The first ‘authorized’ biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson is now available for pre-order from Amazon for $19.80 in paper, or $14.99 for the Kindle edition. Curiously iSteve: The Book of Jobs will be released on March 6th, 2012, the fourth anniversary of the release of the iOS SDK. The description of the book from Amazon provides:
From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In iSteve: The Book of Jobs, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs’ professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs’ family members, key colleagues from Apple and its competitors, iSteve is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.
Six months ago Apple’s quarterly revenue for the first time in approximately 15 years was higher than the Microsoft’s one. But Microsoft was unbeatable with its high profit margins that the company achieved thanks to its software sales. The situation changed in the past fiscal quarter. Today Microsoft has announced net profit of $5.23 billion for the first calendar quarter (third fiscal quarter) of 2011. Apple last week reported profits of $5.99 billion over the same period, which corresponded to the company's second fiscal quarter of 2011. It seems that Apple finally surpassed its longtime rival in almost all position. Moreover Apple’s market cap is now nearly $100 billion higher than Microsoft's.
Yesterday Apple reported its financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2011. In this quarter Apple earned $24.67 billion and net quarterly profit amounts to $5.99 billion. In the year-ago quarter the company’s revenue was $13.50 billion and net quarterly profit was $3.07 billion. Gross margin was 41.4 percent, compared to 41.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 59 percent of the quarter’s revenue. This fiscal quarter is also the best quarter for the iTunes Store with $1.4 billion revenue. $2 billion was paid to developers in App Store.
As reported, Skype 5 has recently exited the beta stage that began in November 2010. Company made some improvements in the program, having reduced the size of the application window.
We've reduced the minimum window size, so that those of you who prefer to keep Skype to one side of your screen, for example, can do that more easily. We've also tightened up the contact list, so that you can see 30% more contacts at once. We've reduced the amount of whitespace in the sidebar too.
Other changes include the return of full-screen mode for video calls and easier access to chatting functions during calls. But the most important change is availability of group video calling to Skype's premium package for $4.99 per day or $8.99 per month. Free during the beta testing period the option was free.
Word Lens is an eye-catching iOS app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It is based on an augmented reality technology and offers real time translation of text. The only thing you need to do is just to point your device's video camera at a sign and the program translates and superimposes the translated text onto the video in real time. Now available only language packs for Spanish to English and English to Spanish for $4.99 each. More language packs are in the works. Text is translated on a word-by-word basis, so context is not taken into account.
In the screenshot above, you can see a Macbook Air with a picture of the new Mac App store, which divines some potential prices for Apple's official apps. This is directly from Apple’s website. So, what are the prices? Turns out they're pretty close to current software prices. The iLife apps are priced out at $14.99, while the iWork apps are priced at $19.99, and when you add them all up, they cost about the same as the bundles you can buy in the Apple retail store. There's also a few other titles at various prices. There's a dice game called Roll 'Em which is priced for free, an app called Color Studio at $29.99, and another game called Fast Lane priced at just $4.99. If this is a real picture of what some of the Mac apps might cost then it will be interesting to see what we get when the store officially opens.
Yesterday Verizon and AT&T announced that the iPad will appear in their retail stores in two weeks, on October 28th.
Verizon will be offering only WiFi-enabled iPads that will be optionally bundled with MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot Routers (which is showed on the image above). The latter allows up to five users to access the Verizon Wireless 3G Mobile Broadband Network via Wi-Fi. The monthly data access plan for 1 GB of data will cost 20$/month.
Chief operating officer of Verizon Wireless John Stratton is excited about this new offer: Read the rest of this entry »
If we look at the iPhone 4 and Galaxy S, we’ll see a big difference between them. No, we're not talking about iOS against Android 2.1. We are talking about batteries: one of them is removable, and the other is not - guess which one? Although today you can find a lot of accessories that offer incredible opportunity to recharge your favorite devices.
If you do not want to bring bulky chargers or extra batteries, then you should pay attention to Mili PowerSpring 4.
So, it is the latest and one of the first cases designed for iPhone 4 with an expanded space for the battery. Mili PowerSpring 4 is available at $ 54.99 (or $ 85 on Amazon). It is said to be the thinnest battery for iPhone 4 in the whole world, sporting 1600mAh capacity.