“This is the second time Apple has unleashed a beta product on the public post the death of (late Apple CEO) Steve Jobs,” Londis said. “Apple Siri was the first,” he said, referring to the iPhone’s voice-activated assistant. He pointed out that Apple used to have a rule forbidding release of beta software when Jobs was in charge. “Apple is letting the public vet the software. This is something Jobs never would have done.”
I’m sick and tired of pundits saying “This is something Jobs never would have done.” There’s ever been precisely one person on Earth who knew what Jobs would have done, and he died last October.
Londis is also demonstrably wrong. Apple, under Jobs’ leadership, released any number of public betas. OS X Public Beta is one example. FaceTime for Mac is a more recent example. iWork.com. The list goes on and on.
This is just one example of the “Not on Steve Jobs’ watch” harping that’s been going on for months, and the vast majority of it is total bullshit.
T-Mobile said on Friday that it has reached a deal to unload its cellular towers for $2.4 billion, a move that will help fund the company’s effort to modernize its network.
The lessee is Crown Castle, a Houston, Texas-based company, which has secured a 10-year deal with T-Mobile with an option to buy. T-Mobile is scrambling to upgrade its service to high-speed LTE following AT&T’s failed acquisition of T-Mobile last year. Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s parent company, plans to use the money to pay debt and fund the network expansion.
iPhone 5 goes on sale in 22 countries today including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Mayer’s rule: If a new product can’t be shipped in six months, and if it doesn’t have a realistic shot of reaching 100 million users or generate $100 million toward the company’s top line, then Yahoo will no longer bother.
It’s no secret that I like Mayer and it’s because of things like this. Tell your employees what you want and expect them to meet those expectations.
Magazine publisher Future hinted it will upgrade its digital strategy at scale later this year, as it announced impressive sales thanks to Apple’sz [sic] iTunes Newsstand. “Sales of digital editions on Apple devices have passed £5 million ($8 million) in the period since the Apple Newsstand was launched in October 2011,” the company reported in Thursday’s interim trading update.
Good news for Future, which has made a huge transition to digital publishing on the iPad in the past year.
The company sold 7.4 million BlackBerry phones and 130,000 PlayBook tablets last quarter. Analysts on average predicted 6.9 million smartphones and 217,000 tablets. Apple, meanwhile, sold 5 million units of its latest iPhone in a single weekend.
From hard-core shooters to amazingly fun casual games, thousands of quality Mac games are available for purchase and download. Explore the latest demos, dive into the best sellers, or check out the newest indie gems.
The beta is over and the final version is available for download.
Jim Dalrymple and Dan Benjamin discuss the launch of the iPhone 5, its sale success, a redesigned Mac Pro, using an iPhone on the Verizon network, Corning’s relationship with Apple, WiFi issues with the iPhone 5, Billie Joe’s (of Green Day) breakdown at the IHeartRadio music festival, and buying the right amp.Sponsored by Igloo Software, Harvest (use code 5by5 for 50% off first month), Gazelle, and MailChimp.
It’s easy for most of us around these parts to forget how badly technology still works for so many people. This is supposed to be the best we have today: an iPad, a routine OS update, an Apple Store, an automatic backup feature. But even the iPad, while easy to use for routine tasks, still shows its computer heritage in clunky, ugly, techie ways like software updates and restores. And while Apple Stores have a reputation for great service, there are enough counterexamples happening every day that I’m not sure how much longer that reputation will last.
Arment recounts some recent tribulations his elderly grandparents have suffered with a data migration facilitated with an Apple Genius at their local store. The story doesn’t knock Apple Stores or Geniuses, but it does highlight some of the issues that unsophisticated Apple product users (or as I like to think of them, muggles) still face with Apple technology.
Google’s Eric Schmidt last year handed the CEO reigns over to co-founder Larry Page and became the firm’s executive director, but he has remained in the spotlight. This week Schmidt has been touring Asia to help introduce the Nexus 7 there, and during a stop in South Korea the normally staid executive loosened up with by dancing with Korean pop sensation Psy.
Yesterday we reported on a vulnerability on Samsung phones that could allow a malicious website to wipe a user’s device, but new details are coming to light that indicate the issue extends beyond Samsung’s product line — and that the dialer in some versions of Android may by the cause.
Barnes & Noble on Wednesday took the wraps off two new models of its Nook e-reader, an Android-based tablet designed to go head to head with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and other inexpensive e-readers and tablets. The Nook HD and HD+ cost $199 and $269 respectively.
The HD is a 7-inch tablet with a 1440 x 900 pixel display. The $199 model comes with 8GB of built-in storage; a 16GB version is available for $229. The HD+ is Barnes & Noble has a 9.5-inch display capable of showing 1920 x 1280 pixels.
The HD+ is the first Nook have similar dimensions to the iPad, though its resolution is lower (the iPad’s is 2048 x 1536). The HD+ comes in 16 and 32GB models for $269 and $299 respectively.
Both units can be expanded with more storage capacity using microSD cards, and have built in 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth. Both run Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich.”
Starting today, you can use Google Maps to find a sea turtle swimming among a school of fish, follow a manta ray and experience the reef at sunset—just as I did on my first dive in the Great Barrier Reef last year.
