The company has told some applications developers, including Sony, that they can no longer sell content, like e-books, within their apps, or let customers have access to purchases they have made outside the App Store.
Apple rejected Sony’s iPhone application, which would have let people buy and read e-books bought from the Sony Reader Store.
Apple told Sony that from now on, all in-app purchases would have to go through Apple, said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division.
Category: Apple
‘One Mac mini’
Chris Foresman at Ars, discussing Omni Group’s free OTA sync service:
The cloud syncing service is built to work with any WebDAV server, so users can use iDisk, their own server, or use Omni Group’s free hosted service.
“We actually host over 10,000 users on one Mac mini,” [Omni Group CEO Ken] Case said, explaining that as long as the service can scale on such modest hardware, Omni will continue to offer free syncing. However, some corporate customers would likely prefer to host their own data for security purposes, and WebDAV gives them an easy way to do that with minimal effort.
Moron of the Week: Netgear CEO Patrick Lo
Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform. Ultimately a closed system just can’t go that far … If they continue to close it and let Android continue to creep up then it’s pretty difficult as I see it. Right now the closed platform has been successful for Apple because they’ve been so far ahead as thought leaders because of Steve Jobs.
ActiveSAN
While it looks like killer hardware, this thing doesn’t run OS X Server. So calling it an “Xserve replacement” is something I really can’t bring myself to do.
The Next MacBook Pro
Marco weighs in on the future of Apple’s portable lineup:
I’m predicting the next 15” to be, effectively, the halfway point between the current one and what you’d expect a 15” Air to be.
I have little doubt that this is the future of the 15”, but I do think it’s risky to predict it now. Apple always kills off old technology and moves forward a little too soon for some people’s comfort (which usually works out very well), but this is a major change, and it might be too much at once.
‘You’ll Just End up Sad in the End’
In my weekly column at Macgasm, I shared my thoughts on the hype surrounding the next iPad.
OmniFocus Aid
OmniFocus Aid would be lightweight, easy to use, and built for the sole purpose of throwing tasks into your OmniFocus database when at your Mac. Or, put another way, it would be a utility that consisted of just the top-notch ways that OmniFocus for Mac currently lets you capture action items:
- Quick Entry Pane (not unlike the one that already ships with OmniFocus)
- It knows your projects and contexts
- Supports clippings, Mail rules, and bookmarklets
It should install in the Menu Bar to be accessible for those who don’t swear by the keyboard, and it should sync in the background. It could sell for a few bucks to anyone who purchases the iPad or iPhone versions.
Twenty Third-Party Apps
Deleted. Deleted. Deleted.
Suddenly, I’d gone from having 60 third-party apps on my phone to having a mere 20. That’s enough to fit on two screens (if you stuff the Stock Apps you can’t delete and don’t use into a folder). It’s been about 15 minutes since I finished, and already I can’t remember half the apps I deleted. I think that’s a great sign that I did the right thing.
A ‘Rocky’ Time
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson seems confident AT&T won’t suffer too badly at the hands of the Verizon iPhone:
[The coming months] may be rocky, volatile and hard to predict, but as the market stabilizes, we will work through it.
Good luck, dude.
Software Updates and the App Store
Cabel, writing about a bugfix release for Transmit:
We wrapped up Transmit 4.1.5 on January 6th, fixing some important bugs and addressing two major (and unexpected) Mac App Store issues with Transmit Disk and Amazon S3, part of the pain of the bleeding edge.
Our plan was simple: submit 4.1.5 to the Mac App Store, but don’t post it to our direct customers until it’s approved by Apple, so all customers are treated equally and get the update at the same time.
iOS Minimalism
Several days ago, I asked Patrick Rhone (on Tumblr) his thoughts on minimal computing with iOS. Quite surprisingly, Episode 3 of his new “Enough” podcast answers my question.
If you aren’t listening to this show, you really are missing out.
What Dave Caolo Took to Macworld
I’m super jealous of that 11.6" Air, but not of those headphones.