From Russia With Love: Old Films Become Illegal Apps

For as much as Apple wants to curate the content of its App Store, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the app review team at Cupertino to filter apps based on illegal content with no copyrights from the genuine ones. A new report on the BBC points to several apps being sold in the App Store with no consent from the Russian company that has rights on the content of these apps. The apps, in fact, are based on old Russian films like Gentlemen of Fortune, Assa, The Diamond Arm, Kin-dza-dza and Cheburashka.

The films and cartoons, as noted by the BBC, are still protected by copyright. Russian film studio Mosfilm and the Joint State Film Collection confirmed that they didn’t approve the release of those apps in Apple’s App Store:

It is illegal to present our films as applications either in iTunes or on any other internet site. It is permitted only on our own Mosfilm site”, Svetlana Pyleva, Mosfilm’s deputy director-general, said in an interview with bbcrussian.com.

“The only official internet site where you can watch legal Mosfilm content is the Mosfilm site.,” she said. “There are no third parties which we have permitted to use our content.

An Apple spokesperson told the Russian BBC that the company “understands the importance of protecting intellectual property”, so it won’t be a surprise to see the apps pulled soon. After all, this is not an isolated case of apps sold without consent of the original copyright owners: just open the App Store and look for clones of Nintendo’s Super Mario, Angry Birds or other 1980’s hits. The truth is most companies don’t care about the rip-offs, and some file complaints to get the apps removed. Overall, the App Store is a crowded place with more than 350,000 apps and it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for Apple to check on every copyright agreement ahead of the app’s approval. At least it’s fairly easy to contact the iTunes team and claim copyright infringement.

Spotify’s Head Of Business On iTunes and Music Labels→

Spotify’s Head Of Business On iTunes and Music Labels

Spotify, the European-based music streaming service, is having a hard time trying to launch its product in the United States. Once expected to become available in a self-imposed December 2010 deadline, the service failed to launch due to the lack of deals with major music labels that, as you can guess, have to guarantee Spotify access to their music libraries.  Two weeks ago, All Things Digital reported Spotify managed to close a deal with Sony, as a first step to bring the service to the United States. In the past months, rumors surfaced detailing how Apple was subtly playing against Spotify to convince labels that the service wouldn’t be a good source of revenue like iTunes.

Spotify’s head of business Faisal Galaria told Strategy Eye:

Q: But aren’t the labels eager to break iTunes’ monopoly?

A: If you’re the digital team [at a label] and 80% of your revenue was coming from one place, how much are you going to p*ss them off until someone else can guarantee all that revenue from a new source?

Put yourself into their shoes for a moment – you’re a nice, fat big executive at label X, Y, Z. You’re getting half a million dollars a year as long as you hit your bonus. Your bonus means that 80% of your revenues comes from iTunes. Are you going to tell iTunes where to go? Because your half a million dollar bonus has now gone.

According to various reports, Apple may be blocking Spotify from launching in the States because of a similar music streaming service they are building on top of iTunes, based on the data center in North Carolina. [via Cult of Mac]

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This Front Row Mockup Is Totally Gorgeous

Designer Zach Forrester tried to imagine what would Front Row look like if Apple updated its interface with new shiny pixels, animations and a visualizer. The result, a series of mockups available here, is impressive: Zach took the basic concept underlying Front Row’s UI and the Apple TV’s browsing experience and re-imagined them with a bit of artistic sense and pixel perfection in mind.

I’m not sure about the keyboard as-you-type he designed, but everything else looks great: from the Movies view with larger poster art and slide-in animation for a single item, to the music player that includes a subtle visualizer on top of the Cover Flow navigation and next to the Now Playing album art.

More screenshots are available here, and there’s a limited web demo for you to play around as well. [via Beautiful Pixels] Read more

The Great Disparity in Global iTunes Prices

Over the weekend I curiously started investigating whether Australians had been getting a progressively worse deal for their iTunes purchases as the Australian dollar rose from USD$0.60 to parity whilst iTunes prices stayed constant. The answer is most definitely a yes but it doesn’t just apply to Australians, and the extent of the price disparity is larger than I had thought.

Whilst Apple is entitled to have different prices for different regions, it doesn’t really need to. Furthermore the extent to which there is price disparity is very extensive for the music section of the store and this article aims to bring the inequity to light. Apple has previously been under similar pressure but the exchange rates reverted back, I would hope Apple again reconsiders their iTunes pricing system now when exchange rates have pushed the disparity to a very high level.

This turned into a bigger article than I had expected so here are the key things I cover and keep reading after the break for a full run down with tables, graphs and more.

  • iTunes uses fixed prices (i.e. $0.99, $1.29 etc.) and for stores outside the US these price levels were converted using a very conservative prediction of the future value of a particular currency
  • The price levels in non-US stores seem not to have been updated in a long time, yet the value of the non-US currencies have mostly appreciated since then. As a result people purchasing from most of the non-US iTunes Stores are now paying more than US customers and Apple is earning more from those customers
  • The conversion rate is different for the App Store and Music store (and likely the other stores too), the App store conversion rates are much more appropriate and the price disparity is less extreme.

Updated on April 27 2011 - see end of article for revised figures and comment.

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Android Gains 22% Of Tablet Market, Becomes #1 Smartphone Platform by Shipments

According to two different reports surfaced this morning, Google’s Android mobile operating system has gained 22% of the tablet market share and has become the world’s leading smartphone platform with 33.3 million shipments in Q4 2010.

The first report, as noted by The Loop, details how Android-based tablets grabbed 22% of the market in the fourth quarter of 2010, and while the iPad is still “dominant”, the Samsung Galaxy Tab drove sales of tablets running Google’s OS.

Strategy Analytics sees continued growth for Android-based tablets in 2011 with the release of Motorola’s Xoom and other high-profile devices. The company expects that as more Android devices hit the market, media developers in the United States and elsewhere will increasingly support the devices with content.

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Xserve Third Party Replacement, ActiveSAN Revealed

ActiveSAN, the product that was being teased over the past few days has finally been announced as third party replacement for Apple’s Xserve which was discontinued in January.

The product, called ActiveSAN is rack-mountable unit, runs on the Linux operating system with metadata controllers and the ‘Quantum StorNext SAN file system’. It’s hardware uses the Active Storage product design, runs on the Intel Nehalem server platform and is Xsan compatible.

No definite word on whether it is officially endorsed by Apple yet.

Jump the break for a video introduction by the company and additional details as they come.

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Mac App Store: Miro Converts Videos for iOS, For Free

Available for free in the Mac App Store, Miro Video Converter is a little utility that converts almost any kind of video to formats compatible with iOS and other Apple devices, Android handsets, WebM, Theora and a variety of other platforms. As you can guess, Miro Video Converter comes from the creators of Miro, video player and torrent downloader.

The app doesn’t offer all the control and customization possibilities seen, for example, in the popular Handbrake video conversion tool, but it’s got a nice and simple interface where all you have to do is drop a file, select the output and hit Convert.

Miro Video Converter is available here. Check out the list of supported formats and devices below. Read more

Netgear CEO Makes A Few Predictions on Apple, Steve Jobs→

Netgear CEO Makes A Few Predictions on Apple, Steve Jobs

Netgear CEO Patrick Lo doesn’t get it:

At a lunch in Sydney today, Patrick Lo said Apple’s success was centred on closed and proprietary products that would soon be overtaken by open platforms like Google’s Android.

Lunch was not the main point. Here it is:

Lo said Apple’s closed model only worked because, in many product categories like MP3 players, “they own the market”.

“Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform,” said Lo.

This is a common mistake: thinking that Apple’s integrated model is somehow linked to Steve Jobs’ personality or physical presence at Apple. But there’s more:

Right now the closed platform has been successful for Apple because they’ve been so far ahead as thought leaders because of Steve Jobs,” said Lo.

Wrong again. They have been successful because they predicted what consumers wanted, not because of Jobs’ personal tastes.

Eventually they’ve got to find a way to open up iTunes without giving too much away on their revenue generation model.

What does this mean, exactly? This is business lingo. I think he wants Apple to accept any kind of app. The real gem is about Flash:

What’s the reason for him to trash Flash? There’s no reason other than ego,” he said.

Or maybe – but you know, I’m just guessing here –  it was a business decision.

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Marco Arment’s MacBook Pro Speculation→

Marco Arment’s MacBook Pro Speculation

Marco Arment predicts a new MacBook Pro 15” inspired by the success of the new MacBook Airs:

And I’m guessing that the 15” will undergo its most significant change in a very long time: it will adopt the wedge shape of the Air, losing its thick, uncomfortably sharp front edge. Removing the optical drive will free up a lot of space inside, leaving room for a rearrangement that can enable the wedge shape without giving up a significant amount of battery volume.

No glass and SSD by default may end up on the new MacBook Pro as well. The problem with a wedge design is that it leaves small room to “big ports” like FireWire and Ethernet, something users are really used to have on the MBP 15-inch. I agree with Marco when he says there’s little sense to keep the 13-inch MacBook Pro in the line-up now that the 13-inch MacBook Air is so portable and powerful.

Also, Apple’s homepage says it all: MacBook Air is the next generation of MacBooks. We just have to wait to see where do we go from here.

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