A bit of content news in this Friday edition of the recap, with Amazon's MP3 Store now allowing purchases from the iPhone and iPad, updates to the Dolphin Browser and the debut of Rolling Stone magazine on Newsstand. It will have to tide you over, since there won't be a weekend recap on Monday as we'll all be off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so enjoy your three-day weekend, folks!
If you can't beat 'em, code around them! Amazon announced Thursday that its MP3 Store has now been optimized for the iPhone and iPod touch, allowing iOS users access to the e-tailer's 22 million large catalog of songs, all with the ability to purchase tracks from the palm of your hand, then use the free Amazon Cloud Player app to stream or download them to your device. The website is built on HMTL5, and all purchases are stored in the cloud, where they can also be downloaded any time to your desktop computer as well. It's a pretty clever move on Amazon's part, and there's not much Apple can do about it, since they've always touted Mobile Safari as an open alternative to the App Store. To get there, simply point your iPhone browser to the MP3 Store and start shopping.
Thursday marked the arrival of Rolling Stone magazine onto the iPad, complete with Newsstand subscriptions (one month for $1.99 or one year for $19.99) as well as single issues for only $4.99, with a one-month free trial after installing. Unfortunately, for print subscribers, the news is less awesome: Judging from the hostile customer reviews for the app, your print sub means little to the Newsstand version, and won't get you access to all of the pop culture goodness -- at least not yet. For everyone else, the 7.4MB download awaits.
USA Today has published several photos from the unauthorized Steve Jobs biopic jOBS this week, giving us a better look at what Ashton Kutcher looks like playing the late Apple co-founder. The photos also give a look at actor Josh Gad's performance as Steve Wozniak (known to his fans as simply "Woz"), but is it just us or does he seem quite a bit off the mark? If you happen to be heading to the Sundance Film Festival later this month, you can get your first look at the flick, whose world premiere will be the closing night film -- and then start waiting for the real deal with the Aaron Sorkin adaptation of the best-selling Walter Isaacson bio coming from Sony.
If you prefer to rock a third-party browser on your iOS device, MoboTap has just unveiled Dolphin Browser version 7.0 (version 6.0 for iPad), a pretty significant update to the mobile web browser. Among the superpowers injected into the latest version are one-tap sharing to Twitter, Facebook and email as well as the ability to clip web content straight to Dropbox or Box. Dolphin Connect support also allows the Chrome, Firefox and Safari extensions to send tabs, images, phone numbers and directions between desktop and mobile browsers and even sync bookmarks, tabs, history and passwords across devices. In other words, this is a pretty awesome update to the free browser app, so get thee to the App Store and start downloading for iPhone/iPod touch or iPad right now.
Well, that wasn't very nice! Wired has an interview with Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page, who discusses why the search giant continues to reach for seemingly impossible projects like a self-driving car. Tucked away among the questions asked by journalist Steven Levy is a comment posed as a question about late Apple founder Steve Jobs' quest to "go to thermonuclear war" with Apple over Android, to which the Google CEO quips, "How well is that working?" Of course, the verdict is still out how well Apple is fending off Android handset makers such as Samsung in court, but we'd say the company's exceptionally healthy profits speak for themselves...
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