Seth Weintraub

In the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, fans are lining up to listen to his music in record numbers.  In fact, the current iTunes Top 25 has songs from the Jackson’s songs 19 times.  Nine of the top 10 albums are also Michael’s.  No previous artist, living or dead, has achieved that level of popularity on the music service since it opened in 2003.  Oh, and he is 15 of the top 15 on Amazon.

Love him or hate him, he could sell albums.

Fmylife.com is a website where users share their embarassing life events.  Often these range into the obscene (as you might guess from the title of the app). 

Now, it is in the App Store ($1.99 link) so you don’t have to wait until you get home to tell the world that you clogged the toilet at your date’s house. 

So far it is the first 17+ app in the App Store.  More to follow we assume.

We’ve always been partial to grouphug.us.

If you want to get your Push IM fix (and aren’t using the AOL IM dev), you now will soon have an option.  IM+ 3.0 ($5.99 iTunes link) hit the app store and allows support for the following IMs:

• New! Twitter
• New! Skype™ Chat
• Facebook® Chat
• Yahoo®
• AIM® / iChat / MobileMe®
• MSN® / Windows Live®
• ICQ®
• Jabber®
• Google™ Talk
• MySpaceIM

Unfortunatley it isn’t Fring or Skype so you won’t be able to do VoIP….yet.

Update: Push IM+ hasn’t hit the store yet.  Atm, only sends offline messages to your email.  Their push app is waiting for approval,as is BeeJive (thanks commenters)

The iPod touch 3.0 Page is up and working according to MacRumors.  You’ll soon be able to pay $9.95 for the iPod Touch 3.0 update, if you haven’t already installed it for yourself, free.  Update: Link temporarily back to 2.2.

By the way, here’s a great little video of some guys with a lot of iPhone 3G Ses from all over the world.

 TMobile’s Dutch site has revealed some iPhone processor specs, below:

This is the first revelation that the iPhone now has 256MB of RAM.  Also, the 600MHz chip is likely the Samsung S5PC100 ARM Cortex A8 (link to our past evaluations of this processor).  If the speed was simply megahertz, the new iPhone would only be 1.5 times as fast (400MHZ to 600MHz).  This is a new class of processor which we’ve been talking about over the past few months.

In case you weren’t able to watch our stream earlier today, here’s the official video.  If not on Safari, click here to go to Apple’s site.

While some of this stuff was outlined at the release of iPhone OS 3, Businessweek conjures up some other possibilities for App sharing:

One example of P2P connectivity will be available in the new iPhone 3.0 software, due this summer. Users will be able to play multiplayer games with one another using Bluetooth connectivity, rather than needing to be on a carrier’s network. A player’s phone will automatically detect nearby iPhones and iPod touches that run the same app and send them an invitation to join the game. Initially, the feature will work only when both parties already have a particular app. "Now you can sell copies of your app to two players instead of one," says Dave Howell, a former Apple engineer who now runs peer-to-peer file-sharing apps maker Avatron Software. In the future, a player may be able to invite another to a game when the second person does not yet own a particular app. Such invitations could trigger additional purchases.

Recommending apps to friends and getting the 5%-ish cut sounds like a great idea to us.  There is nothing technically blocking something like this, and throwing a little change in my iTunes account for a recommendation sale sounds good all the way around.

Flickr user adamjackson1984 looks like the first to post pictures of WWDC 2009 decor.  As you can see below, the major theme looks to be One Year Later.  Light Years Ahead which seems to refer to the tens of thousands of App Store applications put together by developers. 

 This seems to imply that the iPhone will be the focus of this year’s event (again).

If the NYPost’s numbers are correct, Apple’s 5th Avenue store is pulling in more than its fair share of revenue.  The store, which is open 24 hours a day, 365 days/year pulls in $440 million in revenue per year or a staggering $1.2million a day, including weekends and holidays.

Before the GM Building was sold to a Boston Properties partnership last year, a prospectus shown to possible purchasers revealed the Apple store under the famous glass cube was doing an incredible $440 million a year. By comparison, sources said, Apple’s outpost at Prince and Greene streets does $100 million. (The uptown Apple is larger, but not by much — it has an estimated 10,000 square feet of selling space compared with 8,500 feet in SoHo.)

What’s interesting is that Apple’s Soho store, which is roughly the same size, but includes large presentation/learning stage areas "only" pulls in $100 million a year(woops!).  The 14th Street store has more square feet than either of the other stores (32,000 vs 25,000 5th Ave and 21,000 Soho).  That means it likely does similar sales, if not more than Soho.  That puts the three stores in New York at a minimum of $600-700/year.  That’s roughly $2 million per day!

From Apple’s SEC filings, we know that Apple’s store sales range from $1.4-2 billion (holiday quarters higher than current) per quarter or $6-8 billion/year.  That puts the three Manhattan stores at around 10% of the total global store revenue. 

That’s a lot of iPods brought home by tourists, props to whoever makes the best "Big Apple" pun in the comments.

We’re starting to think there might be someone out there who wants us to believe that there is a pretty cheap iPhone in the pipe.  BGR says a 4GB iPhone (which we first heard about not 30 minutes ago) will run Canadian customers CA$99 plus some outrageous Fido-Rogers plan for like 3 years.  All kidding aside – they still want you to sign up for a 3 year plan?!?!

Notice also that the Video Calling service is called iChat and, at least the 4GB model, is only a 2 megapixel camera.  If there is video chat, that means it must have a front mounted camera or some weird miror thing.  That is if BGR’s source is to be believed.

Engadget’s sources say that new iPhones will come in just about every size imaginable.

…we’re hearing from a trusted source that new iPhones in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities just garnered approval by the PCS Type Review Certification Board, the standards body responsible for certificating handsets for use with some carriers (AT&T, for instance)

Wow.  If so, that 4GB model is going to have a low starting price point.  That might make the Androids and Pres a harder sell.

It really is that simple…

From the Toys section:

Ever want an AC outlet in your car?  Amazon currently has a 5-star rated inverter for automobiles for the lowest price we’ve ever seen, $35+ free shipping.  This one also includes: separate USB power charging and cable, 300 watts of surge capacity, 175 watts peak power, 150 watts continuous power. Utilizes ICC Technology: Low Vehicle Battery Auto Shutdown, Prevents Overload or Short Circuit.  A three year warranty also applies.

Google today announced their Google Product Search for iPhone.  It looks like a very useful product to compare specs and pricing as well as reading product reviews.  There is certainly overlap with this application and Amazon’s iPhone application.

Does anyone else wonder if Google uses its own engineers to advertise products to make it seem more geeky and less…evil?

Apple today launched its  1 Billion apps celebration/contest.  It appears that the 1 billionth app downloaded (or free entry received) as determined by a timing computer will win the all of the Apple gear.  This prize includes the following: MacBook Pro, Time Capsule, iPod Touch and $10,000 iTunes gift card.

Engadget interviewed Peter E. Arnell about the new Peapod electric car in lower Manhattan yesterday.  While it is a nice sub-30 MPH concept at a kind of steep $12,000 price tag, what caught our attention was that the iPhone or iPod touch was the center of the car’s navigation, carbon footprint info and entertainment system (See 2:15 min in).  It wouldn’t really be a stretch to see other car manufacturers following suit here.  In fact, with the 1000 new APIs that include external device control as well as allowing external devices to control the iPhone/iPod, there have to be some exciting app development opportunities in the automotive area.  Developers?  Are you listening?

http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/dfdd92a5

 Oh and a "disclaimer" here: I was the IT guy who replaced the IT guy who had bits of broken CD shot into his eyes by Arnell.  That was a fun few months :P

iPodNN is reporting that Apple has patented the application of the Unibody process to iPods. The one in the picture, the Classic, seems to be heading towards EOL in a generation or two so that’s not terribly exciting.  What would be VERY interesting is if they applied that to the iPod touch and iPhone.  Mockup artists, that’s your cue.  Meet us in the comments?

Apple told developers today that their Push Notification servers were ready for testing.  Those developers whose application hope to operate behind the scenes will need to use this service to notify users of new information.  From Apple:

The Apple Push Notification service provides a way to alert your users of new information, even when your application isn’t running. Send text notifications, trigger audible alerts, or add a numbered badge to your application icon.

For those adventurous iPod touch 2G owners out there, you now have an(other) option to Jailbreak your little precious.  The Dev-Team is releasing Redsn0w today as a command line only application but expects to have a full GUI version available shortly.

Anyone out there doing the command line?  Let us know how it goes.

To us in the cheap seats, we’d have to wonder exactly what you will do with this jailbreak?  Most of our iPhone Jaibroken apps are for iPhone-only tools like video and 3G Tethering.  Maybe we need to have another look at Cydia. 

artwork via

According to theappleblog, some* older iPhone and iPod touch users are having some issues with the 2.2.1 upgrade.  Apple’s forums are lighting up with people whose Wifi has been adversely affected by the update.  According to the blog, Apple is reccomending a hardware replacement and that the replacements NOT have firmware 2.2.1.  That would imply that there is no easy way to reverse whatever damage 2.2.1 hath wroght.

Anyone out there have first hand experience with this kind of problem?  If for some reason, you haven’t upgraded to 2.2.1, you might want to hold out for a minute.

 *Right, we know that there are 30 million iPod, iPhone owners out there.   If yours is working fine like ours and everyone we know, you don’t need to get snooty and tell us.  This is a small segmented problem.