9to5 Staff

Apple today sent out invitations to WWDC 2008.  Macintosh? Check.  iPhone?  Check

So what does ‘A landmark event.  In more ways than one.’ mean?  And why are there two Golden Gate bridges diverging into a poorly Photoshopped landscape?

Let the speculation begin!

(Just for the record, we think ‘Landmark’ has to do with the location-based APIs in the iPhone SDK)

Nothing terribly exciting….

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhwvlqZXSsg&hl=en]

Remember we pointed out RIM’s need to make moves to combat the threat of iPhone? Now the company has hitched up with Puretracks to offer a music service to Blackberry users. The new deal means the Blackberry now offers some of the entertainment-friendly features of the iPhone, but the move may be too little, too late.

Sure, a move to offer Puretracks support is nice, and yes, it does mean RIM is actively preparing its flood defenses to stem the imminent iPhone wave on its business in the enterprise market, but Puretracks lacks the hype, catalogue and accustomed user base of the Apple service. In essence this is just another move by the majors to reduce Apple’s grip on online music distribution. Ensuring healthy competition in the digital music market makes sense in some ways, but we all know the majors want to foster such competition solely in order that they can force higher prices on online music sales. That’s what all the major label disputes with Apple seem to come down to, at any rate.

Puretracks is partnered with all the major labels, but the Canadian-based service hasn’t announced track pricing yet, is available only in the US, and The music store will be available on the BlackBerry Pearl, the BlackBerry Curve and the 8800 series, which already have music players inside. The service launches on April 1 (no joke), hopes to reach other markets in future, and the partners hope in future to offer support for WiFi capable handsets. One thing is immediately clear. Apple has a fight on its hands as it tries to seize a chunk of the enterprise market with iPhone.

Apple has confirmed that in excess of 100,000 iPhone developers have downloaded the beta iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) in the first four days since its launch on March 6.

The iPhone SDK furnishes developers with the same set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and tools that Apple uses to create its native applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.

“Developer reaction to the iPhone SDK has been incredible with more than 100,000 downloads in the first four days,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. Apple also revealed that over one million people have watched the launch video on Apple.com.

So you were wondering if Apple was going to spread an extra thick layer of security over the new version 2.0 of the iPhone software?  You know – to keep the 1,000,000 unlocked versions from being updated and from being customers at the App Store?

Yeah, we didn’t think so.  iPhone 2.0 is already hacked.  Version 3 and 4, though just twinkles in Apple’s eye?  Cracked too.

The whole "security" thing?  Kinda a joke at this point.  Apple must really need those unlocked iPhone sales to hit its goals.

The real issue for Apple is that they are getting a bad rep from a security standpoint – which will seriously hurt them in the enterprise.

Seriously, Apple.  Just open up the iPhone to all carriers already.

Sensis, the search engine division of Telstra (Australia’s largest mobile carrier),  is hiring an iPhone developer to put its Australia-only search engine on the iPhone.  Why would a telecom put an Australia-only search engine on the iPhone?    Because the iPhone is coming to Australia.  When?  Soon.  You’ve been warned, mate – get out of that Optus plan ASAP…

Telstra has had a back and forth view on the iPhone – from  senior executives saying it was "Doomed" to complimenting it.

Original Job posting:

Design BA for iPhone search application
Contract Role

Description:

Are you a business analyst with experience gathering and documenting requirements for interactive web or mobile products? We’re looking for a BA with a technical front-end UI background to help us design cutting-edge search applications for the iPhone. This isn’t boring old specification-heavy BA work. This is exciting and agile BA work to help us envision mobile search applications that work great and look beautiful. Let us know if you think you’ve got the right combination of creative flair, geekiness, and detail orientation to get the job done.

Details:

• 2-3 month contract
• Melbourne CBD

Send a resume, cover letter, and salary requirements to brian.curtis@sensis.com.au

Steven Levy left his MacBook Air is a stack of magazines and newspapers on his living room table.  He thinks his wife threw it away.  As people considering plucking down $2000 of our hard earned money for a computer, the desire to wap him in the back of the head is overwhelming.

His excuse?  His wife often cleans up his clutter on his living room table.  OK.  That sounds familiar reasonable.  However, knowing this, would you put a $2000 computer in a stack of magazines that your wife routinely scoops up and throws away?  Would you even put an important list of to do items in a stack of newspapers your wife is going to throw away?

And Mrs. Levy?  That 3 pound magazine you threw away.  Didn’t it seem a bit heavy?  I mean usually the Newsweeks come in at a little less than 3 pounds these days, right?

Moral of the story.  Take better care of your $2000 device.  And if you do something boneheaded like lose it in the magazine trash, don’t put it out there for public consumption – unless you expect some ridicule.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven to us.  We think Uncle Murray swiped it when he was over for dinner last week.  Or maybe it is stuck in the couch.  With prescription glasses as strong as Mr. Levy’s, it might be time to send in a private eye.

Update: I ‘fixed’ the problem by turning off the ability to view hidden files in the finder and restarting – or maybe it was just the restart?  Or maybe it will break again.    Does this work for any of you?

According to Apple’s support forums, a lot of people have been having some issues with Flash lately.  I know I am one of them.  Is anyone else out there with Intel Macs with updated browsers and Flash Plugins having issues with sites like www.espn.com?

Sorry if that crashed you bythe way.  There are lots of people out there having similar problems and lots of fixes suggested at the Apple forums.  However – no one has really pinpointed the problem yet. 

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to point the finger at Adobe and say that they are retaliating for Apple not including them on the iPhone.  Realistically, however, this is pretty unlikely.  It is probably some 3rd party stuff like Perian that I have running.

Or?

Apple’s US online store is out for lunch again this morning, with the customary "We’ll be back soon" sign showing on the front page.

Apple’s UK store and other European store fronts appear unaffected as the company seems set to bounce into another Apple Tuesday.

We call them Apple Tuesday because this is the day the company likes to introduce new products. However, merely because the store goes offline doesn’t always mean new product releases.

We’ll keep you posted. (UPDATED: The Store is now available once again, no immediate changes yet visible).

We Are Together (Thina Simuyne) is an award-winning feature-length documentary about children, music and HIV. Its creation would have been impossible without Apple’s cutting-edge video technology, which empowered two independent British filmmakers to tell the inspiring story of a group of orphans at South Africa’s tiny Agape children’s home. The film follows the orphans as they form a choir to raise desperately needed funds for the home. It’s a remarkable journey that eventually takes them to New York to raise awareness of the impact of the disease, performing with Paul Simon and Alicia Keys.

Please check it out…

Apple’s iPhone will become one of the world’s leading mobile gaming platforms, as games developers worldwide make plans to deliver titles for the platform, now the iPhone 2.0 SDK (beta) has been made available.

Like RIM with its Blackberry in the enterprise market, Sony, Nokia and other manufacturers creating mobile gaming devices (such as the PSP or Java-enabled mobile phones) face a tough battle as Apple makes its biggest move yet into the gaming market.

Gamers can look forward to a wide selection of titles come June when the iPhone is finally enabled for third-party applications. Developers Feral Interactive, Artificial Life, Sega, iD Software, Gameloft, Aspyr, Freeverse, and Pangea Software have all confirmed hopes to deliver games for the platform.

Developers are excited at the potential of creating titles for the device, and its non-phone sister, the iPod touch. They want to explore the built-in movement sensors within these devices, and can’t wait to make products available for sale through the ever-busy iTunes Store.

EA CEO, John Riccitiello observes: "The animation technology in the iPhone OS enables us to build awesome games. I think iPhone consumers are going to be blown away by the games we create for this platform."

At the Apple event last week, EA demonstrated a version of Spore which uses the accelerometers inside the phone to allow gamers to control their game. Sega showed us an iPhone version of Monkey Ball.

Mobile gaming companies are moving into the space. Gameloft will introduce over 15 iPhone/iPod touch games by the end of 2008. Compnay president, Michel Guillemo, said: "The iPhone gaming environment opens a new era in mobile gaming and is exactly what we’ve been waiting for."

Long time Mac developers are also excited. "This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in game development in 15 years, except maybe for the Nintendo Wii," Glenda Adams, director of development for Aspyr Media told Macworld.

Beyond custom third-party applications, Sun has also confirmed itself to be looking at the iPhone SDK with the aim to port a version of Java to the device. While Apple has no plans to support this, Sun argues that making Java for iPhone available is well within the remit of the third party development agreement, and introduction of such technology would enable iPhone users to play Java games on their device.

What makes the iPhone so attractive to all involved is both the extent of its deployment and the suitability of its user base. While the Sony PSP has shifted ten million units in the US since March 2005, Apple has sold four million iPhones so far, and intends selling ten million by the end of this financial year. That’s a large potential market that justifies creating titles for the platform.

Better still, iPhone users are already accustomed to using the iTunes Store, and are already prepared to spend money for digital commodities. Other gaming platforms have faced an uphill struggle persuading less tech-savvy consumers to do the same.

While it’s far too early to say how the big game will play out, it’s clear Apple is exercising a two-pronged approach: beefing-up iPhone to appeal to core Blackberry users in the enterprise market while enabling its mobile to become a large deployment world-class casual gaming platform.

And all these reports ignore Apple’s second growing market: the iPod touch. That the touch will support the same games and systems means developers are looking at a much more sizable market than iPhone sales figures alone would lead us to believe.

Apple’s games development partners will play their hand in June.

….thanks to http://www.gameguru.in/ for the image

Ugh.  We’re as sick as anyone else about hearing "the Beatles are coming to iTunes!"  It seems like at least once a month the rumor pops up.  This month is no different.  Reportedly, there is a $800 million dollar deal in the works (this isn’t how iTunes works is it?)  The London-based Telegraph (a great source of information) is this month’s source saying,

Sir Paul McCartney is expected to release the Beatles back catalogue for download on the internet in a deal which could be worth up to £300 million.

Former hits from albums such as Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album and Help will be available on the popular iTunes website and are expected to top the download charts for several months on release.

Although the exact value of the records are not known, some estimates have placed it at £300 million and Sir Paul, Ringo Starr and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison would all receive large sums of money as part of the contract.

Sir Paul, 65, is currently involved in a divorce settlement with his estranged wife Lady McCartney and the final hearing, expected in 10 days time, could see him paying her up to £30 million in a cash settlement.

A spokesman for Apple Corps, the Beatles record label, would not confirm when the records would be available online and said: "The date has not yet been set."

Release of the Beatles’ songs over the internet has earlier been prevented as the surviving band members were involved in legal disputes with their record label EMI and Apple Corps and the American company Apple Computers, who own iTunes. (more)

Beatles music appeals to new music lovers every day, but we have to believe that if you are a Beatles fan and a iPod lover, you’ve already ripped your Beatles music from CD (or otherwise). 

For those of you too young to remember, the G5 Powerbook was a similar monthy rumor a few years back that obviously never came to fruition.  We’ll see how this one does.

We’ve seen this before.  Apple, when they are about to do price drops start pushing the refurb prices way south.  This month,  the Apple Store started  dropping the refurbished 4Gb Nanos to $129 and the 8Gb ones to $169.

The iPod Classics dropped even further to $209 for 80Gb and $299 for 160Gb.

iPod Touches?  $229 for 8Gb and $329 for 16Gb.

Same is occurring in Britian.

Any given Tuesday….

We don’t condone torrenting stuff or bypassing Apple’s $99-$199 charge for developing iPhone applications but thought it would be prudent to report that the iPhone SDK is now floating around the torrent sites.  The DMG file weighs in at 2.1 GB and is the real deal we can confirm.

If you actually are successful in developing an application with this, you will be forced to pay Apple the normal price before they publish the application on their site, one must assume.

Click for more

The SDK is only for Apple Leopard users running XCode.

Research In Motion (RIM) isn’t taking Apple’s move into the enterprise market it dominates without a fight. The company has confirmed plans to push back with the introduction of social networking and entertainment features.

Right.

As part of the push, RIM has reached a deal with Black Eyed Peas’ artist, Will.i.am, to make that artist’s content and online community Dipdive available on the BlackBerry. (Will.i.am was also behind Barack Obama’s successful “Yes We Can” video.) The company introduced Facebook software for its smartphones last autumn.

RIM’s in a fix. Apple’s introduction of Exchange support means core Blackberry customers have a choice of devices, and with the iPhone offering extra value in terms of screen real estate, iPod and other sexy features, the Blackberry maker must struggle to preserve its market.

Two-thirds of RIM’s 12 million Blackberry users are government or corporate clients. In order to widen its business and resist the Apple-driven iPhone assault, RIM has little choice but to extend its product’s versatility.

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie told Reuters, "The two hottest trends in wireless are social networking and multimedia, which is principally portable music."

While the company continues to insist iPhone poses no competition, with economic downturn threatening sales in its key business sectors and the debut of iPhone, which threatens to clean up in the consumer market, things appear grim.

Apple has already seized the number two slot in the US smartphone market, grabbing 28 percent share. Blackberry continues to dominate this sector with 41 percent, Canalsys claimed last month.

In the consumer markets, a January ChangeWave survey showed a move toward smartphones, with iPhone and Blackberry competing for dominance. That survey of 4,182 consumers declared the iPhone to be the leading choice, with 17 percent of consumers planning to buy a smartphone planning an iPhone. That compares with 15 percent planning to pick Blackberry.

Customer satisfaction may be key to victory. 72 percent of those surveyed who already own an iPhone said they were "very satisfied" with the product, while just 55 percent were equally satisfied with their Blackberry.

The game’s afoot. Apple, which sells iPhone in just four countries and has confirmed four million sales of the device so far already holds 0.6 percent of the world’s cell phone market, according toGartner.

This compares to RIM’s 1.2 percent.

With Apple planning to sell 10 million iPhones this year, its overall market share seems set for steep growth, pushing ahead of RIM.

Investors are watching closely. Apple shares seem to have begun reclaiming a little lost ground on strength of last night’s iPhone SDK announcements (up a few pennies to $121.36). Beleaguered RIM has lost $1.72 per share to hit $96.20 on pre-market trading this morning.

Battle, it seems, is joined.

As an IT Administrator that is happily "exchanging" my headache of Active Directory/ Exchange server knowledge in for a company that wants to move to Google Apps, I am surprised that Apple has forgot its best buddy, Google – at least for the time being. 

The SDK announcement yesterday included no reference to Google Apps working on the iPhone.  While I’ve been using IMAP to check my Google Apps Email for awhile now (at push-like 1 minute intervals), it is a bit of a pain to connect to the Calendar and Addressbook through the EDGE web interface.  I would much prefer to use the native apps like Exchange now can.  I also know that I can sync my desktop Calendar and Addressbook.app to Google Apps and sync it periodically with the iPhone…but this isn’t really how I’d like to work (well since 1998) – and the point of the iPhone’s Internet connectivity is to be able to receive updates in real time. 

The iPhone doesn’t even support Leopard Server’s iCalendar or LDAP Addressbook.  This has to change – post haste.  It would be really surprising if Apple neglected the standards-compliant Google Apps in favor of Exchange.  Will we see an update soon?  I hope so!  Right?

Today’s iPhone software development kit (SDK) announcement by Apple Inc. — long anticipated and long overdue — is big news for iPhone (and iPod Touch) users. Sure, there’s a hitch: Just like last year, when Apple unveiled the iPhone in January then made would-be buyers wait six months to get their hands on it, everyone will have to wait until June for all the promised applications and advances to arrive.

But it will be well worth the wait.

When the one-year anniversary of iPhone 1.0 rolls around this summer, iPhone fans will get what is essentially version 2.0 of their favorite smartphone. The added features and apps expected then — some of which were showcased by Apple today — will transform the iPhone far beyond what it has been so far.

Hey – Computerworld nicked this (ha) continue reading from there.

We’ve brought back the four panel live view of SDK event feeds.

Click here for coverage

Today we will have coverage from Gizmodo, C|Net, Macworld and Computerworld.

Coming from here – I was surprised to see i am Legend’s alternative ending.  takea gander…

http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?umid=184699

Perhaps we’ll see alternative ending choices in our movie viewing options in the future – maybe even in AppleTV?

We’re just hours away from Apple’s bells-and-whistles meeting where it will reveal the real deal on iPhone application development, and new information’s beginning to trickle through.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, last night told those at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference that the company will talk about the iPhone in the enterprise.

Oppenheimer also noted that the frequency of iPhone unlocking reflects demand for the device, and echoed chief operating officer Tim Cook’s comments last week in which Apple revealed it isn’t "wedded" to its existing revenue-sharing deal with mobile operators.

"We’re off to a great start, but we’re learning and we’re not wedded to any one particular way to go to market. Our objective is to drive scale and take market share," said Oppenheimer.

MacRumors warns that the iPhone SDK will be available for Mac OS X only and that the software will be made available as an extension of the capabilities of the Xcode development tools shipped with Mac OS X 10.5. This makes sense on account of the OS X system that runs iPhone.

Analysts are beginning to get categorical, too, with many now anticipating Apple will announce support for Microsoft’s Active Synch technologies for the iPhone, meaning Entourage support, and the long-expected support for Lotus Notes, may appear.

Finally, whispers reaching 9to5 Mac from various closely-connected sources suggest iPhone users can look forward to "a few more" applications for their devices, perhaps as soon as today, but no word yet on what these may be.

That’s despite recent conjecture claiming the iPhone SDK announced will be available as beta software only.

Samsung has teamed-up with Adidas in a direct assault on the Apple and Nike Nike+ partnership.

Samsung this morning announced its new initiative in partnership with Nike competitor, Adidas.The two firms have teamed-up to introduce a new product, the miCoach phone, which they are calling the "first true sports music mobile" and which will be available across Europe from mid-March.

Just like the Nike+ system, miCoach collects and analyzes personal data and then customizes training plans based on a user’s fitness level and specific goals, while offering real-time feedback during a workout using the phone.

The device offers a stride sensor and heart rate monitor, offering training tips and time updates, all to a musical accompaniment that’s tailored to the workout. 

Apple and Nike this week announced their plans. The partners intend extending their combined system for iPod nano users to integrate with gym equipment. The partners are working with major gym equipment manufacturers such as Life Fitness and Technogym to achieve this. The Nike+-enabled equipment will be installed at participating gyms, including 24 Hour Fitness and Virgin Active Health Clubs.

The upcoming battle for athletes ears and wallets seems set to play out a little like a WWE doubles match, with Samsung and Adidas attempting to "lay the smack down" against Apple and Nike.