AppleTalk Thursday #7

Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of AppleTalk Thursday. Quite a bit of Apple news this week so as always let’s dive right in.

Verizon announces price plans for iPhone

Verizon yesterday announced its pricing plans for the iPhone 4. Which are the same as their other smartphone plans. Existing Verizon customers can order their iPhone TODAY! All you AT&T (and other carrier) switchers, will have to wait until next Thursday.

Skype 5 out for Mac

Great news Skype has released Skype 5 out of beta for the Mac. There is one catch to it though, group video chat is now a premium feature. You can go with a monthly fee of $9 or a day pass of $5 for the service. I couldn’t imagine doing the $9 a month as it is a feature I hardly use, however the pay as you go $5 plan is appealing. If I do video chat it is usually 1 on 1 and not a group video chat. I guess we can call this the “Leo Laporte Fee” as he relies on Skype video group chat for his TWiT podcasts with contributors that are not in the TWiT Cottage.

Apple wants eBook makers to offer in-app book purchasing

Ok so this one is looking nasty. Apple rejected Sony’s eReader app on the basis that it lacked an in-app purchase of book content. Now keep in mind Apple approved the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook apps, both of which when shopping for content, open the mobile Safari browser to access the Kindle and Nook eStore...just like the Sony eReader app does. So this is baffling but Apple has offered an explanation in that it is simply enforcing a pre-existing rule in the app store and that developers must offer both in-app purchase content along with web-based store access. So does this mean that Apple will be pulling the Kindle and Nook apps soon? I sure hope not as I rely on the Kindle app for my book reading and if they did pull it I would buy a Kindle before using Apple’s own iBookstore and iBooks reader app. I hope Apple rethinks this policy quick.

Apple introduces Paid Subscriptions to iTunes App Store

With The Daily coming out yesterday, Apple announced it now supports subscription plans in the iTunes store for publishers content. I think The Daily will be the first of many publishers under this new plan. Which leads me to the last article of the day....my initial review of The Daily!

The Daily: Initial Review

So yesterday Rupert Murdoch the CEO of NewsCorp announced The Daily for the iPad. It was also released about an hour after the announcement. I downloaded it right around that time and I have to admit it is pretty cool! The photos of the stories are great quality and video is sharp. Also it has the ability to read out articles to you so you can be doing something else while still getting caught up on the events of the day. It will also update throughout the day so in essence it is a live paper. During the first 2 weeks it is free courtesy of Verizon, after which it will cost 99 cents per week or $39 a year. That is a great deal for a daily publication. The closest thing I can compare it to is the Wall Street Journal app also owned by NewsCorp, but even better. For now The Daily is strictly an iPad publication but the door is open to other platforms making tablets such as Android once that market has established itself.

Well, that is going to do it for this edition of AppleTalk Thursday. See you all next week for another edition.