Apple Invites Developers to Submit iPad
Applications to App Store

post from Daring Fireball on 19 March 2010 03:19:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Submissions in by March 27 “will be considered for” the grand opening of the iPad App Store. Seems a little nutty that the vast majority of them have been tested (by developers) only using the simulator.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/19/apple-officially-invites-developers-to-submit
-ipad-applications-to-app-store/

Digg this

Why Stephen OGrady Is Against Software Patents

post from Daring Fireball on 19 March 2010 03:12:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

A comprehensive look at just how broken the system is. (Via Tim Bray.)

Update: Fireballed at the moment. Here’s a text-only version from Google’s cache.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/03/19/software-patents/

Digg this

AT&T intros new worldwide messaging add-on plan

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 19 March 2010 03:05:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=14c7f9b668e06e54f3ae5e4df7d8e9fb

Digg this

Forbes: Palms Stock Plummets After Analysts Cut
Targets to $0

post from Daring Fireball on 19 March 2010 02:36:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

The message seems to be that Palm is in serious trouble — not just merely “struggling”, but in dire straits.

I don’t really understand why. Their WebOS phones are, to my eyes, the best competitors to the iPhone. People who own them seem to like them. Their marketing hasn’t been great, but it’s been better than Android’s. But Android is taking off and WebOS isn’t, and, trite though it sounds, Palm really has bet the company on WebOS.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/19/technology/palm_target_price_zero/

Digg this

H&FJ: Four Techniques for Combining Fonts

post from Daring Fireball on 19 March 2010 02:26:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Bookmark this now.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://www.typography.com/email/2010_03/index_tw.htm

Digg this

iPad app development dominated by games, e-books

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 19 March 2010 02:25:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Apple may be counting on games and not e-books to carry the iPad in the early stages, analysts at Fl...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=824aa7cb07fb524f97c6f3188bbee15e

Digg this

Chris Holt Reviews Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown
Wars

post from Daring Fireball on 19 March 2010 02:20:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Chris Holt:

It?s huge in scale and depth?something iPhone players aren?t used to. If many games play like thin leaflets, consider Chinatown Wars your copy of War and Peace. Minus the Peace.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://www.macworld.com/appguide/app.html?id=382644

Digg this

Raiding Eternity

post from Daring Fireball on 19 March 2010 02:17:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Outstanding, poetic writing at Gizmodo by Joel Johnson.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://gizmodo.com/5491404/raiding-eternity

Digg this

Amazon Brings Kindle Software to the Mac

It’s been teased for a fairly long time now, but Amazon finally released its Kindle companion software for Mac, as of yesterday. To date, the Kindle application has only been available for Windows machines, which has made it slightly harder for Mac users to organize and manage their Kindle collection.

Kindle for Mac also offers e-reader features, so you can access all of your e-book purchases, download and read them right on your computer. It’ll also sync the furthest location read with all Kindle devices registered to your account if you want, so that you can continue reading on your Kindle, iPhone or Mac without missing a beat.

Not yet present in the current version of the software is the ability to make and edit notes, highlight portions of the text and conduct full-text searches, but these are all planned for a later update, according to Amazon. Future versions will also let you click on images to zoom in to see a larger version, and to rotate it if you wish. One feature that is present is the conveniently-placed “Buy a Kindle” link found in the Help menu. Subtle, Amazon.

The application also lets you manage your Kindle and make purchases in the Kindle store, although for both of these functions it actually just kicks you over to Amazon’s web site in your default browser. In fact, the Mac software really isn’t much more than a bare-bones e-reading application. Not that that’s a bad thing, but I’m wondering why exactly it took this long to get the software out there.

The answer is probably that Amazon didn’t really have a good enough reason to until the iPad came along. Up until that point, drawing a link between a free iPhone app and a free Mac app to display content that Amazon was originally taking a loss on selling didn’t make much sense. The Kindle itself — the hardware — was the key to success, and it’s pretty easy to chuck that altogether when you’ve got the other two.

Amazon must’ve seen the writing on the wall following the iPad announcement, and realized that joining the company would be considerably more productive than attempting to beat it at this point, and so decided to cover all Mac-based platforms instead of just partially serving Apple customers. Will it pay off in the long run? We’ll have to wait and see how well Apple tolerates iBookstore competitors when the iPad hits store shelves early next month.

Related GigaOM Pro Research (sub req’d): Evolution of the e-Book Market

Read The Full Article:
http://theappleblog.com/2010/03/19/amazon-brings-kindle-software-to-the-mac/

Digg this

China Mobile pushes Apple to support local 3G
standard

China Mobile has allegedly asked Apple to create a special version of the iPhone to support the carr...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=83aef95ec6f863a588776a4d898de43d