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Dan Nosowitz, Fast Company
Joe White, App Advice
Chris Matyszczyk, CNET
Ping picks at the nice parts of Facebook and Twitter--friending and following--and offers these benefits to its users without the generalists' pains.
Matthew Miller, ZDNet
Yukari Iwatani Kane And Shira Ovide, Wall Street Journal
Other media companies, including General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, Time Warner Inc. and CBS Corp., turned down Apple's new pricing options and don't expect to sign up for TV-show rentals as currently configured, according to people familiar with those companies.
Even Fox—a unit of News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal—considers its participation a short-term experiment, according to people familiar with the matter. Jim Gianopulos, CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, said Fox would work with Apple "for the next several months."
Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek
Even Jobs concedes the device is mainly for tech hobbyists, and most of the Sept. 1 event was dedicated to the revelation of a new line of iPods and a social networking feature that works within iTunes. What Jobs didn't say is that Apple wants to become king of the living room. He tells Bloomberg Businessweek that when the time is right, Apple could open an App Store for the TV that could do for television sets what all those apps have done for the iPhone. Asked if the iPad could evolve into the TV of tomorrow, Jobs shrugs and says, "That's how I do most of my TV watching today."
Jennifer Saba and Yinka Adegoke, Reuters
Apple Inc introduced a new version of Apple TV on Wednesday with shows from just two networks, underscoring its struggles to win over a media industry worried about losing control over the pricing of its programs.
Jason Perlow, ZDNet
The rental pricing (and content availability) just doesn’t make sense yet. And without Apps, and extremely limited prime time TV content selection, I just don’t see what the value play of the new Apple TV is yet.
Alex Dobuzinskis, Reuters
Critics hoping for more from Apple Inc's Web-to-TV plans -- a device, say, that would revolutionize living room entertainment the way the iPad changed tablet computing -- may just need to wait a bit longer.
Chris Morris, Variety
Hollywood's majors have been divided on Apple's TV show rental plan, as evidenced by the lack of programming from NBC and CBS in the announcement. Apple topper Steve Jobs expressed optimism that other networks would "see the light and get on board" with the company "pretty fast."
Donald Bell, CNET
Khoi Vinh, Subtraction
The problem is that every company out there that’s addressing this opportunity, from Sony to Samsung to even Apple, is actually trying to solve the wrong problem. None of them are really asking how they can fix the living room problem. Rather, they’re focusing on establishing their brand in the living room, positing completely unrealistic scenarios in which a consumer buys only, say, Samsung-branded components (e.g., its absurdly useless WiseLink protocol) without acknowledging the reality that the components of most home theaters make for a decidedly heterogeneous world.
Seth Weintraub, Fortune
A Google Spokesperson told me: "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." --meaning that Jobs' assertions were wrong.
Om Malik, GigaOM
Apple received much of this social capability with the acquisition of Lala, an online music service, which as a standalone company used sharing of social objects to drive folks towards paid music downloads. Now they are only closing the loop by further sharing what they bought. I wouldn’t be least bit surprised if the sales of music on the iTunes store rocket upwards, thanks to social discovery.
Ben Kunz, BusinessWeek
Next time you're sitting at an airport bar and hear two businesspeople debate whether Apple is a technology or design company, chime in: "Nope. What Steve Jobs sells is pricing."
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted that Google was activating 200,000 Android devices a day. Obviously, that’s a massive number. Today during the Apple event in San Francisco, Steve Jobs took the chance to one up him — then take a shot at Google.
Paul Boutin, New York Times
Apple’s goal is to boost sales of iTunes music and videos, by enabling what techies call discovery. Discovery is the process of finding something you didn’t know you were looking for. You may not have known it existed. For instance, Ping generates a Top Ten list from the music purchases of your circle of friends. By learning what your friends and your celebrity heroes are listening to, you will very likely discover new songs you’ll want to buy with one more click.
Jason Snell and Jonathan Seff, Macworld
After Wednesday’s Apple media event, we got to spend a little while in a hands-on area adjacent to the Yerba Buena theater with a few dozen members of the media, analysts, VIPs, and—most importantly—new iPods and Apple TVs. Without any further ado, here’s what we spotted.
AppleInsider
Announced on Wednesday, AirPlay is the improved and rebranded AirTunes, which allows users to stream music from their computer to other locations in their home. Previously, that streaming required an Apple-branded AirPort Express or another computer running iTunes. With AirPlay, users will be able to stream to speaker docks, AV receivers and stereo systems from companies including Denon and Bowers & Wilkins.
Richard Gaywood, TUAW
There are lots of disgruntled people in the UK this evening, following Apple's announcement that the new Apple TV, retailing for $99 in the US, will cost... £99. If you subtract our sales tax (which is always quoted upfront, unlike in the US) that's the equivalent of $128, a rather excessive 28% hike.
Clint Ecker, Ars Technica
Alongside the music players, Apple announced a smaller, black Apple TV that costs $99, has no built-in storage, streams content from iTunes or iOS devices, and fully integrates Netflix into the existing Apple TV interface. Apple's new black box will be available later this month.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Megan Lavey, TUAW
Most of the new release's focus is on Ping, a social network for music. "It's like Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes," Jobs said.
Marco Tabini, Macworld
Apple didn’t just roll out new products during its Wednesday press event; it also rattled off some impressive statistics about its mobile, music, and retail efforts. Here are some of the numerical highlights from Steve Jobs’s presentation.
Erica Sadun, TUAW
FaceTime. It isn't just for iPhone any more. Apple has just introduced a new generation of iPod touch with an improved chip (the same A4 that powers the iPad and the iPhone 4), a better display (the iPhone 4's double-resolution Retina display), and a built-in, front-facing camera that introduces FaceTime video conferencing capabilities.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
The new shuffle has a familiar-looking click wheel on the small postage-stamp shaped model that was introduced a few years ago.
Megan Lavey, TUAW
It's hip to be square. Announced today, the newly introduced iPod nano finally dispenses with the wheel as a control surface -- because now the control surface is the iPod touch. The new model is so small that like the newly announced iPod shuffle, it has a clip that allows it to be worn and has a 24-hour battery life.
AppleInsider
Apple on Wednesday showed off iOS 4.2 for the iPad, including folders, multitasking, support for wireless printing, and streaming of audio, video and photos through the new Air Play feature.
Megan Lavey, TUAW
Siobhan McFadyen, Daily Record
Welcome to the world's first iSchool - where pen and paper have been pushed aside in favour of computers. At Cedars School of Excellence, in Greenock, all the lessons are now taken using iPads.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Despite his bravado, however, Shipley can admit when he makes a mistake. On the release of the 2.5 update to Delicious Library, he told Ars that the ambitious plans for Delicious Library 2.0 ending up resulting in a finished product that, while beautiful and impressive looking, performed poorly for some users. That's why version 2.5 consists largely of bug fixes and performance enhancements, and instead of adding features takes a few away.
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA)
Dan Gillmor, Salon
There were a number of noteworthy elements to Wednesday's launch announcements in San Francisco -- updated music and video players, plus a social network that could become a real force in that arena, and more. The most obvious, however, was the company's relentless pursuit of being the primary media gatekeeper and toll collector.
What Apple has embedded in its social network is something Facebook can't dream about, at least not yet: verified users and their credit-card numbers, more than 160 million of them.
Ron McElfresh, Mac 360
Ali Shah, GigaOM
Apple already has the simplicity with the iPhone 4’s version of FaceTime, and they seem to be poised to get the ubiquity.
John P. Falcone, CNET
Is AirPlay an iTunes-only protocol, or does it work with other audio sources? Does AirPlay offer any added value over Bluetooth for streaming audio?
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Wall Street Journal
Apple’s fight with the Beatles over the Apple trademark is legendary. But on Wednesday, Apple avoided any such problems over its Ping social network for music — by making sure that it had an agreement with the golf company that holds the Ping trademark beforehand.
Ping has a whopping number of trademark registrations — more than 1,000 around the world, according to the company and its parent, Karsten Manufacturing Corporation. Most of those are related to golf equipment, but the company also owns the rights to Ping for social networking and other online services, it says. That, of course, could have been problematic for Apple.
Ryan Marshall, Fast Company
Associated Press
Apple Inc., maker of the iPhone, Macintosh computers and other consumer electronics, spent $330,000 lobbying the federal government in the second quarter on spending for technology in education and other issues, according to a disclosure report.
Cody Willard, MarketWatch
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
Is Steve Jobs' tablet the device that finally gets Apple past the IT-department gates?
Frank Michael Russell, San Jose Mercury News
Apple, the Cupertino maker of Mac computers and mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad, will provide a live video stream of its San Francisco media event Wednesday.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
I think it’s a poor assumption that Apple could, by sheer will, produce a version of iOS where Flash Player works well on the iPad.
Natalia Nowak, Mac 360
Karl Hodge, Macworld UK
Dave Winer, Scripting News
Miguel Helft, New York Times
In recent years, the company’s Macintosh line of computers has enjoyed a remarkable revival that has been vital to Apple’s emergence as the most valued technology company on Wall Street.
In the latest sign of that comeback, Autodesk plans to announce on Tuesday that it is bringing its flagship AutoCAD design and engineering software to the Mac for the first time in nearly two decades.
Jay Nelson, Macsimum News
InDesign CS5 from Adobe represents a major step forward in usability and adds substantial new features for creating and exporting interactive documents and eBooks.
http://www.cio.de/news/cio_worldnews/2245531/?qle=rssfeed_, CIO
David Pogue, New York Times
Because both Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer excellent e-book reading apps for the iPad (for their own proprietary e-books), the size of Apple’s e-book library is essentially irrelevant.
Marco Arment
AppleInsider
Apple and its fledgling iAds mobile advertising service are the target of a new lawsuit from a company that owns a patent related to location-based ads.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Ramu Nagappan, Macworld
If you’re looking for another way to hang your iPad prominently on the wall, the newly announced PadTab might be worth a look. It works on any flat surface, and lets you easily mount and remove your iPad.
Matt Hamblen, Computerworld
Apple’s iPad tablet is being used by doctors, lawyers and businesspeople to ease their workloads, but many believe the popular touchscreen device can’t yet replace a laptop for functions such as writing long documents.
David Carnoy, CNET
Perhaps signaling that it's getting more serious about selling e-books, Apple is in the process of hiring a U.S. marketing manager for its iBookstore.
Roman Loyola, Macworld
Coding Robots’ Video Mémoires 1.0 is a journal program with a basic set of features to helps track your video entries on a daily basis.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Consider: is there more pressure on Apple to add Flash support to iOS, or on websites with Flash-only content to produce iOS-compatible alternatives? Such pressure — both on Apple and website publishers — is best measured not by complaints on the web, but by sales of iPhones, iPods, and iPads.
MyAppleMenu On Twitter:
Note that Apple did not replace that CD with a cloud in the iTunes icon. :)
Now that FaceTime is on iPod Touch, FaceTime on the Mac can't be far away, right?
If Mac OS has an app store, I wonder if iTunes 10 will be rejected.
Looks like iTunes Ping is not available in Singapore. Time to go check out MySpace. :)
Thank goodness it's not named iTunes X.
Did I read this right? The latest iPod shuffle has one *more* button than the 2nd-gen iPod shuffle?
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