Apple has announced its annual Europe-only iTunes Store holiday promotion, giving away free content each day from December 26th through January 6th. The company has also released a 12 Days of Christmas iOS application [App Store], available in countries participating in the promotion. The simple application, which is universal for iPhone/iPod touch and iPad compatibility, offers push notifications regarding each day's free content.
Unfortunately for customers in the U.S. and many other countries, the promotion will likely be unavailable if past years are any indication. Due to regional content licensing issues, the 12 Days of Christmas promotion has always been limited to European iTunes Stores. Many App Store developers are expected, however, to offer sales around the Christmas holiday in hopes of capturing business from users looking to load up their new iOS devices received as gifts.
Google today announced that it has updated its Google Voice App Store application to support the iPad and iPod touch. The application, which Google and Apple famously faced off over last year before Apple finally approved the app last month, offers an interface for interacting with Google's telephone service.
Starting today, you can download a new version of Google Voice that lets you use all the features of the app on these devices, such as sending and receiving free text messages - except, of course, make cellular calls.
While iPad and iPod touch users can't use the Google Voice app to make cellular phone calls through the service, Google has developed a system known as Click2Call that allows users to initiate calls through other devices.
While you can't use your iPod or iPad as a phone, you can use it to initiate Google Voice calls with your phones. We call this feature Click2Call. Simply click any 'Call' button in the Google Voice app on your iPod or iPad and then select which of your phones you want to ring. Google Voice will call your phone and then connect your call.
The update brings several other improvements, including the ability to set "do not disturb" times during which all calls are sent directly to voicemail and improvements for initiating calls from the address book.
Epic's Infinity Blade debuted on the App Store less than a week ago, but it has already become one of the most successful app launches of all time, reportedly grossing over $1.6 million in its first four days on the market.
The estimate comes from Appmodo, who noticed over 271,000 Game Center users registered with the game, and with the game selling for $5.99, the total works out to over $1.6 million in revenue, of which Epic receives 70% while Apple keeps 30%. The totals appear to be even higher than those estimates, however, as Epic's Mark Rein tweeted that actual sales are actually quite bit higher than that suggested from Game Center stats, noting that not every iOS user is on Game Center.
Asymco's Horace Dediu offers an interesting analysis of new data on Verizon's smartphone device sales over the past year, concluding that, despite a growing Android platform, Verizon finds itself in a position in which it may have had little choice but to accept Apple's terms to bring the iPhone to the carrier.
Dediu's analysis is based on that fact that sales of Android and Windows Mobile smartphones at Verizon have grown only slightly faster than the rate at which sales of Research in Motion's BlackBerry and Palm's webOS devices have fallen so far in 2010, yielding an overall sales growth rate for Verizon far short of that seen with the iPhone on AT&T. But even Android by itself (and a small fraction of sales for Windows Mobile devices that can't be separated out from the Android data) isn't selling as well or growing nearly as quickly on Verizon as the iPhone is on AT&T.
In an apples-to-apples comparison, in Q3 the iPhone at AT&T outsold Android at Verizon (remember, same addressable market) by a factor of 2.5. This is with a variety of devices and vendors thrown in the market. We hardly ever get to see this finely grained a comparison when looking at platforms.
Analyzing the data on a month-by-month basis reveals an even sharper trend of a steep drop in Verizon smartphone unit sales since August as a diversifying range of smartphone vendors have been unable to sustain overall handset sales for the carrier in the fact of the iPhone 4 on AT&T.
Dediu concludes that Verizon has likely been forced to reconsider its 2009 strategy that saw the carrier betting on Android to slow the trend of customers defecting to AT&T for the iPhone. That change of heart coming with the realization that the iPhone is continuing to steal growth from Verizon's offering may have been responsible for the carrier finally sitting down with Apple to get a deal done for a Verizon iPhone.
Of course, there has been much rumor and speculation about AT&T's exclusivity period for the iPhone, which almost certainly played a significant role in the timing of negotiations between Apple and Verizon, but if the sales data presented in the new report is true, it represents an interesting look at Verizon sales figures that suggest that the carrier may truly need to offer the iPhone if it wishes to fight off AT&T's iPhone-driven momentum in the smartphone market.
Steve Ballmer Demoing HP Slate-Style PC at CES 2010
According to the New York Times, Microsoft will once again be pushing their vision of the slate or tablet computer at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 in January.
According to people familiar with Microsofts plans, Steve Ballmer, Microsofts chief executive, is expected to announce a number of these devices when he takes the stage at C.E.S., showcasing devices built by Samsung and Dell, among a number of other manufacturing partners.
Microsoft has been long talking up the tablet or slate form factor over the years, but none of their products have reached mainstream success.
In fact, this time last year, rumors were full force about Apple's then-unreleased iPad. Talk of this Apple tablet dominated rumors and generated a lot of interest at 2010's CES even though Apple wasn't even a participant. Microsoft even demoed an HP slate PC which never ultimately came to market. Meanwhile, Apple's iPad has been seen as a huge success.
Microsoft's newest effort is said to be running under the Windows 7 operating system and is being aimed at a more productivity focused device than the iPad:
The company believes there is a huge market for business people who want to enjoy a slate for reading newspapers and magazines and then work on Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint while doing work, explained a person familiar with the companys tablet plans.
This week two Mac software bundles have launched. These bundles combine a number of Mac apps together into a discounted package.
The first comes from MacUpdate which we've partnered with a number of times over the past few years. The bundle includes the following apps for $49.99 ($534 value).
1Password - Password Manager MacFamilyTree - Geneology app DEVONthink - Organization software Flux - XHTML and CSS web design Default Folder X - Enhances open/save dialogs Art Text + Fonts - Create high quality logos, headings, banners. Swift Publisher - Make cards, certificates, letterheads, and more Chronories - Diary app Interarchy - FTP/SFTP client Typinator - Auto-completes text as you type
1Password in particular is a highly recommended app that allows you to secure your online passwords. In light of the recent hacking of Gawker media it seems particularly relevant. The bundle can be purchased at MUPromo.com, and MacRumors is a promotional partner and benefits financially from referred sales.
Meanwhile, several independent developers have banded together to create the Indie Mac Gift Pack. This is a 6-app bundle that is being sold directly by the developers themselves. The apps include the following for $60 ($272 value)
Delicious Library 2 - track your collections Acorn 2 - Image editor MarsEdit 3 - Write, preview, publish your blog Radioshift - Listen and record radio stations SousChef - Search over 195,000 recipes Sound Studio 4 - Record, edit and produce audio
The apps can be purchased at IndieMacGiftPack.com, and MacRumors has no financial association with this site.
Late last week, Network World reported that Apple has quietly removed from iOS an application programming interface (API) that could detect jailbroken devices. The API had been used by several mobile device management applications to help corporate system administrators determine whether jailbroken devices that could pose a risk due to malware installation were running on their networks.
The new API was part of a bundle of mobile device management (MDM) APIs released in June with iOS 4.0. These APIs were available to third-party MDM applications, such as AirWatch or Sybase's Afaria. With the new APIs, these servers could access directly a range of features and information in iOS or on the device. But in the recently-released 4.2 version, the API intended for detecting jailbreaks has been either removed or disabled.
The report notes that jailbreaking is a constant cat-and-mouse game that could have seen procedures developed to defeat Apple's API, and thus the addition may have been of limited utility. It remains unknown, however, why Apple chose to disable it in iOS 4.2.
Jailbreaking is commonly employed to allow users to install unauthorized third-party applications to their devices or to make tweaks to their iOS systems. Due to the ability for jailbroken devices to have security features built into iOS circumvented, many corporate customers have been interested in keeping tabs on their employees' devices in order to ensure the integrity of their computing infrastructure. While third-party vendors have employed other means of working to detect jailbroken devices, Apple's removal of the dedicated API for revealing such information leaves questions about why the company has made such access more difficult.
Microsoft today released Office for Mac 2011 14.0.2 Update, bringing several stability improvements to the latest version of the company's flagship productivity suite. According to a support document, the update includes the following improvements:
Improvements for all Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 applications
- Reliability is improved when you open Office for Mac documents by using third-party applications. This update fixes an issue that causes Office for Mac documents not to open by using certain third-party applications.
- Office for Mac Updater request users to close Microsoft AutoUpdate during the update process. This update fixes an issue that causes Office for Mac updater to request users to close AutoUpdate when the Office updater is running. When the users close AutoUpdate, the updater also stops the Office update process.
Improvements for Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011
- Stability is improved. This update fixes an issue that causes Outlook to crash or close unexpectedly sometimes when you import a .pst file that contains categories. Specifically, categories that have no category names assigned to them.
Microsoft released Office for Mac 2011 in late October and issued the 14.0.1 update a few weeks later.
Reuters reports on an article in Japan's Nikkei newspaper revealing that Toshiba is planning to invest nearly $1.2 billion in a new factory to make small LCD panels, with the plant being targeted primarily to supply Apple with displays for its small iOS devices like the iPhone. Apple is also said to be investing money in the new facility.
The company's wholly owned unit, Toshiba Mobile Display Co, will construct the facility in Ishikawa prefecture and the plant will churn out low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels, which allow for high-resolution images, the paper said.
Work on the plant will start by early next year, with the production due to begin in the second half of 2011, Nikkei said.
The forthcoming facility is said to allow Toshiba to more than double its existing capacity of about 8.5 million units per month.
Toshiba has been reported as one of the suppliers of the LCD panel for the iPhone 3GS, and is thought by some to also be involved with the Retina display of the iPhone 4, although the individual parts carry only Apple branding.
Update: In an updated version of the article, Reuters notes that a Toshiba spokesman has denied that such a commitment has been made.
A Toshiba spokesman said the report was untrue and nothing had been decided regarding a new plant to build LCD panels for Apple.
Update 2: DigiTimes has also weighed in to note that Toshiba has denied that Apple has invested in any such plant.
With 2010 coming to a close in a few weeks, publications and other sources are putting together their "best of" and "top" lists for the year, and it should come as no surprise to Apple followers that the iPad, iPhone and other Apple products have ranked highly in a number of prominent surveys.
- Google has published its Zeitgeist 2010, ranking top topics based on the billions of search queries made by users during the year. On a global basis, the iPad placed second among "fastest rising" topics, only narrowly trailing Chatroulette. When breaking things down into categories, the iPad topped the global consumer electronics category with the iPhone 4 taking second place.
Google.com (U.S.) - Fastest-Rising Queries for 2010
Apple fared even better when looking at the fastest rising trends in just the United States, with the iPad taking the top overall spot over Chatroulette and the iPhone 4 landing in third place. Apple as a company ranked eighth among fastest rising news search terms, while its retail stores ranked eighth among rising search terms for Google Maps. Among image searches, the iPhone and iPad took eighth and tenth place respectivey. Finally, Google's product search category saw the iPad top the list, with iPhone 4 cases checking in in tenth place.
- Twitter is publishing a series of Year in Review features, and its "Trends on Twitter" page shows the iPad topping the technology category for items discussed on Twitter during the year, while also grabbing the sixth spot in overall top trends. iOS ranked third in the technology category, while the iPhone took fourth place and the MacBook Air ranked ninth.
- Time has published its list of Top 10 Gadgets for 2010, and the iPad again took the top spot in the rankings.
It's not the first touchscreen tablet in the history of computing, but it's easily the most successful so far. With 3 million iPads sold in their first month alone and a market for interactive magazines and newspapers created almost overnight, Apple finally managed to make tablet computing cool.
The 11-inch MacBook Air snagged third place, while the iPhone 4 took sixth and the new Apple TV came in seventh.
Time also published a list of top iPhone apps headed by Netflix, while Angry Birds, the hit iOS game that is now also available on Android, took second place among top video games. Apple also scored a mention at the top of the "oddball news stories" category with the $8 million diamond-encrusted iPhone 4.
Back in August, we reported that Interval Licensing, a patent licensing firm run by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, had filed suit against Apple, Google, and a number of other prominent technology companies over alleged infringement of several patents related to e-commerce and Web search technologies.
In an update on the case, The Wall Street Journal reports that Allen's firm has just been dealt a setback, with a federal judge Friday dismissing the complaint over its lack of specificity regarding exactly which products are alleged to have infringed the patents.
Google and Apple filed motions to dismiss the complaint because it doesn't specify which of the defendants' goods or services infringe the Interval patents.
"The allegations in the complaint are spartan," Judge Pechman wrote, siding with the defendants.
Standards for specificity of allegations in civil cases have been tightened in recent years as a result of a Supreme Court ruling, said Alan Fisch, a partner at the law firm Kaye Scholer LLP in Washington.
The setback appears to only be a temporary one, however, as Interval Licensing intends to refile its complaint in the very near future with the required specificity standards met. The judge has given Interval Licensing until December 28th to do so.
The suit is one of many currently being faced by Apple, which has been reported to be the most-sued technology company over the last several years.
MacDailyNews reports that it has received information from a "source that we believe to be credible" regarding management training for the Verizon iPhone offered by the company last week. According to the report, the Verizon iPhone will launch immediately after Christmas and is in fact an LTE 4G device.
- The new iPhone is an LTE device and that fact - the only "LTE iPhone," exclusive to Verizon - will be the main marketing theme; i.e. "For the new '4G' (cough) verizon network" that Verizon has already started promoting - As rollout of LTE not actually widepsread, Verizon iPhone will have multi-band chip backward compatibility with regular CDMA
The report also claims that the Verizon iPhone is already shipping to Verizon warehouses, and the carrier will maintain control over all stock until launch in order to control information leaks.
Finally, the source indicates that the iPhone 5 was intended to be LTE-only at its debut next summer, but Steve Jobs and Apple are upset that the carriers are not building out their LTE infrastructure quickly enough to make that happen.
Verizon's 4G network launched last week for mobile broadband customers, but the carrier noted that it does not expect to debut 4G-capable handsets until the middle of next year.
MacDailyNews is not a frequent source of rumors, and has a mixed record on the information it has published in the past. In addition, we are skeptical that Apple had ever seriously planned for the fifth-generation iPhone 5 to be "LTE-only", given that even the most aggressive LTE build-out schedules from the carriers have long planned for it to be several years before their entire networks are upgraded to the standard. In fact, other sources have indicated that the fifth-generation iPhone won't support LTE at all, a move which would follow Apple's precedent with not supporting 3G in the original iPhone as it waited for greater availability and more advanced technology for utilizing the standard.
Consequently, we are publishing this rumor on Page 2 for interest and discussion.
Google today officially debuted its Google Latitude application on the App Store, bringing a native iOS app experience to users of the company's location-sharing service for the first time.
With Google Latitude, see where your friends are right now. Latitude lets you stay in touch with your friends and family by making it easy to share where you are and see each other on a map.
With Latitude, you can: - See your friends on a map - find out who's nearby and meet up. - Share your location continuously with whomever you choose - help friends and family stay in touch with you, even when you cant take out your phone. - Control your privacy - share only city-level location, hide your location, or turn off background updating at any time.
The application briefly went live in some countries last week, but was quickly pulled for unknown reasons. That version was labeled 1.0.0, while today's version is labeled 2.0.0.346, so perhaps a significant issue with the initial release was discovered as it was being rolled out.
Google Latitude launched in February 2009, but did not initially offer support for iPhone users. The company rolled out a web app version of Google Latitude for iPhone users in July 2009, noting that Apple had requested that Google utilize a web app rather than a native App Store app over fears that users might confuse a Google Latitude app with the built-in Maps app on iOS.
Back in September, Apple published its App Store review guidelines for the first time, increasing transparency and relaxing some of the earlier restrictions on App Store content.
Last month, we noted that Apple has owned the iTun.es domain since December 2006 and with Apple rolling out Twitter integration for its Ping social networking service speculated that Apple could use the domain as a link shortener.
One month later, Apple has done just that. Users sharing links to iTunes Store content to Twitter will now see iTun.es being used to generate the links for their Tweets. Third-party Twitter applications may, however, continue to display Twitter's default "t.co" shortened version.
Reuters reports that Nortel Networks, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and is selling off all of its assets, is soliciting bidders for its extensive patent portfolio, and Apple is rumored to be one of the major players looking to acquire the rights as it seeks to beef up its arsenal in the increasingly-litigious mobile space.
Sources expect the sale to draw wireless telecom newcomers Apple and Google, which want to build up patent war chests as they fight incumbents such as Nokia, which want to protect their patent positions, in the courts.
"There has been one round of bidding on those patents, this has been completed," said one source, who declined to be identified because the process is private. "And what Nortel has done is divide the patents up into different lots covering different kinds of technologies."
According to the report, Nortel owns over 4,000 patents estimated to be worth over $1 billion, although Apple would almost certainly not be interested in acquiring all of Nortel's intellectual property assets and would instead focus on only the "buckets" of patents that most directly apply to its mobile products and technologies.
The patents likely to draw the most attention relate to third- and fourth-generation wireless technology such as Long Term Evolution, with device-makers such as Research In Motion, Motorola, and Apple seen as likely bidders.
"It is certainly a very significant stockpile of potent weaponry, and whoever lays their hands on it is going to gain significant advantage," said Alexander Poltorak, chief executive of General Patent Corp, which advises companies on intellectual property strategy and valuation but is not advising anyone involved in the Nortel patent auction.
One research firm has estimated that there are 105 patent families deemed essential to deployment of LTE (4G) technology, with Nokia controlling 57 of those families. Ericsson is said to control 14 families, while Nortel, Qualcomm, and Sony are each reported to control about seven families.
The mobile space currently involves a convoluted network of patent lawsuits in which companies are seeking to gain the upper hand over their rivals in the competitive market. Apple, which has been the most-sued technology company over the past several years, is currently suing or being sued by a number of companies, including Nokia, Motorola, HTC, and Kodak.
Late last month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly responded to a customer email regarding the dearth of printer support for the company's new AirPrint wireless printing functionality for iOS devices, noting that there was "lots more coming soon" for the feature.
As HP notes on its AirPrint site, the first expansion of AirPrint functionality since the feature's launch occurred yesterday with the release of firmware updates for six existing HP printers that will allow those printers to support AirPrint.
- Officejet 6500A e-AiO5 - Officejet 6500A Plus e-AiO5 - Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-AiO5 - Officejet Pro 8500A e-AiO5 - Officejet Pro 8500A Plus e-AiO5 - Officejet Pro 8500A Premium e-AiO5
In developer beta versions of iOS 4.2, AirPrint had initially offered support for printing to printers shared via Macs or PCs, but Apple pulled that aspect of the functionality before the public launch, leaving only a small number of HP printers officially supporting the feature via direct printing for the time being.
Apple yesterday announced the publication of an updated version of its iTunes Connect Developer Guide (PDF), offering new information on policies and procedures for developers looking to have their applications featured in Apple's iOS App Store and forthcoming Mac App Store.
A number of details about the features supported (or not supported) for Mac App Store applications have surfaced in recent weeks, including a lack of support for demo and trial versions or promo codes, and as noted by 9 to 5 Mac, the new iTunes Connect Developer Guide further reveals that such iOS features as in app purchases and Game Center are not supported for Mac App Store applications. The guide also notes that customer reviews for Mac App Store apps are not available "at this time", although that distinction may simply be because the store has not yet opened for business.
While Apple could eventually choose to add support for these features in the Mac App Store, they do not appear to be making the cut for the store's debut, which is reportedly still on track for next month. Consequently, it is unknown whether Apple is limiting the features because it has no intention of ever supporting them or if it simply is choosing to prioritize the initial offerings in order to get the Mac App Store up and running as quickly as possible.
Just a few weeks ago, Google announced the launch of Google Docs editing on the iPad and Android platforms via a lightweight mobile interface. Google had previewed the feature a few months earlier, and users had been anticipating the release as another reason to turn to the free web-based productivity platform.
But while the mobile version of Google Docs offered a fair number of tools for editing documents, it didn't offer the full complement of options available through the desktop version of Google Docs. That changed yesterday with Google's announcement that the desktop version of Google Docs is now compatible with the iPad, allowing for additional editing capabilities when needed.
The new mobile editor is fast and lightweight, but sometimes you want to make more style edits like changing a font, or center aligning a paragraph. If you're on an iPad, you can do that by visiting the Desktop version of the document editor.
As noted in the announcement, Google views the mobile version of Google Docs as being the primary vehicle for documenting editing given its optimization for working on lower-powered mobile hardware, but the new iPad compatibility for the desktop version gives users the option for "one-off times" requiring more advanced edits.
Unfortunately, TUAW points out that the desktop Google Docs doesn't function perfectly on the iPad, with some features still being unsupported and some quirky behaviors that may frustrate users.
