The key vehicle for the move is Apple’s newly acquired music-streaming service La La Media Inc. for which Apple paid $85 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Where Apple’s iTunes requires users to download music onto a specific computer, Lala.com lets users buy and listen to music through a Web browser, meaning its customers can access purchases from anywhere, as long as they are connected to the Internet. Apple is considering adopting that same model for songs sold on iTunes, a change that would give consumers more ways to access and manage their iTunes purchases—and wouldn’t require them to download Apple’s software or their purchases. Apple’s recent acquisition of cloud storage music site Lala is being tipped as iTunes first foray into streaming and music discovery.

We also took great care to make Google Chrome a native application for Mac. For example, we integrated the Keychain into Google Chrome for Mac, and incorporated Mac-style animations when you open the Bookmarks bar. For more details on today’s beta release of Google Chrome for Mac, check out the video below.

The web is all a buzz over the Apple Tablet. What’s the real scoop, when’s the timing?! Here’s the buzz:

But unless Apple unveils its so-called iTablet, a touchscreen device that’s supposed to be a cross between an iPhone and a full-fledged MacBook laptop computer, there are going to be a lot of disappointed Apple acolytes. – from All things D

The other big appearance the Apple faithful will be looking for will be Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who hasn’t made an official public appearance since a keynote presentation last October.

“The device, which I’ve held mock ups of, is going to have a 10 inch screen, and when I saw it looked just like a giant iPhone, with a black back— although that design could change at any time” they said, “with the same black resin back, and the familiar home button.” That’s obvious. “But it will come in two editions, one with a webcam and one for educational use.” – from Gizmodo

And today brings more people backing that up. Sources tell The Loop that the tablet will definitely not be a part of the September event (which is likely to focus on music and the iPod, just like all other Apple September events do). Jim Dalrymple writes:

Very reliable sources familiar with the product have said speculation of the tablet being introduced during the September event are flat out wrong. The Apple tablet, they said, would not see the light of day until the first part of 2010.

In linking to Dalrymple’s piece, Daring Fireball says basically the same thing, “I’m almost certain there’s no tablet coming this year. It’s a 2010 thing,” writes John Gruber, who also has a very good track record on these types of things. – from Techcrunch

The talks come as Apple is separately racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution. The device could be launched alongside the new content deals, including those aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project. – from FT

I’ve had a half dozen or so longer posts about Apple brewing in my head the past couple of weeks. There is no shortage of controversy surrounding the company right now thanks largely to the hugely popular and hugely unpopular aspects of the iPhone. But Jason Calacanis’ post yesterday entitled “The Case Against Apple-in Five Parts” serves as a great springboard for bringing up a lot of it. – from TechCrunch

It is the end. Jason “The Animal” Calacanis is thinking about maybe quitting using Apple products, reporting that the company has gone all corporate and mainstream and that Steve has lost his hippie, dippy LSD edge. Look at this language, people:

Years and years after Microsoft’s antitrust headlines, Apple is now the anti-competitive monster that Jobs rallied us against in the infamous 1984 commercial. Steve Jobs is the oppressive man on the jumbotron and the Olympian carrying the hammer is the open-source movement. – from CrunchGear

CUPERTINO, California—August 3, 2009—Apple® today announced that Dr. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, is resigning from Apple’s Board of Directors, a position he has held since August 2006.

“Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.”

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Apple’s Steve Jobs has returned to the office. Apple Employees have return to a status of fear and paranoia. Here’s the AP:

Apple Inc. co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is back at work after a five-and-a-half-month medical leave, during which he received a liver transplant. Jobs, 54, is working from Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters “a few days a week” and working from home the remaining days, Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said Monday.

Techcrunch observes:

Apple’s stock has always been tied closely to Steve Jobs, but if the past six months have taught investors anything it is that the company’s fortunes are tied even closer to its products. And Apple’s products are on fire right now. Over the past six months, the stock is up 82 percent.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/29/apple-wants-you-to-know-steve-jobs-is-back-at-work/

Apple unveiled the newest version of its smart phone today at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, adding video recording and voice control to the device. The “S” in its name represents “speed,” said Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, after revealing the much-anticipated product during his keynote at Moscone Center. – from LATimes

Everything I wrote about last month in “The Next iPhone” still stands. I expect Apple to announce updated iPhones with significantly faster processors, twice the RAM, and twice the storage. I expected prices to remain the same as the current lineup: $199/299 for 16/32 GB, respectively. The video camera is going to be a major selling point. One additional tidbit I’ve heard is the new hardware’s code name: iPhone 3GS. I’m not certain that’s what it’ll be officially named, but my hunch is yes. I have no idea what the S stands for. – from Daring Fireball

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber made his predictions for the WWDC keynote this morning, talking about what he’s heard and what he’s unsure about. He has a great track record when it comes to such things, so when he says he’s heard a new possible name for the device, it’s at the very least probably a code name, which he notes. And I hope it is a code name, because it’s kind of lame: iPhone 3GS. As I allude to above, he makes the case that the “S” in iPhone 3GS would stand for “Speed.” That makes sense given what Apple is likely to tout with this version, but is a rather boring naming convention. I would much rather see Apple go with some other names that have been tossed around like “iPhone Video” or the “iPhone Pro.” The latter makes some sense given the other recently reported talk that there will be a slightly cheaper version of the iPhone that will be for sale when this new version comes out. A lot of people including Gruber believe this cheaper version could simply be the current iPhone 3G reduced in price to either $149 or $99. – from Techcrunch

New, however, is an assertion that the upgraded models will have extended battery life. The new models will reportedly have “15-20 percent” more useful lifespan between charges than the iPhone 3G, addressing a common complaint about today’s handsets. – from AppleInsider

Apple is believed to have licensed future 3D graphics chips from Imagination Technologies. Apple currently utilizes the 4th generation of this graphics chip, though the 5th generation is now available and ready for use. This new graphics chip will allow for more advanced 3D graphics on the next iPhone. – from Macrumors

North Carolina’s government is reportedly promising tax breaks to Apple in return for building a large server farm, eventually worth $1 billion, within the East coast state. A “state official” has told the Charlotte Observer that a bill nearing approval that would bend tax rules for a single, unnamed company are actually meant to accommodate a specific Apple project, which might otherwise be located in another state. The deal would give the tax breaks to companies with a minority market share in North Carolina, but with a disproportionately large amount of property and staff located in the region. Apple would stand to save as much as $46 million in the space of 10 years but, in return, would have to invest $1 billion within nine years and locate itself in one of the state’s poorer counties; Catawba and Cleveland counties are on the short list. – From Apple Insider

French jeweler and watchmaker Cartier sued Apple on Friday for infringing on its trademark, according to The Associated Press, Dow Jones, and others. According to the reports, the suit—filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan—contends that Digitopolis’ Fake Watch and Fake Watch Gold Edition time-displaying iPhone apps improperly use Cartier’s trademarks. Apple is being sued for allowing the apps for download on its App Store. – From Mac World

With a conventional netbook clearly out of the question, researchers for Piper Jaffray said Thursday there’s mounting evidence to suggest Apple next year will introduce its own take on the market in the form of a tablet-based device that will sell for $700 or less. “Between indications from our component contacts in Asia, recent patents relating to multi-touch sensitivity for more complex computing devices, comments from [chief operating officer] Tim Cook on the April 22nd conference call, and Apple’s acquisition of P.A. Semi along with other recent chip-related hires, it is increasingly clear that Apple is investing more in its mobile computing franchise,” analyst Gene Munster and his team wrote in lengthy research note to clients. More specifically, the analyst said these investments will likely culminate with the launch of a touch-screen tablet with a display somewhere between 7- and 10-inches at a special event sometime in the first half of 2010. Such a move, he added, would be consistent with management’s comments that Cupertino-based company has no interest in catering to the existing segment for “cheap” miniaturized notebooks and its spoken desire to differentiate in a market currently dominated by cramped computers with razor thin margins and a subpar user experience. – From Apple Insider

Symptoms

It’s possible to receive a small and quick electrical (static) shock from your earbuds while listening to iPod or iPhone.
Products Affected

iPhone Accessories, iPod, iPhone, iPod Accessories
Resolution
What is happening?

When using headphones in areas where the air is very dry, it is easy to build up static electricity and possible for your ear to receive a small electrostatic discharge from the headphones. Receiving a static shock from a pair of earbuds does not necessarily indicate an issue with the iPod, iPhone, or earbuds.

This condition is very similar to dragging your feet across a carpet and receiving a static shock by touching a door knob. However, instead of the static charge building up on your body, the charge builds up on the device that the earbuds are connected to. Likewise, instead of the static buildup discharging through your finger when you touch a door knob, it discharges through the earbuds.

Note: This condition is not limited to Apple hardware and static can potentially build up on almost any hardware and could be discharged using any brand of earbuds.

- from Apple

The video side doesn’t fall short, as the walkman has MPEG-4, H.264, and WMV support, sadly in most cases crippled at 320 x 240 despite that 3-inch OLED screen’s 432 x 240 native resolution. That’s nearly a quarter of those pixels gone to waste.

Other goodies include FM tuning, 802.11g/b WiFi, internet browsing with YouTube support, and 33 hours of battery life when grooving to tunes, 9 hours when watching video, and surely much less when cruising the web.

The player will come in 16GB and 32GB flavors. Still no confirmed domestic release date, but it can’t be long now.

The NWZ-X1000 is a new departure for Sony in that it’s not just an MP3 player, it’s aimed at Apple’s iPod Touch. In other words, it has a big touch screen for playing videos, and built-in Wi-Fi for web access. It would be ridiculously overpriced if you just wanted to use it for listening to music. If Sony wants to challenge the iPod Touch then clearly it has to do things better. In this case, it means a superior OLED screen, better sound reproduction with built-in noise-cancelling, and FM radio. Format support is better than you get from Apple, and includes Microsoft’s WMA and WMV (but not FLAC). It’s also very solidly made and has a black finish that might well appeal to a bloke. – from Guardian

Frankly, Sony needs to price this one at or below the going rate for the touch in order to make those in the market think twice about how often they’ll actually use applications downloaded from the App Store. Between the S9 and the OLED Walkman, we’re giving the early edge to Sony; the software here is far more polished and it actually has WiFi, something the S9 is sorely missing. On a more general level, we’re just stoked to see someone nail an OLED-based music player, and we can’t help but be giddy that more are hopefully on the way from other manufacturers. The OLED revolution may be stuck in first gear, but this device is a brilliant example of why this technology deserves a slot in today’s consumer electronics arena. We’ll be waiting on pins and needles to hear Sony’s decision on US pricing and availability — we know it’s obvious, but the asking price will definitely make or break this unit’s ability to be taken seriously in the all-too-saturated PMP market. – from Engadget

The birth of a new class of inexpensive thin-and-light notebooks, described in my current Tech & You column, is a good-news, bad-news story for most laptop manufacturers. To the extent that these new sub-$1,000 notebooks cannibalize sales of high-end executive thin-and-lights, among the most profitable products in the portfolio, the manufacturers will face downward pressure on already-battered margins. But to the extent that customers can be persuaded to move up from netbooks, which manufacturers have been able to sell at volume but with little or no profit, these somewhat fancier notebooks could boost the bottom line. Apple, however, faces a different challenge. The company does not play in the low end of the laptop market. It only offers two models for less than $1,500: A 13-in. aluminum MacBook starting at $1,299 and the $999 white MacBook, a product that is growing tired despite a recent refresh of its processor and graphics. The rest of the line ranges from the $1,799 MacBook Air to the $2,799-and-up 17-in. MacBook Pro. – From Business Week

Twitter Search is easily the most promising aspect of Twitter. People talk about mundane updates, or connecting with companies, or following celebrities — but that’s all small scale. The real power of Twitter lies in its aggregate data. Why do you think Google and every other company out there is interested in them? It’s not just because they are the hot ticket in town right now, despite what some would have you believe. It’s all about the data. And Twitter knows that too — and is apparently on the verge of some interesting moves with Twitter Search that will better highlight that. – from Techcrunch

For months, gossipmongers like us have been spreading word that Google might snatch up the microblogging company for a few hundred million. After all, Twitter’s main potential value lies in searching all those tweets in real time and the advertising that could accompany the search results. What business model does that sound like to you?

And Google’s not alone in reportedly salivating over all that searchable data. Apple has reportedly offered $700 million to make Twitter a part of the Steve Jobs family. In fact, Twitter Vice President of Operations Santosh Jayaram (who just happens to be Google’s former head of search quality) just announced a new breakthrough in searching tweets. Now, Twitter’s search engine will also crawl over each tweet, find any links people embedded in them, scan the linked page, and index the content to produce even more accurate results. In addition, Twitter’s search engine will also rank results according to whatever Internet or cultural trend is hot at the moment, as well as the popularity of each twitterer. Now everyone searching on Twitter gets to know what Ashton Kutcher thinks, whether they want to or not. – from Reuters

Forget all those rumors about Apple, Google, Microsoft or anyone else buying Twitter: The company’s bosses say Twitter is not for sale. Yesterday, Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams were on ABC’s “The View” as part of Twitter’s current media campaign that has also included appearances on Oprah and The Colbert Report. Responding to a question from Barbara Walters about the rumors surrounding an imminent purchase of Twitter by a larger tech company, Stone responded with an unequivocal, “No. We are not for sale.” – from PCWorld

“From my perspective, I don’t think Google sees Apple as a primary competitor,” Mr. Schmidt said during a meeting with reporters ahead of the company’s annual meeting of shareholders. Mr. Schmidt said if there were areas of competition between the two, he would recuse himself from discussions. He added that it was well known that he typically recuses himself from Apple board discussions related to the Apple iPhone. – from NYtimes

- from WSJ