Posts tagged with "apple"

BananaTunes Streams Your Music From iOS To OS X Through AirPlay

Erica Sadun, author of the great AirPlay hack BananaTV has come out with a new beta application; BananaTunes. Taking advantage of the recent reverse engineering of AirPlay it will allow you to transmit full stereo music from an AirPlay enabled iOS device to any Mac running BananaTunes.

Previously AirPlay hacks such as BananaTV or AirFlick and AirTuner only expanded upon the video side of AirPlay but thanks to that reverse engineering magic we can now stream music too. TUAW reported mixed results with BananaTunes (it is beta after all) with it working fine with their iPad 2 but having some issues with an iPhone 4. I personally had no issues using both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 in playing music to my Mac through BananaTV, except a few initial seconds of stuttering that soon disappeared.

Ultimately Erica plans to merge the BananaTuner functionality into the BananaTV software, but for now you can download these two zip files (or this all-in-one installer) to try it out, but be warned it requires OS X 10.6 and only runs as a 64-bit application.

[Via TUAW]

Apple Facing Regulatory Scrutiny In South Korea Over Location Log File

The commotion over that iOS log file, which can to some extent, track the movements of your iPhone or 3G iPad is definitally not fading away. Bloomberg, is today reporting that South Korea’s communication regulator is investigating the issue to see whether or not Apple is breaking South Korean law.

The Korea Communications Commission has issued Apple a series of questions over what information is collected and saved and whether users have a choice over whether it is saved or deleted. Furthermore it has asked Apple to clarify why such data exists and whether it is at all stored on the company’s servers. The Commission has also been formed to investigate how to increase privacy protection for smartphone users.

Earlier today we reported on an email from Steve Jobs in which he said of the issue “We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.” It comes after US Senator Al Franken last week called for an explanation for the file, saying, “it raises serious privacy concerns”. The researchers who discovered the file demonstrated that the log file in question records an approximate location of an iPhone or 3G iPad based on cellular tower vicinity and is presumed to exist either for battery performance or as a reference for the device. Many believe that it is either a bug or oversight that the device does not periodically delete the log file.

[Via Bloomberg]

Rinse: An App for Cleaning Your iTunes Library

As a part of RealNetworks evolution, from a content provider to developer of management and distribution software for digital media, it has released Rinse – a $39 application that offers a promise that it will “seamlessly organize and repair your iTunes music library”.

Like other apps such as TuneUp and Equinux’s Song Genie and CoverScout, Rinse promises to correct any mislabelled (or not labelled) items in your iTunes library, add album artwork and remove those pesky duplicate items. It promises to be smarter than those other apps and that “Rinse’s intelligent database technology will find the matching artwork, remove duplicates and clean things up.”

Peter Kafka from AllThingsD had mixed results trying it out on his library, whilst Ben Brooks found it made quick work of cleaning up those duplicate tracks he had in his library. Rinse is available for OS X as well as Windows XP, Vista and 7 for the rather hefty price of $39.

[Via AllThingsD]

 

Fox News Charlotte Gives Us a Glimpse of Apple’s Server Farm

If the Apple data center speculation wasn’t enough, Charlotte local news channel WCCB-TV took a news anchor out to cover the Apple datacenter, which they erroneously report was intended strictly for iTunes and will take on Netflix in the video streaming business in part because of the massive scale. “That’s just too big to house only music files,” exclaims Israel Baldares. I don’t disagree that Apple will move into streaming video, however, to state it as fact is whole a different case of the Fox News crazies. Out of the speculation, however, comes a couple glimpses at the scale of Apple’s datacenter (and the outside of the building is probably all we’ll see for the time being). Couple this with Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s accompanying video, and we get a sense of the sheer size the server farm. As far as the inside goes, we do know that Apple has ordered an insane amount of storage, and has specific orders for custom equipment related to cooling and power. Tack this on to the fact they just pulled data center scalability expert Kevin Timmons from Microsoft, and you have yourselves some wild speculation concerning what Apple might do with lots of unused land.

Apple is only using a third of the 180 acres they own, not including the 70 acres they’ve purchased across the street. It’s speculated Apple could build an East Coast Apple campus, and build a data center in parallel to the building that’s constructed now, giving them a million square feet of space to work with. Apple’s data center is readying to launch, and in the meantime you can get a glimpse at the current state of their data center via the video after the break.

[Fortune via TUAW]

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iTunes In The Cloud: Apple Signs Deal with Warner Music

Following last night’s report on Apple readying the launch of the rumored cloud-based music service based on iTunes after having recently “completed work” on it, Cnet weighs in today claiming the company has signed a deal with Warner Music to offer streaming of the labels’ artist catalogue and songs on the new iTunes cloud service. Cnet notes how Warner Music is only one of the four big players in the music industry, with EMI, Sony and Universal still out of the picture:

Apple has an agreement with Warner Music Group to offer the record label’s tracks on iTunes’ upcoming cloud-music service, music industry sources said. It is unclear whether Warner was one of those two that had previously licensed Apple or whether the label inked a new agreement on Friday.

Indeed, Peter Kafka at MediaMemo posted a follow-up to Reuters’ original report on the finalized cloud service yesterday, claiming that Apple had actually already signed deals with two of the major music labels, and Apple’s Eddy Cue was set to fly to New York City today to arrange the remaining deals. It’s not clear now whether Warner Music was part of the rumored labels that had signed in the past months, or one of the two that needed to be convinced today. Cnet’s report doesn’t provide additional details on the deal.

Speculation surrounding this new cloud-based service from Apple indicates the company has both considered an option to let users back up an existing music collection to the cloud and stream it anywhere, as well as a second iTunes Store-like functionality offering the possibility to stream songs you don’t own through a monthly or annual subscription.

iPad App Takes You Behind The Scenes of Portal 2

The Final Hours of Portal 2 is a new iPad app that combines a 15,000 word article with lots of audio, video and other interactive elements (some never before seen) to tell the story of the development and evolution of Portal 2 - perfect for those of you who (like me) love Portal. It’s written by Geoff Keighley, who also wrote “The Final Hours of Half-Life” which kick-started his career in game journalism, and like that first insight, he was again given extensive access to Valve’s offices and employees.

It really is more than just a 15,000-word essay on Portal 2, the interactive elements and multimedia in the app is really done well, definitely exceeding what the Wired app does in its iPad editions. Some of the most interesting elements include user polls, failed experiments by Valve, insights into a shelved Portal prequel and early versions of that memorable end-credits song by Jonathon Coulton.

The Final Hours of Portal 2 is on the App Store for $2 and whilst it is only on available on the iPad at this stage, Keighley is open to expanding it onto other platforms and devices if the iPad app does well and there is demand for it.

[Via MacNN]

 

Samsung Counter Sues Apple For Patent Infringement

In a counterclaim to Apple’s lawsuit filed earlier this week, Samsung said today in a statement that Apple’s iPhone and iPad infringe on 10 of Samsung’s patents and has called for Apple to stop infringing the patents and pay Samsung compensation. Filed in the Seoul Central District Court, the patents involved largely cover technologies surrounding power conservation during data transmission, improving the 3G data transmission and various wireless data communication technology. In a press statement, Samsung said it was

responding actively to the legal action taken against us in order to protect our intellectual property and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communications business

The litigation between Apple and Samsung is set to be a heated one and Apple is going after Samsung hard, with Apple earlier this week saying to the press “this kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.” Meanwhile, Apple will continue to be Samsung’s second largest client for various electronic components, which go into the very products that Samsung is alleged to have copied, and last year it brought in $5.7 billion of revenue to Samsung.

Author of a book on Samsung and professor at the National University of Singapore, Chang Sea-jin, said to the Financial Times that such legal spats are common and are unlikely to threaten the business relationship between the two companies, he believes that “Apple is just sending a warning to Samsung that they are watching them.” It has also been suggested that Samsung has in the past actively persuaded Steve Jobs that the electronic components sector of Samsung would not in any way leak or reveal information about Apple’s future component needs to the Samsung mobile unit.

[Via Reuters]

 

OpenFeint Gets Bought For $104 Million By Japanese Mobile Social Network Gree

Japanese company Gree which runs a mobile gaming social network yesterday revealed that it had purchased OpenFeint, which runs a very similar social network, for $104 million. The deal follows the $403 million acquisition of Ngmoco by another Japanese firm, DeNa, last October. However unlike that deal, Gree and OpenFeint will not be merging their social networks into one service, opting instead to unify their codebase so that developers can choose to use either Gree, OpenFeint (or Mig33 which Gree also has a deal with) depending on the specific market which the game is targeted towards.

The appeal for such a service that OpenFeint delivers is that mobile game developers can easily utilise a mature network that offers users a more social experience with leaderboards and challenges whilst also helping developers by easily allowing cross-promotion through the network.  Gree has been a big success in Japan with over 25 million users and a market value of $3 billion, but OpenFeint has gone gangbusters on iOS and Android with over 75 million users and is implemented by over 5,000 games.

OpenFeint’s current CEO, Jason Citron, will remain in his position and said in an interview that the deal will accelerate OpenFeint’s expansion globally, which he believes is a “multibillion dollar opportunity” in conjunction with the increasing dominance of smartphones and tablets. “We are beginning of a new age,” Citron further added. “The economic opportunity here is so tremendous and gaming is the killer app.” Meanwhile, Yoshikazu Tanaka, founder and CEO of Gree said “At Gree, we are socializing the next evolution of games and, as the best-in-class US-based mobile social network, OpenFeint is the ideal partner for us to offer the best mobile social games to the largest global audience.”

[Via VentureBeat]

Apple’s Cloud Music Service Almost Ready to Launch?

According to Reuters, Apple “has completed work” on its rumored cloud-based music service that will allow users to store their music online, and access it anywhere using a computer or an iOS device connected to the Internet.

Apple Inc has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google Inc, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies’ plans. Apple’s plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection, said two of these people who asked not to be named as the talks are still confidential.

Reuters also claims Apple hasn’t secured any deal with music labels yet, and industry sources said several labels are hoping to close these deals before the service’s launch. Similarly to Amazon’s recently launched Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, Apple could introduce a service that works on the web and mobile devices, and offers a way for users to “digitally lock” their own media in the cloud – quite possibly without even needing the blessing of music labels to do so. Amazon, for instance, was initially rumored to be in a lot of trouble with licensing deals after the Cloud Player launch, but as of today no major music label has sued the online retailer – which basically gives its users an online space to store their DRM-free songs. Amazon, however, is reportedly in talks with labels anyway to come up with a more “advanced” plan that meets the music industry’s expectations and requirements.

Apple, on the other hand, might launch a service that acts as a remote backup location for a user’s iTunes library, and it could be part of the rumored new MobileMe – a complete revamp of the suite of online sync tools that’s also expected to be free, and deeply integrated into future versions of iOS. A number of reports in the past months indicated Apple was building an online iTunes backup solution with built-in streaming capabilities, although others claimed the company was also focusing on a subscription-based model for streaming the entire iTunes Store catalogue – similarly to how music service Spotify requires a premium subscription to stream music you don’t own.

Last, Reuters reports:

Apple and Google are keen to offer services that give music fans more flexibility to access their media wherever they are rather than tying them to a particular computer or mobile device.

In late 2009, Apple bought Lala, a cloud-based music company, but closed it down in April 2010, leading to speculation that it would launch an Apple-branded cloud service.

Interestingly enough, a series of downtimes and errors in iTunes and the App Store during the past 2 days lead many to believe Apple moved its iTunes servers to the new data center in North Carolina, which was set to become fully operative in Spring 2011. Read more