Hasta La Gadget!

Well, would you look at that? The v1.2 update to MobileMe iDisk that Apple pushed out last month has a secret — er, did have a secret. One of the concealed new features of the app is background streaming, or as Apple puts it, the ability to “play audio from your iDisk while using another app.” For starters, it’s pretty fantastic just to have this functionality in-hand for your own garage jams, but what’s more is that any licensed music on your iDisk still streams perfectly fine. Only time will tell if any record labels (or that mean, mean RIAA) step forward with a grievance, but this could very well be the beginning of iTunes in the cloud. Or a reason for buying Lala. Or a mysterious combination of the two.

Apple slyly enables background iDisk music streaming in iOS 4 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Member of the illustrious iPhone Developer Program? Well, aren’t you special? So special, in fact, that you’re once again being granted access to a highly-coveted iOS build that the unwashed commoners can’t get: yet another beta of iOS 4.1. This time around, it’s beta 3, suggesting that Apple might be getting close to having this thing ready for the mass market; after all, it’s been just a week since beta 2, and Apple tends to accelerate the pace when a release is drawing near. Now, what about that iPad version?

Update: Looks like there’s some bad news for legacy users in this update… namely the fact that Game Center compatibility for second gen iPod touches and the iPhone 3G has been dropped. Thanks for nothing, Apple!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iOS 4.1 beta 3 breaks loose (update: Game Center killed on iPhone 3G and second gen iPod touches) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Right now, if you visit a web page and load a simple PDF file, you may give total control of your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to a hacker. The security bug affects all devices running iOS 3.1.2 and higher. More »

When Apple acquired Lala, the obvious use for all that local scanning and internet streaming technology would have been to serve up our hard-drive-based iTunes music libraries from the cloud. Here we are though, eight months later, and the only significant impact from the acquisition was the closure of the Lala music service. And it doesn’t look like that will change anytime soon. According to an investigative piece by CNET, Apple is telling the big-four music execs that it won’t be offering any significant cloud-based music offerings within the next few months. In fact, CNET‘s sources claim that Apple still hasn’t obtained the licenses required to store and distribute music via a cloud-based service. So what’s Apple doing with all that Lala talent then? According to CNET, the team has been working on an “undisclosed video feature” instead of music. Additional sources at the major film studios claim that Apple plans to create “digital shelves” this year letting iTunes users store movies and other media on Apple’s servers. Hmm, does that sound like Keychest to you?

Naturally, all of this makes sense in light of Apple’s plan to open a 500,000 square foot data center (pictured above) in North Carolina later this year at a cost of $1 billion. What better facility to serve up 99 cent streaming TV rentals to a completely overhauled Apple TV in the home, and highly mobile iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone devices on the go. Anecdotally, it’s not like Apple’s showing too much concern with storage limits on its iOS devices — the iPhone 4 just launched in the same 16GB and 32GB offerings as the 3GS instead of the typical doubling of flash storage we’ve come to expect from new iPhone iterations. So really, the question isn’t if, it’s just a matter of when.

Original image courtesy of Cult of Mac

Apple’s Lala music team working on video streaming service for 2010 launch? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Aug 2010 04:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back when we outlined the iOS 4 features missing from iPhone 3G, we forgot one key bullet point: performance. As more and more two-year veterans of Apple’s phones have taken the plunge and upgraded to the latest firmware, slowdown and battery drain issues have become a common complaint, which is even more irksome when you think of just how little the update really adds to the UI. The Wall Street Journal reports speaking to an Apple spokesperson who said the company is looking into the matter. That doesn’t necessarily mean a fix is coming anytime soon, but hey, at least you can hold the darn thing however you want.

Apple investigating issues with iOS 4 upgrade on iPhone 3G originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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