Apple Inc. (AAPL) is letting a video-game company offer its titles by subscription on the iPad, expanding the role of a feature typically used by magazine and newspaper publishers.Big Fish Games, a Seattle-based game publisher, won approval from Apple to become the first to offer users access to dozens of titles for $6.99 a month. Until now, games have only been available one at a time, requiring users to download individual applications.
Charging subscribers a fee to play every month is reminiscent of the way games worked on cell phones in the bad old days before Apple launched the iPhone. I, for one, am not happy to see this development.
Update, 3:49 PM 11/23: The Big Fish Games title that uses subscriptions – the first such title – has been pulled, according to MacNN.There is no explanation for the decision.
Samsung’s new television ad for their Galaxy S II smartphone focuses on ridiculing Apple customers who wait in line for hours to get an iPhone.
The ad depicts line of white earbud-clad customers lined up behind barricades, noting that it’ll still be hours before they get in the door. They notice a man carrying a Samsung Galaxy S II, and remark about the phone’s large screen and “4G speed.”
It’s worth noting, though, that even in Samsung’s ad, the Apple customers don’t get out of line.
Samsung’s envy is understandable – they were practically giving their Galaxy S II phones away in Sydney, Australia the week that Apple released the iPhone 4S, yet they couldn’t muster a fraction of the interest that the iPhone 4S generated.
The Loop reader Mike DeFrancesco took a couple of pictures and iPhone video from Apple’s Grand Central store earlier today. Rumors had the store opening sometime this week, but that seems unlikely at this point.
Louis C.K., for Fast Company (as told to Nancy Miller):
The next Steve Jobs will totally be a chick, because girls are No. 2–and No. 2 always wins in America. Apple was a No. 2 company for years, and Apple embodies a lot of what have been defined as feminine traits: an emphasis on intuitive design, intellect, a strong sense of creativity, and that striving to always make the greatest version of something. Traditionally, men are more like Microsoft, where they’ll just make a fake version of what that chick made, then beat the shit out of her and try to intimidate everybody into using their product.
The ascerbic comedian gives us his observations of female culture, as the father of two young girls.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski issued a draft order this morning that calls for a hearing to take the AT&T / T-Mobile merger before an Administrative Law Judge. Such a hearing, reminiscent of the one held for the attempted buyout of DirecTV by EchoStar in 2002, would be held once the Department of Justice’s litigation is complete and would certainly be another blockade for AT&T to push through.
It seems that this merger is being contested at every possible turn, doesn’t it?
iBooks publishers looking to send ebooks to reviewers, or who want to stir up interest in a new title through a giveaway contest, are out of luck. Unlike the App Store, publishers cannot create promo codes for the iBookstore.
Seems strange that publishers can’t get promo codes. Hopefully this will change to allow writers to promote their books.
Recent weekly Nielsen surveys of shoppers show that, much like in 2010, the majority of consumers (80%) are avoiding in-store Black Friday shopping. While increased Black Friday promotions appeal to consumer’s desire for “hot deals,” as a shopping event, Black Friday is becoming less relevant in the retail world as online shopping grows and holiday promotions begin earlier and earlier in the year. In fact, 35 percent of those recently survey cited they’ve already started their holiday shopping.
On Friday, we reported that VMware Fusion 4.1 can run virtual versions of Leopard and Snow Leopard, a feature previously barred by Apple’s end-user license agreement. On Monday, the other shoe dropped: VMware posted a blog entry that seems to back away from that feature.“When the license verification step was added in VMware Fusion 4.1 the server edition check was omitted,” the post says. “We are preparing an update.”
Eyebrows raised when the VMWare 4.1 update enabled users to install older versions of Mac OS X on virtual machines – something that would be really handy to IT professionals, developers and others, but something that heretofore hadn’t been supported.
The passive language used in describing the omission fails to pinpoint whether this was intentional or accidental, but one thing’s for sure – think carefully about updating VMware, if you’ve already downloaded 4.1 and are benefiting from the new, apparently unintentional, functionality.
One of the most essential elements in a minimalist design is typography. Let’s face it, you can’t do justice to minimalism with pre-installed fonts like Arial, Century Gothic, Georgia, Verdana, Times New Roman, and etc. But frown no more! Here are 30 sleek fonts you can download for free that could fit perfectly on your minimalist designs.
Apple’s newly launched iPhone 4S has quickly shot up to become the second most popular Cameraphone on Flickr.com. Flickr’s Camera Finder page shows graphs of the popularity of both smartphones and Point and Shoot cameras.
The iPhone 4S is only second to the iPhone 4.
Update: I mistakenly said this was for all cameras — it’s only smartphones.
“We believe that shipments of Nokia’s new Windows Phone 7 products have been lower than we had previously anticipated,” Faucette wrote in a note to clients. “We had expected that the company could ship as many as 2 million units into the six targeted markets for the holidays; however, we now believe that those shipments are likely to be less than 1 million for the quarter.”
It’s still early yet in Nokia’s ramp-up of Windows Phone 7 products, so it’s probably too soon to declare this a failure. But it does suggest that Nokia and Microsoft have an uphill battle against iOS and Android.
Mark Milian, a technology writer for CNN, has reviewed more than a hundred of these e-mails, compiled from those posted by fans to blogs and online message boards. Some never-before-published e-mails from Jobs were shared exclusively for this book. As a whole, these correspondences provide a behind-the-scenes and inside-the-mind account of Jobs’ final and most triumphant years.
HP, not Samsung, was the ruler of non-iPad tablets in the US for the first ten months of the year, the NPD Group said in a new study. With just 1.2 million tablets sold at retail across every company outside of Apple, HP was the leader in the country at 17 percent, or 204,000, sold between its launch and October. The low count suggests that the fire sale $99 TouchPad, not HP’s Windows range, was the sales leader by going on clearance.
I guess if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the Galaxy Tab outsold the Playbook.
FileMaker has announced a free “Holiday Kit” for Bento 4, its popular personal database software for Mac and iOS. The kit was developed to help Bento users use the software to plan parties, track gift lifts, send thank you notes and perform other holiday tasks.
The Cards and Labels templates lets you print mailing labels, track recipient names, addresses, family members, notes and add images of photos and cards received. You can sync the databases with Bento for iPhone and iPad (sold separately). Also included is a Party Planning template that helps you track RSVPs and all the tasks commonly associated with putting on parties, corporate events and family dinners. Last, the kit includes a Gift List template, used for tracking and budgeting holiday gifts, including donations.
The kit also includes a free 30-day trial version of Bento 4 for the Mac, so if you haven’t already tried Bento, now’s your chance.
The consensus is that the value of future, unknown products is zero. Not only that but the probability that there will be any products at all is equally zero. Not only that but whatever Apple does to create new products is not perceptibly valuable. The company is simply the sum-of-the-product-parts and nothing more. Cash flows from current products can easily be shown to be more than the current valuation so even these products are deeply discounted. If and when a new product shows up, it will be considered and maybe if it shows promise, the stock will reflect that, briefly.
Dediu hits the nail on the head – as far as Wall Street is concerned, you’re only as good as your latest hit. And this is one of the many reasons why those of us who have watched Apple for a long time go absolutely crazy when we read what passes for Apple analysis from financial experts.
Following criticism of its pricing for future versions of Creative Suite, Adobe responded on Monday with a statement sent to The Loop.
“Our aggressive subscription price for Adobe Creative Cloud – $49 per month for every Adobe Creative Suite application, our new touch apps and new cloud-based services – will provide incredible value for the creative community and we will clarify and promote these benefits to our customers over the next few months,” reads the statement. “The changes to our upgrade policy, for customers who would like to continue to purchase CS software as a perpetual license, benefits customers who are on the latest versions of our software. We have promotions that enable customers to upgrade to the latest CS version ahead of CS6 at a reduced rate – at the moment we are offering 20% off any upgrade to the latest version of their Adobe software.”
The response to Adobe’s pricing has been strong throughout the community, but that stands to reason considering how many creative pros use the company’s software.
Is Android trying to be elegant, like the iPhone OS? Does it want to be starkly minimalist, like the beautiful Windows Phone? Does it have its own, completely different take on the mobile interface? I can’t tell. Like previous versions of Android, ice cream sandwich doesn’t settle on an aesthetic: As you go from app to app, everything about the design changes.
Farhad’s talking about Android 4.0 (a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich), which Google has apparently redesigned using “ethnographic research” to make it a better user experience. Sounds like they’ve missed the mark, if Manjoo’s experience is any example.
The US International Trade Commission has dismissed S3 Graphics’ first complaint against Apple in its entirety. … It’s a setback for HTC, which is in the process of acquiring S3 Graphics and was hoping to gain leverage against Apple.
Continue to the link for Florian Mueller’s typically insightful and interesting analysis of what this means for patent law.
The results of a new poll by “show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all,” says Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson.
It’s still an open question as to cause or effect: Does watching Fox News make you stupid, or do you have to be stupid to watch Fox News to begin with?
Former Apple vice president Ron Johnson writing for the Harvard Business Review:
People come to the Apple Store for the experience — and they’re willing to pay a premium for that. There are lots of components to that experience, but maybe the most important — and this is something that can translate to any retailer — is that the staff isn’t focused on selling stuff, it’s focused on building relationships and trying to make people’s lives better. That may sound hokey, but it’s true. The staff is exceptionally well trained, and they’re not on commission, so it makes no difference to them if they sell you an expensive new computer or help you make your old one run better so you’re happy with it. Their job is to figure out what you need and help you get it, even if it’s a product Apple doesn’t carry. Compare that with other retailers where the emphasis is on cross-selling and upselling and, basically, encouraging customers to buy more, even if they don’t want or need it. That doesn’t enrich their lives, and it doesn’t deepen the retailer’s relationship with them. It just makes their wallets lighter.
Daniel Monahan has started funding on a Kickstarter project he calls the Creature Case. It’s an interactive case for the iPhone and iPod touch that comes with nine attachable limbs and a face creation app.
Made of silicone, the Creature Case has 21 nodes on it that act as both shock absorbers and connection points for the 9 “bits” that can be plugged in. The bits include arm and leg attachments and allow the case to stand up and rest on a flat surface.
Monahan hopes to get $15,000 pledged to the project within the next month to fund tooling costs, a production run and the development of the face creation app. Anyone who pledges $25 or more gets a case, and as with all Kickstarter projects, it’s an all or nothing deal – if the goal isn’t reached, your account isn’t charged. (And folks who only pitch in $1 can get a colorful AppCrayon stylus instead.)
After playing guitar for 20 years, you come to appreciate having a great guitar strap. I’d played long enough with bad straps that cut into my shoulder or have uncomfortable adjustment fittings cutting into my back that I thought I’d share this.
A 3-inch wide leather strap, custom measured for my height and where I hold my guitar. It’s the exact strap that Torry makes for Zakk Wylde. The second I put this on, I knew it was going to help my back and shoulder.
Typically I play a Les Paul, so weight was definitely a consideration for me when choosing a strap. The problem is, nothing could hold the guitar and keep me comfortable for long periods of time, until I got this one.
I’ve told everyone from big name guitarists to the guy down the street about these straps. Now I’m telling you. Get one, you won’t regret it.
I’ve been using this guitar strap for about four years and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
For those that have seen pictures of my Zakk Wylde Black Label Society vest — Torry made that too. Of course, he makes them for Zakk and the band as well.
Parr then confirmed his departure to AllThingsD, indicating that he’d have more to say on Monday. Mashable limited its official response to a single sentence, “confirming the terms of departure were termination.”
