The good old Associated Press has a couple of good old unnamed sources pinpointing the launch of The Daily — the first iPad-only newspaper venture — as January 19th. They even name the location as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is the company making this leap into the unknown (do people even care about news anymore?) and he is specifically named as a presenter at this alleged event for next week, to be joined on stage by Apple’s Steve Jobs. An ancillary little note is that journalists are said to have already been hired in bureaus across the country, including the big news-spinning markets of New York and Los Angeles — which makes all the sense in the world given the widespread expectation that the news app they’ll be working for will launch by the end of this month.
Update: Did we say the end of this month? Looks like The Daily‘s more likely to debut in early February instead — News Corporation confirmed to All Things D that the iPad news service has been delayed, and an unnamed source says that it will be “weeks, not months” before we see it emerge again.
It’s time to start penning the epilogue to the story of how Verizon and the iPhone came to be happily betrothed yesterday. We’ve already heard a good deal about how the last suitor failed to live up to expectations, but this report keeps the focus predominantly on the newlyweds and their courtship. The agreement came last year and was brokered by Verizon President Lowell McAdam and Apple COO Tim Cook, with input from CEOs Ivan Seidenberg and Steve Jobs (naturally), and though the commercial aspect only took about a day, the preceding technical hurdle was a six-to-nine months ordeal. That entailed putting Verizon cell towers at Apple HQ to check signal and avoid reliability troubles, as well as having Verizon’s Executive Director of Technology David McCarley work in Cupertino for more than a year. As for the rest of the deal, both parties agreed to share inside knowledge (Verizon’s network plans for Apple’s device plans — wouldn’t you like to know) and Verizon had to agree to a logo-free device. Which, given the sure-to-be mindblowing sales, probably isn’t a hard pill to swallow.
That Apple had the original App Store isn’t under dispute, but should the company have the right to exclude others from using the same term to describe their program repositories? Microsoft says no, and has this week filed a motion with the US Patent and Trademark Office asking for it to dismiss Apple’s trademark claim for “App Store.” The application seeks to secure for Apple the exclusive use of the term in the context of computer software broadly, not just on the mobile front, but Microsoft is arguing that its constituent words are generic (or simply descriptive) both individually and as a pair. In making its case, the Redmond company cites Steve Jobs himself, whose exposition on the topic of Android fragmentation included specific mention of multiple “app stores” for the Google OS. It would seem this has been brewing for a while, too, as the last update — dated 7th of July, 2010 — on Apple’s trademark application notes there’s a pending opposition to its claim. Now that Microsoft’s escalated its complaint to asking for a summary dismissal, it’ll be interesting to see on which side of the great divide the decision falls.
We’ve waited. We’ve watched. We’ve wondered. And now, by the grace of Steve Jobs and Lowell McAdam, we’re supposedly going to see a reveal of the mythical Verizon iPhone. Of course, there’s always a chance that Verizon just wants to reveal more details on LTE, or talk about the company’s commitment to openness and Android… but according to the rumor mill, it’s time for Big Red to get some Apple magic.
No matter what happens, we’ll be there live, reporting on the news as it happens with the best liveblog in the business. Tune in at the times below on Tuesday, January 11th to see it all go down.
06:00AM – Hawaii 08:00AM – Pacific 09:00AM – Mountain 10:00AM – Central 11:00AM – Eastern 04:00PM – London 05:00PM – Paris 07:00PM – Moscow 12:00AM – Perth (January 12th) 12:00AM – Shenzhen (January 12th) 01:00AM – Tokyo (January 12th) 03:00AM – Sydney (January 12th)
As 2010 nears its end, it’s time to start getting all nostalgic. There were a lot of ups and downs in the world of tech this year, and as we take a look at some of our top stories for the calendar, it’s impossible not to notice just how diverse the selection is.
We start this first of a two-part retrospective with a surprisingly popular “sex robot” and cap it off with a bit of bad press for Apple in what was largely a pretty decent year for Jobs and co.
[Above, sorry, a little Bieber couldn’t be helped.]
This article was written on August 28, 2008 by CyberNet.
If someone were to ask me who I’d rather meet in person if given the choice between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, I’d pick Bill Gates. He’s an excellent public speaker, and he always seems to be a humble, gracious man. Steve Jobs on the other hand, it’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that there’s an arrogance to him that can get on my nerves. Despite this, I still feel like I have to stick up for the guy. Lately he’s been getting a lot of grief over his health. Most recently, news source Bloomberg “mistakenly” published his obituary. Yes, his obituary.
According to CNET, it’s not unusual for big media outlets to have obituaries written up for famed individuals, even if they are perfectly healthy. That way if something should happen, they can immediately post an announcement and make a few minor changes if necessary. It sounds kinda creepy if you ask me, but it makes sense. This helps explain why Bloomberg has an obituary written for Jobs but it doesn’t explain how someone mistakenly sent the pre-written obituary out over the wire for all to see.
If Jobs ever wondered what he accomplished in life (I don’t think he would, but…), now he knows. According to Bloomberg, he “helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music, and refashioned the mobile phone.”
Of course with this mistake came more talk and speculation on his health and the way he looked (rather thin) at WWDC . Like I said, the guy can be arrogant sometimes, but it’s about time he is given a break!
When Steve Jobs introduced the latest iOS update (version 4.2), the biggest addition was AirPlay, a feature that wirelessly streams some audio and video from an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the Apple TV. An e-mail from the CEO suggests this feature is poised to become more powerful next year.
The AirPlay feature shipped in the latest version of Apple’s mobile software, iOS 4.2.1, and it works the way Apple advertised: It streams video only played from the iPod app on the iPhone/iPod Touch or the Video app on the iPad. What you can’t do today with AirPlay is stream video that you shot with an iPhone, or video from third-party apps or even Safari, to the Apple TV.
A MacRumors reader e-mailed Jobs asking if AirPlay would eventually stream videos from Safari and third-party apps to the Apple TV. The reader claims Jobs replied with a nod: “Yep, hope to add these features to AirPlay in 2011.”
It certainly appears Apple is working on the feature, as currently you can stream audio from videos played in Safari and third-party apps to the Apple TV. We suggest keeping an eye on the developments of AirPlay, because we think when it matures, it could be a gamechanger that offers a compelling alternative to viewing television content through third-party apps and web videos.
iPad owners have had less than a week with iOS 4, but a software update offering news and magazine subscriptions targeted at them could arrive in less than a month.
According to Gruber’s sources, The Daily will be an app in the App Store, but make use of new recurring subscription billing on users’ iTunes accounts, and “developers at News Corp. building the app already have preliminary documentation on the new subscription billing APIs from Apple.”
According to Viticci’s sources, iOS 4.3 wasn’t intended to be released so quickly after 4.2.1, which was originally internally slated for an early November release. It’s possible that 4.2.1’s later official release might also push back the release of 4.3. But with Apple playing such a large role in The Daily, both companies may stick with mid-December announcement and releases, after all.
Subscription-based recurring billing would likely increase the number of paid magazine, newspaper, TV, video and other media applications on iTunes. Really, any application that depends on continuous content or service delivery could introduce a subscription model: online gaming, data backup, GPS, office applications and more. Many subscription-based services already have iOS apps, but have to establish accounts and recurring billing separately from iTunes.
Another technical challenge posed by subscriptions that could require an OS update is automatic background content delivery. If you’re being billed every week for a newspaper or magazine, you shouldn’t have to go through a long, complicated routine just to download a new issue.
A final open question: How much customer information will Apple and app/content makers share with each other about their subscribers? This data has value, too — as does customers’ privacy.
Rupert Murdoch thinks that the iPad is the beginning of the future of media. Steve Jobs agrees. That’s why—according to WWD’s sources—News Corp. is releasing an iPad-only newspaper called The Daily. Created with Apple’s help, says the Guardian: More »
It was October 2003 and Steve Jobs was on stage for a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes. About four minutes into the presentation, he said something that made my pounding heart sink to my burning stomach.
In May 2003, Apple invited me to their headquarters to discuss getting CD Baby’s catalog into the iTunes Music Store.
iTunes had just launched two weeks before, with only some music from the major labels. Many of us in the music biz were not sure this idea was going to work. Especially those who had seen companies like eMusic do this exact same model for years without big success.
I flew to Cupertino thinking I’d be meeting with one of their marketing or tech people. When I arrived, I found out that about a hundred people from small record labels and distributors had also been invited.
We all went into a little presentation room, not knowing what to expect.
Then out comes Steve Jobs. Whoa! Wow.
He was in full persuasive presentation mode. Trying to convince all of us to give Apple our entire catalog of music. Talking about iTunes success so far, and all the reasons we should work with them.
He really made a point of saying, “We want the iTunes Music Store to have every piece of music ever recorded. Even if it’s discontinued or not selling much, we want it all.”
This was huge to me, because until 2003, independent musicians were always denied access to the big outlets. For Apple to sell all music, not just artists who had signed their rights away to a corporation, this was amazing!
Then they showed the Apple software we’d all have to use to send them each album. It required us to put the audio CD into a Mac CD-Rom drive, type in all of the album info, song titles and bio, then click [encode] for it to rip, and [upload] when done.
I raised my hand and asked if it was required that we use their software. They said yes.
I asked again, saying we had over 100,000 albums, already ripped as lossless WAV files, with all of the info carefully entered by the artist themselves, ready to send to their servers with their exact specifications. They said sorry – you need to use this software – there is no other way.
Ugh. That means we have to pull each one of those CDs off of the shelf again, stick it in a Mac, then cut-and-paste every song title into that Mac software. But so be it. If that’s what Apple needs, OK.
They said they’d be ready for us to start uploading in the next couple weeks.
I flew home that night, posted my meeting notes on my website, emailed all of my clients to announce the news, and went to sleep.
When I woke, I had furious emails and voicemails from my contact at Apple.
“What the hell are you doing? That meeting was confidential! Take those notes off your site immediately! Our legal department is furious!”
There was no mention of confidentiality at the meeting and no agreement to sign. But I removed my notes from my site immediately, to be nice. (You can see still a copy someone posted here.)
All was well, or so I thought.
Apple emailed us the iTunes Music Store contract. We immediately signed it and returned it the same day.
I started building the system to deliver everyone’s music to iTunes.
I decided we’d have to charge $40 for this service, to cover our bandwidth and payroll costs of pulling each CD out of the warehouse, entering all the info, digitizing, uploading, and putting it back in the warehouse.
5,000 musicians signed up in advance, each paying $40. That $200,000 helped pay for the extra equipment and people needed to make this happen.
Within two weeks, we got contacted by Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, Napster, eMusic, and more – each saying they wanted our entire catalog.
Yes! Awesome!
Maybe you can’t appreciate this now, but the summer of 2003 was the biggest turning point that independent music has ever had. Until that point, almost no big business would sell independent music. (That’s why I had to start CD Baby, because nobody would sell my music.)
By iTunes saying they wanted everything, then their competitors needing to keep up, we were in! Since the summer of 2003, every musician everywhere can sell all their music in almost every outlet online. Do you realize how amazing that is?
But there was one problem.
iTunes wasn’t getting back to us.
Yahoo, Rhapsody, Napster and the rest were all up and running. But iTunes wasn’t returning our signed contract.
Was it because I posted my meeting notes?
Had I pissed-off Steve Jobs?
Nobody at Apple would say anything. It had been months.
My musicians were getting impatient and angry.
I gave optimistic apologies, but I was starting to get worried, too.
Then in October, Steve Jobs did a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes.
People had been criticizing iTunes for having less music than the competition. They had 300,000 songs while Rhapsody and Napster had over 2 million songs. (Over 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.)
Four minutes in, he said something that made my pounding heart sink to my burning stomach:
“This number could have easily been much higher, if we wanted to let in every song. But we realize record companies do a great service. They edit! Did you know that if you and I record a song, for $40 we can pay a few of the services to get it on their site, through some intermediaries? We can be on Rhapsody and all these other guys for $40? Well we don’t want to let that stuff on our site! So we’ve had to edit it. And these are 400,000 quality songs.”
I’m the only one charging $40. That was me he’s referring to.
Shit. OK. That’s that. Steve changed his mind. No independents on iTunes. You heard the man.
I hated the position this put me in.
Ever since I started my company in 1998, I had been offering an excellent service. I could make promises and keep them, because I was in full control.
Now, for the first time, I had made a promise for something that was out of my control.
So it was time to do the right thing, no matter how much it hurt.
I decided to refund everybody’s $40, with my deepest apologies. With 5000 musicians signed up, that meant I was refunding $200,000.
Since we couldn’t promise anything, I couldn’t charge money in good conscience.
I removed all mention of iTunes from my site.
I removed the $40 cost to make it free.
I changed the language to say we can’t promise anything.
I emailed everyone to let them know what had happened.
I decided to make it a free service from that point on.
The next day, we got our signed contract back from Apple, along with upload instructions.
Unbelievable.
We asked, “Why now?”, but got no answer.
Whatever. Fucking Apple.
We started encoding and uploading immediately.
I quietly added iTunes back to the list of companies on our site.
But I never again promised a customer that I could do something beyond my full control.
Derek Sivers is best known as the founder of CD Baby. A professional musician (and circus clown) since 1987, Derek started CD Baby by accident in 1998 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too. CD Baby was the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients. After he won the 2003 World Technology Award, Esquire Magazine’s annual “Best and Brightest” cover story said, “Derek Sivers is changing the way music is bought and sold… one of the last music-business folk heroes.” In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby to focus on his new ventures to benefit musicians, including his new company MuckWork where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their “uncreative dirty work”. His current projects and writings are all at sivers.org and on his blog. If you’d like to keep close track of Derek, you can follow him on Twitter.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Associated Press (Yahoo! News) | Email this | Comments
If someone were to ask me who I’d rather meet in person if given the choice between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, I’d pick Bill Gates. He’s an excellent public speaker, and he always seems to be a humble, gracious man. Steve Jobs on the other hand, it’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that there’s an arrogance to him that can get on my nerves. Despite this, I still feel like I have to stick up for the guy. Lately he’s been getting a lot of grief over his health. Most recently, news source Bloomberg “mistakenly” published his obituary. Yes, his obituary.
