GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

iPad owners have had less than a week with iOS 4, but a software update offering news and magazine subscriptions targeted at them could arrive in less than a month.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber reports that Apple’s Steve Jobs will join News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch on stage at a December 9th event to announce Murdoch’s new forthcoming tablet newspaper, The Daily. According to Gruber’s sources, The Daily will be an app in the App Store, but make use of new recurring subscription billing on users’ iTunes accounts, and “developers at News Corp building the app already have preliminary documentation on the new subscription billing APIs from Apple.”

Macstories’ Federico Viticci reports further that recurring subscriptions are part of a new version of iOS — iOS 4.3 — with a scheduled release date of December 13.

According to Viticci’s sources, iOS 4.3 wasn’t intended to be released so quickly after 4.2.1, which was originally internally slated for an early November release. It’s possible that 4.2.1’s later official release might also push back the release of 4.3. But with Apple playing such a large role in the release of The Daily, both companies may stick with mid-December announcement and releases after all.

Subscription-based recurring billing would likely increase the number of paid magazine, newspaper, TV, video and other media applications on iTunes. Really, any application that depends on continuous content or service delivery could introduce a subscription model: online gaming, data backup, GPS, office applications and more. Many subscription-based services already have iOS apps, but have to establish accounts and recurring billing separately from iTunes.

Another technical challenge posed by subscriptions that could require an OS update is automatic background content delivery. If you’re being billed automatically every week for a newspaper or magazine, you shouldn’t have to go through a long, complicated routine just to download a new issue.

A final open question: how much customer information will Apple and app/content makers share with each other about their subscribers? This data has value, too — as does customers’ privacy.

Image by Apple.

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By Derek Sivers – CD Baby

It was October 2003 andSteve Jobs was on stage for a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes. About four minutes into the presentation, he said something that made my pounding heart sink to my burning stomach.

In May 2003, Apple invited me to their headquarters to discuss gettingCD Baby’s catalog into the iTunes Music Store.

iTunes had just launched two weeks before, with only some music from the major labels. Many of us in the music biz were not sure this idea was going to work. Especially those who had seen companies likeeMusic do this exact same model for years without big success.

I flew to Cupertino thinking I’d be meeting with one of their marketing or tech people. When I arrived, I found out that about a hundred people from small record labels and distributors had also been invited.

We all went into a little presentation room, not knowing what to expect.

Thenout comes Steve Jobs. Whoa! Wow.

He was in full persuasive presentation mode. Trying to convince all of us to give Apple our entire catalog of music. Talking about iTunes success so far, and all the reasons we should work with them.

He really made a point of saying, “We want the iTunes Music Store to have every piece of music ever recorded. Even if it’s discontinued or not selling much, we want it all.”

This washuge to me, because until 2003, independent musicians were always denied access to the big outlets. For Apple to sell all music, not just artists who had signed their rights away to a corporation, this was amazing!

Then they showed the Apple software we’d all have to use to send them each album. It required us to put the audio CD into a Mac CD-Rom drive, type in all of the album info, song titles and bio, then click [encode] for it to rip, and [upload] when done.

I raised my hand and asked if it was required that we use their software. They said yes.

I asked again, saying we had over 100,000 albums, already ripped as lossless WAV files, with all of the info carefully entered by the artist themselves, ready to send to their servers with their exact specifications. They said sorry – you need to use this software – there is no other way.

Ugh. That means we have to pull each one of those CDs off of the shelf again, stick it in a Mac, then cut-and-paste every song title into that Mac software. But so be it. If that’s what Apple needs, OK.

They said they’d be ready for us to start uploading in the next couple weeks.

I flew home that night, posted my meeting notes on my website, emailed all of my clients to announce the news, and went to sleep.

When I woke, I had furious emails and voicemails from my contact at Apple.

“What the hell are you doing? That meeting was confidential! Take those notes off your site immediately! Our legal department is furious!”

There was no mention of confidentiality at the meeting and no agreement to sign. But I removed my notes from my site immediately, to be nice. (You can see still a copy someone postedhere.)

All was well, or so I thought.

Apple emailed us the iTunes Music Store contract. We immediately signed it and returned it the same day.

I started building the system to deliver everyone’s music to iTunes.

I decided we’d have to charge $40 for this service, to cover our bandwidth and payroll costs of pulling each CD out of the warehouse, entering all the info, digitizing, uploading, and putting it back in the warehouse.

5,000 musicians signed up in advance, each paying $40. That $200,000 helped pay for the extra equipment and people needed to make this happen.

Within two weeks, we got contacted byRhapsody,Yahoo Music,Napster,eMusic, and more – each saying they wanted our entire catalog.

Yes! Awesome!

Maybe you can’t appreciate this now, but the summer of 2003 was the biggest turning point that independent music has ever had. Until that point, almost no big business would sell independent music. (That’s why I had to start CD Baby, because nobody would sell my music.)

By iTunes saying they wanted everything, then their competitors needing to keep up, we were in! Since the summer of 2003, every musician everywhere can sell all their music in almost every outlet online. Do you realize howamazing that is?

But there was one problem.

iTunes wasn’t getting back to us.

Yahoo, Rhapsody, Napster and the rest were all up and running. ButiTunes wasn’t returning our signed contract.

Was it because I posted my meeting notes?

Had I pissed-off Steve Jobs?

Nobody at Apple would say anything.It had been months.

My musicians were getting impatient and angry.

I gave optimistic apologies, but I was starting to get worried, too.

Then in October, Steve Jobs did a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes.

People had been criticizing iTunes for having less music than the competition. They had 300,000 songs while Rhapsody and Napster had over 2 million songs. (Over 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.)

Four minutes in, he said something that made my pounding heart sink to my burning stomach:

“This number could have easily been much higher, if we wanted to let in every song. But we realize record companies do a great service. They edit! Did you know that if you and I record a song, for $40 we can pay a few of the services to get it on their site, through some intermediaries? We can be on Rhapsody and all these other guys for $40? Well we don’t want to let that stuff on our site! So we’ve had to edit it. And these are 400,000 quality songs.”

(Watch the video, here.)

Whoa! Wow.Steve Jobs just dissed me hard!

I’m the only one charging $40. That was me he’s referring to.

Shit. OK. That’s that. Steve changed his mind. No independents on iTunes. You heard the man.

I hated the position this put me in.

Ever since I started my company in 1998, I had been offering an excellent service. I could make promises and keep them, because I was in full control.

Now, for the first time,I had made a promise for something that was out of my control.

So it was time to do the right thing, no matter how much it hurt.

I decided to refund everybody’s $40, with my deepest apologies. With 5000 musicians signed up, that meant I was refunding $200,000.

Since we couldn’t promise anything, I couldn’t charge money in good conscience.

• I removed all mention of iTunes from my site.
• I removed the $40 cost to make it free.
• I changed the language to say we can’t promise anything.
• I emailed everyone to let them know what had happened.

I decided to make it a free service from that point on.

The next day, we got our signed contract back from Apple, along with upload instructions.

Unbelievable.

We asked, “Why now?”, but got no answer.

Whatever. Fucking Apple.

We started encoding and uploading immediately.

I quietly added iTunes back to the list of companies on our site.

But I never again promised a customer that I could do something beyond my full control.

---

Derek Sivers is best known as the founder of CD Baby. A professional musician (and circus clown) since 1987, Derek started CD Baby by accident in 1998 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too. CD Baby was the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients. After he won the 2003 World Technology Award, Esquire Magazine’s annual “Best and Brightest” cover story said, “Derek Sivers is changing the way music is bought and sold… one of the last music-business folk heroes.” In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby to focus on his new ventures to benefit musicians, including his new company MuckWork where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their “uncreative dirty work”. His current projects and writings are all atsivers.org and onhis blog. If you’d like to keep close track of Derek, you canfollow him on Twitter.

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Steve Jobs has successfully prevented Adobe Flash from getting on the iPhone for years, but a new iOS app promises to bring Flash video to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch without upsetting the CEO.

Demonstrated below, Skyfire is a web browser that automatically transcodes Flash video into HTML5 so that it can be displayed on your iDevice (instead of the blue LEGO block symbolizing a lack of Flash support).

To our knowledge, Skyfire will be the first app of its kind to offer a roundabout method for watching Flash videos, when it goes live in the App Store this week.

Apple has prohibited Flash from running on iOS devices ever since the original iPhone launched in 2007. In an open letter published April, Jobs said that Flash was the No. 1 reason Macs crash, and he didn’t wish to reduce reliability on iOS products.In the same letter, Jobs vocalized his support for HTML5, a new web standard that does not rely on plug-ins.

“New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too),” Jobs said.

The Skyfire app only transcodes Flash videos into HTML5 not games. A Skyfire spokesman said the Skyfire app was developed with oversight and feedback from Apple.

“It adheres to every guideline put forth by Apple regarding HTML5 video playback for iOS,” the spokesman said. “Skyfire will allow consumers to play millions of Flash videos on Apple devices without the technical problems for which Jobs banned Flash.”

The app was submitted late August, and it will go live in the App Store on Thursday.

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Maybe Flash on a tablet isn’t as bad as Steve Jobs says it is. That’s what Adobe and Research In Motion want you to think after watching the video below.

Taped at Adobe’s MAX conference this week, the segment shows the BlackBerry PlayBook running media apps coded in Adobe Air, which is based partly on Flash. The video also shows YouTube.com playing a video with Flash 10.1 player.

“We’re not trying to dumb down the internet for a small mobile device,” says Mike Lazaridis, RIM’S CEO, during the PlayBook demonstration. “What we’re trying to do is bring up the performance and capability of the mobile device to the internet.”

Though there is no mention of Apple in the video, the comments about dumbing down the internet appear to target the iPad, which does not support Flash. In a famous blog post published April, Apple CEO Jobs explained why Apple was leaving Flash out of its mobile operating system, citing issues such as application crashes and battery drain. Later, when Flash debuted on the Android OS, some independent tests found that Flash was causing crashes on Android devices and that performance was sluggish, but battery drain was not significant.

The BlackBerry PlayBook will be shipping early next year. RIM has not announced a price.

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CUPERTINO, California Apple on Wednesday releashed a major upgrade for its mini notebook, the MacBook Air, splitting it into two different-sized models.

The MacBook Air will come in two flavors: a 13.3-inch model and an 11.6-incher. They both will come thinner and lighter than their predecessor, with improved battery life that’s similar to the iPad’s, the company said.

“We asked ourselves what would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up?” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. “It’s one of the most amazing things we’ve ever created: it is our new MacBook Air, and we think it’s the future of notebooks.”

Coupled with mobile-inspired enhancements to the computers’ operating systems, such as a planned Mac App Store (due to launch in 90 days) and multitouch enhancements for the next version of Mac OS X, aka “Lion,” the new MacBook Air models show that Apple is trying to redefine the PC market the same way it has tackled the tablet and smartphone markets.

Instead of merely selling hardware, the company looks to be positioning itself as a vertically integrated vendor of mobile devices, selling hardware and software as well as controlling the marketplace through which customers purchase software.

“We think all notebooks are going to be like this one day,” Jobs said.

Despite its position as an underdog in the PC industry, the Mac has seen rapid growth relative to Windows-powered machines in recent years. According to an NPD retail sales report cited by Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook, Apple dominates the premium end of the PC market: For instance, 91 percent of $1,000+ computers sold in June 2009 were Macs. And in Apple’s latest Q4 earnings call, the company reported record-breaking sales of Macs and iPhones, resulting in its most successful quarter ever.

Cook claimed that 1 in 5 PCs sold in the U.S. are now made by Apple — a claim sure to be contested by other PC makers. Recent reports by IDC and Gartner show that Apple’s U.S. market share is slightly above 10%. That is higher than it’s been in years, but just half of what Apple is claiming.

NPD confirmed the 20% figure to Wired, which comes from its retail tracking service, but noted that it applied only to a single month.

The MacBook Airs will include flash storage, 802.11-N Wi-Fi and a Core 2 Duo processor. Apple increased the size of the battery to provide 5 to 7 hours of battery life when surfing the web over Wi-Fi, and 30 days on standby time like the iPad.

The models start at $1,000 and begin shipping today.

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

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CUPERTINO — Apple on Wednesday showed a series of mobile-inspired upgrades to its software lineup.

Coupled with the company’s netbook-inspired and Flash memory-based ultralight MacBook Airs, the newly-unveiled plans suggest the company is readying a new approach to PC sales that’s modeled on its successful reinventions of the tablet and smartphone markets.

Apple previewed Mac OS X Lion, which blends elements of Apple’s mobile operating system iOS into the Mac. Lion is scheduled for release in early 2011.

Like the iOS-powered iPhone and iPad, Macs running Lion will gain access to an app store for third-party Mac software and new multitouch gestures.

Citing the company’s years of multitouch research, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the desktop multitouch gestures will center on the trackpad, not the display screen.

“Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence pads,” said Jobs.

The Mac App Store, which will incorporate automatic installs and updates like those in iOS, will be getting a head start: the store will open on the current Mac OS (Snow Leopard) in 90 days.

Citing the company’s success in selling mobile apps (over 7 billion downloads to date, including both free and paid apps), Jobs said the same basic guidelines would apply to its Mac App Store. Customers will be able to buy and download apps with a single click, installation will happen automatically, and upgrades will be made available regularly just as they are in the iTunes App Store.

The company will also split revenues with developers the same way it currently does, taking a 30 percent commission and paying the remaining 70 percent to the apps’ publishers.

“It’s going to be the best place to discover apps,” Jobs said.

Lion will also include a feature Apple is calling Launchpad, which is essentially a homescreen for your apps, much like what currently appears on the iPad.

Apple also introduced a Mac version of FaceTime, a videoconferencing app that debuted on the fourth-generation iPhone. That means iPhone 4 owners and Mac users will be able to video chat with each other, whereas before the feature was limited to only iPhone 4 users. A beta release of FaceTime for Mac will be available today.

Apple also released an upgrade for its Mac software suite, iLife 2011, which includes new versions of iPhoto, Garage Band, iMovie and other apps. iPhoto now includes features such as Facebook integration and new slideshow modes; iMovie has gained new audio-editing features and themes to automatically create movie trailers, among other tools; and Garage Band includes a new feature called Groove Matching that automatically adjusts different instrument tracks to be in perfect rhythm.

Photo credit: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

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Two prominent Android enthusiasts aren’t taking Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ tirade against the Android mobile operating system lying down.

Iain Dodsworth, the CEO of TweetDeck, and Andy Rubin, the brains leading the Android OS development, have both refuted Jobs’ claims about the effect of fragmentation on users and developers because of Android’s open source philosophy.

“Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t,” tweeted Dodsworth Monday evening after hearing Jobs say that “Twitter Deck” faced a major problem with fragmentation.

“A Twitter client, Twitter Deck recently launched their App for Android,” Job told analysts on the conference call. “They reported that they had to contend with more than 100 different versions of Android software on 244 different handsets.”

Dodsworth is not the only one rebutting Jobs’ strange trash-talking of Android. Android creator Rubin took to twitter to post his first tweet, a coded message to Jobs:

the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

Those are the commands needed to compile Android on a home Linux machin–a way for Rubin to emphasize that anyone can take Android and play with it.

Since it debut in 2008, Android has grown into a major operating system, gathering support from phone manufacturers and wireless carriers. Android is now the most popular operating system among people who bought a smartphone in the past six months, while Blackberry RIM and Apple iOS are in a statistical dead heat for second place among recent acquirers, according to August data from The Nielsen Company.

With its rapid growth, Android could eclipse Apple’s iOS and iPhone. It may be one reason why Jobs seemed to launch in to what seems like a long rant against Android.

“We think Android is very fragmented and becoming more fragmented by the day, and as you know, Apple strives for the integrated model so that the user isn’t forced to be the systems integrator,” told Jobs. (You can listen to the entire conference call here.)

But data shows Android fragmentation, caused by the different versions of the Android operating system on devices, is on the decline. The Android OS is coalescing around three major flavors: Android 1.5, akaCupcake; Android 1.6, or Donut; and Android 2.1, nicknamed Eclair. As of June, almost half of all Android devices ran on Eclair.

Still Jobs tried to convince listeners of the superiority of iPhone’s walled garden, tight control approach over Android’s open philosophy.

We also think our developers can be more innovative if they can target a singular platform rather than 100 variants. They can put their time into innovative new features rather than testing on hundreds of different handsets, so we are very committed to the integrated approach, no matter how many times Google tries to characterize it as closed. And we are confident that it will triumph over Google’s fragmented approach, no matter how many times Google tries to characterize it as open.

Developers such as Dodsworth disagree. Dodsworth tweeted his company has just two developers working on the Android app.

“That shows how small an issue fragmentation is,” he says.

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In Apple’s earnings call Monday, CEO Steve Jobs derided some upcoming tablets for their lack of size.

Presumably referring to Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy Tab and Research In Motion’s PlayBook two 7-inch tablets hitting stores soon Jobs said these devices were too small for a pleasant touchscreen experience.

“7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad,” said Jobs, adding that competing manufacturers were struggling to meet the price point of the iPad, which starts at $500. Both Samsung and RIM have not announced pricing on their tablets.

“These are among the reasons that the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival,” Jobs said during the earnings call.

With his aggressive statements, Jobs is clearly attempting to mark the tablet space as Apple’s territory. For several years, scores of tablet PCs have come and gone after failing to fulfill more than a niche. Though the iPad is not the first tablet to hit the market, it’s the first slate-based computer to succeed as a mainstream, general-purpose device.

The iPad has its numbers to back it: During its earnings call, Apple said it shipped 4.2 million iPads during the fourth fiscal quarter. At this selling rate, Bernstein Research noted thatiPad adoption rates are the fastest in electronics product history.

Jobs’ comments on 7-inch tablets pour cold water on rumors claiming that Apple was preparing to release a 7-inch iPad to compete with rivals. In response to the rumor, Apple watcher Jim Dalrymple explained that Apple had already made a 7-inch iPad at the same time as its available 9.7-inch model, and opted for the latter.

“Why did Apple choose to go with the larger model instead?” Dalrymple wrote. “Only Steve Jobs knows that for sure.”

Jobs appears to have answered that question during Monday’s earnings call. But take his word with a grain of salt — Jobs has been known to denigrate a product category, only to unveil a similar product later.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Remember John Sculley? You know, the ex-Pepsi guy who helped run Apple and eventually forced Steve Jobs out of the company. Yeah, that guy.

Leander Kahney, editor of Cult of Mac and a former Wired.com news editor, has an exclusive interview with Sculley who offers an intriguing explanation of Jobs’ methodology for building great products.

Some of Jobs’ key strategies include beautiful design, minimalism, looking at a product from the customer’s perspective as opposed to relying on focus groups, hiring only the best and rejecting bad work, Sculley told Kahney.

“Steve said: How can I possibly ask somebody what a graphics-based computer ought to be when they have no idea what a graphic based computer is? No one has ever seen one before,” Sculley said when explaining Jobs’ refusal to use focus groups. “He believed that showing someone a calculator, for example, would not give them any indication as to where the computer was going to go because it was just too big a leap.”

Sculley provides rare insight into Apple’s extremely secretive CEO, who only speaks to a handful of mainstream journalists on occasion.Catch the rest of the interview over at Cult of Mac.

Photo of Sculley on a cruise boat: Edyson/Flickr.com

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The new Apple TV could be Steve Jobs’ best sleight-of-hand trick yet.

During his modest introduction of the device, Jobs called the Apple TV “one more hobby.” But a closer look at the code and the hardware powering the Apple TV reveals that there’s a lot more going on under the hood than the CEO shared.

Interestingly, Jobs didn’t mention that Apple TV runs iOS, the same operating system running on its flagship product, the iPhone, and some other big hits the iPod Touch and iPad. And there’s more, too: The Apple TV’s software might already be jailbroken, and some hidden software should eventually allow you to share the Apple TV’s media with other iOS devices.

These secret ingredients could be the recipe Apple needs to shake up the television industry. For years, Apple executives have labeled the set-top box a “hobby” product because of its mild success compared to blockbuster sellers like the iPhone and iPod. Now that Apple TV has been revamped into a streaming rental service with an arsenal of stealth features, maybe Apple has a chance to change the TV business if not today, perhaps later.

“The most importanthint ofApple’s real ambitions in the living room come fromAirPlay, whichputs iPhones and iPads in the driver’s seat and makes theTVjust an outputdevice for theAppleecosystem,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst, in a recent e-mail statement. “ExpectAppleto gradually push more and morein that direction, but as of this moment in 2010,Applehas not yet made asignificant play for control of theTV.”

Here, we round up the juicy tidbits we’ve heard about Apple’s mysterious new set-top box.

iOS and third-party app support

There’s more than enough evidence proving that the Apple TV runs iOS. Dispelling any doubts, Apple recently posted a build of iOS 4.1 specifically for the Apple TV.

This piece of information about iOS is important because of a new feature called AirPlay, which streams media from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the Apple TV. When Jobs demonstrated AirPlay, he only showed the feature working with an iPad’s built-in video player, photos app and music library. Now that we know Apple TV runs iOS, it’s likely that third-party apps such as MLB at Bat or ABC Player will be able stream media to the set-top box, too.

DaringFireball blogger John Gruber confirmed that an AirPlay button is showing up in the MLB at Bat app, and he adds that apps using the built-in media controller will be able to integrate AirPlay.

Long story short, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream media from some third-party apps straight to your Apple TV with an AirPlay button. AirPlay is shaping up to be Apple’s secret weapon to reshape home entertainment.

In addition to AirPlay, the fact that Apple TV is running iOS means that — in principle, at least — it may someday be able to run applications from the iTunes App Store. For now, that capability is not included in Apple TV, but the underlying operating system certainly supports it, so Apple might open a TV App Store in a future software update.

Jailbreaking hacks

Third-party app support will probably be limited for the Apple TV, but that’s where the jailbreakers come in. In the same way that we’re able to override restrictions on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with a jailbreak, we should be able to run unauthorized apps on the Apple TV — something Jobs would never advertise, of course.

In fact, hackers already have a head start, because a tool called Shatter, which was used to jailbreak the newest iPod Touch, already works with the Apple TV, according to the iPhone Dev Team. That means we should be expecting hackers to code some unauthorized apps soon to unlock additional capabilities such as video-conferencing via your Apple TV.

On top of that, existing hacks for the old Apple TV should work, too.Dev Team memberWill Strafach explained thatthe new AppleTV OS seems to be a mashup of the old AppleTV OS and iOS, meaning “frappliances,” plug-ins that add functionality to the old Apple TV, should work as well.

‘Lowtide’ app

The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Erica Sadun, a popular iOS programmer, took a close look at the Apple TV’s software and discovered that it runs an application called “Lowtide” the software containing the set-top box’s media interface.

Sadun dug deeper and found lines of code that suggest that Lowtide might eventually be extended to other iOS devices. In other words, you should be able to share media from the Apple TV to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, whereas originally we thought we’d only be able to do the converse with AirPlay. This functionality would be comparable to a Slingbox or an EyeTV.

Lowtide isn’t readily available for Apple’s iOS mobile devices yet, but iOS developerDustin Howett has already managed to load Lowtide on an iPod touch running iOS 4.1, demonstrated in the video above. He recommended against doing it yourself, though, unless you plan on reformatting your iPhone on a regular basis just to turn it back into a phone.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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In a purported e-mail exchange published by a gossip blog, famously mercurial CEO Steve Jobs told an innocent journalism student to buzz off.

That’s the story featured in today’s Tweet of the Day, which comes from our friends at Valleywag (Gawker Media): “Steve Jobs In Email Pissing Match with College Journalism Studenthttp://gawker.com/5641211/.”

According to the author of the post, Adrien Chen,Long Island University seniorChelsea Kate Isaacs emailed Jobs on Thursday complaining that Apple’s PR department wasn’t replying to any of her e-mails asking about the use of iPads in academic settings:

Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.”

Jobs allegedly shot back a terse reply:

Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry

Incensed, Isaacs shot off another e-mail to the CEO, saying it was a common courtesy to respond to people’s questions. After a few more back-and-forths, Jobs attempted to wrap up the conversation with a deathblow:

Please leave us alone.

Cold. But just about what you’d expect from the world’s most famous ninja.

Apple did not immediately respond to my e-mail requesting comment on the e-mail exchange. Maybe I’ll send a note to Jobs myself whining about the potential impact on my salary. I have cats to feed and a gym membership to pay, you know.

Joking aside, this is especially hilarious for anyone who covers tech, because we all know that Apple’s PR team usually doesn’t respond to professional media outlets so the thought of them responding to a student puts a toothy grin on my face. But congrats, Isaacs: If your story is real, you got a response from the legend himself, which is more than what most of us tech journalists can say.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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In this week’s Gadget Lab podcast, Dylan Tweney and yours truly geek out about the potential for Steve Jobs to be a ninja, in reference to a bogus news report published by Bloomberg about the CEO attempting to smuggle ninja stars from Japan.

Apple said it never happened, but who knows maybe Steve’s just really good at hiding shuriken, like a real ninja would be?

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In more serious news, we’ve had some hands-on time with the new iPod Nano, a touchscreen media player that might even make a decent wristwatch. (Dylan’s full review on the Nano will be published soon.)

Speaking of publishing, we’re currently holding an “iPhoneography” contest, asking readers to submit their most impressive smartphone photos. There have already been a bunch of great submissions. Keep them coming! We’ll feature the best art here on Wired so you can show off to your friends.

Still images are cool, but the world of video is getting plenty interesting with gadgets like the Veebeam, a streaming media player that wirelessly hooks up your computer to a TV. Sounds like an intriguing solution for fans of online video services like Hulu or Netflix.

Like the show? You can also get theGadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you dont want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out theGadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Labvideo oraudio podcast feeds

Or listen to the audio here:

Gadget Lab audio podcast #89

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Whoosh. As fast as a ninja can swoop in for a kill, Taiwanese animators have already parodied Tuesday’s bogus news report about Steve Jobs attempting to smuggle ninja stars from Japan.

Bloomberg on Tuesday published a rumor pulled from a Japanese tabloid claiming that Jobs had vowed never to visit Japan again after airport security guards refused to let him bring ninja throwing stars onto his private jet. Apple later said the story was “pure fiction.”

Way to spoil the fun, Apple. Anyway, here’s how it might have looked if the incident had really happened:

Famous for its CG reenactments of news stories about Steve Jobs, Tiger Woods and other celebrities, Next Media Animation is a small animation outfit located in Taiwan. Wired magazine published a feature story on Next Media Animation in this month’s print edition.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Apple this morning debunked a juicy rumor that Steve Jobs vowed never to visit Japan again after security guards forced him to throw away ninja stars that he attempted to carry onto his private jet.

The rumor was first published by Japanese tabloid SPA! Magazine and reiterated by Bloomberg, who quoted a spokesman confirming that a passenger was stopped at the end of July for carrying shuriken (the Japanese word for ninja stars).

However, Apple in a statement suggested that the CEO is not a ninja after all.

“Steve did visit Japan this summer for a vacation in Kyoto, but the incidents described at the airport are pure fiction,” Apple told All Things Digital. “Steve had a great time and hopes to visit Japan again soon.

(Damn. Because ninjas are cool; and by cool I mean totally sweet.)

Apple hasn’t been showing much love to Bloomberg lately. The publication reported in July that Jobs was warned about the iPhone 4’s potential antenna problems. In a press conference related to the iPhone 4 antenna, Jobs referred to the Bloomberg report as “total bullshit.”

Photo: James Merithew/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

While winding down from Wednesday’s iPod announcements, Apple CEO Steve Jobs appears to have taken some time to respond to an e-mail criticizing the new look of the iTunes icon.

Joshua Kopac, who oversees design work for advertising firm ValuLeads, sent Jobs an e-mail blasting the new iTunes icon (right) a blue bubble containing a music note, replacing the old icon of a music note floating above a compact disc.

Jobs said on Wednesday that iTunes was ditching its old icon (pictured above) because iTunes digital music was poised to outpace sales of physical CD albums by next year.

Kopac provided the e-mail exchange to Wired.com:

Steve,

Enjoyed the presentation today. But … this new iTunes logo really sucks. You’re taking 10+ years of instant product recognition and replacing it with an unknown. Let’s both cross our fingers on this….

Jobs’ reply, terse as usual, was such:

We disagree.

Sent from my iPhone

Jobs this past year has been exceptionally chatty with customers, many of whom have reported receiving e-mail responses from the famous CEO. Wired.com reviewed Kopac’s e-mail for its authenticity, and we believe it’s real.

“It’s hideous, don’t you think?” Kopac said of the new iTunes icon in a phone interview with Wired.com. “Essentially it’s just a music note. The CD previously showed what they were about how they were connected to music.”

Kopac isn’t alone, as the new iTunes icon has already inspired a Twitter account dubbed @itunes10icon a fake persona defending itself against critics who call it ugly.

“Everyone’s so quick to judge me,” iTunes10Icon tweeted early Friday. “I don’t judge you and that shitty, hipster music you listen to.”

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Apple is preparing to announce a major revamp for the Apple TV and upgrades for the popular iPod Touch in an event scheduled for early September, according to a report.

Citing two anonymous sources, Bloomberg claims that Apple will hold a special press event on Sept. 7 in San Francisco to introduce the new products along with a new iTunes rental service for TV programs, as Wired.com’s Epicenter reported Tuesday.

Repeating previous rumors about Apple TV, Bloomberg said a new version of the device would cost $100 and include a smaller hard drive, as it will be designed primarily for streaming content from iTunes. Other reports have claimed Apple would rebrand the device iTV and ship it with its mobile operating system iOS, which could potentially mean the television device will have an app store to enhance its functionality.

Bloomberg’s report also claims Apple will announce an upgraded iPod Touch, sporting a high-resolution display like the iPhone 4. Previous rumors add that like the iPhone 4, the next iPod Touch will include dual cameras.

For several years, Apple has held an annual September event devoted to iTunes and iPods. It would make sense for Apple to unveil a new Apple TV at this year’s event, because a TV-streaming media service would likely be accompanied by a new version of iTunes capable of online storage.

It’s also likely that Apple will release a software update for iPad customers, iOS 4, which will bring multitasking capability, among other features, to the popular tablet.

Photo of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Despite last week’s flurry of bad press surrounding the iPhone 4’s antenna, Steve Jobs is still in a chatty mood about his company’s newest handset. His latest personal e-mail to a customer relates to minerals used to create the iPhone 4 and other Apple products.

In an e-mail to Jobs on Sunday evening, Wired.com reader Derick Rhodes inquired about whether Apple was using “conflict-free” materials to create the iPhone 4. Jobs shot back a reply an hour later stating that Apple was doing what it could.

Hi Steve,

I’d planned to buy a new iPhone tomorrow – my first upgrade since buying the very first version on the first day of its release – but I’m hesitant without knowing Apple’s position on sourcing the minerals in its products.

Are you currently making any effort to source conflict-free minerals? In particular, I’m concerned that Apple is getting tantalum, tungsten, tin, and gold from Eastern Congo through its suppliers.

Looking forward to your response,
Derick

Jobs’ reply:

Yes. We require all of our suppliers to certify in writing that they use conflict few materials. But honestly there is no way for them to be sure. Until someone invents a way to chemically trace minerals from the source mine, it’s a very difficult problem.

Sent from my iPhone

Rhodes was inspired to write the e-mail after reading a recent New York Times piece detailing the horrific warfare in the Congo, which sells minerals to the suppliers who create components for cellphones, computers and gaming devices. Grass-roots campaigns have dubbed minerals from such origins as “conflict minerals.”

Jobs has been known to occasionally respond to customers’ e-mails, though in recent months the CEO has sent at least one e-mail each week. Many of these e-mails make their way to blogs. Some social media experts told Wired.com that they believe Jobs’ casual replies have evolved into a PR strategy as a means for the CEO to communicate with the world.

Jobs’ e-mail to Rhodes contains a typo conflict “few” rather than conflict free presumably because he typed it with his iPhone. Wired.com was able to verify the authenticity of the letter.

Rhodes said he felt grateful about receiving an e-mail from the famous CEO.

“I thought it was really cool,” he said. “His e-mails are really concise, so I really appreciate the thought he put into it.”

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

CUPERTINO, California — Steve Jobs announced new refreshes of the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air that will feature faster processors, better graphics, and a uniform design language of aluminum and glass. Jobs also unveiled a new 24-inch cinema display made especially to accompany Mac laptops. Here are the most important gems we gleaned from the announcement:

1. New MacBook Pros

• Starts at $1999.
• 2.4 GHz processor
• 15-inch 1440 x 900 glossy display.
• 0.95 inches thick, weighs is 5.5-pounds.
• Nvidia GeForce 9400m graphics card.

2. Refreshed MacBooks

• Starts at $1299.
• 2.0 GHz processor.
• 13-inch LED-backlit 1280 x 800 glossy display.
• 0.95 inches thick, weighs is 4.5-pounds.
• Nvidia GeForce 9400m graphics card.

3. MacBook Air

• Cheaper. (The SSD model is now $2500)
• Integration of Nvidia 9400m means 4x faster graphics.
• Faster front side bus.
• Mini-DisplayPort.
• Aluminum and glass design as seen in the MacBook and MacBook Pro

4. New Cinema Display

• 24-inches
• LED backlighting.
• Integrated iSigh.
• 1920 x 1200 resolution.
• 3-port USB hub.
• Stereo speakers.
• Mini display port.
• Out in November.

Wired Liveblogging Team: Words by Mark McClusky, Photos by Jim Merithew

9:46am: Alright. In the room classical guitar music playing….weird!

We’re in the Town Hall meeting rooms at 4 Infinite Loop, at Apple HQ in Cupertino.

More classical music, cello concertos.

9:56am:  "Please silence all your cellphones as a courtesy to the presenters onstage and your fellow attendees."

Getting ready to rock here.

Although the music is still like the most mellow music in the history of any Apple event. More string quartet stuff.

We’re going for a high end vibe today, apparently.

Lights are dimming. Here we go.

Steve Jobs takes the stage, looks teh same as he did at the last event.

"We’ve got some fun stuff to share with you. Today’s about notebooks, we’ve got some new ones to show you."

"I want to zoom out and cover the state of the Mac" Tim Cook, COO at Apple to cover it.

Cook: "Last reported quarter 2.5 million Macs sold."

Been growing 2-3x the market’s growth rate.

Why are we growing faster?

10:01am: 1) Better computers. iMac, Macbook Air.

2) Better software. Leopard. "Virtually everyone agrees that Leopard is far ahead of Vista."

3) Compatibility. Boot Camp. Parallels, VMWare.

It’s removing the fear for switchers.

4) Vista. This is something we didn’t do. You may wonder why Vista
is on the list. I think it’s fair to say that Vista hasn’t lived up to
everything MSFT hoped it would. That’s opened doors to lots of people
thinking of switching.

5) Marketing.

The Mac/PC ads have struck a chord with a lot of switchers.

10:04am: They tell a story.

6) Retail stores. Started this over 7 years ago. 250 stores now in 8 countries. 400,000 visitors a day.

10:05am: 50% of the Macs they sell are people who are new to the Mac.

These are the 6 reasons we’d attribute the momentum to.

As I said, this just didn’t begin. If you look at the history, Mac has outgrown the market 14 of the last 15 quarters.

Retail share: 17.6% market share of unit sales.

Revenue share: 31.3% of retail sales.

10:07am: One out of every three dollars spent on a computer in US retail is spent on a Mac.

Education: We’ve surpassed Dell and become the top supplier of Notebooks, 39% of all notebooks.

10:09am: Many universities now require a computer. That school selects a list of computers, and the students get to pick.

Total Mac units: 4.5M in 05, 5.3M in 06, 7.1M in 07, 7.1M in three quarters so far this year.

Jobs is back: "Let’s talk about notebooks."

We want to talk about some new ways of building notebooks.

Jony Ive coming up to talk about that.

(Not much Steve today so far)

Ive: I want to tell you about a real breakthrough we’ve had on how we can design and build our notebooks.

Currently, here’s how we build our 15 inch Macbook Pro.

10:11am: When you’re designing something that’s thin and light, the trick is making it strong and robust and rigid.

The Aluminum enclosure makes a small contribution to the structure.

It’s the internal frame that holds it together. Currently magnesium die casting.

10:12am: Series of stiffening plates and frames that are
welded to the top plate. Then we add the plastic gasket between the top
and bottom of the case.

The current version is best in class in size and weight, but we’ve been looking for a better way to build a notebook.

10:14am: We had a really significant breakthrough that culminated in the Macbook Air.
You couldn’t build a product as thin, light and strong as the Air with the old way.

Rather than start with a thin piece of aluminum, and then add
material, we started with thick piece of aluminum and then remove
material.

That’s how they do the Air’s palmrest.

(Showing the milling of the Air’s top plate.)

Constantly recycling the cuttings and waste.

Start with a slab that weighs 2.5 lbs. and end up with a .25 pound
plate that forms the structure of the Macbook Air. That unibody
construction made the Air possible.

Obviously, this has relevance beyond the Air.

We’ve been working hard to design new enclosures for new notebooks.

(Jobs back onstage.)

"We also have new graphics on Notebooks."

Nvidia came to us to talk about a new graphics part. It would
combine a chipset and graphics processors all in one part for a desktop
computer. We said we’d like to use it in a notebook.

10:18am: Nvidia GeForce 9400M

Chipset and GPU on one die. 70% is GPU. 16 parallel graphics cores. 54 Gigaflops.

5 times faster than intel integrated graphics.

Call of Duty runs 6.2 times faster, Quake 4 five times faster.

82% as fast as the nvidia chip in the MacBook Pros.

10:20am: So still not the high end option, but big upgrade.

New trackpad. Multi-touch, and glass.

39% larger area. Multi touch. Glass for smooth travel. Entire
trackpad is the button. Multi button via software. new four finger
gestures.

(No physical button!)

New gestures for expose and app switching.

10:22am: So let’s take these technologies and make notebooks.

New MacBook Pro.

Black bezel.
LED backlight.

All connectors on one side.

Aluminum unibody.

Next gen graphics.

Glass trackpad.

Mini Display Port connector. This is going on all our products.

Black keyboard.

The unibody saves us 50% of the weight on the major structural parts.

Going to pass around one of the unibodies.

10:25am: Have people on the aisle to hand them out. Nice stagecraft.

Waiting to get it…

Teams of 100s of people have worked on this for many months.

10:26am: Just handled it. Super stiff, very light. Really is cool engineering.

(Our row is holding up the process…)

Lights back down.

You’re the first to get your hands on it.

We’re got the GeForce 9600M GT.

Both chips are in the computer! the 9400M, and the 9600M GT. 5 hours
of battery with the 9400, 4 with the 9600. Can switch between them.

10:29am: Superdrive.

Magsafe, ethernet, FW 800, no FW400, 2 USB 2.0 connectors, Mini display, audio in and out (Optical and digital.)

Expresscard 34.

Mini Display Port: new industry standard. Going in everything we make.

First Pro that we offer SSD on. Can access battery and drive.

10:30 802.11 N BT 2.1

.95 inches thick. Thinnest pro ever.

2 models.

$1999, 15.4 LED backlit, 2.4 Core 2 Duo, 3 MB, L2 2 GB memory, both graphics chips, 250 GB HD.

Shipping today. Should hit stores starting tomorrow.

Lots of new tech, but we’re just as proud of all the things we left out. We’re working on leaving out toxic chemicals.

First time we’ve earned an EPEAT gold environmental rating.

Now, we want to talk about the Air.

10:34am: Update with some new technologies.

Putting the 9400M in the Air, get 4x faster graphics for the air.

120GB HD instead of the 80.

And have 128 SSD as option.

Mini-display port.

799: 13.3 LED display, new graphics chip, 2 GB ram, 1.6GHZ Core 2 Duo.

10:35 2499 1.86GHZ proc, SSD drive.

New Air: early November.

Also, new 24-inch LED backlight cinema display.

Corner to corner glass.

10:36am: Cable from back — power cord, USB, mini display. Just plug the three things into your computer, and you’re set to go.

1920 x 1200 pixel, iSight and mic. Stereo speakers.

$899

10:37am: available in November.

A great companion to the MacBook Pro.

There’s one more thing. Of course, that’s the Macbook.

This is an amazing product. The best-selling Mac ever.

Entry price right now is $1099. Now, entry price is 999. We’ll just keep on selling these for a long time.

We’re heard from a lot of macbook customers. They want a metal enclosure, faster graphics, and they want LED backlit display.

These are the top three things we’ve heard, and we’re bringing them to the Macbook line.

New generation on top of the white plastic notebook.

It’s all new. Corner to corner glass, LED backlit display.

Unibody aluminum enclosure. Next gen graphics. Glass trackpad, Mini display port connector.

GeForce 9400M, 5x the performance of the old integrated graphics.

New trackpad with gestures.

New display connector.

5 hour battery life.

New display connector.

5 hour battery life.

10:41am: Also EPEAT Gold rated.

2 models.

$1299 entry level.

$1299: 13.3. display, 2.0GHZ core 2 duo, 3 MB cache. 2GB memory. 160GB HD. GeForece 9400M

$1599: 2.4 GHZ proc, 250GB HD, and backlit keyboard.

10:43am: Shipping today, should hit the stores tomorrow.
This is the sweet spot of our market. We’re going to give it to them at $1299.

Two new notebook families.

New way to build them, new graphics, new trackpad, and LED backlit displays,

Playing video, a little documentary.

Jony Ive talking…."We just decided to start over."

10:44am: (Battery display is now on the side of the computer)

Showing the manufacturing on the unibody.

13 milling operations from solid block to the finished part.

(Video is really rehashing much of what we’ve already heard.)

Oh, on the video, we just found out that the trackpad *is* a button. You press down on it to click.

So there still is a physical button — the trackpad itself.

10:50am: They’re really hitting the environmental message hard.

Ive: "I love how we don’t reserve our best ideas for our high end products."

Mark McClusky: "I haven’t said it yet, but they really are beautiful computers. Hope to get hands on with them."

But first, Q & A.

10:52am: Jobs: A few caveats: no questions about earnings, which are coming a week from today.

My blood pressure: 110/70. This is all I’m going to talk about on my health today.

Third, we’re not economists. So we’re not going to talk about the global financial meltdown.

Phil Schiller and Tim Cook up there with Steve.

Relationship with Nvidia: We’re the first to take this new chip to market. I know we’re going to be using lots of them.

10:54am: Blu-ray? Display Port?

As you know, HDMI is limited in resolution, so you can’t do our big 30-inch display.

Schiller: You can get to HDMI with connectors, we think display port is the connector of the future.

Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great from consumers, but the
licening of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting until it takes off.

Schiller: we also think we have a great HD solution in iTunes.

17-inch pro?

It will still be available, being refreshed.

Stealing demand from high-end to mid-end with the MacBook?

10:57am:

We might, but we’ll see what happens. We’ll see a refresh cycle triggered in both spaces, I think.

Size and weight difference on MacBook:

1.08 to .95 inches thick.

Weight 4.5 pounds on the MacBook.

Matte screen in the future:

We’re going straight glass screens. The vast majority prefer the glass screen. Image is crisper, colors are brighter.

You offset it by pushing a lot of light through it.

Netbook from Apple?

That’s a nascent market that’s just getting started, and we’ll see how it goes.

11:02am: Did Apple design the motherboards?

We design them all in house. (Says Steve, laughing)

Touchscreens?

We’ve experimented with it, but it hasn’t made a lot of sense to us.

Hands on area in the other room.

Posted under Gadget Reviews

There’s no doubt many are sitting on the edge of their seats over what Apple, the fashion designer of computers, will unveil at Tuesday’s special event.

To take the edge off, Edible Apple has come up with a drinking game dedicated to the occasion. Sounds like jolly good fun. I’d especially like to see #2 and #12.

See also:

• Apple’s New Notebooks: What We Should Expect
• Apple Teases New Notebook, Rumored Under $1,000
• New Leaked Shots of MacBooks and MacBook Pros
• Photos: Is This the MacBook ‘Brick’?

Steve Jobs Drinking Game [Edible Apple via Digg]

Image: Edible Apple

Posted under Gadget Reviews