NEWS Apple Bans iPhone Developer from App Store Thursday, July 8, 2010
•••Apple says it has banned a developer from its applications store after hundreds of hijacked user accounts were used to push his titles to best sellers.
Developer Thuat Nguyen has been banned for violating an Apple license agreement, “including fraudulent purchases,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said Tuesday. About 400 iTunes users were affected, she said.
Technology blogs said some iTunes users unwittingly had their accounts used to buy Nguyen’s book apps, which at one point occupied 42 of the top 50 book apps sold in the store.
“A vast majority of these book apps were released in April, have little to no customer ratings or reviews, appear to be in Vietnamese … and may or may not be infringing on copyrighted work – we’re noticing a lot of Dragon Ball art here,” the blog Engadget.com said on Sunday. Apple’s app store offers paid and free applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Apple’s store offers paid and free applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Apple has 150 million registered users for its iTunes, iBook and App Store marketplaces for purchasing music, e-books, movies and television shows. More than 225,000 applications are in the App store, with more than 5 billion downloaded, according to Apple.
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, rose $1.69 to $248.63 at 4 pm EDT in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have gained 18 percent this year. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s):Apple Inc.
NEWS Apple Unveils iPhone 4 for $199, Available June 24th Monday, June 7, 2010
•••Apple has unveiled a next-generation iPhone that features video chat, can shoot and edit high-definition quality video, and has a crisper resolution screen.
‘We are going to take the biggest leap since the original iPhone,’ Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said as he showed off the iPhone 4 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference here.
The iPhone 4 will go on sale on June 24 in Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the United States, and will cost $199 for the 16 gigabyte model and $299 for the 32GB version.
The touchscreen smartphone, which comes in black and white versions, will be available in 18 other countries in July and 24 more in August.
The iPhone 4 includes more than 100 new features including a front-facing video camera to allow for video-conferencing between iPhones, a better still camera, an improved battery and a screen with significantly higher resolution.
To demonstrate the video chat program, called FaceTime, Jobs, dressed in his trademark black turtleneck and blue jeans, called up Jonathan Ive, an Apple product designer, and held an iPhone-to-iPhone video conversation.
The iPhone 4 can also shoot and edit HD video. Randy Ubillos, Apple’s chief architect for video applications, displayed an iMovie for iPhone video editing program available from Apple’s App Store for $4.99.
Jobs touted the higher-resolution screen as a major leap forward. ‘There has never been a display like this on a phone,’ he said.
The 3.5-inch screen is the same size as on previous models, but features 326 pixels per square inch, four times more pixels than the earlier iPhones.
‘There is a magic number around 300 pixels per inch that is the limit of the human retina,’ Jobs said. ‘We are over that limit.
‘That’s going to set the standard for display for years to come.’
The improved battery life allows for 40 per cent more talk time, Jobs said, and the iPhone 4 – at 0.37 inch or three-eighths of an inch – is 24 percent thinner than the previous model, iPhone 3GS.
The iPhone 4, which runs on Apple’s A4 processor, features a five-megapixel camera, an improvement on the previous three-megapixel camera.
Users will also have the option to use Microsoft’s Bing as an internet search engine in addition to Google and Yahoo! Google remains the default search engine.
Jobs joked that some of the attendees at the conference may have seen the iPhone 4 previously ‘because there have been a few photos around’.
Technology blog Gizmodo obtained a prototype of the iPhone in April from a 21-year-old man who found it in a California beer garden, where it had been lost by an Apple software engineer, and published details of the device.
Apple launched the iPhone in 2007 and has sold more than 50 million as it battles Google’s Android platform, the Blackberry from Canada’s Research in Motion and others for the fast-growing market.
Before displaying the latest iPhone, Jobs said that more than five million digital books have been downloaded since Apple began selling its iPad tablet computer two months ago.
Jobs, who received a standing ovation as he walked on stage to address the more than 5200 software developers attending the conference, said the 8500 applications developed for the iPad have been downloaded more than 35 million times from Apple’s App Store.
Apple has sold more than two million iPads since it went on sale in the United States in early April and in nine other countries late last month.
Jobs said that 225,000 applications for the iPhone and the iPod Touch were currently available and that five billion applications had been downloaded from the App Store as of last week.
The new iPhone received positive reviews from analysts, although most of the features were known already because of the Gizmodo leak.
Altimeter’s Michael Gartenberg said Apple has ‘raised the bar once again by offering next year’s technology at last year’s prices’.
‘They are the first ones to make video chat easy and that will drive the sales,’ Gartenberg said.
Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said the iPhone 4 ‘keeps Apple ahead of the competition’ by ‘driving software and hardware innovation hand in hand’. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): Apple Inc.
NEWS Steve Jobs to announce iPhone 4G on June 7 Sunday, June 6, 2010
•••Apple’s secrecy about product launches is legendary but when Steve Jobs takes the stage on Monday the world may have already had a glimpse of what’s to come.
Jobs is to be the keynote speaker at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, an annual event during which the gadget maker reveals its latest must-have devices.
This year’s conference, which has attracted more than 5,000 developers of programs for Macintosh computers, the iPhone, the iPod and the iPad, carries less mystery than years past due to an Apple software engineer’s unfortunate evening in a California beer garden a little over two months ago.
The engineer, Robert ‘Gray’ Powell, lost a prototype of the next-generation iPhone while drinking at the Gourmet Haus Staudt near Apple headquarters and it ended up with a 21-year-old man who then sold it to technology blog Gizmodo.
According to Gizmodo, features of the new phone include a front-facing video camera for video conferencing and a better regular camera with a larger lens. It reportedly has a flat back instead of curved back, is thinner than the previous model, the iPhone 3GS, and has a battery that is 16-percent larger.
Gizmodo, unsurprisingly, will not be in the audience when Jobs makes his keynote address at 10:00 am PDT on Monday. The technology blog said Apple has not responded to its requests to attend the June 7-11 WWDC.
Gartner analyst Van Baker said Gizmodo’s revelations about the next iPhone had taken some of the shine off the event.
‘I think the biggest challenge Apple’s going to face is coming up with enough exciting news to have this truly get the market’s attention,’ Baker said.
The front-facing video camera that will allow iPhone owners to have video chats with Macintosh computers or iPhone to iPhone ‘will probably be among the biggest news that we see,’ he said.
I think there’ll be some additional reveals on OS 4.0 (the latest iPhone operating system),’ Baker added. ‘We might see a new iPod Touch,’ the Gartner analyst told AFP. ‘Beyond that, I’m not sure because the iPad’s new and the MacBook line – both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro – just had a significant refresh.
‘So I’m not sure what else to expect from them other than OS4 announcements and a reveal of the new iPhone,’ he said.
Baker said he did not expect the new iPhone to be ‘exactly’ what Gizmodo displayed but there would probably not be substantive differences.
‘I’m sure they had variants of the design floating around and likely made the decision of which ones to manufacture within the last month or so,’ he said.
Kathryn Huberty of Morgan Stanley said Apple may announce a price cut for the iPhone. A $50 drop in price could result in a 40-percent increase in demand, she estimated. U.S. wireless carrier AT&T sells the latest iPhone for $199 and a year ago Apple slashed the price for its earliest model to $99.
Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the Gizmodo leak ‘took some of the surprise out of the event’ but called it a ‘momentary diversion.’
In any case, Apple, which has sold more than 50 million iPhones in three years, has taken an approach of ‘evolution and not revolution’ when it comes to the touchscreen smartphone, Levy said.
‘When upgrading its iPhone hardware, Apple’s goal is never to hit it out of the park,’ he said. ‘Rather, the company’s intent is to move the bar far enough to maintain its market-dominant position.
‘To ensure it has enough new-feature gas in the tank for next year, it never gives customers everything they’ve asked for in any given year,’ he said.
‘Instead, it includes just enough new features to keep the faithful faithful for another year. It’s the ultimate form of controlled marketing, and Apple does it better than virtually any company on the planet.’ • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): Apple Inc. & Gizmodo / Gawker Media
NEWS Apple shifts two million iPads in less than two months Tuesday, June 1, 2010
•••Sales of the Apple iPad have passed two million since its launch almost two months ago.
The Cupertino, California, company began selling the iPad last Friday in Asia, Australia and Europe. The iPad was released in the United States on April 3.
The company does not publicly break out sales figures by region, according to Natalie Harrison, an Apple spokeswoman.
The company previously had said it sold one million iPads in the United States just 28 days after its launch. As a result of the strong demand at home, Apple had pushed back the start date of its international sales. The iPad can be used to send emails, draw pictures and play games. It can also be used as an electronic reader. The basic model costs $499 in the United States, not including extras.
This past weekend, Apple began selling iPads in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Prices for the cheapest, WiFi-only version range from $499 in the United States to the equivalent of $620 in Britain for the entry-level 16 GB model. Canada ($520), Japan ($536) and Australia ($533) rounded out the price basement countries.
At the top end, an iPad 64 GB model with WiFi and 3G connectivity cost $829 in the United States against $1,010 in Britain and $980 in Germany, France and Italy.
The company said the device will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year. • Source(s): Apple Inc.
NEWS Apple’s iPad makes global debut Saturday, May 29, 2010
•••Thousands of die-hard Apple fans mobbed shops worldwide on Friday as the iPad, called a revolution in personal computing by some and limited and overhyped by others, began its global launch.
Long queues of customers snaked outside Apple shops in Australia and Japan hours before the opening and similar huddled masses turned out at stores in six European countries, including Britain and France.
The iPad – a flat, 9.7 inches black tablet – also went on sale in Canada as part of a global rollout that was pushed back by a month due to huge demand in the United States.
One million iPads were sold in 28 days in the United States after the product’s debut in early April despite mixed reviews from consumers.
The product is the latest from Apple, which dethroned software giant Microsoft this week as the largest U.S. technology company in terms of market value, to create a frenzy.
At Apple’s flagship store in Paris, set in the prestigious mall beneath the Louvre museum, 24-year-old engineer Audrey Sobgou beamed as she walked away with one of the prized tablets.
Sobgou travelled 127 miles from her hometown in Lille, northern France, and waited nearly two hours before stepping inside the busy Apple store.
‘I’m not a victim of hype,’ she insisted. ‘I know Apple products and it’s about the quality, the interface, how it’s designed and what it can do. With elegance and style.’
Hundreds of people queued outside the Paris Apple store hours before it opened.
In Britain, a few dozen enthusiasts waited outside the Apple store in central London at 3am to get their hands on the iPad when it opened five hours later.
Staff escorted the first group of customers one by one up to buy their iPad after they opened the doors, whooping, chanting and cheering.
‘I queued overnight for about 20 hours since midday yesterday but it was very, very worth it,’ Jake Lee, a 17-year-old student from Essex, told AFP, clutching his treasured iPad.
The iPad also went on sale in Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland and will be followed in July by a launch in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Alejandro Barras, manager of the Apple store in downtown Madrid, said his iPad stock sold out one hour after opening.
Apple aficionados in Zurich camped out overnight in front of the store to buy the tablet and download some of the 5000 available apps – the media applications that run on the device.
In Montreal, an 82-year-old man with a long white beard and a beret stood in line with about 100 people, some of whom arrived at the Apple store at 6am.
‘I’m not a fan of gadgets,’ Jean-Maurice Demers told AFP. ‘But I’m involved in several political committees and community groups and I’m tired of dragging around several kilograms of files.’
Prices in Japan and Australia for the basic 16GB iPad are comparable to US prices, although a significant markup by Apple in Britain and continental Europe has triggered grumbling.
In France, wi-fi models sell for between 499 and 699 euros ($613 and $860), with the 3G models going for between 599 and 799 euros ($736 and $982) .
The multi-functional device is tipped by some pundits to revitalise media and publishing, with many major newspapers and broadcasters launching applications.
As well as the five other European countries, Apple plans to bring the iPad to Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore in July.
Apple has declined to reveal the number of pre-orders received for the iPad internationally, but Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky put it at around 600,000.
The iPad has officially gone on sale in Australia, with hundreds of tech lovers snapping up the touchscreen tablet device within minutes of it being released in Sydney.
Over 200 Apple fans braved the chilly Sydney weather overnight to be the first to get their hands on the new technology when the George Street store opened its doors at 08:00 am (AEST) on Friday.
Rahul Koduri, who had been in the line since 02:00 am (AEST) on Thursday, succeeded in his dream of being the first in Australia to purchase the iPad.
The 22-year-old Blacktown resident, who snapped up two iPads, was delighted.
‘It’s fantastic, it was so worth the wait,’ he said, holding up his two shiny iPad boxes.
‘One of these is for me, of course, and the other is for a family member.’
• Source(s): Apple Inc.andIndependent Television News (ITN)
NEWS Apple iPad makes international debut Thursday, May 27, 2010
•••Apple’s iPad finally goes on sale outside the United States this week after heavy U.S. demand for the multi-media gadget forced a one-month delay of its international release.
The touchscreen tablet device from the maker of the Macintosh computer, the iPod and the iPhone will be available on Friday in stores in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland.
The Cupertino, California-based Apple plans to bring the iPad to Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore in July.
The company co-founded by Steve Jobs had planned to begin selling the iPad internationally in late April but was forced to delay the global debut of the device because of what it said was ‘surprisingly strong U.S. demand.’
Apple said earlier this month that it sold one million iPads in the first 28 days it was available in the United States, less than half the time it took for the company to sell the same number of iPhones.
More than 5000 applications have been developed for the iPad, according to an Apple spokesman, in addition to the 200,000 programs already available for the iPhone or the iPod Touch, most of which run on the iPad.
A Wi-Fi version of the iPad, which allows users to watch video, listen to music, play games, surf the web or read electronic books, went on sale in the United States on April 3 for $499.
A more expensive model featuring both Wi-Fi and 3G cellular connectivity appeared on U.S. store shelves on April 30 for $829.
Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky estimated that Apple is selling over 200,000 iPads a week — more than its estimated Macintosh sales of 110,000 a week and its estimated iPhone 3GS sales of 246,000 a week.
Apple has declined to reveal the number of pre-orders received for the iPad internationally but Abramsky put it at around 600,000.
The U.S. sales figures indicate the iPad is a hit but success did not appear guaranteed when Apple’s Jobs unveiled the device at a high-profile media event in San Francisco in January.
‘There were plenty of questions before the iPad launch and quite a mixed reaction to it when it was released,’ said Gartner analyst Charles Smulders.
Critics derided it as a ‘big iPhone’ without a phone or a camera and bemoaned its inability to play Adobe’s popular Flash video software.
But the iPad appears to have won over the public with a hip advertising campaign and curious consumers can be seen lining up daily to play with tethered models of the device on display at Apple stores around the country.
‘Aside from the design, a key to its success has been getting the product into the hands of consumers,’ Smulders said.
‘With a new category of product like this it is difficult to understand its value unless you try it.
‘Apple has done a great job seeding the market.’
Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital said he sees potential for the iPad beyond the consumer market.
‘Even corporations are piloting the device at a pace that surprises us,’ Reitzes said. ‘At the very least we believe the device can tap into the corporate market as a ‘log in’ device that accesses the network.
‘Many of our clients are increasingly using, or intend to use, the device as a reader for research as well,’ he said.
With success comes competition and imitation.
U.S. computer giant Dell plans to begin selling its own tablet computer, the “Streak,” which has a five-inch (12.5 cm) screen compared with the iPad’s 9.7 inches (24.6 cm), in Britain in June and in the United States later in the summer.
And another U.S. computer giant, Hewlett-Packard, recently announced plans to acquire struggling U.S. mobile phone maker Palm and is expected to use its WebOS operating system to develop a tablet computer of its own. • Source(s): Apple Inc.
NEWS Apple Market Cap Bigger Than Microsoft? Not Quite Yet, It Isn’t Saturday, April 24, 2010
•••Boosted by upbeat investor reaction to its strong earnings report this week, Apple on yesterday became the second largest company on the S&P 500 Index in terms of market capitalization, surpassing software giant Microsoft. Revenge, they say, is a dish that is best served cold. And if this is true, then Apple must be pleased as punch to see itself in the second spot in the S&P 500, second only to Exxon Mobil.
While coming second is in itself notable – with the notable exception of coming first – what must be especially pleasing to Apple is the company it has replaced – Microsoft.
To understand this, you must travel back in time to 1988. In that year, Apple filed a case against Microsoft, claiming that the Windows graphical user interface (GUI) infringed upon the Mac’s “look and feel.” Of course, since Apple had itself borrowed the Mac’s look and feel by looking at products from Xerox and feeling that the GUI is a good thing, the judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a GUI.
What is more humiliating than being beaten by an opponent? Running back to the same opponent for help when you are down. And Apple was forced to do this in 1997, when Steve Jobs announced that Apple would join Microsoft to release new versions of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh, and that Microsoft made a $150 million investment in non-voting Apple stock. The money made a huge difference to Apple because in 1997 Apple was in deep trouble and was facing a huge finance crunch.
Enough history. Cut to the here and now. Apple is on top and has ousted Microsoft to become the No 2 company on the S&P index. It would be wrong to say that its iPod, iPhone and iPads are selling like hot cakes – it would perhaps be better to say that hot cakes are selling like iPads.
Purists may argue that the S&P 500 represents merely float-adjusted market cap. In fact, as Marco Tabini posted on macworld.com, “Microsoft’s full market cap still outstrips Apple’s by $275 billion to $241 billion.”
True, Microsoft’s market cap is still higher, but Apple has one psychological advantage that was once enjoyed by Microsoft in the PC era – the ability to drive the direction of the market. Now, Apple decides what happens.
Want proof? The iPad now accounts for 26 per cent of all of the mobile traffic on wired.com. The site is so impressed that they are making their Flash-heavy pages iPad compatible. “We are aware of the irony that the majority of wired.com’s videos, which use an Adobe Flash-based player, don’t play on the iPad. We’re working on that, starting with our homepage,” wrote Dylan F. Tweney in an article that appeared on the site.
Many many moons ago, when Steve Jobs hired John Sculley from Pepsi, he is reputed to have asked him, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” Scully didn’t change the world. In fact, during his regime, Microsoft threatened to discontinue Office for the Mac if Apple did not licence parts of the Mac GUI for use with Windows. And those days, Microsoft got what it wanted. But it looks like iPad has just turned the tables.
• What is S&P 500? The S&P 500 is a free-float capitalization-weighted index published since 1957 of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. After the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 is the most widely followed index of large-cap American stocks. It is considered a bellwether for the American economy.
••• Apple says it has banned a developer from its applications store after hundreds of hijacked user accounts were used to push his titles to best sellers.
Apple’s app store offers paid and free applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Dominic Stoughton's Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.