News Corp’s iPad-only Newspaper, The Daily, A Collaboration Between Jobs and Murdoch?

Three days ago we reported News Corp, one of the world’s biggest media outlets, was working on a tablet-only publication Murdoch and his team were really excited about. In the past days more details have surfaced about the app, which should be launching in a few weeks in private beta mode and be publicly available soon after that.

It appears that Murdoch hired a staff of over 100 journalists to handle the publication, which has no print edition but will only be available in digital form-factor. The Daily, this is the name of the app as revealed by Murdoch himself in an interview with Fox Business, is one of News Corp’s “most exciting projects”. Basing on the information also posted by WWDMedia, the app will be a daily news report pushed directly to the iPad without the need of having a previous print subscription. Read more

AppShopper 1.3 Is The Best App Discovery Tool for iOS. Period.

There are dozens of apps in the App Store that promise to revolutionize the way you discover apps. Sort of meta, but this seems to be Silicon Valley’s latest dream: to simplify the way users find interesting apps they might like. Too bad basing the old App Store navigation system on poor Facebook and Twitter integration won’t make the process any simpler: indeed, it’ll just add an extra useless layer that most users will get tired of in a matter of minutes. Read more

Why The Mac Keeps Growing→

Why The Mac Keeps Growing

Horace Dediu on what changed in the PC market in the late 90’s and early 00’s:

In stepped the MacBook with good enough (and improving) office productivity. With excellent appeal along the dimensions of performance consumers demand most of all. It was priced higher than other laptops but the price points were affordable and, inflation-adjusted, lower than they’d ever been. It should not be a surprise that Apple was one of the first vendors to see its portables line become bigger than its desktop lines. The market evolved to the point where what Apple had was what the buyers needed.

Another disruption is going on right now, and we’ll see its deep cut in the market in a matter of a few years: it’s called iPad.

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iPad Launching Soon in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark

According to the Wall Street Journal, the iPad will launch relatively soon in several northern European countries, namely Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The launch could happen later this month or in December, right ahead of the holiday season. European carriers will offer 3G data packages for iPad customers and, also according to the Journal, carriers Tre, TeliaSonera AB and Tele2 AB announced on Friday iPad-specific subscriptions, although they declined to comment on prices and provide more details on the plans.

Five months after its release, Apple already sold 7.46 million units. With the iPad being sold in several retail chains in the U.S. and now approaching to even more European countries, it’ll be interesting to see what will happen in the Q1 2011 fiscal results.

Combo Steve Says T.J. Maxx Isn’t An Authorized Reseller, And He Won’t Match Their Price

I guess you heard that T.J. Maxx is having this unexpected sale of iPads (16GB, WiFi models) at $399 – $100 off the regular Apple price. No one knows where these iPads come from, no one knows why and how are they running this promotion. Steve Jobs, though, doesn’t approve at all.

While people are excited about this sale and are apparently struggling to find these discounted iPads at the nearest T.J. Maxx store, el Jobso shot a series of emails claiming that they are not an authorized reseller. As reported by 9to5mac, he also promised a curious Apple fan that there’s not even the smallest chance he’ll match the discounted of T.J. Maxx, for Ballmer’s sake. Read more

iTunes Connect Mobile App Updated with iPad Support, Retina Graphics, iBookstore Stats

iTunes Connect Mobile is an app for iOS developers that allows them to check on their Apple dev account to see detailed information about the apps currently on sale in the App Store. It’s basically a mobile extension of the Sales & Trends section in iTunes Connect. The app can display data via table or graph format and it comes with filters and menus to restrict a search to specific countries and periods of time.

The latest 1.1 update, released last night, introduces support for the iPad (the app has gone universal), Retina graphics, multitasking and support for iBookstore providers.

A must-have for iOS developers, available for free here. Also, developers: iTunes Connect won’t be available starting December 23rd through the 28th.

Some MobileMe Features Going Free with iOS 4.2?

When Apple released the first GM seed of iOS 4.2 to developers, we noticed that they implemented the possibility to create a free Apple ID inside the MobileMe settings page and even sign in to MobileMe using an Apple ID. The functionality wasn’t working back then and it still returns an error today, and we speculated Apple might be taking the necessary measures to open up MobileMe’s services to a wider audience already using an Apple ID. As noted by MacRumors last night, though, it looks like that was the first move to make MobileMe free to some iOS users, or at least some specific sections of MobileMe. Read more

John Carmack on RAGE, Technical Limitations, Design Choices→

John Carmack on RAGE, Technical Limitations, Design Choices

John openly admits that they’re still experimenting with the App Store. So far Rage has been very successful in the few days it has been out, but they’re still waiting to see the long-term results of a shorter, lower-priced game. He explained that it’s still a point of discussion at Id as to whether the next games are going to be bigger and higher priced, or smaller and lower priced like RAGE.

If this is just an experiment, both from a pricing and technical standpoint, then I wonder what we’ll be able to play on a 3.5-inch screen in 2 years. The iOS gaming scene couldn’t be more promising.

In case you missed the whole story: Rage HD is available at $1.99 in the App Store, and it’s mind-blowing.

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iPad Owners, Get Ready for TweetMag [Preview Video]

Running a blog, it’s perfectly normal that you stumble upon unreleased applications from developers asking you to “take a quick look” at what they’ve been working on. It happens every day, and we love it. But there are some apps you look forward to on your own, without the need of a developer sending you 5 emails a day to ask for bugs found in the beta and “feedback on the UI”.

TweetMag for iPad is one of those apps. Read more