9 to 5 Mac - Apple Intelligence

Arm-saving MacSpeech software is 25% off until 2010

Seth Weintraub — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:51:48 +0000

With the recent explosion of speech recognition on the iPhone (Dragon Speech, Google, even Bing Map search) some might consider revisiting speech recognition on the Mac desktop platform where the technology can be more effectively utilized. About five years ago, both IBM (ViaVoice) and Dragon (Naturally Speaking) both released Mac versions of their Speech recognition applications but both stopped their programs a few years ago and they are no longer supported.

By far the best speech recognition on the Mac platform today is MacSpeech, which recently upgraded its speech recognition engine to use Nuance's Dragon (the same engine used in the iPhone app). Their new application is fully able to integrate with Snow Leopard and works out of the box much better than the iPhone application. The accuracy becomes eerily good after spending a few minutes of teaching it to get used to your voice and way of speaking.

As bloggers, we've had run-ins with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and other RSI disorders which would have sidelined us for weeks had we not had access to MacSpeech. If you haven't tried speech recognition in the past few years on the Mac, you might want to give it another try - it is head and shoulders above previous versions.

As MacSpeech affiliates, we can offer MacSpeech applications 25% off of the list price using this link and the coupon code: "9TO5MAC" at checkout. That puts the regular application at $149 (including free headset), which is the lowest price we could find.

Verizon's Band-Aid solution...

Seth Weintraub — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:00:41 +0000

Those in favor of removable batteries might want to consider this one: A Droid with a loose removable battery cover receives this official remedy from Verizon:

Took my phone to the Verizon store, and this is their solution. It's better than what the original rep tried to do, which is put scotch tape on it. IMO, for a $200 phone, this is unacceptable.

We're not saying it is a "Band-aid" solution but...ok, yes we are.

Flickr via DF

At least they use classy Verizon band-aids, not cheap aftermarket ones.

Verizon ready for iPhone, wishes Verizon's CTO

Seth Weintraub — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:22:55 +0000

Verizon's PR team is hitting AT&T while they are down as Verizon's CTO, Anthony Melone , is saying that they are "capable of handling extra traffic that would be generated by the iPhone"...

"We have put things in place already," Melone tells Bloomberg BusinessWeek. "We are prepared to support that traffic."

And another winner:

Melone says the company is ready for the deluge should Verizon Wireless land a deal with Apple for the iPhone. "We will handle it if we ever get it," says Melone.

Yep. That's it. Nothing like "we're working on Visual Voicemail" or "Apple is answering our calls".

Let's just say we aren't convinced that the iPhone will be heading to Verizon (as much as we might wish it so).

Remember, it isn't just vagueness here. Businessweek is behind such famous stories as this one from April:

Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple to distribute two new iPhone-like devices, BusinessWeek has learned. Apple has created prototypes of the devices, and discussions reaching back a half-year have involved Apple CEO Steve Jobs, according to two people familiar with the matter.

One device is a smaller, less expensive calling device described by a person who has seen it as an "iPhone lite." The other is a media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos, the person says. It would place calls over a Wi-Fi connection. One of these devices may be introduced as early as this summer, one person says.

Intel hints MacBook Pro speed feed for early decade date

Jonny Evans — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:14:22 +0000

Intel intends introducing new chips on January 7, day one of the huge Consumer Electronics Trade (CES) next month, including 32-nanometer Arrandale processors across the Core i3, i5 and i7 brands.

During a press conference picked up upon by MacRumors, Intel promised its Arrandale and Grantdale processors are shipping to manufacturers now and will make their debut in new computers in early 2010.

Mobile versions of these processors have been anticipated to take a leap into the insides of future Apple laptops, specifically the MacBook Pro. Speeds could hit 2.66GHz, MR observes.

However, there’s also possibilities Apple will skip the family, potentially because the processors come with Intel HD graphics, a 45-nm graphics chip integrated with the CPU. Will Apple pick Intel for graphics in its high-end video editing laptops?

At the journalist events, Intel also had several systems on display that were powered by the new chips. Several systems were running animated movies and video games, showing off the graphics capabilities of the new chips.

The new chips include Hyper Threading, while the i5 chips will offer Turbo Boost, which enables processing cores to run a little faster when the demand arises, as reported by eWeek.

Mobile app rainbow: Apple's App Store leads to a pot of gold

Jonny Evans — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:46:44 +0000

Apple’s got a gold mine, and it fits inside your pocket - that’s right, the company’s App Store may win its share of criticism for the relatively difficult path most users have to take to find those apps which don’t make the leader boards, but the mobile app opportunity is much bigger than we’ve seen so far.

Don’t believe us? Oh, ye of little faith, it’s not us who are making these claims but the analysts (who get paid to speculate, don’t you know), in this case the data comes from Screen Digest’s Mobile Intelligence Service, who predict revenues from mobile applications will double in the next four years to reach €100 billion (c.$143.5 billion) by the end of 2013. And we have the seekers at Seeking Alpha to thank for this data.

€8.6 billion of this will be generated by rich media content services such as mobile TV, video, games and music, a growth of 50% compared to the end of 2009, ScreenDigest says.

Now we know Apple currently dominates the App Store gold machine, and while many believe the company creates the best solutions, there are competitors and they will develop their markets too - and don’t neglect the potential challenge/growth of Google’s Android platform.

With a changing competitive landscape, no surprise Screen Digest expects Apple’s share of the market to decline relative to the competition - but anticipates the App Store will generate €1.3 bullion by the end of 2013 from 7 billion downloads.

NB: We’re thinking the prediction seems on the low side, given Apple had already shifted “well over” two billion apps as of November 4 2009.

The increased level of competition means a bevy of platform choices for developers: Apple, Google, Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft (MSFT), Vodafone, RIM, Palm and Orange will all be offering stores, along with smaller operators. (We suspect success will come to those stores offering the best development tools).

The analysts also predict revenues from mobile music services such as rdio or Spotify will grow by 25% in the next four years, reaching €3.2 billion by the end of 2013 “despite a substantial decline in ringtone sales.”

Revenues from mobile games sold through operators’ portals and Apple’s App Store are expected to grow by 40% in the next four years, reaching €2.8 billion by the end of 2013.

Who are the biggest iTunes hold-outs? And why?

Jonny Evans — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:14:03 +0000

We all know The Beatles are/aren’t/are/might be/might not ever make it to iTunes, but we liked this post today naming a few other digital music hold outs.

Sure, bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Led Zep, Metallica, Radiohead and more are all clamouring to sell you their downloads through iTunes today - but Digital Music News has quietly assembled a short list of other missing stars, hiding on the edges of the Apple ecosystem.

We thought we’d add what statements we could find that help explain why these top class bands won’t be selling their music directly to this season’s new crop of iPod, iPod touch and iPhone users via iTunes next week.

The hold outs currently include:

The Beatles
Last thing we heard on this saw Sir Paul McCartney pin the blame squarely on EMI for the lack of catalogue on iTunes. He said: “We were having problems with iTunes – well not iTunes, EMI was the problem – with downloading, which we'd like to do because that's how a lot of people get their music.”

EMI then issued this statement: Ernesto Schmitt, EMI’s global catalog president, said: “Conversations between Apple and EMI are ongoing and we look forward to the day when we can make the music available digitally. But it’s not tomorrow."

AC/DC
Quite a public boycott here. AC/DC are one of the acts who don’t want fans to cherry pick their catalogue, insisting Apple should approve artist’s the right to make albums available in full only.

"Maybe I'm just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless 'em, it's going to kill music if they're not careful," lead singer Brian Johnson , told Reuters. "It's a...monster, this thing. It just worries me. And I'm sure they're just doing it all in the interest of making as much...cash as possible. Let's put it this way, it's certainly not for the...love, let's get that out of the way, right away."

Angus Young, who co-founded the band with brother Malcolm, told The New York Times: "It's like an artist who does a painting. If he thinks it's a great piece of work, he protects it. It's the same thing: this is our work."

Bob Seger
"We've always thought certain artists put out albums that aren't meant to be compilations with 50 other artists," Ed "Punch" Andrews, manager for both Seger and Kid Rock told Wired. "We're hoping at some point albums become important again like they were in the past 30 years."

"It's amazing how many people go there," Andrews said of iTunes. "We're hoping albums work there." Andrews said he wasn't sure if Apple eventually would allow the album to be kept intact.

Tool
"They're about as album-oriented as a group gets these days," says Benson. Tool's albums boast eight-minute-plus epics that often flow one into the next and are intricately packaged. "Tool rightfully feels, 'We're putting a lot into our album as an art form,'" says Benson.

"They're almost certainly taking some degree of royalty hit on the amount of packaging they're doing. I would not expect Tool to go digital this year. All the others could." Clark Benson, CEO of the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, an industry research firm, speaking to Almighty Retail.

Kid Rock (though he puts a few bits ‘n’ pieces out through Amazon MP3).
"We would love to have our catalogs included on iTunes, but the record labels have chosen to disregard the provisions of their record contracts, which never contemplated this form of song licensing," says Andrews, who echoes the concerns of many artists and managers - including the Allman Brothers Band and Cheap Trick, who both sued to get a bigger cut of their digital royalties.

King Crimson and Def Leppard are also pretty much absent from the store, but we’ve found no public explanation yet.

Anybody out there know of any other hold out acts, and why they’re staying that way? And what would you say to convince artists and management to bring their content to the store?

Apple iPhone is big, big, big in Japan

Jonny Evans — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:12:54 +0000

Apple is big - really big - in Japan, where the iPhone now accounts for 46.1 percent of the smartphone market, according to the latest data from Impress.

The company achieved sales accounting for almost half of the entire Japanese smartphone market across 2009, the analysts said. This drove the company’s iPhone 3G and 3GS to claim the top two slots in the sales charts, with the 3G model seizing 24.6 percent and the 3GS grabbing 21.5 percent.

Apple’s success has slashed marketshare of traditional incumbents in the smartphone space, with Sharp’s W-ZERO3 seeing sales halved for the Windows-powered device.

Impress cites ease of use and applications as key drivers for Apple’s success, and confirms the impact of these features on data use on the network: c.77.3 percent of 3GS owners access data services for over half an hour a day, the report says. Android (and the 3G iPhone) hit 66.8 percent.

Read this laughable Google translation of the Impress report here. (It’s near enough incoherent).

Will Rdio kill the Spotify star?

Jonny Evans — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:49:40 +0000

Spotify may not be launching into the USA until 2010, but the innovative streaming music service may already face stiff competition from all-new and soon to launch service, Rdio.

This new streaming subscription service was founded by Skype/Kazaa pioneers, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom. What the service will do on launch remains shadowy, but the company has now released an iPhone app, making this available to all via the App Store.

Snag is, to use it you have to be a member of the private beta tester’s club, but it suggests the launch of the service simply ain’t so far away.

So, what does it do?

Checking the App Store description, we learn: “Rdio is like carrying a giant MP3 player in your pocket – you have unlimited and unrestricted access to all the music, and you get to select exactly the song, album or artist you want to hear. And you can skip, pause fast forward as much as you want. Build your collection and compose your playlists on rdio.com and listen to them all on the go. Or search for just the right song when you’re out and it will start playing instantly.”

Features will include unlimited playlists, notifications and more, reports Music Ally.

Apple updates Xsan, Mail Server

Jonny Evans — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:40:14 +0000

Apple has introduced a Mail Services Update for systems running Mac OS X 10.6.2 Server.

The update addresses issues affecting overall mail service reliability and performance, and is available for free download via Apple’s Downloads section and Software Update.

This update includes the following improvements:

Allows the Mail service to recover from an interruption in Directory Services
Reduces Mail service memory usage

The update is recommended for all servers running Snow Leopard Server version 10.6.2.

The company has also introduced a trio of new downloads for Xsan users:

Xsan Uninstaller

This will remove Xsan from your computer.

Xsan 2.2.1 FileSystem Update for 10.6

The 2.2.1 update is recommended for all systems running Xsan 2.2.

Xsan 2.2.1 FileSystem Update for 10.5

The 2.2.1 update is recommended for all systems running Xsan 2.2.

AT&T has only reduced spending on its network since the 2007 iPhone launch

Seth Weintraub — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:47:10 +0000

AT&T has received a great deal of criticism for the abysmal quality of its network in major cities. They've always countered that they were going to, at some point in the future, upgrade the quality of service in those areas where it is poor. But according to their own SEC filings, they've actually been pulling back on spending on their network.

All this time they've been taking more and more iPhone owners on unlimited plans, they've actually cut their spending on the network that is supposed to carry their data. Is it any wonder that people are so mad?

Images via Gizmodo