July 22, 2011
James Brightman, IndustryGamers:
“Now, in Microsoft’s just released fourth-quarter and year-end earnings, we see that Xbox 360 shipped 13.7 million units (up from 10.3 million in 2010) and operating income more than doubled for the Entertainment and Devices Division from $618 million to $1.32 billion.”
Nintendo plans to release the Wii U in 2012, and Sony is rumored to be readying a PlayStation 4 console. But momentum is clearly on Microsoft’s side with the Xbox 360, which saw renewed interest with the release of the Kinect peripheral in 2010. Gamers still love to play Xbox 360 games, and Microsoft has built a thriving, vibrant online ecosystem in Xbox Live Arcade, as well.
AppleInsider:
“As Apple’s patent lawsuits against HTC have created concerns among market watchers, and have even strongly impacted HTC’s stock price, Wang pointed out that the player, which started the patent war, wants either money or market influence and should consider any related losses as costs of doing business,” the report said.
Acer’s chairman said his company is “ready to face any patent infringement challenges associated with adopting Android.” Be careful what you wish for.
Ben Berkowitz, Reuters:
“One of Sony Corp’s insurers has asked a court to declare that it does not have to pay to defend the media and electronics conglomerate from mounting legal claims related to a massive data breach earlier this year.”
The crux of Zurich American’s argument is that their policy was for general liability against possible property damage, and was never intended to insure against the type of digital attack Sony suffered when its PlayStation Network servers were hacked into this past April.
Sony said that the hacking attack has cost it $178 million, and in May said it was expecting insurers to help pay.
ComScore:
To get a better understanding of how Google+ is performing to date and who is using it, comScore pulled together some figures based on the first 21 days of its public existence (June 29, 2011 – July 19, 2011). Importantly, these data are based on unique visitors (which is different than “users” in that people who never sign up may visit Google+ pages) from home and work computers (which excludes usage via mobile devices). In addition, comScore is measuring behavior from people who visit plus.google.com pages, which may not include usage that occurs through the Google+ bar at the top of most Google pages.
20 million users in 21 days. Not a bad start. I’m on Google+ — just search for Jim Dalrymple and you’ll find me.
Jason Subler for Reuters:
After the stir provoked by her first blog, titled “Are you listening, Steve Jobs”, the woman invited readers to send their photographs of fake Apple stores worldwide — and has received responses from place including Costa Rica, Caracas and Vietnam.“You just made me realize, I, too, have been in a fake Apple Store without knowing it! While I was living in Bogotá, Colombia last year I found an Apple Store in the middle of a very trendy area of the city,,” wrote a reader named Laura.
Let the madness begin.
Freeverse has announced that it’s discontinuing a number of Mac game titles because of the release of OS X Lion: (more…)
Reuters:
Wang, a petite, 23-year-old office worker who would not give her first name, spent 14,000 yuan ($2,170) last month buying a Macbook Pro 13-inch and a 3G iPhone from the Kunming store. She wasn’t issued a receipt at the time, with staff telling her to come back later.“Where’s my receipt, you promised me my receipt last month!” Wang shouted at employees, before being whisked away to an upstairs room.Staff were also angry at the unwanted attention after more than 1,000 media outlets picked up the story and pictures of the store from the BirdAbroad blog.
It’s an almost perfect replica of a real Apple Store, right down to the color of the staff’s shirts.
This year marks the end of “Entourage,” one of my favorite HBO shows. The network released a special tribute about the show on iTunes. (more…)
July 21, 2011
Looking at iPad market share, John Gruber says:
What they’re calling market share is really “shipment share”. I don’t think that’s what most people think of as market share. By their metric, a company could take the market share lead by shipping 10 million tablets and selling none of them to customers.
This is exactly what I point out when talking about RIM and the PlayBook. RIM says they shipped 500,000 PlayBooks in its last fiscal quarter — for all we know they could be sitting in a warehouse somewhere. Shipped doesn’t mean sales.
Florian Mueller:
Today Lodsys has amended its complaint against mobile app developers and modified the list of defendants, leaving out one of the seven developers sued on May 31 (Vietnamese company Wulven Games) but adding five famous games companies.
It seems Lodsys thinks it owns almost every technology ever invented.
Bloomberg:
Apple is in early talks that may lead to an acquisition offer for Los Angeles-based Hulu, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
This is interesting. Apple could do a great job with an streaming video service, but I don’t quite understand why Apple would need Hulu to make it happen. The company already has a new $1 billion data center, relationships with the networks and movie studios, and the technology to make it all happen.
With previous releases of Mac OS, Apple had to stop development about a month before it was supposed to ship, so disks could be manufactured. After manufacturing, disks had to be shipped to stores and other retail outlets, which costs quite a bit of money when you add it all up. Yesterday, they released Lion on the Mac App Store and paid whatever distribution it costs to have it downloaded. That’s it. $29.99 x 1 million sold.
No damn wonder Apple can pull in a $7 billion profit in one quarter. Good on you Apple.
Apple on Thursday said OS X Lion topped 1 million downloads in just one day. (more…)
Dan Moren at Macworld writes:
“The top-of-the-line XS model also includes the Roku 2’s new Bluetooth motion-capable remote. In addition to using the buttons to control browsing and playback on your Roku 2, you can use the motion sensitivity to play games, such as Angry Birds (itself also included free with the Roku 2 XS).”
Some have wondered if the second-generation Apple TV – which is built around iOS, unlike its predecessor – may be upgradeable at some point to play games. Either way, it’s something interesting to differentiate the Roku 2 from other set top devices.
Reuters:
This certification … enables the U.S. federal government to buy with confidence knowing that the PlayBook meets their computing policy requirements for protecting sensitive information,” said Scott Totzke, a senior vice-president for BlackBerry security at RIM.
Apparently nobody in the U.S. government sends email.
If you’ve purchased a new Mac any time since June 6, you can get a free copy of OS X Lion from Apple as part of their Lion Up to Date program. The deal also applies to companies or individuals who bought qualifying Mac servers. (more…)
The first measure of any professional audio product or instrument is its sound quality. Once you have that, the rest is often a matter of personal preference. In this instance, the hardware that is the vehicle bringing your audio into your DAW, or any recording interface, involves a lot of factors that can make or break the output of even the best quality source. I/O (input and output) audio interfaces are far better than they were in the past, but Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 offers so much quality and value in this product that their competitors will need to step up their game to compete. (more…)
AirDrop is a new feature in OS X Lion that lets you wirelessly send files to other OS X Lion users, without Wi-Fi. But it only works on certain Macs. Apple has posted a KnowledgeBase article explaining which ones work: (more…)
“These governments and corporations are our enemy. And we will continue to fight them, with all methods we have at our disposal, and that certainly includes breaking into their websites and exposing their lies.“We are not scared any more. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir.”
They go on to say that they act like “bandits” because governments and big business forced their hand. The “society made me what I am” excuse is familiar to anyone who lived through the 80’s punk rock counterculture (or, heck, the 50’s greaser era). Does anyone over the age of 14 – or working at an emotional maturity level higher than a teenager – actually take these punks seriously as a force of positive change?
Chris Breen for Macworld:
For example, let’s say a remote Mac has two user accounts—Joe and Jane. Joe is currently working on that Mac in his account. From another Mac, Jane can select that Mac under the Shared heading in a Finder window, click Share Screen, and enter her user name and password in the resulting dialog box. When she clicks the Connect button, a Select Display window appears. Within this window are two options—Ask to Share the Display and Connect to a Virtual Display. If she clicks Ask to Share the Display a message appears on the other Mac indicating that Jane would like to share the screen. If Joe clicks Share Screen, Jane can see what’s on Joe’s screen as well as control Joe’s account.
Okay, that is very cool.
“So, I beseech you: Fix your communities. Stop allowing and excusing destructive and pointless conversations to be the fuel for your business. Advertisers, hold sites accountable if your advertising appears next to this hateful stuff. Take accountability for this medium so we can save it from the vilification that it still faces in our culture.”
Anil Dash offers people who run Web sites and online communities some common sense advice (with some raw language peppered in), and he makes some excellent points. If you run a site and you’re content to just let the comments run rampant with idiocy, you’re part of the problem.
2K Games on Thursday released Sid Meier’s Pirates for the iPad. It’s priced at $3.99 and is available for download from the App Store. (more…)
Rob Pegoraro:
For years, I’ve had to tell sometimes skeptical friends and family members that real journalists don’t do that. We are generally uncouth, sometimes lazy and screw up in plenty of other ways–not least when we drop stories because they seem too complicated or might make readers think we’re taking sides–but we don’t act like common criminals.
Rob is talking about the whole Rupert Murdoch scandal. It doesn’t seem to matter which industry you talk about, there are always some unscrupulous people. Rob is definitely one of the good guys.
Benedict Evans:
Of course, the picture would be equally bad if Nokia had chosen Android or stuck with Symbian/Meego instead of choosing Windows Phone – Nokia simply has no competitive devices in the mid range and high end of the market this year.
Nokia is definitely in a transition period,but only selling 16.7 million smartphones last quarter is bad. Remember, Apple just reported selling more than 20 million iPhones in its latest quarter.
OS X Lion has a new feature called natural scrolling that is trying my patience, but I’m giving it a try anyway. I have a few tips that may help you get used to it too. (more…)
July 20, 2011
Apple on Wednesday launched its B2B App Store, allowing businesses to make volume purchases of apps. (more…)
Christina Warren for Mashable:
Because installation takes place entirely from within the Mac App Store, the usual “clean install” option isn’t present. If you’ve followed our guide for preparing your Mac for Lion, you’re probably in good shape to proceed with an upgrade. If, however, you long for the ability to do a clean install without having to first install Snow Leopard and THEN install Lion, Mashable has you covered.
Christina takes you through the simple steps to create the disk. Great if you want to have the clean install option at some point.
Matt Richman:
Of the 25.09 million iPhones Apple sold in 2009, 35.8% of them came during Apple’s first and second calendar quarters. In 2010 that number was 36.1%. Using calendar 2011 iPhone sales numbers and a 36% average, Apple is on track to sell a whopping 108.3 million iPhones this year. To put that in perspective, 108.3 million iPhones would be 20% more than it sold in all of 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined.
This is just getting silly now.
MacProVideo.com:
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion has been referred to by Apple as “Back to the Mac”. That’s because iOS took a lot from the original Mac OS X and built on the unique touch interface of the iOS devices. In OS 10.7 Lion, Apple brings a lot of their iOS experience “back to the Mac”. Specially the interaction with touch surfaces like the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad have become a central feature of Mac OS, but there’s also a whole lot more.
Videos like this are great for new and old user alike. It gives new users the lowdown on everything Lion, and it also gives existing users a look into what’s new. It’s a 97-minute tutorial covers all the Core features of Lion.
RIM investors must be holding their face in their hands this morning after reading how well Apple did in its latest fiscal quarter. While RIM bombed its most recent quarter, Apple blew away all expectations. (more…)
