Apple has acquired the streaming music service Lala, according to reports from the NY Times Brad Stone. Lala lets users stream music, operating on a business model that lets the user listen to anything once in its entirety for free, with subsequent plays costing fractions of what it would cost to purchase the track outright.
Of course, since this is Apple we are talking about, there is no indication of whether the purchase was about getting a head start in the streaming music business, or whether Apple just saw an inexpensive way to eliminate some competition. Perhaps Apple was only interested in the talent behind the organization, and not the product they actually produced.
Time will tell.
Category: News
Looking for a serene writing experience? Tired of being distracted by outside applications and windows? Do you need the sounds of nature to inspire your writing? If you answered yes, you’ll probably dig Omniwriter, a new writing application that aims to remove distractions (ala Writeroom).
Omniwriter is currently in beta, and has no affiliation with the Omni Group.
Category: Software
This is becoming way too frequent. Is anyone at Apple listening?
Category: Software
Somewhere in Silicon Valley, Larry Ellison is watching the Chrome OS Webcast thinking, “Dudes, I pitched this shit back in 1997.”
Category: Opinion
The Camino browser team has released version 2.0 of the Gecko powered web browser. Version 2.0 brings a number of new features to the table for the browser, including…
- Tab Overview: Think of it as Exposé for your open tabs.
- Tabbed browsing improvements: You can (finally) reorder tabs, and when the number of tabs exceeds the window width, view open tabs in a drop down menu. Additionally, left and right scrollbars appear to allow you to scroll through the tabs.
- Download notifications through Growl (if it is installed).
There are a number of other smaller improvements and bug fixes to the browser as well.
I have a soft spot for Camino. Back in the early days of OS X, Camino (then called Chimera), was the best browser, hands down available for the platform. As a web developer, using Mac OS X in those days was a difficult task. The included web browser, Internet Explorer 5, was a big steaming pile of shit. It was slow, buggy, and its rendering engine was nowhere near as robust as the Gecko rendering engine. When the first builds of Chimera appeared, it was like seeing the Marines appear on the beach with reinforcements. By the time Chimera 0.2 was released, it was my default browser. I stuck with Chimera/Camino until Safari hit the scene in 2003.
But I’ve always appreciated what Camino offers Mac OS X users – a small, fast, lightweight browser built on top of a rock solid rendering engine.
Congrats to the Camino team for shipping version 2.0!
Category: Software,Web Development
AT&T has decided enough is enough, and publicly responded (via a press release) to the claims made by Verizon Wireless in their latest ads.
AT&T cites as fact:
AT&T’s wireless data coverage reaches 303 million people – or 97% of the U.S. population, where they live and work. Our data coverage consists of 3 different types of technology:
3G. 233 million people or 75% of the population are covered by AT&T’s 3G network, the nation’s fastest.
EDGE. 301 million people or more than 96% of the population are covered by EDGE.
With both 3G and EDGE coverage, customers can access the Internet, send e-mail, surf the Web, stream music, download videos, send photos, text, talk and more. The only difference – with some data applications, 3G is faster than EDGE
GPRS. Covers 303 million people, allowing you to talk, text, e-mail and access basic websites optimized for wireless.
AT&T is the #1 network for smartphones, with twice the number of smartphone customers than Verizon, our closest competitor. Some of the reasons include:
Most popular smartphones. Unlike Verizon, AT&T offers the most popular smartphones in the industry.
More wireless apps. Unlike Verizon, AT&T customers have access to more than 100,000 applications, more than with any other wireless company.
Talk and E-mail at the same time. Unlike Verizon, AT&T’s 3G network lets wireless customers simultaneously talk and surf the web or do e-mail.
Fastest 3G in the nation. Unlike Verizon, AT&T has the nation’s fastest 3G network.
Responding to a negative ad is always a gamble, as it sometimes legitimizes the claim being made against you. In this case though, I think AT&T is correct in going after Verizon.
AT&T doesn’t have the coverage that Verizon does, and everyone pretty much knows it. However, I do believe that Verizon isn’t giving AT&T its due with regard to EDGE, which is a pretty fast fallback technology.
I have no love for AT&T, but I’m enough of a realist to understand that each of the cellphone companies have their issues.
Category: News
It’s nearly two weeks after Apple’s new Magic Mouse debuted, and supplies are extremely constrained. Apple’s own website shows availablity as 5-7 days. Amazon lists their availability at 2-3 weeks. Most other retailers have yet to see any supply of the new wireless mouse.
This of course begs the question – is the Magic Mouse a hit? It seems strange that in a down economy people would be willing to cough up $70 for a wireless pointing device. Of course, this is Apple we are talking about, and most of the reviews for the Magic Mouse have been positive.
We’re still anxiously awaiting our Magic Mouse. Once we have it in hand, we’ll post a review.
Category: News
Facebook Developer Joe Hewitt has written his last iPhone app. Or something like that. In protest of Apple’s well publicized AppStore approval policies, the iPhone Facebook Application Developer has handed the project off to another developer and is moving on to “more open” pastures.
Joe had this to say to TechCrunch:
“My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.
The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.”
I can definitely sympathize with Joe on the nebulous (at best) and nefarious (at worst) review process. Hopefully, Joe’s defection will cause someone at Apple to finally fix the problem once and for all.
Category: iPhone,Software
Safari 4.04 is available via software update. No word yet on whether the recent improvements to the webkit inspector landed in this update.
From the release notes:
This update is recommended for all Safari users and includes improvements to performance, stability, and security including:
Improved JavaScript performance
Improved Full History Search performance for users with a large number of history items
Stability improvements for 3rd-party plug-ins, the search field and Yahoo! Mail
For detailed information on the security content of this update, please visit this site: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.
Update: The Webkit Inspector improvements noted above are not included in Safari 4.04.
Update: It appears the keyboard shortcut for Top Sites, Command-Shift-1 has been removed from Safari 4.04. If you use this keyboard shortcut, you may want to hold off on upgrading.
Update: Looks like the shortcut has been changed to Alt-Command-1. That’s the sort of change you would expect to be detailed in the release notes, if your release notes had any meaningful, detailed descriptions.
Category: Software,Web Development
