August 22, 2011
If you’re in the market for an iPhone, you might want to check out Best Buy on Monday.
Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile specialty stores are offering users the opportunity to pick up an AT&T 8GB iPhone 3GS for free. The offer is available to those who wish to upgrade or purchase a new two-year activation.
Of course, the iPhone 3GS is not the newest iPhone on the market, but it’s still a worthy phone. The sale is for Monday, August 22 only.
The deal is for in-store only sales, according to Best Buy.
Macworld:
In an email to Macworld early Monday morning, Loch wrote: “I’m happy to put Techspansion to rest. Again.” Updates for VisualHub (and its sibling AudioHub) are available at Techspansion’s website.
Techspansion and its payment processing service, Kagi, were at the center of a dispute earlier this month after Kagi released a Lion update to the discontinued software application VisualHub without Techspansion’s consent. Tyler Loch, founder of Techspansion, discontinued the software in 2008.
When you’re the CEO of a company and something happens to your competitor, you should show some class or at the very least keep you mouth shut. Of course, Michael Dell is not known for his class — remember the comment about Apple in 1997 when asked what he’d do with the company?
“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
That’s right Michael, because you’ve done so much in the past few years to further the computer industry. Let’s see, we have the competitor to the iPod. I can’t even remember the name, but it died. Then there’s the Dell Streak tablet — dead. And I saw a commercial the other day where Dell users can change the color of the lid on their laptop.
Wow, great stuff.
Here are Dell’s latest comments about HP.
BlackBerry Cool:
With summer ending, we’re expecting a few announcements from RIM just around the corner. End of summer also means we’re closer to the holiday season where RIM and all the major tech companies scramble to get a killer product out of the door that everyone can buy for their loved ones. So what can we expect to see from RIM coming soon? Here are 5 things we have heard about and we know will come soon (hopefully).
When one of the five things on your list is “Native Email and PIM functionality on PlayBook,” you’re pretty much screwed.
AppleInsider:
BBM Music will arrive as a beta in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. in early September, before launching in the three regions later this fall. Subscribers won’t be able to export the music to PCs, but they will be able to transfer to the PlayBook tablet. The service will also reportedly contain a social aspect that will let subscribers share songs with other BBM Music subscribers.
The PlayBook of music services.
August 19, 2011
WordPress, the popular Web publishing software, now powers 14.7 percent of the top million Web sites in the world and is used in 22 percent of new active domains in the United States. That’s the word from WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg, who posted the stats in a new State of the Word blog on the WordPress Web site. (more…)
American Mustache Institute:
But there are exceptions to every rule, and we have found one, courtesy of our friends at Build-A-Beard.The owner and operator of said goatee — a goatee that is certainly worthy of praise — is one Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, who was caught in this photo hounding bicyclists wearing uncessary biking shorts while he was walking to an Apple iPad event.
The beard salutes you!
Reuters:
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is close to rolling out its own music streaming service that will work across its mobile devices, according to four people familiar with the plans.RIM is in late-stage negotiations with major labels, including Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, Sony Corp’s Sony Music, Warner Music Group and EMI Group. The new service is expected to be announced by Labor Day in the United States, September 5.
Please stop now RIM. Your products and terrible and you screw up everything you touch. We’re embarrassed for you.
BGR:
One of our high-level AT&T sources just informed us that an AT&T Vice President has confirmed to several employees that the iPhone 5 is slated to launch in early October.
Yep.
What kind of perverse, unforgiving parallel universe did I wake up in that allowed the PlayBook to still be on the market, and HP’s TouchPad has been discontinued. (more…)
Reuters:
Court records reveal that Apple has already seized unauthorized iPod, iPhone and iPad accessories sold by two stores in the Flushing neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, and is now demanding the names of its customers and suppliers. It is also asking one of the defendants — Apple Story — to change its name to keep consumers from confusing the unauthorized gear with Apple-sanctioned products.The trademark infringement lawsuit was first filed on July 25 against Apple Story and Fun Zone Inc., both owned by New York resident Janie Po Chiang, who is named as a co-defendant in the suit, along with Fun Zone manager Jimmy Kwok.
Calling your Apple knock-off store “Apple Story” is just asking for a world of hurt.
August 18, 2011
If you were thinking about an HP TouchPad instead of the iPad, don’t bother. HP announced Thursday that it is discontinuing operations for webOS devices, including the TouchPad and webOS phones. (more…)
AT&T has indicated that it is doing away with its 1000 message a month plan, offering new subscribers a more expensive unlimited plan (or pay-by-message fees) instead. The change phases in on August 21, 2011. (more…)
BGR:
“The offered consideration does not compensate shareholders for the company’s intrinsic value and stand-alone alternatives going forward, nor does it compensate shareholders for the company’s value as a strategic asset for Google,” investor John W. Keating said in the lawsuit.
Take your money and run.
Avid released an update for Pro Tools 9, adding support for Apple’s recently released OS X Lion. (more…)
August 17, 2011
AppleInsider:
Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry sent an investor note out on Wednesday warning that a weak back-to-school season caused last weekend’s Mac sales to slump between 35% and 40% from the weekend of July 23rd. It was “probably one of the slowest weekends for Mac sales,” Chowdhry said.
It’s ridiculous for an analyst to check with four university book stores and then come to a conclusion like this.
Ars Technica:
You may think you’re defending your favorite platform because it’s just that good. But, according to a recently published study out of the University of Illinois, you may instead be defending yourself because you view criticisms of your favorite brand as a threat to your self image. The study, which will be published in the next issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology, examines the strength of consumer-brand relationships, concluding that those who have more knowledge of and experience with a brand are more personally impacted by incidents of brand “failure.”
We certainly have seen this phenomenon strongly manifest in the Apple community, though we’re not the only ones, and it isn’t just with technology, either. I’m curious to understand better the reason some people develop such a fierce “Self-Brand Connection,” as the researchers put it. Is it little more that misplaced 21st century tribalism, or is there something else at work?
Here’s something I’m sure is going to be on the gift lists of a lot of iOS users: the Helo TC, from Griffin Technology, that long-time maker of peripherals and accessories for Apple devices. It costs $49.99 and is now available at Griffin’s Web site; the company expects to have it stocked in retailers nationwide for the holiday season. (more…)
The Next Web:
Apple and Nokia, along with Qualcomm and several other companies, are weighing bids for InterDigital Inc in order to scoop up its trove of patents for wireless tech, reports Reuters. The company is up for sale and is proceeding with its auction.The news that Apple and Nokia are interested in the roughly 8,800 patents available from a purchase of InterDigital isn’t in itself all that surprising. Many have viewed the InterDigital auction as the next big patent hoarding battleground for some time now. The altered variable now is Google’s announcement of its purchase of Motorola Mobility, and its 17,000+ patents, on Monday.
InterDigital bills itself as the developer of “fundamental wireless technologies that are at the core of mobile devices, networks and services worldwide.” The company holds about 8,800 U.S. and foreign patents, with 10,000 more in process around the world. Is anyone else getting as tired of hearing about patents as I am?
Logitech has introduced the Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac, a computer keyboard that recharges its internal batteries using solar power and indoor light. It costs $59.99 and will ship later this month. (more…)
ZDNet:
This consistent marketing experience from Apple is something that competitors simply cannot reproduce. These companies are coming from a computer background for the most part, and they are set up to market new products to the audience that buys computers. That’s why promotions around most Android tablets have tried to appeal to the tech-savvy crowd. Remember the early Motorola XOOM ads? Like virtually all tablet ads, they missed the iPad target market completely.
James Kendrick has some good insights here. He’s right – none of the companies making tablets beside Apple have been able to provide a compelling message to customers about why their device is better. Where I separate from him is in thinking that “many of the products not selling are quite good.” Most of them are downright miserable pieces of crap, as evidenced by playing with them for five minutes or less.
Tony Iommi on a Rolling Stone story published yesterday:
I’m saddened that a Birmingham journalist whom I trusted has chosen this point in time to take a conversation we had back in June and make it sound like we spoke yesterday about a Black Sabbath reunion.At the time I was supporting the Home of Metal exhibition and was merely speculating, shooting the breeze, on something all of us get asked constantly, “Are you getting back together?”Thanks to the internet it’s gone round the world as some sort of “official” statement on my part, absolute nonsense. I hope he’s enjoyed his moment of glory, he won’t have another at my expense.To my old pals, Ozzy, Geezer and Bill, sorry about this, I should have known better.All the best, Tony
I’ve seen Sabbath a couple of times and love their show. It would be incredible to have another album from the pioneers of heavy metal.
Tablets have been around for years, and while there was a lot of interest in what the platform could do, they never really caught on. It wasn’t until Apple released the iPad that tablets became a popular device. (more…)
August 16, 2011
Arik Hesseldahl:
According to one source who’s seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.A second person who has seen Best Buy’s TouchPad sales figures confirmed the results as “consistent with what I’ve seen,” and went so far as to say that 25,000 sold might be “charitable.” This source suggested that the 25,000-unit sales number may not account for units that consumers return to stores for a refund.
It’s not the year of the tablet, it’s the year of the iPad.
Apple on Tuesday released an update to OS X Lion to version 10.7.1 – the update is available through the Software Update system preference, and is recommended for all Lion users. (more…)
MacUser (UK):
A court in Düsseldorf has lifted the injunction it granted Apple last week, which prevented Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in all European Union countries except the Netherlands.The initial injunction banned Samsung’s Korean-based parent company and its German subsidiary from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the EU.The injunction was lifted after Samsung complained that the court did not have the authority to issue an injunction on its parent company. The injunction on the German subsidiary remains in place. Samsung’s appeal against the initial ruling, which found that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 had infringed Apple patents, will be heard on 25 August.
It was only last week that the preliminary injunction was put in place. It’s important to note that this decision is largely procedural – it doesn’t go to the heart of Apple’s complaint, which is that Samsung infringed on Apple’s design with the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The two companies are set to square off in court again on August 25th, so we’ll surely hear more from both sides then.
Macworld:
Kagi, a popular payment processor for independent software developers, recently began selling a $5 Lion-compatibility patch for the discontinued-in-2008 VisualHub video converter that the original software’s developer says he didn’t authorize—and isn’t getting paid for. Kagi defends the move, arguing that it’s merely helping less tech-savvy paying customers that it says the developer abandoned.
TUAW also reports on this. Bottom line: Techspansion, the company behind VisualHub, isn’t associated with this updater and has asked customers not to use it. Under those circumstances, Kagi’s justification for continuing to offer it is questionable at best. Until this is resolved, caveat emptor.
The Mac Observer:
Given that comforting sanity check, I measured the diameter of the Apple spaceship as 1615 ft, plus or minus a few ft., depending on where one places the ruler. That’s a radius of 807.5 ft.So, if one could magically fly the future Apple spaceship to Arlington, VA and hover over the Pentagon, it would just slightly cover it.
Apple has more cash on hand than the U.S. government, so this seems appropriate.
John Gruber on Dan Lyons’ crap story:
Another way to look at this story, then, is that maybe Google really did want those Nortel patents, and when they didn’t get them, they knew they were in a worse position than ever, patent-wise, with Android. And then Motorola started threatening — publicly, just this month — to wage patent warfare against other Android handset makers. And started talking about support for Windows Phone. We now know that while Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha and badass 11-percent-of-the-company shareholder Carl Icahn were making these threats to wage a patent civil war against other Android handset makers, they were actively negotiating with Google on a buyout. Does anyone, Lyons included, think it’s a coincidence that these stories — not based on speculation but on-the-record statements by the CEO and the company’s biggest shareholder — came out one week before this acquisition was announced?
And MG Siegler on the same story:
This all begs the question: over the past two years, would you have gained more knowledge by reading Lyons, or by having your head up your own ass?Tough call.
GamesIndustry.biz:
[Crytek managing director Avni] Yerli agreed that tablets offer more, stating: “I can see that the multifunctions that devices like tablets offer is a big advantage of them. And I think people want one mobile device that can do multiple things.“Considering this, I think those handhelds are lacking in that area and they are losing ground, actually. I think they have to be more innovative.”
Crytek is the German video game development studio behind the CryEngine, video game technology used to create hit games including Far Cry, and the Crysis series. So far the company’s bet heavily on Windows and Xbox 360, but it seems that even they can see the writing on the walls: the future of portable gaming can lie with devices like the iPad rather than dedicated handheld systems like Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation Vita.
