Apple

Apple gave up a sliver of Internet market share last month, according to preliminary figures released Sunday by Web metrics company Net Applications.

The Mac OS had been hovering around the 10 percent mark among operating systems accessing the Web. But in its Operating System Market Share report for February, Net Applications showed the Mac OS at 9.71 percent, down from 9.93 percent in January. Meanwhile, Microsoft Windows' Internet share increased to 89.37 percent from 88.26 percent in January.

In a separate report, Net Applications reported spikes in usage share of Windows 7--the follow-on to Windows … Read more

As an iPhone user, one of the things I've found to be increasingly irksome is the customer review system built into Apple's App Store for the iPhones and iPod Touch.

It's as basic as you get, which follows the design ethos found in the many of Apple's hardware products, such as the no-button Mighty Mouse, disappearing MacBook buttons, and I/O ports on its notebook computers and LCD displays.

While simplicity is one of the qualities that makes Apple's products more approachable for the basic user, it's something that doesn't translate well to a crowd-powered review system.

In its current state, the review system lets you very easily rate a software application from one to five stars, along with the option to write in any thoughts or feelings you have about it. This sounds great, in theory, but a good majority of the reviews found on App Store applications seem to prove otherwise.

More often than not, you'll see one-star reviews in which people are raving about the quality of an application. There are also people who give an application five stars, then go on to spend two paragraphs discussing how often it crashes and larger off-topic issues like international pricing and the handset's lack of a copy-and-paste feature. You also get a lot of comments written in ALL CAPS, with lines of Emoji icons, colored stars, and superfluous exclamation marks.

In every sense, it's like the Wild West: untamed and full of interesting characters.

To Apple's credit, on Friday, the company (as promised) removed reviews from customers who had not purchased the application they were reviewing. This may cut down on spam and ill-conceived or written reviews, but it's not a big step in improving how the review system works.

Problematic by design The problem stems from the fact that Apple has treated software reviews with the same level of simplicity it's approached movie and music reviews. These two mediums are not interactive, nor do they have hangups like development schedules and performance issues.

While you can rate an album or music track based on your enjoyment of it, it's not speaking to a truth about frame rate jitters, buggy code, or a developer who has not put out a necessary update in six months--all things you may find in iPhone applications and that can be good to know before plunking down money on a purchase.

One reason there's a lack of these types of clarifications in user reviews is that Apple has fragmented its reviews system based on platform. Mobile users don't get the same quality of review browsing as those using iTunes do. For instance, when viewing user reviews in iTunes, you get the option to flag a bad review and say whether it was helpful. You can also sort by best and worst reviews, along with the most helpful and recent.

On the iPhone, users have none of these options. In fact, there's currently only one way to view reviews--in chronological order. For a device that's slowly gaining independence from having to sync up with a computer (as seen in recent improvements to podcast downloading on the device), this is troubling.

A better system There are a three things Apple could do, explicitly to software application reviews, that would beef up the system and make reviews really matter to the potential customers who read them. All three can be found on Amazon.com, which has done a really fantastic job of creating a single ratings system that works on multiple genres of products:… Read more

Apple distributed an e-mail recently to MobileMe subscribers that detailed some improved features, but the biggest news from that e-mail was the fact that push is back.

Push was part of the initially tragic launch of MobileMe in 2008--a launch so poorly implemented that the word "push" was removed from descriptions of MobileMe until synchronization between computers and mobile devices (i.e. iPhone and iPod Touch) would perform at an acceptable level.

Now that push is in business again, syncing with Macs or PCs is faster. Any updates that you make to contacts or calendars on your Mac … Read more

Softbank Mobile, the iPhone carrier in Japan, plans to introduce a new program Friday that will give some iPhones away for free with a new two-year contract.

The 8GB iPhone will be free to new subscribers who sign up for a plan starting on Friday, likely to disappoint those who paid the equivalent of $235 (22,782 yen) in the recent past, according to CrunchGear. Softbank is also reducing the price of the 16GB version from $350 to $118 as part of the new "iPhone for everybody Campaign."

Softbank also cut the cost of its maximum data plan … Read more

Few reporters who cover Apple should be surprised to learn that it is a rather secretive and controlling company.

Most of us who regularly follow Apple are accustomed to rolling our eyes and chuckling at the bizarre restrictions company representatives sheepishly try to enforce at its events, such as requiring an escort for reporters who want to walk 100 yards away from the press room down a huge open hallway to use the bathroom at the Moscone Center, lest they ask Steve Jobs what he thinks of the Kindle, or something. It was therefore a bit surprising Wednesday to read … Read more

CUPERTINO, Calif.--Apple's first annual shareholder meeting in more than 10 years without founder and CEO Steve Jobs was largely uneventful, as COO Tim Cook and board members stepped in to handle questions regarding Apple's disclosure of Jobs' health.

Five shareholder proposals were considered, and only the one approving the re-election of Apple's eight existing board members was approved in preliminary voting. As in past years, the informal question-and-answer section was by far more interesting, although without Jobs' usual acerbic replies to institutional shareholders on soapboxes, a little duller.

For the record, Apple shareholders rejected proposals that … Read more

Google's latest version of Chrome has claimed the lead in my JavaScript speed tests, but Apple's new Safari 4 beta is the first browser to challenge it on Google's own performance benchmark.

JavaScript is a programming language that powers not just innumerable ordinary Web sites, but also many Web-based applications such as Google Docs. With the computing industry's major push to cloud computing, Web application performance is increasingly important, and there's a race on to see who's got the best JavaScript engine. JavaScript engines even have become a named feature, with Chrome's V8, Firefox's TraceMonkey, Opera's Futhark and upcoming Carakan, and now the Safari's newly branded Nitro, which is Apple's version of WebKit's Squirrelfish. … Read more

With Safari 3, I admired Apple's chutzpah for bringing its browser to Windows. With the new Safari 4 beta, I'm actually starting to admire the browser, too.

A big user interface overhaul makes Safari look polished rather than clunky on Windows, builds in better search abilities, and makes good use of the fact that people often visit the same sites over and over.

However, the lack of something like the extensions architecture that Firefox pioneered still means Safari 4 (download for Windows and Mac OS X) is better only than Safari 3, not the competition. … Read more

EMI unveiled a new feature on iTunes Tuesday called iTunes Pass, which allows Depeche Mode fans access to the band's upcoming album and other selected goodies.

Apple chose to let EMI make the announcement for iTunes Pass, a new service that will gradually release tracks until the middle of June from the album Sounds of the Universe along with exclusive remixes and videos for $18.99. This is a separate offering from the album itself, which is scheduled to be released on April 21 and can be preordered for $9.99.

At the moment, it appears EMI and Depeche … Read more