Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Time to Cut AT&T Some Slack, iPhone Users?
Since 2008, AT&T’s network in and around San Francisco has experienced an increase in 3G data traffic of 2,000 percent. If you find this metric as astonishing as I do, consider this: The increase in Bay Area data traffic is actually below the national average–significantly below. According to AT&T CTO John Donovan, 3G data traffic on the company’s wireless network has risen nearly 5,000 percent nationally in the past 12 quarters.
Psystar’s ill-starred crusade against Apple has ended in a total rout. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup on Friday dropped the hammer on the Mac clone maker, granting Apple’s request for a summary judgment and denying Psystar’s counterclaim.
When it launched on July 10, 2008, Apple’s iTunes App Store held just 552 apps. Today, Apple tells us, it boasts more than 100,000. Astonishing, really, when you think about it. The App Store isn’t even two years old yet. Nor is the iPhone SDK.
Here’s an interesting data point from Apple’s recent 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: The company has budgeted $1.9 billion in capital expenditures for fiscal 2010. That’s 70 percent more than the $1.1 billion it spent in 2009. What does Apple plan to do with those additional funds? 
When Apple said it does not support iTunes integration with third-party digital media players, it meant it. With iTunes 9.0.2, it has once again disabled the Palm Pre’s ability to synch with the media software.
Well, this is a first. Sonos, the company responsible for the wireless multiroom audio system of the same name, is today debuting a new piece of hardware designed for an iPhone app, rather than the other way around.
If the teen demographic is a critical indicator of a company’s long-term growth prospects in the consumer electronics and online music markets, Apple has nothing to worry about. Because according to the results of Piper Jaffray’s 18th biannual Teen Survey, Apple devices continue to do well with American teenagers.
The majority of Windows Mobile users have no idea what operating system is running on their phones, a recent survey from the CFI Group found. Microsoft is hoping to change that with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 and the opening of Windows Mobile Marketplace, its long-awaited answer to Apple’s iTunes App Store.
Apple seems to have gotten over its aversion to apps duplicating core iPhone functions. This morning, Internet telephony company Vonage released an app that allows iPhone users to make calls over Wi-Fi and AT&T’s voice network.
Oh, it’s really on now. This morning Palm announced webOS 1.2.1, another point release to its new webOS platform that restores media synchronization with the latest version of Apple’s iTunes (9.0.1). Moreover, the company has gone the extra step of extending that synchronization feature to photos. 
Palm has begun rolling out webOS 1.2.0, a minor point release to its new flagship operating system, which boasts some 70 improvements. Notably absent from this update: The reenabling of iTunes synchronization, which Apple spannered when it released iTunes 9.0 earlier this month. 
AT&T has finally completed the very important “internal system upgrades” that prevented it from supporting multimedia messaging service on Apple’s iPhone. And at some point late tomorrow morning, the carrier will release an update enabling MMS.
