The auction house Sotheby’s is selling an official memo from Steve Jobs to Atari about improving the World Cup Football game. The pages – stamped and signed by Jobs himself – describe circuit diagrams and paddle layouts. Delightfully, the stamp says “All-One Farm Design” and features a Buddhist mantra, “gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svahdl.” As you do.

If you’re thinking of picking this up you’d best have about $10,000 to $15,000 handy – although bidding could get fierce. Quoth MacWorld:

If you’re really feeling spendy, you can plop down $180,000 on an original Apple I circuit board, presumably in mint condition. Get cracking and don’t forget: Sabbe satta sukhi hontu.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Apple and a number of other large U.S. publishers of conspiring to fix eBook prices and filed an antitrust lawsuit. While most of the publishers quickly settled the lawsuit, Apple decided to fight. Earlier this week, as Ars Technica reports today, Apple responded (PDF) to the government’s accusations. Apple doesn’t mince words in its response. The company’s lawyers call the case against Apple “fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law” and say that the idea that Apple tried to reduce competition and fix prices is “absurd.”

In its complaint, the U.S. government said Apple and publishers like Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin and Macmillan, who favor the so-called agency model which allows publishers to set their own eBook price, were colluding to fix eBook prices in their fight against Amazon, which favors a wholesale model that gives it the power to set the price of the eBooks it sells. The DoJ alleges that Apple and the other publishers conspired to eliminate competition in the eBook retail market.

Apple, however, argues that the government “sides with monopoly, rather than competition, in bringing this case. The Government starts from the false premise that an eBooks ‘market’ was characterized by ‘robust price competition’ prior to Apple’s entry.” Before the iBookstore, Apple says, “there was no real competition, there was only Amazon.”

Apple says its entry in the market benefited consumers, as it brought is challenging Amazon and provided consumers with choice and “innovative features, such as color pictures, audio and video, the read and listen feature, and fixed display.”

The company also argues that it is giving more power to the publishers and especially to self-publishing and smaller publishing houses.

Throughout the document, Apple accuses the government of selectively quoting Steve Jobs from Walter Isaacson’s biography (“The Government’s selective citation to hearsay from a small portion of Apple’s former CEO’s biography is irrelevant and has no place in this litigation.”).

In an apparent effort to help its users find more interesting apps in its cavernous digital stores, Apple today made an interesting tweak to its iOS and Mac app stores. Both now feature a “free app of the week” and an “editor’s choice” section. As Apple’s official App Store Twitter account announced yesterday, Cut the Rope: Experiments is Apple’s choice for this week’s free app in the iOS store. Editor’s Choice apps include Extreme Skater and Facebook Camera for iPhone, Sketchbook Ink for iPad, and Cobook and Deus Ex Human Revolution in the Mac App Store.

Other app stores, including Amazon’s Appstore for Android, of course already feature similar free apps programs. The iTunes Store, too, offers a free single of the week.

Even though this isn’t the most original promotion, free apps are always welcome and it’s no secret that Apple’s App Store has a massive problem when it comes to discoverability. Unless an app appears in the various stores’ top 10 or at least top 25 lists, chances are that most users will never see it unless Apple decides to feature the app in its “new and noteworthy” section.

Earlier this year, Apple acquired app store search and discovery service Chomp. Chomp, which is still up and running, allows users to just say what kind of app they are looking for and goes beyond the easily gamed keywords and app names that are the hallmark of Apple’s own limited app store search feature. For the time being, though, Apple hasn’t integrated Chomp’s features into its own app stores and it still remains to be seen if it ever will.

Apple is continuing its “famous person uses Siri” commercials by bringing in famous person John Malkovich to add a soupçon of Old World weltschmerz and philosophizing to what is, in short, a way to schedule a wake-up call without unlocking your phone. The commercials feature Malkovich in what appears to be the house above the nasty places in Hostel where he muses on fine meats and the meaning of life.

I don’t quite get these celebrity appearances but, in the end, I suppose they’re good for brand awareness. Siri isn’t for the geeks – it’s for the folks who may have once been in love with BlackBerries. Siri suggests a certain ease, a certain subsumed technicality that would draw in the C-level exec and, in parallel, well-known superstars. It is, in short, a little assistant that will never talk back to you, never ask for a raise, and never request that you stop cursing.

That they chose Malkovich for this one is a little odd on the surface but it makes sense: Malkovich’s audience these days is the indie-film-loving, ironic post-gen-X C-level business person who is adult enough to be able to spend a little money on a 4S yet still is wary of being marketed at. A similar demographic targeting is shown in the choice of Samuel L. Jackson (the just-below-Mensa-level adventure/action loving geek who remembers Mace Windu’s sword) and Zooey Deschanel grabs the plugged-in hipster demographic. If you extrapolated this further into an older demographic you could almost foresee commercials featuring Betty White and maybe Leonard Nimoy.

For those who find these a bit out of character, I suggest we go back and look at the Mac vs. PC ads that featured two memorable faces who, arguably, cannot be disassociated from that campaign. You can’t look at John Hodgman – even with his sassy little mustache – and not see that poor, put-upon PC being shown up by Justin Long.

The iPod advertising was genius because it made everyone think they could move like a sinuous dancer to the lilting chords of Jet. These new commercials allow a certain type of consumer to associate him or herself with a certain archetype. As inclusive as Apple seems to its fans, it’s still important to segment those still on the fence and, one by one, speak directly to them.

Mobile advertising company  Millennial  Media, one of the biggest in the U.S., has released its quarterly ad impression report, and the results show that Apple continues to remain the single-biggest brand, and most popular phone maker, on the Millennial ad network — with the rest of the list largely dominated by Android.

Apple has a clear lead in the field of device makers based on brand: the popularity of Apple’s iPhone handsets, iPad tablets and iPod music players gave the company a share of 28.32 percent of all devices on the network, with its closest competitor, Samsung, picking up a share of 18.25 percent of the overall market impressions. Millennial also notes that non-phone devices are continuing to see a growing impact on the overall mix.

RIM slipped down to number-five in the list of top manufacturers, and  with 10.16 percent of all devices, and Nokia, once the leading vendor of mobile handsets, is now down to 10th position, with a 0.91 percent share of mobile devices.

When considering individual handset models, you can really see the strength of Apple’s strong portfolio essentially built around one device. Apple only had the iPhone (unspecified which precise model; perhaps all three) in the top-20, but usage of iPhones was enough to give it 15.1 percent of the whole market. The next-closest competitor was BlackBerry Curve with a 4.44 percent share of the market.

In contrast to Apple, other handset makers are still relying on several handset models, which all do moderately well, so that in aggregate they are gaining better market share. For example, RIM has five handsets in the top-20, the biggest number. Together that accounted for only 12 percent of impressions. Samsung had four handsets, which together made eight percent of impressions. HTC also had four models in top-20, with Motorola listing three.

Although the usage of tablets is really taking off — Millennial notes that is up by 33 percent over last year, with iPad very much in the lead — smartphones are still accounting for the vast majority of traffic. Collectively, they account for 73 percent of all ad impression traffic, versus 62 percent the year before. Traffic from tablets and other non-smartphone devices went up as well, t0 20 percent from 15 percent, while feature phones are really in decline. Lower end devices not account for only seven percent of ad impression traffic, compared to 23 percent a year ago.

When it comes to platforms, although Apple leads in terms of single brand, the sheer aggregation of Android device makers continues to push Google’s OS into the lead. Android now has 49 percent of all impressions, with iOS at 33 percent. Millennial notes that Android overtook iOS as the dominant platform in 2011. BlackBerry is at 14 percent to round out the top three.

In terms of popular apps, Millennial says that games were the most popular category, and it grew by 10 percent over last year. Music and entertainment took the number-two position. The full rankings for popular app categories are below:

It’s hard to underestimate how important ranking in Apple’s top 25 in the iTunes store is for mobile app developers. After all, the top 25 is probably the single most important app discovery mechanism for most iOS users. But how many downloads does it take to rank in the top 25? Mobile app store analytics firm Distimo today published some interesting data that answers just this question. Turns out, in the U.S. store, the answer currently is about 38,400 daily downloads for free iPhone apps and 3,530 for paid iPhone apps. To rank in the top 25 per category, of course, takes significantly fewer downloads, with games unsurprisingly being the most competitive category. It takes 25,300 daily downloads to rank in the gaming top 25 for free apps and 2,280 downloads for paid apps.

For free apps, other competitive categories include ‘entertainment’ (6,700 daily downloads), ‘social networking’ (5,800), ‘lifestyle’ (3,900) and ‘music’ (3,900). Interestingly, in the paid app charts photography apps rank just behind games and entertainment apps. Still, it currently only takes about 270 daily downloads to rank in the photography top 25 for paid apps.

These numbers, of course, are always changing and this just represent a snapshot of what Distimo found when it compiled this data last month.

Update: We just talked to one source with a lot of experience in building mobile apps and who also currently runs a top App Store app. According to this source, Distimo’s numbers are too low and may just represent data from a relatively small number of apps. Keep that in mind as you read Distimo’s data.

Given the popularity of games on iOS, Distimo also took a closer look at the various gaming subcategories. Here, arcade and action games lead the pack:

This is the first time Distimo is releasing a detailed set of these numbers. It’s worth noting, though, that at the end of 2011, the company reported that it still took about 45,000 daily downloads to rank in the top 25 of most popular free apps. Since then, though, Apple has been working hard to shut down various scams and bots that automatically downloaded apps and allowed developers to rank in Apple’s charts without having a real user base (then, once you are in the top 25, of course, real users will automatically find you, of course). Judging from Distimo’s latest data, these efforts are starting to pay off and will hopefully make life a little bit easier for legit developers.

Almost 115 million households in the U.S. currently own at least one TV set and 36 million own four or more. That’s a huge market and as Apple, Google and Microsoft try to wrestle more of this business away from the traditional content and hardware players, the old-school cable and satellite providers now suddenly have to content with this new group of challengers that, until now, barely registered on their radars. According to Forrester analyst James McQuivey, it’s Microsoft that’s winning this platform war so far.

Why? Microsoft, MCquivey argues, currently has a massive lead over its competitors thanks to its Xbox360. According to a new report by Forrester, the number of U.S. households that watch online video on a TV set is now up to 32.1 million, up from just 24.8 million a year ago. The majority of these households use their game consoles to do so. The adoption of connected TVs is also moving ahead quickly. Forrester estimates that 18.5 million households now use them to stream online video in the living room. Over-the-top set-top boxes like the Apple TV, Boxee and Roku, however, are still niche products, with just 4% of U.S. online households owning one at the end of 2011.

Looking ahead, Forrester estimates that by 2016, 66.8 million U.S. households will have connected their TV sets to the Internet and 89% of HDTVs sold will be connectable.

In this quickly growing market, McQuivey argues, it’s all about who owns the platform. Microsoft is in the lead right now, but still, only 49% of Xbox 360 owners currently connect their consoles to the net. McQuivey argues that in order keep its lead, Microsoft has to push this number to 75% and highlight the numerous video options beyond Netflix it already offers.

Google, says McQuivey in his blog post today, “has to push Android onto every TV device, including the Motorola set-top-boxes it is about to own.”

Apple, of course, is widely rumored to be working on a TV set as well. McQuivey and his colleagues, however, think that Apple shouldn’t just sell a replacement TV. Instead, the company should focus on something more akin to a smaller, 32-inch screen iHub that could be used in the dining room or kitchen to create a central hub for the family to gather around and use a shared calendar, Facetime, and view photos and videos.

[image credit: stevestein1982]

Here’s hoping that you already managed to get your hands on an HTC One X, because it may be a while before they appear on store shelves again.

According to a release put out by HTC last night, U.S. Customs has blocked shipments of AT&T’s HTC One X and Sprint’s EVO 4G LTE thanks to an ITC ruling handed down last year.

The news may come as an especially large bummer for Sprint customers looking to upgrade to the new EVO, as a new report from the Wall Street Journal indicates that device will miss its original May 18 launch date. Sprint has since scrubbed their website of references to the device’s forthcoming launch, and there’s still no word on a revised launch window.

To get a firmer grasp on why this is happening, we have to flash back to 2011. After HTC was originally slammed with allegations that they infringed ten of Apple’s patents with their “personal data and mobile communications devices.” International Trade Commission Judge Carl Charneski ruled in Apple’s favor on two of those claims (which just so happened to stem from the same patent, No. 5,946,647) in July. After a smattering of delays, the ITC handed down their limited exclusion order in December, which prohibited the importation of devices that violate the ’647 patent.

And what are the offending bits? The big one in this case deals with a minor UI feature, namely the ability for users to touch a phone number displayed in an email or a webpage in order to fire up the phone’s dialer.

The import ban didn’t go into effect until April 19 (the ITC wanted to give HTC some time to make the appropriate fixes), but the company apparently didn’t make thoughtful use of their time. HTC now claims to have fixed that “small UI experience”, and noted in their release that they are “working closely with Customs to secure approval” for the devices to be released. The ITC’s order does allow for refurbished handsets to enter the country in order to replace faulty devices, though both devices in question are brand spanking new (one of them hasn’t even been released yet) so that little loophole will likely go unused.

Even so, we’re left with little clue as to when shipments of devices will be permitted once again. Sprint and AT&T can’t be too pleased with this turn of events — I’ve reached out to both carriers for comment, but haven’t heard back at time of writing.

The iPhone might be coming to the world’s largest mobile carrier, China Mobile. The world comes from Bloomberg quoting China Mobile’s chairman. The report also details that the phone might not hit the carrier’s 655 million subscribers yet this year. But the two sides are talking. That’s a start. Apple needs China Mobile and China Mobile needs Apple.

“China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation,” Xi said. “When there is more specific news, we will disclose it.”

As Bloomberg notes, one of the sticking points has to do with China Mobile’s proprietary network that’s not friendly with the iPhone’s mobile radios. China Mobile is currently rolling out 4G service but only in six cities so far; three more cities are slated to get it this year. The rollout kicks into high gear next year with plans to expand the 4G base stations from 900 units to 200,000.

Although China Mobile is the country’s, and the world’s, largest mobile carrier, its 3G network is starting to show its age relative to newer, faster 4G networks. A 4G iPhone is exactly what China Mobile needs to keep up with the times.

The iPhone is already a hit in China even without China Mobile. Apple revenue in China is up threefold year-over-year for Apple. In fact, Apple has reported more revenue in China so far this year than it did all of last. Getting the iPhone on China Mobile is likely a top priority of Cook and Co.

Cook said in the October 2011 earnings call: “For China — the sky’s the limit there. I’ve never seen so many people rise into the middle class who aspire to buy Apple products.”

Remember last week when Foxconn president Terry Gou said that he was working hard at building the new Apple TV? The rumor was, as you might suspect, patently false. But just how false is the surprising part.

Welcome to the magical world of Apple rumors.

Before we begin, take a look at this delightful Fortune piece that shows us the truth behind the big Apple rumor mill. It’s well-written and cogent and takes us all to task, including our own Matt Burns for jumping into the morass.

The iTV story trickled out at the end of last week. In short, it said that Foxconn president Terry Gou explicitly announced that Foxconn was “making preparations for iTV,” suggesting that the company was ready to build a flat panel TV for Apple at any moment. The statement appeared in a short piece on ChinaDaily.com and said:

Now Terry Gou would have to be suicidal to say this. He would have to literally have most of his brain eaten by bacteria before he would announce a single Apple product. What’s more, no other press picked up this gem. It was apparently a misunderstanding because the day Terry Gou announces an Apple product is the day an asteroid scores a direct hit on the St. Louis Arch. There is, in short, no way he would risk all of Apple’s lucrative business just to score points with the press.

Had anyone – ourselves included – stopped for a moment and considered the ramifications of what Gou was allegedly saying, they’d understand the ridiculousness of the statements. However the idea – that the president of a major electronics manufacturer decides to go off the rails and let fly with a ridiculous rumor – is wildly compelling news. The piece spawned ancillary pieces about the possibilities of the iTV and what exciting features the non-existent product could have.

Foxconn, for their part, told TheNextWeb that:

They closed with a forceful line: “Any reports that Foxconn confirmed that it is preparing to produce a specific product for any customer are not accurate.”

So what happened here? I think most Apple rumors are a combination of genuine interest and schadenfreude. For most journalists (read “bloggers”), Apple is a black box. They have no view inside and they often get short shrift when it comes to actual launched hardware. They know people love Apple, but Apple refuses to talk to them. So they – and we are equally guilty – ride Apple rumors into the shoals of fabulism. After all, if Apple PR doesn’t tell you the news ahead of time, then why even bother confirming it?

Second, you have the sense that Apple sometimes deserves these leaks. The flip side to interest in Apple news is a sense that Apple is so stingy with its news that it’s only right to upbraid the organization by essentially playing click games with the news. Who does it hurt if the iTV is talk of the blogosphere for most of the week? What does it matter if every tiny news station from here to Jakarta is running a brief on this “leak.” Apple deserves what it gets.

I’d say both those stances are valid yet it still doesn’t excuse the loss of levelheadedness. While I agree that the concept of an iTV is cool at best and newsworthy at worst, it’s up to us to separate rumor from ridiculousness. We didn’t do a good job this time.

With Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference just weeks away, expect plenty of reports of new features to come crawling out of the woodwork. In fact, here’s one from the Wall Street Journal — they claim that Apple has been doing some major tinkering with their iCloud storage service, the fruits of which will be unveiled on June 11.

First up is the ability for users to share and comment on each other’s photos, a pretty dramatic shift away from iCloud’s current approach to photo storage. As it stands, each user has a single Photo Stream meant mostly to make sure images are on the devices they need to be on. This shift in sharing actually sounds a little reminiscent of Apple’s recently-killed MobileMe service, though how exactly the sharing process would play out within iCloud is still up in the air.

Also reportedly onboard is new functionality that allows users to sync their notes and reminders (though that was recently outed thanks to a website snafu), as well as the ability to upload videos to the cloud service from an iDevice.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer let slip during the company’s last earnings call that their iCloud service now has over 125 million users, though he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) go into detail about how many of them are actually paying customers. It’s also unclear whether or not new features like these will require users to be on one of the company’s paid service tiers, though Oppenheimer pointed out during that same call that iCloud revenue may not be a big focus for the company right now.

“Our real desire here was not about selling more storage,” Oppenheimer said. “We just really want to increase the customer delight from the entire ecosystem and platform of our iOS devices and the Mac, and that’s why we’ve done iCloud.”

Of course, I don’t expect that mindset to hold up forever — GigaOM reported late last year that Apple earmarked $7.1 billion for non-retail capital expenditures in 2012, with the implication that a good chunk of it would go to bolstering the company’s cloud operations. Building up the groundwork for a great user experience is welcome, but Apple certainly wants a more substantial return on investment than just good feelings from their customers.

If reports hold true, then WWDC will also see a substantial update to iOS’s preloaded Maps application. Gone will be any trace of reliance on Google’s map data — everything is said to come from within the company, though they had to snap up mapping company C3 Technologies to create the (apparently impressive) new 3D viewing mode.

If the rumors pan out, Apple’s next MacBook Pro line will set the notebook world ablaze with a thinner chassis, USB 3.0 and a 15-inch high-resolution, so-called retina display. Of course it would pack the latest Intel silicon with rumors and logic pointing to an Ivy Bridge chipset. Sounding a different from the long-rumored 15-inch MacBook Air, this model, if it really exists, seems appropriately equipped with impressive hardware to retain the Pro designation and lead Apple’s charge against the onslaught of so-called Ultrabooks.

The current MacBook Pro has undergone very little cosmetic change since its introduction in 2006. And for good reason, too. It’s a good-looking machine and try as they might, other notebook manufacturers have yet been able to replicate its sex appeal. In fact, according to 9to5mac’s report, the next version would not be drastically different either. Reportedly, the next model will incorporate many familiar design cues albeit in a thinner chassis. The most notable changes seem to be the elimination of an optical drive and the power button moved to the top right of the keyboard.

Intel is in the early stages of rolling out its next generation of mobile chips, which Apple will likely use for the next version of the MacBook Pro. Codenamed Ivy Bridge, these chips boost improved performance, better battery performance, and come with native support for both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connectivity. Interestingly enough, 9to5mac states that the next MBP will use several of both interconnects although in the past Apple has seemingly ignored USB 3.0, instead championing Thunderbolt’s faster speeds and multi-protocol support. Still, USB 3.0 offers dramatically faster speeds than USB 2.0 and it’s completely backwards compatible to the older spec.

While a thinner chassis and improved computing performance are impressive enough, the next MBP is rumored to launch with a so-called retina display. 9to5mac doesn’t detail the screen’s resolution, but in order to fall into Apple’s own definition of a retina display — that is, a display that boost the maximum amount of detail the human eye can perceive at a somewhat arbitrary distance — the resolution would have to be insane by today’s standard. For example it would have to exceed (possibly by a factor of two) the new iPad’s 9.7-inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536.

Today’s rumor peg the new model with a summer release. Best Buy is already slashing prices on its MacBook Pro inventory, somewhat signalling that new models are incoming. Pricing would likely be inline with current models although it wouldn’t be surprising to see the retina display positioned as a premium upgrade with lofty price.

The current MacBook Pro is in a desperate need of a weight loss regimen. As PC makers are utilizing Ultrabook design elements in full-size notebooks, Apple’s professional line is looking a little bloated in comparison. As an owner of a Core i7 15-inch model myself, I’ll admit to look longingly at coworkers rocking a featherlight MacBook Air. However, I love the larger screen and more I/O connections of the Pro line and am willing to put up with sub-two hour battery life and enough heat to fry an egg. Even if today’s rumors don’t pan out exactly to the letter, it’s a safe bet that Apple’s next MacBook Pro refresh will be something special in its own right — at least that’s what I’m telling myself as my 15-inch MBP is currently cooking my thighs.

[image via applemacbook.com]

What is 4G? Many an armchair philosopher over the past few weeks has pondered this concept and now, thanks to a minor tempest caused by upset customers, Apple has changed their iPad branding from “WiFi+4G” to “WiFi+Cellular.”

Although the iPads were compatible with US 4G networks, the iPads didn’t work with international 4G connections, thereby dropping a few folks in Australia into a tizzy. To prevent this, Apple put the old moniker down the memory hole and replaced it with the new naming convention.

Although Apple posted notices at the point of sale explaining the terminology, they also completely changed world-wide branding to reflect the concerns.

via SlashGear

As we approach the E3, the electronic gaming show in early June, I suspect that the value of “Retina” high-resolution displays will soon become apparent. While the prospect of Retina MacBooks is all but inevitable, we have reached a plateau when it comes to general computing and, more important, living room media.

The first question is, in short, why do we need a Retina MacBook? Presumably it would be a superior experience for video and photo editing and offer designers far more real estate on a large screen, especially when viewing photos at lower resolutions. As evidenced by the iPhone’s Retina display, gaming will become considerably more compelling. This presupposes a rich and vibrant OS X gaming ecosystem.

The second question is also quite interesting: If console manufacturers begin to promise 4K (4096 × 3072) video output, what does that mean for TV manufacturers? As we well know, the 3D craze was, just that, a craze. 3D hype was far overblown but 4K hype will be even crazier. Selling a few 3D screens would have been nice. Selling millions of 4K screens is a necessity. After all, 4K displays will be considerably more expensive and far less initially popular than even 3D. 3D was an iterative update, but 4K is a massive investment.

The market expansion of higher resolution displays is contingent on a few things. First, manufacturers need to be able to retool previous manufacturing facilities to produce 4K screens. This isn’t difficult, just a concern in a situation where 1080p and other resolutions are still widely popular.

Second, the global economy will need to be able to support a full upgrade from 1080p to 4K. Hard-core gamers will most definitely flock to the new resolutions, but will general users? Although the retina MacBooks will be sort of a gateway drug to higher resolution, convincing a cohort of television owners to upgrade will be tough, especially if they’ve just been burned by Blu-Ray (a dying, if not dead, format) and 3D.

It will also be delightful to hear all of the marketing-speak behind newer displays. While “Retina” is out, expect HP, Samsung, and Dell to offer “High-Rez” laptops and maybe even “SuperPlasmaWonderDisplay” phones. Display marketing will depend less on pixels and more on arbitrary words stuck together.

We still have a while to go before 4K is even a “thing,” higher resolution screens are coming and console makers and gaming PC manufacturers will probably be the first to push it through into the mainstream. Whither go gamers, the public follows and, although this is just a guess, I suspect the first “cheap” 4K screens will arrive around CES 2015 and really hit stores by 2016 – plenty of time to get the last few years of use out of your PS3 and Xbox 360, not to mention your heavy-duty gaming PC.

For Google Maps, winter is coming. Potentially.

As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, with the upcoming iOS 6 software, Apple intends to replace the Google Maps aspect of their default Maps application with their own, in-house version. Mark Gurman of 9to5 Mac was the first to report this news, and dives into more of the detail behind it, including the 3D aspect. John Paczkowski of AllThingsD confirmed the change. And after talking to my own source, I can beat the dead horse in confirming the switch.

I’ve also heard a little bit more. First of all, iOS 6, which is expected to be shown off in developer preview form at WWDC in June, is internally codenamed “Sundance”. Second, while Paczkowski’s source said the new maps functionality will “blow your head off”, I’ve been told that’s a bit of hyperbole (you think?). Specifically, while the 3D functionality is cool, it’s also not something people are going to use regularly. Think of it like Google Street View — cool, but how often do you actually use it when compared to the regular Google Maps product? (Having said that, I still expect Apple’s 3D maps to be cooler than Google Street View.)

More interesting to me is the implication of this switch. Let’s assume that alongside this change, Apple will also be replacing the default hooks in the iOS SDK that currently use Google Maps. This is a big deal for third party developers. While some choose to use other maps APIs (like Bing Maps, for example), the vast majority go with Google Maps because it’s baked right in and easy to hook up.

If that changes…

Consider Foursquare. They recently made headlines when they switched away from Google Maps on their website. At the same time, they made a point of saying they weren’t switching away from Google Maps on their mobile applications (where maps are obviously the most important). Why not? Again, because Google Maps are standard in both the iOS and Android SDKs. More importantly, unlike with the web, developers aren’t charged to use these maps on mobile. At least not yet.

Google recently made the change to start charging high volume customers of the Google Maps API on the web. Hence, the Foursquare switch, and several others larger customers are now either switching or considering switching. My guess would be that because of iOS, Apple may be the largest user of the Google Maps API right now. It’s not clear if Google charges Apple for this or not. Or if they’re about to start, as they have with other third-parties.

But it doesn’t matter. Apple can afford any charge Google throws their way, and would undoubtedly pay it if they thought it was worth it to ensure iOS remains the best mobile platform out there. This move away from Google Maps is more about controlling essential technology, as John Gruber points out today.

But the side effect of such a switch could seriously harm Google Maps as the de-facto mapping service. Again, because of their very nature, maps are most vital for mobile usage. And if Apple not only pulls iOS out, but takes millions of developers with them, Google Maps could suddenly go from behemoth to vulnerable. (Which makes their decision to start charging large customers all the more dumbfounding — this cannot be a huge source of revenue for Google, no matter the scale.)

Of course, Apple will have to ensure that their mapping product is flawless, or developers will choose to go with Google Maps anyway (assuming that’s still an option — even if it’s slightly more complicated). But given what’s now leaking out about the product, it would seem that after years of work, Apple is finally ready to take on the mapping challenge. And this may be even more problematic for Google than it seems on the surface.

As a quick aside, while there’s not much other iOS 6 information floating around out there right now, there have been whispers backing up Gruber’s assertion that Siri APIs are another possibility. There have also been whispers about Siri for iPad finally coming. Specifically, I’ve been led to believe it’s more of a UI issue than anything else. After all, Apple is using the technology for the Dictation functionality found on the new iPad. They’ve just been working on what Siri for iPad will look like, I’ve been led to believe.

As we’ve seen the past few days, new iCloud functionality should be a key part of iOS 6 as well. And more deep ties into the forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion should be revealed.

There is also some chatter about iTunes 11. It has been a not-so-well-kept secret that Apple has been trying to completely re-write the software for a long time. There have been several false starts and scrapping of projects. It’s believed (but far from confirmed) that Apple may be zeroing in on the major revamp they’re after. And a part of that may be both Apple and the labels warming to a full-on Spotify competitor…

Pure speculation at this point, but fun speculation.

Update: To back-up the “Sundance” information, Nima Moayedi reminds us that Apple has a history of codenaming iOS builds after ski resorts. Sure enough…

[image: 20th Century Fox]

Google’s map data has been baked into the iOS Maps app since the days of the first, thick, aluminum-backed iPhone, but that may no longer be the case once iOS 6 hits the streets. Unnamed sources told 9to5Mac that the Cupertino company would instead take that opportunity to reveal their own Maps application, and those early reports paint a pretty impressive picture.

Astute readers may recall that Apple has been on something of a mapping company shopping spree these past few years — what began with the purchase of Placebase in 2009, continued with Poly9 in 2010, and culminated with Apple snapping up C3 Technologies late last year.

As far as the app itself goes, the biggest addition to the mix is a robust new 3D mode that is said to be a straight implementation of the what C3 was already working on when they were acquired. Considering how damned good some of their 3D maps looked, this should be a real treat (assuming the report isn’t just hot air). Also on deck is an updated street view mode also courtesy of C3, and what would a major revamp be without a new app icon?

While C3′s (and possibly Poly9′s) tech seems to have been used in building (or replacing) features, the purchase of white-label mapping service Placebase presumably allowed Apple to build up their store of map data to the point where they apparently feel comfortable giving Google the boot. Apple has forecast their shift away from reliance on Google in other ways, too — about two months ago, Apple switched from using Google’s map data to data provided by the OpenStreetMaps project (even if it did take them a while to own up to it).

While Apple isn’t expected to fully unveil iOS 6 and all the changes they’ve made until this year’s WWDC in June, if you’re champing at the bit for nifty 3D mapping functionality on your iDevice, apps like UpNext Maps may be able to hold you over until Apple delivers their next big iOS update.

Plug in your iDevices people, because Apple just released an update.

It’s a minor one, to be sure, but brings about some rather helpful bug fixes. Most notably, you should no longer receive the “Unable To Purchase” message when buying digital content from the iTunes or App Store.

There have also been some complaints about AirPlay video playback, which will be resolved with iOS 5.1.1, as will a bug that prevented the new iPad from switching between 2G and 3G networks. The update will also improve the reliability of using the HDR option for pics snapped with the Lock Screen camera shortcut.

It’s been two months since Apple released iOS 5.1, which added the swipe to open camera function and fixed a few call quality and battery life bugs.

As previously mentioned, this certainly isn’t the most exciting thing we’ve seen come out of Apple, but an upgrade is an upgrade. So go ahead and plug in your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch and get your update on.

In one of the most anticlimactic (and likely ineffective) marketing campaigns in history, RIM has today launched its “Wake Up. Be Bold.” campaign in Australia. It began with a group of “protestors” disembarking from a bus outside of Apple’s Sydney store with signs that read “Wake Up.” But don’t get too excited — that’s the most exciting part of the story.

After the long and vigorous rivalry between Samsung and Apple, both in marketing and in the courts, the South Korea-based company was originally blamed for the seemingly out-of-the-blue protest. RIM, of course, kept quiet.

But it was in fact RIM that staged the shit show, which all culminated in the launch of the wakeupbebold.com website, wherein an Australian man explains how business has changed and that to be different you mustn’t just “think different,” but “do different” (which I’m fairly certain is grammatically incorrect), lest you end up “floating through life like a cork in a stream.”

Not only is the ad boring — just a stream of text accompanied by a voice — but it really doesn’t resonate in any way shape or form. At BlackBerry Jam last week, we saw some pretty cool new features that will ship with BB10, including a badass new keyboard and a retro time-defying camera app built with tech licensed from Scalado.

Yet, the ad talks about how business is no longer conducted by briefcase-carrying, cubicle-sitting suits. But if I remember correctly, it’s the old-school business man (likely forced by his big business employer) that still uses a BlackBerry. Way to go for a new demographic, RIM.

What’s worse, the mantra of “BlackBerry isn’t for everyone” is woven throughout the campaign. “We know some people will choose to float on by, and that’s fine,” says the random voice.

Not once throughout the ad does the company make mention of why RIM is ready to take on the iPhone and grab its core customer base (or floating corks, if I may be so bold), and the campaign can’t even really crack a solid joke at Apple the way Samsung manages to do in its campaign spots.

I usually love writing about phone ads, but this was a depressing and disappointing way to open up the week. Thanks for that, RIM.

Oh the “where do I find hot startups?” problem … VCs have been grappling with this for ages, resorting to such avenues as rampant gossiping, reading TechCrunch, informally tapping into early stage investor networks for intros to later stage deals and apparently, according to PandoDaily‘s Sarah Lacy, setting up formal programs where entrepreneurs who are “network rich and cash poor” serve as deal scouts. Makes sense.

Thus becoming the platform for startup discovery presents a huge opportunity for anyone who comes up with a grand solution: And, because which hot startup isn’t mobile these days, Apple itself is rumored to be trying to solve the problem with its own app discovery and promotion platform, aiming to go beyond its Featured section and expand into more intensive forms of app publicity. Its recent acquisition of Chomp harkens to this ambition and project, though as far as I can tell it still has a long way to go.

Being in on something early has become an increasingly hot commodity. But beyond word of mouth and TechCrunch, where’s an aspiring deal scout to go when they need to find the hippest startups? (Other than AngelList of course, but that’s a whole ‘nother post …)

Curious, I talked with one of the more informal Silicon Valley startup scouts earlier this week, and asked them about their process for finding cool new companies. The answer? Well, there’s an app for that of course. Many actually.

While it won’t cover non-mobile, non-consumer outliers like Palantir, this “deal scout” had a fascinating process, using iOS discovery apps to figure out which mobile startups were promising. The scout’s two most thumbed iOS apps for finding early stage startups were Chomp and Crosswalk, with Discovr Apps being used to check in on possible competitors. The scout took an hour each day to go through the “New” section of the App Store via Chomp, scrolling through thousands of apps looking for ones that fit the profile of a startup.

“You can tell which apps are going to be startups by reading the app name…. i.e. Pair, Highlight, Circle, Glimpse …. Words that are ‘Web 2.0,’ the scout went on. “Names that are singular words, Cloudy, Clear, Path, SideCar, are obvious technology startups. Words and/or sentences that are like…. ‘complete guide to,’ ‘tips & tricks for,’ ‘blah blah blah lite’ ‘religious jargon’…. are not startups.”

After scout used Chomp and Crosswalk to figure out what was trending, i.e. which mobile apps were seeing the most user acquisition, they then used Discovr Apps to highlight potential competitors. For example, for this article, we figured out that Zwapp, FrenzApp, AppGrooves, AppsFire and Appshopper were all app discovery competitors to Chomp and Crosswalk, using the Discovr Apps app.

But where do you go after you’ve found the newest, hottest apps? How can one tell what will be a good bet?

“It’s super hard to tell what’s going to be successful,” my source said, “I download them, and test the apps and then contact the founders, ask[ing] them questions about how it’s going, why they built it (i.e.what problem they’re solving), and where they see it going. In addition, the scout said that they check blogs and AngelList to find out whether or not early stage influencers or biggies like Sequoia had already invested.

They also mentioned that they didn’t use the Android market because it was very rare for a successful app to originate on Android and then cross over to iOS.

So should other deal scouts, or anyone who’s interested in early stage startups take this advice and download some apps that find other apps immediately? “If they want to find super early apps that may be potential ‘ins’ for investment, yes, they do/should use these apps,” the scout said. That, and wait until AngelList goes mobile.

Image via Olly 

Editor’s note: Alexander Haislip is a marketing executive with cloud-based server automation startup ScaleXtreme and the author of Essentials of Venture Capital. Follow him on Twitter @ahaislip.

Congratulations. You’re the CEO of a startup. You’re doing the hardest job in business. You’ve raised money from venture capitalists and turned down better-paying jobs elsewhere. You’ve mastered complicated things such as capitalization tables and common things, such as payroll. You’ve fought with competitors, coworkers, friends and even yourself without losing your way or your wits. You’ve inspired others to work beside you each day to make your dream a reality. I salute you.

Now, everybody else calling himself or herself a CEO—listen up, this is for you: stop it. Just stop calling yourself a CEO.

Stop putting “CEO” on the business cards you printed last week at Moo.com for YourLastName Consulting LLC. Take it off your LinkedIn page. Remove it from the résumé you’re passing around in hopes of getting hired. Self-titling as CEO is an atonal homage to structurally mandated social hierarchies, not a statement of your iconoclastic self-determination.

Maybe it’s generational. Steve Jobs’ early business card read: “Vice President, New Product Development,” in part because he recognized he didn’t have the skills to run the company he wanted to build. At least not yet. Bill Gates went with the classic and somewhat understated “President.” But today’s tech titans have opted for something much more conspicuous. If you were one of the folks to get an early Mark Zuckerberg card, you may remember the supercilious line: “I’m CEO, Bitch.” Way to stay classy, Zuck.

Facebook aside, title inflation is bad for business. Calling yourself the CEO will label you as either an egoist or someone with confidence compensation issues. That will make people less willing to work with you or help you. Taking the top title in a company also suggests a limited vision of what your company can become. Ask yourself: would you still be CEO if it were a $100 billion business or would you require what’s euphemistically called “adult supervision?”

So stop pretending to have attained a title you didn’t earn and start doing what you need to do to get to where you want to be. Here’s how:

Attract Awesome People

Jobs had Wozniak and later, Markkula. Clark had Andreessen. McNeally had Bechtolsheim, Joy and Khosla. A remarkable CEO should be like the moon, illuminated by the reflected light of all the stars he or she has brought into orbit. Awesome people act as accelerants to whatever you’re doing. They push ideas forward, execute with aplomb and challenge you to new heights.

If you can hire, hire. If you can’t hire, bring them into your orbit as advisors, friends and fellow travelers. Get them to invest their creativity and energy.

To get the true benefits of awesome people, focus on diversity. You want to have as many different perspectives on a problem as you possibly can, so bring on the best people from as wide array of backgrounds and from different generations. They’ll learn from each other and the confluence of their experiences will be the basis of company creativity for years to come.

Most importantly, attracting awesome people to your company precludes retreat. You carry too valuable a cargo of energy and confidence invested by others to turn back.

Build an Experience, Not a Product

Eric Ries has put the concept of the minimally viable product (MVP) front and center in the minds of Silicon Valley startups. But this focus is somewhat misguided. Products give you utility and then may be discarded. Products are the one-night stands of business. Experiences give you memories and good experiences will bring you back for more, it engenders a long-term relationship. The best CEOs know this instinctively and do all that they can to create and cultivate an attractive experience for their customers.

Once you’ve got a good experience, cement it with the bond of buying. A funny thing happens when people buy your product: they invest their energy into the choice and will find reasons to justify their action. In the early days of Apple, customers loved their computers because they had to pay a boatload of money for them. They found aspects of the experience they could rave about just to justify their purchase to others.

That price tag is valuable to you too. It focuses the mind tremendously and forces you to deliver a unique and memorable experience of real value. When you offer a product for free, you aren’t forced to justify your existence to customers or show a useful benefit. That’s why we see half a dozen Instagram clones.

A CEO doesn’t market a product to users. A CEO sells an experience to customers.

Learn Finance

If you wanted to be a rock star, you’d have to learn to read music and if you wanted to be an award-winning novelist, you’d have to learn basic grammar. It should not come as a surprise that if you want to be the CEO of a business you should learn finance. Yet we regularly see founders blowing off finance or outsourcing major financial decisions to hired guns.

There’s no secret to learning finance. There are plenty of good books that can take you through the basics of accounting up to the execution of liquidity preferences under preferred stock agreements. Interview friends that have run their own companies, worked in banking or had P&L experience for a division in a larger company. Start using QuickBooks. Today it’s easy to find help online from corporate finance communities such as Proformative.

For startups, there’s one important financial metric that matters more than any other: months left to live given your current burn rate. Real CEOs know this number and manage it religiously.

Define a Big Goal and Take Small Steps

Plenty of wannabe Silicon Valley CEOs have read Jim Collins and will tell you about their BHAG (That’s their Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal). They’ll tell you that they want to revolutionize the datacenter, or change the face of mobile payments, or create a new paradigm for social sharing, or something equally nebulous. That’s great. But it’s the ability to both set that goal and show how you’re going to achieve it that marks a real CEO.

Successful CEOs balance aspirations with operations. They focus on things that can be done today to secure customers and growth over time—not on the title they put on their business cards.