AppleTalk Thursday #9

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of AppleTalk Thursday where we discuss all things Apple. Let’s see what is going on in the world of Cupertino today.

iPad in the Enterprise Marketplace

The iPad which btw is still not even a year old yet, is making great strides not just with the general public but also in the enterprise market. In-fact 80% of Fortune 100 companies are already deploying or piloting the iPad according to Apple in its recent earnings call. Imagine what the 2nd generation iPad will do.

Apple could benefit from Nokia-Microsoft partnership

An analyst with RBC Capital Markets has speculated that with Nokia abandoning Symbian for Windows Phone 7, the move opens up possible significant gains for the Apple iOS, Google Android, and possibly BlackBerry (remember them?). Course he also stated that Microsoft could see gains as well (insert laugh track here).

MobileMe for FREE and the mini-iPhone Rumor

So lots of talk this past week of a possible smaller and less expensive iPhone and also an updated MobileMe that will not only may be free but will offer cloud based access to music and photos. This would seem to make sense as it would help Apple fight off the Android market and give that data center in North Carolina a purpose.

iPhone 5 with a Slide out Keyboard and a Bigger Screen?

Another rumor is that Apple is working on iPhone 5 prototypes one of which has a slide out keyboard while another model would have an 8MP camera but otherwise be the same as the iPhone 4. Yet another rumor speculates that the next updated iPhone could have a 4” screen up from the current 3.5” screen. I am not putting much stock into either rumor as this point, but it is a lot of fun to talk about.

Apple and Samsung, partner and competitor

Apple will soon be Samsung’s biggest customer with a $7.8 Billion deal for Samsung to manufacture the screens for the iPhone and the iPad’s. On the flip side of the coin, Samsung has announced a new 10” Galaxy tablet with 16 or 32GB configurations. No word on pricing yet.

Apple debuts App Store Subscriptions

On Tuesday, Apple made it official with App Store subscriptions from within the app or in-app subscriptions. The move opens up an area for content to digital newspapers, magazines, and music based services. Apple has also advised developers they have until 6/30 to comply with the new method in their apps. This of course is not making a lot of developers happy. On a side note, The Daily which has been plagued with crashing issues, has extended its free subscription to the end of February. I was really happy with it at first, but lately not so much. Will be interesting to see who follows The Daily with a similar app.

Kindle iOS Update

Speaking of developers that will soon be effected by Apple’s new rules, Amazon has updated their Kindle app with a couple of handy features. One shows the progress bar on the home screen of your book shelf showing where you are on your books, another now actually shows what physical page number you are on which makes it easier to site passages to people reading a physical book. This is also a feature Amazon just updated on their own Kindle devices as well.



Verizon handling iPhone Traffic Smoothly

There was a lot of talk on how the Verizon network would handle the iPhone’s once they got into the wild, well it appears it has met the challenge without a hitch. Very good news for Verizon there!

iOS App Reviews

So for this week’s app reviews I wanted to focus on online radio apps. There are quite a few of them out there and I use a few of them.

Pandora (FREE) - Course the most popular radio apps out there is Pandora. By choosing an artist or a song, it will play tracks similar to that artist or song for hours! They also have an iPad specific version as well. It is a free service however if you pay the $36 per year subscription, it allows you to skip more tracks up to 6 per hour I believe.

iHeartRadio (FREE) - This application allows you to listen to 750 radio stations across the US. I use it to listen to KFI out in Los Angeles, a station I listened to all the time when I lived out there.

TuneIn Radio (99 cents) - TuneIn Radio is similar to iheartradio but it tends to offer more radio stations so it might be worth the 99 cents to buy and use and it has an iPad version too.

SiriusXM (FREE) - If you are a subscriber to SiriusXM, then this is a nice app you have your stations with you all the time. This has been handy for me when I am driving a car that doesn’t have satellite radio. My truck was in an accident this week which does have an sat radio unit and since I am in a loaner, I can play the stations through my AirTrip device through the car stereo.

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

Tuesday Tech Talk #80

Hello all and welcome to another edition of Tuesday Tech Talk. Can’t believe this is #80, only 20 more to go to numero 100! Let’s see what is going on this week!

Microsoft paying Nokia Billions to adopt OS

Wow, Microsoft, it has come to this, you have to pay people to be your friends? Generally speaking when you license out your OS to a hardware maker then you are the one getting paid...not the other way around. Oh Microsoft, just call it a day and just make X-Boxes, that is one thing you have excelled at.

Pandora going Public

Pandora announced on Friday it will be going public but did not specify as to when. They hope to raise $100 million in an IPO. This may be a great buy actually and I may add it to my portfolio, will probably fare better than my SiriusXM stock.

AT&T Rolls out Unlimited Calling to Any Mobile Carrier

Last week AT&T announced it will now offer its cell customers the ability to call any mobile phone no matter the carrier, for free, but there is one catch, you have to change your texting plan to an unlimited one. Haven’t decided if I will do it or not as most of my cell contacts are already AT&T users. Also if you send them a text message they will apply 1000 minutes to your plan if you happen to be an iPhone owner.

Kindle Getting Real Page Numbers

Kindle will be rolling out a software update to its devices as well as third party apps over the next few months that will add the actual page # on the page you are reading. Currently it just shows you the percentage of book you have read.

HP bringing WebOS to its PC’s

Wow, another hit to Microsoft possibly as HP is looking to deploy its in-house OS when it purchased Palm, into its PC’s. Join the club HP, it has worked for Apple for years!

Verizon Shows Off Voice-Over-LTE

Verizon this week is showing off the ability it will have to use voice and data at the same time when it makes the jump to LTE from CDMA, currently on the CDMA network you cannot do both, something AT&T has used against them in marketing. Can we say LTE iPhone 5?

Well, that is going to do it for this edition of Tuesday Tech Talk. See you all next week for more talk about things in the tech world!