More Noise to Signal.

Combine these efforts with the existing iPhone tie-ins — Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail — along with AppleTV’s recently added support for YouTube, and we can see how the Apple/Google alliance is strengthening.

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This is not the first time that Apple had issues with its power adapters. In August, Apple announced that it was investigating issues with its MagSafe power adapters for the MacBook and MacBook Pro line. According to some users, these adapters tend to overheat, short out, and burn.

With millions of iPhone 3G phones sold in the last few months, this is a major undertaking for Apple. The only advantage for Apple is that these power adapters are relatively inexpensive. Currently, replacement adapters retail for $29, though Apple's actual cost is surely a lot less. Apple will probably take a small financial hit from this, but the real question will be if the image of the iPhone will be tarnished by this recall - especially after so many users have already complained about other problems with the phone.

During the period where the activation servers were down, the Apple store employees let everybody still buy their phones and had them finalize the activation at home. As it turns out, that might not have been very useful at all, especially if the iPhone servers are still only working intermittently.

According to various reports online, these problems weren't just limited to the US, but pretty much occurred around the globe. Given how widespread these reports about problems are, it would seem that the majority of issues was more due to Apple's fault than the local carriers'.

If Apple is really working on this, then we expect them to release it through a similar annual subscription model as Mobile Me. Chances are that Apple will also use the same SproutCore JavaScript framework it used for MobileMe. When Apple first discussed SproutCore, some already assumed that the natural next step for Apple would be a productivity app built around this framework.

Will the MobileMe Disaster Repeat Itself?

Given what a disaster the release of Apple's Mobile Me online email and calendaring applications was, we can only hope that Apple, if it really decides to go this route, will have learned from that experience.

A Taste of the Cloud iWork: 280 Slides

If you want a taste of what these online apps could look like, have a look at 280slides, a Keynote-like online presentation app that was developed by two former Apple engineers.

On the other hand, as Zac points out, getting some of this functionality into applications now would definitely help putting some pressure on Apple to release this functionality quickly. After all, there are a good number of applications that just aren't very useful without being able to copy and paste (blog clients, text editors, email clients, etc.).

Zac also notes that he doesn't think that Apple is trying to squash OpenClip on purpose, but it does seem as if Apple is creating a bit of a moving target for developers. Given Apple's penchant for secrecy, every developer who is trying to write an application that gets relatively deep into the OS has to fear that Apple might just close off some necessary functionality without warning.

According to Schiller, iWork.com will work on all the major browsers, including Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Documents are not only viewable online, but can also be downloaded.

Apple also announced a Keynote Remote iPhone app, that will be available in the App Store for $0.99, as well as major updates to its iWork and iLife suites.

Apple once again had to accept defeat and has announced that it will extend all subscriptions to its bug-ridden MobileMe service for yet another 60 days. This move comes after the company already gave every subscriber an extra 30 days after the botched launch of the product in July. MobileMe is quickly becoming Apple's most public failure in recent years - when the service first opened, it was basically rendered non-functional for the first couple of days, after that, a good number of users stopped receiving email, calendars disappeared or didn't sync, and the service often simply didn't work.

MobileMe was supposed to be Apple's answer to Web 2.0 mail clients like Gmail or Yahoo Mail, but instead, it has turned out to be a relatively clunky and slow paid alternative to a lot of free services. While the MobileMe email client has some neat features like QuickReply, it often doesn't stack up against its free competitors.

Besides handling mail, MobileMe also manages contacts and calendars, as well as online storage and photo-management (both of which are pretty much useless for Windows users, by the way). MobileMe users have complained about problems with pretty much every single aspect of the service, so giving everybody a total of three free months of subscription (which is pretty much three times the lifetime of the service so far) is a small consolation for the agony a lot of paying users have had with MobileMe. Thanks to the constant service interruptions, MobileMe even became the target for phishers.

Given that nobody is paying for MobileMe right now anyway, maybe Apple should just have had an open, three-month beta period.

"Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices."

Fair enough, Apple had to play by the rules of 'the big 4' record labels. Apple’s DRM system then, called FairPlay, is all about protecting the copyright of the music companies. And who can argue with the success of that strategy - Jobs notes later in the article that up till the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store.

The crux of the article is Jobs' 3 alternatives to DRM for the future:

However Jobs argues that there is no lock-in, since "97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store".

2) "...Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores."

However Jobs doesn't like this option, as it'd mean revealing "secrets" about the DRM to competitors. Also Apple would then not be able to guarantee "to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies."

3) Which leaves the third scenario: abolish DRMs entirely. At which point Jobs passes the ball firmly back into the record companies court, arguing that "DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy."

Conclusion

In effect (and Apple fans please don't get upset with this phrasing of words), this article is a piece of propaganda from Apple. The position is that Apple and Steve Jobs hate DRM just as much as you and I, so they will gladly support the abolition of DRM - if the big record companies choose to do so. Apple is positioning itself on our side, in the war against DRM. This is all very well, and a very commendable stance from Jobs and Apple. But I'm left feeling that surely there's more Apple can do to fight DRM than to simply give a hospital pass to the record companies? Apple is after all totally dominant in the online music industry, so it now has considerable power of its own. They are not totally at the mercy of record labels.... are they?! Because that's what this article from Steve Jobs makes it out to be.

According to a post on Apple's website, the company is now claiming - for the record - that they will not guarantee other devices will sync with the iTunes software nor will they support those devices.

Here's how the post reads:

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

That sounds like a definite slap in the face to the Pre who may soon see one of their main selling points disappear with a simple update to the iTunes software.

Still, Apple has to be careful not to implement the update in a such way that makes it appear that they've done so just to break the Pre's syncing ability...that would reek of anti-competitiveness and could get them in trouble with the U.S. Department of Justice. However, we know Apple is filled with enough smart people that they could surely think of a way to break it without making it look like they broke it on purpose . The question is, will they really do something that under-handed and sneaky? Or do they just want to create a climate of fear by implying that you can't trust the Pre to always work?

Either way, it doesn't look like good news for Palm.

While Apple uses games from Electronic Arts and the I Am T-Pain app as examples of highly popular applications, these apps also profited from instant name recognition and a built-in fan base. For other apps, getting discovered in the Apps Store is getting increasingly hard as the competition heats up. Besides bringing a rather lackluster version of the genius feature to the App Store, Apple also hasn't made any significant improvements to the app discovery experience in iTunes and the mobile store.

Now, Apple has released another tool to extend the functionality, allowing enterprises to access logs and install apps on iPhones as well as configure them.

The iPhone Configuration Utility is available exclusively for enterprises running Mac OS X. Enterprises can use any of the three tools to create a configuration file and email or post the file to a web site. The file is in XML format and can be installed onto the company's iPhones with the following settings pre-configured:

• Device security policies
• VPN configuration information
• Wi-Fi settings, APN settings
• Exchange account settings
• Mail settings
• Certificates that permit iPhone and iPod touch devices to work with your enterprise systems

The difference between the tools is that the iPhone Configuration Web Utilities allow enterprises to create config files while the iPhone Configuration Utility for Max OS X allows enterprises to also access logs and install apps on iPhones.

Breaking Ground in the Enterprise Market

Unfortunately, Apple is choosing to limit their reach within enterprises by only allowing the Configuration Utility to work on enterprises running Mac OS X. There is a relatively small number of enterprises running their OS when compared with those running Windows operating systems. However, we're hopeful that Apple will soon release the same functionality for enterprises running Windows. All of these tools are available for free in the Enterprise Support section of the Apple's website. For more information on integrating iPhones within your enterprise, we recommend checking out the Enterprise Deployment Guide (Third Edition)(PDF).

We got a chance to test both apps and both work just as advertised. For the AIM app, for example, the delay between sending a message and a notification popping up on our phone was usually under five seconds and sometimes almost instantaneous. Push, by the way, is enabled both for the free AIM app, which features ads, and the $2.99 paid version which is ad-free. One problem we noticed, though (and the same goes for the Associated Press news app with push), was that clicking on 'view' in a pop-up notification only open the app, but didn't take us to the actual message. We almost wonder if this is something Apple's API doesn't support, as this seems to be common among the push apps we have seen so far.

BeejiveIM is a bit pricey at $9.99, and the price might go up to $15.99 later, so if you really want this app, which supports, Windows Live, AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk, Facebook, MySpace, ICQ, and the Jabber protocol, not is probably the time to buy it. The one IM protocol this app misses support for Skype chats, though we are hoping for IM+ with support for push notifications (iTunes link to the free version) to be allowed into the store in the next few days.

Finally!

We are very excited to see the first new batch of push notifications in the App Store, though we would still like Apple to make a few changes to the way the iPhone handles these messages (including the ability to set a 'quiet time' during which notification are ignored). However, as long as Apple doesn't allow applications to run in the background, push notifications are the best alternatives and we are looking forward to seeing what developers will do with this new feature.

UPDATE: Apple today announced it sold its one millionth iPhone 3G on Sunday, only three days after its launch on Friday, July 11. Here is the rest of its announcement:

iPhone 3G is now available in 21 countries--Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US--and will go on sale in France on July 17.

"iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world."

See also: Apple's App Store: 10 Million Downloads Later; and iPhone: The New Personal Computer

At the conference Apple said there are currently 2500 widgets in Dashboard. They announced two enhancements to that today.

Firstly Dashcode, which is a visual editor for HTML and CSS - enabling you to modify templates to produce widgets ("we have templates for RSS, podcasts, images, whatever you're looking for.").

The second new feature is Web Clip (same name as Google's Gmail RSS feature). Apple's Web Clip enables you to "turn any part of a Web page into a Widget".

The summary: "With Dashcode, we have a way for developers to more easily create widgets and with Web Clip, we can turn any piece of any Web page into a Widget."

Sounds excellent and shows once again that Apple is right on top of the user experience, as both of these features make it easy to create relatively complex mini web apps for your desktop. Om Malik thinks the web-connected widgets (and what isn't web connected these days!) will be "a bandwidth-using application", but the reality is that's where widgets are headed. Both desktop and Web - and in the near future connected to a whole host of Internet devices too. e.g. TV, music players, even the proverbial future fridge. I can't wait till that sort of widget connectivity becomes more common.

Photo via Engadget