Tuesday, September 22, 2009
USB-IF Sides With Apple, Spanks Palm in iTunes Synch Spat
The USB Implementers Forum, the industry group that oversees the universal serial bus standard, has finally responded to Palm’s claim that Apple is “hampering competition” by locking the Palm Pre out of iTunes, and it’s not looking good for Palm. In a letter submitted to Apple and Palm today, the group dismissed Palm’s claim that Apple has violated its USB-IF Membership Agreement. It also took issue with Palm’s alleged use of Apple’s vendor identification number, which it says violates USB-IF policy.
Last Friday was a particularly productive day for the Apple team that reviews submissions to the iTunes App Store. AppShopper reports that 1,394 new applications were approved that day. An impressive number when you consider that Apple employs only 40 full-time reviewers and requires at least two of them to scrutinize each app.
Responding to the publication of Google’s unredacted answers to the Federal Communications Commission, Apple insists that it did not reject Google Voice. “We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told me. “Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google.”
Well this is uncomfortable: Asked by the Federal Communications Commission in August if it had rejected Google’s Voice app from its iTunes App Store, Apple claimed it had not and that the app was still under review. But according to a newly unredacted document from Google, Apple did reject the app.
Lots of jawing yesterday over reports that Palm is paying developers to bring their mobile apps to the webOS platform. An interesting claim–were it true. But according to multiple sources, it’s not.
Apple’s latest 52-week high is well on its way to becoming a 52-week low. In a research note to investors this week, Charlie Wolf of Needham & Company lifted his price target on Apple to $235, from $200, largely on the merits of the iPhone and the iTunes App Store.
Hoping to further differentiate its new Bing search engine from market leader Google, Microsoft is moving away from the proverbial “10 blue links” we so often associate with the search experience. During a presentation at the TechCrunch 50 event in San Francisco, the company announced Bing Visual Search, a Silverlight-based feature that replaces those links with images.
of the week was undoubtedly Apple’s Rock and Roll event on Wednesday featuring Steve Jobs 2.0, that was only the anodized aluminum, candy-colored, video-shooting cherry on top of another week of tech sector reporting from All Things Digital. 
After nearly a year out of the public eye, Apple CEO Steve Jobs returned to it yesterday at the company’s annual music event. It was his first public appearance at an Apple gathering since Oct. 14, 2008, when he uncrated the company’s new unibody MacBooks, and it far overshadowed the new products he was about to announce. In fact, it could be argued that public confirmation of Jobs’s health since his return to the company was truly the most significant announcement of the day.
Like we didn’t see this one coming. Among the new features of Apple’s iTunes 9 media software is one that wasn’t announced this morning: An update that prevents the Palm Pre from synching with it. 
Speaking at Apple’s music event, CEO Steve Jobs, in his first public appearance since his medical leave of absence, introduces iTunes 9. After noting that iTunes is the largest music store in the world, boasting some 100 million accounts, Jobs rattles off some of the software’s new features. Among them: Genius Mixes and improved synching. The latter enables more specific synching and supports a new way of managing applications for the iPhone and iPod touch with a nice drag-and-drop feature. Very easy to organize and reorganize applications. The crowd really likes this one. 
Leave it to Steve Jobs to upstage his own products. Rumored by some analysts to be a nonevent, Apple’s invitation-only music gathering today is already proving quite eventful. Audience members expecting Apple exec Phil Schiller to quarterback today’s proceedings were given a welcome surprise when CEO Steve Jobs took the stage in his first public appearance since his liver transplant surgery. 
