Apple went ahead and gave the green flag for the music streaming service Spotify, whose biggest selling point is the fact you can create playlists in a free desktop app, and then listen to those playlists via your iPhone at any point in time, with or without a data connection. Apple told the developer:
“The current status as of right now is it’s been approved, and we hope to add the app to the more than 65,000 apps on the app store very soon, We’ve been in constant communication working with the developer and have already notified Spotify that the app will be in the app store very soon.”
The good news is Apple approving this application for iPhone owners. The bad news being it is currently only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Britain, France and Spain. The weird news is that we still don’t see it actually in the App Store in those countries?
Spotify’s popularity has grown to over 2 million subscribers in Britain and they hope to have their service available here in the US before the end of the year. Perhaps this approved iPhone app will help things move along quicker. Music lovers can only hope.
Would any of our readers be ready to lay down their hard earned money for a service such as Spotify?
A robbery victim has taken advantage of his MobileMe service and put it to good use. A Pittsburgh man, who’s name has been withheld, told police he was forced to turn over his wallet, his PIN number and his iPhone at gun point (Pellet Gun as it turns out) by 3 robbers early Sunday morning. Lacking any tech savvy skills or common sense for that matter, the robbers were clueless about one of MobileMe’s very helpful features, “Find My iPhone“.
After calling the police, the man used his computer and MobileMe to track down his iPhone along with the 3 not so smart criminals having a late night snack at a local restaurant.
Police said they will charge Bryant Rather, 22, of West Mifflin, Brent Ray Potter, 22, of Swissvale, and Myron Knox, Jr., 22, of Homewood, with two counts each of access device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime. Mr. Rather and Mr. Potter will also be charged with robbery.
Exploding iPhones have been a very popular topic as of late, but now an alleged tier 2 iPhone support agent has contacted Gizmodo to further back up Apple’s claims that the exploding iPhones are not the result of faulty batteries but rather simply cases of user abuse.
I’m a Tier 2 iPhone agent for Apple. I’d like to add that roughly one to two calls out of every thousand that I take deal with the battery “overheating”. Generally, this incident can be described as “uncomfortably warm”, and I have not ever received or heard of a coworker receiving a call about someone being injured by the iPhone, including people too stupid to stop using their phones after the screen is broken.
The email later goes on to say Apple gets tens of thousands of calls and zero of them have proven to be safety issues. From the beginning of this debacle we’ve had a feeling that this was simply the media blowing this way out of proportion. We still get this feeling…
Does this alleged tech support email put some of your minds to rest regarding the “exploding” iPhones?
Apple has finished their investigation in the case of the exploding iPhones/Pods and the results are not shocking – the battery malfunction theory has been rejected. It was first rumored that defective batteries were more than likely the cause of the devices going boom but as it turns out, excess force was the reason – according to Apple.
“The iPhones with broken glass that we have analysed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone.”
With 26 million iPhones and 200 million iPods sold to date, Apple claims there are zero confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports of overheating they have investigated are in the single digits.
So are you buying what Apple is selling? Could these isolated incidents actually be due to excessive force in every case or could there still be something up with those batteries? What do you think?
The NFL’s regular season is fast approaching and what a better way to kick the season off then with some Madden 2010 on your iPhone (or iPod touch)?! EA has been promising us some Madden action on iPhone for a while and now they finally will deliver.
The game will contain real NFL rosters and, based upon the screen shots, will include Brett Favre and Michael Vick on both of their new respective teams. While EA is promising a release date of no later than opening day, September 10th, there is no official word on a price point. All of that aside, we think you can expect Madden 2010 to stiff arm it’s way into the App Store at $9.99.
RealNetworks recently submitted their on-demand music streaming application for the iPhone and iPod Touch to Apple for review. Yes, this is the moment all of you Rhapsody subscribers have been waiting for.
Rhapsody is a subscription based service, $12.99/Month, that allows you the ability to listen to any single song or album on-demand. Current subscribers to Rhapsody can simply log into the app with their existing user name and password and can be streaming music in no time. If you are not a subscriber you will have the opportunity to take the app for a free limited time test drive.
The big question is whether or not Apple will approve this app but given the amount of negative press Apple’s app approval process is currently getting, we are leaning towards this one being approved.
Subscription based music streaming is in high demand on devices such as iPhone so it makes us wonder – when will Apple make it’s move into the music streaming business? Not that this would be likely to actually happen but Apple could even offer the service as an extra perk to all of us who subscribe to their MobileMe service.
Would you be willing to pay Apple for a service such as Rhapsody or are you perfectly content with current iTunes setup?
TomTom insists on teasing us all with the above video yet there is still no mention of pricing or availability. As you can see, this car kit brings a lot more to the table than a simple window mount for your iPhone. With the following extras, you can count on this being a pricey addition to your accessory collection.
Hands-free dialing
Louder speaker
Enhances GPS signal
Charges iPhone
As impressive as the TomTom car kit looks, we are thinking you possibly may have to dish out up to at least $100 for this tricked out window mount. Are you still interested in making this purchase?
Yesterday Popcap announced that it will be porting its fastest-selling Mac/PC game in the company’s history, Plants vs Zombies, over to iPhone before the year is over.
Not familiar with this game? You should be, it’s highly addicting gameplay not only caters to hardcore tower defense fans but to casual gamers alike.
Play five game modes: Adventure, Mini-Games, Puzzle, Survival, plus the stress-free Zen Garden
Conquer all 50 levels of Adventure mode — through day, night and fog, in a swimming pool and on the rooftop
Battle 26 types of zombies including pole-vaulters, snorkelers and “Zomboni” drivers
Earn 49 powerful perennials and collect coins to buy a pet snail, power-ups and more!
Sadly, no exact release date or pricing has been announced but Zombie lovers rejoice. It will be here soon enough.
Numerous press reports are claiming that iPhones and iPods are “exploding” — well, three isolated devices, at least so far. Apple is said to be investigating these reports and have no answers as of now.
“These are isolated incidents and… there is not a general problem, For the cases which have been reported in the media, Apple [is] trying to get more information on the details of the incidents and will do tests as necessary to investigate the possible cause.”
It was last August that we reported on the iPod fires that were taking place. Three recent claims in the past few months have sparked this new investigation:
Thankfully no one was injured in any of the above incidents. With the millions of iPods and iPhones sold to date and only a very few being proven “faulty” this is nothing you should be too concerned about. In fact US Consumer Product Safety Commission claims that a total of 15 Apple devices since 2001 have been recorded as faulty, while none included any serious injury.
Welcome to From the Forums. If you are curious as to what all of the hot topics are on the TiPb forums, this is the place to be. In order to create any new threads of your own or reply to any of the following threads, you must be a registered member. Becoming a member is a simple process that will only take a few minutes out of your day, so if you haven’t already, head on over and register now.
The first thread comes to us from jaguar11 and he wants to know how many push applications do you currently have on your iPhone? Sure the availability of push notification enabled applications was pretty slow at first but a lot of developers are finally coming around. Hopefully that is a good sign of things to come.
Next up we have a great poll thread from toomanyphones – what iPhone GPS application are you using? It seems like the GPS application market has exploded the past few months as so many developers took advantage of TomTom getting to the party late. So what is your GPS app of choice?
Last but not least, smileyboy started a poll thread that poses the question, what’s your monthly data usage? Are you someone who barely uses data with your iPhone or are you making sure you get your money’s worth for the high prices the carriers are charging?
