November 4th, 2009

I Am T-Pain enjoys 10,000 downloads per day

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 8:20 pm

Categories: Announcement, App Store

Tags: App, Smart Phones, Digital Music, Handhelds, Digital Media, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Hardware, Jason D. O'Grady

Apple today announced that the App Store now offers more than 100,000 apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, making it the largest application store in the world.

Apple has a pretty substantial head start in the market with 10 times the apps of its nearest competitor, the Android Market, which has 10,000 apps. Rounding out third place is Blackberry App World with 3,000.

The most surprising part of the Apple press release was Jeff Smith’s (CEO of app wunderkind Smule) admonition that his I Am T-Pain ($2.99) app gets a whopping 10,000 downloads per day.

Apple also noted that 2 billion apps have been downloaded since the App Store opened on July 10, 2008.

October 20th, 2009

Apple shuffles consumer lineup; iMac, MacBook, Mac mini, mouse updated

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 3:30 pm

Categories: Announcement, Apple, Hardware, Mac mini, MacBook, Mouse, Multi-Touch, iMac

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Apple Intel Mac Mini, Mouse, Apple MacBook, Apple iMac, Apple Inc., Mice, Desktops, Hardware, Peripherals

Hot on the heels of its most profitable quarter ever, Apple today announced a completely revamped consumer hardware lineup, including:

• An all new iMac line featuring LED-backlit 21.5 and 27-inch widescreen displays in a new edge-to-edge glass design and seamless aluminum enclosure. (Press release)
• The low-cost MacBook was revved with an updated polycarbonate unibody design, LED-backlit display, fixed 7-hour battery and Multi-Touch trackpad. (Press release)
• A new Mac mini got an upgraded processor, more storage and double the standard memory, starting at $599. Apple is also offering a new $999 Mac mini configuration that comes with Snow Leopard Server pre-installed. Curiously, no press release for the Mac mini.
• The Magic Mouse replaces the Mighty Mouse and is the first mouse to use Apple’s revolutionary Multi-Touch technology. Read more about it in David Morgenstern’s earlier post.

So far the Magic Mouse is probably the most interesting announcement of the lot. Apple has a tough time conforming the traditional mouse designs used by all other computer OEMs and has always bucked the trend with mice – for better or for worse.

What are your thoughts on the new announcements? What are you ordering?

September 9th, 2009

Apple announces new iPods and iTunes 9

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 12:35 pm

Categories: Announcement, Apple, iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod touch, iTunes

Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple iPod, Apple Inc., Apple iTunes, Digital Music, Digital Media, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics, Jason D. O'Grady

Apple today announced new iPod touches, iPod nanos and a major revision to iTunes.

The third-generation iPod touch gets the faster processor and improved 3D hardware of the iPhone 3GS. Dubbed the “most affordable gateway to the App Store” the new 8GB touch drops from $229 to $199. But the high capacity versions $299 (32GB), $399 (64GB) now have the ability to run OpenGL|ES 2.0 (like the iPhone 3GS.)

The fifth-generation iPod nano gets a video camera, speaker, FM radio, Genius Mixes, pedometer for Nike+, larger display and glossy colors. Prices are $149 (8GB) and $179 (16GB).

Not to be left out, the iPod shuffle got five colors and a price drop to $59 (2GB), $79 (4GB).

iTunes 9 is a major upgrade to Apple’s jukebox software, adding iPhone app organization, Genius Mixes, expanded media syncing options, Home Sharing and iPhone app organization. According to MacRumors:

Home Sharing allows iTunes media to be copied and shared among 5 authorized computers in the same household, with settings available to make copying new purchases automatically. All authorized computers are visible in iTunes in the Shared category in the Source list.

iPhone app organization feature that was previously rumored. Replicas of the home screen pages of a connected iPhone appear within the Applications tab where apps can be selected for syncing and removal and dragged and dropped to appear on the desired home screen page.

Here are the press releases:

• Apple Premieres iTunes 9
• Apple Introduces New iPod nano With Built-in Video Camera
• Apple Introduces New iPod touch Lineup
• Apple’s iPod shuffle Now Starts at Just $59

Which (if any) are you purchasing?

August 24th, 2009

Snow Leopard confirmed for August 28 release

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 8:18 am

Categories: 10.6, Announcement, Snow Leopard

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Apple Safari, Snow Leopard, Grand Central Dispatch, Apple Mac OS, 64-Bit, Desktops, Network Technology, Operating Systems, Processors

Apple has confirmed the rumor that Snow Leopard (a.k.a. Mac OS 10.6) will be released this Friday, August 28, 2009 — ahead of its estimated ship date of September.

To create Snow Leopard, Apple engineers refined 90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects that make up Mac OS X. Users will notice refinements including a more responsive Finder™; Mail that loads messages up to twice as fast;* Time Machine® with an up to 80 percent faster initial backup;* a Dock with Exposé® integration; QuickTime® X with a redesigned player that allows users to easily view, record, trim and share video; and a 64-bit version of Safari® 4 that is up to 50 percent** faster and resistant to crashes caused by plug-ins. Snow Leopard is half the size of the previous version and frees up to 7GB of drive space once installed.

For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal®, iChat® and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard’s support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software developers to write applications that take advantage of multicore processors. OpenCL, a C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics.

Snow Leopard will be available as a upgrade to Leopard (10.5) for $29 or $49 for a five-seat Family Pack. A Mac Box Set including Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09 and iWork ‘09 will be available for $169 for a single user license and $229 for a Family Pack. If you purchased a qualifying Mac with Leopard installed after June 8, 2009 you can get a copy of Snow Leopard for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 plus tax via Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-to-Date Program.

Full details are on Apple’s product page: http://www.apple.com/macosx/.

June 8th, 2009

WWDC 09: the announcements (Updated 10x)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 10:34 am

Categories: 10.6, Announcement, MacBook Pro, Safari, WWDC

Tags: Operating System, Apple MacBook, Expresscard, Battery, Apple MacBook Pro, Engineering, Flash Memory, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets

Following is a wrap-up of the announcements at WWDC 2009 in San Francisco today.

iPhone 3GS:

• “The S stands for speed.”
• Launching Messages: 2.1x faster
• Load SimCity: 2.4x faster
• Viewing an Excel attachment: 3.6x faster
• Load NYTimes.com: 2.9x faster
• Averages 2x speed increase — some things are even faster
• OpenGL ES 2.0 support
• 7.2Mbps HSDPA
• 3 megapixel camera
• Auto-focus, auto-white balance, auto-exposure, tap-to-focus
• Better light sensitivity. Auto-macro — close as 10cm away. There’s an API.
  
• Video Capture — 30fps VGA, has an API
• Scrub and edit the video with your finger
• Share it from the iPhone to YouTube
• VoiceControl — (”play songs by The Killers”), ask iPhone “what’s playing now?” You can also say “play more songs like this” and Genius will play more songs like this.
• Digital Compass — Integrated into maps — shows compass to use orientation on maps.
• Hardware encryption — Remote wipe, encrypted iTunes backups
• Improved battery life — Up to 9 hours WiFi, 10 hours video, 30 hours audio, 12 hours 2G talk, 5 hours 3G talk time.
• $199 / 16GB
  
• $299 / 32GB
  
• Available: June 19
  
• Keeping the iPhone 3G for only $99
  

iPhone 3.0 demos:

• Gameloft’s Asphalt 5 — Racecar sim with Bluetooth P2P multi-player
• AirStrip Critical Care — Medical app alerts Doctor with patient data. The monitor window for  looks pretty amazing. “The medical community is flocking to the iPhone.” Dock-connector accessory possibilities are almost endless “I can look at this real-time waveform data even if I’m not at the bedside.” Showing zooming, scrubbing to look for abnormalities.
• ScrollMotion’s iPhone book store — Contains over 500 best-selling book, 50 major magazines, 170 daily newspapers, and 1m books. Whoa. Take that Kindle!
• TomTom — Turn-by-turn directions and a car-kit with: windshield mount (portrait or landscape modes), dock with power, speaker, GPS enhancer, handsfree calling, and audio output. Availability: Summer, Price; TBA.
• ngmoco StarDefense — 3D tower defense game with multi-touch support and expansion sold through in-app purchases.
• Pasco — K-12 science app.
• ZipCar — 6,000 self-service vehicles in US & UK, 300k members. Instant car location and reservation via GPS and the new embedded Google Maps integration. (I’m a ZipCar customer, so this is pretty neat.) You can even activate the car horn remotely (to find the car) through the app!
• Line 6 and Chordmaster — Control your guitar and amp from your iPhone
  

iPhone SDK 3.0:

• 1,000 new APIs
  
• In-app purchases
• CoreLocation: turn-by-turn directions and embeddable Google Maps
• Push Notifications: alerts, sounds, badges

iPhone OS 3.0:

• A major new upgrade to iPhone.
• Cut/copy/paste
• Landscape mode
• MMS
• Rent or purchase iTunes content from the phone
• Tethering: 42 partners at launch, no AT&T
• Safari Javascript benchmarks 3x faster
• Auto-fill
• HTM5 support (with offline db support) and audio/video tags
• 30+ languages supported: Hebrew, Arabic, Thai and others
• New feature: Find my iPhone. Log into MobileMe and it shows you on a map where your phone is. Also: “Send it a message, have it play a sound (whether or not you left it in silent mode) and the waiter can find it and call you.”
• Remote wipe

iPhone:

• “it’s been an incredible year for the iPhone. It was less than a year ago that we released iPhone 2.0…”
• Developers have downloaded the SDK over a million times.
• More than 50,000 apps on the App Store
• Sold more than 40m iPhones and iPod touches.
  
• On April 21 crossed over a billion apps downloaded

Read the rest of this entry »

April 7th, 2009

Xserve updated with Nehalem processors

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:08 am

Categories: Announcement, Hardware, Xserve

Tags: Apple Xserve, Intel Xeon, Processors, Servers, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, Jason D. O'Grady

Apple updated its online store today with new Xserve models as was leaked last week on Apple’s Hong Kong Web site.

Using Intel “Nehalem” Xeon processors and a next generation system architecture, the 1U rack-optimized Xserve delivers up to an 89 percent improvement in performance per watt. Xserve is available with up to two 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors and industry-leading storage options that include a low-power solid state drive (SSD) and up to 3TB of internal storage. Starting at $2,999, Xserve includes an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard.

The new Xserve includes a 2.26GHZ Quad-Core Xeon 5500 processor for $2,999 and Built-To-Order options include dual 2.26 GHz, 2.66 GHz or 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors and a Solid State Drive (SSD).

March 26th, 2009

WWDC 2009 dates announced

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 1:17 pm

Categories: Announcement, Apple, Developer, WWDC

Tags: WWDC, Jason D. O'Grady

Talk about cutting it close! Apple today announced the dates for its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC): June 8-12 at Moscone West in San Francisco, just over three months before the event itself. On its Developer Connection Web site Apple warns:

Tickets to last year’s WWDC sold out. Don’t miss your opportunity, purchase your ticket by April 24 and save $300.

Tickets cost $1,295.00 when you purchase by April 24 and go up to $1,595 after that.

March 17th, 2009

The iPhone 3.0 event video

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:45 pm

Categories: Announcement, Video, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Video, Tools & Techniques, Advertising & Promotion, Management, Marketing, Jason D. O'Grady

You can now watch the entire 1.5 hour presentation from today’s Apple iPhone 3.0 event (in QuickTime, natch) on the Apple Web site.

On March 17, Apple presented the blueprint for iPhone OS 3.0, the next version of the world’s most advanced mobile platform. In addition to previewing its innovative features, Apple gave members of the iPhone Developer Program immediate access to the iPhone OS 3.0 software beta and an updated Software Development Kit (SDK) with over 1,000 completely new APIs.

Also, an Apple press release outlines many of today’s announcements.

March 17th, 2009

Wrapping up Apple's iPhone OS 3.0 event (Updated 6x)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 11:40 am

Categories: Announcement, Operating System, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Peer To Peer (P2P), Pricing, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Online Communications, Internet

Scott Forstall, Apple VP of iPhone software today announced that 100 new features and 1,000 new APIs are coming to iPhone OS 3.0 this summer.

Highlights include:

• New pricing models for subscriptions, additional levels and new content charges within apps
• P2P wireless for iPhone, iPod touch
• Accessories can communicate through the dock
• A2DP — Stereo Bluetooth
• Push notifications
• Cut, copy and paste
• Landscape mode for Apple apps
• Shake to shuffle iPhone and iPod touch
• WiFi auto-login for hotspots

New Apps:

• Messages app — MMS
• Voice Memo app — free?
• Spotlight — standalone app and integrated search across some apps

Spotlight-aware Apps:

• Address Book
• Mail — can only search email headers, not message content
• Calendar
• iPod
• Notes — entire note
• iPod — music & movies
• third-party apps

Updated Apps:

• Stocks — gets more info
• Calendar — Exchange, CalDAV and calendar subscriptions
• Notes — now syncs (only with MobileMe)
• Safari — Anti-phishing, remember login credentials
• YouTube — log in, share and save favorite videos, subscribe to channels, etc.

New API’s:

• Maps API — embed maps in apps
• Email sheet — so apps don’t have to quit
• Proximity sensors
• iPod library access
• Streaming audio and video over HTTP — goes through firewalls
• Data detectors
• VoIP APIs

Misc:

• Parental Controls extend to movies, TV shows, and App Store
  Support for more languages, improved keyboard for them as well.

That make the “still missing” features:

• Flash/Video
• Camera improvements — video recording, image stabilization
• Voice dialing
• Data tethering over Bluetooth
• Multitasking
• Bluetooth keyboard/mouse support

Rumors that didn’t pan out:

• Tablet
• Verizon Wireless carrier agreement
• “Velvet Rope” section of the App Store
• Time Capsule interface

How did Apple do?

March 12th, 2009

It's official: iPhone OS 3 coming 17 March (updated 3x)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 9:53 am

Categories: Announcement, Apple, Firmware, Hardware, Software

Tags: Apple iPhone, Operating Systems, Software, Jason D. O'Grady

The gang over at Engadget got invited to an Apple event to launch iPhone OS 3 on 17 March — a week from today:

We just got the announcement, iPhone OS 3.0 is coming. Set your clocks, mark your calendars. It’s going down March 17th. Apparently, we’ll get a sneak peak at the new OS, as well as a look at a brand new version of the SDK. Exciting stuff indeed, and we’ll be there live at 10am PST (1pm EST) with the liveblog.

Update: This is obviously much sooner than the May-June/WWDC time frame that I’ve been hearing for iPhone OS 3, but not entirely surprising. Apple appears to looking for feedback on the new OS well in advance of WWDC, so that changes could be implemented before it ships. New iPhone hardware is also rumored in the May-June time frame to coincide with WWDC.

Update 2: Hopefully iPhone OS 3.0 will include all the features mentioned in this rumor by Derek Underwood, i.e. concurrent apps and sandboxing shared-space.

Also, what do you think about Apple settling on “iPhone OS 3 Software?” Sounds kind of awkward, doesn’t it? I guess that “iPhone OS” will replace “iPhone firmware” moving forward…

Update 3: MacRumors notes that Apple previously hosted a media event in March 2008 to provide a “roadmap” for iPhone developers, and it appears that this upcoming event may follow a similar theme.