iOS Devices

The new Pioneer VSX-1020-K receiver was announced today and it isn’t just the next version of Gizmodo’s Battlemodo champ and CNET Midrange editors’ choice, though that does give it some credibility   The VSX-1020-K contains a “Works with iPhone” certification (with free custom Pioneer iPhone app, free) that allows you to connect up your iPhone have your way with your living room sound.  That’s in addition to being able to browse your music on your HDTV. 

It is available for pre-order with a price guarantee at Amazon for $549.  iPhone screenshots below:

Product Features

Here’s the older model getting messed with: http://www.cnet.com/av/video/flv/universalPlayer/universalSmall.swf

We’ve been holding off on posting this to see if it was just a blip, but now the iPhone developer site has been down over an hour so perhaps something interesting may come up — like the ability to submit iPad apps?  It is about that time if Apple wants to have a good selection of specially designed apps available at the iPad launch.  Anyway.  If anyone sees anything new – shoot us a note in the comments.

We’re back online

With Sony’s recent offerings (PSP Go sales 50% under estimates) being somewhat below par, it is hard to get excited about anything coming down their pipe.  That, however, didn’t stop the Wall St. Journal from talking about their recent Sony leaks:

Threatened by Apple Inc.’s growing stable of portable devices, Sony Corp. is developing a new lineup of handheld products, including a smart phone capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games, according to people familiar with the matter.  The Japanese electronics giant also has a project under way to develop a portable device that blurs distinctions among a netbook, an e-reader and a PlayStation Portable, or PSP. The device is designed to compete against multifunction products such as Apple’s coming iPad tablet, these people said.

The new devices would take advantage of a new Sony online media platform, temporarily named Sony Online Service.  One of the bigger questions is will they run on the PSPoS or Android or something else?http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf

According to a recent Job posting, Apple is looking for an “iPhone Advertising SDK Manager”.

This job opportunity obviously stems from their recent purchase of Quattro wireless, a mobile advertising platform.  What’s interesting (and different from Google) here is that Apple appears to be integrating the advertising engine INTO the iPhone SDK so developers who want to put advertising in their apps will likely be able to do so from within Apple’s iPhone SDK environment and get payouts from the same place that they currently receive payments from paid apps.

Google currently has separate entities for Adsense Mobile, Admob (which hasn’t yet cleared regulatory approval) and the Adroid SDK.  Apple’s system, unsurprisingly, is more elegant.

Job description     The iPhone team is looking for a manager to work on supporting next generation mobile advertising. This will involve managing a talented team of developers working on the frameworks included in the iPhone SDK. The ideal candidate will be responsible for the day to day management of the engineering, as well as related frameworks. He or she will spend much of their time interacting with the engineering team, program managers, other engineering teams, and executives. We need someone who is comfortable working in a fast paced environment with rapidly changing priorities.
Experience
– Bachelor’s degree (CS preferred) and 5-10+ years experience.
– Strong programming and design ability.
– Excellent problem solving, critical thinking, and communication skills.
– Familiarity with Unix, Mac OS X, Cocoa, iPhone SDK, Objective-C, C, and C++ is highly desirable.
– Experience in the online advertising industry

via iPodNN

Apple, if they needed a reason to go after HTC, and by proxy Google, may have had it in marketshare numbers. Android’s growth has been pretty spectacular over the past few quarters highlighted by the graphs below from Quantcast, a web analytics firm.

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Paid Content (via Gizmodo) caught a pretty interesting presentation by Penguin CEO John Makinson in London on Tuesday.  The topic?  iPad Books…er Apps.  He sees ebooks hitting 10 percent of book sales next year (this year 4%) and with ‘books’ like these, that doesn’t seem to be out of the question.   Also check the presentation below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdExukJVUGI&w=700&h=400]

Penguin is not using the ePub format for these ‘books’, rather building the applications in html according to Makinson.  Some fun facts:

Those little Mac window icons we found inside of Valve’s Steam gaming platform might not just be skins as some of you thought.  Today, Valve released a slew of teaser ads to various websites around the web (Kotaku, MacRumors, MacNN, Shack News, Macworld, Gizmodo).  Six in all, the ads (pasted below) tease the release of the following Mac games: Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead. (Via Gizmodo)

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Apple has someone over at the Wall St. Journal HQ in New York City keeping an eye on their loaner iPad if remarks from Rupert Murdoch are taken at face value.

Mr. Murdoch said the Journal planned to be on Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer. “In fact, we’ve been allowed to work on one, and it’s under padlock and key. The key is turned by Apple every night,” he said in response to a question. “But we will be on that with The Wall Street Journal.” Mr. Murdoch said he believed in a year or so there will be a half dozen or more devices on which consumers will be able to receive newspapers and other media.

Oh, and the Journal is going to be on the iPad (in case you thought it might not be) as well a a slew of other devices like the Kindle (pictured).

With an exemplary track record of wireless network load planning like AT&T’s, it’s important to listen to what they believe will happen with future products.  Tucked into yesterday’s investor meeting, AT&T’s CEO mentioned that he didn’t expect much 3G traffic from the 10-inch screen media device with Youtube and other network-heavy applications:

AT&T Inc expects users of Apple Inc’s iPad to connect to the Internet mostly using short-range Wi-Fi networks rather than AT&T’s cellular network, the chief executive of AT&T said on Tuesday. While AT&T has agreed to provide wireless connections to the iPad tablet computer, Randall Stephenson said he does not expect the device to result in many new service subscriptions for AT&T as consumers will instead use Wi-Fi or prepaid services, where they do not subscribe to a service contract. “My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription,” he said during a webcast of an investor conference, adding that the device would be a mainly “Wi-Fi driven product.” Many consumers have their own Wi-Fi networks at home or go to coffee shops where they can avail of free Wi-Fi.

We took a poll (screengrabbed below) which seems to say that 3G will be an important part of the iPad experience with almost half of the people expecting to get iPads opting for the 3G version.  Our poll wasn’t alone in this “reverse Bell curve”.  Changewave got similar results.

The next few months might be interesting for those of us who rely on AT&T’s network.  Meanwhile some may consider the Mifi model.

Digitimes today refutes stock manipulator analyst Peter Misek’s assertion that parts shortages will cause delays in shipping the iPad and possibly a smaller, US-only rollout.

In response to reports that initial volumes of Apple’s iPad in late March will be lower than originally planned and the launch will be only in the US market because production by Foxconn Electronics has been delayed, Foxconn’s component suppliers have said their supplies are on schedule and Foxconn should be able to ship 600,000-700,000 iPads in March and one million units in April.

Foxconn declined to comment publicly, though I think this proxy communication by their suppliers to Digitimes could be construed as such.  

The iPad is set to go on sale on or around March 26th at 6:00pm.

Also: That is a lot of iPads!

The New York Times talks to some legal analysts today who discuss what happens when technology companies win patent disputes.  Take the case of Tivo vs. EchoStar:

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, outlines a similar case in his book