SketchParty TV

This looks like a lot of fun for the whole family. Talk about taking advantage of multiple Apple devices, this is it.

App pricing strategy

Realmac Software’s Rob Jarman discusses the company’s strategy behind the pricing for Clear for Mac. Personally, I hate the race to the bottom with pricing and am willing to pay a developer a reasonable price for their work. “Reasonable” is often the point of contention with many people though.

Dutch court: Samsung Galaxy products infringe Apple patent

A Dutch court ruled on Wednesday that some of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy smartphones and tablets infringe an Apple patent in the latest round of the two firms’ worldwide battle.

The court ordered Samsung Electronics to pay Apple damages, determined by how much profit it has made from the sales.

The patent dispute concerns the Android operating system versions 2.2.1 to 3.0 used on Samsung’s Galaxy tablets and smartphones, the court said.

Smart people those Dutch.

Create a greeting card with iPhoto

Dave Caolo takes you through the process of creating a holiday greeting card using one of your own photos. It’s a great tutorial, especially with the holidays being right around the corner.

HP, Autonomy allegations heat up

Hewlett Packard Co rebuffed a request by former Autonomy Chief Executive Mike Lynch to detail accusations of accounting fraud leveled against the British software company and its former executives, and challenged Lynch to submit to questions under penalty of perjury.

HP was responding to an open letter that Lynch shot to HP’s board on Tuesday, asking for specifics of the U.S. company’s allegations that Lynch and former Autonomy executives inflated revenue and gross margins, which HP said last week forced it to take an $8.8 billion writedown on Autonomy’s value.

It really appears that both sides think they have something on the other. If Lynch really did do something, wouldn’t he just go hide and count his money? Now HP ups the ante with the “penalty of perjury” request.

It’s hard to know who has the upper hand here.

About the rumor that Apple decimated its pro audio team

A rumor began circulating earlier this week that Apple’s Pro audio team has been decimated.

Apple’s Pro Audio application team is virtually gone, according to recent conversations with a couple of ex-Apple employees. […] In the words of one of them, the team has been ‘decimated’.

Nope.

There’s no truth to this rumor.

More Amazon bullshit

Amazon today announced that this Black Friday and Cyber Monday were the best ever for the Kindle family, and the popular new Kindle e-readers and tablets remain at the top of Amazon’s best sellers list worldwide.

How many exactly did they sell? Amazon won’t say. Could be they sold 10 Kindles between the two days, nobody knows for sure. Just more bullshit from Amazon.

Windows 8 bloatware

Bloatware is a result of companies not giving a shit about their users. It’s alive and well in Windows 8.

Apple fires Maps manager

Bloomberg:

Richard Williamson, who oversaw the mapping team, was fired by Senior Vice President Eddy Cue, said the people, who asked not to be named because the information wasn’t yet public. Cue, who took over last month as part of a management shakeup, is seeking advice from outside mapping-technology experts and prodding digital maps provider TomTom NV (TOM2) to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple.

Eddy is cleaning house.

Ballsy

Harry Marks rounds up all the excuses from major publications who falsely reported on Monday that Google bought ICOA. Not a single apology, but lots of finger-pointing.

Samsung rewards developer for copying iOS game

Samsung has announced the winner of its Smart App Challenge and look who made it to the top! Our old “friends” from Feeling touch with their Gun & Blood shooter! “Their” game is surprisingly similar to our very own Overkill. People with really sharp eyes might even call it a clear copycat, a rip off, a shameless robbery, and we would be inclined to agree with them.

Stay classy folks.

Happy 70th Jimi

If a musician’s greatness is measured by the breadth of his influence — and how else should we gauge it? — Jimi Hendrix’s legacy commends him as one of the most inspiring virtuosos who ever lived. Consider just a few of the acts who explicitly cite Hendrix as central to their sound, or who pay tribute by incorporating at least something of him into their work: The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Miles Davis (who, of course, influenced Hendrix, as well), ZZ Top, Stephen Stills, Public Enemy — the list is as long as it is dizzying in its variety.

Via Jim Coudal

Oopsie

Arik Hesseldahl got to the bottom of rumors that Google bought ICOA Wireless:

But people within the company say that contrary to a press release posted on PR Web, Google has not bought ICOA, a Rhode Island-based player in public Wi-Fi Networks.

It fooled a lot of people this morning. Good job Arik.

Apple’s astonishing profits

  • From October 2011 through September 2012, the combined net profit of Microsoft, Google, eBay, Yahoo, Facebook and Amazon was $34.4 billion. Apple alone made $7 billion more.

  • In the same period, Dell, Asus, Intel, Acer, IBM, Lenovo and HP, i.e. virtually the entire PC industry, made $19.3 billion or less than half of Apple’s profit.

How’s that for some context.

Amazon has no profits, but lots of faith

But what makes Amazon not just amazing but downright dangerous is that as a financial matter it has something even better than profits—the boundless faith of the investment community.

It’s truly amazing how the investment community treats Amazon differently than many other companies.

Ringer for iOS and Mac [Sponsor]

Ringer for iOS and Mac. Effortless iPhone ringtones, text tones, and alert tones. Easily select just the right part of your song to turn into your ringtone. See the waveform for your media so you can quickly find the spot you are looking for. Control fade in and fade out. Choose the gap between rings. Auto volume balance keeps ringtones from being too loud or too quiet. Ringer on the Mac lets you use just about any media including video and automatically imports tones into iTunes, ready to sync to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

Apple I photos

We’ve come a long way in a relatively short time.