Tag Archives: apple

iTunes Ping: The Missing Thing

Apple this week launched Ping , a new social network that runs within the iTunes software. Ping takes the “activity stream” format popularized by Twitter and Facebook and applies it to the music your friends are “talking about, listening to, and downloading”. In theory, this should take us beyond mainstream hits and further down the so-called “long tail” of lesser known artists. It’s here that Ping fails to deliver: The network is currently just another way to follow Lady Gaga
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iPhone 3G Speed Test: iOS 4.0 versus iOS 4.1 [IPhone]

iOS 4.0 was so slow on our 3G, we promptly downgraded after updating. Earlier this week, Apple announced, among other things, that iOS 4.1 fixed performance on the iPhone 3G . We put their claim to the test. More
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iTunes Ping’s Latest Problem: Spam

iTunes Ping is apparently full of spam, yet another hiccup in Apple’s road to establishing a legitimate social network. As Sophos notes on its blog, a barrage of spam links are hitting the music-themed social network. Many of these links are to offers promising free iPad, iPhone or iPod touch devices. Apple released iTunes 10 and iTunes Ping earlier this week and the rollout has been a little bit rocky.
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Twitter for iPhone/iPad Getting Push Notifications Soon

We’ve just gotten an email from Twitter stating that staffers are testing push notifications amongst themselves and the company will be rolling this feature out to all users soon. Push notifications would enable users to get instant, real-time updates for certain types of tweets — probably DMs and @replies and perhaps other kinds of tweets, as well. A few lucky users accidentally got the new feature with the Twitter for iPad application which was recently released. “When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users,” wrote a Twitter spokesperson
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Hey, iTunes Ping: What About the Bands?

Update: Commenter Bruce Hoffman contacted TuneCore about this issue and received this response: “Thanks for writing! Not only will Ping have ‘People’ accounts, but it will also have ‘Artist’ accounts that allow musicians to upload and create their own pages featuring their pictures, videos, tour-dates, music recommendations and a lot more. We were fortunate enough to speak with Apple today to begin working on getting the first TuneCore Artists Ping accounts set up. We will be able to get more and more TuneCore Artists set up over the next weeks as Apple works to authenticate and set up Ping Artist accounts for the millions of artists within iTunes.” Plenty of criticism has already been directed towards the new social network that’s baked into iTunes 10 — Ping — with an emphasis on the user (not to mention rumblings about a fleeting Facebook integration ). But there’s one contingent of users no one has really mentioned yet: the bands , many of which are still unable to get in on the action as of this afternoon. Immediately after hearing about Ping yesterday, I sent out a flurry of e-mails to band friends, urging them to, “Get on this now!” Everyone was stoked, ready to replace their MySpace pages with revenue-making destinations on the brand new iTunes social network
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Morning Brief: iTunes 10 & Ping Now Live, Samsung Unveils Tablet, Twitter’s iPad App

This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G , America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology. Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world
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Google Responds to Steve Jobs’ Android Activation Jab

As he was boasting that Apple is activating 230,000 iOS devices a day at Apple’s San Francisco event yesterday, Steve Jobs took the opportunity to accuse competitors of boosting their numbers when it comes to device activations. “We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers,” said Jobs, most probably referring to the recent figures from Google, whose Eric Schmidt claimed 200,000 activations daily in August 2010. Google has quickly responded to Jobs’ allegations. In a response to an inquiry from Fortune , a Google spokesperson said: “The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services.” So there you have it: according to Google, it might even have more than 200,000 Android device activations every day. Who do you trust: Apple or Google
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Twitter’s iPad App: All the Bells and Whistles

Twitter has just announced the service’s official iPad app. It’s free and comes with a slew of touch interface bells and whistles built right in. The app is intended to allow for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other media and updates. It’s also usable even for those who don’t have Twitter accounts. Twitter for iPad [iTunes link] has a few new UI touches that you haven’t seen elsewhere
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Why the Apple A4 is the iPod Touch’s Killer Feature

As expected, a massive upgrade to the iPod touch was announced earlier today at Apple’s special event. Although the most outwardly impressive revisions come by way of front and rear facing cameras and the retina display, perhaps more significant was the announcement that the device would house the same chip capably powering the iPhone 4 and the iPad — the Apple A4. The A4 mobile ARM processor is of particular importance when considering Apple’s mobile future.
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New Apple TV Adds Netflix, iTunes Rentals and iPad Streaming for $99

At Apple’s special event today, the company announced a redesigned and re-formulated Apple TV . As expected, the new device comes with support for Netflix , streams content and offers affordable rental pricing for TV shows. The new Apple TV will be available later this month (you can pre-order it now) for $99.99. While most of the changes to the device were expected, not everything that was predicted was announced.
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