Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)
Starbucks is launching a store-finding and menu-information application for the iPhone, and is testing a second app that will let customers use the phone as their Starbucks card.
So here’s the thing about the smartphone market: there are way too many of them.
The year 2010, JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson asserted in a report this morning, “should be the year of the shakeout in smartphones.” He believes most of the market share and carrier focus will consolidate around three vendors.
The “iTunes LP” is just one of the many new iTunes features revealed yesterday during Apple’s announcement. But the iTunes LP, unlike the other new features which get to exist as simple and fun enhancements in iTunes 9, has a heavy burden on its shoulders.
So Apple announced a new iPod lineup on Wednesday.
Though technically he returned to work two months ago, it was as the host of Wednesday’s Apple music event that Steve Jobs publicly retook the reins of the company he founded.
Eight months ago David Papazian was on top of the world. His company, Mobigame, had just released its first videogame for the iPhone. In the space of just a few weeks it had won two prestigious awards. The past two years of early mornings, late nights and tireless endeavour were set to pay off; the sacrifices had been worth it, the indie developer dream was coming true. Today, he sits dejected and worn.
Over the past three decades, a few titanic rivalries have defined the technology industry’s megatrends, ultimately determining which products eventually end up in consumers’ and companies’ hands. Now, adding to the annals of competition that include Microsoft’s clashes with Apple in the ’80s, IBM in the ’90s, and Google in this decade, the new defining rivalry in tech may be between Google and Apple.
The iTunes music store sells single songs at approximately the same price, with artist presented in more or less the same way. Apple’s App Store, however, is still somewhat like the wild west (at least as far as music goes), where the rules are being made up in real time.
I continue to think of my iPhone not as a phone but as a personal computer. Which is why I continue to be so nonplussed about Apple’s barring of some applications on the grounds that they compete with its own apps, and others at (reportedly) the behest of AT&T.
Way back in what we called “the 80s,” my father bought a VCR. Its magic let us record TV shows for later viewing, and we loved it. In fact, VCRs did 4 things: 1) Record the show you were watching, 2) Record a show that was airing on a channel other than the one you were watching, 3) Watch videos previously recorded (your own or commercial movies), 4) Record shows all on its own.
The news this week that Napster is relaunching with a $5-a-month subscription plan that includes 5 free MP3 downloads would appear to be a troubling development for RealNetworks’ rival Rhapsody service, which will set you back $13 a month for a streaming service that lacks the free MP3s. It is also no doubt irritating to Real that it comes from a company that is now a unit of Best Buy: in the past, the Best Buy digital music store was a re-branded version of Rhapsody, which came pre-loaded on non-Zune, non-iPod music players sold by the retailer.
When the University of Missouri School of Journalism’s student newspaper reported that incoming students of the journalism program would be required to purchase either an iPhone or an iPod Touch, it touched off a debate about whether universities can require specific tech purchases or whether certain companies can have a tech “monopoly” on campuses.
If you were buying 30,000 songs, would you rather pay $30,000 or $15 per month?
Apple’s iTunes makes saving music from CDs onto one’s personal computer a simple process, but doing the same with a DVD is much more complicated endeavor. Most DVDs are encoded with digital rights management technology to prevent copying.
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