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Rumor: Apple’s Cloud Music Service Won’t Be Free

A new report by Cnet today claims Apple will charge users a fee for its rumored cloud-based music service, although no exact details on pricing have been provided. Citing “music industry insiders”, Cnet says Apple could offer the service free of charge initially as a promotion, but eventually they’ll have to charge users to keep the service running and pay music labels. It’s unclear whether the new cloud service will offer different kinds of monthly and annual subscriptions, although Cnet points to an old report that suggested Apple could go for a $20/year fee.

Don’t expect Apple’s cloud-music service to come free of charge, at least not forever.

Apple plans to eventually charge for its cloud music service, sources told CNET. Users would be able to store their digital media on the company’s servers.

Music industry insiders told me that Apple has indicated it could offer the service free of charge initially but that company will eventually require a fee. Google is also expected to charge for a similar service.

Several reports in the past weeks indicated Apple was working on a complete MobileMe revamp featuring new cloud-based music functionalities, social and location features, as well as a new price point to make basic parts of the service (such as syncing options) free for all iOS and Mac users. Last week, it was reported work on Apple’s new music service had been finalized, with the company seeking to close deals with music labels to push ahead the release of its new iTunes-in-the-cloud offering. Cnet also claimed Apple had signed a deal with the Warner Music Group, whilst Peter Kafka at MediaMemo said Apple had already closed deals with at least two of the four major music labels, with Apple’s Eddy Cue visiting New York City to ink the remaining deals.

Evernote 2.1 for Mac Brings Faster Search and Audio Notes

Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin said Apple users are the most valuable to the service, and you might remember the release of the Mac App Store version months ago more than doubled Evernote’s new userbase. For these reasons, it appears that Evernote is now seriously committed to delivering full-featured updates for the OS X and iOS clients – Evernote 2.1 for Mac, available today, brings several new functionalities and improvements to the popular “memory tool” including faster search, audio notes for free and premium users, as well as social sharing options for Twitter, Facebook, and email.

It’s no secret that Evernote for Mac used to become really slow with hundreds of rich notes in the database, constantly backed up to the app’s cloud for web, desktop and mobile access. The improved search functionality in version 2.1 makes sure looking through all your notes is a fast and reliable process – if you consider that several users keep thousands of notes into Evernote, you can understand how important it is for the company to implement a stable search algorithm that returns accurate results in seconds. For academics, students, and journalists who keep track of everything through Evernote, improved search is quite possibly the single biggest reason to update to 2.1. This update, however, doesn’t stop at search: the Evernote team also implemented a new sharing feature to send notes off to Twitter and Facebook, but you can share a note via email or copy the URL to the system’s clipboard, too. Our writer Graham Spencer – a huge Evernote fan – says he’s not sure how much the sharing aspect of Evernote will improve his workflow, but I’m pretty sure the option will be loved my millions of users anyway.

Last, Evernote 2.1 brings audio notes: whilst free users can record audio up to 25 MB per note, premium Evernote subscribers can create audio recordings up to 50 MB, which is roughly 4 hours of recoding time. The audio recording UI is nice, and all you have to do to activate it is hit the microphone button in the toolbar. You can create new audio notes or add new audio to existing files in your Evernote account.

Evernote 2.1 is propagating now through Software Update, or you can download it direct from the company’s website. The Mac App Store version (still reporting 2.0.5 as the latest update) will receive the 2.1 facelift “soon.”

No Revenue? No Problem. Apple Could Survive On Cash Reserves ‘Til 2018→

No Revenue? No Problem. Apple Could Survive On Cash Reserves ‘Til 2018

At the Q2 2011 earnings call, Apple announced its cash stockpile had increased by $6.1 billion, totaling $65.8 billion by the end of the March quarter. Asymco’s Horace Dediu decided to take a look at these numbers to put things in perspective, and came out with some interesting facts about Apple’s current cash. For instance, if Apple’s revenue stopped completely, its cash would keep operations going for at least 7 years until mid-2018 – that is, if Apple suddenly stopped generating any kind of revenue. If you consider, though, that Apple will keep selling millions of products in the next months, and that the cash pile will continue growing bigger, you get an idea of how cash allows the company to invest in pre-payment deals, or research & development for new breakthrough devices like the iPad. Other tidbits from Asymco’s research:

The funds are big enough to place Apple’s CFO office in the top 100 largest fund managers in the world and larger than any hedge fund manager.

Current cash is worth more than Nokia, RIM and Motorola Mobility’s market caps, put together.

Apple’s cash is worth half of Google’s enterprise value.

With the release of the white iPhone 4, more iPad 2 shipments and rumored iMac and MacBook Air updates on their way, we wonder what the chart above will look like after Apple’s Q3 2011 results. [via GigaOM]

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iPhone 6 To Use Next-Gen Thinner Displays from Sharp?

Japanese newspaper Nikkan is today reporting that Apple may have made a display component deal with Sharp for the display of the sixth-generation iPhone. It is based on reports that Sharp has begun preparation for the start of manufacturing in Spring next year at its Kameyama plant in Japan for an iPhone display using next-generation technologies.

Sharp will reportedly be producing “low temperature poly-silicon technology” displays, a next generation technology that will allow displays to be thinner and lighter whilst consuming less power than a current LCD display. The key component of these new displays is the polycrystalline silicon, which enables display drivers to be mounted directly onto the glass and thus have a thinner display. Other advantages of the technology include displaying a more vivid image and enhanced durability because of a reduced number of connecting pins.

Previous rumors had circulated that Apple had sided with Toshiba for future display manufacturing – but a Sharp representative disputed this at the time. In a similar vein, Tim Cook commented in January at the Q1 earnings call that Apple had entered a $3.9 billion component supply deal. He didn’t specify what component it was for, but it was speculated that it was for high-resolution displays and that the deal was between Toshiba, Sharp and a third manufacturer. Sharp was also at the center of another display rumor back in January in which they were supposedly preparing to manufacture glasses-free 3D displays for the iPod Touch.

[Nikkan [Google Translate] via AppleInsider]

 

Android Strides Ahead In US Smartphone Market Share

A new market survey by Nielson in the United States has shown Android drive ahead and gain 37% of the smartphone market share, a strong 10% margin over Apple and the iPhone which sits in second place at 27%. The figures show a significant change since the last Nielson survey, done in October that had the iPhone with the largest smartphone market share at 27.9% and BlackBerry in second place at 27.4%. Android has largely absorbed the 5.4% market share BlackBerry lost as well as the decreasing share of Symbian and older Windows Mobile devices to go from 22.7% in October to its 37% market share in March.

The survey also revealed that Android is now the most desired smartphone operating system for consumers, with 31.1% of consumers surveyed saying they would choose an Android phone compared with 30% who would go with an iPhone. In both the market share and desired operating system, Android is showing significant increases whilst Apple is seeing minor reductions compared to others such as BlackBerry or Symbian.

A final aspect of the survey was what recent smartphone acquisitions were and it reveals that 50% of all new smartphones purchased were running Android, whilst 25% were iPhones and 15% were BlackBerry phones. It is worth noting that this survey was solely focused on smartphones and as such did not include reference to the other iOS devices such as the iPod Touch or iPad. Jump the break for two more graphs.

[Via AllThingsD]

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Following Apple’s Rejections, Tapjoy Caps Pay-Per-Install App Downloads

Last week, a number of reports suggested Apple had silently tweaked its algorithm that handles ranking of App Store applications, giving more importance to the quality and usage stats of an app rather than simple download numbers. The tweaked system, never confirmed by Apple but noticed by several third-party App Store ranking engines and advertising agencies, had its effect mostly on free apps in the Social Networking and Games categories, with the Facebook iPhone app quickly climbing to the first spots of the charts after months of sitting in the 10-20 positions. At the same time, Apple also began rejecting updates to applications that implemented “pay-per-install” methods – a system that, especially in iPhone games, allows you to earn virtual goods and currencies by downloading another app from the Store. As noted by pay-per-install and advertising network Tapjoy, the rejections came as Apple apparently started enforcing section 3.10 of the App Store Review Guidelines, which doesn’t accept developers who “attempt to manipulate or cheat” the App Store’s user reviews and charts. In this case, apps powered by pay-per-install options manipulate the charts as users go download additional software not for quality or particular interest, but just because they want to unlock the virtual goods.

At the VentureBeat Mobile Summit, Tapjoy CEO Mihir Shah said the company rolled out last week a cap on how many times an application can be downloaded through Tapjoy’s programs. Details on the cap aren’t clear, but it sounds like the new strategy is aimed at complying with Apple’s rules in a way these “offerwall” programs don’t manipulate the charting algorithm of the App Store, yet providing some exposure for Tapjoy’s advertisers. Admittedly, whilst advertising has always been a part of the Internet and it doesn’t surprise anyone that a company pays money to get exposure, having certain apps ranking higher in the App Store only because they invested more in pay-per-install methods doesn’t exactly sound great. If Apple wants to promote quality rather than download numbers, they have every right to rebuild their garden’s walls – as I stated previously. Tapjoy is yet another third-party company that had to change its service to keep up with Apple and the App Review Team. mocoNews concludes its article on Tapjoy with this quote from the company’s CEO:

Still, app developers should have some flexibility to market their applications within other applications, Shah said. “There has got to be a number of very creative long-term ideas that impresses a balance between marketing spend and organic rankings,” he said.

Creative ideas, as Shah calls them, clearly can’t come from paying money to gain visibility in the App Store. Rather, I believe Apple would see developers investing more in iAd for apps, or clever techniques to team up with fellow developers and promote iOS apps together. But right now, pay-per-install networks have to change.

The “Re-Imagined” TweetDeck 2.0 iPhone App Hits The App Store

TweetDeck has today released its completely new 2.0 iPhone app that has received a “Hollywood re-imagining”, being rebuilt from the ground up to be “fast, flexibe and full-on powerful.” The update, which has been a long time coming, adds a number of new features and improvements whilst retaining the “guiding principles” of the original.

One of TweetDeck’s new and innovative features is the use of pinching on a column to access the columns’ settings so that any combinations of Twitter timelines, mentions, DMs, Facebook feeds and so on can be merged into one customized column. The whole user interface has also been redesigned, following the direction that their Android and Chrome apps have gone in, and of course it now takes advantage of the Retina display.

Also improved is multiple account handling and gestures, which although not extensive as those present in Tweetbot, are greatly improved adding the ‘pull to refresh’ and pinch for column settings gestures and general improvements in swiping through your various feeds. Finally there is built-in Deck.ly support, letting you write those longer messages on Twitter without hassle.

The 2.0 version comes after “several months of feverish work” and a promised iPad revamp of the app is also coming in a Universal binary “in the next couple of weeks”. In fact technically TweetDeck 2.0 is not an update and the old versions of the app have been temporarily removed from the App Store to avoid confusion. So don’t go to the updates tab of the App Store, it won’t appear there, you’ll have to download the new TweetDeck app from the actual store.

Jump the break for some more screenshots of the new update.

[Via TechCrunch]

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White iPhone 4 Prototype Spotted On eBay

In the past few weeks, white iPhone prototypes and leaks have been popping up all over the place. Following a series of videos posted by a Vietnamese website showing a white iPhone 4 running an old iOS 4 build with different versions of multitasking and Spotlight, BGR managed to shoot some photos of another white iPhone running on T-Mobile USA network. Not to mention the fact that Apple is widely expected to finally introduce the white iPhone 4 tomorrow after a 10-month delay, although no official announcement has been made yet.

If you’re that kind of collector that doesn’t mind spending money to get your hands on Apple memorabilia, however, a white iPhone prototype is available on eBay. The prototype unit reports the usual XX Apple-internal marks on its case, runs iOS 4.3.1 (build 8G4) and it appears to be an AT&T iPhone. The unit has 16 GB of storage and it’s got DF3039 engraved on the front panel – perhaps an ID number for the unit. The eBay seller has posted several pictures of the device, and claims it’s “a mint condition Executive iPhone 4.” The price? This prototype is currently bidding at $2,838.00 and, as you can see from the photos, it comes with an old-style proximity sensor different from the one that will ship with the public version of the white iPhone. [via 9to5mac]