Friday - March 12, 2010
There are rumors that Apple's iPad launch has already run into some rough patches that are uncharacteristic for the company, but how much substance is actually behind them? One frequently mentioned challenge is having a sufficiently impressive array of available content that's compatible with the device. The company reportedly has reduced the number of top-level categories in its iBookstore from 35 to perhaps as few as 20. That could mean that Apple is consolidating some categories to avoid displaying any that would appear understocked with iPad offerings.
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Thursday - March 11, 2010
When Apple enabled in-app purchases for iPhone applications, it seemed as though the days of "free" and "paid" versions of any given app were coming to an end. Soon, I thought, everything in the store would start out free as a teaser and then charge for an upgrade. That hasn't exactly panned out universally, but Vlingo's new voice application does charge in the way I thought all apps would charge by now.
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Wednesday - March 10, 2010
The first rule of Apple's App Club is: You do not talk about App Club. Any developer who writes an app for the App Store is forbidden from making any public statements about the iPhone Developer Program Licensing Agreement. Second rule of App Club is: Said developers also can't sell their apps to other app stores, even if that app is eventually rejected by Apple.
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Wednesday - March 10, 2010
Apple has announced the iPad will hit retail shelves April 3, sending the adrenalin surging through competitors' veins. HP and several Chinese manufacturers have announced tablets in what might be perceived as an attempt to capitalize on the not-quite-a-laptop, not-really-a-netbook category.
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Tuesday - March 9, 2010
Valve one of the largest distributors of online games, has announced that it will make its Steam online gaming service and proprietary gaming engine, Source, available on the Mac. The service, Steamworks for the Mac, comes equipped with Steam Play, a feature that allows play on either a PC or Mac at no additional charge.
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Tuesday - March 9, 2010
Apple debuted its first TV ads for the iPad during the Academy Awards television broadcast on Sunday, doing what Apple does best: showing us dozens of things we can do with an iPad in just a few seconds, all to the tune of some hip music we've never really listened to before. Yet these ads are like walking into a restaurant where the menu doesn't arrive -- we're hungry and salivating.
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Tuesday - March 9, 2010
Given the growing popularity of mobile devices and the great many applications to go with them, you would think that this new niche had plenty of room for newcomers. Many of those newcomers, though, will find it difficult to capture a great deal of consumer attention. Places like the Android Market and the Apple App Store are popular and growing fast, but they're awash in apps that struggle to stand out from the crowd.
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Monday - March 8, 2010
The new features in Apple's makeover of its image editing and archiving program Aperture appear to be a hit among photographers, even though the initial release of the application was so flawed an upgrade had to be released within two weeks of its launch. Aperture 3.0 ($199) has more than two hundred new features.
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Monday - March 8, 2010
Users of apps from BIRT, the open source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools project, will be able to access them on the iPhone starting Monday. Actuate, which founded the BIRT project and coleads it with the Eclipse Foundation, is putting its BIRT Mobile Viewer on the App Store.
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Friday - March 5, 2010
We now know when the first iPads will be available for sale in U.S. Apple Stores: April 3rd. We now know what kinds of iPads you'll be able to buy at that time: the WiFi models only. And we now know when you'll be able to pre-order your iPad via online delivery or Apple Store pickup: March 12. What we don't know: How will Apple sell the iPad?
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