It isn't news that Apple wanted to create a streaming-music service that would compete against Pandora. But now we are learning the back-story of why the idea was nixed - and it is a familiar refrain. According to a Friday morning news report, music publisher Sony/ATV wanted larger royalties for its songs...
It's easy to get carried away with Tim Cook's "we're really sorry" apology to customers over sub-par mapping experience in iOS 6. After all, everyone is holding Apple in high regard as the company has literally become a yardstick of quality for smooth, pleasing software folks actually love to use.
"If the hardware is the brain and the sinew of our products, the software is their soul", Steve Jobs once said. And when that soul is left in darkness, Apple's brand gets tarnished. We've seen it happen with MobileMe and it sure looks like history is repeating itself as iPhone customer satisfaction drops due to the Maps fiasco.
Or is it a fiasco? Like every misstep of Apple's, this one feels like it's been blown way out of proportion by click-hungry, bloodsucking media vampires (Antennagate, anyone?). iDB is curious to hear your thoughts on the Apple Maps situation so I've put together an interesting little poll embedded right below...
If there’s one thing we all learned from Apple’s Maps mea culpa, it’s that mapping the globe is a tricky business. It took the search giant seven years and tremendous manpower to turn Google Maps into the world’s most popular mapping service. Quick to exploit rivals’ weaknesses, Google once more outlined its mapping advantage today just as Tim Cook’s apology was making rounds on the web…
Apple's boss Tim Cook just issued a mea culpa on Apple's awesome Maps in the form of an open letter published on Apple's website. What's really interesting is that the issue which threatened to snowball into a PR catastrophe has forced Apple to advise customers to use rival services "while we’re improving Maps".
It takes a tremendous amount of public outcry to force Cupertino into such a defensive position. I imagine heads will roll as Cook gives Apple's mapping team a kind of dressing down Steve Jobs once gave to the MobileMe team ("you should hate each other for having let each other down"). No matter how you look at it, the Maps fiasco has tarnished Apple's reputation, at least in my view...
The struggling Japanese electronics giant Sharp confirmed Friday that it is making "adequate volumes" of displays used for Apple's iPhone 5, Reuters reports. Sharp's statement arrives just as Apple has rolled out the device to 22 more countries this morning. The ongoing supply constraints continue to affect availability of the iPhone 5, which still shows 2-3 week shipping times on Apple's international online stores. Furthermore, some international carriers stopped taking iPhone 5 pre-orders due to low supplies...
Acknowledging what has become Mapgate, Apple's chief executive Tim Cook issued an apology for inaccuracies, faulty data and other issues plaguing Apple's new in-house mapping service that replaced the stock Google Maps app on iOS 6 devices.
And just as his predecessor did when Apple got entangled in disputes with the music industry over copy-protecting iTunes songs or Adobe over Flash, Cook issued an open letter on the company's web site to explain Apple's position on the matter...
JailbreakCon is less than 48 hours away, and as a sponsor, I will be representing the iDB team at the event. I'll be the first to admit that the workshops will be over my head but we plan to get some face to face time with some of the speakers to learn more about who they are and what they do.
Among the most acclaimed speakers, we expect to talk to Saurik, Ryan Petrich, P0sixninja, iH8Sn0w, pod2g, and more. We already have a few questions we'd like to ask them but we were thinking that you might have some questions to ask them too...
Making good on its promise, Apple today is rolling out the iPhone 5 to 22 new countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
The iPhone 5 originally launched on Friday, September 21, in nine major markets, including the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. Apple's self-imposed goal is to have the new phone available in over a hundred countries across 240 carriers by year's end...
Want a quick and easy way to access recent purchases and account balances made with your American Express card? If you're running iOS 6, then you can now do so with Passbook.
First of all, just to clear up any misconceptions, you can't actually purchase goods via Amex using Passbook — that functionality doesn't yet exist. What you can do, though, is sync your Amex card with Passbook to access the convenient features mentioned above — balances, recent transactions, and the like.
As someone who uses Amex exclusively for almost every purchase, large and small, I've been anxious to try out Amex's Passbook offering ever since it was first announced that they were on board. Here's what I found...
And the iOS Maps bashing saga continues… Wanna know how it ends? Go past the fold for the remaining three tables. Joy of Tech also has another funny take on Mapgate, by the way…
The A6 chip which debuted on the iPhone 5 earlier this month can do some pretty clever tricks, stemming from a heavily customized ARMv7 design. Benchmark data suggests that the A6 can dynamically overclock itself to up to 1.3GHz and downclock to just 500MHz, depending on workload.
This is nothing new in chip design, of course (just ask Nvidia or Qualcomm). But given that Apple designs its chips in-house based on ARM and Imagination Technologies blueprints, it shows just how far along Cupertino is versus companies that use off-the-shelf chips which are not as power or performance-efficient as the A6...
With less than 24 hours until the second phase of global iPhone roll-out, some carriers have stopped taking pre-orders for the device due to low supply. Over in Slovakia, carriers Slovak Telekom and Orange Slovakia stopped taking pre-orders amid widespread supply constraints, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Furthermore, I've just checked with the nine global Apple Stores that currently sell the iPhone 5 and nearly all of them still quote 2-3 week delivery estimate, suggesting that Apple is selling iPhones as fast as it can make them. Folks around the world are obviously getting fed up with the iPhone...