The game was added to the iTunes App Store in January and was available for 99 cents.  The game look and felt just like the original game.  The original game required a Zapper peripheral fake gun.  The game features ducks that you have to shoot, coming in one-two-or-three at a time.  If you didn’t shoot the ducks in time, they would fly away and you would miss out on necessary points to advance to the next level.  The dog would even laugh in your face if you missed.  But if you hit the bird, the dog would smile and hold the duck up by the neck as seen in the image above.

Lucas Mansfield was the developer of the game at Lawl Mart.  The game had the same sounds and music from the original game.  “It’s an unfortunate situation, but I do understand Nintendo’s position,” stated Mansfield.  Mansfield intends on releasing a similar game that isn’t a direct rip-off of the original.

AT&T’s 4th quarter net income was $2.4 billion, down from $3.1 billion one year ago.  AT&T also added that their earnings were hit by the iPhone 3G initiative which involved ramping up their 3G networks.  This year, AT&T made about $12.9 billion in net income on revenue of $124 billion.

Revenue for AT&T competitor Verizon Wireless was about $24.6 billion in the 4th quarter.

After taking a picture of the cube, the application will use computer-vision to match the colors automatically.  CubeCheater uses the Kociemba algorithm to provide the solution of the Rubik’s cube, thus making the puzzle solvable within 20 moves.

CubeCheater’s most updated version of the software has different styles of cubes including the blue-white cubes sold in Japan and cube configurations can be customized if you have a non-standard cube.

CubeCheater currently has about 49 reviews with an average rating of about 3.5 stars. The application was made by Eric Faller

“Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history — surpassing 10 billion dollars in quarterly revenue for the first time ever,” stated Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a release.   Apple sold 2.52 million Macintosh computers during Q1 2009 and 22.73 million iPods.

Apple sold over 4.36 million iPhones this quarter.  This is almost double what they sold in the fiscal first quarter of last year.  However the Apple sold 6.9 million iPhones last quarter.  Even though there was a slowdown iPhones sold, this has not caused a slowdown in applications sold in the App Store.  Over 500 million applications have been sold within the last few months, also contributing to Apple’s profits.

During the earnings call, Apple COO Tim Cook made an interesting statement.  When asked about upcoming competition like the Pre, BlackBerry, and Android, Cook stated “We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does.”  The Palm Pre has a multi-touch user interface and Apple holds a patent on this.

Cook was also asked about whether he was talking about Palm in regards to that statement, he replied “I don’t want to talk about any specific company. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off.”

Interestingly, Palm’s chairman is former Apple product chief Jon Rubinstein.  Rubinstein was put in charge of Palm by Elevation Partners.  Elevation Partners is Palm’s biggest investor, who made a recent $100 million investment for the Pre.  Elevation invested $325 million into Palm last year too.

[via TechCrunch and Apple PR]

1. Spellwinder - Word search game where adjacent letters are used to create words.
2. Dice King - Dice swapping puzzle game where two adjacent dice form matching combinations of three or more.
3. Prismatrix - Color sequence matching game with hexagonal gems.
4. Combo 11 - Card elimination game.
5. Carpet - Similar to Solitaire, but all the aces have already been dealt.

[via Macworld]

Steve Jobs is considering a liver transplant during his five month medical leave.  The Apple stock took a hit after the news that Jobs reported that he had hormonal imbalance and took medical leave shortly after.

“The good news flipped by the bad news makes one wonder what Apple knew,” stated Duke University law professor James Cox. “It’s not surprising for the SEC to come in and look afterward, given the pressure and publicity regarding their handling of a lot of cases.” Most recently, the U.S. SEC was criticized for the handling of the Madoff scam.

Apple will be reporting their first quarter earnings at the end of the market close today.  A conference call will following the earnings report at 5PM Eastern Time.

[via Bloomberg]

Two hundred million of those downloads were made in the last 42 days.  That gives us 4,761,904 downloads per day.  The App Store just started about 6 months ago with about 500 applications to start with.

Carnoy released the book as a free download on the iTunes App Store, but it was rejected for “obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory” language.  Carnoy decided to resubmit the book into the iTunes App Store after cleaning up the language in the book.  He replaced the S word to “damn” or “crap” and replaced the F word with just the letter F in the novel.  Carnoy hopes one day that the book will be able to be added to the App Store without censorship.

Some of the other applications have already been accepted for having mature content in a NSFW type of option, but not yet books.  To read the novel, click here [iTunes link]

[via Gizmodo]

Tim Cook will be watching over Apple while Steve is out on medical leave, yet he has a much different style of handling the company.  Cook is known for the way the marathons of meetings he runs and the late nights he spends at the office.  Cook’s job will have a bit more pressure while Steve is out.  Apple shareholders will be breathing down his neck to make sure he fills in the Apple leader’s shoes properly.

This isn’t the first time that Tim Cook has filled in for Steve Jobs.  In 2004, Tim filled in for Jobs while he underwent treatment for pancreatic cancer.  Jobs was away for more than a month.

Tim Cook went to Auburn University for undergraduation studies and followed it up with an MBA from Duke University.  Cook is also on the board of Nike Inc.  Apple hired Cook in 1998 to make Apple’s oversee logistics.  Apple’s manufacturing was so inefficient that they were losing customers to Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Company.  Before Apple, Cook was VP at Compaq and spent 12 years at IBM before that.

Even though Cook doesn’t pound on the table and isn’t nearly as charasmatic as Steve, he has mastered the art of constant questioning.  “He is the master of the Socratic method — he will continue to ask why and why and why,” stated Mike Janes, who worked with Tim Cook for about 5 years.  “If you’re not prepared, it can be a very uncomfortable place.”