Schmidt says he recuses himself from board meetings when the iPhone comes up. That has to be nearly impossible to do. The iPhone is Apple’s biggest product right now and the company has to revolve around it. On the flip side, an Apple board member not knowing anything about iPhones wouldn’t be making informed decisions.
Twice this week, I’ve engaged in conversations about Apple missing the boat on potentially sweet markets that would have fit right into its iTunes growth strategy. Amazon’s Kindle-DX and the announcement by Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser of a forthcoming product, code-named Facet. Real’s DVD-ripping technology is should be available in iTunes.
New iPhone applications will be rejected unless they are ready for Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 3.0 firmware upgrade, developers have been informed.
narramissic writes “In a recent blog post, Josh Fruhlinger muses on the possibility of 3G radio receivers turning up in future Mac notebooks (as foretold by Apple job postings and the mention of WWAN hardware in Snow Leopard beta releases). ‘At first glance,’ says Fruhlinger, ‘this seems like a reasonably awesome idea.’ But will the target market be willing to take on the additional telecom charge? ‘And, more to the point,’ he says, ‘most of us have gotten accustomed to the idea of one Internet connection per household, shared with a wireless router. The latter idea could be covered by a router that connects to the Internet over a 3G connection — something like the MiFi hotspot. It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple had such a thing in the pipeline, an Airport station (Airport Mobility?) that didn’t need to be plugged into the wall. That would explain the search for 3G experts, anyway.'”
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Apple announced recently that iPhone and iPod users had downloaded an impressive one billion programs from the company’s online App Store in a mere nine months. Meanwhile, 15 of the 20 most popular paid downloads since the service opened have been games.
gyrogeerloose writes “According to MacRumors, NIN’s iPhone application has been approved. Trent Reznor has reported via his Twitter account that the now-approved app was resubmitted without modification, which suggests that Apple reconsidered their initial rejection. This should really come as no surprise to anyone who follows Apple news since it follows the company’s typical pattern of handing potentially controversial iPhone apps, especially when it concerns high-profile rejections.”
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fm6 writes “When the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems was announced, it was widely assumed that Oracle was interested only in Sun’s software technology, and would sell or discontinue all its hardware businesses. Larry Ellison, in an interview (PDF) just posted on the Oracle web site, says that’s not what’s going to happen. In particular, SPARC isn’t going anywhere: ‘Once we own Sun we’re going to increase the investment in SPARC. We think designing our own chips is very, very important. Even Apple is designing its own chips these days.'”
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Since the announcement of iPhone software 3.0, the Internet has been busy picking away at its many builds finding new and exciting features. Once feature the OS spelunkers don’t have to root around for is MMS. Apple is finally bringing the sought after feature to the iPhone.
An anonymous reader writes “Evidence has been growing that Apple is developing a new gaming console. Now, there are some possible details about how a combined media/game console might work, based on patent applications filed by Apple in late 2007 and early 2008. Here is some what we can look for: having your personal music integrated into a title, a ‘natural’ gesture multitouch interface, and a single online store that sells games, media, and video.”
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narramissic writes “Microsoft has identified 12 application types that won’t be accepted at the MarketPlace for Mobile store. Among them: VoIP apps, programs that are larger than 10MB, and programs that change the default browser on a device. Overly restrictive? Maybe. But perhaps the clear set of rules (PDF) will prevent confusion similar to what’s been encountered over Apple’s policy for approving or rejecting applications from the App Store.”
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