01.09.08 - 01:59pm
After numerous allegation against Apple, fines and upcoming lawsuits Apple has chosen to reduce the price of music downloads in the U.K. bringing an end to the European Commissions anti-trust investigation against Apple.
The U.K. was one of the few left out of standardized pricing that Apple had already set in Europe as a result of complaints from people traveling from country to country and getting different pricing wherever they went. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain currently have unified iTunes pricing. The U.K. however still had a .10 cent higher price per song, due to their use of the pound rather then the euro.
“This is an important step towards a pan-European marketplace for music,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We hope every major record label will take a pan-European view of pricing.”
Category: itunes | Tags: apple, europe, itunes, uk | Be the First to Comment »
01.08.08 - 11:35am
Apple usually reserves their new products for the MacWorld Exposition coming up next week, but this year they let two products out a week early releasing them instead during the famed CES convention in Las Vegas.
The new Xserve server and a new Mac Pro computer were both announced yesterday with shipping of the products beginning today, Tuesday.
Apple says the new 1U rachmount Xserve is twice the speed of the previous Xserve. It features a high-bandwidth hardware, dual independent 1600 MHz front side buses and expanded memory up to 32GB of 800MHz memory. This increases the memory over the Xserve’s predecessor by 64 percent. The bandwidth is four times the old and also supports the latest high-bandwidth expansion cards. Included as well is built-in accelerated graphics compilable with a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display. Pricing for the new Xserve begins at $2,999.
Category: apple | Tags: apple, mac-pro, xserve | Be the First to Comment »
12.27.07 - 03:05pm
Apple has just filed a new patent that may reveal what the iPhone could become - much more than just a mobile computer, but also a new way of getting through life. The iPhone could also become a purchaser of products at McDonads, Starbucks and more.
The patent says “A processing system is described that includes a wireless communication interface that wirelessly communicates with one or more wireless client devices in the vicinity of an establishment. The wireless communication interface receives a remote order corresponding to an item selected by at least one of the wireless client devices. A local server computer located in proximity to the establishment generates instructions for processing the remote order received from the wireless communication interface. The local server computer then passes the processing instructions to an order processing queue in preparation for processing of the remote order.”
Category: apple | Tags: apple, iPhone, patent, starbucks | Be the First to Comment »
12.27.07 - 01:28pm
Apple has made its first deal in online movie rentals through iTunes with News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox.
The record breaking deal should boost lagging sales of movies from iTunes and Apple TV, as well as set the precedent for more deals should it prove successful.
Users will be able to rent a film from Fox with a limited amount of time to watch it before the DRM encoding makes it void.
Apple has been trying to make the landmark deal with movie studios for some time now and has finally succeeded. The full details involved in the deal are expected to be announced at MacWorld on January 14th.
Category: apple | Tags: apple, fox, itunes, movies | Be the First to Comment »
12.26.07 - 04:18pm
The iPhone has been heralded as the “Invention of the Year” by Time magazine and had an utterly superb phone web browser
with a beauty no one can deny. Nonetheless it has often been criticized for its lack of business use. Avaya Inc. is about to bridge the iPhone with businesses allowing it to connect seamlessly to the business network while at work.
Avaya, is a privately held telecommunication company that specializes in enterprise telephone and call center technology. With the new downloadable program which is set to come out in the UK at the beginning of 2008, business users will be able to go to work and connect the iPhone into their business network. This will allow for the iPhone to take over the typical desk phone. It can then be used for conference calls, call transfer, abbreviated dialing and anything else the desk phones can do.
Category: iPhone, iphone accessories | Tags: apple, avaya, business, iPhone | Be the First to Comment »
12.19.07 - 12:24pm
Apple is looking to cross the continents and traverse into Asian waters seeking deals in China, South Korea and now in Japan.
Japans market, like China’s and South Korea’s is proving to be a hard one for Apple to cinch a deal with the incredible revenue sharing of iPhone subscriptions that Apple wants. The fact that South Korean talks have been ongoing since August and no deal has been made yet in China, where Apple has been under negotiations since November, can’t help matters. In Japan, however Apple is using free commerce to its advantage and pitting two rival Japanese companies against each other in an effort to get the deal Apple wants.
NTT DoCoMo would be the obvious choice for Apple as they control the market with half the overall share. They are known for being the first to market the hottest high end phones. Softband is the other mobile network Apple is in talks with. Softband is known for being behind on their phones and technology. Getting the iPhone would be a huge push for them. Most likely though, Apple is just trying to use them to force NTT DoCoMO into a deal.
Category: apple, iPhone | Tags: apple, iPhone, japan | Be the First to Comment »
12.18.07 - 02:05pm
Apple has introduced new iPods for the holiday quarter since the iPod revolution first began in 2001. This year, however was especially significant as Apple brought video to the nano and added touch to the Touch introducing “radically different” iPods.
Due to the complexity of the new iPods and the insurgent high demand analyst Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray says that he believes Apple may have sold 24 to 25 million iPods in the first two months of the December quarter, beating Wall Street’s consensus of approximately 23 million.
“While it is too early to make a definitive call on December quarter iPod results, we have analyzed the first two months of NPD data (October and November) for the quarter and found that it suggests iPod units of 24m-25m,” said Munster.
“Apple has announced new iPods in September for the last three years, but this year’s models are significantly more innovative than the past upgrades,” Munster said. “As such, we believe the new iPods are driving sales earlier in the December quarter (in October and November) to a greater degree than in the past.”
Category: apple, iPod | Tags: apple, ipods, piper-jaffray, quarter-sales | Be the First to Comment »
12.18.07 - 11:53am
Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most popular video games in the world selling over 45 million copies, since its 1991 introduction. A Japanese game, the Hedgehog called Rocket Sonic is the main character who performs hair-raising loop-de-loops and dizzy dives as he tries to prevent Dr. Eggmans from achieving world domination.
The ever so popular game has been tweaked so Rocket Sonic can perform all his daring escapades on the famous iPod. “We thought Sonic on the iPod was a great fit, and fortunately Apple felt the same way,” says Simon Jeffery, president and COO of Sega of America.
Rocket Sonic is not alone in becoming an iPod performer. Peggle is also available for play. Peggle, named by MSNBC in August 2007, as one of the “Top 5 most addictive computer games of all time”, features a colorful 2D background filled with different colored “pegs”. The objective is to complete 55 stages by removing all the orange pegs by bouncing the balls off other pegs and obstacles before one runs out of balls.
Category: itunes | Tags: apple, itunes, peggle, sonic | Be the First to Comment »
12.14.07 - 02:17pm
Every year Apple blogs are flooded with speculation as to what will be released at the Apple MacWorld exposition in January. Apple, who keeps absolutely mum on anything up and coming, creates so much rampant speculation that they generate approximately 700 million in free advertising each year. MacWorld is one of the most talked about events as this is where Apple usually showcases any new products.
Expected for MacWorld this year is a new skinny, skinny, laptop. Fifty percent thinner than the current model the laptop is expected to have a 12-13 inch screen, optional flash memory, LED backlighting and no optical drive. The price is expected to run around $1500, more expensive than average, but you will get all the great normal Mac software such as iMovie already included. Programs that would cost you hundreds of dollars a piece to buy and put on a regular computer. Whether or not it will support a touch sensitive screen similar to the Touch is up in the air and most likely just a “please we want that.”
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12.12.07 - 12:56pm
Nokia currently controls 39 percent of the 1.1 billion global mobile phone business, and own 50 percent of the worlds smartphones. They are a force to be reckoned with and they are putting up the largest battle of all the mobile phone operators against Apple’s iPhone and Googles new open platformed Android.
“It’s very clear that Apple, Google, and other players are bringing in a lot of new directions,” Nokia’s CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in an interview with the New York Times. “Convergence is a nice, dandy word, but it means industries colliding.”
Kallasvuo says that Nokia is poised to continue their domination in spite of the drop in market share in the U.S. Nokia now only holds 10 percent of the U.S. market down from 28 percent five years ago. While Kallasvo said they are not going to outright copy Apple’s business of sharing revenue he did say they are looking to expand with a possible shared turnover model in new services provided. “We are interested in Internet communities, navigation and all kinds of entertainment. We will look into these areas and strike when an opportunity arises,” said Kallasvuo.
Category: iPhone | Tags: apple, iPhone, nokia | Be the First to Comment »
