It turns out that his hobby 9to5Mac blog was always his favorite and in 2011 he went full time adding his Fortune Google followers to 9to5Google and adding the style and commerce component 9to5Toys gear and deals site. In 2013, Weintraub bought one of the Tesla’s first Model S EVs off the assembly line and so began his love affair with the Electric Vehicle and green energy which in 2014 turned into electrek.
In 2018, DroneDJ was born to cover the burgeoning world of drones and UAV’s led by China’s DJI.
From 1997-2007, Weintraub was a Global IT director and Web Developer for a number of companies with stints at multimedia and branding agencies in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid and London before becoming a publisher/blogger.
Seth received a bachelors degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in Multimedia and Creative Technology in 1997. In 2004, he received a Masters from NYU’s Tisch School of the Art’s ITP program.
Hobbies: Weintraub is a licensed single engine private pilot, certified open water scuba diver and spent over a year traveling to 60 cities in 23 countries. Whatever free time exists is now guaranteed to his lovely wife and two amazing sons.
The LATimesreports that iCloud will be a low-priced add on to iTunes costing users just $25/year, perhaps as an add on to MobileMe?
Dubbed iCloud, the service initially will be offered for a free period to people who buy music from Apple’s iTunes digital download store, allowing users to upload their music to Apple’s computers where they can then play from a Web browser or Internet-connected Apple device.
The company plans to eventually charge a subscription fee, about $25 a year, for the service. Apple would also sell advertising around its iCloud service.
Earlier CNet reported that Apple had sewn up the last major record label, Universal, to sell its products in the iCloud. The deal had reportedly been finalized late last week (plenty of time!).
A 9to5mac reader writes in telling us he/she’s found some interesting files in Lion. These files are labeled “MobileDocumentsFolder.icns, Mobile Documents 32.png and SidebarMobileDocumentsFolder.icns” and show new types of icons for a Cloud file system. Clearly, this would seem to be the successor to iDisk and is probably shows a more transparent interface between the desktop and the Cloud, perhaps a little more like Dropbox. We’re also thinking there is an iWork.com component as well since these are “documentsFolders”.
– here’s the new sidebar icon.
Update: In fact, it looks a lot like a mix of iDisk and iSync (which makes a lot of sense)
The Shanghai Dailyis reporting that a 17-year old sold a kidney so he could buy an iPad 2.
“I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it,” said the boy surnamed Zheng in Huaishan City. “A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.”
On April 28th, the boy went to Chenzhou City in neighboring Hunan Province for the kidney removal surgery arranged by the broker. He was paid 22,000 yuan (an extra 2,000–) or $3,400 after his right kidney was taken out at Chenzhou’s famous No. 198 Hospital.
His mom later found out (probably because he was rocking a new white iPad 2 and a huge scar) and called the police.
The hospital claimed they had no idea about Zheng’s surgery because the department that did the surgery had been contracted to a Fujian businessman.
Suddenly, waiting in line overnight doesn’t seem so insane anymore. Expand Expanding Close
We are getting reports that Apple Stores are receiving packages that aren’t to be opened until Tuesday. Perhaps they are fluffy little iClouds – or maybe new Airport adverts? Or, yes, Lion and iOS 5
We’re hearing numerous reports that the App Store is down globally. While our first inclination is to say Apple is moving everything to North Carolina ahead of WWDC or something, it is probably just a glitch…or is it?
According to Business Insider, Apple COO Tim Cook told Goldman analyst Bill Shope, “he sees no reason why the tablet market shouldn’t eclipse the PC market over the next several years.”
That is right exactly in line with Steve Jobs comments of a year ago. Shocking, we know. Expand Expanding Close
Apple looks like it is tightening its grip on the “App” and “Mac” naming rights area. Last month, it forced App4mac to change its name. Sure Apple is now in the Mac Apps game but the company in question is six years old and named itself App4Mac two years before iOS turned Applications into apps. Patrice Calligaris, CEO writes to tell us:
On May 6, we received this letter from Apple lawyers. On June 1st, our company become adnX.com. Before we were app4mac.com during six years and it has never been a problem.
We complied only for the first case as other two cases are silly. We fixed the graphics that they did not like.
The laptop mods keep coming but this one might be our favorite so far.
The new Crux Case Loaded comes with an extra battery and working bluetooth trackpad and will be available in July for $250. Older models without are a somewhat more reasonable $150.
We’ve been tracking Time Capsule/Airport shortages reported earlier for about a week. Our sources noted that Airport Express has been plentiful but supplies of TimeCapsule and Airport Extreme have been tightening globally the way products usually do before a refresh.
What we do know is that Apple has been internally testing Time Capsules to cache Software Updates for both Mac and iOS devices. The way we’ve heard it works is that the new Time Capsule learns which devices connect to it via Wifi. It then goes out to Apple’s servers and downloads Software Updates for those products.
When the user wants to install the software update, the Time Capsule, which is also the router, routes you to the locally stored update, rather than downloading the whole thing over the Internet. This works for iOS updates as well, though the updating still happened via the Mac.
Apple’s Mac OSX Servers currently do this for Mac businesses, so the technology already exists externally (though Mac OSX Server just downloads everything – without knowing which devices will be connected).
With Apple’s new iCloud component, we believe Apple has a chance to extend this functionality. Perhaps Time Capsules could cache parts of your iCloud music locker that you use the most so that it speeds up the streaming process. It could also cache large documents and files that get used often or even movies and photos you own.
While Macs have plenty of local storage, this would be particularly beneficial for iOS devices which are limited to Flash storage, especially AppleTV which has very little local storage. As HD video gets bigger (1080P) Apple will need new ways to deliver and store this content.
The system could also work in reverse. Apple could allow these new Time Capsules to back up your backups to the Cloud.
Will this be part of Apple’s iOS 5/Lion/iCloud announcement? We’ll just have to wait and see. Expand Expanding Close
With five days to go before WWDC, Apple now is the official registrant behind iCloud.com. It appears that there may just be some live iCloud demos in store (shocking, we know). Also, it explains why Apple had to go public about the iCloud.com – the domain registration would have went public beforehand anyhow
Mosaic of tiles (“which are better icons because they can show their personality”). Honestly, this looks pretty interesting. Also interesting will be Microsoft’s ability to deliver a finished product and whether or not this will work across devices..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osa1ZXZaaWM&w=640&h=390]
And you thought Mac was going back to iOS? Windows is becoming fully touch enabled like Windows Phone 7.
Today we’re starting to roll out a completely new version of Twitter search. Not only will it deliver more relevant Tweets when you search for something or click on a trending topic, but it will also show you related photos and videos, right there on the results page. It’s never been easier to get a sense of what’s happening right now, wherever your curiosity takes you.
We’re hearing rumblings that Apple will let you Tweet from any app with hooks from Lion and iOS. If so, you’ll have a Twitter login in the general settings, almost like we had for Facebook in iOS 4.
A source with some success in the past has passed along that iCloud will have educational-tiered pricing, perhaps being free for students and teachers to a certain level or with the purchase of Apple products.
The tip makes sense for a few reasons. One, Apple’s Back to School promotions are said to be tied to WWDC – which is unusual. The tie-in could include Cloud offerings. In fact, it would be surprising if iCloud wasn’t somehow tied to Mac sales.
Example: Buy a Mac, get an iPod and two years of iCloud for free.
Also, Google’s Apps for education (Microsoft’s as well) are making a huge Cloud push in schools, a traditional stronghold of Apple. The offerings are free for acadamics. As Google starts to deploy Chromebooks to these students at $20/month, Apple needs to have a strong Cloud to Computer showing. Obviously Apple’s computers are strong, so too should its Cloud offering.
So HP(alm)’s TouchPad is about as close to an iPad as you can get without giving Apple any money (exact same sized display/form factor, etc). HP, beyond the original demo, hasn’t shown much about the product. However, at Sandisk’s booth (who are supplying the Touchpad’s storage), they were giving out full demos:
I can’t imagine this demo will stay live long but enjoy it while you can and just wonder how it’s “Card-based” OS will compare to an iPad 2 running iOS 5. Expand Expanding Close
Too early to start talking about iPad 3 components? Yeah, but whatever. Digitimessays that Apple is certifying display manufacturers which include the normal players: LG and Samsung.
Apple has begun certifying components for iPad 3 and many Taiwan-based makers are actively participating. Some makers have already landed certification such as Radiant Opto-Electronics with LED backlight units, according to industry sources.
According to component makers, the timing for the launch of iPad 3 should be in 2012.
Taiwan-based firms think iPad 2 will become the mainstream and Apple will lower its price to compete with other tablet PCs.
One last tidbit from the D9 Eric Schmidt interview (hey – this is turning into a liveblog!). When asked how consumers could be more secure, he mentioned use the Chrome Browser (natch), use two factor Gmail authentication and [most importantly] dump your Windows PC (like Schmidt has) and get a Mac. He also reiterated that he was a proud former Apple board member.
Schmidt and Google are probably still stinging from getting hacked by China through their Windows-based PCs a few years ago.
Still, interesting he didn’t say “Get a ChromeBook!”, no? Expand Expanding Close
More fun from the D9 event: Kara Swisher told Eric Schmidt that Steve Jobs told her “to do more privacy stories on Google” and that “Android is a probe in your pocket.” The conversation would have been off the record until now. More at 9to5Google.com Expand Expanding Close
I’m watching the D9 talk with Google Board Chair Eric Schmidt who just said that Google just renewed their Maps relationship with Apple. In the next sentence, he said there is a search relationship in place, but wasn’t as certain with his words. This backs up our source from last week.
Now, sources have told 9to5Google that although Apple is working to improve the iOS Maps application, iOS 5 will not bring an Apple developed maps service and Google Maps is still in. Besides Apple’s purchase of both Placebase and Poly9, some speculated that Apple is building their own maps service to either compete with Google or step away from their input into iOS.
Techcrunch and DaringFireball are talking up Twitter integration into iOS 5 with the following passages:
We’ve heard from multiple sources that Twitter is likely to have a big-time partner for such a service: Apple. Specifically, we’re hearing that Apple’s new iOS 5 will come with an option to share images to Twitter baked into the OS. This would be similar to the way you can currently share videos on YouTube with one click in iOS. Obviously, a user would have to enable this feature by logging in with their Twitter credentials in iOS. There would then be a “Send to Twitter” option for pictures stored on your device.
and
So close to the bigger story, but yet so far. Imagine what else the system could provide if your Twitter account was a system-level service.
… respectively. What’ most interesting is how much this sounds like an integrated iOS service we detailed in January called MediaStream and a subset service called PhotoStream that…
From the looks of different alerts and plists, it appears that Apple will let iPhone users set up “Photo Streams” that friends could “subscribe” to. Also, it looks like there will be some privacy preferences related to this, so you can choose who is allowed to view your “Streams.”
With Photo Streams, you will also be allowed to “invite” other users to view your pictures as you take them and upload them to a service. This service looks like it is connected to MobileMe, and we speculate that “Media Stream” can be directly connected to “Find my Friends.” We think Find my Friends will be another aspect of Apple’s social network, a part of a free MobileMe, where you can choose to view your friends’ “Photo Streams” all on that same map. Apple has a patent on something called iGroups relating to this. This would clearly tie into the Mac and iOS photo app’s Places feature. From looking at the SDK, it looks like “Media Stream” could very well also have a plugin counterpart, like AirPlay, in 3rd party apps.
So it appears that the pieces are starting to come together. It appears that Apple may include your Twitter social graph in this stream.
Apple is obviously friendly with Twitter in its Ping social network and currently works with Facebook and Flickr through iPhoto. iCloud may be the act of tying it all together.
The 6,300 square-foot restaurant is located at the Del Amo Fashion Center: 3525 West Carson Street in Torrance. It opens at noon Tuesday, May 31. Other units are planned at Fashion Valley Mall in San Diego and Los Cerritos Center in Cerritos.
Apple Inc. has reached terms with major recorded-music companies to allow it to launch a digital locker service that would be more robust than those currently offered by Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
According to these people, deals with three labels have been completed, and the fourth, with Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, is likely to be signed this week. Apple has signed deals with Warner Music Group Corp., Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group Ltd.
Earlier, CNet reported that Apple was also rushing to sign up movie studios:
In the past several weeks, Apple executives have stepped up their attempts to convince some of the major Hollywood film studios to issue licenses that would enable Apple to store its customers’ movies on the company’s servers, two sources close to the negotiations told CNET. Apple began discussing a cloud service with the studios over a year ago.
A tell tale sign that Apple has accomplished something in terms securing something for the WWDC keynote is that they released iWork for iOS today meaning it got bumped. Whatever Apple just readied, beats iWork and major content for a music/movie locker certainly would seem to fit this category. Expand Expanding Close
More trouble in Microsoft land as Bloombergreports that Microsoft device manufacturers are complaining about the software giant’s meddling in their affairs:
Microsoft Corp. is putting “troublesome” restrictions on makers of processors used to run the coming Windows tablet-computer operating system, Acer Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer J.T. Wang said.
“They’re really controlling the whole thing, the whole process,” Wang said at the Computex trade show in Taipei without identifying the restrictions. Chip suppliers and PC makers “all feel it’s very troublesome,” he said.
