9to5 Staff

Apple

Some slight insights into how Apple

iPods and external hard drives seem to be the gifts of choice this season, with Amazon

Apple has rapidly become the gatekeeper for success in the games market, according to games developers speaking during a DiscoveryBeat event in San Frnacisco.

Not bad for a company that maybe three short years ago was characterised as having little footprint in the games market.

Backflip Studios chief executive, Julian Farrior, stressed the point:

The detente between Apple and Adobe over Flash support on the iPhone may be more than a storm in a teacup – at stake could be both company

We thought it probably worth noting an unavoidable fact about Apple Computer – the company is presently engaged in developing new versions of every computer or software package it currently offers up for sale.

That

Probably still  reeling from all publicity around these shots, Microsoft reportedly told journalists gathered for a company press event in Germany not to use or mention Apple products.  Our German is a bit rusty and Google is even worse, but according to Handelsblatt and our bad translation:

“While at a Windows Mobile 6.5 demonstration in Munich, Germany a journalist was warned by a Microsoft spokesman not to mention or use Apple products…since it was a Microsoft event the journalist had previously told everyone that he had never owned an easier to use cell phone than the iPhone.”

Now, you can say what you like about Microsoft’s huge market share – not just in terms of PC sales but also in virus and Trojan horse production – but even in Apple’s darkest days we don’t think Cupertino ever insisted on no mention or use of Microsoft-powered products. Looks like a fin de siecle to us…

Anyway, returning to the story, here’s Google Translate’s laughable translation of part of it – perhaps some of our German-speaking readers can, erm, actually translate this.

“The offense: The journalist had dared to talk during dinner to mention that he had never seen a possessed so easy to use phone like its iPhone. Und das auf der Vorstellung des Windows Betriebssystems Mobile 6.5. And on the idea of the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. “The emotion surprised me,” says a PR consultant was present at that time. “It shows that the nerves are raw.”

 “We’ve messed with Mobile 6.5,” quoted Paul Jozefak, members of the Microsoft Venture Capital Summit, the Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer. “I wish we had Windows Mobile 7 in the market.” This should come 2010th.”

So there you have it – the world’s biggest software company, sticking its head in the sand.

Thanks to reader Towa Tei for the tip.

Apple sent out a note to iPhone developers today notifying them that there is a new iPhone developer RSS feed on Apple’s site. The feed contains both news and announcements important to the iPhone developer community. The feed can be found here.

Apple released Airport Client Update 2009-002  today fixing some minor issues in Snow Leopard’s wireless access software.  A restart is required.

Update: Apple also released MacBook Pro EFI 1.8 firmware update for MacBook Pro 5,1 and 5,2.  The update will require subsequent installation of Superdrive Update 3.0 which will quiet the DVD drive during startup and on wake from sleep.  ***ALSO BEWARE OF THE LOUD BEEP DURING THE UPDATE***

Google has today released the Mac beta of its Google Chrome browser, though this release is not feature-identical with the existing Windows version.  For instance, extensions aren’t available to Mac users(yet).  Google also released a Linux Beta as well.

The company promises its browser will run websites and applications at

The battle for the future of publishing is on once again – the last time we saw war like this was at the advent of desktop publishing – today, five major publishers confirmed the last few weeks of rumour with the announcement of a joint venture to develop an

Since the purchase of Lala late last week by Apple, the topic of discussion is how much Apple paid for it and what they plan to do with the music streaming company.  We heard yesterday from Peter Kafka at Media Memo that the price was $80 million and that Warner music alone got $10 million of their investment back. 

Today, TechCrunch is saying that Apple only paid $17 million for Lala and since they had $14 million in cash, the “rest” of the company was only valued at $3 million.  If this information is accurate, it would lend to the idea that Apple is purchasing companies like this for the engineering talent and experience. 

Apple purchased a similar-size organization called PlaceBase earlier this year.  There is some speculation that this purchase was a talent-based purchase as well, as the company had some financial issues.

Kings of Leon, Lily Allen and Lady GaGa head this year

Nokia is shutting down its posh Regent Street shop following its failure to grab the hearts and minds of consumers.

The company apparently spent

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsge4iM-FTE&w=600&h=385]

This is great: Dragon Dictation has come to the iPhone, a superb solution that lets you speak your text/emails into your Apple mobile.

This App is powered by Dragon Naturally Speaking – the same highly-effective speech to text engine which powers MacSpeech (itself a life-saving product for many, particularly those with damaged/broken arms).

How it works:

• Dragon Dictation for iPhone allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages, with the company claiming this is up to 5 times faster than typing on the keyboard.
• Voice-to-text transcriptions that may be sent as SMS, Email, or pasted into any application on your iPhone using the clipboard
• Convenient editing feature that provides a list of suggested words
• Voice driven correction interface
• You can dictate anything and drop it anywhere using the iPhone clipboard feature. Start, stop, start again: long e-mails, short messages, a note, a post, whatever you want.

With Dragon Dictation you can also update your Facebook status, send notes and reminders to yourself, or Tweet to the world

The Boxee team – developers of the popular media streaming software that works with Macs and the Apple TV – last night announced D-Link as their first hardware partner (with an Apple TV-competing device that

Danish police have turned to Macs for use in managing this week

Short version: App developer Molinker hires army of reviewers to rate up their apps.  Developer gets caught by bloggers who write nasty emails to Phil Schiller. 

Phil Schiller replies confirming “Yes, this developer’s apps have been removed from the App Store and their ratings no longer appear either.”

Apple drops all 1,000+ of their apps from the App Store.  Bloggers rejoice.

Long version

It’s called 3G4 (get it?  because G kinda looks like a 6?  That’s teen slang!) and the iPhone Nintendo N64 emulatior is actively being developed by a 14 year old developer.  You’ll notice in the demo below that it is running pretty well at scaled down resolutions. 

Things on Doogie’s to-do list: overcome duplicate button registers, delayed presses, and some crashing — and he has yet to implement the L, R, and Z keys.  It is due out next year, probably on a Jailbroken platform like Cydia or Rock.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgJqXqZUZtU&w=600&h=385]

Yes, you are a slacker.

via engadget

According to his multiple sources, Apple paid around $80 million for Lala, reports MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka today.  Depending on what time they got in, investors are getting about half of what they paid to a bit of a profit for early investors.  Kafka singles out Warner Music which put in $20 million and got about 50% back.

Speculation is that Lala’s purchase was about aquiring talent and expertise to Apple rather than Lala’s streaming music platform.  Lala’s industry licenses became null and void the moment they were sold to Apple.  Kafka offers:

But LaLa