More details regarding the price-plan Apple intends to use upon the launch of its iAd platform came out today in a Wall Street Journal article, indicating the company will charge upwards of a $1 million for certain ad-buys.

To be among a select group of advertisers at launch, however, could cost $10 million or more, the article suggests.  Ad executives say they’re used to paying between $100,000 and $200,000 for similar mobile deals, but Apple is certainly putting a premium price on it’s so-called premium mobile advertising opportunities.

Apple is planning to charge advertisers a penny each time a consumer sees a banner ad, ad executives say.  When a user taps on the banner and the ad pops up, Apple will charge $2.  Under large ad buys, such as the $1 million package, costs would rack up to reach the $1 million mark with the various views and taps combined.

Read on at http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/apple-to-charge-a-premium-for-premium-mobile-advertising-6270/

The maker of the iPhone and iPad, Apple Inc, has decided to acquire mobile-application developer Siri so as to get the technology that will allow Apple customers to do Web searches from their phones by talking to them.

The San Jose-based company makes a voice-recognition and search program and earlier this year the company had expressed its willingness to offer the program, which it describes as a virtual personal assistant, to Apple to use it in iPhone this year.

Shawn Carolan, a managing director at Siri investor Menlo Ventures said that the acquisition agreement has been signed but the deal has not closed yet and added, “The offer from Apple had to be very compelling for the executive team and the board to accept.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has increased Apple acquisitions in recent months in order to lay hands on more and more advanced technologies to add better features in the company’s gadgets. The Cupertino-based company is facing stiff competition from Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and devices using Google’s software in smartphones.

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans,” said Apple’s spokesman Steve Dowling.

Read more on http://www.timesnewsline.com/news/Apple-Buys-Siri–A-Personal-Assistant-App-For-iPhone-1272548644/

2003: Apple opens the iTunes Music Store and starts to revolutionize the music-recording industry, one song at a time.

Between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, the media were undergoing a massive conversion from analog to digital. The music industry hated it.

Much to the chagrin of the Recording Industry Association of America, internet users quickly caught on to digital music as a free alternative to paying for albums. In fear of declining album sales, record labels filed lawsuit after lawsuit against online services Napster and MP3.com for hosting digital music, as well as Diamond Multimedia, a Korean company that released an MP3 player called the Rio. Clearly, for the recording industry, change wasn’t easy.

In stepped Steve Jobs. The Apple CEO harbored a vision in 2002 of an online music store hosted by Apple that would be easy to use, complete in selection and reliable in performance. These factors, Jobs thought, would be enough to convince customers to pay for something they could otherwise obtain for free illegally. The store, then, would enable record labels to compete with pirates rather than pursue a futile attempt to destroy them.

But in order for online music to work, Jobs believed his store would have to allow customers to purchase music in a completely different way: a la carte. Convincing labels was hardly easy.

“When we first approached the labels, the online music business was a disaster,” Jobs told Steven Levy, author of The Perfect Thing. “Nobody had ever sold a song for 99 cents. Nobody really ever sold a song. And we walked in, and we said, ‘We want to sell songs a la carte. We want to sell albums, too, but we want to sell songs individually.’ They thought that would be the death of the album.”

Jobs started his talks with the big players first: Warner Music and Universal. Apple flew the firms’ teams up to Cupertino, California. In a boardroom at One Infinite Loop, Jobs proceeded to present his plan.

Jobs first reeled in the labels with one crucial proposal: Apple would sell songs through iTunes, music-player software that was then available only for Macs. After all, how could Apple, whose Mac operating system held only single-digit market share, ruin the record business if the iTunes Store took off?

After a series of long and painful negotiations, the two labels ultimately agreed they would play, but only after Apple agreed to bake in some restrictions (aka digital rights management): iTunes-purchased songs would be limited to being playable on three “authorized” computers, and a playlist could only be burned on a CD seven times.

Labels BMG and EMI soon followed, and later Sony hopped on board. Apple opened the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with 200,000 songs. (Simultaneously, Apple released its third-generation iPod.) In the first week, iTunes Store customers bought more than a million songs. Six months later, Apple convinced the labels to allow iTunes to be shared with Windows users.

Apple announced at its final Macworld show Jan. 6, 2009, that iTunes would cease selling songs encumbered by DRM restrictions. Though a significant step for Apple, Jobs was not present to make the announcement — he was on medical leave. The Wall Street Journal later revealed that Jobs successfully underwent a liver transplant. He resumed his post in June 2009.

The iTunes Store has expanded to include movies, TV shows and the App Store providing third-party software for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad customers. To date, the iTunes Store has served more than 10 billion songs, 200 million TV shows, 2 million films and 3 billion apps.

Sources: The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness, by Steven Levy; Wikipedia

Photo: Apple CEO Steve Jobs (June 2007)
Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Read More http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/04/0428itunes-music-store-opens/#ixzz0mOdMgIsx

Kyle Conroy put together an aesthetically, if not financially, appealing spreadsheet showing what your worth would be if you had bought Apple stock instead of Apple products… the results are interesting, to say the least…

See the original post at http://www.kyleconroy.com/apple-stock.php

Large retail stores in Japan were ordered a week ago to stop selling Apple products online (Google translation; Japanese original). The comments in the Japanese business newspapers suggest that Apple believes online shopping confers an aura of ‘cheapness’ on their products; but some say that killing the Apple store’s competition must have entered into the calculation.

As of today, most of the largest retailers have notices on their Apple catalog pages asking you kindly to visit the shop if you want to acquire a piece of magic. It seems that for the moment the campaign is aimed at the big fish, as smaller shops still seem to be selling Apple products.

It’s been a bit over three weeks since the iPadlaunched, and the hype has quieted somewhat. We’ve all seen the reviews that came out right around launch and we’ve heard all the arguments both for and against Apple’s tablet device.

It’s also been exactly three weeks since I bought an iPad and I thought this would be a good time to share my experience with it. This isn’t an objective review; this is just me sharing my personal experiences with a new device. Before launch a lot of people wondered what the iPad was for, and this is my answer. This is what the iPad is used for in our house.

First a quick bit of background information on me. I primarily use Windows 7 (a desktop machine) at home and OS X (on a MacBook Pro) at work. I own a netbook (running Windows 7) that converts into a tablet. My phone is a Motorola Droid. The iPad was my first real experience with Apple’s App Store, though I am of course familiar with the Android Market. I’ve been attracted to the tablet form factor for a while now, but the netbook makes a lousy tablet. It’s too thick, too slow, and the screen needs constant calibrating. Just not a pleasant experience.

Now I’m going to confess something to you. When I got caught up in the hype and purchased my iPad, there was a little voice in the back of my head telling me it was a huge mistake; that it’d be something I’d use for a few days and then get tired of. That I was signing up for a heaping helping of Buyer’s Remorse.

That little voice was wrong (so far). I use the iPad constantly. In fact, it only took a few days for my girlfriend and I to realize sharing an iPad wasn’t going to work, so we’re now a two iPad household.

Let’s start with the problems I’ve encountered. My biggest gripe by far is the lack of Flash; it can be a real pain sometimes when surfing the web. What’s most frustrating is knowing that Apple doesn’t care that its customers are experiencing this frustration and that this particular problem will never be fixed.

Next, if you want to get work done, be warned: the iPad isn’t an office tool (in my opinion, I know others feel differently). I do take mine to the office, but mostly to carry my music on, and to use during my lunch hour. Generally speaking, the iPad is a home (and maybe coffee shop) device. It’s a bit too big to carry around with me all the time. When it comes to getting work done, I’m firmly in the “a laptop or netbook can do everything the iPad can do, only better” camp. Sure, you can plug the iPad into the Keyboard Dock, buy a Bluetooth keyboard (or apparently use the Camera Connection Kit to connect a USB keyboard) but why would you bother with all that when a laptop performs better for doing tasks that require lots of text entry or multiple windows/programs open?

Then there’s the issue of accessories. A naked iPad feels slippery to me; I feel like some kind of case is a must. I have the official Apple case, which is horribly over-priced but wonderfully versatile. The flip cover protects the screen when I jam the iPad into my laptop bag or toss it onto the back seat of my car, and that same flip cover folds back and into a slot to form a wedge-shaped stand that can hold the iPad vertical for watching videos or at a gentle angle for interacting with the device. My girlfriend has a silicone sleeve for hers (the Apple case has become really hard to find); it offers no protection for the screen but the back has a couple of ridges that offer a very secure grip on the iPad.

We bought two of the Apple docks and have never used them; they were a complete waste of money for us. You have to take the iPad out of whatever case you have it in in order to use the dock, and that’s a pain in the neck. A Lego iPad stand would be of more use than the Apple dock. Chargers are over-priced, but at least you can use the iPhone/iPod cables you might already own.

Speaking of charging, let’s talk about the battery. There’s been a lot of complaining about the device not charging on a USB port. It will charge, slowly, once the unit goes to sleep, but realistically plugging it into a wall socket is the most efficient way to charge an iPad. What the complainers don’t tell you, though, is that an iPad will run all day on a single charge. Yes, the battery life is 10 hours but in real-world terms I’ve never run out of a charge over the course of a day. I just plug it in when I go to bed; the charging situation isn’t the problem nay-sayers want to make it.

So the iPad isn’t an office tool; what is it then? I’d call it an entertainment device, I guess. It’s the web at your fingertips in a screen large enough to make reading websites comfortable. Our iPads are always nearby. My girlfriend is one of these crafty types and she’ll often have her iPad beside her while she’s making things, using it to look up bits of info she might need or to take short notes on. There’s always an iPad at hand while we’re watching TV, in case we need to look up something on IMDB or Wikipedia. We’ve used them in the kitchen for checking out new recipes. Basically we carry them around the house constantly.

So it’s great for surfing the web. It’s also a great ebook reader. I can’t compare it to an e-ink device because I’ve never used one of those for any serious length of time. But despite the fact that people insist a back-lit screen hurts your eyes, I haven’t found that to be the case at all. My eyes aren’t as young as they used to be and by bumping up the font size and turning the brightness down, I can read more comfortably than I’ve been able to in years (yes, more comfortably than I read print books). I find the iPad’s screen is much more comfortable to read off of then either my laptop screens or the LCD on my desktop. It’s a beautiful screen (but a smudge magnet; I bought a packet of 12 lint-free cloths for $5 and they do a great job of keeping the screen clear).

We watch a lot of video on our iPads. We’ve got a Netflix account, and I’m fairly hooked on the ABC.com app. If we’re both going to watch the same show, we still plunk ourselves down on the couch in front of the big-screen, but the iPad makes a very nice “personal television.” Plug headphones in and she can watch “Walking With Dinosaurs” (she’s such a nerd) while I’m reading or watching something completely different.

And there’s the app store, of course. I spend way too much time downloading various apps. I find I purchase a lot more from the App Store apps than I do from the Android Market, and I think a lot of that has to do with the size of the iPad. I’ve got a few sketch applications which prove once again I have no talent for drawing. A few music making applications which remind me that I should’ve been a rock star. And of course more games than I really have time to play.

So there’s a lot I do with my iPad and that’s what makes it so useful. After a long day I can flop down on the couch and, on one device, play a game, then watch some TV, then read a book, then plink out some tunes on an electronic keyboard, then look up a tutorial for playing the keyboard, then check to see what’s happening on Twitter and catch up on my RSS feeds. Yes, you can do all of this with a netbook; I’ve done all of this with a netbook. But the ergonomics are completely different with the iPad. It doesn’t feel like a computer because it isn’t a computer. It feels like…well my apologies for sounding cheesy but if feels like something out of science fiction at times. It feels like I’m holding The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer from Neil Stephenson’sThe Diamond Age.

Now, that all said, a lot of what I love about the iPad comes from it’s shape. I’m still not a fan of Apple’s “Walled Garden” and benevolent (?) dictatorship. I’m still really hoping that one of the upcoming Android tablets is as fast and ergonomic and beautiful as the iPad, and that the Android Market catches up to Apple’s App Store. I’ll switch in a heartbeat if that comes to pass.

But for now, there’s literally nothing like the iPad on the market, and I haven’t had an instant of that Buyer’s Remorse I was worried about. It “feels” like a unique product and I think it’ll be best appreciated by people who find joy in using technology. The iPad is a fun device and not something you’ll need at the office. The smart money is still on waiting for a second generation, or a similar Android device, but I’m not getting any younger and I’ve been waiting for a tablet like this since my days watching Star Trek.

No regrets, at least so far. We’ll see how the hardware holds up over time, and how much remorse I feel when a better, cheaper tablet hits the market.

Apparently, Steve Wozniak has some reservations about Apple’s security methods.

The Apple co-founder has claimed that an Apple employee was fired after showing Wozniak an iPad hours before the device was rolled out to the public earlier this month, according to Gizmodo.

“I can tell you that the test engineer who showed me an iPad after midnight, for (two) minutes, during the iPad launch was indeed fired,” Wozniak wrote to the blog.

Wozniak said he did not learn that the “test engineer” was fired until later and he speculated in his e-mail that he thinks the engineer wasn’t supposed to show anyone an iPad 3G version or that he showed the device before he was allowed. “And I’m an Apple employee who he was showing it to,” Wozniak wrote.

“In my opinion, Apple was not hurt by my being shown this iPad,” Wozniak wrote. “I did describe this to Steve Jobs the night of the iPad introduction and he said ’so it’s no big deal.’”

The employee still got fired, Wozniak said. He took note that the Apple engineer who showed him the iPad is unemployed but Gray Powell, the Apple engineer who lost what is believed to be a prototype of the iPhone 4G, still has his job. Powell inadvertently touched off a media blitz by losing the experimental handset in a San Francisco Bay Area bar last month. The person who found the phone sold the device to Gizmodo for $5,000. On Friday, CNET reported thatpolice are looking into the matter.

“What am I missing here? ” Wozniak wrote. “Product secrecy is good for Apple and should be strictly enforced, but maybe 10 percent of niceness and 90 percent of strictness is OK too.”

It’s safe to say that Wozniak feels a kinship with Apple’s engineers. Gizmodo published its e-mail correspondence with Wozniak after CNET published photos of Wozniak dressed in a T-shirt that read: “I went drinking with Gray Powell and all I got was a lousy iPhone prototype.”

In an e-mail to CNET, the 59-year-old Wozniak said of Powell: “It seems clear that (Powell) kept the iPhone prototype secret enough to satisfy Apple. It’s a bad accident that could happen to any of us.”

Wozniak’s attempts to come to the aid of Apple engineers is likely to only boost his already prodigious popularity in Silicon Valley and with hardcore techies. The creator of the Apple I and Apple II computers, Wozniak is considered one of the founding fathers of personal computing.

Gizmodo.com, the technology blog, said law enforcement officials seized computers from the home of Jason Chen, a staff editor who wrote about a prototype for an Apple Inc. iPhone that had been left behind in a bar.

“Last Friday night, California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered editor Jason Chen’s home without him present, seizing four computers and two servers,” according to a statement on Gizmodo’s site, which is owned by Gawker Media.

Gawker Chief Operating Officer Gaby Darbyshire asked the police today to return Chen’s property, citing a law that protects online journalists from having their newsroom equipment seized. The seizure may reignite debate over whether bloggers should be accorded the same status as reporters who work for traditional news outlets.

“Under both state and federal law, a search warrant may not be validly issued to confiscate the property of a journalist,” Darbyshire wrote in a letter posted at Gawker’s Web site. “We expect the immediate return of the materials you confiscated from Mr. Chen.”

Gizmodo said it paid $5,000 to obtain the device after it was left at a Redwood City, California, bar by an Apple engineer identified as Gray Powell. A patron who found the device on a stool and realized it was an unreleased iPhone, tried to contact Apple to return it, Gizmodo said, citing an interview with the unidentified finder.

Gizmodo gave the phone to Apple on April 19 after receiving a letter from Bruce Sewell, the company’s general counsel, asking for the return of a “device that belongs to Apple.”

‘Are Bloggers Journalists?’

Nick Denton, founder and president of Gawker, said in an e- mail that the question boils down to whether Chen is considered a journalist. “Are bloggers journalists? I guess we’ll find out.”

REACT, a Silicon Valley technology crime task force, is continuing with the investigation, said Stephen Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, which has jurisdiction over Redwood City, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. He declined to say who or what initiated the investigation.

“What Gizmodo is saying has been addressed to us and is being looked at by us and the prosecutor assigned to the investigation,” Wagstaffe said in an interview today. “When and if the investigative team submits a case to us, I don’t know if they will or when. At this point, we are just investigating, no different than any other incident that is reported to us.”

The investigation is being led by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department detectives assigned to REACT, an independent law enforcement agency.

Wagstaffe said that there have been allegations that the probe involves violations of California theft laws. The allegations of theft involve the person who found the phone, Wagstaffe said, adding he’s “not suggesting anything as to anyone else.”

Chen described the seizure in a six-paragraph letter posted on Gizmodo, which also published the search warrant inventory provided by REACT.

Announcing that Cal Stach, the developers of PIC-SAFE, has launched a unique app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users. The application offers users an exclusive tool and cutting edge picture sorting and privacy technology for iDevices. It is the only app that removes the need for cutting and pasting, replacing it with fast and easy, drag and drop action. PIC-SAFE has built-in sharing and security features, essentially offering a well organized photo vault.

The developer has created the program to increase the ease and speed of tucking pictures away in a secure environment. Users can reveal only photos that they want to share with others, without people realizing that some are left out or accidentally seeing a snapshot that the owner would rather they didn’t.

Using the PIC-SAFE app is easy enough for everyone. All a user has to do is create a folder, select as many photos as they want to put into that folder then drag and drop the pictures into it. Each folder can have its only password protection to keep out prying eyes. Viewing snapshots is also easily done, just by touching and holding for one second. The usual pinch and pull motions will enlarge the photograph, if desired. PIC-SAFE also allows users to email photos directly from within the application.

The photo up there is a new iPhone 4G hardware prototype with iPhone 4.0 software. The Verizon iPhone release date is still unknown, but analysts say that Apple plans on releasing a Verizon iPhone either this year in June or next year (2011). Apple is currently providing their iPhone phone on AT&T, but it would be wise of them to offer it on multiple carriers just like Google offers their Android smartphone, the Nexus One on multiple carriers as well.

The new iPhone 4G that’s launching in June has a front facing camera, as revealed by the pictures a popular tech blog named Gizmodo posted. Gizmodo may be in trouble for buying a stolen iPhone 4G and then posting pictures of it on their blog, but that’s another story. The new iPhone 4G will be big for the front facing camera alone, and the added multi-tasking support.