How And Why Steve Jobs Bought Lala
A former Color employee Aubrey Johnson
Lala's music was streamed over the Internet instead of stored locally. The service allowed users to listen to a collection of more than 7 million titles as a stream over the Internet – much like Spotify and Pandora today. Users could also buy and download songs usually for a lower price than Apple’s iTunes was offering.
Sharp reduces the iPad display production, because of lower consumer demand
Reuters reports that Sharp, one of the major partners that produce displays for Apple`s mobile devices, has reduced the production of displays for iPad at one of its plants. Sources do not indicate the reasons for the dramatic reduction, but it seems to be a combination of decreasing consumer interest to the iPad mini and the natural seasonal downturn.
Amazon optimizes its MP3 store to attract customers using iOS devices.
Today, Amazon announced about optimization of the music store for Safari app on iOS devices. This move is the company's desire to dominate the digital music market.
"Since the launch of the Amazon Cloud Player app for iPhone and iPod touch, a top request from customers has been the ability to buy music from Amazon right from their devices. For the first time ever, iOS users have a way do that – now they can access Amazon’s huge catalog of music, features like personalized recommendations, deals like albums for $5, songs for $0.69, and they can buy their music once and use it everywhere,” said Steve Boom, Vice President of Amazon Music.
Facebook Messenger application now allows to make voice calls for the United States accounts
This month, Facebook updated the Messenger app for iOS with beta support for VoIP calls between Facebook accounts. This feature was originally limited to Canadian iOS accounts but now is being opened to all United States accounts, reports The Verge.
Apple Job Listing Outlines Goal To Develop Siri As A Recognizable Character
In November Apple hinted at its plans to add new features to Siri with a job listing seeking individuals to translate Siri into a number of new languages. And earlier this month Apple posted another interesting job listing. This job posting looks for a creative individual skilled in writing character-driven dialog to help the company develop Siri as a recognizable and distinct character.
Angry Birds Rio is Free today
Today iPhone and iPad users can download popular game Angry Birds Rio for Free. Regular price is $0.99 for iPhone version and $2.99 for iPad version.
Download links from AppStore:
In Angry Birds Rio, the original Angry Birds are kidnapped and taken to the magical city of Rio de Janeiro, where they eventually escape their captors and set out to save their friends, Blu and Jewel – two rare macaws and the stars of the hit motion picture, Rio. Angry Birds Rio pairs the physics-based gameplay of the original game with unique twists based on the film.
Amazon And Apple Ordered To Enter Settlement Talks On ‘App Store’ Trademark
This month, a court
Apple and Amazon have been battling over the trademark for about two years, with Apple claiming the use of the "Appstore" name by Amazon to describe its online store for Android apps causes confusion amongst consumers and infringes upon App Store name.
Production Of iPhone 5S To Begin In March For June/July Release
Today analyst from Jeffries Peter Misek released a new research note
Apple Plans To Open R&D Center In Beijing?
Apple's retail store in Beijing
According to an article from Chinese site Tencent (via BrightWire), last week during his visit to China Tim Cook discussed company's plans to create a research and development center in Beijing. The report said:
Low-Cost iPhone version in plastic cover will appear in the second half of 2013
The cellular version of the iPad Mini and fourth generation iPad will appear in China on Friday
Apple today announced that celluar version of the iPad mini Wi-Fi and fouth-generation iPad will appear in China this Friday. The iPad mini and the new iPad are now available in more than 100 countries.
Apple cut iPhone 5 component orders due to reduced demand
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has cut a part of the orders for iPhone 5 this quarter due to weaker than expected demand.
"Apple's orders for iPhone 5 screens for the January-March quarter, for example, have dropped to roughly half of what the company had previously planned to order, two of the people said.
The Cupertino, Calif., company has also cut orders for components other than screens, according to one of the people.
Apple notified the suppliers of the order cut last month, the people said."
Oracle Released Java 7 Update 11 To Fix Security Vulnerability
On Friday, we reported that Apple had used its anti-malware system in OS X in order to disable Java 7 browser plug-in over a security vulnerability that was widely exploited in the wild.
Apple's anti-malware tool is able to enforce minimum version numbers for such plug-ins as Flash and Java, and the company simply updated its blacklist to require that computers be running higher version of Java 7 than was publicly available.
Analyst Claims Next-Generation iPad Mini And iPad Will Launch In March
Today Brian White, analyst from Topeka Capital Markets, released a new report based on information obtained from sources at CES currently held in Las Vegas.