iOS Devices

Today, AT&T issued a response to Verizon’s ads which have been getting a lot of attention lately.  The ads show maps of 3G service, which Verizon covers more geographic area of the US.  AT&T thinks that consumers believe that those maps are of overall geographic coverage – which AT&T actually has more of than Verizon.

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AT&T is also suing Verizon over the claimed misrepresentation.  AT&T’s claim (which they never dispute the maps – but somehow call them “blatantly false and misleading”)  below:

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Despite Apple

Apple has introduced iTunes Preview, a new way to share iTunes music information using a Web browser, and also announced the iTunes Best Album & Song 2009 (UK) shortlists.

The new iTunes Preview feature replaces the old behaviour of the service. In the past, whenever you sent a link to a song or album from the iTunes Store to another person, clicking that link would automatically open up iTunes – or generate a pester message urging the other party to install iTunes.

Now this doesn

They say competition is a gift to help you change, so good news for Apple TV fans as that particular set-top box now has even more competition when it comes to streaming entertainment, as the Boxee team have announced a partnership with a company which will bring a set top box equipped with the team

Music industry bible, Billboard, has announced Billboard Live, a new service streaming live music events to iPhones and online.

There

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Livestream today announced the immediate availability of its free service for streaming live to the iPhone and iPod touch, Livestream Procaster, a great new solution which lets users can stream live from their webcam, video camera or even broadcast their PC or Mac desktop, directly to iPhone users over 3G or Wi-Fi connections, with less than five minutes of setup.

The streaming service uses the H.264 HTTP live streaming functionality included within the native QuickTime player that Apple has pre-installed on the iPhone.

What this means that Livestream producers do not need to obtain iPhone App Store approval to launch their own iPhone live streaming channel, nor do their viewers need to install any application as streams can be viewed using the iPhone

Silicon Alley Insider charts Apple’s cash hoard today.  It is interesting to note that Apple was paying off a lot of debt in the earlier parts of the chart.  Also, Apple’s cash reserves really started to skyrocket when they set the iPhone loose.  Apple can already buy a company the size of Dell with their cash and short term investments.  What are they saving all of this money for?

Joe Hewitt, the developer of Facebook.app for the iPhone has resigned according to his Twitter account.  Facebook’s iPhone app is one of the most popular and one of only a handful installed on more than 50% of all iPhones and iPod touches.

He didn’t give reason for the move but said he handed the job off to another developer.  He will stay on as a Facebook developer working on other projects (*cough* tablet*).

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You remember the T-Pain App, right? Sure you do, it managed to get to 10,000 downloads a day – now there

Here

Look, Nvidia

The iPhone juggernaut shows no sign of slowing.  Orange, who are selling the iPhone for the first time today in the UK, reported sales of at least 30,000 in its first day.  Apple has been selling the iPhone, iPhone 3G and now the iPhone 3GS on the O2 network for two years so it is interesting to see so much pent up demand on another carrier (Apple…are you getting ideas for the US here?).  There were also concerns that Orange’s network policies might alienate prospective customers.

Vodaphone will soon offer the iPhone in the UK as well.

Apple was just catching up to demand at the end of last quarter for the iPhone 3GS.  It appears demand is still strong.

Meanwhile, in the US where we have five times the population of the UK, analysts estimate that the Motorola Droid sold 100,000 units in its worldwide debut over the Friday/Sat/Sunday weedend.  Verizon had 200,000 on hand and Verizon store owners polled said they had sold about half of their inventory.  Those same analysts expect Motorola to sell a million Droid handsets in the coming year.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has introduced a host of enhanced iPhone and iPod touch-enabled features and social web-based offerings within its latest batch of Blu-ray releases.

The studio has announced the release of Blu-ray versions of Bruno, Funny People, 9, American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, Public Enemies, and Inglourious Basterds, these will ship by Christmas.

All the discs include the pocket BLU app, which offers iPhone and iPod users touch further enhancements to the Blu-ray experience, and social BLU, which offers Blu-ray users more ways to interact with their Facebook and Twitter networks through an Internet-connected Blu-ray player.

Craig Kornblau, President of Universal Studios Home Entertainment said, “By bridging Blu-ray’s vast capabilities with the Internet, iPhone, iPod touch and some of the hugely popular social networking platforms, we are effectively taking the Blu-ray experience to the next level, offering consumers the opportunity to easily integrate their favorite films into those activities and devices that have become part of their everyday lifestyle.”

pocket BLU uses the device’s Wi-Fi connection to work seamlessly with a network-connected Blu-ray player and offers the following advanced features:

• Advanced Remote Control: A sleek, elegant new way to operate your Blu-ray player. Users can navigate through menus, playback and BD-Live functions with ease.
• Video Timeline: By turning the phone to landscape mode, users will bring up the video timeline, allowing them to instantly access any point in the movie.
• Mobile-To-Go: Users can unlock a selection of exclusive bonus content with their Blu-ray discs to save to their device or to stream from anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi network, enabling them to enjoy exclusive content on the go, anytime, anywhere.
• Browse Titles: Users will have access to a complete list of pocket BLU-enabled titles available and coming to Blu-ray Hi-Def. Free previews and more.
• Pop-Up Keyboard: Enter data into a Blu-ray player with this easy and intuitive keyboard that will facilitate such Blu-ray(TM) features as chatting with friends and sending messages.

The pocket BLU app will be made available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch. It doesn’t appear to be available at the App Store at this time, but our information suggests its pending – perhaps it’s lost in Apple’s Byzantine App Store approval process…

AT&T continues to claim it will offer tethering support to iPhone users on its network – but remains completely non-committal when it comes to offering any concrete date for introduction of the same.  We were told to take any references to tethering in 2009 out of our posts last month so we’ve given up on seeing it this year, even though AT&T is adverising new Laptop Connect services as we speak.

It has been a year since the carrier promised tethering would be enabled for US iPhone users,

Apple

Recall the story of the giant semi-legal iPod ad on the side of a Boston building? A story which seemed to hint at all sorts of political intrigue as Apple attempted to secure permission to carry the gigantic ad…

Well, just to keep the near 4,000 readers of the original report in the loop, news today is that that self-same ad is gone, torn down, evicted by Boston

One of the things that no one has really talked about much on the Android platform is the limit of installing apps to the internal storage (news to us), and not on the external Flash micro SD cards.  Apple allows you to install apps on the 8-64GB of storage that comes along with the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.  AndroidandMe exposes this significant issue with the Google OS:

The Droid ships with a 512 MB ROM which contains only 256 MB available for app storage. Google does not support installing apps to the SD card (and likely never will), so developers are limited in what they can create.

Google is all about the Cloud so this is likely something they’ve considered, but it will significantly limit what can be put on an Android phone like the Droid.  256MB is only enough for a few mid-sized games.  If you build a 50MB app for the Android platform, how many people will give you 20% of their phone’s app storage for it?

Update: It looks like there is a fairly easy way to hack the OS to store apps on SD cards.  Also, apparently Google is working on this issue for an upcoming release.  Another commenter says that apps can have calls to SD storage so all of the media can be stored externally.  For instance, in a first person shooter, all of the bitmaps and graphics can be stored on the SD card while the application runs from the internal storage. So it might not be as big a deal as originally thought. Thanks commenters.

Somehow I think Apple will exploit this in an upcoming commercial. via DF.

$750 million for the mobile advertising company started three years ago.  Mobile is hot, thanks to the iPhone.  Don’t take it from us.  In the words of Admob’s founder:

Then came the iPhone. Suddenly, Apple solved so many problems that had plagued mobile for so long. They showed all of us the way forward and their efforts have led to a landslide of rapid improvements in our space. We were so excited by the promise the iPhone represented that we shifted a significant portion of our attention to that device in its very early days. We launched the first iPhone ad units focused on the web and quickly added the capability to run ads in applications. Now with the addition of excellent devices from Palm, Nokia, RIM, and plethora of Android powered smartphones, we have all the preconditions necessary for what will be a tidal wave of mobile browsing and app usage. But let there be no mistake. Our business, and the mobile industry in general, owes Apple a debt of gratitude.

The deal also makes Google a little bit more scary in the mobile space now that they own a platform and the lion’s share of the advertising on other platforms.

Seems the tech pundits are convinced its Android-based systems which are going to trample on Apple

Apple has arranged a series of new deals to boost the profile of the iPhone in the Qatar and Singapore, while Japan