9to5 Staff

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Good news from billionaire Richard Branson’s iPad publishing venture — Project: you can download Project 1 for free for the holidays. And, as this video shows, the winner of the title’s competition to design the front cover of issue two has been announced.
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been named 2010’s ‘Person of the Year’ even while US President, Barack Obama, speaks up for the wealth of the Apple co-founder.

The Financial Times named Jobs its person of the year, saying the introduction of the iPad marked the moment when the ‘rebound’ in Apple’s fortunes “was complete”.

The iPad is the culmination of an approach that he has seemingly been perfecting for his entire career,” stated the newspaper’s opinion writers.
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Concerned about net neutrality and hold a little inner fear that one day access to the Web will involve tiered access with the ‘real’ Web almost impossible to get to?

Then be glad Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has taken time to tell an FCC net neutrality hearing to do the right thing and enact net neutrality rules that favor the people.
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We just love surprises here at 9to5Mac, from the news that the MacBook Pro is the biggest-selling laptop on Amazon at time of writing (second-best in the UK) to the peachy-keen deals on Apple Protection there, but that’s not what this story is about — this surprise comes from the developers at Occipital who have uncovered secret augmented reality capabilities within Mobile Safari for iOS 4.2, woot!!
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Henry Ford may famously be thought to have said, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black,” as he invented mass production, but now it looks like the veteran auto company has an iPhone fixation, revealing support for the Apple device in future generations of its vehicles running the Ford Sync AppLink platform.

Some may note my determination that Apple has a story to tell in the automobile industry — perhaps partnerships will make this story thrive. So, what will this mean?
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From the “I can’t believe this ain’t viral advertising” dept comes the heart-warming tale of Taiwanese pop star, Jimmy Lin, who has posted a pic of himself holding a proper iPad along with a device he claims is the first prototype of an  iPad mini.  (It’s not).  Never mind Steve Jobs recently said that seven inch tablets are “dead on arrival” and that you’d need to sandpaper your fingers down to use them…
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple’s gearing up for a busy, busy year in 2011. We’re already expecting the iPhone 5 and iPad 2.0, we’re looking forward to the Mac App Store and more. So what events and product releases might feature in Apple’s 2011 schedule?

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Even while it emerges Google’s Google TV plans seem to be foundering (FIRE SALE!), Apple has announced that its new Apple TV will ship its millionth unit later this week.

While many hope the A4 chip inside Apple TV might be enabled to run some apps one day, many also consider the Netflix support within Apple TV to be the big win for sales.

Press Release follows:
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So much for Thinking Different™: Looks like Apple may have joined Amazon, Banc of America, Paypal and other corporations which have evicted Wikileaks from their servers — the briefly-available Wikileaks app for iPhone and iPad has been kicked out of the App Store.

The Time person of the year public vote-winning Julian Assange-founded Wikileaks has attracted controversy with the leak of a series of US diplomatic cables which illustrate the seamier side of international diplomacy.
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We all know this is set to be an iOS Christmas — now it is interesting to discover that Apple’s iPad is so popular there’s an increasing wave of two or more iPad households, according to reputable research from YouGov.

Researchers found nearly a fifth (17%) of Apple iPad owners state that there is more than one tablet in their household, either owned by themselves or another family member.
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Yet more fascinating action in the smartphone space with an unholy rumored combination between Nokia and Microsoft set to potentially change the structure of the market.

What’s happening?
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This is the world’s biggest iPhone and it is situated in the world famous St. pancras International station. It isn’t actually an iPhone, however, it is in fact a bank of 56 iPads all set up to work together in an iOS nod to signify the release of Lara Croft Guardian of Light (below) on the App Store.
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Electronic Arts set off an iApp price war last week when it discounted many of its games to just $0.99, sparking the release of Tap Tap Revenge 4 for free and a big games sale from other iOS heavyweight, Namco.

All the app makers are engaged in a stiff fight to populate the iTunes App Store top ten lists in time for Christmas — after all, Apple’s lists won’t be updated from December 23, so grabbing a good slot on those lists now is likely to translate into great sales opportunities as all those new iPads hit the store.
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Merry Christmas iPhone 4 lovers with Radio Shack’s impressive $149 price tag on the 16GB model now undercut by Sam’s Club, which plans to offer the device on AT&T for just $147 (plus 2-year contract).
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News Corp sources tell News Corp reporters that News Corp’s iPad app, the Daily will drop on January 17th.

Given that News Corp. has hired dozens of blabby journalists for the Daily, and interviewed many more, lots of other details about the app/service have leaked out already: It will come out daily, it will sell for 99 cents a week, it will use lots of video and it will have cool multimedia bells and whistles, including some kind of 3-D effect that lots of people are very excited about. And Apple CEO Steve Jobs may or may not participate in a launch event.

The date has moved around a lot but it appears that it will be coming at some point in the future and carry a $.99/week price.  Other billionaires launching iPad publications recently include Richard Branson.
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COMPUTERWORLD: As per usual, Apple seems set to dominate CES once again next year, even though it won’t actually attend the show. And that’s despite a keynote speech from Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. Here’s why Apple’s taking over.

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Research In Motion’s in the news today: not only is its iPad-killing PlayBook delayed until around the time iPad 2.0 is expected to ship, but Mac users with a BlackBerry can now download the latest desktop connection kit. Meanwhile the company’s financial results were alright but nothing supercalifragilistic.

By the numbers then:
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There’s never been a better time to stock up on the greatest iPhone games from Electronic Arts, where you’ll find a huge range of hot titles on sale now for just 99-cents a pop (59-p in the UK).

“Giving an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch as a Christmas present?,” reads the official launch statement.”Now is the time to load it up with the best games for less cash than ever before.”

“Already own an iPod touch, iPad or iPhone? Then bring some fun to holiday travel or gather the family for game time around the iPad while warming up by the fire.”
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In case you’ve any doubt left, you can forget the notion of AMOLED screens in the next-generation iPad, there simply aren’t enough components to go round — indeed, Apple competitors who made the leap to the tech are already facing steep component shortages.

There’s an inevitability about all this. Even as Apple competitors attempt to leapfrog iOS devices by fielding more advanced technologies in their gadgets, they forget the need to serve mass market products up in reliable quantity.
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The figures are in and they confirm that iTunes remains the biggest US digital music retailer, with Amazon failing to grab too much of Apple’s digital music heartland.

NPD tells us AAPL’s iTunes took 66.2% of the digital music market in the third quarter of this year – that’s up from 63.2% in Q3 2009.  Easy still beats free.
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Forget Flash, really, forget it. I don’t care how much more efficient it is at last becoming now it faces much-needed competition — I do however care that US iPad users can now download Vevo HD, a beautiful app offering you access to all 25,000 videos in Vevo’s huge catalog — no Flash required.

“The app has a few special features created especially for the iPad, including our favorite one, Music Maps, which gives you a window into what videos people are watching in your neighborhood and around the world,” the company says on its website.
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