Google has problems getting the support it needs to progress its Google TV plan, even while Apple is quietly plotting its own path. Content providers have serious misgivings with Google’s business model, while content creators generally are wary of giving Apple too much control. Breaking the deadlock is critical if either competitor is to successfully reinvent TV.
Here’s the latest iPad commercial. From delicious to magical…
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Yahoo has introduced an all-new and improved HTML5-optimized version of Yahoo Mail for the iPad, delivering a faster and easier to organise solution when it did.
“If you’ve used our recently launched HTML5 mobile Web mail for iPhone you’ll feel right at home,” writes Lee Parry, product manager for Yahoo Mail. “We’ve kept all the things users love about our new mobile Web mail experience, while also optimizing for the gorgeous large screen of the iPad.”
If you
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He may be a Mac, but as this clip shows Apple’s former ad star, Justin Long, is also an iPhone jailbreaker as revealed on a US TV show this week.
Long was guesting on the Jimmy Kimmel Live Show, during which he pulled out his iPhone to show a series of funny SMS text messages to the audience. When he did, the Cydia icon was in plain sight among Long’s other apps — a big sign that his phone has been jailbroken.
Apple supplier Pegatron has admitted to being “aghast” at the kickback scandal involving an Apple manager and its recently-acquired Kaedar subsidiary — but says it shouldn’t affect relations between the two firms.
Apple employee Paul Devine pleaded not guilty to money laundering and wire fraud charges after prosecutors said he received at least $1 million from half a dozen Asian suppliers for providing information.
Through an elaborate system of bank accounts and a front company, Devine took payments in exchange for sharing confidential data, including sales forecasts for unreleased iPod and iPhone models, product roadmaps and sales reports.
Busted once the company found information relating to the kickbacks on his Apple-supplied computer, Devine now faces criminal and civil actions.
Pegatron was implicated in the scandal, but sacked a senior manager at Kaedar in response. The company also observes that it acquired Kaedar in 2008 and that firm is not involved in its Apple product supply chain.
Pegatron — one of two firms manufacturing iPhones for Apple — has been seeking to increase its Apple order book. The company observes that as the kickback scandal dates from before its acquisition of Kaedar, relations between Apple and its wannabe supplier shouldn’t be negatively impacted.
The firm also recently secured dsktop manufacturing orders from Apple, say reports.
Yet another move to end dependence on Flash, giant online video website, Vimeo, today introduces a new universal video player designed to work on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch (iOS) and Android devices.
The new player uses HTML5. The player will detect the appropriate codec, file size and bit rate for each device it sends content to. All videos will be viewable in the best-supported format through the universal player.
“With the latest generation of browsers and devices, we’ve had huge demand for an embeddable player that works with HTML5 and on devices like iPad and iPhone,” said Andrew Pile, vice president of product and development for Vimeo, in a statement.
The site is also adding a new
Will Apple take a leaf from Amazon’s copy book and introduce a version of iBooks for Android? After all, Google will open its Google bookstore in the coming months.
Sure, I know this may seem eerily familiar but a second report citing sources within China’s manufacturing industry claims Apple will introduce a new 7-inch model iPad soon. That’s as it emerges the iPhone 4 will launch in China in early September.
We let you know about last week’s Digitimes report, which claimed a 7-inch iPad is on the way. Now Taiwan’s Chinese-language Economic Daily News says Apple will launch this by the end of the year.
The report names several component contractors, including Chimel Innolux (screens). Touchscreen technology from Cando Corporation will feature in the devices, which will be manufactured by Compal Electronics.
China Unicom, Apple’s carrier in the China, will launch Apple
If you’ve been wondering what to expect from iPhone 5, the next-generation, beyond an all-new and improved antenna, then let me share a few ideas with you — your iPhone will be your wallet, your house keys, your identity, the centre of your mobile existence. At least, that’s how it appears on news of Apple’s hiring of near field communications (NFC) expert, Benjamin Vigier.
Apple’s online support Discussions boards blipped out briefly this weekend after the site was allegedly hit by a malicious attack — and that’s when Apple quietly announced that “Apple Discussions is becoming Apple Support Communities“.
“Very soon a major change will be taking place here at Apple Discussions. To help you prepare we have created some documents to give some insight and instructions on this major upgrade,” Apple informs on its website.
These communities seem set to be a lot more social, with user profile, biographies, user images and the ability to “Personalize your homepage, select your preferences, add widgets.”
In the past, Apple’s Discussion forums have often become places were new product testers (customers) of first-generation products note product failings or weaknesses. You can find some (fairly general) information on how the new Discussions will work right here.
An overheating Apple iPod bought trains on Tokyo’s insanely busy commuter train network to an unscheduled stop for eight minutes during the city’s early morning rush hour this morning, Reuters reports.
The train was stopped at around 8.20am (Japan) in western Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward while officials investigated the cause of the smell, said a spokesman for Tokyu Corp.
“When a member of staff went to investigate inside the train, a passenger came over showing him that the iPod she was listening to had burst apart,” the spokesman told Reuters, confirming local reports.
The timing is extremely bad. Apple was last month ordered to improve safety warnings following cases of overheating among its first-generation iPod nanos. Apple has since offered to fix these units, explaining that a bad batch of batteries has been the culprit.
What isn’t clear in the current case – the sixtieth known in Japan so far – is what make or model of iPod caused the delay on a line used by one million commuters each day.
Apple’s iPad has eaten the lunch of the nascent netbook industry, with major PC manufacturer, Asustek, lowering its netbook shipments targets for 2010’s third quarter in response. Netbook sales are in decline as Apple’s iPad prevails in new markets.
Asustek Computer saw sales of its netbooks in the second quarter fall short of expectations mainly due to competition from Apple’s iPad. Digitimes tells us the company response to this has been to lower Q3 targets — this is highly significant ads Q3 is the traditional biggest-sellling period.
The manufacturer now hopes to sell 1.4 million netbooks, but will offer its own tablet solutions (the Eee Note and Eee Pad) in the fourth quarter.
There’s a lot riding on the fourth quarter, when iPad attempts by multiple manufacturers are expected to hit the market. Meanwhile iPad mind share continues to increase, with Apple seemingly set to boost this a little pre-Xmas with reported launch of a seven-inch model and faster processors in 2011.
Despite its portability, only 15 per cent of UK iPad users regularly take their iPad out with them, according to a survey by Cooper Murphy Web. 38 per cent say the Apple tablet is their preferred device for browsing the internet, while 55 per cent of iPad owners would still rather use a laptop or desktop computer.
The device is attracting enterprise sales for Apple and is rapidly finding favor among hitherto untapped markets, including the elderly.
Atlantic Equities analyst James Cordwell says the iPad’s popularity with the elderly is helping Apple reach beyond its traditional base of younger customers.
“Demographically, the world, especially in developed markets, is getting older, and it’s probably where Apple is least penetrated,” Cordwell told Business Week.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple’s iAds system seems off to a slow start, with ad agencies having problems dealing with Apple’s notoriously over-controlling nature.
Apple’s need to learn how to work like ad agencies work has caused some planned ad campaigns to suffer huge delays — not precisely what clients booking $60 million value of advertising might expect.
Apple named 17 launch partners for iAd — but of these just Unilever and Nissan have had iAd campaigns in July. A Citigroup campaign began last week. Others also started last week, including campaigns from Disney and JC Penney.
Apple’s tight controls mean ad campaigns are taking up to ten weeks to create. “It’s a huge issue having Apple in the creative mix,” one ad director told the Wall Street Journal. This may have caused luxury brand, Chanel, to pull out of the effort.
The problem right now is that Apple is handling ad unit production as it develops tools for external agencies with which ads can be designed in future. This means ad agencies “don’t necessarily know what it is capable of or how to use the technology, one ad executive said.”
To shift some of its unfilled itinerary, Apple last month launched ‘iAds for developers’, a discount scheme for in-app app ads.
Apple’s purported plan to rebrand its Apple TV product as the ‘iTV’ now seems set to see the company sued heavily in the courts, as “furious” executives from major UK television broadcaster, ITV, are meeting with lawyers to plan legal action, according to UK newspaper, The Mirror.
The broadcaster, who owns the trademark to the name ITV in Britain, will also weigh up its options on a global ban.
A channel insider told The Mirror: “You only have to look at recent problems with the iPhone 4 to see not everything Apple produces is gold dust. We all take our ITV brand very seriously and we’ll do everything in our power to protect it.”
The Mirror notes that an Apple spokeswoman “denied the names will be too similar”. Does this mean Apple’s plan for an iTV is true, in that in saying the names won’t be “too similar” the PR is tactily admitting they will be fairly similar?
The irony is that Apple needs support from broadcasters to execute its TV revolutionizing effectively, particularly in order to launch its iTunes video streaming services outside of the US.
Worldwide, Apple’s Regent Street store is still the company’s busiest shop, Apple senior vice-president of retail Ron Johnson admits.
Move over iPad, here’s the touch-controlled tablet Mac from Axon Logic. A 1.6GHz 10-inch two-pound slice of special slate for Mac users, though it would be more accurate to describe this as a ‘Hackintosh’.
See, what Axon Logic have done is release the new tablet PC complete with a hidden EFI partition — which as Mac hackintosh heads know is a secret sauce they need for a relatively simple OS X install. Or any other Darwin-based OS.
According to Axon Logic:
Besides using only quality components, they are specifically chosen to be compatible with Darwin. That gives you the freedom to run, in addition to Windows and Linux, any* Darwin OS. Darwin and all of its required components such as the mach_kernel and kexts are on an EFI partition to make it effortless to install your favorite XNU/Darwin OS. Just pop in the disk, and follow the directions.
While the manufacturers are warning on licensing restrictions on the $750 tablet, which runs Linux and will also run Windows.
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Via: Crunchgear
Apple’s in hot water over the iPhone once again, this time it has been hit with fresh litigation by VirnetX, a company which in May won a similar legal action against Microsoft.
Microsoft agreed to pay $200 million to the company, which claimed WIndows and other Microsoft products violated patents it held on virtual private networking (VPN) systems.
With Microsoft beaten it was only a question of time until VirnetX sought new targets, and Apple is it. The company claims the VPN system used in the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad use its technologies.
Apple is alleged to have violated Patent No. 6,502,135, one of those that Microsoft violated.
The action isn’t confined to Apple: Cisco, NEC and Aastra are also named in suits filed in the patent holder friendly East Texas federa court.
The company holds four dozen patents, many of which were awarded to engineers who worked for a firm which contracted to the US Department of Defense.
Forgive me. I’m still not quite sure what happened in my life that there came a day I’d write a story about a new ad campaign for a bank. For good or ill, that day has come: Apple has fielded a third major brand iAd into its systems, this once comes from Citibank.
The ad promotes the bank chain’s credit cards and iPhone apps, and is quite an innovative little thing, tying as it does people’s ‘real-life’ stories with the iPhone, geo-location and more. It works well.
The new Citibank slot joins ads from Dove soap for men and Nissan, the other two big brand ads inside the Apple system at this time.
Oh — look over there >> that’s how the ad works!! Enjoy.
Those $29 Apple rechargeable batteries? Yeah, they are just rebranded Sanyos. The good news is that they are some of the best on the market, Engadget saying that they retain more than 75% of their charge after three years of use.
Better news? You don’t have to pay that pesky Apple tax to get on board with rechargeables. Amazon’s got some pretty solid deals on eneloops.
Amazon sells the Sanyo versions for $18 for 4 batteries with charger.
Apple has a plan for the Apple TV — iTV, but broadcasting rights complexities may mean the streaming iTunes video service launches in the US only, at least at first. Outside of America we’ll be using apps on the device while consoling ourselves with an OK Cupid survey which says iPhone users are dating superstars, or something like that…
This is the strangest idea, Apple has filed a patent which would turn your video game play time into a comic or eBook you could edit, read and share (presumably via your iPad).
As Mr Purcher at Patently Apple puts it “At the end of the day, I see a new iLife app in the making which will associate itself with a new online Apple comic book print service.”
Maybe, the patent explains that gamers are asked to make lots of choices using customizable characters in many video games. Apple’s patent means data can be gathered while you play. This might include character information, dialogue from the videogame, and results and metrics reflecting the performance of the user in the videogame. It adds pre-made text and “boom”, you have a game as a comic.
The patent also seems capable of recording activities via a third party console or DVD player, though bear in mind — this is just a patent, not a product — yet…
For more depth on how it works, take a look here…
Watch some old dudes talking about a remote control/DVR app for the iPad
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More below:
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via Engadget
With Apple seemingly set on rebranding the Apple TV with the same brand as the UK’s second-oldest television broadcaster, ITV, it looks like the company may still have some fuss and botheration before it can convince broadcasters to truly join the iOS Internet TV network party (assuming such dreams don’t die the death through net neutrality).
In the same week as Disney CEO, Bob Iger, steps up to the plate to call the iPad a ‘game-changer’, it seems broadcasters aren’t totally sure they want the game changed.
A report claims rights holders of TV content are charging firms up to three times as much for a license to offer media via the iPad, a report informs.
MobiTV CMO Ray DeRenzo says broadcasters fear alienating their existing distribution partners, so feel obliged to charge top dollar. “It is three to four times more expensive to license the same piece of content for a tablet than for a mobile phone,” he told Mobile Entertainment.
“I can programme a package of content on mobile and make it available for $10 a month in the US, but if I take that same lineup of content and make it available on the tablet, I’m going to have to charge more like $30. And at $30, there is not a market for that product.”
With Apple reportedly set to offer some form of hybrid cloud-based TV content-cum-network via the future ITV box, does the $30 charge also represent an approximation as to the monthly charge Apple will have to make for access to all-you-can-eat content?
Disney’s Iger has a more positive vision, saying “Our gut is that cannibalization is negligible and that people still do most of their viewing on bigger screens.”
Yet more hints suggest Apple is preparing to unleash a new generation of music player, with iPod shuffles and iPod nanos available at huge discounts through a major UK high street retailer.