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 #56

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of Tuesday Tech Talk. I have quite a few things to talk about this week and not all of them are Apple related so hope you enjoy!

Google Wave shutdown

Google announced last week it will be ceasing updates to Google Wave and will shut it down at the end of the year. For those that don’t know, Google Wave is a online collaboration web application that had a lot of buzz initially but faded fast. I haven’t used it in months.

Android update

There appears to be an update on the way to the Android OS in early September. While I’m on the subject of Android, I’m not getting into the whole iPhone vs Android “battle” anymore. You have 2 great mobile OS’s that are NOT using Windows and that is a win for almost everyone.

Microsoft Office for Mac release date

Microsoft has finally set a release time for Office 2011 for Mac. It will become available in late October and will be available in 3 flavors. A Student & Home edition for $119 which will include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Messenger, a Home & Business edition for $199 ($279 for a 2 computer install) that will include all the above plus Outlook, and an Academic version for $99 that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Messenger but will only be available in authorized academic channels and from Microsoft directly.

Verizon to get iPhone in January?

Stop me if you heard this one before. According to a source Apple has apparently ordered millions of Qualcomm CDMA chips from a January launch. What I don’t understand though and correct me if I’m wrong but the CDMA doesn’t allow you to both talk and use data at the same time so to me a CDMA based iPhone would lack the feature found in the GSM based iPhone available from AT&T. Personally I would love to see it happen, this is America and the iPhone should not be tied down to a single carrier.

Google now allowing switching between multiple accounts

If you happen to have more than 1 Google account, you can now switch between them without having to log out and log in. Yes I do admit, I have 2 Google accounts. Why? Because their free and why not.

Bill Gates on the future of education

Bill Gates has some interesting ideas on how in the future the dynamic of learning will be turned on its head. No longer would there be an X amount of students in a classroom, instead students for free will be able to watch lectures online. He envisions higher learning as not place based and how no matter how you learn you should get credit for it i.e., watching an online lecture.

This Week’s iPhone/iPod touch/iPad apps

Instapaper ($4.99) - This app which works for both the iPad and the iPhone and iPod touch allows you to read stories you choose to read later off websites. The cool thing about it is you can read them while offline. Here are a couple of screenshots.

Vonage Mobile for Facebook (FREE) - This awesome app allows you to talk for free with other Facebook friends who have the app on their iPhone, iPod touch, and Android devices (iPad coming soon). I tried it out with my friend Dave in California and the quality was excellent! Dave lives in an area where his 3G is not the best so a lot of times his calls will drop or fade but with the WiFi connection on the Vonage Mobile app it was excellent. Which leads to my next point with Vonage and Skype having apps for the iPhone, how soon until Apple allows the Google Voice app into the store?

CellTower ($2.99) - This handy little app will show on a map the nearest cell towers to you and who owns them. So if you are ever in an area with low bars, now you can find out why that is.

Friendly ($3.99) - This is a nice iPad based Facebook browser. Although for the price I would like to see a few more features like chat and attaching links with a status post. That being said there is a 2.0 version coming soon so hopefully it will offer such features.

TuneIn Radio ($1.99) - My friend Jeremy was telling me about this app. It allows you to listen to radio stations all over the country on your iPhone or iPod touch. It also allows you to record them within the app as well.

Well, that is going to do it for this edition of Triple T. Tune in Friday for another Googling Friday post about all things Google. Take care!