Apple News

Around a month ago there was a hue and cry about how iTunes was using anti-competitive practices and that the price of music downloaded in Britain was higher than in the rest of the European Union. This time it seems that iTunes is slashing the price of downloads from the usual 79p to 73p.  Customers have claimed that though the price on the iTunes store still says 79p they have been charged 73p instead.

Last month Apple had said that it would lower the prices that it charged for music on its UK iTunes store by mid-year thus resolving charges from the European Commission that this downloading service broke European Union rules by settling prices all across Europe.  The Commission had said that British shoppers were at a particular disadvantage as the songs priced at 79p were the most expensively priced in the entire region.

In another piece of news after the tie up with 20th century Fox and now with American Idol, Apple could now be entering into a partnership with the BBC. BBC said that it could announce a partnership with Apple to sell the BBC Worldwide Television show content to different parts of the world. BBC said it may make the announcement as early as Tuesday.

After American Idol and giving licenses to movie houses and gaming houses, Apple is now targeting the grand daddy of media- the BBC. If the deal works out it shall turn out to be very successful as there are millions of people around the world who would shell out nice sums to have BBC content streaming into their homes one way or the other.

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Beginning with the 24 semifinalists of ‘American Idol’ this week from now on iTunes customer can buy music performances by the participants of the show for 99 cents per song. There is more money involved when the show is narrowed down to the top 12 finalists and performances will sell for $ 1.99 per song.  Also from Monday onwards fans can pre-order performances of their favorite contestants from the iTunes store and it will be downloaded automatically the day after the show.

According to Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes the store has created a special section for ‘Idol’ fans which has a huge variety of music and video performances from the show. Apple is confident that American Idol’s viewership is going to be delighted with the opportunity to purchase footage from the show.

iTunes also plans to provide exclusive direct links from the free streaming performances on americanidol.com which is the official site of the show and also from MyIdol which is American Idol’s largest fan site on the internet.  All that fans will need to do is to go to iTunes, purchase their favorite performances and then sit back and enjoy them on their iPod, iPhone, Apple TV or their Macs and PCs.

This is a great deal for the simple reason that it is lucrative for Apple as well as American Idol and most of all for the fans who now get to have memories of their favorite contestants long after the season is over. This is yet another brilliant move on Apple’s part as they continue to remain hesitant about new ventures and yet carry out a lot of their business moves through iTunes.

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The above picture apparently doesn’t have much truth in it. Recently the market has been rife with speculation that Apple was planning to develop a handheld gaming device of its own. However a source has said that as of now the company has no such plans to enter into the gaming console industry on its own.  On the contrary, Apple wants to route all its future ventures through its breakthrough device, the iPod.

The company is very wary about diluting its brand with too many risky new products as discussions between the company and third-party software teams reveal.  The company sees the iPod as the central player in any future forays into the gaming industry and the company sees the iPod as capable enough to handle all games.  The OpenGL ES (Embedded Systems) software library which is used in the much vaunted click wheel is efficient enough to handle gaming if Apple decides against a faster device.

The source has said that there is not much pressure on Apple to bring about a new business model for games and has received much positive feedback from game producers who have been granted access to develop games which are sold through iTunes.

The company wants to add games to the iPhone and the iPod touch but till now there has been no confirmation of any news that the company has been developing games for these two touch screen devices. Until now however both these new devices have been kept away from Apple’s gaming efforts because of their incompatibility with the operating systems of the older iPods and their control schemes which are very different.

As of now there does not seem to be much probability of Apple coming out with its own gaming console as sources have confirmed and as it is well known the computer giant doesn’t dip its fingers in too many pies.

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Apple’s attempt to stop iPhone’s from being unlocked doesn’t seem to be succeeding as it seems that iPhones are being purchased and unlocked all over the planet. Apple’s seems unable to keep the iPhone locked to AT&T, the telecom provider that pays Apple a handsome chunk of its service plan revenue.

There is a lot of buzz about missing iPhones being circulated all over the world. There is obviously an iPhone Bermuda Triangle somewhere. By the end of the last year Apple reported that it had sold 3.75 million iPhones but AT&T has recorded only around half of that, it has record of only 2 million iPhone subscribers. So the question now is, where did the other 1.75 million iPhones go? Even if you count out the 350,000 phones that have been sold through Apple’s European carriers, that’s still 1.40 million.

There is an explanation for all this. People really are desperate to lay their hands on an iPhone. An iPhone sells for $ 399 in the U.S but an unlocked one goes for as much as $ 700 on eBay. The thing with this is that though Apple is losing out on the revenue from AT&T, it is definitely selling almost double the number of phones this way. AT&T has a exclusive five year deal with Apple and it is definitely the one on the losing side with the rampant unlocking that’s going on.

Though Apple engineers keep coming up with technological changes in the iPhone that prevent it from being unlocked such changes never last long. The iPhone keeps getting unlocked by someone or the other. So there has to be a long term solution against this in AT&T’s benefit. Or they might as well terminate their contract. Meanwhile, iPhone lovers in other parts of the world continue to make merry.

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Its always great being the head guy in a huge company. No matter what the financial situation of the company and whether it makes profits or incurs losses you always get your nice little pay package.  Despite the fact that Apple stocks have dropped drastically CEO Steve Jobs has still got his salary. 

2007 however was a great year for Apple as the company’s stock rose by 133% to end at $ 198. It is because of this that in spite of drawing the same $ 1 salary for the last ten years Job is sitting pretty on his stake in the company which has doubled to reach $ 770 million by the end of the last year. Even other huge businessmen like Warren Buffet earn their cash in much the same way and it is also very good PR for the companies.

In August Jobs exercised an option over 1,20,000 shares that were awarded to him in 1997 and even though he didn’t sell the underlying shares he still earned a cool profit of $ 14.6 million.            His salary has been greatly boosted by gifts from the company’s board of directors like a jet, millions of stock options. A year ago there was a huge issue about the stock options awarded to Jobs. Backdating of stock options is not illegal as long as it is accounted for, which it wasn’t in this case.  Apple however managed to wriggle out of the situation and placed the blame squarely on two subordinates who had left the company. But since the whole issue Apple has been trying to be as transparent to the public as possible.

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The people at Apple are out with the world’s slimmest laptop. And it is slimmer than the others by quite a margin. The entire laptop is less than an inch thin. The Mac Book Air as it is called though not having caused quite as much hype as the iPhone has had people pretty excited. This super sleek laptop is three quarters of an inch thick and is extremely stylish.

The laptop has great design along with great features. It comes with a 2 GB ram and like most Mac Books is super fast. It has an iSight camera and a multi touch touchpad like the iPhone. It measures 0.76 inches at its thickest part and 0.16 at its thinnest. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple said it is the thinnest laptop available in the market. It is so thin it can fit into an envelope as Jobs demonstrated during the annual Macworld convention in San Francisco earlier.

It is priced at $ 1800 which puts it somewhere between Apple’s entry level laptops and the high end ones. Laptops are the company’s highest selling products and sales rose by 37 % at the end of September. Trade analysts are worried that Air will steal high end customers who will instead buy the lower priced Air because of its features.

This is Apple’s fourth big release after the iPhone, the iTouch and Apple TV. Apple stocks have skyrocketed making the shareholders and members a very happy lot.

The laptop is generating a lot of positive response in the market among users and making a laptop thinner than this one will take a lot of doing. Its thicker end is less than half the thickness of VAIO’s thinnest notebook’s thinner end. It’s thin as a reed. Literally.

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The European Union just put Apple back in its place. The Union which is formed by 27 countries has succeeded in forcing Apple computers to bring down the price per downloaded song in Britain to par with that in other European countries. Apple, now desperate to have the anti-trust case against it dropped is agreeing to the demands of the European Union. Apple was charging 9 cents more for every song downloaded through iTunes in Britain as compared to the rest of the European Union. Such anti-competitive behavior was not taken to very kindly by the E.U.

E.U earlier brought technology giant Microsoft to task and settled for 777 million euros. Last year it had said that Apple had illegally restricted where users could buy music from. Apple has blamed the difference in price on more expensive licensing deals with record companies in the U.K. In return for dropping prices, E.U has agreed to drop the anti-trust case against Apple.  E.U has alleged territorial sales restrictions because users can only buy music from iTunes in the country in which they reside.

This drop in prices is to take effect within six months. Apple also said that the higher prices charged by record labels would have to be taken into consideration and that they would reconsider the existing partnerships with the record companies that do not lower their wholesale prices within the six month period.

Steve Jobs said that it was a step towards an all-Europe market for music and that he hoped all major music labels would take a uniform pricing level all across the continent. The E.U has a history of bringing big technological companies to book and this time Apple joins the list of its conquests.

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Axiotron has come out with its Tablet Mac which has been authorized by Mac.  The MacBook was unveiled a year ago and features a stylus sensitive LCD slate style display from Wacom which allows you to write and draw onscreen. The tablet is the very height of professionalism and has 512 levels of pressure sensitivity so you can get that level of precision which is necessary in the world of digital art and design. It is an absolute delight and the latest in designing and editing technology.

The tablet is clearly targeted at artists and professionals in the design industry. It comes with a Mac OS Leopard, has a Core 2 Duo Processor and has Leopard’s handwriting recognition software.  It has a small 13.3 inch screen, with a built in webcam and a CD/DVD combo drive.  It basically is a slightly modified MacBook with a screen that twists.  It supports Bluetooth and also has 802.11n Wi-Fi. It has a triple layer of metal plating including a layer of copper over which there is a layer of nickel and is topped off with chrome. It is available in a satin as well as an optical mirror finish.

There has been a lot of anticipation about this tablet. It will retail at Axiotron outlets and it is set to retail at $ 2,290. The very highest in style and functionality for professionals in the design and animation field as well as students who can afford a bit more, this one is set to give competition to the HP tablet. For people who prefer Windows Dell also came out with the Latitude XT tablet which has a 12.1 inch daylight- viewable screen which weighs 3.5 pounds. With the entry of three computer giants it looks like the tablet market is getting a little competitive.

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Apple is going places. It has now signed a deal with 20^th century Fox for rental of their videos. The rental service allows new users to watch clips of Fox movies by providing them clips which work for a specified amount of time.  20^th Century Fox will be the first who will be privileged to benefit from Apple’s FairPlay protection service apart from Apple’s own products. Apparently Apple is in negotiations with other companies to have their videos on Apple products as well. Sony, Paramount and Warner Bros. are said to be in talks with Apple currently but nothing is concrete as of now.

Apple will now be expecting an increase in sale of its Nanos, Classic, Touch and iPhones since with the exception of the iPod shuffle all Apple gadgets play video and these users can now have access to the videos. The videos will also come preloaded on the iPods which means that users can now make high- quality copies of these videos. There sharing of these over the internet however is prohibited. With this new deal many other studios and companies are likely to be eager to sign a deal with Apple and get the much desired pre-release publicity for the upcoming movies. At present Disney sells its latest releases through iTunes which Paramount and MGM have been selling older movies. The sheer mass appeal of Apple is sure to grab the attention of studios since though iTunes is not the only such renting service; this is the only one of its stature.

Apple in true Apple fashion is all out to conquer and looks like many are quite willing to join it as long as long as they reap some of the benefits. The deal is all set to be made official by the people at Apple on the 14^th of January.

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Apple Computers has finally ended its epic battle against Think Secret that published confidential information about Apple. Apple first filed the suit nearly three years ago in January 2005 against the owner of the site Nick Ciarelli. Ciarelli is a Harvard alumnus who wrote under the pen name Nick DePlume and was accused by Apple of divulging trade secrets and it was also demanded that he reveal his sources.  The site was one of the three that Apple has been repeatedly targeting in an attempt to force the anonymous sources to reveal themselves.

The two parties reached a settlement the terms of which were that Ciarelli would shut down the site. The down side however for Apple is that Ciarelli did not compromise on its integrity and the names of the sources still remain a secret. Ciarelli announced to the media that he was very pleased with the outcome of the settlement and that he was glad that he would now have the time to pursue further studies and journalism seriously.

The whole issue had dragged the whole blogger- journalist controversy into the big picture. The court which tried this case was initially disposed to award the case in Apple’s favour but it was overruled by a three judge bench which held that bloggers should be afforded the same protection as journalists and hence the identity of the sources need not be revealed.

Apple has also earned a huge amount of negative reactions from bloggers and other members of the cyber world who said that it was just another attempt at controlling by the computer giant and also that lawsuit was a incredible foolish and badly thought out strategy.

Apple has emerged victor once again, but at the precious premium of losing out on some goodwill among fans and in the market for its oppressive tactics.

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