Belkin finally ships TuneCast with iPhone app

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 25 January 2010 11:30:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

After revealing the add-on months earlier, Belkin today at last began shipping the TuneCast Auto Liv...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=d95670b5aa2ec98ee791870110c2d883

Digg this

Corona 3.4 adds Account Chart Builder, new
interface

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 25 January 2010 11:05:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

designersdomain has released Corona 3.4, an update to the company's general accounting software. Us...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=9a4f258a6b9b7f6afb2cd0c53072e4f9

Digg this

Read your books like you watch movies

post from on 25 January 2010 11:00:00 AM. ©

dBelement today introduces Reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Fall in love with reading all over[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-10290.htm

Digg this

Decline of the Desktop Mac

post from TheAppleBlog on 25 January 2010 11:00:00 AM. © TheAppleBlog

Strolling the mall with my wife, I was looking for an excuse to visit the Apple Store, but instead I found a reason: the disappearing desktop.

?Where have all the desktops gone?? I asked her pointedly.

She looked inside the glass front and pointed. ?They?re right there.?

?Well, yeah, but why are there so few? I need to investigate.?

She sighed. ?Don?t buy anything.?

?Don?t be ridiculous,? I replied. ?This is work. Anyway, no one in the know buys anything right before an Apple event.?

Well, not usually.

Inside, a quick count of Macs tallied just thirteen desktops, ten iMacs, two Mac minis, and a single Mac Pro. That contrasted with 36 Mac laptops.

If that disparity surprises, it shouldn?t. A look at a few other numbers tells the tale of the respective rise and fall of Mac laptops and desktops, and maybe what it means to you.

I asked a nice person in a brightly-colored shirt about the dearth of desktops, but he didn?t know anything, not even that there was a brightly-colored Apple event imminent. The invitations were privately sent out from far above the local Apple Store, and thus could not even be officially acknowledged below. That might explain from whence the store layout came.

Luckily, Apple must still divulge at least some information to the public, like Macs sold. Over the last decade laptop sales have been waxing, desktops not quite waning. While it is true desktop sales have seen some growth since the nadir in 2004, desktops have yet to match the sales record set in 2000. While that?s not exactly the end of the world, looking at models in percentage terms of Macs sold does seem a little more apocalypsish.

Those trend lines are no friend of the Mac desktop. For 2009, seven out of ten Macs sold were laptops, and in 2010 that ratio will likely rise to three out of four. While this may explain the single table of iMacs in the back of my local Apple Store, the question now becomes: is the Mac desktop doomed?

Steve Jobs once described Apple?s business model as an uncomfortable piece of furniture, a three-legged stool. What he was getting at is where the money comes from: Macs, iPods and the iTunes Store, and the iPhone.

This is Apple?s business model without the awkward furniture metaphor. Looking forward into 2010, the iPhone is surging, pulling along the iTunes Store, the iPod flattening out, and Macs are holding their own, or rather laptops are. In 2010, the desktop Mac will likely account for just a tenth of Apple?s net sales.

However, it?s important to remember Apple is a company that makes things, four major hardware product types, maybe five soon, but four now.

In 2009, desktop Macs, which include the Xserve, Mac Pro, iMac, and Mac mini had net sales of $4.3 billion on 3.18 million units. That works out to about $1,350 per desktop, and compares favorably with laptops at $9.47 billion in sales on 7.2 million units, around $1315 per laptop. There is no chance Apple is going to take that kind of money off the desktop anytime soon, but an increasingly portable world will continue to have consequences for desktop users.

I was there at Macworld Expo 2005 when the Mac mini was introduced, and five years later it looks pretty much the same, even the new server model sans optical drive. From the outside, the Mac Pro of 2010 looks a lot like the PowerMac G5 of 2003, even though one could arguably create a lighter, more portable mid-tower case with Intel inside. Not going to happen.

While internal changes are required, external redesign of Apple?s desktops would require R&D better spent on, say, a tablet. To that end, only Apple?s flagship desktop, the iMac, has seen, and will likely see, further refinement. From polycarbonate to aluminum and glass, to maybe a dock/slot for a tablet, the iMac has effectively become the desktop Mac.

If you are the Panera Bread iMac Man, you probably won?t notice, but for the rest of us desktop Mac users the future will pretty much look like the past.

Read The Full Article:
http://theappleblog.com/2010/01/25/decline-of-the-desktop-mac/

Digg this

IDC: Android to overtake iPhone, BlackBerry by
2013

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 25 January 2010 10:55:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Android will rise to be the second most used mobile OS in the world by 2013, according to a new IDC ...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=a562446d0d61706ea0dbff639463cc99

Digg this

LogMeIn updates Pro2 beta with PowerPC support

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 25 January 2010 10:25:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

LogMeIn has launched an important update to Pro2 for Mac, the company's high-level remote networking...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=53e92f26ea6ae0eabc5da3ec7abe13a7

Digg this

AT&T To Lose iPhone Exclusivity

post from iHackintosh on 25 January 2010 10:20:31 AM. © iHackintosh

The most anticipated Apple Tablet is not the only highlight of the Apple Event. Having been the first and only iPhone distributor in the United States, AT&T will lose its exclusivity of the iPhone to Verizon. Apple believes that the iPhone sales will[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ihackintoshfeed/~3/sSv6yNLvS1M/

Digg this

Rumor Has It: AT&T Losing iPhone Exclusivity
this Wednesday

post from TheAppleBlog on 25 January 2010 10:10:00 AM. © TheAppleBlog

According to a report over the weekend on HotHardware.com, Apple may have more to announce at its special event this Wednesday than its mythical tablet.

We have been led to believe by an inside source that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on the same day, though it’s not yet clear what other carrier (or carriers) will be stepping in to also carry the phone.

It doesn?t come as any great surprise to hear about the end of AT&T’s exclusive partnership with Apple, but I will be surprised if El Jobso deliberately announces it during his keynote. After all, if he did announce it, at what may become the most-watched-and-reported-on keynote in Apple’s history, the predictable whoops of delight from the attendees will be hugely embarrassing for AT&T. Will Jobs be so insensitive?

AppleInsider says AT&T?s contract with Apple expires in June this year. Certainly, AT&T has recently been shoring-up its offering of smartphones to include Android-based handsets, but that’s hardly unusual for a mobile operator striving to remain relevant in a crowded and hugely competitive market.

While Apple may be looking forward to ending the exclusivity deal, I don?t think the same is true of AT&T. They have attracted and retained millions of new subscribers with the iPhone since its launch in 2007. The press hasn’t been kind to it, and even its own CEO has criticized its bandwidth-chomping customers, but I’m sure AT&T doesn’t regret one single lucrative day of that almost-three-year partnership.

Brand Loyalty

Incidentally, this is pretty much win-win for Apple, who — I am sure — will see tremendous sales on other networks despite the relative age of the iPhone. For instance, here in the UK, O2 enjoyed high iPhone sales throughout its exclusive partnership period.

But as soon as O2?s exclusive partnership with Apple ended, Orange reported record-breaking opening day iPhone sales. And more recently, a third major carrier, Vodafone, also started selling the iPhone and reported even higher opening day sales.

If this demonstrates anything, it is that significant numbers of customers remain loyal to their cellular networks, choosing to ?make do? with whatever handsets are available to them, all the while quietly coveting the wares of competing operators. Personally, I have no such loyalty. Most of the operators here in the UK offer pretty much the same awful services at pretty much the same inflated prices, with only minor differences in tariffs. The biggest differences lie, as always, in the range of handsets they have to offer.

When I bought my iPhone back in 2007 I just happened to already be an O2 customer, but I readily admit, had I been with another carrier, I would have made the move without hesitation. I?m surprised, then, to learn that an awful lot of people are not so ready to switch. Apparently brand loyalty extends to products and services beyond Apple. Who?d have thunk it?

A Harsh Light

AppleInsider suggests this brand loyalty probably had something to do with the relative sales success of iPhone alternatives such as Motorola?s Droid, which served as a ?second best? choice for carrier-loyal customers who wanted an iPhone but weren?t prepared to leave their existing network operator.

…an announcement this week might effectively preclude a large group of consumers from upgrading to phones they might otherwise be interested in because they know the iPhone will be hitting the relatively stable Verizon network in just a few months.

Verizon?s network may be ?relatively stable? right now, but wasn?t AT&T?s considered stable before the arrival of the iPhone in 2007? I don?t know, of course, but — wasn’t AT&T always a bit rubbish? Didn’t it take the arrival of the iPhone to shine a harsh light on its patchy service?

Or was it the arrival of the iPhone that caused the degradation in service? HotHardware?s Shawn Oliver thinks it was the latter.

The iPhone itself doesn’t really handle the switch from 3G to EDGE very well, so calls that are in-progress tend to fail? It seems that AT&T is tired of taking the heat for this, and at this point, they may be smart to just let another carrier take some of those customers who are most inclined to complain.

Did he just imply iPhone customers are a bunch of moaning minnies?

So who’s right? Will the inevitable opening-up of the iPhone to other carriers in the U.S. destroy Android sales? Will Americans enjoy the iPhone price wars that (sadly) never happened over here? Or will everyone be too busy cooing over the Tablet to even care?

Or — worse — what’s the chance that Apple will have an AT&T-related announcement this Wednesday, but rather than confirming the end of the exclusivity deal, could Jobs announce a new, extended exclusivity partnership that includes the iPhone and the Tablet? What fresh horrors could such a partnership bring?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Why Apple Should Choose Sprint Before Verizon Wireless

Read The Full Article:
http://theappleblog.com/2010/01/25/rumor-has-it-att-losing-iphone-exclusivity-thi
s-wednesday/

Digg this

Divine Robot proudly presents Eveningstar - its
Genre-Redefining Shooter

Divine Robot today announces Eveningstar 1.0, their new sci-fi shooting game for iPhone and iPod[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-10325.htm

Digg this

BandMate 2.0 points the spotlight on the concerts
you'll want to catch

Austin-based WellAlright today released BandMate 2.0, an update to their personalized concert[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-10109.htm

Digg this