August 27th, 2010 
Tommy Billionaire tech investor Paul Allen sued nearly every major tech company today including Apple and Google, on the grounds that they violated e-commerce and social network patents held by a company he invested in heavily during the late 1990s, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Google – Paul Allen – Wall Street Journal – Searching – Search Engines
Read more – msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines
August 14th, 2010 Tommy A manager at Apple Inc. has been indicted by a federal grand jury in an alleged kickback scheme involving suppliers of iPhone and iPod accessories.
iPhone – Apple – iPod – Money laundering – Wire fraud
Read more – msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines
August 8th, 2010 Tommy An Apple executive whose responsibilities include iPhone hardware is leaving the company in the wake of antenna problems with the newest version of the smart phone.
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August 1st, 2010 Tommy Is apple cider vinegar a magic food?
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July 16th, 2010 Tommy 
Today, as expected, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would offer free rubber “bumpers” to anyone who bought an iPhone 4 to fix the antenna’s design problem. However, no hardware fix was promised.
Apple – IPhone – Hardware – Smartphones – Handhelds
Read more – msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines
July 15th, 2010 Tommy 
Apple will host a press conference Friday to discuss the iPhone 4, said a company representative. Though no further details were provided, we assume that the conference will address concerns that the iPhone 4’s antenna design causes increased dropped calls.
Apple – IPhone – iPhone 4 – Handhelds – Smartphones
Read more – msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines
June 15th, 2010 Tommy 
Pre-orders for the new iPhone 4 began today, and both AT&T’s systems, as well as Apple’s, were inundated with orders. AT&T now says those who order from late Tuesday onwill get the new iPhone on June 25, not June 24, the official release date.
iPhone – Apple – AT&T – Smartphone – Handhelds
Read more – msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines
January 13th, 2010 NIT 
Tags: Android, app, Apple, compatible platforms, desktop software market, impact developers, industry shift, iPhone, market, mobile platforms, percent, piracy, piracy rate, store, Wall, year one
As the mobile application space becomes larger and larger, cracked software and piracy — problems that have plagued the desktop software market for years — become more prevalent and a larger concern for app developers.
The website 24/7 Wall St. is estimating that the iPhone App Store has lost $450 million to piracy and cracked downloads. Although we’re not denying that App Store piracy is a very real concern, we do take issue with the methodology and estimated numbers in this report.
As iPhone detractors are always keen to point out, mobile applications, and, in turn, mobile application piracy, is not a new issue. The Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms have been battling the problem for the better part of a decade, and the Palm Classic- and JDK-compatible platforms even longer than that.
However, with the big push to acquire newer smartphone platforms like the iPhone and Android, plus the industry shift to platform-specific app stores, mobile application piracy has started to take on a new face.
In February of last year, one-click cracking tools and an over-the-air cracked app store were developed for the iPhone and iPod touch. While only available on jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch devices, this type of software showcased the trivialities of cracking and distributing paid mobile applications.
Lest you think this phenomenon is just limited to the iPhone, Android app developers have been complaining about the effect the Android Market return policy has had on app piracy for months.
The bottom line is that this is a real issue and it does impact developers, which in turn impacts the development ecosystem as a whole, including users. But how big is the problem?
24/7 Wall St. is claiming $450 million has been lost to piracy in the iTunes App Store alone, but we have some very real problems with the way that figure was determined.
The biggest red flag is that 24/7 Wall St. assumes that paid iPhone applications have a piracy rate of 75 percent. How did they come to this conclusion? Using some past piracy usage examples from apps from Fishlabs and other developers, they came to the conclusion that for every app purchased, three more were downloaded from cracked sources.
Now, this might be true for games like iCombat and others from Fishlabs — but this certainly isn’t going to be the case across the board. It might be more fair to say that the piracy rate for games in the App Store is 75 percent, but even then you would need a much larger sample size and various tracking methods if you wanted to be accurate.
Additionally, 24/7 Wall St. is estimating that 17 percent of the 3 billion apps downloaded from the App Store were paid apps — or 510 million. They then multiply that by three (using the previous ratio) and assume that 1.53 billion apps have been pirated. Then, the report multiples that figure by $3 (the average price of a paid app) and gets $4.59 billion. Assuming that 10 percent of app pirates would have actually purchased the app in question, that’s how you get $459 million in lost revenue.
I’m not a statistician, but even I can see that that’s really, really reaching.
Here’s the biggest problem I have with throwing around figures like “$450 million lost in piracy” — it doesn’t help the situation at all. Most people take piracy statistics with a grain of salt, anyway, and when they dissect the nature in which those figures were calculated, are more likely to write-off the entire issue. That certainly doesn’t help the game developer who sees that X percent of her usage statistics are coming form people who didn’t even pay for the app.
Instead of inflating figures, why not talk about what could be done to help curb (not solve, you can’t solve piracy in the digital age) the problem?
Both Google and Apple have policies in place that make it difficult for developers to fight against app piracy. Google’s return policy for the Android Market is a particularly wide loophole; there has to be a middle ground between letting users return an app within 24 hours and just using the system as a “buy/request refund/restore from backup” scheme.
Because Apple so tightly controls its developer ecosystem, developers are in a sense beholden to Apple to make sure that the encryption linking apps to specific devices is stronger. Because only jailbroken phones can use cracked apps, an obvious solution would be making the devices harder to jailbreak. That’s easier said than done, of course, but the fact remains that the onus really shouldn’t be on developers who have no control over how to sell their apps and have limited options in securing them.
What do you think about this report and mobile app piracy in general?
Tags: android, app store, iphone, money, piracy
November 23rd, 2009 NIT Tags: allthingsd, Apple, apple ads, Apple Isn, attack ads, CDMA, core strength, iPhone, Luke Wilson, Map, network, phone, prime time programming, Read, t network, time, tonight, Verizon, Wall Street, wall street journal
Verizon opened up total war against AT&T in October when it unleashed its “There’s a Map for That” ad campaign, slamming AT&T’s 3G coverage using the iPhone commercial catchphrase “there’s a map for that.”
Since then, both sides have relentlessly attacked each other. First AT&T sued Verizon, Verizon fired back with holiday attack ads and its own statement. Most recently, AT&T returned fire with its own commercials starring Luke Wilson.
Caught in the commercial crossfire however has been Apple and the coveted iPhone. After a month and a half of being the whipping boy of Verizon ads, Apple has apparently had enough. Starting tonight, new Apple ads will flood the airwaves that not only tout the iPhone, but the AT&T network (sort of).
According to WSJ’s AllThingsD, Apple has opted to air two ads during tonight’s prime time programming (think “House”) that focus on the iPhone’s ability to surf the mobile web while still on your call, something that Verizon does not support.
The end of each ad is where Apple makes its dig into Verizon, asking “Can your phone and your network do that?” while displaying the AT&T logo. This is the first time we’ve ever heard an Apple ad specifically talk about the AT&T network.
Apple needed to respond: Verizon was attacking AT&T by targeting its core strength, which is by far the iPhone. Apple couldn’t let the iPhone’s brand be damaged anymore. However, these ads really aren’t Apple specifically endorsing AT&T, but rather them endorsing the non-CDMA 3G network AT&T employs. Verizon’s CDMA cannot support phone calls + Internet browsing, while the non-CDMA can.
Regardless, this entire affair is probably going to get uglier soon, with more commercials and more posturing by all sides. Here are the ads that will air tonight, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:
Tags: apple, att, iphone, verizon
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Can Google pull off yet another upset with its Nexus One? We’ll let you have the final say with the poll and the comments section below. This week’s poll closes on Friday, January 15th at 12:00 PM PT.
Tags: apple, Google, google phone, iphone, nexus one, web faceoff
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