9to5 Staff

Money-back guarantee – a promise by a retailer to give you back your money if you are not satisfied with something that you bought – is taken for granted with tangible products and re-packaged intangibles such as the MobileMe box. When it comes to apps, it just seems weird to ask for a refund in the 99-cent economy, many people feel. The Taipei City Government begs to differ, arguing the same rules should apply to digital goods. They are ordering Apple and Google to introduce a seven-day money-back guarantee for sales of iOS and Android apps, Taipei Times reports.

An official said the lack of a return and refund mechanism violated the Consumer Protection Act. In an example of the problem the city government is trying to prevent, Yeh cited a case of software bought on Apple Store on Thursday that did not work, but left the buyer without recourse.

In other words, Taipei imagines a world where you could buy an app and “return” it for a full refund within two weeks if you’re not fully satisfied. When the App Store debuted as this phenomenal virtual bazaar to buy iPhone apps, nobody ever expected someone some day could demand the same consumer protection for digital deliveries. But Taipei’s demands have their merits. After all, the city officials cut a similar refunding deal with online auction web sites. If online sites are OK with it, so should app stores be, right?

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A Honda driver smashes his car into the window of Apple’s Greensboro retail spot in what’s being described as a robbery attempt. Obviously panicking after seeing the results of his reckless actions, he fled the scene without stealing anything. Check out a mid-air suspended MacBook Air tilted behind the display window. The store will be closed all day Friday. MyFox8 has the story:

Police described the suspect as a white male wearing a white shirt and hooded mask. According to 107.5 KZL, a security guard said the suspect was wearing a white ninja suit. Police said the car involved in the accident was reported stolen around 6 a.m. There was only one person inside the vehicle .

I guess this laughable thief doesn’t realize how lucky he’s been. Unlike this guy.

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WebKit – an Apple-developed, open-sourced rendering platform based on KHTML – is picking up steam on desktop. On laptop and desktop computers, WebKit-powered browsers are closing in on Mozilla’s Firefox, which is the world’s second most-popular browser. Look no further than Net Applications’ numbers derived by monitoring more than 40,000 websites in their network (see above chart). Adding May 2011 web usage share numbers for Safari (7.28 percent) and Chrome (12.52 percent) brings us to the combined 19.8 percent market share.

If you include the quickly growing mobile, where Webkit absolutely dominates, its numbers are even bigger.

That’s just shy of one fifth of all desktop browsing, putting WebKit within spitting distance of Firefox’s 21.71 market share. Trends do not favor browser vendors who have been pretty much bleeding market share to Google and Apple in past months. Chrome and Safari have managed to grow their user base over the past couple of months at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Why is the use of WebKit spreading?

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Everyone’s favorite geek, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, always make great headlines and today’s business congress on Australian’s Gold Coast was no exception. The other Steve, as some call him, likened sophisticated machines we have created to “the superior beings”, adding:

We’re already creating the superior beings, I think we lost the battle to the machines long ago. We’re going to become the pets, the dogs of the house. Every time we create new technology we’re creating stuff to do the work we used to do and we’re making ourselves less meaningful, less relevant. Why are we going to need ourselves so much in the future? We’re just going to have the easy life.

Of course, this comes from the man who created the original Apple I and II computers that kickstarted the personal computer revolution in the mid-1970s. Following-up on his last month’s comment that the machines are already winning, he conceded to have partly joked, elaborating:

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This tidbit from New York Post:

Apple will fork over between $100 million and $150 million in advanced payments to the four major music labels in order to get its iCloud off the ground, three separate sources told The Post. The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant has agreed to pay the labels between $25 million to $50 million each, as an incentive to get on board, depending on how many tracks consumers are storing. The size of the advance payments have been a major hold-up for Google, which had been negotiating with the music companies and now will likely have to pony up higher fees to get a rival cloud service into action, said music industry sources.

So money after all was that major roadblock Eric Schmidt hinted at during his D9 chat with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher…

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_0VZhhSLDU&w=670&h=411]

Kudos to Detusche Telekom AG-owned T-Mobile for fresh advertising ideas. The carrier reckoned it could tap the cultural phenomenon that is Angry Birds to help sell more phones in Europe, so they launched a promotion based around a life-sized version of Angry Birds. T-Mobile began work on the real-life Angry Birds level two weeks ago. A huge set was built at the Plaça Nova de Terrassa in Terrassa, Spain. At least three stories high, it involved extras, flying birds and people in a big crane blowing up the pigs. You can see the end result above and the making-of video after the break.

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Some people think, rightfully perhaps, that a fifth-generation iPhone will only run on fourth-generation cellular networks that are based on 3G HSPA+ radio technology rather than the latest LTE technology. Don’t kill the messenger, folks – this one comes from the mouth of  Hudson Square Research‘s Todd Rethemeier, as relayed by Barron’s Tiernan Ray:

The next version of the iPhone – he suggests it’s going to be an iPhone 5, rather than recent discussion of an interim model, an “iPhone 4S” – will have 4G wireless only for the AT&T version, not for the one shipped to Verizon.

And what does an eagle-eyed analyst do on such news? Cut Verizon from Hold to Sell and upgrade AT&T from Hold to Buy. Man, I should have been an analyst…

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From 9to5Toys.com

HandHeldItems knocks up to 93% off select Apple iPhone 4 cases. Plus, take an extra 20% off via coupon code “20iphonecs”. Even better, receive a $1 HHI store credit with your purchase. In all, 1,169 items are discounted, several of which are at or near lowest-we’ve-seen prices. (Scroll down to see them all.)

A best bet after coupon is the Silicone Cassette Tape Case for Apple iPhone 4 (pictured) for $3.87. With free shipping, that’s the lowest total price we could find by $1, assuming you use the credit. This case protects your iPhone 4 from dust and scratches and features pre-cut volume and port openings.

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Following the last month’s explosion that knocked offline Foxconn’s iPad 2 assembly facility in Chengdu, China and left three killed and at least fifteen injured, the news is reaching us that the assembly line has resumed operation. John Paczkowski on the All Things D blog relays this tidbit from a Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White’s note:

Our meetings today indicate that the Chengdu facility has been held back by yield issues on certain outside components; thus, the operation may not have reached the optimal utilization rate. Therefore, the explosion in Chengdu may result in more of an equilibrium situation with certain component vendors, rather than a shortage situation. Netting this all out, we believe the production of iPad 2 will be supply constrained during the June quarter; however, we are not prepared to place the bulk of the blame on the Chengdu operation.

Foxconn has concluded investigation into the explosion, but has yet to release any results, Paczkowski says. The explosion may have cost Apple anywhere between half a million iPads up to a third of total iPad 2 output.

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Apple doesn’t want to annoy Hollywood majors and record labels who provide iTunes with valuable content. No wonder the company is happily bowing to content owners’ every whim, actively seeking ways of preventing us from capturing stills and recording video in certain situations. That’s right, future iPhones could refuse to capture cams of the latest blockbuster flick and might keep you from snapping images of your favorite band’s live performance. Come on, you’re aware this files as copyright infringement after all…

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When this February Apple rolled out the new MacBook Pro family with Sandy Bridge chips and Thuderbolt I/O, the company surprised many with a SATA3 interface for the hard drive and disappointed at the same time by leaving the Superdrive in SATA2. SATA3 allows for theoretical data transfer speeds of 600 megabytes per second versus 300 megabytes per second for SATA2. Real-life numbers, as always, are lower and dependant on a number of factors, such as the speed of both your processor and the peripheral attached to the SATA interface. Initially, all 2011 MacBook Pros shipped with the SATA2 in the optical drive bay and the SATA3 in the main bay.

That appears to be changing as we’re hearing from multiple sources that Apple has upgraded the units delivered lately to SATA3 connectivity in the optical bay. However, this in no way implies that the latest SATA3 SSDs will work in the optical bay due to some compatibility problems with the SATA interface. Resolving them will likely require an EFI update, Snow Leopard 10.6.8  (which is currently in beta-testing) or even another quiet hardware adjustment…

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Barnes & Noble’s all-new Nook e-reader is now shipping. The company announced via a press release yesterday that the new Nooks have been shipped to those who pre-ordered them. New orders placed via their website will ship immediately, in time for Father’s Day. The device will also be in stock at Barnes & Noble locations. The e-reader features a six-inch display with the latest E-Ink Pearl display technology that responds to touch input. It also surprises with other noteworthy goodies…

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Remember Seagate’s GoFlex Satellite, a nice-looking portable wireless storage for iOS gear? This market is obviousyl booming due to the onslaught of smartphones, tablets and personal media players. The latest entrant includes Kingston which previewed a similar pocket-sized drive at Computex. Aptly named Wi-Drive, this battery-powered, flash-based portable drive acts as a media server that streams 720p video, music and other media to your devices via a dedicated iOS app (Android app is coming within 1-2 months). It’s got other features and we’ve got a quick video tour right below…

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TUAW points out (and MacRumors concurs) that several US Apple Stores are experiencing constrained supplies of AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule wireless gadgets. Multiple sources tell MacRumors those products have been in short supplies at several locations, with “sales reps indicating that no new shipments appeared to be planned”. Insiders also tell TUAW that “some AirPort devices are either low in stock or out of stock altogether”. The publication explains:

A reader let us know that all of the Apple Stores in his area are out of AirPort Express models, and one of our sources confirmed the Apple Store in his area is out of stock on not just the Express, but the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule as well. Another source says supplies at one store are not constrained and never have been, but the store “may have” received a notice to send its AirPort device inventory back.

At press time, the online Apple store listed a 24-hour availability for the AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule. Could this constrained inventory of Apple’s wireless appliances conveniently happening just days ahead of WWDC have something to do with the iCloud service? Maybe new base stations designed to seamlessly work with the iCloud and cache data in the background?

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If you thought linking an external storage to a Cinema Display over a single Thunderbolt cable was cool, check out Thunderbolt edition of LaCie’s Little Big Disk. This nice-looking drive would pass as an everyday external storage if it weren’t for its Thunderbolt interface that Apple and Intel jointly developed. You can daisy-chain five of these via Thunderbolt, link them to a high-end display and still move data in and out at breakneck-speeds. Slashgear reports about a little demo LaCie showed off at Computex:

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So, you have a great blog and want to run an iPad or iPhone giveaway that would drum up interest and keep those eyeballs glued to their screens… Hope you read Apple’s Guidelines for Third Party Promotions first. Fortune’s Philip Elmer De-Witt did some digging and figured out the document imposes all kinds of restrictions on sweepstakes that are no doubt attractive for your audience, but also devaluing Apple’s reputable brand.

The two-page document that lists these guidelines – and many more – has been around at least since January, but it seems that Apple has begun reaching out to companies to enforce them only recently.

Did you know you’re expected to send Apple all marketing materials related to your promotion? And don’t you ever use “free” as a modifier in headlines and call-outs related to the promotion, like the teaser image we cunningly used for this article. The list goes on and one, here are a few more examples:

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Net Applications is out today with a new survey that paints iPad’s web usage share 53 times greater compared to Android slates. As always, their findings stem from tracking browser and operating system usage across their global network of more than 40,000 websites so you should take them with a pinch of salt. Of course, iPad’s web usage lead might progressively decrease as the Android camp carries out their tablet carpet bombing. For now, though, iPad is king. Now, onto the numbers, more amazing facts plus nice embedded chart from Net Applications…

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Apple has just updated GarageBand for iPad and iMovie for iPhone/iPad with bug fixes, AirPlay compatibility and other new features. Free updates are now available on the App Store. GarageBand for iPad version 1.0.1 is a 369MB download while iMovie for iOS (supports iPad 2, iPhone 4 and fourth-generation iPod touch) version 1.2.1 weighs in at 69.2MB, priced at five bucks each. Don’t panic if those updates don’t show in iTunes or the App Store app yet, propagating changess across all regional stores can take anywhere between a few minutes to a couple hours. Here’s the official list of enhancements from iTunes release notes.

GarageBand for iPad version 1.0.1

• support for audio output over AirPlay, Bluetooth devices and HDMI with the Apple Digital AV Adapter
• import of AIFF, WAV, CAF audio files and Apple Loops (16 bit, 44.1 kHz)
• allows copy and paste of audio from supported apps into GarageBand
• addresses occurrences of GarageBand freezing while playing Smart Instruments
• improves overall stability and addresses a number of minor issues

iMovie for iOS version 1.2.1

• audio plays from your HDTV when using the Apple Digital AV Adapter
• video plays full screen from Marquee to your HDTV when using the Apple Digital AV Adapter
• resolves some cases of missing media in projects
• provides more accurate clip grouping by date in Video browser
• fixes an issue where a project’s background music would not fade in or out
• additional performance and reliability improvements

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Here’s the latest for NOK from Google Finance. See Nokia’s current market valuation? It’s barely hovering at $25.54 billion. This means Wall Street is now valuing the #1 handset maker in the world at about the same as Apple’s last quarterly revenue of $24.67 billion. Apple’s market valuation? $321.81 billion. Another way of looking at it? Nokia’s phone business could be also worth less than Skype.

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Come on, you knew the “I, Robot” movie poster mockup was inevitable the instant the “iCloud” term got its first official mention in Apple’s press release.

So we needed an excuse to run that greate movie poster mockup with Steve Jobs… Patently Apple points us to Apple’s trademark application for “iCloud” filed with the European Trademark Office under application number 010011484. Interestingly, the company first applied for the iCloud trademark last December in Jamaica, when the rumor-mill had not coined the term yet. And yes, that movie poster mockup was an instant hit, judging by your comments. Matter of fact, it inspired reader Spencer to send in an improved version. It’s right below the fold (you know you want to)…

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Apple’s North Carolina datacenter has been kept shroud in secrecy since the work began on the 500,000-square foot site. Apple being Apple, they even prevented aerial imagery of the $1 billion facility to appear in mapping services such as Google Earth, explains Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt:

If you asked Google Earth or Google Maps to show you the intersection of U.S. Route 321 and Startown Road — where the data center is located —  the current satellite imagery stopped a few yards short of the construction site. West of Startown Road, there was, as recently as two weeks ago, nothing but woods and farmland and a bit of driveway that ended abruptly in the middle of a field.

Apple has conveniently pinged Google just days before the iCloud announcement, likely asking them to lift the embargo on the North Carolina satellite imagery in their mapping services. The site is still absent from Street View, though. Go past the break to examine aerial shots of the data center yourself.

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