Sony is planning to launch their answer to iTunes, offering music, movies, books, mobile apps, and more… sometime in the future. No, they haven’t announced a date yet, but given their portfolio of PS3, PSP, Sony Reader, and how more and more is being integrated into their Bravia televisions, while the MP3 player market is dwindling, convergent devices are on the rise. (Of course, they’ll need to fix their smartphone offerings and get them integrated into their own platform as well –hello PSPhone, can you get to that already?)
It sounds like a great idea, and makes perfect sense for Sony to evolve as a media giant. The only problem we see? Yeah, sony. At every turn, they’ve gone for closed and consumer-hostile, and while you can succeed with one of those, you can never succeed with both. ATAC auto-DRM’ing your music, Sony CDs installing Root Kits, UMD’s on PSP, it’s a miracle (of money and will) they got Blu-Ray established.
If you’re going to copy Apple, Sony — and in this case we hope you do — copy it as closely as you can. Have liberal DRM with 5 (or more) devices that can be authorized, content that can be transported between devices. In other words, make it as consumer friendly as possible, even if it scares the traditional Big Media out of you.
[Business Week - thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Google continues to optimize their websites for the iPhone (and Android, and webOS), this time giving Google News the bump. Says the Google Mobile blog:
This new version provides the same richness and personalization on your phone as Google News provides on desktop. Our new homepage displays more stories, sources, and images while keeping a familiar look and feel. Also, you can now reach your favorite sections, discover new ones, find articles and play videos in fewer clicks. If you are an existing Google News reader on desktop, you will find that all of your personalizations are honored in this mobile version too.
If you read Google News on your iPhone, let us know if you like it, and if you like it better than the regular version you got yesterday.
Regarding that picture making its way across the internet, the one at Microsoft’s invitation-only Mobius event where Big Redmond discusses their secret plans for all things Microsoft and Zune, and heartless bloggers show up with Apple Mac hardware…
Yes, that’s our very own editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn hard-left in the pic, and he assures us, even as we tease him, the machine mix was close to 50/50 and many were running Windows virtual machines (they needed to sync their Zunes, after all!)
(And no, there were no reports of Ballmer snatching iPhones at this event, sadly no reports of iPhones at the event at all…).
[WindowsPhoneThoughts]
Our good friend Phil over at sibling site WMExperts got his geeky hands on Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile and did what any self-respecting editor would do — took it one on one with the great one — Safari. Well, technically Safari running on last year’s slower hardware, the iPhone 3G (as opposed to the much faster iPhone 3GS), but it’s not a final build of Opera either. The results?
Opera Mobile 10 beta isn’t quite as good as Safari on iPhone 3G, but it’s getting there. Hit the link above to see Phil’s video, then come on back here and let us know what you think.
Apple has yet to announce an iTablet, which is good because the supposed universe dent’er is supposedly suffering a supposed “delay” — getting pushed back from early to late 2010 so that Apple can supposedly add a supposedly expensive, LG-crafted OLED (organic light emitting diode) screen to the mythical mix.
At 9.7 inches, it would cost $500 for the panel, and bump the entire kit up to a $1500 or $1700 price point. So much for the imaginary device filling a slot between the sub-$500 iPod touch/iPhone and the $1000 MacBook, right?
A cheaper 10.6 inch device is also rumored to be in the imaginary pipeline for that, somewhere over $800. Both could get “cheaper” (front facing consumer price-wise) if they run 3G and are subsidized by a telco, like the iPhone is by AT&T.
There were OLED rumors for the iPhone 3GS earlier this year (with iTablet chatter attached), which of course didn’t pan out (though they did for the Zune HD). Would Apple go big on OLED for an iTablet before they go small, and presumably more affordable, with the iPhone? Especially if it delays something that’s had no public mention and certainly no release date attached to it? (Insert Microsoft Pink references here).
Either way, you want OLED?
[DigiTimes via Gizmodo]
Mplayit [Facebook link] is a new online service that aims to let your Facebook friends share iPhone app recommendations with you — and then take it one step further and actually let you see videos, demos, and other information before you decide to buy it via the iTunes App Store.
Now anything with iPhone and Facebook in the title is no doubt attention-grabbing, but as the App Store zooms past 100,000, discoverability is going to need fixing, if not from Apple than from a ton of independent thinkers just so something (anything) can shake out. Is Mplayit it?
Mplayit introduces “playable discovery” for the iPhone today in its new Facebook app store and said it would add Android and Blackberry in the coming months. Rather than hunting and pecking for reviews and top lists, the Facebook page shows real “apptivity” that is going on in app stores so users can see which apps are receiving the most downloads, reviews, plays. In coming weeks, mobile users will also be able to see the “apptivity” within their social network so they can clearly see which apps their friends and family are most interested in.
Our guess is it will depend on how many popular apps they can really show off in a way that’s compelling for users. If you check it out, let us know what you think.
(And really, anything that keeps Facebookers busy, and not hitting “invite all” to spam online friends with random events on other continents — is huge.)
The TV show Lie to Me, a few weeks back (season 2, episode 3 to be exact) decided to take the lies just one step too far — they showed an iPhone where one of the characters could swipe between SMS notifications.
To the trained eye, of course, it was merely screenshots of standard model text dialogs over the Notes app, with swiping no doubt courtesy of the Photo App, and sound effects added in post. (The whole screen, not just the alert dialog, changed on swipe). However, it shows that even TV now has to work around the vexing lack of great notification handling on the iPhone.
Sci-fi aside, it does show one possible approach. If instead of that nasty little box you had to cancel or reply to immediately, or risk losing forever, Apple let you swipe back to see previous notifications, would that be a good solution? Or are we still holding our breath (and turning ever-bluer) waiting or a Palm webOS- or Google Android-level solution?
After a long time in limbo, fan favorite desktop Instant Messenger (IM) client Trillian [$4.99 - iTunes link] has finally (finally!) arrived for iPhone and iPod touch.
Features include AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk, tabbed chat windows, clean contact lists, killer connection management, instant cross-device sync (via Astra server), simultaneous sign-in, and “intelligent” push notification.
Confession: I’ve been podcasting, now I’m editing, so I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, but if you’re giving it a go, please let us know your favorite features, pros and cons, and just in general — what you think!
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Speaking of the ongoing ad-war between AT&T and Verizon, according to CNET:
A federal judge in Atlanta Wednesday declined to grant AT&T a temporary restraining order that would force Verizon to stop showing the ads.
So the “map for that” campaign can continue, even as AT&T counters on the marketing front with “side by side“.
On the legal front, though certainly a set back, we’re sure AT&T’s lawyers want to get as much as they can out of this legal challenges will continue as well.
Join Chad, Rene ,and special guest, Keith Newman (of PalmCast fame) tonight for all the week’s news, views, and rants. If you have any questions, leave a comment below, hit us up on Twitter @theiphoneblog, or better still — join us live in the chat room via http://www.tipb.com/live
REMINDER: You can watch us live on your iPhone with the Ustream Viewer app [Free - iTunes link]. Just wait until the show starts (8pm ET) and search for iPhone. We’ll pop up. Literally.
Chat with you soon!
