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Posts tagged with "apple"

Rinse: An App for Cleaning Your iTunes Library

As a part of RealNetworks evolution, from a content provider to developer of management and distribution software for digital media, it has released Rinse – a $39 application that offers a promise that it will “seamlessly organize and repair your iTunes music library”.

Like other apps such as TuneUp and Equinux’s Song Genie and CoverScout, Rinse promises to correct any mislabelled (or not labelled) items in your iTunes library, add album artwork and remove those pesky duplicate items. It promises to be smarter than those other apps and that “Rinse’s intelligent database technology will find the matching artwork, remove duplicates and clean things up.”

Peter Kafka from AllThingsD had mixed results trying it out on his library, whilst Ben Brooks found it made quick work of cleaning up those duplicate tracks he had in his library. Rinse is available for OS X as well as Windows XP, Vista and 7 for the rather hefty price of $39.

[Via AllThingsD]

 

Fox News Charlotte Gives Us a Glimpse of Apple’s Server Farm

If the Apple data center speculation wasn’t enough, Charlotte local news channel WCCB-TV took a news anchor out to cover the Apple datacenter, which they erroneously report was intended strictly for iTunes and will take on Netflix in the video streaming business in part because of the massive scale. “That’s just too big to house only music files,” exclaims Israel Baldares. I don’t disagree that Apple will move into streaming video, however, to state it as fact is whole a different case of the Fox News crazies. Out of the speculation, however, comes a couple glimpses at the scale of Apple’s datacenter (and the outside of the building is probably all we’ll see for the time being). Couple this with Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s accompanying video, and we get a sense of the sheer size the server farm. As far as the inside goes, we do know that Apple has ordered an insane amount of storage, and has specific orders for custom equipment related to cooling and power. Tack this on to the fact they just pulled data center scalability expert Kevin Timmons from Microsoft, and you have yourselves some wild speculation concerning what Apple might do with lots of unused land.

Apple is only using a third of the 180 acres they own, not including the 70 acres they’ve purchased across the street. It’s speculated Apple could build an East Coast Apple campus, and build a data center in parallel to the building that’s constructed now, giving them a million square feet of space to work with. Apple’s data center is readying to launch, and in the meantime you can get a glimpse at the current state of their data center via the video after the break.

[Fortune via TUAW]

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iTunes In The Cloud: Apple Signs Deal with Warner Music

Following last night’s report on Apple readying the launch of the rumored cloud-based music service based on iTunes after having recently “completed work” on it, Cnet weighs in today claiming the company has signed a deal with Warner Music to offer streaming of the labels’ artist catalogue and songs on the new iTunes cloud service. Cnet notes how Warner Music is only one of the four big players in the music industry, with EMI, Sony and Universal still out of the picture:

Apple has an agreement with Warner Music Group to offer the record label’s tracks on iTunes’ upcoming cloud-music service, music industry sources said. It is unclear whether Warner was one of those two that had previously licensed Apple or whether the label inked a new agreement on Friday.

Indeed, Peter Kafka at MediaMemo posted a follow-up to Reuters’ original report on the finalized cloud service yesterday, claiming that Apple had actually already signed deals with two of the major music labels, and Apple’s Eddy Cue was set to fly to New York City today to arrange the remaining deals. It’s not clear now whether Warner Music was part of the rumored labels that had signed in the past months, or one of the two that needed to be convinced today. Cnet’s report doesn’t provide additional details on the deal.

Speculation surrounding this new cloud-based service from Apple indicates the company has both considered an option to let users back up an existing music collection to the cloud and stream it anywhere, as well as a second iTunes Store-like functionality offering the possibility to stream songs you don’t own through a monthly or annual subscription.

iPad App Takes You Behind The Scenes of Portal 2

The Final Hours of Portal 2 is a new iPad app that combines a 15,000 word article with lots of audio, video and other interactive elements (some never before seen) to tell the story of the development and evolution of Portal 2 - perfect for those of you who (like me) love Portal. It’s written by Geoff Keighley, who also wrote “The Final Hours of Half-Life” which kick-started his career in game journalism, and like that first insight, he was again given extensive access to Valve’s offices and employees.

It really is more than just a 15,000-word essay on Portal 2, the interactive elements and multimedia in the app is really done well, definitely exceeding what the Wired app does in its iPad editions. Some of the most interesting elements include user polls, failed experiments by Valve, insights into a shelved Portal prequel and early versions of that memorable end-credits song by Jonathon Coulton.

The Final Hours of Portal 2 is on the App Store for $2 and whilst it is only on available on the iPad at this stage, Keighley is open to expanding it onto other platforms and devices if the iPad app does well and there is demand for it.

[Via MacNN]

 

Samsung Counter Sues Apple For Patent Infringement

In a counterclaim to Apple’s lawsuit filed earlier this week, Samsung said today in a statement that Apple’s iPhone and iPad infringe on 10 of Samsung’s patents and has called for Apple to stop infringing the patents and pay Samsung compensation. Filed in the Seoul Central District Court, the patents involved largely cover technologies surrounding power conservation during data transmission, improving the 3G data transmission and various wireless data communication technology. In a press statement, Samsung said it was

responding actively to the legal action taken against us in order to protect our intellectual property and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communications business

The litigation between Apple and Samsung is set to be a heated one and Apple is going after Samsung hard, with Apple earlier this week saying to the press “this kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.” Meanwhile, Apple will continue to be Samsung’s second largest client for various electronic components, which go into the very products that Samsung is alleged to have copied, and last year it brought in $5.7 billion of revenue to Samsung.

Author of a book on Samsung and professor at the National University of Singapore, Chang Sea-jin, said to the Financial Times that such legal spats are common and are unlikely to threaten the business relationship between the two companies, he believes that “Apple is just sending a warning to Samsung that they are watching them.” It has also been suggested that Samsung has in the past actively persuaded Steve Jobs that the electronic components sector of Samsung would not in any way leak or reveal information about Apple’s future component needs to the Samsung mobile unit.

[Via Reuters]

 

OpenFeint Gets Bought For $104 Million By Japanese Mobile Social Network Gree

Japanese company Gree which runs a mobile gaming social network yesterday revealed that it had purchased OpenFeint, which runs a very similar social network, for $104 million. The deal follows the $403 million acquisition of Ngmoco by another Japanese firm, DeNa, last October. However unlike that deal, Gree and OpenFeint will not be merging their social networks into one service, opting instead to unify their codebase so that developers can choose to use either Gree, OpenFeint (or Mig33 which Gree also has a deal with) depending on the specific market which the game is targeted towards.

The appeal for such a service that OpenFeint delivers is that mobile game developers can easily utilise a mature network that offers users a more social experience with leaderboards and challenges whilst also helping developers by easily allowing cross-promotion through the network.  Gree has been a big success in Japan with over 25 million users and a market value of $3 billion, but OpenFeint has gone gangbusters on iOS and Android with over 75 million users and is implemented by over 5,000 games.

OpenFeint’s current CEO, Jason Citron, will remain in his position and said in an interview that the deal will accelerate OpenFeint’s expansion globally, which he believes is a “multibillion dollar opportunity” in conjunction with the increasing dominance of smartphones and tablets. “We are beginning of a new age,” Citron further added. “The economic opportunity here is so tremendous and gaming is the killer app.” Meanwhile, Yoshikazu Tanaka, founder and CEO of Gree said “At Gree, we are socializing the next evolution of games and, as the best-in-class US-based mobile social network, OpenFeint is the ideal partner for us to offer the best mobile social games to the largest global audience.”

[Via VentureBeat]

Apple’s Cloud Music Service Almost Ready to Launch?

According to Reuters, Apple “has completed work” on its rumored cloud-based music service that will allow users to store their music online, and access it anywhere using a computer or an iOS device connected to the Internet.

Apple Inc has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google Inc, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies’ plans. Apple’s plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection, said two of these people who asked not to be named as the talks are still confidential.

Reuters also claims Apple hasn’t secured any deal with music labels yet, and industry sources said several labels are hoping to close these deals before the service’s launch. Similarly to Amazon’s recently launched Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, Apple could introduce a service that works on the web and mobile devices, and offers a way for users to “digitally lock” their own media in the cloud – quite possibly without even needing the blessing of music labels to do so. Amazon, for instance, was initially rumored to be in a lot of trouble with licensing deals after the Cloud Player launch, but as of today no major music label has sued the online retailer – which basically gives its users an online space to store their DRM-free songs. Amazon, however, is reportedly in talks with labels anyway to come up with a more “advanced” plan that meets the music industry’s expectations and requirements.

Apple, on the other hand, might launch a service that acts as a remote backup location for a user’s iTunes library, and it could be part of the rumored new MobileMe – a complete revamp of the suite of online sync tools that’s also expected to be free, and deeply integrated into future versions of iOS. A number of reports in the past months indicated Apple was building an online iTunes backup solution with built-in streaming capabilities, although others claimed the company was also focusing on a subscription-based model for streaming the entire iTunes Store catalogue – similarly to how music service Spotify requires a premium subscription to stream music you don’t own.

Last, Reuters reports:

Apple and Google are keen to offer services that give music fans more flexibility to access their media wherever they are rather than tying them to a particular computer or mobile device.

In late 2009, Apple bought Lala, a cloud-based music company, but closed it down in April 2010, leading to speculation that it would launch an Apple-branded cloud service.

Interestingly enough, a series of downtimes and errors in iTunes and the App Store during the past 2 days lead many to believe Apple moved its iTunes servers to the new data center in North Carolina, which was set to become fully operative in Spring 2011. Read more

Conan O’Brien Introduces The Apple iDea

Brought to you by the minds of Conan O’Brien and TeamCoco, the iDea is the latest product in Apple’s multitouch line-up – except it’s not clear what it is, yet. Clearly inspired by Apple’s latest iPad 2 promo videos and ads, the iDea commercial touches some key parts of Apple’s marketing machine: gestures, voiceover, higher price point for bigger model, thinner design in the second-gen version. It’s got everything the Apple marketing team would be proud of.

Check out the video below. [via TUAW]
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Apple Q2 2011 Financial Results: $24.67 Billion Revenue, 4.69 Million iPads, 18.65 Million iPhones Sold

Apple has just posted their Q2 2011 financial results. The company posted revenue of $24.67 billion, with 4.69 million iPads sold, 18.65 million iPhones and 3.76 million Macs. Wall Street consensus estimate was EPS of $5.36 and revenue of $23.34B. Mac sales saw a 28% increase over the year-ago quarter, while with 9.02 million iPods sold Apple saw a 17% unit decline. Overall, the company posted quarterly revenue growth of 83% and profit growth of 95%. International sales were 59% for the quarter, with Asia and Pacific regions featuring a 182% increase year over year. The reported iPhone sales were stronger than expected by most analysts, with a 113% increase year over year. iPhone revenues, however, grew faster than sales with a 126% increase [source]. Overall, this was the biggest non-holiday quarter in Apple’s history.

With quarterly revenue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95 percent, we’re firing on all cylinders,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We will continue to innovate on all fronts throughout the remainder of the year.

In Q1 2011, the company posted a record revenue of $26.74 billion with 7.33 million iPads sold, 16.24 million iPhones and 4.13 million Macs. In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion. The company sold 2.94 million Macs, 8.75 million iPhones and 10.89 million iPods during the quarter.

Apple will provide a live streaming audio feed of its Q2 2011 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and we’ll update this story with the conference highlights. Read more