MacRumors

Google's major announcements at its Google I/O conference continue today, with the company announcing that it has acquired Simplify Media to assist it with rolling out a new syncing service that will allows users to push apps and music directly to their Android-based mobile devices over the air.

According to TechCrunch, Google's demo of its next-generation Android operating system codenamed "Froyo" included a new section of the Android Market devoted to music, offering a possible significant competitor to Apple's iTunes.

Details are sparse at the moment, but here's how this basically works. You go to the Market on the web, find a song you like, click the download button, and just like with apps, the song starts to download on your Android devices. So it's iTunes, over the web, with auto-syncing. No word on who the partners are for this, what the prices will be, etc.

Simplify Media announced in mid-March that it was pulling its popular iPhone applications and preparing to move in a "new direction", which now appears to be related to Google's acquisition of the company and development of the auto syncing service.

Google's forthcoming desktop application based on Simplify Media's technology will reportedly allow users to make their entire non-DRM music library available for streaming directly to their Android-based devices with a single button click.

TUAW notes that Apple has added a new section to its iTunes Store pages for movies, offering ratings and reviews from popular review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

iTunes' integrated Rotten Tomatoes ratings presents the movie's prospective buyers and renters with the Tomatometer chart featuring the total count of reviews along with a fresh/rotten breakdown and the average rating. Viewers are also shown four review snippets from Top Critic reviewers, follow by a link to the movies page on RottenTomatoes.com.

The new section appears between the "Viewers Also Bought" and "Customer Reviews" portions of each film's iTunes Store page.

With all of the clamor over the Apple's favoring of Web standards such as HTML5 over Adobe's Flash, it seems notable that Adobe has stepped forward with an announcement that it has released an "HTML5 Pack" extension to its Dreamweaver CS5 website authoring application.

The Adobe HTML5 Pack is an extension to Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, the latest version of the industry-leading HTML authoring tool for website design. This extension provides more creative options to Adobe Creative Suite 5 users so they can more easily create, deliver and optimize compelling content consistently, across the widest array of screens, to maximize revenue streams and forward their businesses.

The new HTML5 Pack is available as a free download for users of Dreamweaver CS5.

Adobe's release, while certainly in the works well before Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted his Thoughts on Flash open letter, serves as something of an answer to the challenge posed by Jobs at the conclusion of that letter.

Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

In a research note released today, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky increased his estimate of 2010 iPad sales from 5 million to 8 million, citing upcoming international launches and continued strong sales in the U.S. as evidenced by retail store shortages. For the current quarter, which runs through late June, Abramsky is predicting iPad sales in excess of 1.8 million units in the United States and an additional 600,000 in the nine new countries receiving the device on May 28th, pushing quarterly sales to 2.5 million, up from earlier estimates of 1.5 million.

Continued strong iPad sales in the U.S. are estimated in excess of 200,000 per week, nearly double that of current Mac unit sales.

Checks indicate that US iPad sales remain strong post-launch, driven by rising consumer visibility to iPad's user experience, sustained PR/word-of-mouth marketing, 3G iPad launch, and broadening iPad apps/content. We believe Apple is now selling >200k iPads/wk, greater than US Macs (est. 110k Macs/wk) and just below US iPhone 3GS first qtr (246k/wk).

RBC's data also shows a positive effect from iPad accessories, with record "attach rates" as customers purchase cases, docks, and other items to go along with their iPads. Abramsky estimates iPad accessories adding an additional 15-20% in incremental revenue for each unit sold, well above 6-10% estimates for the iPhone and iPod.

RBC continues to carry a $350 price target on Apple's stock, which is currently trading at approximately $240 per share.

As noted [Google translation] by German site Macerkopf.de and expanded upon by Engadget, Apple has begun activating international iPad App Stores ahead of the device's launch in those countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. In fact, stores appear to be going live even in countries that are not included in this round of device launches. Engadget notes that things appear a bit unstable at the moment as Apple works to get everything up and running for the new markets, but should stabilize in time for the official iPad launch later this month.

Apple began taking pre-orders for all iPad models in the nine new countries early last week, with the device scheduled to launch in those countries on May 28th. Recent data from Yahoo showed approximately 10% of iPad users accessing its network of sites coming from outside the United States, suggesting that a significant number of devices have made their way out of the initial launch country.

Earlier this week, the spotlight was put on Apple for its policy prohibiting customers from purchasing iPads with cash by a report from KGO-TV in San Francisco noting the case of a woman on fixed income who had saved up cash over a period of weeks to purchase an iPad as her first computer.

"It took quite a long time for me to just save up this small amount of money to go down and purchase one," she said. "I had my cash in the backpack and I went up proudly to the counter and told them, 'I would like to purchase an iPad.'"

She was at the Apple store in Palo Alto, about to pull out the big wad of cash and take home her first computer. Instead, she received a terrible blow.

"They said, 'Sorry, we don't take cash.'

With no credit or debit card in her name, she was unable to purchase her iPad, the victim of an Apple policy designed to help prevent customers from circumventing purchase limits in place to deal with tight supplies of the popular device.

Apple initially stood by its policy, but today Apple Senior Vice President for Retail Ron Johnson announced that the company has changed its policy to allow customers to purchase iPads with cash if they set up an Apple account in the store at the time of purchase.

About a month ago, we said we'd like you to use a credit card when you buy your iPad, and that was the best way we could think of to make sure that people only bought two per individual," said Johnson. "And then it came to our attention that Diane [Campbell], through your story, was very interested in buying an iPad with cash, and we made a decision today to change that."

Johnson said our story triggered a company-wide policy change. As of today, anyone can pay for an iPad with cash as long as they set up their Apple account at the store. Apple accounts are needed for the iPad anyway, so that is not putting anyone out.

As a gesture of goodwill toward Diane Campbell, the woman whose experience brought the issue considerable publicity, two employees visited her home today to offer her an iPad free of charge.

"I am just so excited," said Campbell. "Words can't explain right now."

Apple's "no cash" policy was not unique to the iPad, as the company has introduced it in October 2007 for the iPhone in order to deal with high demand.

CNET reports that Apple has issued a response to yesterday's report that the company is working to "rethink" its Final Cut Pro offerings as the balance of usage of the video production software has shifted towards "prosumers" from the high-end professionals it originally targeted.

"Final Cut Pro is the first choice for professional video editors, and we've never been more excited about its future," Apple spokesman Bill Evans told CNET. "The next version of Final Cut is going to be awesome, and our pro customers are going to love it."

Apple currently offers Final Cut Express, targeted at prosumers, which CNET notes should leave the Final Cut Pro team free to continue catering to high-end video professionals with the Final Cut Studio package.

Apple's comments don't necessarily rule out the report's claims of the company looking to bring in more "prosumer-friendly" features to the full Final Cut Studio package, but do suggest that it is not planning on forgetting its professional audience with future releases.

Gartner today published a report covering worldwide mobile phone sales to end users for the first quarter of 2010. The results show Apple placing seventh among all mobile phone manufacturers with 2.7% of the market, up from 1.5% in the year-ago quarter. The growth places Apple within striking range of Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Research in Motion as it seeks to move up the list into the top five in the future.

The first quarter of 2010 was Apple's strongest quarter yet, which placed the company in the No. 7 position with a 112.2 per cent increase in mobile devices sales. "Growth came partly from new communication service providers in established markets, such as the UK, and stronger sales in new markets such as China and South Korea," said Ms Milanesi. "The second quarter of 2010 will be a very important one for Apple. We expect that Apple will present its new iPhone in June during its Worldwide Developer Conference, which will be the first to feature the latest release of the iPhone OS that includes welcome improvements for developers and users, such as multitasking."

The report also examined the more limited smartphone market from an operating system standpoint, showing Apple's iPhone OS in third place behind Symbian and Research in Motion with 15.4% of the market, up from 10.5% year-over-year. The iPhone OS placed ahead of Google's surging Android, which held 9.6% of the market. That worldwide data contrasts with the United States, where a recent NPD study showed Android-based handsets outselling the iPhone.

Gartner's numbers are somewhat comparable to overall and smartphone numbers released by IDC in recent weeks. The data paints a slightly different picture of the earlier data, however, which saw Apple edging out Motorola in overall mobile phone sales to become the largest U.S.-based manufacturer.

As hinted at by yesterday's disappearance of Tweetie 2 from the App Store, the rebranded official Twitter iPhone application [App Store, Free] has now been released.

In addition to the rebranding, Twitter brings several enhancements over the previous version of Tweetie:

- Tweetie is now Twitter! We didn't just do a name change, we've added a bunch of new stuff.
- Search has been reorganized, now you can search all tweets and find users in the same spot, view Top Tweets and Browse Suggested users.
- Search results now include Top Tweets, try it with Trends...winner combo!
- You can now use Twitter without an account! Search, Browse uses, view trends and top tweets.
- Sign-up is now available within the application as well, complete with Suggested user list.
- More tab has been reorganized to accomplish all this. Users with one account can add a second account under the Accounts and Settings button here.
- Actions we've found people use most, like Retweet have been moved to the main actions bar.
- Minor tweaks were made to tweet rendering so they match Twitter.com tweets.

Twitter last month acquired Tweetie with the intention of adopting the popular platform as its own free iPhone application. For the time being, Twitter does not offer an iPad-specific version of the application, although it seems logical that the company might pursue development of either a universal Twitter application or a dedicated iPad version that could take advantage of the significantly greater screen real estate available on Apple's tablet device.

Google today is making a number of major announcements at its Google I/O conference in San Francisco, with several of them directly related to Apple's offerings and supported standards.

First, Google announced the launch of The WebM Project, a new open-source, royalty-free video file format that appears set to take on Apple-backed H.264 for the future of Web-based video. The WebM project is based on V8, a file format from long-time video format firm On2 Technologies, which was acquired by Google earlier this year.

WebM not only has the significant backing of Google, which will be building support for the format into its Chrome browser and YouTube, but also Mozilla and Opera, which will be including support for it in their browsers. It is unknown at this time whether Apple will support WebM in its Safari browser, although it appears likely it will given the strength behind the new format.

Second, Bloomberg notes that Google will be teaming up with Intel to bring its Android software to television sets and other home entertainment equipment, seeking to obtain a dominant position in the rapidly-growing connected TV industry.

"This is a new frontier for Google," said Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "It's a return to traditional mass media concepts."

To attract consumers, Google will need to provide a broad variety of easily searchable programming and let viewers chat or post comments about it online, on a single screen, Valdes said.

The report pegs Google's effort in contrast to Apple's attempts in the arena with the Apple TV, which has seen only limited success in what the company has repeatedly referred to as a "hobby". Google's effort will seek to move beyond the standalone Apple TV box directly into Web-connected televisions, which have begun to take hold with consumers. According to one study cited in the report, an estimated 46% of flat-panel televisions shipped in 2013 will be Web-connected, up from 19% today.

Boy Genius Report briefly notes that it has received a tip that Verizon may be preparing to roll out network technology that would enable simultaneous transmission of voice and data, a feature that both Apple and AT&T have trumpeted on the iPhone.

We have been told that when the mythical Verizon iPhone materializes, assuming it's not a LTE unit, it might launch with VoRA; Voice over Rev. A. According to our source, Verizon has been testing VoRA as a precursor to VoLTE, and as long as the network upgrade timeline and iPhone release are aligned, we should see this happen.

Implementations of the CDMA2000 standard currently used by many carriers around the world, including Verizon, do not support simultaneous voice and data, a drawback viewed by many as significant in comparison to the UMTS standard employed by AT&T and all other current iPhone carriers.

AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega participated in a Q&A session this morning at a J.P. Morgan conference, and The Wall Street Journal blogged his comments, a number of which focused on the iPhone and iPad.

According to de la Vega, about 80% of AT&T's customers are on family talk or corporate discount plans, which serve as a significant barrier for customers to switch to a competing carrier. While he declined to reveal the date upon which his company's exclusivity agreement for the iPhone in the United States will expire, he appears relatively unconcerned over the possibility of a mass exodus of customers once the iPhone reaches other U.S. carriers.

De la Vega's comments do not suggest, of course, that Apple could not benefit immensely from an expansion of the iPhone to other U.S. carriers, which would allow the company to tap into large markets of customers who have been unwilling or unable to switch to AT&T for the device.

In addressing the iPad, de la Vega noted that he is a fan of the device, using it extensively on Wi-Fi. He does, however, enjoy the flexibility of having 3G data services available, even though he apparently does not take much advantage of it.

Apparently AT&T's mobility chief uses his iPad mostly on WiFi rather than 3G. But "if customers want to use 3G, we have to give them 3G," he says.

Questions also arose over AT&T's much-maligned wireless service, particularly in New York City and San Francisco. De la Vega expressed satisfaction with recent improvements in New York, but acknowledged that equipment shortages have continued to hamper AT&T's ability to bring service performance up to par in San Francisco.

fscklog points to a posting on Taiwanese site Apple.pro showing photos of the front and back of a purported white next-generation iPhone front panel.

While very similar to the traditional black panel seen in some previous parts leaks and in prototypes that have surfaced in recent weeks, it does carry an unknown physical feature directly above the earpiece slot. The feature appears similar to a "reflective surface" seen in another part leak back in February.

Apple has offered a white back on its iPhone 3G and 3GS models, with the exception of the 8 GB 3G model. If today's purported images do in fact turn out to be authentic, it appears that Apple is looking to bring that style option around to the front with a more prominent presence.

Update: The photos have since been revealed to have originally come from Chinese e-commerce site Taobao.com and were cropped before being posted at Apple.pro.

Vietnamese site Tinhte has scored another Apple prototype, this time posting photos and videos of an iPod touch carrying a rear-facing camera. The device is a 64 GB model and carries a "DVT-1" designation, which stands for "design verification test", a typically late-stage testing model.

The prototype does not, however, appear to be a particularly new creation, as its serial number indicates that it was manufactured in June 2009. In addition, a codename of "N18" appearing on a sticker on the back of the device indicates that this is a third-generation iPod touch prototype with camera similar to one that surfaced in August 2009 just ahead of the iPod touch revision launch in September. Similar prototypes also briefly appeared on eBay late last month.

Apple is believed to have scrapped the camera from last year's iPod touch revision relatively late in the design process, but may still be planning to include one in future versions.

Third party case manufacturers have already started creating case designs for the unreleased 4th generation iPhone. The so-called iPhone HD was originally leaked by Gizmodo in April with another major leak this month.

HardMac published this image from one of their contacts in China. The cases share the same rounded corner design of the leaked iPhone as well as additional spacing for a camera flash. A quick search shows some other early cases for the iPhone HD.

While these cases don't provide any additional confirmation beyond the original leaks, it does show that some companies are confident enough about the 4th generation iPhone design to begin producing cases for the product.

One item spotted in the latest iPhone 4.0 Beta is a new configuration page for Internet Tethering. The page alerts AT&T customers that in order to set up internet tethering, you need to contact AT&T at 611 or visit AT&T's website. The new message seems to indicate that AT&T may finally be ready to deliver tethering to U.S. customers.

Internet tethering was a feature introduced in iPhone OS 3.0 and is supported by many international carriers. It allows users to share their iPhone's 3G internet connection to other devices such as their laptops over Bluetooth or USB. AT&T, however, has been slow to roll out the feature to its customers due to concerns about increasing strain on their networks. iPhone 4.0 is due for public release this summer.

Apple is said to be revamping their Final Cut Pro product to appeal to a more mainstream audience rather than high end professionals. After layoffs in 2007, Apple has reportedly reorganized the Final Cut Pro team under the lead of Randy Ubillos, the developer who completely redesigned iMovie in 2008. The new iMovie was drastic departure from the original iMovie codebase.

According to a report from AppleInsider, the goal of the new Final Cut Pro is to make it "more appealing and useful to the needs of prosumers".

Currently, Final Cut Pro is targeted at advanced professionals with a scaled down, less expensive Final Cut Express version sold to users who don't need all of its high end features. Because Apple now primarily sells the Express version, the company wants to rethink Final Cut Studio and scale its overall development to better fit the majority of its customers.

Steve Jobs was recently questioned about the fate of Final Cut Pro. MacSoda sent an email to Jobs asking about layoffs and the future of the application. Jobs replied:

We certainly do [care about Pro apps]. Folks who left were in support, not engineering. Next release will be awesome.

A new support document posted today outlining the ports and connectors included on Apple's updated MacBook confirms that the new model supports transmission of both audio and video via its Mini DisplayPort output. The feature allows users to run a single cable (when using a compatible Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter) from their computer to their home theater system or television.

Mini DisplayPort (video out): Connect to an external display, projection device, or TV that uses a DVI, HDMI (audio and video) or VGA connector with a separate adapter.

According to a footnote regarding the HDMI compatibility, users should be sure to use a VESA-compliant adapter to enable the full capabilities.

Apple's current MacBook Pro and iMac models already support this functionality, and it will be reassuring to some potential customers that even Apple's low-end notebook also offers the convenient connectivity.

Apple has yet to update its support document regarding non-compliant Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters to reflect the new MacBook's capabilities, but will likely do so in the near future.