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Softpedia
iPhone developers are being encouraged to go over the iOS 4 Readiness Checklist in what is Apple’s way of transitioning everyone (from programmers to consumers) to the next-generation of iPhone software. Developers are being told that all new apps and updates must be built with SDK 4 starting now, and that iOS 2.0 software is no longer supported in the App Store.
Josh Lowensohn, CNET News
Developing apps, and games in particular, for the iPad, is very different than it is on the iPhone. Not in the software or familiarity when coming from the iPhone, but in how the game ends up playing on a bigger screen.
Aharon Etengoff, TG Daily
Apple's difficulty in satisfying the massive demand for its iPhone 4 has reportedly prompted frustrated consumers to consider purchasing alternative smartphone models.
Ed Oswald, Technologizer
California-based law firm Kershaw, Cuttiner, and Ratinoff is asking for customers with iPhone 4 signal reception issues to contact it, likely signaling the beginnings of a class-action suit against Apple over the issues.
AFP
The latest version of Apple's iPhone is on sale in Beijing's electronic stores and luxury hotels, months before the official launch of the trendy smartphone in China, state media said Tuesday.
Mike Prospero, Laptop Magazine
Steve Jobs was right to limit Facetime to Wi-Fi connections. Audio came through only in patches, and video was like a slideshow at best.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
For US$9.99 per month, you'll get you ad-supported access to the full current seasons of most shows and full back seasons of select shows. Plus, brand new Hulu Plus apps for the iPhone and the iPad will bring the television to you.
Joe Aimonetti, CNET News
Details of the issue vary throughout the forum posts, but essentially, the proximity sensor (the one that shuts down the screen functionality when your iPhone is close to your face or in your pocket) seems to be malfunctioning.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
The first thing you notice is that the iPhone 4 feels smaller in hand — the decrease in width, even more so than thickness, is quite noticeable. It feels tight.
Then you turn it on, and you see the screen.
Richard Gaywood, Fscked.co.uk
If you’re in a strong signal area, you may not ever see the effect, because even with the attenuation from holding the phone you’ll still have plenty of signal left over. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to be affected by the issue unless you are never, ever in a weaker signal area — and the second test above suggests that 3G data transfer rates are still going to be slower anyway.
It might (might) be fixable in software. People are talking about things like calibration faults in the signal strength meter, or some sort of dynamic frequency allocation that doesn’t square with any bit of the GSM spec I’ve ever been exposed too. I’m uncertain about this. It doesn’t feel like a software fault to me.
BGR
Clearly Apple is taking the position that nothing is wrong with the antenna, although that’s not surprising since most companies will never willingly admit their flagship product is potentially suffering from an unfixable flaw.
Brooke Crothers, CNET News
Luxury ultrathin laptops from Apple and Dell were once ultra-hip. Now they quietly age at Apple and Dell online stores.
Rick LePage, Macworld
The image-processing enhancements in Lightroom 3 are impressive, and only solidify the program’s position as one of the best tools for managing, editing, and publishing photos.
Kathrin Hille, Financial Times
Foxconn is preparing to shift part of its production of Apple gadgets from Shenzhen to north and central China, amid a greater willingness from the US company to work with factories away from its long-time Chinese hub.
The move, aimed at containing costs, follows drastic wage hikes for large parts of the workforce of the Taiwanese-owned company, after a string of worker suicides and widening labour unrest.
Therese Poletti, MarketWatch
Apple Inc. may be able to line up customers around the block, but even the iconic technology company can no longer afford clumsy product launches in the hotly competitive smart phone field.
Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
If a quick glance at the iPhone 4’s new features inspires initial cynicism, spending five days immersed in the actual device makes another impression entirely. For the first time since 2007, I feel as though the device I’m carrying isn’t merely an improved iPhone, but a truly new one.
Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC
Apple's latest gadget is a useful mobile video production device. Pity it's not so good at making phone calls.
Scott Grizzle, App Advice
Ever since the first iPhone, there has been a “Notes” application. However, the ability to save and manage notes has always been fairly minimal. Now, with iOS4, Gmail users can easily manage their notes, even across multiple Gmail accounts.
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
"Until someone invents a way to chemically trace minerals from the source mine, it’s a very difficult problem."
AppleInsider
A report outlining advertisers' plans for Apple's new iAd program indicates that the new interactive ads won't reach iPad users until iOS 4 becomes available for it in November.
Ina Fried, CNET News
Samara Lynn, PC Magazine
One of the most aesthetically beautiful business servers we've ever seen, this tiny, peppy machine makes for a quiet desktop server that's perfect for light-duty home and SMB server tasks.
Yukari Iwatani Kane, Wall Street Journal
For most designers, there’s always a compromise that they have to strike between the look and feel of a product and its function. But Apple is a company that is renowned for its obsession with design, and designers like Mr. Rolston and Mr. Brunner believe that this was a case in which aesthetics may have won over function.
Still, neither designer believes that the problem is a huge one. “Is this really that big of an issue? I’m not convinced it is yet,” says Mr. Rolston.
Michael Kassner, Tech Republic
As you can see, there are many questions left unanswered. Yet, embedding advertisements in mobile phone applications is a game changer and not going away.
David Neal, V3.co.uk
Apple has released guidance aimed at enterprises looking to use the iPhone 4 for internal video calls. The company recommends that enterprises open up a number of their network ports in order to take advantage of the phone's FaceTime feature.
MacNN
A number of iPhone 4 owners are experiencing problems with the device's proximity sensor, Apple's support forums reveal. The touchscreen may turn back on after very little movement, and even rapidly switch on and off.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
The Kindle app is seeing some good support from Amazon -- the most recent update not only enables the Retina Display on the iPhone 4, but adds both video and audio to the offerings in certain titles.
David Dahlquist, Macworld
With the version 2 update, you can pause live radio stations, and pick back up where you left off. You can also use a new Next Song command to skip songs you don't like, or jump backwards to catch something you might have missed, thanks to Pulsar’s enhanced buffering capabilities.
Whitson Gordon, Macworld
Dave Caolo, TUAW
A number of stereo units from Pioneer, JVC and others are giving a "device incompatible" message when connected to an iPhone running iOS 4. Note that the 3G and 3GS phones in question worked fine with these stereos when they were on iOS 3.1.3. Of course, the iPhone 4 only runs iOS 4, but since the older phones are also affected it seems likely that this is a software issue, not a hardware one.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Kabuki Vision on Monday introduced DocsPortal 1.0 for iPad. The app integrates with your Google Docs account, letting you browse, search, and view all your documents therein—including word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other files you store with Google.
Jason Snell, Macworld
The iPhone 4 is, in many ways, the best iPhone Apple has ever made. It’s faster than the 3GS, yes, but it’s the screen that is the biggest leap forward in quality. The new face-forward camera not only works well with FaceTime, but opens the door to all sorts of other videoconferencing possibilities in the future. And the rear-facing camera has taken a big step forward from the 3GS, offering quite high-quality stills and Flip-class HD video.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
As far as the iPad is concerned, the iPhone 4 (and earlier iPhones, for that matter) is just another camera.
David Chartier, Macworld
Social media clients are almost a dime a dozen these days, but a surprising few of them are designed to help businesses tackle Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the social Web. HootSuite is one of these chosen few, and it has recently undergone a major upgrade in the name of simplicity, compatibility, and speed.
Martin Peers, Wall Street Journal
The real question has to be whether concerns about the antenna, combined with carrier congestion issues, will slow uptake of the iPhone among customers not yet converted to Apple worship.
Joe White, App Advice
After a massive 600,000 pre-orders were taken for Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone 4, an unbelievable 1.1 million units went on to be sold launch weekend. That makes a grand total of 1.7 million iPhone 4 units, and the Sunday sales figures haven’t even been totaled up yet!
David Morgenstern, ZDNet
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
During our time testing the device, numerous peers of ours who had no intention of getting an iPhone 4 began reconsidering it after seeing the screen—this was definitely the main reason why people started changing their minds. At the same time, the signal/antenna issue appears to be a serious concern; we hesitate to straight-up recommend the iPhone for this reason, though in the real world, it may not affect you as much.
Arik Hesseldahl, Bloomberg BusinessWeek
The rise of the iPhone notwithstanding, the Mac is still a big part of Apple, which dropped "Computer" from its name in 2007. Macs sell for an average price of $1,300 with 30 percent gross margins, Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, said. By comparison, consumer-grade Windows machines sell for half that, about $687, according to research firm IDC.
That's why Apple's relatively small slice of the U.S. market - only 6.4 percent in the first quarter of 2010, up from 4 percent in 2005 - doesn't matter much. For every half-point in market share Apple takes from Hewlett-Packard, Dell and all the other Windows vendors, it boosts its sales by about $3 billion, Munster says.
Sarah Marsh, Reuters
Apple Inc must "immediately make clear" what data it collects from users of its products and for what purposes, Germany's justice minister was quoted as saying by Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday.
"Users of iPhones and other GPS devices must be aware of what kind of information about them is being collected," Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told the German weekly.
Electronista
Apple chief Steve Jobs may have confirmed a firmware-based solution to the iPhone 4's supposed reception problems through an e-mail to a fan. The executive told the reader that "there is no reception issue" but to "stay tuned" for more.
Alison Flood, The Guardian
Authors such as Iain Banks and Martina Cole are increasingly supplementing book releases with apps full of bonus material.
Thomas Ricker, Engadget
Mike Elgan, Computerworld
The iPhone 4 is a marvel of industrial design. Form and function are united beautifully, and it's an incredibly useful phone. I bought one. I love it.
But three design decisions by Apple demonstrate a new boldness, a new level of power by hard-core designers inside Apple -- and a corresponding weakness by engineers and usability specialists.
Charles Arthur, The Guardian
Want to know the must-have item for owners of the new iPhone 4? A bit of duct tape – or a dab of nail polish.
Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine
Having never owned an iPhone, I learned a lot about the iPhone 4 and the iPhone ecosystem. Overall, the iPhone is everything Steve Jobs promised and probably a whole lot more than what I got to try out over the last day. Even with the "Death Grip" issue, I think Apple has another winner on its hands.
Telegraph
Lauren Milsom, of the Left-Handed Club, which boasts 90,000 members and represents 10 per cent of the population who are left-handed, branded it a ''design flaw''.
She said: ''It seems ludicrous to suggest that 10 per cent of potential users should be told they have to adopt a less natural hand hold to use this latest technology."
John Martellaro, The Mac Observer
This coherence of OS vision is just what Mr. Jobs needs to put the final nail in the coffin of Windows.
Jason Hiner, TechRepublic
The primary source of the iPhone 4’s speed boost is the upgrade to HSDPA (which began with the iPhone 3GS) and HSUPA (which is new to the iPhone 4).
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Simply dial 1-888-FACETIME, and after a moment or two, an Apple employee will answer and show you how it works as well as "a few advanced tips."
Jeffrey Battersby, Macworld
An overview of personal finance tools for the desktop, iPhone, and Web.
Jackie Dove, Macworld
FontLab has released Fontographer 5, a new version of its font editing application. This version of the software—which lets you create, customize, fine-tune, fix, and convert fonts to different formats—is specifically designed for desktop publishers who need quick solutions to font problems.
Joe Wilcox, International Business Times
Apple shoppers came to spend money on iPhone 4, not get freebees.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Reports of call and data signal strength problems in the new iPhone 4 have a basis in fact, a hardware expert said Thursday.
BBC News
Steve Jobs responded to a query about the problem from one owner by saying: "Just avoid holding it in that way."
The official advice is to "avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band".
Melissa J. Perenson, PC World
As it turns out, the way Apple tackles multitasking is fundamentally different from how Google handles the job--and that difference speaks volumes about Apple's mature interface polish as opposed to Google's work-in-progress, developer-optimized approach.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Joshua Topolsky, Engadget
Apple cops to the fact there are reception issues with the new iPhone -- namely, that if you cover the bottom-left corner of the phone and bridge the gap between the notch there with your naked flesh, you could see some signal degradation. Yes, you read that right: it's not a software or production issue, simply a matter of the physical location of your hand in regards to the phone's antenna. The company's suggested fix? Move your hand position, or get a case which covers that part of the phone, thus breaking contact.
P. J. Connolly, eWeek
Christopher Breen, Macworld
I’ve had a couple of hours to play with iMovie for iPhone and these are my impressions.
Joe White, App Advice
"Yep, someday."
Dan Moren, Macworld
Will FaceTime really get video-calling to catch on? It’s hard to say, but with the smooth, slick it-just-works way that Apple’s implemented FaceTime, it will certainly be tough to point a finger at the technology as the culprit.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Twitterrific 3.0 combines the company’s previous three offerings (Twitterrific for iPad, Twitterrific for iPhone, and Twitterrific Premium for iPhone) into a single ad-supported universal application. In addition, the app has been updated to take advantage of iOS 4’s fast app-switching and the iPhone 4’s new Retina display.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Despite the crafty design, it turns out that some users are experiencing a problem where holding the phone a certain way in the left hand can significantly reduce 3G signal strength.
AppleInsider
"Apple is using a bonding agent called Organofunctional Silane Z-6011 to bond the layers of glass," austingaijin wrote. "Apparently, Apple (or more likely Foxconn) is shipping these products so quickly that the evaporation process is not complete. However, after one or two days of use, especially with the screen on, will complete the evaporation process and the yellow 'blotches' will disappear."
Erica Ogg, CNET News
On Thursday, coinciding with Apple's high-profile first day sale of the iPhone 4, Reps. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) announced that they have sent a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs expressing their concerns and asking for answers regarding reports that Apple is gathering location information on its customers.
Brennon Slattery, Macworld
Microsoft updated its Bing iPhone app, adding social network integration, visual scanning, and restructured entertainment sections that may lure people away from Google.
Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post
Nick Bilton, New York Times
The suit, presented as a proposed class action lawsuit, currently names three individuals who claim that Apple and AT&T “baited” them into purchasing an iPad 3G with the promises of a flexible unlimited data plan, “only to have that promise reneged upon within weeks of their purchases.”
Jessica Dolcourt, CNET News
While Apple's FaceTime calling seems to win all the video chatting marbles, just remember that its victory is relative. FaceTime only operates over Wi-Fi, which hobbles its overall usability.
Stewart Meagher, THINQ.co.uk
Designers of ebooks are starting to grumble about Apple's policy of locking down which fonts can be used on its iBooks platform.
Apple's guidelines say that designers choosing their own fonts would lead to "a bad user experience", a claim which some are calling shortsighted.
David Chartier, Macworld
Apple’s iOS 4, released this past week, may boast 100 new features for end-users. But it’s the features most users don’t see that could end up having the more lasting effect on how they use their mobile devices.
Joe White, App Advice
Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone 4 hits stores today! Queues have been forming all around the world, with 600 people having queued outside London’s Regent Street Apple Store by 07:00am!
AppleInsider
Across the globe, Apple launched the iPhone 4 in five countries Thursday, generating long lines and unparalleled buzz, as only an Apple product launch can do.
David Chartier, Macworld
Now it’s time to explore more of the finer details of iOS 4—the new features and polish that may not make it to Apple’s product pages, but may still make someone’s day.
Macworld
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
After a global launch that saw the iPhone 4 land in Japan, Germany, France, and the U.K., U.S. customers had their chance to get their hands on Apple’s newest smartphone Thursday morning. And, despite early shipment to some customers and limited iPhone supplies, the crowds still turned up at Apple Stores across the country for the iPhone 4’s official release.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
Like the Kindle app, iBooks is an excellent e-reader that feels impressively like the future—while simultaneously feeling a heck of a lot like an actual book. Right now, Amazon’s dominating selection renders it the top dog in the iOS e-reading world. But if the book you’re after is available for iBooks at a good price, the app provides an immersive and thoroughly pleasant reading experience, particularly on the iPad.
Michael Jones, TUAW
Charles Cooper, CBS News
Based on the overwhelming pre-orders, Apple likely has another a mega-hit on its hands. All of which is likely to further stir the envy and concerns of rivals watching this former upstart morph into the new Goliath.
Shari Steele, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Apple claims it needs to build a walled garden to protect users. From where we’re sitting, however, the walled garden looks very much like an effort to control the user and re-set traditional expectations about what you can do with the products you buy.
Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing
Victor Agreda, Jr., TUAW
Reception drops once your hands cover the metal bits of the iPhone 4. Metal bits which happen to be the antennas.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
If the pre-order process is any indication, this is going to be moderately more difficult than showing up on launch day for past Apple products. How difficult, you may ask? Well, before you rush out the door with a tent, chair, and your choice of soon-to-be-obsolete electronic gadget to pass the time in line, here are a few tips, tricks, suggestions, and warnings regarding your impending journey.
AppleInsider
A review unit sent out by Apple has managed to collect "incredibly minor" scratches on its back made of hardened glass after just a few days of heavy use.
Dan Moren, Macworld
As with the previous litigation, the complaint was filed in a Delware district court. Both of the new patents—6,282,646 and 7,380,116—have the same description, referring to a “System for real-time adaptation to changes in display configuration.” Both seem to deal with what happens when you plug in an additional video input or output into a device.
Keith M, TUAW
Several folks who've received an iPhone 4 early are tipping us and reporting to Apple that the fancy, new Retina displays on their new iPhones are defective and showing odd, colored splotches near the bottom edges of the screen.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
The Mac mini remains an impressive feat of hardware engineering and design, fitting decent computing power and a solid set of features in a tiny package. And apart from the slow stock hard drive, there’s not much to complain about with the latest model—this is as full-featured a computer I’ve seen in a package this small, and the new enclosure looks great and is built like a tank.
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
So yes, it’s been somewhat of a mess (and we’re not even at launch day yet). But the question here is, how much difference will it make?
Matt Neuburg, TidBITS
The app is both backgrounded and inert; but it is still running, in the sense that its resources and interface are still present, so that it doesn't have to be relaunched from scratch in order to resume. That way, when you come back to that app, no matter how, the app can simply pick up doing what it was doing when you left off, instantly.
AppleInsider
"White models of Apple's new iPhone 4 have proven more challenging to manufacture than expected, and as a result they will not be available until the second half of July," Apple said in a statement. "The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected."
David Dahlquist, Macworld
Lilliput Labs has released Mailboxes for the iPad, a multi-user Gmail client that provides an easy and secure way to access your Gmail or Google Apps email on a shared iPad.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
With the launch of iBooks for iPhone, Apple has taken time to improve upon the app’s text presentation from its original iPad incarnation. The Georgia font has been added, and it looks very good on the iPhone’s screen. Additionally, you can now disable right-justified text, which is an even more welcome change (though annoyingly, accessible only within the Settings app). Justified text on a screen the iPhone’s size requires often-ridiculous word spacing when hyphenation isn’t available, and indeed iBooks doesn’t hyphenate.
AppleInsider
Users can now run unauthorized code on their iOS 4-equipped iPhone 3GS, as well as iPhone 3G and iPod touch, thanks to the latest software "jailbreak" released by hackers.
David Pogue, New York Times
AFP
Braving summer rains and tweeting about their excitement, dozens of Apple fans queued outside a Tokyo cellphone store Wednesday, the eve of the global launch of the latest iPhone.
Softpedia
One of the many iPhone owners trying to upgrade to iOS 4 with no luck has an interesting story over at Apple’s Discussions forums, in which he alleges that Apple had anticipated upgrade problems with iPhone 3G handsets, and that the company’s top priority is offering iPhone 4 customers the best experience possible.
Stephen Fry, The Guardian
Apple has once more leapfrogged the competition. HTC Android handsets still impress and offer a viable alternative for many, but iPhone 4's star quality is irresistible.
Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek
Software developers believe Google's Android platform has a better long-term outlook, better technological capabilities, and greater openness than Apple's iOS platform. These are some of the findings of a survey of 2,733 developers conduct between June 15 and 17 by Appcelerator, maker of the Appcelerator Titanium Developer Platform.
Chris Matyszczyk, CNET News
The effect, it says, is close to that of Viagra. And all you have to swallow is the developer's rationale. The app allegedly "makes a kind of high-frequency alpha wave to synchronize with your own brain wave."
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Mrbrown.com
This has to be the single biggest reason for me to upgrade my iPhone 3Gs to iOS4: the ability to use an old Nokia SU-8W foldable bluetooth keyboard sitting in my drawer since I moved from the N-series smartphones.
Michael Gartenberg, Macworld
In the end, that original tagline became a reality. Apple products truly are for “the rest of us,” and will continue to be so as long as Apple continues to deliver and raise the industry bar.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
Alex Sherman, Bloomberg
Apple Inc.’s iPhone 4 will “dazzle” consumers with its thinner redesign, “radically” sharper screen, higher-resolution front-facing camera and updated operating system, reviewers said.
Brooke Crothers, CNET News
The iPhone 4 got a timely teardown from iFixit on Tuesday night, confirming that it integrates 512MB of RAM and a new battery connection scheme and revealing the accelerometer/gyroscope hardware, among other things.
Kristena Hansen, Los Angeles Times
David Pogue, New York Times
If what you care about is size and shape, beauty and battery life, polish and pleasure, then the iPhone 4 is calling your name.
But you probably didn’t need a review to tell you that.
Marguerite Reardon, CNET News
On Tuesday, AT&T announced that only preordered iPhone 4s will be in stock in its retail stores on Thursday, the official iPhone 4 launch date. Anyone looking to buy an iPhone 4 off-the-rack at an AT&T store without preordering the device will have to wait until Tuesday, June 29.
Walter S. Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
Just as with its predecessors, I can’t recommend this new iPhone for voice calling for people who experience poor AT&T reception, unless they are willing to carry a second phone on a network that works better for them.
For everyone else, however, I’d say that Apple has built a beautiful smartphone that works well, adds impressive new features and is still, overall, the best device in its class.
AppleInsider
When running on iPhone 3G, iOS 4 disables multitasking, background wallpapers, Bluetooth keyboard support, and a "data protection" feature.
Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing
Yes, the notable features with iPhone 4—both the device and the iOS4, which came out yesterday in advance of the iPhone itself—are mostly tweaks. But what tweaks they are: Apple's focus on improvement is as much key to the quality of its products as innovation. But there's one flaw it can't completely eliminate: the unreliable quality of calls placed over AT&T, which remains the iPhone's only U.S. carrier.
Joshua Topolsky, Engadget
We're not going to beat around the bush -- in our approximation, the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now. The combination of gorgeous new hardware, that amazing display, upgraded cameras, and major improvements to the operating system make this an extremely formidable package. Yes, there are still pain points that we want to see Apple fix, and yes, there are some amazing alternatives to the iPhone 4 out there. But when it comes to the total package -- fit and finish in both software and hardware, performance, app selection, and all of the little details that make a device like this what it is -- we think it's the cream of the current crop.
Joe White, App Advice
"The icon animation with backgrounds didn’t perform well enough."
David Chartier, Macworld
Nathan Alderman, Macworld
Far faster than Firefox, and more customizable than Safari, Chrome reaches a very happy medium between the two. It’s a great addition to the ranks of Mac browsers, and a clarion call to Apple, Mozilla, and Opera to step up their game.
Ian Paul, PC World
Overall, Apple appears to be doing a pretty good job with your location data; however there have been some criticisms over the new policy. Apple does not specify, for example, whether or not it will still track your location even with the Location Services global control turned off. It's also not clear how long Apple intends to store your location data, and what kind of safeguards it has in place to protect its database of location information.
Galen Gruman, InfoWorld
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
The first-generation iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the much newer iPad, may be vulnerable to some or all of the 65 bugs. The new iOS 4 operating system, which launched yesterday, can't be installed on 2007's iPhone and iPod Touch, and the upgrade is not slated to reach iPad owners until this fall.
Ed Baig, USA Today
As with previous iPhones, the latest model breaks new ground. FaceTime video calling on the iPhone 4 is one of those cool "seeing is believing" features, and it arrives on top of several across-the-board enhancements. And iOS 4 is a mostly terrific software upgrade.
Cutting through the hype, Apple has given longtime diehards, and first-time iPhone owners, plenty to cheer about.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
ARN
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
A bunch of apps have already been updated for iOS 4 and now display “iOS 4.0 Tested” in the description. Here are a couple of the better ones.
Dave Girard, Ars Technica
Adobe has capitalized on Lightroom's strengths and worked hard to fix its weaknesses, and all that effort has clearly paid off.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
TJ Luoma, TUAW
In a strange twist with what appears to be a security issue, users of Google Apps who set up their accounts using the Microsoft Exchange settings (aka ActiveSync) may find that their iPhones have been set to auto-lock in one minute.
Jeffrey Mincey, Mac 360
If you’re serious about using iWeb instead of a more advanced web page management system, then iWeb Buddy’s extras will be worth the effort and expense.
Paul Venezia, InfoWorld
Why would you centralize on a single operating system that's tasked with everything from cell phone calls to addressing high-end graphics and audio interfaces, especially when you have two perfectly good ways of handling those use cases now?
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Apple could resolve half of this problem this Fall with a unificationof iOS 4 for both iPhone/iPod touch and the iPad. But the hardware bifurcation between the lines may linger. I suspect Apple may try to ship new iPads in the January timeframe in the future, while it continues to ship new iPhones in the June timeframe to create a greater time gap between this split.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
You may not be able to completely shut off Apple’s new iAds system when it shows up on iOS 4 devices in July, but at the very least, you can stop it from using your personal information to tailor ads to you.
David Sarno, Los Angeles Times
In an updated version of its privacy policy, the company added a paragraph noting that once users agree, Apple and unspecified "partners and licensees" may collect and store user location data.
The company says the data is anonymous and does not personally identify users. Analysts have shown, however, that large, specific data sets can be used to identify people based on behavior patterns.
Joe White, App Advice
The iPhone and iPod Touch application allows users to connect to their Windows Live account, and chat with friends through Windows Live Messenger or Y! Messenger. The app still allows messages to be received when it’s closed, which is an added (but expected) bonus.
Macworld
We’ve got the answers to your questions about the mobile OS update.
Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS
Apple made iOS 4 available for free download today for owners of newer iPhone and iPod touch models.
David Chartier, Macworld
Released as a 1.1 update, iBooks is now a universal app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad; it debuted on the latter device back in April. This latest version brings a number of new features to the reading experience, including bookmarks, the ability to highlight passages, and note-taking capabilities. All of these annotations can stay in sync across your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, too.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Make no mistake, multitasking is the lynchpin of iOS 4; for better or worse, the rest is just window dressing—though welcome window dressing, to be sure.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
We'll say up front that we like the update. For iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 3G users (as well as second- and third-generation iPod touch users), iOS 4 will add useful functionality that will make your device more useable than ever. There are, however, some obvious downsides, and we'll address those in this review.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
While iOS 4 brings significant changes to many areas of the iPhone and iPod touch, the changes found in the iPod (iPhone) and Music and Videos (iPod touch) apps are mostly refinements of existing features.
Heather Kelly, Macworld
The biggest change will be familiar to iPad users: The addition of Events, Faces, and Places support. While you can't create new events or tag faces on the iPhone, you can sync existing collections from iPhoto or Aperture.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Easily the most-requested feature for iPhone Mail (or at least the one I’ve heard the most over the past few years) has been a unified inbox—a single inbox that displays incoming messages from all your accounts. Mail in iOS 4 provides just that: The top level of the Mail-screen hierarchy continues to display a list of your Mail accounts, but above that you’ll now find a new Inboxes section.
Mel Martin, TUAW
Not a minute too soon! As expected, Pandora has updated the much-loved music app for the iPhone to version 3.1. This build will (drumroll) allow you to keep playing music when you move on to something else.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Nik Fletcher
Every time Apple releases a new OS update, be it on the Mac or iPhone, there’s a bucketload of smaller - lesser-spotted - changes that appear in the system. iOS 4 very much continues this trend, so whilst you’re busy perusing the new update today here’s 8 little changes you may (or may not) spot.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Nathan Alderman, Macworld
Tough competition has only made Safari 5 even better. Reader needs a little work, the proprietary CSS3 tricks aren’t quite kosher, and the jury’s still out on extensions. But until Google or someone else steps up for the next shot at the title, Safari 5 is still the fastest, sleekest, all-around best browser in the business.
AppleInsider
The first batch of iPhone 4 deliveries are now in transit from China, with Apple sending FedEx notifications indicating a June 24 delivery date.
Tim Bajarin, PC Magazine
Now three of the area's most stellar companies are under scrutiny from government agencies, thanks to developer and customer complaints about their policies. Apple, Google, and Facebook are facing a growing backlash. Whether or not the companies are ultimately found guilty, these complaints have returned the negative focus to the Silicon Valley.
Dan Frommer, The Business Insider
Good news: Apple's new FaceTime video calls won't use up your allotment of carrier minutes, even if they're initiated from within a voice call, an Apple rep tells us.
Brooke Crothers, CNET News
The Apple iPhone 4 packs a lot of cutting-edge tech--one of the reasons preorders for the iPhone sold out immediately. Here's a second look at three standout specs that elevate the iPhone 4 above its predecessor.
Jeff Bertolucci, PC World
MobileMe, despite its consumerish bent, may find greater success in the small business market. Two features stand out as particularly pro-business: Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe.
AppleInsider
At WWDC, Apple treated its Mac OS X and iOS programmers to a preview of its entirely revised Xcode 4 integrated development environment. Here's a look at what's new and how it matters for end users.
TiPb
Kevin Kelleher, Washington Post
As a result of Apple's decision to wade into the porn morass, it's quite possible that the company could end up being seen as both as an opponent to free speech and an purveyor of porn. Not an easy trick to pull off.
Andrew McAfee, Forbes
I believe that America's extraordinary track record of innovation and creativity exists not despite its IP laws, but at least in part because of them. I applaud the fact that IP creators and owners have strong rights to exclude, even when these creators and owners are big, powerful corporations. And I really like the bundle of sticks contained in my iPad.
AppleInsider
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
David Pogue, New York Times
“What your readers are seeing is a routine update of the daily data activity on their devices—whether the iPhone or other handsets—to ensure billing accuracy. Customers are not charged for any data usage as part of this routine update.”
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
There’s nothing in the developer agreement guidelines to suggest these apps wouldn’t be allowed. But, they’re not. And the problem is that the developers who made these apps only found out after they had created the apps and submitted them to the store. Obviously Apple can’t write guidelines that cover scenarios it hasn’t foreseen; but once something new comes up, their policies to handle it should be documented publicly.
Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS
The Find My iPhone app makes this a much simpler task.
AppleInsider
Apple silently updated its Snow Leopard malware protection in this week's Mac OS X 10.6.4 update, targeting a Trojan that disguises itself as iPhoto.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Don't mess with Texas. Especially Dallas resident Justin Wagoner. He's the first in line for an iPhone 4 at Apple Store Knox Street. For those of you who just glanced at your calendar, you're right. He's a week early.
Alexander Vaughn, App Advice
Apple has just released a brand new universal “Find my iPhone” app to the App Store.
Clint Ecker, Ars Technica
The first iteration of the extension system allows developers to add features to a number of carefully controlled places within the application. Developers can create toolbars, add items to contextual menus, manipulate windows and tabs, add toolbar buttons, and manipulate and extract content within webpages themselves. Extensions can also selectively inspect and filter resources and deny them from loading.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
When Apple announced the iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010, however, the company ticked off nearly every box on the wishlist: more megapixels (though as ever, there are people for whom no amount is ever enough), better low-light sensitivity, an LED flash, a wider angle of view, 720p HD video recording, a front-facing camera, and more. An iPhone 4 isn't going to replace a DSLR or a high-end point-and-shoot, but for all but the most devoted pixel-peepers, the hardware is capable of some very nice images.
Paul Boldt, Don Scansen, Tim Whibley , EE Times
Nick Bilton, New York Times
DLP Mobile, a small New York City development company that specializes in iPad and iPhone applications, said it is readying the release of a new app designed for the iPhone 4 called the Mirror App. The app takes advantage of the front facing camera on the new iPhone and simply acts as a mirror, with a few extra digital features throw in.
The application will make color corrections and has light filters to allow people to apply makeup or add a little gel to their hair in low light settings.
AppleInsider
Apple has made more than 100 individual sessions filmed at its Worldwide Developers Conference available to developers via iTunes U, for free.
David Goldman, CNNMoney
Recent iPad security scares are a sign that Apple's devices are a growing target for hackers, spammers and malicious coders.
Frank Michael Russell, San Jose Mercury News
According to Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, manufacturers including Apple will sell 3.5 million tablet computers this year in the U.S., but the market will grow at a "whopping" 42 percent yearly rate from now until 2015.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Android and iPhone fans will read the preceding paragraph very differently. Android fans will read it and say, “Exactly — give us the hardware and let developers figure out what to do with it.” iPhone fans will read it and say, “I can’t wait to get an iPhone 4.”
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
iTunes Digital Booklets are the PDF files that come with with some iTunes albums, and include lyrics and cover art. Unfortunately, they’ve been of limited usefulness since you can’t really do much more than view them on the computer or organize them into a smart playlist. Come Monday, however, you’ll finally be able to load them onto an iOS 4-capable iPhone or iPod touch—and Apple has kindly released a Knowledge Base article detailing how to do so.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Tod Maffin, TUAW
David Chartier, Macworld
Apple announced at Safari’s release that it would open a Safari Extensions Gallery later this summer, and the doors are now open for submissions.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
We had heard that Apple confirmed this 512MB figure during one of the WWDC sessions last week, and have now verified this. The session it was revealed in is now available (Session 147, Advanced Performance Optimization on iPhone OS, pt 2) for registered Apple developers.
Bill Synder, InfoWorld
I supported Apple CEO Steve Jobs when he trashed Flash and banned it from the iPhone's and iPad's iOS. I agreed with him when he was tough on the Website that purchased (probably illegally) a lost iPhone 4 prototype. But Apple has crossed the line at least twice this month, prohibiting app developers from using AdMob and Google's advertising services on the iPhone and censoring sexual content in iPhone and iPad apps.
Taken together, Apple's bozo moves threaten to deprive developers -- the lifeblood of any platform -- of needed income, and they place Jobs & Co. in the role of a digital ayatollahs, dictating what types of content users will access on their own hardware. Neither action is good for Apple's business, and they smack of monopolistic bullying.
Vito Pilieci, The Ottawa Citizen
So, why does the iPad work? It's because someone at Apple, and that someone is likely Jobs, said on Day One of the iPhone's development that the software powering the device needed to be made with fingers in mind.
Topher Mathews, Washington Post
This Friday night, Apple will finally open its store at 1229 Wisconsin Ave. NW in Georgetown. It's the culmination of a saga stretching back two and a half years to when the technology giant bought the building that housed the French Connection clothing store.
Demolition of the building began in November, meaning that it took Apple approximately eight months to physically build the store. That's less than half the 19 months it took for Apple to get design approval for the new building.
Chris Matyszczyk, CNET News
If the Playboy app has already been approved--one that has surely far racier content--how can the Sun be denied? Moreover, perhaps the Apple approval committee also understands the peculiar cultural context inhabited by the Sun in the less than sunny isles.
Brian Prince, eWeek
AT&T said it is investigating reports that customers were able to view other people’s information when placing advance orders for Apple iPhone 4.
Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal
After sampling several early examples of these books apps, I’ve seen some tantalizing hints of the creative possibilities for authors and publishers who recast themselves as app makers.
Bob Tedeschi, New York Times
Neither app is enough to make me scrap my laptop — Documents To Go needs to work out some bugs, and Quickoffice is the slicker and more reliable of the two — but now that I can get some work done on the iPad, I plan to pick up an external keyboard.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
And as nice an app as TwitBird is in all its incarnations, I don’t find that it offers anything better than the free Twitter app. HootSuite, however, succeeds by coupling its very elegant app with its data-driven approach, since that’s a unique service Twitter’s own client doesn’t provide.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
"10.6.4 update for Mac OS X includes Flash Player, but not the latest version," said Brad Arkin, Adobe's director of security and privacy, in a message on Twitter Tuesday shortly after Apple issued the security and performance update.
Apple can, in response, issue a new patch that removes all Flash player once and for all. :-)
David Chartier, Macworld
iTunes 9.2 adds a handful of features, chiefly compatibility with iOS 4 and iPhone 4, both of which are slated for release next week. In addition, the update introduces book syncing and reading with an iPhone or iPod touch running iBooks 1.1, and support for organizing and syncing PDF documents as books.
Marco Tabini, Macworld
According to an FAQ published on Apple’s Canadian and British Websites, customers in those countries—as well as in France and Germany—will be able to buy an iPhone 4 handset for full price but without any commitment or carrier lock. This means that they will be free to choose any GSM carrier that uses frequencies compatible with the company’s phones without having to be subject to a long-term contract—and with the ability to swap carriers at any time without having to replace their devices.
AppleInsider
Apple's cylindrical glass tower entrance to the new underground retail megastore in Shanghai China, set to open mid July, is now decked in red curtains, signaling close proximity to launch.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
When Apple released a Mac mini that bears an HDMI port on Tuesday, it took mere minutes before people suggested that this new mini was the next-generation Apple TV in disguise. And for some, it may be. We’ll take a deeper look as we have more time to test out the new Mac mini, but here’s a look at some of areas that separate the two.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
It’s the unwise parent who grants their young child unguarded access to the Internet. Thankfully, Mac OS X provides some protection with its built-in Parental Controls. If you’re concerned about what your child might see online—or are simply interested in limiting the time your Mac-obsessed spawn spends in front of the computer—join us on this tour of Snow Leopard’s Parental Controls.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Both AT&T and Apple have sent out statements Wednesday acknowledging yesterday's iPhone 4 preorder meltdown. According to AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom, preorder sales for the iPhone 4 were 10 times higher than the first day of preorders for the iPhone 3GS last summer. Apple has also publicly acknowledged that things did not go smoothly, apologizing to would-be customers who weren't able to get an order in before the iPhone 4 sold out.
David Chartier, Macworld
Ki Mae Heussner, ABC News
As educators across the country try to keep pace with technology, Apple's new tablet will be boarding the school bus and carried into to classroom -- the latest teaching tool for schools willing to foot the bill.
James Kirkup, Telegraph
The Apple iPhone, one of the most popular mobile phones in Britain, is not safe from electronic snooping, government security experts have told MPs.
John Siracusa, Ars Technica
Michael Rose, TUAW
As of a few minutes ago, with some intermittent switching back to the original date and variation among different areas of the country, the US Apple Store website is now showing a pretty consistent July 2nd shipping date for new preorders.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
No longer an industry underdog, the company must tread more carefully, says an analyst.
Rich Brown, CNET
Apple's new Mac Mini answers a lot of the issues that have plagued the series over the years.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
The new Mac mini, while wider than the previous model, is only 1.4 inches thick. And something else is missing—the power supply. Instead of the heavy, bulky, white power brick that’s shipped with every mini since the line was introduced, the newest mini comes with only a thin power cord and a video adapter.
Associated Press
Pre-orders began Tuesday at 5 p.m., and the early rush for the iPhone 4 led to long lines around Tokyo and overwhelmed computer servers struggling to keep up with demand.
Peter Kafka, Wall Street Journal
Steve Jobs wants to keep porn out of his iTunes App Store. But not all porn. At least if you define porn as “half-naked shots of unknown British models.” Because that’s what you get with the new iPad app from The Sun.
David Pogue, New York Times
I mean, come on, people. This is our fourth annual go-round with new-iPhone releases. Surely the surge of interest and popularity is no longer catching Apple or AT&T executives by surprise.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Apple details three types of of updates contained in Mac OS X 10.6.4: general fixes and improvements, fixes and improvements for Aperture 3, and fixes and improvements for external devices.
Apple also released Mac OS X Server 10.6.4 on Tuesday, with improvements for Wiki Server, Software Update Server, vacation mail notices spanning multiple days, improved reliability of VPN connections, and more. The update is recommended for all current users of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server.
AppleInsider
With more major releases than ever headed to the Mac platform thanks to the release of Valve's Steam service, Apple is working closely with its hardware and software partners to improve performance of graphically intensive titles.
Matt Drance, Apple Outsider
The battle continues to heat up. With both words and actions, Apple is taking the competition very seriously.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Here's how to put together a Mac just right for small and messy hands.
AppleInsider
Shaw Wu with Kaufman Bros. issued a note to investors noting that the Mac mini refresh is the most significant for the desktop hardware since it was first introduced in January of 2005. The new hardware added an HDMI port and now has an aluminum unibody exterior. But those additions weren't enough to offset some dissatisfaction with the new price for Wu.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
When Apple revised the terms in its iPhone Developer Agreement to make room for limited analytics by independent third-party advertisers, it also made an adjustment to allow non-Objective-C code in iOS apps under certain conditions and with Apple's written permission. Developers so far seem cautiously optimistic that the change will be a net positive for developers as well as for users of some apps that got caught in what appears to be an Apple versus Adobe crossfire.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Simply called "Apple Store," the new app lets users shop the full line of products available at The Apple Store. But it's more than shopping.
You can use the app to read customer reviews, find an Apple Retail Store in your area and monitor in-store events. Speaking of the brick-and-mortar stores, if you're planning a visit you can first use the Apple Store app to arrange personal shopping, schedule a Genius Bar appointment or organize a One to One session.
Brooke Crothers, CNET News
The iPad is starting to grab market share from Netbooks, a trend that may not bode well for these small laptops, according to a report from DisplaySearch on Tuesday.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Apple’s decision to add a HDMI output and highlight the TV-hookup capabilities of the new Mac mini is made more interesting by the recent rumors that they’re working on a new, cheaper cloud-based version of the Apple TV. It’s not clear when such a product would be ready to go, but you can bet that Apple is going to use the next few months to see how the Mac mini sells as a living-room compatible device.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
Since Steve Jobs announced the latest update to Apple's smartphone, customers have begun to hit up gadget trade-in sites to sell their old iPhones, which could be a sign that they're ready to upgrade to the latest version of the iPhone.
Victor Agreda, Jr., TUAW
Yes, the mighty iPhone 4 (and Apple's marketing) have won the day and are, at this moment, currently sold out at AT&T's stores for launch day delivery (you can still preorder from Apple, however).
Galen Gruman, InfoWorld
The company wants to ensure both technical and moral purity -- a sure path to killing Apple's creative spirit.
Jeff Bertolucci, PC World
The Mac mini seems well equipped for office life. It may achieve greater success as a small business server than as a living room media center, particularly if the next incarnation of Apple TV is a hit.
Scott Moritz, TheStreet
Call it hardball or capitalism in its purest form, but Apple's autocratic approach to business and the current sway its products have in the market have been nothing but punishment for other players.
You cannot count the number of failures brought on by Apple without also counting the number of new players making apps, iPod and iPhone cases, and USB peripherals.
Benjamin Mayo, My Playground Of Thought
Apple's implementation of "multitasking" isn't perfect from a function perspective (the overall experience is very good though), although it certainly is better than what the article makes it out to be.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Just moments ago, Apple’s latest mobile device was put up for pre-sale on Apple’s Online Store. But as was rumored, it’s only available for pre-order in black. They don’t give an estimate as to when the white one will be available, but it will undoubtedly be at some point this summer.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
The Mac mini has been given a sleek new slimmer (1.4 inch) aluminum case made using the same unibody technique that Apple uses on the MacBooks. More importantly, the thing packs a powerful processor and supposedly twice the graphics performance. But the big news is that the device has an HDMI output for the first time. You know what that means: this thing just became a lot of people’s media center.
Dealerscope
Amber Corrin, Defense Systems
As the military continues its search for the best battlefield smart phone, it’s looking more unlikely that the iPhone will be a contender. The biggest hurdle: Apple’s proprietary technology and the massive price tag attached to implementing it across the Defense Department.
TJ Luoma, TUAW
Background processing is extremely constrained to three specific areas, which Apple believes will cover most of the things that most people want to do most of the time.
TomKnighton.com
Really? So, instead of making more hugely popular products that millions of Americans just can’t help but buy, they should have come and answered some silly questions asked by silly people sitting in a silly position just because they’re in Congress, despite there being no requirement to?
Matt Neuburg, TidBITS
I've recommended Witch in the past, but its most recent incarnations have given it a boost in speed and power that makes it irresistible. Witch has better keyboard navigation than ever. Witch is now Spaces-friendly, meaning that it can see windows open in spaces other than the one you're currently in. And the latest version, 3.5, even lets you display a preview of a window.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
A video love song to iPad developers (and a warning to anybody considering Android).
Mario Almonte, Huffington Post
What began as grumblings over Jobs' refusal to offer the iPhone to a more reliable wireless network and, more recently, criticisms of the iPad's technical shortcomings, are turning into criticisms of Jobs himself. And Jobs' temperamental response to his growing number of critics threatens to undermine all that he has achieved for Apple.
Rik Myslewski, Register
Another day, another lawsuit for Apple. This time Jobs & Company are being taken to task for naming the iPhone's new mobile-advertising platform "iAds" when that service mark is already owned by a Southern California media company.
Nilofer Merchant, BusinessWeek
The essence of what causes Apple to win is the same thing that causes startups to innovate, the same thing that is at the root of all high-performance cultures. His description encapsulates the smart collaboration that underlies the creative acts of innovation throughout Apple and that exemplifies the company's culture.
TJ Luoma, TUAW
If you're currently running a 5GHz-only N network, your iPhone won't take advantage.
Kim Hart, Politico
Apple is famous for its veil of secrecy around the new iPads and iPhones. But Sen. John Rockefeller and others in Congress wonder whether the company has more than technological innovations to hide.
When Apple didn’t participate in an April hearing on children’s online privacy, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, gave voice to his suspicions.
Alexander Vaughn, App Advice
If you were hoping to reserve a white iPhone 4 tomorrow (which apparently looks sleek with a black bumper), then get ready to be disappointed.
AppleInsider
Apple's Game Center in iOS 4 is now enabling user logins for the first time since the company began distributing the app with developer builds of the next OS for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
Heather Kelly, Macworld
Dave Caolo, TUAW
P. J. Connolly, eWeek
Personally, I want a notebook computer to combine performance, portability and sturdiness, and that much Apple has accomplished, in spades.
Marguerite Reardon, CNET News
As unlimited mobile data plans become a thing of the past for many wireless smartphone subscribers, developers will have to think more carefully about how efficiently their apps use network resources.
Tod Maffin
On both the iPhone and iPad, the speaker is located on the rim of the product — which means that when you’re looking at the screen and listening to audio, the audio is shooting out away from you.
Philip Michaels, Macworld
AVG Technologies plans to unveil a Mac version of AVG LinkScanner, a free download that scans Website links for potential threats. AVG says its LinkScanner application checks Web pages in real-time, posting a warning to users if the software finds a Website that could pose potential problems.
Nick Bilton, New York Times
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
David Dunham, Radio Free Lunch
More surprising was the number of women. There are never a lot (you inevitably hear someone joking about the lines for the men’s toilet and the lack of line for the women’s), but this year seemed worse than I remember.
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
Once again, it's a little surprising that there's a capability of the age-old Image Capture program that Apple hasn't yet built into iPhoto, but there it is.
Reuters
While Apple Inc has eased restrictions for iPhone advertising, targeting them more pointedly at rival Google Inc, it hasn't done enough to mollify antitrust regulators.
Topher Kessler, CNET News
Despite the advancements in virtualization technologies, Boot Camp is still the best option for compatibility and overall speed when you want to run Windows programs on your Apple hardware. This will arguably always be the case, but while speed is a perk, native support for NTFS in OS X and HFS in Windows prevents quick file transfer both to and from the partitions.
Despite this, there are several utilities that will allow two-way file transfers both in OS X as well as in Windows.
Eric J. Savitz, Barron's
I have absolutely no doubt that the new iPhone will sell like hot cakes once it goes on sale later this month. But as I walked away from the event, I couldn't help wondering: Now what? I won't even attempt to guess. But let me note a few things that Apple-philiacs are currently thinking about.
(Ryan Faas), Computerworld
Mark Veverka, Barron's
Perhaps the most important thing that people may be missing in the carrier debate is the fact that AT&T is ahead of its competitors when it comes to the wireless-data learning curve. By virtue of tackling these issues during the early days of iPhone adoption, AT&T is building itself a very capable infrastructure, despite customer sentiment to the contrary.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Austin Leeds, Low End Mac
Unlike many Apple products, the iPad does not feel first generation.
Jeff Carlson, TidBITS
iMovie for iPhone will require the iPhone 4, and not be available for the iPhone 3GS. Handling video and creating real-time transitions needs the power of the iPhone 4's A4 processor.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Dan Frommer , Business Insider
Outsider
While explicit approval from Apple is still required, these new terms seem to acknowledge that there’s a difference between an app that happens to have non-compiled code, and a meta-platform. It’s a step that should allow for many new possibilities.
Rik Fairlie, New York Times
Gazelle, a site that pays for used electronics and tech products, says Friday is the day you’ll get the most money for an old iPhone. That’s today.
Rik Fairlie, New York Times
The Camera Connection kit is an easy way to import photos to the iPad to share when you’re on the road and off the computer. The iPad just can’t hold up its end of the deal by letting you rename folders and view photo data.
Thomas Wailgum, CIO.com
What Jobs did next, according to Carmine Gallo, author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, was vintage Jobs (and a model for how presenters should deal with stage crises): He did not panic.
Scott Gilbertson, Webmonkey
The message of Reader (and tools of its ilk) isn’t that the online publishing model is doomed, but that it desperately needs a reboot to get rid of all the junk that’s clogging up the whole point of the system: connecting readers with the information they want.
Mathew Ingram, GigaOM
As for the new feature being a surreptitious attempt to push content companies to develop apps, that seems a little Machiavellian, even for Apple — especially since only a fraction of readers are ever going to use the Reader feature.
Los Angeles Times
Although federal antitrust officials are reportedly looking into Apple's effort to bar rival advertising networks, it's hard to see how the company's tactics violate the law. Simply put, the iPhone doesn't dominate the smartphone market. The more important question is how consumers will react to the emerging picture of Apple.
Jeff Smykil, Ars Technica
At $9.99, Air Display is a bit more expensive than many iPad applications, but if you have a legitimate need and reasonable expectations, it’s worth the money.
Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired
Apple’s position isn’t as crazy as it might sound.
Harry McCracken, Technologizer
Apple says Safari 5 is the world's fastest browser. Other folks disagree. Who's right? Everyone and no one.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
The question in these cases is always whether Apple has enough market power to force people to play by its rules. The federal government will be concerned about whether there will be a healthy market for ad networks outside of Apple's system and whether developers will be able to switch over to those ad networks easily enough to create competition between Apple's ad network and other ad networks.
Glenn Fleishman, Ars Technica
After examining the video from the event and discussing it with two veteran WiFi gurus, it seems almost certain that the MiFi was only part of the problem. A flaw in the pre-release iPhone 4 iOS was clearly another element.
That's not to say that having hundreds of WiFi base stations doesn't cause trouble. In fact, the iPhone 4's putative driver problem likely arose from the multitude of network signals. But neither the ocean of signals nor the iPhone 4's performance can be looked at entirely in isolation.
David Chartier, Macworld
App Store developers who have been itching for a way to to keep an eye on their sales stats while on-the-go can finally rejoice. There is, at last, an (official) app for that.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Safari dethrowned the speed kings from Google and Opera Software to take the top spot in the time trials.
Agam Shah, Macworld
U.S. regulators are planning to investigate whether Apple is shutting out third parties such as Google and Microsoft in advertising the iPhone and iPad, according to a report published by the Financial Times on Thursday.
Chris Holt, Macworld
Dan Frakes, Macworld
If you accidentally close a tab you didn’t mean to close, just press Command+Z, the Mac’s standard keyboard shortcut for Undo. The “lost” tab is immediately restored.
Ramu Nagappan, Macworld
Chronos has released iScrapbook 3, a major upgrade to its digital scrapbooking software. The new version includes twenty new templates, font and cover flow previews, and faster page loading.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Overall, Safari 5 is quite snappy, and does feel faster than Safari 4—especially on Windows. Though Safari's Nitro JavaScript engine may have a very slight raw performance advantage, the benchmarks we ran show that Apple and the WebKit team certainly have some areas where it can improve—both in JavaScript performance characteristics as well as optimizing performance for animation and other graphics rendering.
Minimal Mac
What happens for me is that, after a few seconds of use, the device itself seems to disappear. Suddenly, I am holding whatever app I am using in my hands.
Phil Plait, Discover
Let me make this clear: if you have perfect eyesight, than at one foot away the iPhone 4’s pixels are resolved. The picture will look pixellated. If you have average eyesight, the picture will look just fine.
At the very worst, you could claim Jobs exaggerated; his claim is not true if you have perfect vision. But for a lot of people, I would even say most people, you’ll never tell the difference. And if you hold the phone a few inches farther away it’ll look better.
Mahesh Sharma, ZDNet Australia
Apple secured a "zero profit" deal to receive iPhones from Chinese technology manufacturer Foxconn, according to a worker rights activist group, which has linked the factory's poor wages and working conditions with a number of young worker suicides.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet
Seth Rosenblatt, CNET
Speed is important, but it's not the only judge of a good browser. With the exception of the unique Reader feature, Safari 5 does more to bring Apple's browser into line with other browsers than actually forging any new ground, and even with the improvements made to this version Safari still lacks many of the small but useful features competitors offer. For raw JavaScript speed, Safari is at the head of the pack for now, but Apple's focus on other user needs is remains less than exemplary.
John Paczkowski, Wall Street Journal
This seems to be an elegant compromise between readers and publishers. Activating Reader requires additional navigation and a click of the mouse. In other words, it requires motivation.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Most companies, seeing their competitors already doing something, would feel forced into releasing their own solution as quickly as possible. Not Apple. And I suspect this ends up being a big benefit for the users.
Roman Loyola, Macworld
When Safari 5 was released last Monday, Apple claimed that the "world's fastest" Web browser is now faster. Macworld Lab performed a performance test on the new Safari, and our results didn't exactly match those claimed by Apple, we did find a boost in performance.
Nik Fletcher
Perhaps instead of flamebait posts of ‘Apple are out to get us’ media companies should be asking themselves ‘how did reading content online become so sucky’?
Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service
Microsoft may be the biggest software company in the world, but like everyone else who does a deal with Apple, it too was sworn to secrecy.
"We agreed not to disclose our terms," said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president, online audience business at Microsoft. Mehdi said that Apple was impressed with some new Bing features that are in store for iPhone users."
Michael Muchmore, PC Magazine
Safari is already a fast, beautiful browser, but the new Reader view makes it even more appealing. Leading support for HTML 5 features will also be important, but you can already get that in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, and soon in Internet Explorer 9. Safari's strong bookmarking, RSS reader, and vivid new-tab page will appeal to many, but Chrome is still faster, and our Editors' Choice Firefox is more customizable.
Bryan Wolfe, App Advice
Numerous articles have popped up showing users hollowing out their old iBook screens and putting in its place, a new iPad. In addition, a new aluminum keyboard is installed where the iBook’s keyboard used to be.
Brenno de Winter, WebWereld
Windows 7 and Mac OS X each have a new, fundamental flaw that will be presented at the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam in July. These security holes are so close to the core operating systems that fixing them may be very hard.
AppleInsider
Black hat hackers have exploited a security flaw on AT&T's web servers which enabled them to obtain email addresses from the SIM card addresses of iPad 3G users.
AppleInsider
After Apple this week announced its new open standard for video calling, dubbed FaceTime, major online chat providers have expressed interest in the new standards-based technology, but do not yet have plans to adopt it in their own services.
Derrick Story, Macworld
The iPad might not be the final destination for your images, but with Apple's Camera Connection Kit, it can be a great stop along the way. You can preview your photos on its large screen, build dynamic presentations with them in Keynote while you sip coffee at a cafe, or publish your favorite pictures online—all without cracking open a laptop.
Here are some ways enthusiast photographers can build a decent workflow right now using the iPad with the optional Camera Connection Kit.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Just 48 hours after Safari 5's release, the first extensions are appearing; safariextensions.tumblr.com is keeping track and listing new ones as they become available.
Macworld
Colin Wheeler, Cocoa Samurai
David Pogue, New York Times
Ina Fried, CNET News
Now, again, creating and editing Office documents on an iPad is not supported, so it's not surprising it doesn't really work in the mobile version of Safari. That said, with iPads flying off the shelves, it probably should be a supported browser. And Microsoft might want to rethink that decision not to create native apps for the iPhone and iPad as well.
Kevin Hall, DVICE
While the details are still coming together as Apple gets its iAd service together, the message is clear: if you want to advertise on any product with an Apple logo, you better be comfortable with the company having hands in both your pockets.
Gabriel Madway, Reuters
Google Inc said on Wednesday recent changes to Apple's developers agreement would effectively cripple Google's advertising tools for the iPhone, creating "artificial" barriers to competition.
"This change is not in the best interests of users or developers," Omar Hamoui, founder of mobile ad company AdMob, said in a blog post. AdMob was recently purchased by Google.
Joanna Stern, New York Times
Christopher Mims, Technology Review
Creator of the popular reading app Marco Armenti on how he's managed to avoid angering the New York Times - so far.
Matt Hamblen, Computerworld
Getting an open standard will mean not only talking to standards bodies, but also persuading some industry powerhouses to get behind those standards, including Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Google.
All of those competitors are surely interested in providing video chat with mobile devices and could easily favor going in a separate direction from Apple. Developing one's own technology outside of the mainstream industry standard is the very nature of how some technology companies compete -- and win -- today, including Apple.
AAP
Foxconn Technology Group says its customers — which include global technology giants Apple and Dell — will have to pay more after it increased wages in China by nearly two-thirds in the aftermath of a spate of worker suicides.
Miyoung Kim, Reuters
Apple's iPad, initially viewed as a Web entertainment gadget for consumers, is quickly making inroads across businesses in Asia as wedding planners, luxury hotels and airlines hook up to the tablet computer.
Melanie D.G. Kaplan, SmartPlanet
We put a lot of pressure on AT&T (Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act requires manufacturers and providers of phones to be accessible) and Apple to make the iPhone accessible. They promised it would be, and in a year or two, it was. They not only took VoiceOver and moved it over to iPhone, but they changed they way you use the touch screen so it was accessible for someone who can’t see it.
Peter Robins, The Guardian
In other words, two of the big threats to the ad-supported model, ad-blocking and excess inventory, might end up cancelling each other out. I did promise you absurd optimism.
Jeffery Battersby, Macworld
eBlaster is a powerful tool for collecting information on any and everything taking place on a monitored computer. While I have to admit that the idea of having to gather this kind of information does make my skin crawl a bit, I’m also aware that these tools are necessary. And when you need to surreptitiously monitor what’s happening on another computer you won’t find a better application that eBlaster.
Molly Wood, CNET News
If there are three reasons an app can be initially rejected from the store, there seem to be innumerable and incomprehensible reasons an app can be yanked from the store.
Matt Warman, Telegraph
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Ken Fisher, Ars Technica
So the company that has made an advertising platform a major part of its iOS strategy is also hawking an ad-blocking technology for its Web browser, where it has no stake in ads.
Marco Tabini, Macworld
It's still too early to say whether extensions will catch on and become an important part of the Safari ecosystem. Their introduction, however, kicks Safari's capabilities up a serious notch and represents a direct move against Firefox, although the latter has a considerable lead and a well-established reputation as an extensible browser that are going to be difficult to overcome.
Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired
Ultimately, Apple’s ad blocker differs from the rest because the company also offers a protected alternative for web publishers — the Apple App Store — where they can publish without having their advertisements blocked.
Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
Those of us in the business of lame analogies are eager to seize upon this incident as an illustration of the fundamental difference between Apple and Google. Apple commands more control over their developers and their community.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
In light of the pattern of the last few years, and the company's growing mobile device and mobile platform businesses, Mac OS X's absence Monday is curious.
Khoi Vinh, Subtraction
Building a great display for typography without building great typographic tools is a dereliction of duty.
Seth Weintraub, Fortune
Apple yesterday upgraded its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement with very specific terms that give it significant advantages over Google and Microsoft in advertising.
Sam Diaz, ZDNet
In a nutshell, the best way to get around this is to understand the connectivity needs of your audience and cough up enough dough to make sure that the in-house WiFi is robust enough so that guys like me can use it to do our jobs. Shutting down my laptop yesterday so Steve Jobs could run his demo was something I was not willing to do. Just like Steve, I was there to do a job. His was to present. Mine was to liveblog.
Greg Beato, The Smart Set
Pots help sell plants. Bookshelves move books. It’s the same with high-tech gadgets. The usefulness of the iPad may still be up for debate, but the case vendors have already literally created a place for it in our lives.
David Dahlquist, Macworld
Simon Quicke, Microscope.co.uk
Messaging security specialist FaceTime has announced plans to scrap its name after Apple unveiled plans to use the same moniker for its video calling application. The vendor has decided it will change its name after agreeing with Apple that it would not have a conflict over branding.
Glenn Fleishman, Future Tense
Wi-Fi can cope with a lot of so-called interference, but the protocol wasn’t designed to handle hundreds of overlapping networks in a small space.
Mike Morton, Google Mac Team, Google Mac Blog
Audience folks quickly caught on to the idea that if you put an interesting message on your iPad screen, the camera would find you.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
The iPhone and iMovie for iPhone, with its family-and-friends focus, is likely to change the way people think about portable video—how it’s shot as well as edited. It will be interesting to see if iPhone 4 owners continue to produce polished videos after the novelty of editing video on the iPhone wears off.
Sachin’s Posterous
FaceTime will work because it doesn't change the device you use or your existing behavior.
Jim Lynch
Apple had been looked on as some sort of savior for media companies with its iPad device. I doubt many companies will appreciate Apple destroying their ad-based web publishing businesses while simultaneously trying to get them to create apps and content for the iPad.
Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal
Beau Colburn, Macworld
You may not have a lot of need to take photos secretly with your phone, but if you ever do, NinjaCam will get the job done.
Anthony Caruana, ITWire
The stats they chose to show omitted one major player and didn’t tell the full story about another. Perhaps there’s a hint of worry in Cupertino.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ITworld
Take one part mystery, one part charisma, one part branding, and two parts excellent system design and engineering, bake at Apple HQ in 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA for six-months to a year and then release with grand fanfare. It works every time.
Rex Hammock
Bottomline: PR people can’t be bragging in one press release how Apple is charging advertisers tens of millions of dollars to help them get annoying ads and visual distractions in front of people who use Apple products, and then in the next press release, be bragging how they’re helping Apple product users “remove annoying ads and other visual distractions.”
Nilay Patel, Engadget
Heather Kelly, Macworld
Erica Ogg, CNET News
Jobs threw a lot of numbers out there, mostly to remind developers that even though other smartphone makers are catching up to and even surpassing the iPhone in some ways, that it's the App Store's reach and size make for a bandwagon that's worth riding for a long time.
Ben Smith, Politico
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating claims that the computer giant Apple has refused to sell its new iPad to people of Asian descent, apparently over smuggling fears.
The Attorney General's's civil rights bureau was tipped off by an Assemblywoman from a Chinese-American section of Queens, who complained publicly last month that her constituents were being asked unusual questions when they sought to buy the devices. The iPad was not yet for sale in Asia at the time of the complaints in May.
David Katzmaier, CNET
We suspect the iPhone 4's screen will bring a visible improvement over the current, outdated iteration, and rival the best phone screens currently available. But it probably doesn't deserve to be named after an eye part.
Nat Worden, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs said Monday that the company's iAd platform, its mobile advertising network, will go live on July 1, introducing yet another disruptive force in the media industry.
The rise of digital advertising already has weighed heavily on traditional media businesses--such as publishing, radio and television--and the nascent mobile market is expected to bring a new wave of upheaval as devices like Apple's iPhone and iPad proliferate.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
The effect is that the pixels appear to be painted on the surface of the phone; instead of looking at pixels under glass, it like looking at pixels on glass. Combined with the incredibly high pixel density, the overall effect is like “live print”.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
The new App Wall is perhaps even a little prettier than last year’s model. It shows the top 50,000 apps in the App Store across 30 24-inch LED Cinema Displays. As each app is downloaded it falls into a stack (still color-coordinated) across the displays. Once the display hits 10,800 apps, it resets and starts over with app downloads.
Jessica Dolcourt, CNET News
Right now, it looks like nothing too bruising. Wi-Fi and hardware limitations on the iPhone 4 (like that front-facing camera) will keep FaceTime's audience modest until iPhone 4 sales take off, though not having to register for a new service is sure to attract new users. In the meantime, Skype has a chance to add video calls and other unique features to its iPhone lineup before FaceTime takes off.
Erica Ogg, CNET News
About 20 minutes later, Jobs said he'd figured out that there were more than 570 Wi-Fi connections in the room that were disrupting his demo.
"So you guys have a choice: Either turn off your Wi-Fi (devices) or I give up. Would you like to see the demos?" he asked the crowd. "Then all you bloggers need to turn off your notebooks. Go ahead, just shut the lids. I'll wait," he said.
Brad Stone, New York Times
Amazon.com can pretty much dismiss that number as overstated — but its execs still have good reason to worry about the threat Apple poses to the Kindle.
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
Amid the excitement of Apple Worldwide Developers Conference keynote and rumors regarding AT&T’s status as the iPhone’s sole U.S. carrier, the wireless company gave some current iPhone customers even more good news: earlier-than-expected upgrade pricing.
Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Three years after being sued by Cisco Systems for giving its iPhone the same name as a Cisco product, Apple has taken another page from the Cisco playbook, renaming its iPhone operating system, iOS.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
It got no attention in Steve's WWDC keynote, and it's not showing up in Software Update as of yet, but according to an Apple press release, Safari 5 is out for release today.
Victor Agreda, Jr., TUAW
Starting June 24, the price of the iPhone 3GS, which began life at $199 (for 16GB) and $299 (for 32GB) will drop to $99 for the 16GB model.
Ina Fried, CNET News
Bing joins Yahoo as an option, but Google remains the default search engine.
David Chartier, Macworld
The OS, which runs on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, has been renamed iOS 4.0—a smart move given the number of mobile devices Apple now offers. The new OS offers over 1500 APIs for developers, and Jobs showed off a number of them on stage.
Michael Rose, TUAW
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Zynga showed up on the stage at the WWDC keynote this morning to show off one of the most-awaited (and most hated) apps coming to the iPhone: Farmville.
AppleInsider
To take advantage of the new 720p-capable HD video camera in iPhone 4 will be an all-new, $4.99 mobile version of iMovie for editing videos, Apple announced Monday.
Jonathan Seff, Macworld
Jobs described the phone as, “beyond a doubt, the most precise thing and one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever made” before highlighting a number of its new features.
A new screen technology called a retina display add much higher precision to the iPhone. In fact, at 326 pixels per inch, it’s double the 163 pixels per inch resolution of the iPhone 3GS.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
In an update promised for "later this month," Jobs said that iBooks would now support reading PDFs—"one of the biggest requests." PDFs get a separate virtual "shelf" within the app to keep them separate from e-books in ePub format.
Ramu Nagappan, Macworld
Netflix will add to its App Store offerings later this summer, when it releases a new app for the iPhone. Previewed during Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, the movie rental service’s app will provide the full Netflix experience: you can stream video (over Wi-Fi and 3G), view recommendations, browse genres, and access your queue.
Marco Tabini, Macworld
According to Jobs, users have downloaded more than 5 million books—approximately 2.5 for each device sold—in the first 65 days of iBooks’ availability. In addition, five of the six largest publishers have reported the app's share of their electronic sale to be about 22 percent, which is rather impressive for an e-book reader that has been on the market for just over two months.
AppleInsider
Speaking at Apple's annual developers conference on Monday, chief executive Steve Jobs said his company's industry-leading App Store has generated developers more than $1 billion in revenues while serving up over 5 billion app downloads since its inception two years ago.
AppleInsider
Ted Bade, Inside Mac Games
Tales of Monkey Island is a lot of fun to play and keeps a smile on your face. The graphics and audio of this game create the perfect ambience. While the game engine has its faults, the story is just so much fun that I found myself looking forward to playing.
Bob Evans , InformationWeek
Runaway success at Apple and Google has governmental mandarins gleefully preparing litigious and regulatory shackles. And that is sheer madness.
Dan Ablan, Macworld
Kinemac 1.8.3 is a reasonably priced but powerful 3D-creation tool from which any digital artist can benefit. Whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional 3D content creator, this program is definitely worth checking out.
Kirk McElhearn, Kirkville
This is really sad; Apple censoring a comic of one of the English language’s greatest novels, while still, fortunately, allowing that novel to be sold in ebook format via its iBookstore.
John Brandon, Macworld
I can’t think of any truly negative features in FastTrack Schedule 10. It runs fast and nimble, has plenty of powerful features, and has an amazing cadre of templates. The only real downside: it is not an enterprise tool, so multiple project managers cannot access a project at the same time and make changes. And, as a desktop app, it is only available on your Mac and not from the Web, like many competing tools.
Erica Ogg, Tom Krazit, CNET News
People wondered if Apple had peaked with the iPod. Then the company introduced the iPhone. People wondered if Apple had peaked with the iPhone. Then it introduced the iPad.
When the "Stevenote" is finished on Monday, people will wonder again. Apple has drawn a road map to the next era of computing, but that doesn't guarantee it safe passage.
Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone, New York Times
Some developers worry that customers will be reluctant to download and use the most bandwidth-intensive apps and that developers will cut back on innovative new features that would push customers over the new limits.
Tim Bajarin, PC Magazine
Ultimately, all Apple really wants to do is create products that are easy to use and that people want. There's no mystery in this vision. Once the key principles are recognized, it's easy to demystify Apple.
Wall Street Journal
Yukari Iwatani Kane and Kate O'Keefee, Wall Street Journal
Many details of Apple Inc.'s new iPhone are already widely known, but expectations are high for the fourth-generation smartphone's official unveiling this week at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Chimpden
Many of the early reviews of the iPad have focussed on its limits as a content creation device. I’ve had the opposite experience.
Jameson Berkow, Financial Post
Apple is so hot right now that everything it unveils flies off the shelves, sending its share price higher. The question longer term however, is whether its “closed” strategy of development can continue to deliver the goods — and the buzz — with open-source operating systems such as Android offering slick new applicationsand growing competition.
Chris Dixon
The people griping about Apple’s “closed system” are generally people who are new to the industry and didn’t realize how bad it was before.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
As the banners draped across the lobby of the conference center make clear, this event is for the people who created 200,000 iPhone apps and 5,000 iPad apps.
Electronista
In an expected if slightly ironic twist, Steve Jobs -- perhaps the most secretive executive in the tech industry -- has seen the writing on the wall.
Joe's Coding Blog
As I am sat on the steps of Moscone West on this fresh San Francisco Sunday morning, I couldn't help but wonder, that all these people are affecting the lives of millions around the world in profound ways.
Electronista
Apple has fallen to the third position in Rescuecom's latest computer reliability report, after maintaining the highest overall score in 2009. Each of the top five companies showed improvements in scores, with IBM and Lenovo representing the strongest growth as both companies share the top spot for the first quarter in 2010.
AppleInsider
Those attending Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco next week will have the aid of a new iPhone application designed to help them find sessions and get directions.
Ryan Faas, Computerworld
If you're coding for the iPhone or iPad, you have to choose.
Brooke Crothers, CNET News
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Michael Rose, TUAW
Nick Bilton, New York Times
On Friday, a company spokesman said the decision had been made. “AT&T will honor the $29.99 unlimited data pricing for customers who order iPad by June 7,” he said.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Turns out that several MobileMe subscribers have reported having their account type change, fueling speculation that Apple will announce tiers to MobileMe subscriptions next week during WWDC.
David Chartier, Macworld
DashPad lets you run multiple widgets in Safari on your iPad, such as a calculator, sticky note, Google search box, unit converter, and a Yellow Pages directory. You can arrange them any way you want, and the widgets will remain in their place even if you have to reload the page.
Minimal Mac
Ted Landau, Macworld
If you are getting a strong signal and everything else seems to be working fine, your type of password may be the reason behind the slow down.
David Winograd, TUAW
Jake Shapiro, Ars Technica
AFP
An Australian restaurant has ditched printed menus and now hands diners the latest tech-craze, Apple's touchscreen iPad computer, from which to choose and order their meals.
David Morgenstern, ZDNet
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Apple’s new HTML5 page on its site is a showcase for what you can do with the technology. There are seven impressive examples of things you can do using only HTML5: Video, Typography, Gallery, Transitions, Audio, 360, and VR. “Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web,” Apple writes.
Neil Mcallister, InfoWorld
Often puzzling, always frustrating, the list of reasons why developers are denied access to Apple's iPhone App Store grows ever longer.
Sang Tang, TUAW
While the iPad version of Keynote represents a slight twist on Apple's flagship presentation app and serves as a gateway into multitouch computing on a large display, it has a few shortcomings when compared to its Mac OS X counterpart. As a result, those who start their Keynote workflow on Mac OS X may be surprised when some of their transitions, builds and fonts don't show up the same way on the iPad.
Donald Melanson, Engadget
Jason Schwarz, TheStreet
Those who assume that Jobs is the only one who can lead Apple are wrong. Leveraging the App Store is more about operations than it is about innovation. The innovation has already happened. Freeing up Jobs from his CEO responsibilities wouldn't be as bad as it sounds.
Stephanie Wong, John Liu and Tim Culpan, BusinessWeek
Foxconn's suicides are a reminder of the human cost that can come with the low-cost manufacturing U.S. tech companies demand.
Richard Perlman, IP
Spencer E. Ante, Wall Street Journal
In one incident, Google pulled dozens of unauthorized mobile-banking apps from its Android Market in December. The apps, priced at $1.50, were made by a developer named "09Droid" and claimed to offer access to accounts at many of the world's banks.
As more companies, governments and consumers use wireless gadgets to conduct commerce and share private information, computer bad guys are beginning to target them, according to government officials and security researchers.
Stephen Spector, NetworkWorld
Pete Cashmore, CNN
The time is right for Apple for tackle the TV, and the company's re-entry into that market is a no-brainer.
Ryan Singel, Wired
The app store remains Apple’s — the rules for who is in and who is out are as murky as ever — and Apple reserves the right to dissemble about what its policies are, even if you do manage to get in.
Farhad Manjoo, Slate Magazine
How Android, Chrome, and the iPad are shielding us from dastardly programs.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Snell’s argument is that Apple should do this to nip the argument that the iPhone is too closed. But if Apple did exactly what Snell argues, critics would still harp on the closed App Store. iPhone critics have seldom let facts get in their way.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Mail doesn't include a scheduling feature. You can add one with an AppleScript.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
It doesn’t matter how many (or how few) people will be adversely be affected by these changes. What matters is that AT&T and—by extension—Apple told consumers exactly what they would be getting by purchasing an 3G-equipped iPad, and AT&T is now changing part of the deal after the fact. AT&T should honor those sales-pitch promises for anyone who purchased an 3G-equipped iPad before Wednesday’s announcement. And Apple should make sure that happens. But I won’t be holding my breath.
Jason Snell, Macworld
I’m here to say to Apple that while I understand very well the reasons for the company’s walled-garden approach to native iPhone OS apps, the strengths of that approach have now been surpassed by the bad publicity and reputation that Apple and its products are now getting in the market as a whole.
Mercedes Bunz, The Guardian
The Apple iPad will probably never replace television, but it is likely to cut a big piece out of it. Chad Evans of MLB.com, the official website of US Major League Baseball, is leading the attack.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
New York Times
For its tactics to violate antitrust laws, Apple would need to possess what is known as a “dominant” market share. But Apple controls only about a quarter of the smart-phone market. There are more phones on the market using the Android operating system.
It is not obvious how the market should be defined, however. There are about four times as many applications written for Apple as for Android devices. And experts estimate that Apple accounted for virtually all the roughly 2.5 billion app downloads last year. Antitrust regulators are right to look into whether the company is leveraging this clout to stymie the development of applications for its rivals, closing the door on competition.
Lisa Schmeiser, InfoWorld
Christopher Mims, Technology Review
Ever since the feature debuted in 2008, there's been a lot of speculation about how iTunes Genius accomplishes its playlist-building magic. Now an engineer at Apple that works on the iTune Genius team has revealed some tantalizing clues--a rare disclosure for the infamously secretive company.
Joe Wilcox, Beta News
Matt Drance, Apple Outsider
The challenge, as Jobs notes, is ensuring these packages don’t cross the line of transmitting sensitive information about the user or their device. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find that common ground.
Lex Friedman, Macworld
While some of the changes certainly seem positive, AT&T’s approach to tethering, along with its plan for data overage fees, strikes me as rather hostile to customers.
Erica Sadun, TUAW
David Chartier, Macworld
Joe Clark
There’s no live text, meaning there’s no search. It also means there’s no accessibility on the first computers that are accessible by default if you the developer do no extra work at all.
Mathew Ingram, GigaOM
More than anything, it feels like an industry grasping at any straw it can, in the hope of building a life raft.
Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek
What's most noteworthy about the complaints provided by the FCC is that the majority of them take issue with AT&T as much, if not more than, Apple. To read through the complaints is to be struck how much ill-will has been generated by Apple's decision to make the iPhone available exclusively through AT&T in the U.S.
Jordan Golson, 9 To 5 Mac
If you are an existing iPhone customer, you can keep your existing unlimited plan for $29.99. If you wish to add tethering as an option, you must drop your old plan and add the new 2GB/$25 plan -- plus pay $20 a month for tethering.
Jordan Golson, 9 To 5 Mac
Basically, new iPad owners pay $25 for 2GB of data, or 30 days -- whichever comes first.
Ina Fried, CNET News
Speaking for an hour and a half at the D: All Things Digital confab, Jobs said the day is coming when only one out of every few people will need a traditional computer.
Jobs said advances in chips and software will allow tablet devices like the iPad to do tasks that today are really only suited for a traditional computer, things like video editing and graphic arts work.
Joshua Topolsky, Engadget
Robert Wright, New York Times
Why is Jobs choosing the same path that, last time around, kept him from conquering the world? I had puzzled over this for months until I had a conversation with tech-watcher Harry McCracken, who suggested a theory that seemed outlandish at first but is making more and more sense to me: Steve Jobs just isn’t bent on world domination.
Maybe Jobs is basically just an artist. Maybe he wants above all to create products that are beautiful. And he succeeds, even if it costs him market share, and even if he doesn’t handle the trade-offs between functional and visual beauty as I would.
Frank Michael Russell, San Jose Mercury News
CEO Steve Jobs doesn't seem to be budging from an April 29 post describing Flash as slow, power hungry and unsuitable for some of Apple's products, and detailing his preference for the new HTML5.
Yukari Iwatani Kane And Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs, in a broad-ranging discussion, took more potshots at Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash software, vowed not to get into search despite Google Inc.'s move into Apple's turf, and called Apple passing Microsoft Corp.'s stock valuation "surreal."
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Jobs did say that if the market tells them they’re making bad choices, they’ll change. But so far, that isn’t happening. “People seem to be liking the iPad,” Jobs said to laughs and applause. “We’ve sold one every three seconds since we launched it,” he added.
Nick Bilton, New York Times
What lovely New York weather we had this weekend: sunny, high 80s and a light breeze. Perfect for lying around outside and reading a good book. That is, if the book you are hoping to read is not on an iPad.
It seems that some iPads do not like direct sunlight, saunas or long walks on the beach.
Erik Sherman, BNET
Apple's global personal computer market share for the Mac is flat among consumers and sinking in businesses. That stands in sharp contrast to Apple's success in the U.S. and counters some popular assumptions.
I think one reason is that a major selling point of Apple -- that there is a genius near you -- is not available worldwide.
Nick Eaton, Seattle Post Intelligencer
Joe Wilcox, Beta News
Mitch Wagner, Computerworld
While Apple has made some troubling decisions in recent months, these cases are still evolving, and new information is coming in. So I'll continue giving Apple my business -- but I'm keeping an eye on them.
Brooke Crothers, CNET News
After living through an era when it seemed utterly impossible that a U.S. consumer electronics brand would succeed in Japan, Apple's appeal now is truly surreal for me--and a complete turning of the tables.
Alexander Vaughn, App Advice
Apple is walking a very thin line here. When is a menu with icons a desktop, and when is it not?
Joe White, App Advice
"This has our full attention."
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Why yes, it should be a simple matter to sync to-do items between your iPhone and iCal. And it is, with the right software.
David Chartier, Macworld
Intego, makers of security and privacy apps for the Mac, warned on Tuesday that some Mac software include a new piece of invasive spyware. Macworld has obtained a preliminary list of the applications with the spyware.
In a press release, Intego states that a number of apps and screen savers distributed through sites like MacUpdate, VersionTracker, and Softpedia are installing a little more software than users bargain for; Apple’s Mac OS X Downloads site also contained entries for some of the apps, though the download links appear to now be inactive. The spyware in question is called OSX/OpinionSpy and it’s a variant of Windows spyware that has existed since 2008.
David Chartier, Macworld
The iPad’s unique design poses some new questions about where a portable computer and media viewer can fit into our daily lives. I’ve spent a bit of time doing just about everything one can on an iPad, both at home and on the road, and I think I have some answers.
Franklin Pride, Inside Mac Games
It really just comes down to this. Are you willing to spend $10 on one of the best adventure games ever made, with upgraded graphics, voice acting, and a hint system as freebies? If you like adventure games at all or if you just want to add another classic game to your collection, The Secret Of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a must-buy.
(Ryan Faas), Computerworld
Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle
Stephen Shankland, CNET News
Flash Player may be banned from the iPad, but that's not keeping Adobe Systems from other efforts to leave its mark on the Apple devices. The latest development: new viewer software announced Monday that lets publishers create splashy digital versions of their magazines.
David Talbot, Technology Review
The Elements app suggests a future direction for the "knowledge engine"--e-book interactivity.
Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News
Clive Akass, The Inquirer
Apple is not having everything its own way and mobile evolution has a long way to go. As Jim Zemlin, president of the Linux Foundation said, "We are in the first five minutes of a very long game."
Electronista
Apple is planning to redistribute some of its product profits back to Foxconn workers, claims a Chinese news site. The change in Apple policy is said to be the result of a corporate investigation exploring the connections between suicides and factory working conditions.
Mark Egan and Christine Kearney, Reuters
Giants and upstarts of publishing gathered at the annual BookExpo America here this week agreed e-books will transform the business, although exactly how it will all shake out remains unclear.
Stuart Kennedy, The Australian
The iPad is very much a work in progress. The OS 4 update will add multitasking, the local iBookstore should soon carry the latest books and there's an army of developers and designers working on fresh apps, bags, cases and other add-ons for the gadget.
AppleInsider
Apple said Monday that iPad sales have topped two million in less than 60 days since it first launched in the U.S. on April 3.
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