Free Republic

Apple beat Google to LaLa deal after failed bid for AdMob - report By Brian Garner Published: Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 08:00 PM EST Google was in serous discussions with music streaming service Lala before it was sold to Apple earlier this month. Google and Apple have been battling to purchase some of the same companies in an attempt to gain leverage in the highly competitive tech sector. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google had been in serious talks with online music streaming company La La Media Inc. before Apple closed the $85 million deal earlier this month....

Why Apple should keep a closer eye on prolific app store developers In the most recent example of a developer attempting to milk Apple customers out of their hard earned money, a Chinese-based development company named Molinker engaged in a scheme to artificially inflate the number of positive reviews that appeared alongside many of their apps, which altogether totaled over 1,000. By Yoni Heisler Fri, 12/11/09 - 2:17am. It's no secret that a well-reviewed and popular iPhone app can potentially net a developer hundreds of thousands of dollars.  But the potential to make a lot of money inevitably causes...

iPhone App Store reaches 300,000 available apps by end of November 2010? Submitted by David Kuan - 12.11.2009 According to IDC, Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch will hit the 300,000 apps mark before 2011. This may seem like an amazingly large number, but Apple passed the 100,000 apps available for download milestone last month. In addition, more than 200,000 have been submitted, at a rate of 8,500 new apps and updates every week. It's not hard to imagine Apple approving its 300,000th app well before the end of the year. Unless, of course, app developers put...

AT&T and the All-You-Can-Eat Dilemma By Chris Maxcer MacNewsWorld 12/11/09 4:00 AM PT Some AT&T customers are fuming about comments a company executive made recently about why the carrier is having such rotten network issues -- some users tend to use up an awful lot of bandwidth. AT&T certainly isn't the hero of this story, but it is worth taking a closer look at what was really said why some of it actually makes sense. Listen. Wow. If you're reading this, there's a decent chance you've seen the inundation of whiny news stories and blog posts over the widely reported...

Apple Says Nokia Missed The Boat And “Chose To Copy The iPhone” Instead by Erick Schonfeld on December 11, 2009 Now that Apple has responded to Nokia’s patent lawsuit filed last October with its own countersuit today, we have a clearer picture of what the dispute is all about. As suspected, it is about money, specifically the patent licensing fees Nokia is trying to get out of Apple for wireless patents it holds and it alleges are infringed by the iPhone. But more broadly, it is about Nokia missing the boat on the shift from conventional phones to mobile computers...

The Apple iPhone doesn't make coffee. It can't print photos. It doesn't read VHS tapes. And it doesn't come in "every color that exists." But the xPhone, currently all the rage on YouTube, is all of those things. Could this new product from Germany literally nuke the iPhone into nonexistence? Watch the official video on the revolutionary iPhone killer, the new phenomenal xPhone. Yes, that's actual German, mostly just narrating what you're seeing on the screen - except for the bit about the colors. The entirely imaginary xPhone was a graduation project for Martin Fischer, a 25-year-old computer graphics designer...

Why Apple succeeds, and always will By Joe Wilcox Published December 9, 2009, 9:45 AM Simply put: Apple doesn't play by the rules. It reinvents them. Apple applies what I call "David Thinking" to its broader business, product development and marketing. Apple is David to Microsoft Goliath -- and other ones, too. Goliath plays by one set of rules. David choses to change the rules, which favor his strengths rather than those of Goliath. David Thinking is most provocative and surprising when Goliath acts like David. After all, David sometimes becomes Goliath; Apple is a giant in music with iPod...

AT&T Inc. plans to take steps toward curtailing excessive data usage by some iPhone customers as it battles growth in both wireless traffic and perceptions of network problems. Ralph de la Vega, who run's AT&T's wireless and consumer businesses, said Wednesday the company will introduce "incentives" to encourage customers to cut back on their data usage. Mr. de la Vega said AT&T's strategy wasn't set yet, but said the incentives wouldn't affect the majority of AT&T's subscribers. He said details will likely be available early next year. The wireless industry has been wrestling with the exponentially growing use of data...

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library has launched iReagan, the official Ronald Reagan app for iPhone and iPod touch users. This FREE app, the first ever for a Presidential Library and for the National Archives, delivers Ronald Reagan right to your fingertips. Content includes: Full-length speeches including his famous Berlin Wall and "Evil Empire SpeechesIconic photos of President Reagan Stunning images and detailed descriptions of the Reagan Library's spectacular annual "Christmas Around the World" exhibit currently on display at the Library Inspirational quotes from "The Great Communicator"

Apple can be copied, but can it be beat? By Jim Dalrymple DECEMBER 8, 2009, 8:15 AM PT Apple has some of the best selling computers in the market, it’s the No. 1 music distributor, it sells movies, TV shows, iPods and it’s changing the mobile space with the iPhone and App Store. It’s also one of the most copied companies in the world, but can anyone beat them? It’s almost funny to watch companies line up to put out products that mimic Apple’s look and functionality. Apple puts out a new iPod and all of a sudden there are...

Dragon Dictation comes to the iPhone. Wow. by Mel Martin on Dec 8th 2009 at 12:00AM Put this into the 'I didn't think they could ever get this to work on an iPhone' category. I'm talking about Dragon Dictation [iTunes link] from Nuance, the developers of the very popular Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC. Nuance also provides the speech recognition engine for MacSpeech Dictate on the Mac platform. To dictate on the iPhone you just launch the app, press the record button, and start talking. Your dictation can be a brief sentence, or a much longer treatise. Once the...

Apple Bans Another Developer, 1000+ Apps Pulled by Greg Kumparak on December 7, 2009 As the old mantra goes, “Cheaters never prosper”. In this digital age, it may be time to revise that saying. Granted a veil of anonymity by the Internet, cheaters surely prosper from their cheating; it’s just that when they get caught, they go down hard. Alas, “Cheaters may temporarily prosper – but if they get caught, they’re totally boned” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Such was the case earlier today, when the development company behind over 1,000 iPhone applications was busted scamming the...

All Hail the iPod touch By Om Malik December 6, 2009 As the competition for smartphone domination starts to heat up, it is becoming increasingly clear that the iPod touch is Apple’s ace up its sleeve, and according to a report by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company, 24 million iPod touches represent about 40 percent of the total 58 million iPhone OS devices. From the time I first laid my hands on the iPod touch, I have been a big fan of it — after all, it is just like an iPhone except that it has more storage, is...

Forget The iPhone: The iPod touch Is Where It’s At Posted 12/07/2009 at 8:33:11am by J.R. Bookwalter Apple may have to fend off a number of competitors for the iPhone’s crown of smartphone dominance, but one area where there seems to be comparatively little competition is the roost ruled by the iPod touch. Based upon a report by Flurry, a San Francisco mobile analytics company, there are 24 million iPod touches in use, which represent 40% of the total 58 million iPhone OS devices, according to Gigaom’s Om Malik. After all, the iPod touch has one big advantage over the...

Analysis: Apple Embraces The Cloud, Positions Mobile With Lala Deal December 07, 2009 - Digital and Mobile By Glenn Peoples, Nashville With its acquisition of online music start-up Lala, Apple appears to have bet on a digital music strategy that places ownership – no matter how ephemeral - over subscription. And more than competing services, Lala best fits into Apple's desire for well-designed applications that complement other Apple products. The iPod wouldn't be the same without iTunes, and the iPhone should be better with Lala. Apple's interest in Lala is not surprising. Compared to other services, Lala has an iTunes-like...

Is Apple the Mobile Walmart? Gib Bassett - 1:43 pm on December 5, 2009 Yesterday I came across an article on CNET titled, “In mobile, do developers or consumers matter most?” and immediately thought, “Who cares what developers think, at least the ones who want to make money?” The article describes the oft-cited displeasure that developers have with Apple and its policies, and how it may cause defections to other platforms.  Yet the article also says this about the iPhone: “…for most consumers, their mobile device of choice is a lifestyle decision, a personal, ever-present extension of themselves…” With the...

Apple has the opportunity to do in mobile what Microsoft did on the desktop: Own the standard platform upon which every popular application is based.  The irony of this cannot be lost on Microsoft, which has flubbed its own opportunity to do the same. Google's Android could mount a strong charge here because it's hardware agnostic (the same way Microsoft Windows is, ironically).  But otherwise it's Apple's game to lose. Keep reading at the NYT >

You've loaded up your iPhone with Yelp for restaurants and Shazam for music. Now get ready to download a dose of "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" from a popular political figure of the past: the Gipper. The Ronald Reagan iPhone app, introduced this week, promises to "deliver Ronald Reagan right to your fingertips," offering the speeches, sayings and photos of the "Great Communicator" to a potentially wider and younger audience, thanks to the popular mobile technology. The efforts of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley (Ventura County) mean that five years after his death, Reagan's appearance on...

Android goes for iPhone weak spot: porn apps Bill Andad - Dec 3rd, 2009, 9:45 am Yes there are 100,000 or so apps for the iPhone, but thanks to Apple policy if it's porn you are after there's not an app for that. The construction of an Adult App Store for Android devices, however, could soon swing this particular market segment towards the iPhone competitor. The MiKandi App Store is strictly an adults only affair, and claims to be the world's first fully mobile adult app store. Although currently only available for Android users, the developers are already talking about...

HELP!! I just got a new iPhone and am trying to download music, but it keeps asking for an Apple ID, and I don't have that. All of my paperwork is in Japanese and my reading is not that great. Any advice is welcome!!!

Internet and television personality Alex Albrecht claimed to have insight on the price of Apple's rumored tablet during the latest episode of Diggnation, which also featured actor John Hodgman from Apple's "Get a Mac" commercials. During the course of episode 231 of the Internet-based show, co-host and Web entrepreneur Kevin Rose asked Hodgman, who plays the bumbling "PC" in Apple's commercials, if he has any inside information on the tablet. "I don't know anything about it," Hodgman said. "You think they'd tell me?" Rose then turned his attention to Albrecht, and insinuated that the co-host had privately revealed supposed information...

So it seems the CrunchPad is no more... The CrunchPad, which was the brainchild (pace legal settlements) of Michael Arrington, who runs the Silicon Valley-based technology news site TechCrunch, was intended to be a touchscreen tablet computer with a 12.1in screen... it began in July 2008 with the aim of producing a $200 tablet computer... the idea was that it would be open-sourced as far as possible. Except what is there to open source in the hardware? All the things you need to be standard already are; all the things you need to be special aren't -- such as some...

While rumors of a possible Verizon-compatible iPhone in 2010 persist, one analyst has predicted that Apple will instead bring the iPhone to another GSM-based carrier in the U.S.: T-Mobile. In a note to investors released this week, Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel Partners said his firm believes that T-Mobile, and not Verizon, will be the beneficiary when Apple's exclusive agreement with AT&T expires next year... AT&T's exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone is due to expire in 2010... While the iPhone in its current iteration is compatible with T-Mobile's network, it is not capable of connecting to its high-speed...

What critics were saying about Steve Jobs' smartphone in the months before it launchedThree years ago, when it became clear that Apple (AAPL) was about to unveil some kind of mobile phone, critics began to weigh in on its chances of success. AAPLinvestors' Terry Gregory, building on a list of skeptical quotes begun by MacDailyNews, has put together what may be the definitive collection. A sample: “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”...

I am looking for an iPhone that I can later unlock and use with other carriers and plans. Let's take, for example, iPhone 3GS, 32 GB. Am I missing something in my analysis? Apple sells this 3GS for $299, provided you commit to a two year plan. If you cancel before that time, you pay a fee of $175. I have looked on the internet and see unlocking software for as little as $30. Given these facts, why then would anyone want to pay more than $299+$175+$30=$505 for an unlocked iPhone 3GS? I see prices of $600 and above on...

Security expert expresses discontentSophos’ Graham Cluley has updated his blog with news that the author of the Ikee worm, emerged earlier this month, has gotten himself places, thanks to his malicious feat. Cluley doesn’t care much for the hacker and would rather see him pay for his actions, rather than get rewarded. “The author of the world's first iPhone worm must be feeling pretty chirpy today, because he's managed to get himself a job as an iPhone application developer,” Cluley writes. “21-year-old Australian Ashley Towns, revealed that he was going to join mogeneration [...] on his Twitter feed earlier today,”...

Over the past two decades, Ricardo Dominguez has been utilizing electronics and the internet to piss off just about every high-level administrative authority in the US. In the late 90s, his performance-art-cum-activist organization the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) set up a participatory website-jamming network called the FloodNet system, which allowed anyone with an internet connection to gum up the official sites of the US Border Patrol, White House, G8, Mexican embassy, and others, rendering them inaccessible. The Department of Justice retaliated with an electronic attack on the EDT that aimed to destabilize the group and interrupt their online meddling. As...

I am in the same boat as the developer whose app was rejected (and later approved under pressure) by Apple. So far, our app has been rejected three times by Apple because "... it contains content that ridicules public figures". Our app is a countdown timer to the 2010 midterm elections, 2012 presidential election, and 2013 inauguration. The images are included below. Can you help a fellow Freeper get his iPhone app published by Apple?    

The latest studies have shown that there are an increased number of individuals diagnosed with ADD. However, I believe there is a different form of ADD for Techie Addicts. Not all Techie Addicts suffer from this disorder. I am an engineer, a “Techie Addict” since back in the days when Atari came out. I am on the computer approximately 16-18 hours a day. I live just a few minutes away from my office. At the end of the day, I go home and have 2 of my laptops on my bed. I basically work on my business and do online...

An iPhone application that Apple had rejected as "objectionable" for its caricatures of members of Congress now is available to users, the application's developer told FoxNews.com Saturday. The developer, Ray Griggs, said Apple reversed its initial decision after a FoxNews.com story this week about claims that the caricatures, in particular a drawing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were "offensive." The app, now for sale at the iTunes App Store, provides access to a telephone directory that lists the number of every U.S. senator and congressman and features caricatures of the legislators drawn by an artist.

An iPhone application that Apple had rejected as "objectionable" for its caricatures of members of congress now is available to users, the application's developer told FoxNews.com Saturday. The developer, Ray Griggs, said Apple reversed it's initial decision after a FoxNews.com story this week about claims that the caricatures, in particular a drawing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were "offensive." The app, now for sale at the iTunes App Store, provides access to a telephone directory that lists the number of every U.S. senator and congressman and features caricatures of the legislators drawn by an artist. Griggs, who thanked the nearly...

A conservative filmmaker in Hollywood thought he had developed a worthwhile iPhone app: a telephone directory listing every U.S. senator and congressman, with caricatures of the legislators drawn by an artist. But Apple apparently didn't see the value, and the computer behemoth said a cartoon drawing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was part of the reason why. The filmmaker, Ray Griggs, told FoxNews.com that his small firm, RG Entertainment, received a rejection letter from Apple this week calling the caricatures "objectionable." He added that he has received several e-mails suggesting that Apple stock owned by Pelosi's husband may have played...

I always knew that Mad Magazine was filled with ner-do-wells that will rot your brain and turn you into a big meanie. My teachers in school all told me so... and they were teachers so they must've been right. Now the Apple iPhone App store has finally seen the light of reason on this truism, too. Well, if the App Store didn't deny Mad Magazine exactly, it did lower they kabosh on one of its nasty, mean-spirited artists, Tom Richmond, by denying his iPhone App registration. Serves him right, the troublemaker. The good name of Apple computers will not be...

The second half of 2010 could finally bring a much-anticipated Verizon Wireless iPhone. A new hybrid chip developed by Qualcomm makes it possible to communicate with several different network technologies using only one component. This means Apple can manufacture one device, the "world mode" iPhone that will work on all of the networks it's currently compatible with as well as Verizon's CDMA network. Previous reports speculated that Apple would wait until at least 2011 for Verizon's launch of LTE technology.

Our friends over at major Chinese news portal 163.com are reporting [Google machine translation] that not too many people were actually queuing up to get one, at least in Beijing.These rather disappointing, initial reactions don't mean China rejects the iPhone at all, however.

There’s nothing geeks love more than to argue mobile phone platforms. Here’s Matt Blaisdell saying that apps weren’t key to iPhone’s success. That’s true, but now that Apple has apps the world has changed and challengers to the iPhone will find it very tough. Here’s why: everyone is using a different set of 20 apps. Trillions of combinations. You can see this on Appsfire’s VIP list (my iPhone apps are listed there, along with a number of others). None of us have the same set of apps. So, to get me off of the iPhone you are going to have...

In a not-entirely-surprising move, Apple today announced the renaming of its key products, formerly the iMac computer, the iPhone smartphone, and the iPod portable music player, will henceforth be called the "OMac" the "OPhone" and the "OPod". Apple Board of Director Albert Gore, Jr., released a statement on recycled post-consumer paper, using organic soy ink, pointing out that a the name "GorePod" tested much better with key demographic groups than "OPod", and that he is worried about the amount of paper and electricity that will be consumed in rebranding these already successful products. When Apple pointed out the amount of...

Apple has released iPhone OS 3.1.2 which contains various bug fixes and improvements. This update is available via iTunes for the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, and the iPod touch.

The free iPhone OS 3.1 Software Update includes some great new features, as well as all the features from previous updates. iPhone OS 3.1 gives you Genius recommendations for apps, lets you download ringtones wirelessly, offers a new way to organize apps on your iPhone, and more.

Yelp iPhone Application Adds Augmented Reality Easter Egg Thursday August 27, 2009 04:42 PM EST; Category: iPhoneWritten by Eric Slivka Mashable reports on a discovery that the latest update to the iPhone application from popular business establishment review site Yelp [App Store, Free] contains an augmented reality easter egg called "Monocle" that allows users to view business ratings overlayed on a video stream from their iPhone's camera. The feature is only compatible with the iPhone 3GS, which contains the necessary digital compass for properly assessing the device's orientation. Download the new Yelp app (came out yesterday). So you shake your...

The iPhone & Steve Ballmer: It’s Time For Him To Eat Some Serious CrowWednesday, August 26, 2009 There are very few people in the tech world who annoy me quite like Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. It’s not just that he’s loud, dismissive and arrogant. It’s that he manages to be all these things while usually being spectacularly wrong, especially when it comes to Apple. Take for example his thoughts on the iPhone from a USAToday article in 2007: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance,” said Ballmer. “It’s a $500...

iPhone users talk on the phone less than regular cell phone users [ ... ] they spend a whopping 50% more time using their phones than average cell phone users ... [ ... ] iPhone users spend 60 minutes per day on their phones versus 40 minutes for cell phone users. iPhone users talk on their phones about 45% of the time they use it versus 70% for cell phone users. [ ... ] What makes up the difference? It's not texting - each type of user spends about 15% of their phone usage texting. [ ... ] iPhone users...

Start Mobile has managed to get 18 separate iPhone applications approved by Apple. So you’ll imagine their surprise when one of them was recently rejected. But you may be even more surprised to find out why. Apparently, Apple doesn’t like the way one piece of art in the app depicts President Obama. Is it out of line or tasteless? Well, you can determine for yourself, because you’ve undoubtedly seen the art in question before: It’s Shepard Fairey’s famous “HOPE� image of Obama that was everywhere during his Presidential campaign.So why on Earth would this be rejected? Well, here’s the wording...

"APPLE HAS CHANGED THE WAY THE GAME IS PLAYED", says MSFT Win Mob chief Thu, 08/20/2009 - 01:21 by Jonny Evans "Apple has changed the way the game is played," Loke Uei, senior technical product manager for mobile developer experience at Microsoft said at the company’s first Windows Mobile Developers Camp (WinMoDevCamp) yesterday. His comments came during the developer meeting at which Redmond hopes to inspire/attract application developers to its platform. Attendees also got to see a preview of Windows Mobile at the event. The company hopes to take on Apple when it launches its Marketplace for Mobile later this...

ONE IN FOUR SONGS IN U.S. BOUGHT ON ITUNES By Caleb Johnson Aug 19th 2009 at 1:30 PM Although digital music sales continue to rise, CDs still account for the market majority in the U.S. When it comes to the burgeoning online world, though, iTunes stands alone. Macworld writes that a recent report released by NPD Musicwatch showed that 25-percent of the songs purchased in the United States during the first months of 2009 came from the iTunes store. That makes iTunes the most popular music retailer in the country, beating out former champ Wal-Mart, which boasts 14-percent. (That figure,...

Apple's 99-Cent Apps Are Too Cheap, Microsoft Says By Barry Levine August 20, 2009 9:39AM Microsoft is wooing developers to Windows Mobile by promoting the idea that Apple, Inc. prices App Store apps too low at 99 cents. Loke Uei told developers "your app is worth more than that" in sessions preparing for Microsoft's launch of Windows Marketplace for Mobile. The BlackBerry, Palm and Android stores also plan to charge more than 99 cents. With Apple's App Store offering many free and 99-cent apps whose prices please buyers but frustrate many developers, Microsoft is wooing developers to its Windows Mobile...

As the new owner of an iPhone, I'm overwhelmed by the number of applications available for it. I'm certain many of you must have discovered some gems. What do you consider your top five useful applications? Your top two or three "just plain fun" applications? Your "you gotta see this to believe it" application? I love the phone except the battery life is outrageously short and it required switching to AT&T from Verizon. I live in Atlanta and am stunned and how many dead zones and dropped calls I suffer here with AT&T. Verizon was like a tightly woven blanket.

iHandgun is an ultra realistic gun simulator application for iPhone and iPod touch. When you pull back the slide, it makes a clicking sound. Touching the trigger results a gunshot sound, gun fire, smoke from the muzzle, and even an ejected cartridge! It's of course reloadable. Change magazine and shoot as many times as you want.

Right about now, Apple probably wishes it had never rejected Google Voice and related apps from the iPhone. Or maybe it was AT&T who rejected the apps. Nobody really knows. But the FCC launched an investigation last night to find out, sending letters to all three companies (Apple, AT&T, and Google) asking them to explain exactly what happened. On its face, it might seem odd to some people that the FCC is investigating the rejection of a single iPhone app. After all, iPhone apps are rejected every day. But the Google Voice rejection caused an unusual amount of uproar, and...

With one bombshell already having been dropped at the BlackHat Conference (that most implementations of SSL are configured to give up everything including logins, credit cards, etc.), researchers dropped another one today when they demonstrated how the SMS infrastructures of GSM-flavored operators such as AT&T (NYSE: T) and T-Mobile are hackable to the point that cell phones can be hacked and their users can be tricked into divulging confidential information. By the time you read this, there will probably be some videos of the hacks posted to YouTube. But the net net is that there are different SMS message types....