9to5 Staff

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Betting Apple intends calling its new tablet the

  http://www.youmaker.com/v.swf

Phew – iPhone (and tablet?) supplies are safe after all, as it looks like that there strike over at Wintek in China has been resolved, with the company claiming production of Apple

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Square Enix is bringing versions of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II to the iPhone and iPod touch.

The publisher hasn’t revealed any info on the mobile ports, but screens suggest these will be based on the existing PSP versions, featuring redrawn graphics and character art, exclusive all-new dungeons and an updated camera view.

No word yet on release dates are to be announced.

Amazon has opened up its Kindle device to developers, promising launch of its very own App Store offering developers 70 per cent of the take, the latest in a series of moves on the part of the company as it attempts to combat the upcoming Apple tablet.

“We’ve heard from lots of developers over the past two years who are excited to build on top of Kindle,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “The Kindle Development Kit opens many possibilities–we look forward to being surprised by what developers invent.”

Amazon will release a set of programming guidelines that other companies

http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf

Another WSJ report from Yukari Iwatani Kane gives more of a background on this tablet and Apple in general than any other story in recent memory.  The only way to gather it all in was to put it in bullet points below:

• Steve Jobs is betting he can reshape  businesses like textbooks, newspapers and television much the way his iPod revamped the music industry.
• In developing the device, Apple focused on the role the gadget could play in homes and in classroom
• The tablet will come with a virtual keyboard
• New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger declined to comment in an interview Wednesday on its involvement in the new device except to say, “stay tuned.”
• Electronic Arts is working on a game, to show off on the device possible at the show on the 27th.
• Mr. Jobs is “supportive of the old guard and [he] looks to help them by giving them new forms of distribution
• Apple was in serious discussions with Microsoft Corp. to incorporate its Bing search engine into the iPhone as the default search and map technologies
• The company was discussing with the New York Times how it could charge for news through iTunes [UGH]
• Apple has experimented with the ability to leave virtual sticky notes on the device and for the gadget to automatically recognize individuals via a built-in camera. It’s unclear whether these features will be included at launch.
• In October, Apple sent representatives to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the industry’s largest trade fair.
• Apple pitched media companies on a “best of TV” subscription service to television networks under which customers would pay a monthly fee for on-demand access TV content.
• At a meeting in New York with one network in October, an Apple executive said the company was specifically looking to access four to six shows per channel.
• Apple has also been planning a revamp of its iTunes music service by creating a Web-based version of it that could launch as soon as June, say people familiar with the matter. Tentatively called iTunes.com, the service would allow customers to buy music without going through the specialized iTunes program on computers and iPhones.
• Apple plans to populate as many Web sites as possible with ‘buy’ buttons, integrating iTunes transactions into activities like listening to Internet radio and surfing review Web sites.
• In November, Apple hired Tracy Augustine, a former executive at textbook publishers Cengage Learning Inc. and Pearson Education Inc., as the director of worldwide education. Ms. Augustine is responsible for “driving global strategy and revenue for the education online store for students,” according to her LinkedIn description. Ms. Augustine didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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Today, Bumptop released its popular and intuitive 3D desktop organizer for Mac. Bumptop allows users to have more customization over their desktop by allowing file thumbnails to be stacked and individual altered in size or location. Bumptop displays the files on your desktop in a cool-looking 3D fashion, while maintaining the speed, and desktop features such as expose intact. Bumptop for Mac is free but a Pro version with support for multi-touch trackpads, and support for quick file searching from the desktop is available for $29.

According to CNET, Apple is speaking to recording companies on the possibility of a free streaming music service.  Apple didn’t reveal much, but much like what was reported yesterday, the idea is that people would upload their music to Apple’s servers and it would be available to them anywhere in the world on any device.

The service would be framed to the recording industry as a “value add that could help stimulate sales” according to their sources and would be available as early as this Spring.

The issue appears to be whether the licensing for music changes when users are able to store them in the cloud.  MP3 founder Michael Richardson says consumers shouldn’t have to pay the labels any extra to store their music in the Cloud.  But he’s currently being sued by EMI for doing just that.

Robertson said he expects to see an “upload” button on iTunes as part of a future update.

Interesting.  That would allow you to upload your own music to the iTunes “Cloud”.  But, that doesn’t seem to mesh with what Apple is telling the Recording Industry.  Clearly what Apple is after, at least in the first stage, is an upsell feature that gives you an option of making a song purchased available anywhere.   Just newly purchased songs.  Not songs you’ve ripped off of CDs years ago. 

Scott Moritz, whose rumor record is questionable at best, today posts some new “information” on the Street.  

The Tablet will be on Verizon with a 3G chip manufactured by Qualcom according to Ashok Kumar.  Perhaps most interestingly however, it will have a docking station: 

The Tablet will also include a docking station, according to Northeast Securities’ Kumar. This could be a crucial feature for consumers who harbor an ongoing love affair with keyboards. For those unsatisfied with touchscreen typing, a dock would connect to a keyboard and mouse.

Of note, a tablet having a keyboard and mouse could take market away from Apple’s popular MacBook line.  Also, Technologizer’s Harry McCracken wonders if that dock isn’t a wireless one.

BGR has another vague one today about how AT&T’s busybodies are scrambling to upgrade their network to meet the demand of some new, data-hungry device.   Obviously they are looking at Apple’s event next week.

AT&T has apparently been meeting individually with regional executives to inform them of some changes to the AT&T network. What have we heard? Well, for starters, they seem to be focused on prepping the network to compensate for unannounced devices and also future devices that will use