss its original May 18 launch date. Sprint has since scrubbed their website of references to the device’s forthcoming launch, and there’s still no word on a revised launch window. → Read More
The iPhone might be coming to the world’s largest mobile carrier, China Mobile. The world comes from Bloomberg quoting China Mobile’s chairman. The report also details that the phone might not hit the carrier’s 655 million subscribers yet this year. But the two sides are talking. That’s a start. Apple needs China Mobile and China Mobile needs Apple. → Read More
Remember last week when Foxconn president Terry Gou said that he was working hard at building the new Apple TV? The rumor was, as you might suspect, patently false. But just how false is the surprising part.
Welcome to the magical world of Apple rumors.
Before we begin, take a look at this delightful Fortune piece that shows us the truth behind the big Apple rumor mill. It’s well-written and cogent and takes us all to task, including our own Matt Burns for jumping into the morass. → Read More
With Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference just weeks away, expect plenty of reports of new features to come crawling out of the woodwork. In fact, here’s one from the Wall Street Journal — they claim that Apple has been doing some major tinkering with their iCloud storage service, the fruits of which will be unveiled on June 11.
First up is the ability for users to share and comment on each other’s photos, a pretty dramatic shift away from iCloud’s current approach to photo storage. As it stands, each user has a single Photo Stream meant mostly to make sure images are on the devices they need to be on. This shift in sharing actually sounds a little reminiscent of Apple’s recently-killed MobileMe service, though how exactly the sharing process would play out within iCloud is still up in the air. → Read More
If the rumors pan out, Apple’s next MacBook Pro line will set the notebook world ablaze with a thinner chassis, USB 3.0 and a 15-inch high-resolution, so-called retina display. Of course it would pack the latest Intel silicon with rumors and logic pointing to an Ivy Bridge chipset. Sounding a different from the long-rumored 15-inch MacBook Air, this model, if it really exists, seems appropriately equipped with impressive hardware to retain the Pro designation and lead Apple’s charge against the onslaught of so-called Ultrabooks. → Read More
What is 4G? Many an armchair philosopher over the past few weeks has pondered this concept and now, thanks to a minor tempest caused by upset customers, Apple has changed their iPad branding from “WiFi+4G” to “WiFi+Cellular.”
Although the iPads were compatible with US 4G networks, the iPads didn’t work with international 4G connections, thereby dropping a few folks in Australia into a tizzy. To prevent this, Apple put the old moniker down the memory hole and replaced it with the new naming convention. → Read More
As we approach the E3, the electronic gaming show in early June, I suspect that the value of “Retina” high-resolution displays will soon become apparent. While the prospect of Retina MacBooks is all but inevitable, we have reached a plateau when it comes to general computing and, more important, living room media.
The first question is, in short, why do we need a Retina MacBook? Presumably it would be a superior experience for video and photo editing and offer designers far more real estate on a large screen, especially when viewing photos at lower resolutions. As evidenced by the iPhone’s Retina display, gaming will become considerably more compelling. This presupposes a rich and vibrant OS X gaming ecosystem.
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For Google Maps, winter is coming. Potentially.
As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, with the upcoming iOS 6 software, Apple intends to replace the Google Maps aspect of their default Maps application with their own, in-house version. Mark Gurman of 9to5 Mac was the first to report this news, and dives into more of the detail behind it, including the 3D aspect. John Paczkowski of AllThingsD confirmed the change. And after talking to my own source, I can beat the dead horse in confirming the switch.
I’ve also heard a little bit more. First of all, iOS 6, which is expected to be shown off in developer preview form at WWDC in June, is internally codenamed “Sundance”. Second, while Paczkowski’s source said the new maps functionality will “blow your head off”, I’ve been told that’s a bit of hyperbole (you think?). Specifically, while the 3D functionality is cool, it’s also not something people are going to use regularly. Think of it like Google Street View — cool, but how often do you actually use it when compared to the regular Google Maps product? (Having said that, I still expect Apple’s 3D maps to be cooler than Google Street View.) → Read More
Google’s map data has been baked into the iOS Maps app since the days of the first, thick, aluminum-backed iPhone, but that may no longer be the case once iOS 6 hits the streets. Unnamed sources told 9to5Mac that the Cupertino company would instead take that opportunity to reveal their own Maps application, and those early reports paint a pretty impressive picture.
Astute readers may recall that Apple has been on something of a mapping company shopping spree these past few years — what began with the purchase of Placebase in 2009, continued with Poly9 in 2010, and culminated with Apple snapping up C3 Technologies late last year. → Read More
Plug in your iDevices people, because Apple just released an update.
It’s a minor one, to be sure, but brings about some rather helpful bug fixes. Most notably, you should no longer receive the “Unable To Purchase” message when buying digital content from the iTunes or App Store.
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In one of the most anticlimactic (and likely ineffective) marketing campaigns in history, RIM has today launched its “Wake Up. Be Bold.” campaign in Australia. It began with a group of “protestors” disembarking from a bus outside of Apple’s Sydney store with signs that read “Wake Up.” But don’t get too excited — that’s the most exciting part of the story.
After the long and vigorous rivalry between Samsung and Apple, both in marketing and in the courts, the South Korea-based company was originally blamed for the seemingly out-of-the-blue protest. RIM, of course, kept quiet.
But it was in fact RIM that staged the shit show, which all culminated in the launch of the wakeupbebold.com website, wherein an Australian man explains how business has changed and that to be different you mustn’t just “think different,” but “do different” (which I’m fairly certain is grammatically incorrect), lest you end up “floating through life like a cork in a stream.” → Read More
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