It’s likely to be a busy news week for Apple fans in the lead-up to Christmas this coming weekend. Apple is shutting down their iTunes Connect developer portal come Thursday which means no new apps or updates until next Friday, December 30 so these companies are scrambling like elves at the North Pole to get their latest work approved and out the door before then. In the meantime, kick your feet up and take a look at what’s making news for this fine Monday, December 19, 2011.
It’s almost becoming too easy to poke fun at Research In Motion, the onetime smartphone giant who seems to be tied with Netflix for 2011’s most clumsy tech business. Case in point: A report from Electronista claiming that 22 pallets of BlackBerry PlayBook units were stolen -- along with the big rig carrying them through Indiana en route back to home base in Waterloo. The cargo carries a street value of $1.7 million, although it’s unknown if that’s based on the original $499 retail price or the recent fire sale pricing of only $199. In any event, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the company’s $485 million inventory write-down on the failed PlayBook tablet for this quarter, that’s for sure.
Meanwhile, AppleInsider is reporting that RIM’s entire operation is now worth less than Apple’s App Store alone. According to author Brian S. Hall, RIM’s current stock price of $13.44 for a total value of $7.04 billion last week, just a few bucks shy of the $7.08 billion that Apple’s App Store alone is estimated to be worth. “The App Store is probably worth more than BlackBerry,” Hall explains. “All of BlackBerry. Just the App Store. Nothing else. Not the iPhone or iPod. Not Mac. Just the App Store.” Ouch.
Christmas is coming, and it’s that time of year that sends developers into a nervous condition. Why? The surge in App Store sales on Christmas Day alone makes for a nice year-end bump in revenue, but it also falls during an eight-day stretch when Apple’s iTunes Connect is closed for the holidays. According to a new report from The New York Times, the annual shutdown begins on Thursday, December 22 and ends a week later, with regular new app submissions and updates flowing again on Friday, December 30. During the shutdown, developers are essentially frozen in time, with no way to offer new apps or even push out patches for existing ones, should last-minute bugs rear their ugly head -- although app sales will continue unabated, there just won’t be any human curators working during the downtime. That means a mad rush to approve new apps and updates in the next three days before the curators go home for the holidays -- and a big surge in new sales from all those iPhones, iPod touches and iPads getting opened on Sunday morning.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on how “Apple executives have discussed their vision for the future of TV with media executives at several large companies,” according to the usual “people familiar with the matter.” Of course, the report comes on the heels of many others offering little to no detail on exactly how Apple intends to conquer the living room with a branded HDTV set after the late co-founder Steve Jobs told official biographer Walter Isaacson that he “finally cracked it” while discussing an interface for reinventing the television. The new report is equally vague on details, mentioning only “technology that would respond to users’ voices and movements” in one meeting, although Apple supposedly indicated such technology might “take longer than some of its other ideas.” We’d sure like to hear what they are...
SHAPE Services today pushed out a new update to their popular IM+ app which now adds Beep, a cross-platform messaging service for iOS (including iPod touch and iPad), Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. Baked right into the existing IM+ app, Beep brings your address book contacts into the instant messaging fold while saving money on SMS and MMS messages. The update also includes a new interactive Angry Birds theme for iOS users with a moving background and flying birds and pigs from the beloved Rovio games. In-app location-based chat service Neighbors has also added a new “shouts” feature for group chats as well. Both the free and paid IM+ Pro editions can be purchased or updated from the App Store, available now.
If you’re one of the few, the proud using an unlocked iPhone here in the U.S., chances are you’re doing it through T-Mobile. One of the longtime disappointments of their otherwise fine service has been the lack of 3G data, which uses a different radio band than AT&T. TMoNews.com is reporting that a number of unlocked iPhone users in the Pacific Northwest, Nevada and parts of Northern California are starting to see a heart-warming 3G icon light up on their handsets, which appears to be T-Mobile doing some shuffling of their radio bands. These users are picking up a 3G data connection on the 1900MHz band usually reserved for PCS, which is now pumping out some HSPA+ love for these unlocked handset owners. It’s unknown if this is something T-Mobile is simply dabbling with or the start of a real shift toward iPhone-friendly 3G, but the lucky users who are receiving it prior to Christmas are likely just pleased as punch to have it at all.
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