Tech Industry

Computerworld: What happened to objective news reporting? Why are so many reports inaccurately characterizing Apple as losing the marketshare battle with Anrdoid on basis of statistics which include an iPhone product transition? It seems strange to me.

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Another online service goes ‘instant’ in what has to be the fad of the week.   15-year old Stephen Ou gives us iTunes Instant via the iLoop

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Computerworld: The iPad is going to save publishing, adapt education, change corporations and offer newspaper subscriptions soon — not bad for a product introduced only this year. Perhaps that’s why Apple’s signed-up a new supplier to raise iPad manufacture to a potential three million per month — 36 million per year.

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Apple issued a press release (and updated iOS 4.2 page) ahead of the iOS 4.2 beta that just hit.  In it, they detail the new AirPrint standard and its ability to work with HP ePrint printers.  To confuse matters slightly, HP offers an iPrint iOS app (pictured below) that does iOS printing.

It appears that MacOS 10.6.5 will also allow printing through a Mac with current developer builds offering that functionality.

“AirPrint is Apple’s powerful new printing architecture that matches the simplicity of iOS—no set up, no configuration, no printer drivers and no software to download,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users can simply tap to print their documents or photos wirelessly to an HP ePrint printer or to a printer shared on a Mac or PC.”

“We’re pleased to work with Apple to bring Apple’s AirPrint to our fall lineup of ePrint printers in time for the holiday shopping season,” said Vyomesh Joshi, HP executive vice president, Imaging and Printing Group. “Making it easy for our customers to print anytime, anywhere, is a key priority for HP. iPad, iPhone and iPod touch customers are going to love how easy it is to print using our new range of ePrint printers, creating high-quality printed pages in an instant.”

Full Release below:
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Mercury News is reporting today that Apple will soon launch a subscription plan for newspapers which will also provide advertising revenue stream for publishers.

The Cupertino company has agreed to provide an opt-in function for subscribers to allow Apple to share with publishers their information, which includes vital data that news organizations use to attract advertisers, industry sources say.  Publishers “want the data of their customers so they can integrate it into their circulation database so they know who their customers are,” said [industry analyst]Fidler, who works with many newspapers…”Obviously, Steve Jobs sees this as a significant revenue stream for Apple in the future.”

The report states that Apple wants to take 30% of subscription revenue sold through the online store and up to 40% of advertising revenue from the venture.  Not all publishers are lining up for this proposition.

Publishers wanted to pay Apple a fee rather than a cut of subscription and advertising revenue, and are not happy with Apple’s terms, he said. They had hoped to offer app editions as part of subscription bundles that include print versions of the paper. Instead, they must use Apple as an intermediary with subscribers.

Apple continues to make major moves into publishing, with Conde Naste saying that devices like the iPad may soon account for 40% of their revenues.
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Apple may have originally attempted to encourage development of Web applications before it introduced the App Store (and ain’t it glad it did), but now apps on smartphones are a bona fide US hit, with 35 percent of US adults having apps on their phones, though only one-in-four US adults actually use these apps. Still, that ain’t a bad record.

The most recent Pew Internet Life survey tells us that among mobile phone owners, 29 percent have downloaded apps to their phones and 13 percent have paid for the privilege.
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The Mac Virtual Machine market heats up today with the release of Parallels 6.  The biggest Virtual machine maker for the Mac platform adds 80 new features (most of which we detailled a little early!).  See below for a breakdown.

Battling back with price, VMWare today is dropping the price of a competitive update to $10.  That is a pretty drastic measure.

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Computerworld: In attempting to rally their remaining troops with anti-Apple rants, both Amazon and Nokia unwittingly expose the fear afflicting management at both firms. With Amazon reticent on actual Kindle sales figures and Nokia facing declining European market share, does their mockering flattery betray low company morale?

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Nokia remains the dominant smartphone provider in Europe but competitors are whittling away at its European marketshare, the latest July stats from comScore reveal.
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Nokia is hosting its annual event Nokia World this week, and company VP Markets, Niklas Savander has used the event to diss competitors, including iPhone maker, Apple.

Pointing out that Nokia remains the market leader, Savander said
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Apple has introduced a new Express Lane service to its customer support system, an online engine that should help customers find the support they need.

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Last week when you went to customize a Mac Pro on Apple’s online store, the section about adding a monitor discussed the 24 inch LED Display:

Now, Apple’s Mac Pro customization page talks about the 27 inch LED display that is launching sometime this month. This sudden change on the store leads us to believe the 27 inch display’s launch in imminent:

Tomorrow, Tuesday, may even be the day as that is the day Apple typically releases new products.

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We reported that Sean Kovacs, the developer of GV Mobile, may have gotten the heads up that his app would be re-approved to the App Store. Well today, it looks like he submitted it.

Update:

We’ve gotten some more information about GV Mobile:

-New app name is “GV Mobile +”

–This is the new app icon

-The app will support the retina display

-The app will do iOS 4 quick-app-switching/multitasking

-There may be some sort of push notification feature in this release or in a future update.

-It will be free for the first 12 hours then will go to $2.99

We’ll be following this story closely and update when news comes about. Update: Some screenies, below.
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It seems pretty likely  according to some research done by Macrumors.  imsense’s technology is likely behind the processing of the overexposed/underexposed images taken with the iPhone 4’s camera that leads to the often-better HDR pictures. Here’s the evidence, which is pretty damning:
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGmRKSds9OY&w=673&h=404]

Yeah, OK. So it isn’t easy to read an iPad in direct sunlight.  Plus, who wants to bring your $500-$830 bundle of awesomeness out to the pool when a $140 piece of plastic does the job?

Oh, wait?  You wanted to browse the web in color?

via CrunchGear.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxLpMMzXVCk&w=670&h=415]

Apple-lover, raconteur and much-loved public figure, Stephen Fry, this morning jumped into the future of publishing with the release of his new book The Fry Chronicles as a conventional title, eBook and — but of course — iPhone, iPad, iPod touch app.
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6jkDikBSmg&fs=1&hl=en_GB]

For a little diversion while we wait for the gear to shift up (as it inevitably will) why not take a moment to cast your eyes at Trendhunter’s pick of 14 transformed Apple products, from the iPad-powered Mac to, well, take a look. (*Status, mildly entertaining).

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http://yt-live.appspot.com/

The battle for cloud-based music services takes a new twist this week with Google’s move to begin testing YouTube as a live video streaming platform.
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Adobe may be fighting for the future of Flash but that hasn’t stopped the company offering up an add-on pack for Adobe Illustrator that turns the software into an HTML5 authoring tool.

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We’ve been getting tips that Target would be selling iPads really soon (including building a special display) and now Engadget’s got a pic that may or may not prove that.

Rock Your iPhone and Saurik’s Cydia have just announced a merger that also merges their app stores for jailbroken devices. All application licesneses will be kept for both the Rock and Cydia app stores so you should be all good when the transition completes in a few days.

Details of the acquisition have no been released, and this app store fusion will surely make jailbreaking even more convenient.