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Jason Walsh, Low End Mac
Aayush Arya, Macworld
Similar to its previous Facebook page for iTunes, Apple has now launched an official App Store page where the company plans to dish out “free exclusive offers, hot tips, tutorials, and more.”
John Rizzo, Macworld
There are three good ways to share a single hard drive between Macs and PCs for general storage and backup: You can trade a USB hard drive between them; you can use a network-attached storage (NAS) device (such as Apple’s Time Capsule); and you can also use file sharing to back up data on one system to an external drive attached to another system.
Om Malik, BusinessWeek
A store redesign is the least Apple can do for the iPad, a device whose ability to sell content might bring the company a fresh bonanza.
Dave Rosenberg, CNET News
AppleInsider
A new report profiling the troubles AT&T has faced with millions of bandwidth hungry iPhone users revealed Tuesday that Apple has modified its handset to make it less taxing on its wireless partner's network.
Maggie Shiels, BBC News
Applications for the iPad will generally cost more than ones for the iPhone or iPod touch developers have said.
They blame the extra work involved in designing for the iPad and the risk factor of not yet knowing how many customers will buy the device.
Nicholas Bonsack, Macworld
This update offers two tiny fixes for Leopard and Windows users, respectively. iMovie users can rest easy with the knowledge that QuickTime 7.6.6 offers “general reliability improvements”, while Windows users should see fewer issues involving playback of h.264 content on multi-core PCs.
Heather Kelly, Macworld
Apple released iPhoto 8.1.2 on Tuesday, a minor update for iPhoto '09 users. The 13.6 MB download is mostly a bug fix, with some iPad syncing compatibility thrown in.
Matt Rosoff, CNET News
The video about music playback (labeled "iPod") did give a couple of hints on how the iPad might evolve to take advantage of all that extra screen real estate.
Sachin Agarwal, Posterous
When you launch iTunes, you see your music. When you launch iPhoto, you see your photos. When you launch Mail, you see your email. Where is it all stored? Who cares.
Andrew Leonard, Salon
People will use it, but more for their own purposes than for the likes of the New York Times or Wired. The iPad will not solve the content business model problem, but I'm betting a lot of virtual farms will be growing on these new tablets, and an awful lot of people will find something to say to each other via their shiny new touch-sensitive big screens, whether in 140 character bursts, New York Review of Books blog posts, or in the middle of Central European municipality council meetings.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Here’s why this is significant: when Chrome OS-based netbooks launch later this year they will not only compete with Windows-based netbooks, they will also compete with the iPad. The iPad, of course, will not run Flash. This could be a major differentiating factor when people are deciding which machine to buy this holiday season. Especially if those people are addicted to Farmville (which is, of course, Flash-based).
Don Reisinger, CNET News
Pennsylvania-based Seton Hill University, which has an enrollment of about 2,100, announced on Tuesday that starting fall semester, all full-time students will receive an iPad tablet device in an effort to boost learning ability and technical know-how.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
We’re T-Minus four days to the release of the iPad, and amidst all new app sneak peaks and iBooks screenshots floating around on the Web, Apple is doing some extra prep work of its own. On Tuesday, the company released iTunes 9.1, bringing iPad support to the company’s multimedia jukebox software, and improving support for Genius Mixes.
Leander Kahney, Cult of Mac
I give credit to Rubinstein, who was at the heart of the development process. He had the initial technological insight, put together the team to develop it, and led the charge to keep improving and updating the device. If there’s a godfather of the iPod, it’s Jon Rubinstein.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Fuel Collective on Monday released Permute, a new OS X application for converting media files.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
A Taiwanese chipmaker is suing Apple over the use of multitouch technology in several products, including the iPhone, iPod Touch, and forthcoming iPad.
Elan Microelectronics filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission Tuesday, accusing Apple of violating an Elan-owned patent that covers "touch-sensitive input devices with the ability to detect the simultaneous presence of two or more fingers."
John Rizzo, Macworld
As with file-sharing, remotely accessing a Mac from another Mac is relatively straightforward. The tools are built into OS X; you turn on screen-sharing in the Sharing preference pane. But setting up screen-sharing between a Mac and Windows PC takes a bit more work, and requires installing some third-party software. The biggest problem: Macs can't share screens with PCs running Windows 7 Home Premium edition.
Jeff Gamet, The Mac Observer
Apple released the official iPhone OS 3.2 SDK late on Monday, giving developers the non-beta version of the application development tools days ahead of the iPad launch.
AppleInsider
Apple has posted the terms of its firmware licensing agreement for the iPad, which restricts free operating software updates to the current major reference release.
Dave Rudden, GamePro.com
The listings for the first batch of iPad games have popped up on iPhone analysis site App Annie, finally confirming what most of us expected—yes, some games will be more expensive on the iPad.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Brad Stone, New York Times
An era is formally ending at Apple. Tony Fadell, one of the creators of the iPod and iPhone, is breaking off his nine-year affiliation with Steve Jobs & Co.
David Carr, New York Times
The speculation and long run-up to the tablet obscures the fact that things are going to move quickly once there is an embedded base of users. Publishers want get on board this fast-moving train, but are concerned they might get run over trying to hop on.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Video services company Brightcove announced Monday morning that it will support HTML5 for its customers, offering "high quality, interactive, and advertising-supported Web video experiences for HTML5-compatible devices." Two major Brightcove clients, the New York Times and Time Inc., are participating launch partners, meaning that these two sources will have the option of ditching Flash in some cases in order to be more iPad compatible.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Each tour presents a short video about one of the iPad’s apps, showing off the features of the program while a voiceover describes just how amazing and magical the whole device is.
AppleInsider
Apple on Monday released Mac OS X 10.6.3, the latest software update to its Snow Leopard operating system, bringing improvements in the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X and addressing compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications.
AppleInsider
Apple on Monday announced that the iPad will go on sale this Saturday, April 3, at all of its 221 U.S. Apple retail locations, as well as "most" Best Buy stores.
Chris McVeigh, Macworld
Mac OS X’s Address Book app is capable of printing elegant envelopes, but if you use the default settings, you’ll churn out envelopes that are workmanlike, but dull. With very little effort, you can create a custom envelope template, adjust the sizes of the address blocks, and spice up your envelope with a new font, a splash of color, or even a company logo.
John Rizzo, Macworld
Sharing files from a Mac to a Mac is simple: You enable file-sharing in the Sharing preference pane and that's it. But trying to share files from a Mac to a PC requires a few more steps. And trying to access a PC's files from a Mac is more challenging still.
Ed Moltzen, ChannelWeb
Perhaps the biggest improvement Apple can make to MobileMe will have nothing to do with the software itself, but with the April 3 launch of its iPad -- a product that should make MobileMe easier to navigate, easier to manage and more valuable to use.
Larry Dignan, ZDNet
Doug Hanchard, ZDNet
Apple is not the dominant player in the computer, consumer electronic / smart device market. There is not enough evidence for a case to be made against Apple implying it is violating antitrust law. There’s no fight over Digital Rights Management (DRM), availability of content (independents are whining a little bit) or distribution options (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google) available or competitive product offerings.
Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat
Smashwords, a site that lets writers self-publish their eBooks, said today it has signed a distribution deal with Apple to put its books into the iPad iBookstore. Mark Coker, chief executive of Smashwords, said in an email to authors that his company was working on signing the deal ever since the iPad was announced. And, yes, this means that unpublished authors can sell their work on the Apple iPad for virtually no cost.
Jin Hyun-joo, Korea Herald
The government has asked Apple Inc. to allow Koreans to use their own choice of basic search service on the iPhone, an official told The Korea Herald.
The Korea Communications Commission, the country's telecom regulator, is looking into whether the practice restricts consumer choice, the KCC official added.
Chris Nuttall, Financial Times
Mike Musgrove, Washington Post
Last week was an intense one for some of the Washington area software developers who make and sell software for Apple's App Store.
After all, Apple's latest and much-hyped product -- the slate-shaped iPad -- is almost here, and many are hoping that the device's release April 3 will bring a fresh wave of customers and purchases. To help encourage those download dollars, many have been working overtime to create and polish new versions of their wares.
Chris Matyszczyk, CNET News
Justine Hyde, Detroit Free Press
The growing acceptance of iPhones and Apple computers among corporations has been a boon for one Novi professional whose computer service business is bearing fruit in a barren economy.
Tyler Tschida, App Advice
iPad fever must have struck more people than even Apple had originally anticipated, as it appears that they have sold through their initial supply of Wi-Fi-only iPads and have been forced to push the expected shipping date for all new pre-orders to April 12th.
Daniel Lyons, Newsweek
The iPad will change the way you use computers, read books, and watch TV—as long as you're willing to do it the Steve Jobs way.
Daniel Lyons, Newsweek
"By the way, I solved the problem of battery life and [the lack of] multitasking on the iPhone."
AppleInsider
After nearly two years of criticism of its censorship of adult content in the iPhone App Store, Apple appears to be gearing up to sell explicit content for both the iPad and the iPhone and iPod touch.
Brian Lam, Gizmodo
Janine Driver then compared these two with a baseline of 30 other images of Jobs and Schmidt to come to the conclusion that the two are about 33% trustful of each other in terms of body language. And one of these men is scared of the other.
James Temple, San Francisco Chronicle
The conspicuously conspicuous nature of the meeting raises the possibility that it was a staged event -- designed specifically in the hope of sending that very message.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
Brian Lam, Gizmodo
Jobs and Schmidt, whose companies have just ended their love affair, were spotted minutes ago talking business at Calafia in the Town and Country shopping center in Palo Alto.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
When Apple first announced the iPad, it did not own the trademark on the name. Now, after some negotiating with Fujitsu, it does, and just in time for its touch-screen tablet to go on sale next week.
Ryan Faas, Computerworld
One of the questions that keeps coming up as the iPad’s April 3 launch nears is whether it will be a good fit for office use. While some analysts have raised questions about security and management issues with corporate or education uses, others have wondered what business and productivity apps might emerge, and which ones could mean success for the nascent tablet.
Ed Sutherland, Cult of Mac
Franklin Pride, Inside Mac Games
Overall, Osmos is an agreeable, addictive, and atmospheric game that pretty much anyone can pick up and play within minutes. It's not an overly innovative game in its own right, but it adds enough to make itself unique.
Vemedio
That‘s right! We did not violate any paragraph of the SDK, yet they forbid us distributing our app.
Shira Ovide and Suzanne Vranica, Wall Street Journal
A laundry list of open questions about Apple's iPad isn't keeping magazine publishers and advertisers from lining up for the launch of the tablet computer next week.
Magazine publishers see the device as crucial to their future as they scour for new ways to make money, with print advertising still under threat. Digital advertising has been a disappointment for many publishers, but with the iPad they feel they have a technology that best marries the splashy look and size of a full-page print ad with the cool interactive features of a digital ad—and the ability to count how many people saw it.
Don Nguyen & Matt Buchanan, Gizmodo
Questions. The iPad raises a lot of them. Like, "What's gonna happen when I carry it through airport security? Will I get fingerbanged by the TSA?" So, we asked the TSA: What's the official iPad airport security policy Their response simultaneously says very little, and very much.
Matthew Shaer, Christian Science Monitor
According to one report, the Wall Street Journal could charge $17.99 a month for access to an Apple iPad-friendly edition of the business broadsheet. Some bloggers say the price tag – no matter how high the quality of the iPad content – is too steep.
AppleInsider
Virtually every major browser and operating system were targets at this week's "Pwn2Own" hacking contest, with Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer 8 vulnerabilities exploited, along with flaws in the iPhone OS.
Katie Marsal, AppleInsider
Recently deceased Apple Board of Directors member Jerry York told The Wall Street Journal last year that he wished he had resigned after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs didn't publicly disclose his health issues.
Kim Heras, The Next Web
Apple’s iPad georetardation policy, where the new device will be available in key markets outside of the US a month after the US drop date, is a slap in the face for the many developers outside of the US who have made the app store what it is.
Ron Miller, DaniWeb
Touch Arcade
It appears that several iPad specific version of games have already been approved by Apple and are inadvertently appearing in Apple's iTunes Web Interface.
Michael Jeans, App Advice
And this is what you ultimately want: the ability to rent and to borrow ebooks. It’s nice to know that we will be getting NYT Best Sellers for $9.99. But how about the ability to rent them for $1.99 a week?
Bob Tedeschi, New York Times
David Gewirtz, ZDNet
Does the iPad have the Kindle beat on a much more important factor: not alienating its customers?
Dan Frakes, Macworld
This system tweak, SpaceStation, is a clever combination of an OS X launch agent and a background process that updates your Desktop image whenever you switch spaces.
Nicholas Bonsack, Macworld
Aperture 3.0.2 does add one very significant new feature, buried at the very bottom of the release notes: iPad compatibility. This will allow users to import photos from the iPad into Aperture, and to sync photos in their Aperture library with the iPad. Beyond that, there is a wealth of fixes for general stability and issues.
John Paczkowski, Wall Street Journal
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
Don Reisinger, eWeek
Whether AT&T, Google and customers like it or not, the iPhone is an extremely important device in today's mobile market. The product has single-handedly revitalized AT&T's business, changed the mobile market and ensured that consumer desire will always in some way be determined by the products Apple puts out. That kind of power can have far-reaching effects. And it means that Apple could capitalize on its standing in the marketplace and use the iPhone to impose its will.
Yukari Iwatani Kane and Joann S. Lublin, Wall Street Journal
The death of Apple Inc. director Jerome York last week has left the company with fewer independent voices, putting it in conflict with its own board's rules and renewing concerns about the board's ability to oversee strong-willed Chairman and Chief Executive Steve Jobs.
Apple's time frame for finding a new board member, and even whether it will seek one, are unclear. Apple directors haven't hired a search firm to recruit a new director, but the Cupertino, Calif., company typically prefers to tap its own network and conduct its own search, industry recruiters said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Marco Tabini, Macworld
Pro Applications Update 2010-01 includes 24 bug fixes and improvements for five different applications.
Electronista
Many titles on Apple's iBookstore will carry the same price as their Amazon Kindle equivalents when the store and the iPad go live on April 3rd, a leak may have confirmed today. A pre-release look at the store has 27 of the 32 top books costing $10, or the same as a typical Kindle book. The current list seen by AppAdvice has just one $13 title.
Brad Stone, New York Times
Apple is a notoriously secretive company. Its few public statements are dissected by its knowledgeable fans with the vigor of forensic experts. But Mr. Jobs sometimes takes a more intimate approach to information-sharing — and when his e-mail messages pop up on the computer screens of random fans and critics, they can inspire ecstasy and awe.
David Chartier, Macworld
Mariner Software’s MacJournal has long been an “iPhoto for journaling.” It's a powerful text editor that features support for multiple journals, blogging, rich media, and MobileMe sync, along with a healthy dose of iLife integration. But one realm into which it hadn't ventured is that of the iPhone—until now.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
The US Army's top tech heads met at Apple's Cupertino headquarters earlier this month to discuss the use of Apple technologies in military applications. The meeting is part of a larger initiative from RDECOM to leverage existing consumer technology for use in a "tactical environment."
Brian X. Chen, Wired News
The iPhone community has reacted strongly to the news that some app review sites have pay-to-play policies.
Tim Beyers, Motley Fool
I also get the sense that consumers have shifted expectations for what mobile devices can (and should) do, and they're increasingly confident Apple can deliver.
iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone. That's enough number of different models to replace the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, and iPod Classic.
Bryan Chaffin, The Mac Observer
It seems appropriate to us to offer Mac OS X a birthday shoutout, as it was on this day in 2001 that Apple officially shipped Mac OS X 10.0. After a multi-month public beta, Apple released the final version on a Saturday, with small-scale events at its CompUSA Stores-within-a-Store.
Nick Bilton, New York Times
Apple iPad owners will be able to buy electronic books from many places -- and Apple's iBookstore may not be the most appealing one.
Olga Kharif, BusinessWeek
Business demand for the iPad may be greater than expected. Companies and workers are buying the tablet to use it for communications and mobile productivity.
John Paczkowski, Wall Street Journal
Given Munster’s confidence in an Apple gambit in the television market, how long will it be before we see one? Two to four years, says the analyst–about the time we see an a-la-carte iTunes TV Pass.
Jefferson Graham, USA Today
The iPad, a 9.7-inch touch-screen computer that Apple touts as a multimedia e-reader and mobile Web surfer, is set to launch April 3, starting at $499. It is an understatement to say that Lahman, and thousands of other developers who created programs for the iPhone, are excited about the possibilities. "If there ever was a space to do some land-grabbing in, this is it," says Lahman, Gogii's CEO.
Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS
Nicholas Bonsack, Macworld
Want an Ivy League education but don’t want to pay Ivy League prices? That’s not exactly what you’ll get from Harvard’s offerings at iTunes U, but you’re sure to find plenty of quality, Harvard-produced content at no cost to you.
iTunesU is a great feature in the iTunes universe. Do check it out.
Giles Turnbull, Cult of Mac
Bill Snyder, InfoWorld
By keeping the platform closed, Apple deprives iPhone and iPad users of some of the best new mobile apps.
Nick Farrell, Fudzilla
Apple fanboys must be starting to wonder if Jobs' Mob has decided abandon its laptop range. With the tame Apple press pushing press releases that are full of yarns about the iPad, iPhone and dull applications that can run on the gizmos, the notebooks have been languishing undeveloped. While we can understand that Apple finds it difficult to be that much of a control freakish company and get more than one product out at a time the MacBook Pro is being flogged with an outdated Intel Core 2 Duo processor under the bonnet.
Dow Jones
The Monetary Authority of Singapore is leaning toward tightening policy a bit in April to curb inflation but hasn't decided yet, a person familiar with the central bank's thinking said Tuesday.
The MAS is leaning toward tightening because with Singapore's recovery from the global downturn "firmly in place, inflation fears are emerging," the person said. But he added that "some voices" are urging caution, given uncertainties about the durability of the global recovery, so the possibility of no action "cannot be written off."
Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle
I know my survey wasn't scientific, but it was sure fun. My totally nonobjective conclusion is that creative professionals recognize superior technology at a much higher-than-average rate.
Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo
One year and—barely—nine months. That's what it has taken Apple to invade 19 percent of the total US portable game market, while the PSP sunk from 20% to 11%, and the Nintendo dropped 5%. And that's only revenue.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
Albert Wan, Apple Matters
I'm hoping Google's recently unveiled answer to the Apple TV will eventually develop this untapped industry.
Eric Savitz, Barron's
Craig Hockenberry, furbo.org
As developers, we want to maintain a pool of testers, not devices that they test on. Devices are ephemeral: they change as new hardware is introduced and replaced. The thing that remains constant are the people who test our products.
Josh Lowensohn, CNET News
Appwhirl and Appvoyage--a pair of new companies launching here at the DemoSpring conference, are trying to make the process of creating an iPhone app and submitting it to the App Store take less than five minutes and something that requires no programming prowess whatsoever. In fact, building them takes place right in your Web browser.
Alexander Vaughn, App Advice
What started as a rumor just a few moments ago is now official, Apple is about to reverse its policy regarding contract requirements for new iPhone purchases in the US.
Motoko Rich and Brad Stone, Macworld
Apple’s iBookstore on the forthcoming iPad is set to get larger. The company has just signed a deal with the largest distributor of independent publishers to sell electronic versions of it books on the new device.
Perseus Books Group, a large independent publisher that also distributes works from 330 other smaller presses including Grove Atlantic, Harvard Business School Press, Zagat and City Lights Books, signed a deal last week with Apple, following five of the six biggest publishers that have already signed agreements with Apple.
Dan Moren, Macworld
On Monday, Apple added the ability for App Store customers to gift specific apps to others.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Have a large-screened Mac is a blessing and curse--lots of real estate, but tiny text and objects. Some suggestions for making things more visible.
Inga Saffron, Philly.com
Barely four years after Apple opened the store in the basement of the General Motors tower, Bohlin's ethereal one-story structure - a glorified vestibule, really - has become a must-see attraction as well as Apple's highest-grossing location.
Apple
"Time kills in banking, and we want to be responsive to our clients. We use iPhone as a way to give our clients access. They can talk to a decision-maker right away."
Apple
Saving lives means making fast, informed decisions. And at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, iPhone instantly delivers the information that physicians need to make critical treatment decisions. The hospital recently developed VitalHub, an in-house built iPhone app that gives physicians secure, remote access to patient records, test results, vital statistics, and medical literature from its vast internal data network. Using VitalHub on iPhone allows Mount Sinai’s clinicians to respond more rapidly to patient needs wherever and whenever they arise.
Matt Rosoff, CNET News
It's the first free app that lets users search for and play songs on demand on their iPhones. Like the desktop app, Muziic for iPhone gets around content owners' licensing restrictions by taking content from YouTube, which already has a deal with Apple to power online video on the iPhone.
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
We're tremendously sorry to report that Now Software, makers of the Now Up-to-Date & Contact software and its Now X replacement, has suspended day-to-day operations.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Spring may be in the air, but if you’ve spent a long winter packing your Mac with applications, files, and folders, there’s a good chance it could use a stern cleaning. These tips will help you do just that.
Matthew Miller, ZDNet
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Based on Mozilla, Kylo is a Mac- and Windows-compatible streaming-media browser intended for the big screen—specifically HDTVs attached to a computer. Unlike media center applications such as Boxee, Plex, and XBMC—which play local as well as Web content—Kylo is solely for playing content delivered over the Internet.
Brad Stone and Jenna Wortham, New York Times
It can be difficult to write software for a gadget without being able to touch it. But that has not stopped developers from rushing to create applications for the Apple iPad.
Danny Sullivan, AdAge
If Apple flips the search switch to something other than Google, plenty of Apple fans will be demanding a way to change that. Plenty of others may question why the change was made at all. Is it really because there's a better search engine out there for them to use? Nothing is impossible, and Apple's got an enviable reputation for game-changing. But I wouldn't bank on similar success when it comes to search.
Kevin Kelleher, GigaOm
Both companies will continue to play a major role on the mobile web, but I doubt either will ever gain the upper hand. This dramatic tension between Apple and Google may be around for a long time. So executives at both might as well get used to it.
Boston Globe
By keeping control over iPhone apps, though, Apple has taken on an enormous responsibility. By and large, the company discharges it benevolently. Even so, the dustup in Germany is a warning to would-be iPhone and iPad owners: The devices aren’t fully free as long as a single company decides what can go on them.
Stephen Totilo, Kotaku
Possibility 1: Its co-creator did spend five minutes at last week's Game Developers Conference "Indie Gamemakers Rant" to declare that he "absolutely fucking hate[s] the iPhone app store." He likened the iPhone gaming market to that served by the low-quality Tiger handheld gaming systems of the 80s and 90s, handheld devices that played crude Mega Man and Street Fighter games.
Possibility 2: Zits & Giggles' creators also kept raising the price of their game — as an experiment — up to $400 as of last week.
Ryan Block, GigaOM
The first time you walk into an Apple Store and pick up an iPad, you’ll understand the hype: Apple has managed to create a beautiful, thoughtfully designed, compelling product in a space where mediocrity was, until now, status quo. But odds are you probably won’t buy one — at least not yet. And that’s OK.
MacNN
Apple has begun offering 10-pack iPad bundles for educational institutions, with a modest discount for quantity purchases. Each package includes ten iPads paired with USB-to-Dock Connector cables and power adapters, while a single set of documentation is shipped with each order.
Mashable.com
Chris Matyszczyk, CNET News
Apple's launch ad for its "magical and revolutionary" product succeeds in attracting 2.4 million views online, making it the second-most-watched online ad.
AppleInsider
Apple on Friday afternoon opened the floodgates for developers authoring software for its forthcoming iPad, allowing them to begin submitting the applications to its App Store for approval.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Zooom is a capable substitute for one of my favorite all-time Gems, MondoMouse, letting you more-easily move and resize windows. It even offers a few unique features of its own.
Ted Landau, Macworld
A bug in iTunes 9.0.3 affects your ability to play ringtones from iTunes on your Mac.
Jon Frott, Fortune
Apple doesn’t do stock buybacks, doesn’t pay a dividend, and is sitting on $40 billion in cash. Is that a problem?
Chris Holt, Macworld
TuneUp can help fix with missing and mislabeled metadata in your iTunes tracks, but it won't find everything.
AppleInsider
An elite group of software developers afforded early access to the iPad must provide photographic evidence that they've complied with a stringent set of requirements before Apple hands one over, but for everyone else, authoring software for the upcoming device can prove to be a shot in the dark.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Don Reisinger, eWeek
Apple's lawsuit against HTC could prove to be a long-lasting headache for the Mobile industry. HTC says it will vigorously fight Apple's lawsuit and prove that it doesn't violate the company's patents. But if HTC loses, or even if some of Apple's patents infringement claims are upheld in court, the lawsuit could set the mobile industry back in a number of ways. This is how it could happen.
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
Apple updated its Web site this week with plans for youth programs the company will put on for kids.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
Sources have told The Wall Street Journal that Apple has "sold hundreds of thousands" of iPads since the device went on presale March 12. If this keeps up, Apple could end up selling more iPads in the first three months than original iPhones sold the first three months after its debut, according to those sources.
Nicholas Bonsack, Macworld
With the release of Logic Pro 9.1 back in January, Apple's pro audio software made the historic jump to becoming a 64-bit application on Snow Leopard. Thursday's 9.1.1 update smooths over a few things.
Jason Snell, Macworld
Save $130 and cut yourself off from the 3G network, or spend the money and keep your options open? For a lot of people, saving the money will be the right call. But the 3G deal is so good that I’d give those higher-cost models some careful consideration first.
Marco Tabini, Macworld
You don't want to know what potentially compromising information your browser leaves behind—and now, thanks for Washing Machine, you won't need to.
Doug McLean, TidBITS
Kudos to Pim van Bochoven for the creation of The Time Capsule Memorial Register site, where users were able to transform their individual complaints into a larger, more organized, and more powerful force that encouraged Apple to take action. While it's unfortunate that getting Apple to address a widespread problem required such arm-twisting, it's great to see the user community band together and create momentum for their cause.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Although it's not obvious how, Time Machine makes it easy to access and browse other drives containing Time Machine backups.
Nick Bilton, New York Times
Yukari Iwatani Kane and Sam Schechner, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. is still trying to secure media content for the iPad with just weeks to go before the tablet computer's release, said people familiar with the matter, as the company tempers some of its initial ambitions for the much-hyped device.
Lining up TV programming, digital newspapers and other content ahead of the iPad's April 3 release has proven difficult for Apple as some potential collaborators weigh the advantages of working with the company against the potential threats to their current sources of revenue, people familiar with the matter say.
Scott McNulty, Macworld
After months of anticipation, Amazon on Wednesday night released a beta of Kindle for Mac, software that lets you read Kindle e-books without the need for any special hardware (say, a Kindle). The free app for OS X 10.5 or later is available now in more than 100 countries, and joins the ranks of Kindle for iPhone, Kindle for PC, and Kindle for Blackberry.
Erica Sadun, TUAW
Sarah Jacobsson, PC World
While Apple's ban on screen protectors is kind of strange, it makes sense. As someone who has gone through my share of touchscreen devices (starting with my Verizon LG Dare), screen protectors are mostly just a waste of money--for both the consumer and the retailer. So perhaps Apple is just looking out for you, consumer--making sure you don't waste your money. Er . . . yeah.
Sinead Carew, Reuters
Cellphone developer HTC Corp said it is confident it can fight off a recent technology patent infringement lawsuit from iPhone maker Apple Inc and promised to issue a formal response in the next few weeks.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
James Rogers, TheStreet.com
Apple's iMac is fast emerging as the savior of the beleaguered desktop market, according to analyst firm Caris & Company.
"Believe it or not, we estimate Apple's iMac accounting for a full quarter of all desktop market growth in calendar year 2010," writes Caris analyst Robert Cihra, adding that this will help stem recent desktop declines.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Why yes, as a matter of fact, it is possible to archive your iPhone's SMS messages.
AppleInsider
Apple this week unlocked new tools that allow iPhone developers and publishers to pre-set the release date of their applications and schedule price changes.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Among the most popular accessories for the iPhone, iPod, and MacBook lines are films and coverings designed to protect the screen from scratches; some products also fight glare and offer privacy protection. However, several vendors—who wish to remain anonymous to avoid conflict with Apple—have told Macworld that Apple will no longer sell such products, or any other products that adhere to Apple devices, in either the online Apple Store or Apple retail stores.
Multiple sources have told us that, because of the difficulty of applying such films and coverings without blemishes or air bubbles, these products are returned at a higher rate than many other products.
AppleInsider
Apple this week quietly announced a handful of enhancements to its fledgeling iWork.com beta service, including the availability of new sharing features and improvements to the online service's user interface tailored for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
Dave Itzkoff, New York Times
If Steven P. Jobs wants relief from one of his more merciless satirists, a television set may not be the best place to turn. On Tuesday, the cable channel Epix and the studio Media Rights Capital said they had struck a development deal for a new series called “iCon,” to be written by Dan Lyons, a Newsweek contributor who has sent up the Apple chief executive on his popular blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, and in his novel “Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs – A Parody.”
Dan Frommer, Business Insider
One of the more interesting things you can do with Apple's iPhone and iPod touch is to use it as a remote control for other devices.
Since the iPhone App Store launched almost two years ago, developers have created hundreds of remote control applications.
AppleInsider
In addition to new App Store software, National Public Radio and The Wall Street Journal also plan to create specific versions of their Web sites completely devoid of Adobe Flash for iPad users.
Philip Michaels, Macworld
AppleInsider
Originally scheduled to ship soon after the iPad launch in April, both the keyboard dock and 10W USB power adapter for Apple's tablet computer now have estimated ship dates sometime in the month of May.
Ryan Faas, Computerworld
The Mac Mini server is a well-priced solution for small businesses.
John Letzing, Wall Street Journal
Tim Bray, a software developer employed until recently at Sun Microsystems Inc., said Monday he has joined Google as a "developer advocate" with a focus on the company's Android operating system. And he wasted no time decrying Apple's vision of the cellphone market and strategy for the iPhone.
Brier Dudley, Seattle Times
Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel and senior vice president, welcomed Apple's lawsuit as the opening salvo in a bigger effort to sort out who owns the technology used in smartphones and start collecting a standard set of royalties. License holders have been talking about this behind the scenes for some time, and Apple brought it out in the open, he said.
Peter Kafka, Wall Street Journal
One of the most interesting things about Apple’s App Store is that it is a level playing field, or at least it’s supposed to be. That said, it certainly helps to be one of the big guys.
AppleInsider
An estimated one in five iPhone developers are companies founded specifically to create applications for the iPhone, according to the latest Flurry Smartphone Industry Pulse survey. That represents the second-largest category of developers behind only preexisting online companies, including giants like Google, Facebook and eBay. Those established brands take up 22 percent of the iPhone developer share.
Seth Weintraub, Computerworld
Richard DeVaul's Linkedin status changed last month from Founder & President at AWare Technologies to Senior Prototype Engineer at Apple, Inc. This is a significant hire for Apple and one that shows the company is looking far ahead into the future of mobile computing.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Mike Elgan, Computerworld
The truth is that people don’t buy consumer electronics for the quantity of features. They buy it for the quality of experience.
Doug McLean, TidBITS
Busy people take notice: the latest version of Cultured Code's popular task manager Things is now available and comes with a big functionality boost. Version 1.3 brings a new Mixed Projects feature, enabling users to work with projects that have active, inactive, and scheduled to-dos all at once, something that wasn't previously possible.
Ramu Nagappan, Macworld
The MacBundles has put a new spin on the now well established software bundling promotion. In addition to offering the usual “batch of a dozen software titles for $50,” the MacBundles has created a BYOB (Build Your Own Bundle) option that lets you customize the package.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Three weeks ago the hard drive in my MacBook Pro went bad. So far as I can tell, I didn’t lose a single byte of data. Here’s how.
Daniel Jalkut, Red Sweater Blog
While the rest of the world iterates on existing solutions to known problems, Apple discovers and solves problems we didn’t even know we had.
The Business Insider
Apple and Google were alleged to have had a no-poaching pact for years . Now that they're enemies pitched in an Android versus iPhone battle, it appears that agreement is over.
Dan Ablan, Macworld
While most 3D programs on the market play nicely with Adobe’s industry standard apps, none have thus far created an integrated system that removes the guesswork for its users. That’s the strength of Strata Design 3D CX 6.1.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
Applications meant for the iPhone may look similar to their iPad brethren, but they present new challenges to the people creating them.
Nic Fildes, The Times
Britain’s second-largest residential broadband provider is preparing to switch its entire workforce to Apple laptops.
Apple has been a minor player in the enterprise market and does not make a priority of selling directly to corporate customers, outside the education and media sectors. But with more workers using Apple’s computers at home and downloading business applications and checking e-mails on their iPhones, the pressure on companies to switch to Apple’s products for work purposes is growing.
Olga Kharif, BusinessWeek
Demand for digital book applications on Apple devices gives developers and publishers fresh ways to make money—a mixed blessing for Amazon.
Joe Wilcox, Beta News
Apple's initial goals have little to do with protecting intellectual property as much as scaring away competitors.
Brad Stone, New York Times
So moving our music into the cloud and piping it to any device, on demand, should be easy, right?
Brad Stone and Miguel Helft, New York Times
While the discord between Apple and Google is in part philosophical and involves enormous financial stakes, the battle also has deeply personal overtones and echoes the ego-fueled fisticuffs that have long characterized technology industry feuds.
At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket.
Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal
Nearly 10,000 iPhone users were accessing the Microsoft employee email system last year, say two people who heard the estimates from senior Microsoft executives. That figure equals about 10% of the company's global work force.
Paul Suarez, PC World
According to a recently-posted FAQ, Apple will replace your iPad if it "requires service due to the battery's diminished ability to hold an electrical charge," for $99 and a $6.95 shipping fee.
Paul Farhi, Washington Post
On Friday, the first day that buyers could pre-order the device (it arrives in stores next month), Apple racked up an estimated 91,000 sales in just the first six hours of availability, putting temporarily to rest the Internet's persistent "iPad fail" meme. Analysts predict the first-year sales could reach 5 million.
Karen Gullo and Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg
Apple Inc. chief executive officer Steve Jobs won approval to tear down a mansion south of San Francisco after a state court judge overruled objections by preservationists, a city official in Woodside, California, said.
Superior Court Judge Marie Weiner in Redwood City, California, said in a March 8 ruling the mansion had been vacant since 2000 and “nothing had been done to stop the abandonment of this house,” which has led to animal infestation, vandalism, rot, mold and decay.
Susan Decker, Bloomberg
Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, asked a U.S. judge to throw out Apple Inc.’s claims that it is trying to monopolize the wireless technology market and seize access to iPhone technology.
Apple’s antitrust and breach of contract allegations are implausible and are “designed to divert attention away from free-riding off of Nokia’s intellectual property,” the Finnish company said yesterday in papers filed in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.
Eric A. Taub, New York Times
The Solar Surge, from NovoTek, uses the sun to charge an external supplemental battery enclosed in a case that surrounds the iPhone. According to the company, this is the first solar charging solution approved by Apple, and it works with the iPhone 3G and 3GS and the iPod Touch.
AppleInsider
Apple said Friday that Chief Operating Office Tim Cook was awarded nearly 22 million in stock- and cash-based compensation for his performance running the company during Steve Jobs' absence last year.
Leander Kahney, Cult of Mac
AppleInsider
Apple revealed a minor tweak to the iPad hardware when preorders began Friday morning, with a button previously designated for audio muting changed to a "screen rotation lock."
Dan Moren, Macworld
Apple didn't just put the iPad up for pre-order this morning, it also added some new information on a handful of iPad features, such as 3G plans, iBooks, and more.
Heather Kelly, Macworld
There are 2,897 photography apps available in the App Store. Glyn Evans sorts through every new release—each faux-film-filter, cropping, and tilt-shift tool—so you don't have to.
Nicole Martinelli, Cult of Mac
Chris Clark, Release Candidate One
It’s important to remember that despite Apple’s insistence that iPad apps have lush graphics evoking physical objects, there’s no license to be stupid about interaction. Good design is good whether your toolbar is leather-bound or a flat gray. Sexy graphics and animation are icing on the cake.
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA)
What did I actually get? Oh, the top-of-the-line model: The iPad 3G with 64 gigs of storage, due to ship a few weeks after the WiFi-only iPad.
Neven Mrgan’s Tumbl
Until books are completely re-imagined as objects (and I’m not holding my breath) people will expect them to look like facing pages, double-sided, picked from a shelf. Five hundred years of tradition mandates this. We start there, and we go more elaborate (as books add video, interactivity, etc.) and less so (as no-longer-necessary conventions get dropped.)
AppleInsider
The legal battle over mobile technology patents between handset makers Apple and Nokia will likely drag out for years, with both companies looking for a court hearing to be held in 2012.
Brian X. Chen, Wired News
Apple’s recent purge of sex-tinged iPhone apps, combined with its lesser-known ban of “cookie-cutter” apps, signifies the company’s new focus on quality, rather than quantity, in its App Store.
Ronald Grover, Tom Lowry and Cliff Edwards, Bloomberg
AppleInsider
Apple is set to take preorders for its highly anticipated iPad multimedia device Friday, and the company's Web site will begin accepting advance orders from customers at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, 5:30 a.m. Pacific.
Giles Turnbull, Cult of Mac
Nick Bilton, New York Times
A step-by-step guide to making a smart choice between the Wi-Fi-only and 3G versions of the tablet from Apple.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Safari 4.0.5, which is available for Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Windows users, offers several performance and stability improvements: performance improvements to Top Sites; stability improvements for third party plug-ins; stability improvements for Websites with online forms and Scalable Vector Graphics; and a fix for an issue that prevented Safari from changing settings on some Linksys routers.
Chris Holt, Macworld
I never thought I’d say this, but if you’re going to play this game, your money might be better spent on the Xbox 360 or PS3 version. A myriad of technical issues, glitches, and a complete disregard for the Mac platform makes this hard to recommend over other titles.
Chris McVeigh, Macworld
All of these utilities can help you create fun new icons that you can add to your favorite desktop files and folders, or use for social networking or other decorative purposes.
Manton Reece
Here's my summary of the show, what it took for me to be there and what I got out of it for Riverfold. This is supposed to be in the spirit of Rogue Amoeba's excellent series on Macworld, but more from a super-tiny company perspective, and just where my experience differs.
MacNN
Significant may be multiple references to multitasking, such as a code comment discussing a "multitasking dialog box." While multitasking is already possible in a limited sense on iPhones and iPods, several reports have suggested that Apple intends to extend the option to third-party apps.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
This year, the timeline appears a bit off.
Marco Arment
The interface paradigm of mimicking real-world objects shouldn’t be applied universally.
Julian Lee and Asher Moses, Sydney Morning Herald
Apple has been dealt a severe blow having been told that it no longer has a monopoly on the letter "i" as a prefix for all its products. A trademarks tribunal has knocked back Apple's bid to stop a small company from trademarking the name DOPi for use on its laptop bags and cases for Apple products.
Gregor Schauer, The Business Insider
One of the more curious things about the patent infringement lawsuit that Apple filed against HTC is why it didn't file one against Palm first. There had already been a lot of speculation about Apple suing Palm, but virtually no one saw them taking on HTC first. Interestingly, an unintended consequence of this lawsuit is that it potentially increases the value of Palm's patent portfolio, and strengthens the case for them to be acquired.
Harry McCracken, Technologizer
Richard Hallas, Inside Mac Games
Legacy of Time is not an especially lengthy or demanding game, but it remains as entertaining and immersive as when it was new. Buy it in full knowledge of what it represents, and you should certainly enjoy it.
David Chartier, Macworld
TextExpander from SmileOnMyMac is the ultimate macro tool. It lets you create snippets of frequently used text or images, then instantly paste said snippets into any app simply by typing an abbreviation. It’s like a rubber stamp for working on your Mac, and it just got a lot more...stampier—but in a good way.
Nick Spence, Macworld UK
Neil Hughes, AppleInsider
Apple -- along with AT&T, Research in Motion and a number of other mobile companies -- is the defendant in a new patent suit that covers a broad range of smartphone related technologies, including e-mail syncing and Bluetooth connectivity.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
Here are some tips for using the Dock efficiently—whether you're quickly accessing files, folders and applications or turning on and off your tunes.
AppleInsider
The announcement that the Steam gaming service and Valve's line of games -- including Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 -- are being ported to the Mac has convinced major developers like DICE and Gas Powered Games to consider the jump as well.
Kirk McElhearn, Macworld
What used to be a complex procedure is now relatively simple with iTunes 9. So make sure you’re running the latest version of iTunes on both systems, and then follow these easy steps.
Jim Dalrymple, CNET News
For laptop computers, Apple scored 86 out of a possible 100. That's 23 points above its nearest competitor, Lenovo, which scored a 63. In fact, Apple scored the highest in each of the Consumer Reports categories.
Matt Asay, CNET News
What is immediately obvious to me is that a) the technology industry is a morass of conflicting patent claims, b) since there's really no way to completely avoid others' patents the best defense is to have a hefty counterbalancing patent portfolio of one's own, and c) thus, only big companies can truly compete in a trigger-happy, patent-wielding marketplace.
Claire Cain Miller, New York Times
Some Web site founders have been surprised that their products are better suited to cellphones.
Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo
If indeed things get any worse, I hope the lawyers at the European Union, and hopefully some commission at the United States' Senate will give us the answer.
Kevin Kelleher, Slate Magazine
Apple has its reasons for introducing each of these demands in its contracts. But the least it could do is engage in an open discussion about why they are there and whether they should be changed.
Kevin Kelleher, Slate Magazine
Today Ballmer is praising Apple. Which will make it all the more painful if Apple decides to turn on Microsoft in the future.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Steve Ranger, Silicon.com
The keyboard isn't going away any time soon but there have never been so many credible rivals to its supremacy.
J.D. Biersdorfer, New York Times
The iPhone App Store has apps that allow you to remotely tap into your PC.
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA)
In the meantime, I’m preparing for the iPad.
Josh Lowensohn, CNET News
Getting one of the most advanced 3D game engines onto the iPhone has not been an easy task for Epic Games. But they're close to getting into the hands of developers, and gamers alike.
ChannelWeb
When Apple does buy companies, it's almost always tight lipped about how they'll fit into its strategy. But when you look at Apple's history, some acquisitions stand out in terms of adding important features to existing product lines or opening doors into new markets.
Tom Petruno, Los Angeles Times
Apple Inc. shares continued their run to new highs Tuesday, lifting the stock market value of the company past $200 billion for the first time. That gives Apple a seat in a very exclusive club: Only four other U.S. companies -- Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Wal-Mart Stores and Berkshire Hathaway -- have market values exceeding $200 billion.
Michael Learmonth, Advertising Age
While other big-budget TV marketers have taken to flogging their TV ads using social tools on YouTube, Twitter and elsewhere, Apple's strategy is decidedly retro. For Apple, it's all about driving viewers to Apple.com, and a potential sale; dissemination of the video itself is secondary.
Luke Plunkett, Kotaku
Eli Milchman, Cult of Mac
The new iPhone app from German-based TeamViewer complements their (also free) desktop app, which means now you can help grandma find cool Firefox plugins, or show dad how to open iTunes — while out walking your dog. For free.
Paul Bonanos, GigaOM
It’s somewhat ironic that the very company that atomized the album in order to sell individual tracks -– one of many causes for the music industry’s decade-long tailspin –- has encouraged the rebundling of songs with iTunes LP. But I’m told by an industry source who preferred to remain anonymous that iTunes LP wasn’t Apple’s idea in the first place. Rather, it’s the result of the same renegotiations between Apple and the major record labels that yielded DRM-free songs and flexible pricing early last year, a concession by Cupertino to make a gesture in favor of album sales as consumers increasingly show a preference for digital singles.
Philip Michaels, Macworld
Microsoft rolled out minor updates to the 2004 and 2008 editions of its Office suite of productivity tools on Tuesday that patch a security vulnerability in the Excel spreadsheet application.
Tom Kaneshige, CIO
Macs in the enterprise aren’t just cheaper to manage—they’re a lot cheaper, according to a new survey released today by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance.
William Porter, Macworld
A year after the release of the FileMaker 10 database program, version 11 has arrived, with new tools and great new features that make it even easier to use. FileMaker 11 also puts many cool database tricks within the reach of ordinary users. FileMaker 11 may be the best FileMaker ever.
Jonathan Schwartz, What I Couldn't Say...
In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple’s IP.” (IP = Intellectual Property = patents, trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, “I’ll just sue you.”
AppleInsider
Before Apple publicly sued HTC, the iPhone maker privately had "blunt conversations" with other smartphone companies, amounting to legal threats that have proven disruptive to the roadmaps of would-be iPhone killers, according to a new report.
In a note to investors Tuesday, analyst Yair Reiner with Oppenheimer Research said industry checks indicate that, starting in January, Apple launched a level of discussions with top handset makers to "underscore its growing displeasure at seeing iPhone-related IP infringed."
Mercedes Bunz, The Guardian
The International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) is considering making a complaint to Apple over the computer firm's request that German publisher Springer censor the naked girls on one of its iPhone apps.
Jason Perlow, ZDNet
Rather than focus on the device’s limitations I would like to focus on what the device will do for me that makes it an easy sell.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet
I like the iPad, a lot. I like the screen, I like the form-factor, heck, I even like the broad base of apps already available for it from the App Store. But there are aspects of the device that I don’t like, and which I find really hard to overlook.
Fred von Lohmann, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Overall, the Agreement is a very one-sided contract, favoring Apple at every turn. That's not unusual where end-user license agreements are concerned (and not all the terms may ultimately be enforceable), but it's a bit of a surprise as applied to the more than 100,000 developers for the iPhone, including many large public companies. How can Apple get away with it? Because it is the sole gateway to the more than 40 million iPhones that have been sold. In other words, it's only because Apple still "owns" the customer, long after each iPhone (and soon, iPad) is sold, that it is able to push these contractual terms on the entire universe of software developers for the platform.
Jefferson Graham, USA Today
Aperture 3 is fine, serious software that should put a dent into rival Adobe's very popular Lightroom -- if the demanding photographer who craves for manual controls can get past the iPhoto-like automatic tools and pre-sets. (Apple's tagline is "Pro performance with iPhoto simplicity.")
Brad Cook, The Mac Observer
Anne Mai Bertelsen, Mediapost
What's striking about these two campaigns -- for the Mac and the iPhone -- is that Apple bucks the trend of how many companies market to Boomers.
TJ Luoma, TUAW
John Paczkowski, Wall Street Journal
Scott Lowe, IGN
With the announcement of Steam for Mac, will Apple computers finally be considered a viable gaming platform?
AppleInsider
Valve revealed that it would bring its games powered by the Source engine to the Mac, including Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2. Steam users who own games for the PC will be able to download and play the same games available on the Mac for free, and the new "Steam Play" feature will allow gamers on both Windows and Mac OS X to play online, with or against each other, regardless of their system.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Espionage provides a unique twist on encrypted disk images, integrating them with Finder folders.
Gary Hamel, Wall Street Journal
Whatever you think of Apple, you have to admit it has outmaneuvered some pretty daunting competitors. My message: Apple’s unique success is a product of its unique passions. And that’s why I don’t think any other company will soon duplicate the kind of run Apple has had over the past decade—whether or not Apple produces an encore with the iPad.
Brier Dudley, Seattle Times
You don't often hear Microsoft's Steve Ballmer gushing about Apple, but he was sure being nice to his Cupertino, Calif., rival last week.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors.com
Apple just aired their first iPad commercial during the 82nd Annual Academy Awards.
Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch
In the wake of Apple’s sudden decision to remove nearly all “sexy” applications from the App Store, we’ve been hearing that the company is also clamping down on so-called “cookie-cutter” applications — iPhone apps that are built from templates using one of the many app-building services available.
Electronista
John Biggs, CrunchGear
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
With its stock trading at $218.95 a share when the markets closed Friday, Apple broke into the top five largest U.S. companies by market capitalization, right below Wal-Mart and above Berkshire Hathaway.
Mike Elgan, Computerworld
iPhones in the lives of children is, in my opinion, an underappreciated cultural phenomenon.
While nobody was looking, the iPhone became a universally understood part of children's culture. And hundreds of companies have responded by creating child-specific apps, which makes the device even more compelling to children.
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Wall Street Journal
Erik Sherman, BNET
The Apple patent infringement suit against HTC, the Taiwanese handset maker, has puzzled lots of people. It shouldn’t: The lawsuit is a sign that the mobile industry is melting down and that companies are starting to panic, even if they won’t admit it. Fear permeates the air because fundamental business practices are shaking apart and no one knows how things will come back together again.
Alexander Vaughn, App Advice
While we’ve all been wondering , without much hope, about whether the iPad will be able to use the iPhone’s data connection, it seems like none of us thought of the most obvious way to answer that, ask Steve Jobs.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
All but one of the films nominated for Academy Awards in the documentary categories were edited using Apple's Final Cut Pro.
Dan Moren, Macworld
The trouble is that even with the ability to run iPhone apps in a virtual simulator on their Mac, developers cannot fully replicate the experience of using an iPad—because nobody has one.
And yet developers are being asked to design applications to show off just how cool the device can be and enhance its appeal for millions of potential customers. It’s a little bit like being asked to decorate and furnish a room with your only reference being a photograph.
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
When Public Radio Exchange (PRX) developed the free Public Radio Player for the iPhone, the nonprofit hoped for 500,000 downloads. It now has 2.5 million. "I'm very happy with that number," says PRX executive director Jake Shapiro.
Matt Legend Gemmell
The iPad may be a larger version of the iPhone in terms of the hardware and operating system, but treating it as the same device would be foolish. It turns out that increasing the display size of touch-screen hardware can transform it into an entirely new class of device. The iPad is a productivity platform in a way that the iPhone rightly never tried to be.
AppleInsider
Apple has announced that its long-awaited iPad will be available for purchase for consumers starting on Saturday, April 3, while pre-orders for the multi-touch device will begin on March 12.
Erica Sadun, TUAW
For the moment, I'm leaning towards limiting Universal Apps to apps like games that provide substantially similar experiences on both platforms, although I'm certainly willing to be convinced otherwise. Add in a few iPad-specific changes where they apply, but if the two products have diverged enough that you have to put up a "Notice to iPhone users" about limited functionality, perhaps it's time to rethink your approach.
Roi Carthy, TechCrunch
Erica Sadun, TUAW
This newly restructured Mac Developer Program itself has been updated to match the iPhone dev program in terms of pricing and features. Formerly starting at $499/year, the new program is attractively priced at just $99 now. Missing are the high ticket items: notably Mac hardware discounts, WWDC tickets for premiere members, and the compatibility labs. It's unclear what will happen to each of these benefits, although the first two are likely dead in the water.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Apple has topped Fortune's list of the most admired companies for the third year in a row, but Google is nipping at its heels.
Farhad Manjoo, Slate Magazine
Come on, Apple: Let your engineers fight the tech battles, not lawyers.
Nick Bilton, New York Times
At first glance, it looks as if we’re in the middle of a patent lawsuit Super Bowl party. Nearly every large mobile phone player — with the exception of Microsoft, Palm and, so far, Google — has recently been involved in some sort of patent litigation regarding mobile technologies.
Carol Queen, San Francisco Chronicle
Bottom line, the stunningly sex-negative message sent by the first news of the purge was: We could be shopping the App Store appropriately for adult stuff, but no -- apparently Apple doesn't want there to be an app for that.
John Caroll, ZDNet
What Apple is trying to do is prevent companies from building phones with multi-touch user interfaces. They want to freeze innovation in the space so that they are the only ones to have the features people want. That’s wrong, plain and simple.
Niraj Chokshi, The Atlantic
Google and Apple are emerging as top contenders in the fight for the mobile advertising market.
James Kendrick, jkOnTheRun
Dan Moren, Macworld
The judge stayed litigation in the case pending the outcome of the International Trade Commission investigations that each company requested against the other.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
But what if Apple had patented these things in 1984, and had successfully protected these patents from being used by other U.S. companies? (Or at least the features and designs which weren’t derived from earlier work at Xerox.) It’s not just Microsoft that would’ve been blocked from creating Windows as we know it. A company called NeXT would have been blocked from creating NeXTStep.
Marguerite Reardon, CNET News
Apple's recent lawsuit against handset maker HTC could be the beginning as the company marks its turf in the smartphone market.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Russ Juskalian, Macworld
Aperture 3 adds new features that will impress both amateurs and professionals, and make image organization, editing, and sharing easier. But as is the case with software aimed primarily at pro users, Aperture 3 takes a powerful computer to get the most out of it.
Pete Mortensen, Cult of Mac
Thomas Fitzgerald
I have to strongly disagree with those who say that Apple defending its portfolio of patents is a bad move, or that it stifles competition. For too long Apple has been the sole source of progress in the technology world. Other companies have thrashed around stale ideas until Apple comes out with something new and then everyone flocks to copy it. Hundreds of companies use Apple’s often game changing products as a basis for their own success and why shouldn’t Apple say “enough is enough”.
Leander Kahney, Cult of Mac
Matthew Miller, ZDNet
This latest lawsuit pushed me closer to not buying one because I am getting a bit tired of Apple’s arrogance, even though I do really enjoy using some of their products.
Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon
In its zeal to purge sex apps, the consumer giant created an unexpected boom ... in sex apps
Erica Ogg, CNET News
One of the bigger surprises about the iPad when it was introduced was the sweet 3G prepaid subscription deal Apple and AT&T are offering. But it turns out, AT&T's CEO doesn't anticipate many people will even use it.
Dan Costa, PC Magazine
If Apple's target is Google's Android, why is the company going after HTC? Because HTC brought a knife to a gun fight.
Paul Escallier, Tom's Guide
All this doesn't change the fact that Apple is still charging the same price for its MacBook Pro two years later, even when component prices have fallen considerably. As this chart clearly shows, Apple's price fixing scheme is very real. We call it a scheme not because Apple denies or hides its pricing, but because it is the only computer maker to follow this totally proprietary business model.
Harry McCracken, Technologizer
So here’s the grim and dystopian scenario, and it’s grim and dystopian for Apple, not for HTC or Google: A few years from now, maybe this new case will end up looking as ill-advised as the 1988 one. Maybe Android, despite being a principal target of Apple’s wrath, will end up on most of the smartphones in the world that aren’t made by Apple–but won’t ever catch up with the iPhone in terms of general polish. Maybe people will see the iPhone as a breakthrough that lost ground to a less inventive but more pervasive competitor.
Ted Landau, The Mac Observer
After Apple released their latest 21.5" and 27" iMac upgrades, Wil Shipley discovered that the iSight camera built in to each iMac had been changed. Wil pays attention to such changes because he is the developer of Delicious Library, a program that uses the camera as a barcode reader.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Yes, you can so backup your iDisk with Time Machine.
Ramu Nagappan, Macworld
For a limited time, MacHeist is offering a bundle of seven apps for $20, and the Mac Sale has ten apps for $50.
Jason Walsh, Low End Mac
Owen Fletcher and Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service
China Unicom, the only mobile network operator selling iPhones in China, is in talks with Apple to sell a version of the popular smartphone with Wi-Fi, something the companies could not do previously due to government regulations.
Joe Kissell, Macworld
If you don't want to spend the money for MobileMe just to be able to sync contacts and calendars among various Macs and iPhones, you can get the same results for free using Google.
Sam Diaz, ZDNet
The best thing about this game of chess is that, with every move, the players are trying to out-do each other to make themselves look more appealing to end-users. In reality, their game of chess makes winners out of those users - people like us.
Dan Frommer, The Business Insider
In terms of perception, it's really the latest sign from Apple that it is terrified of Google, whose Android operating system is becoming a formidable rival in the smartphone industry. This amid broader, intensifying competition between the two companies.
Wil Shipley, Call Me Fishmeal.
If Apple becomes a company that uses its might to quash competition instead of using its brains, it's going to find the brainiest people will slowly stop working there. You know this, you watched it happen at Microsoft. Enforcing patents isn't a good long-term play: it's the beginning of the end of the creative Apple we both love.
Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service
Smartphone maker High Tech Computer (HTC) on Wednesday defended itself against accusations of patent infringement by Apple, saying it develops its own technology.
Arik Hesseldahl, BusinessWeek
Apple's attempt to block the import of smartphones made by HTC Corp. underscores the growing prominence of the International Trade Commission in settling patent disputes over smartphones, one of the fastest-growing areas in technology.
David Morgenstern, ZDNet
In the world of legal rights, whether patent or copyrights, the owner must defend its rights or lose them. According to Apple’s patent complaint filed on Tuesday, Cupertino has other actions already moving along in the courts.
Daryl Deino, Examiner.com
Apple store employees may complain that they are underpaid. However, they will get the first glimpse of the hottest gadget in years, the iPad, on March 10. This will be around the time training begins for the device.
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
In essence, a month before automatic renewal, Apple charges your credit card $1.00 to verify that it's still good, and 3 to 5 business days later, refunds the money to your card. So most people don't even see the charge. It was only because Citibank's fraud warning system noticed that we were alerted.
Nick Bilton, New York Times
The lawsuit that Apple filed on Tuesday against HTC, the mobile handset maker, opens up a lot of questions about the future of Android phones like the Nexus One and the cellphone market in general. But it could also have an effect on consumers, specifically those who have purchased HTC Android phones.
Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch
As expected, this lawsuit is about Android. HTC, of course, is one of the largest manufacturers of Android handsets.
Darren Murph, Engadget
Erica Ogg, CNET News
As Apple and HTC prepare to duke it out inside a courtroom, fans of both companies' smartphones are taking sides on the web.
John Paczkowski, Wall Street Journal
Named as exhibits in the litigation: A handful of Android and Windows Mobile devices, including Google’s (GOOG) Nexus One, the T-Mobile G1, the Droid Eris, the Touch Diamond, the Touch Pro2 and the Imagio.
Jeffery Battersby, Macworld
LifeAssets 1.0 offers an interesting twist on the way you view and plan for your financial future. It sets your focus forward, so that you can see where your financial future lies.
AppleInsider
Apple on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against rival handset maker HTC over the alleged infringement of 20 patents related to the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.
The suit was officially filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission and in a U.S. District Court in Delaware. Exactly what patents HTC is alleged to have violated were not detailed.
Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Former Mozilla security chief Window Snyder has been hired by Apple.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
The addition of Skype to new TVs from Samsung, Panasonic, and LG could bring about the long-predicted videophone.
Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle
They say the best things in life are free, and here are four truly useful Mac software offerings that are absolutely free and unbelievably useful.
John Herrman, Gizmodo
People rarely talk about iPhone app piracy, but when they do, it sounds devastating: 90% piracy rates, $450 million in lost sales, etc. Here's the truth: App Store piracy isn't a big deal—and it never will be.
John Biggs, CrunchGear
Seriously, Apple, WTDuck?
Luke Westaway, CNET UK
Ryan Naraine, ZDNet
Over the last two weeks, security researchers have reported eight different zero-day vulnerabilities in Apple’s Safari browser.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Is there a way to eject volumes, drives, or discs without also closing Finder windows? Sure. Just know what to select.
AppleInsider
The director of technology for Apple's MobileMe service has departed to become the chief technology officer at Thumbplay, a U.S. media subscription service, the company revealed Monday.
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
Some Apple suppliers in China used underage labor, Apple looked into it and took care of the problem. Please move along.
Ted Samson, Infoworld
Apple shareholders this week rejected two proposals that would have forced the company to add superfluous layers of bureaucracy to the company's already-effective sustainability efforts.
Christopher Harris, School Library Journal
With the introduction of its nicely sized tablet with a beautiful color display, fully functional onscreen and external keyboards, and an impressive 10-hour battery life, Apple answered two of the three major arguments against ebooks.
Shawn Blanc
Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News
iStanford, the iPhone app that's making the paper campus map obsolete, has caught on in a big way since its introduction at Stanford University in 2008.
Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News
A survey of about 200 Stanford University undergraduates revealed that almost a third worry about becoming addicted to their iPhones, think they may be using them too much and dread becoming "one of those iPhone people."
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