Apple

Perhaps no one has benefited as much from the downfall of the Treo than Apple.

On Thursday, ChangeWave released the results of an otherwise dismal survey predicting a tough time ahead for anyone who relies on corporate IT spending for their livelihood. But the news was good for those in the smartphone business not named Palm; smartphone shipments to U.S. corporations are expected to grow even as overall IT spending falls.

And Apple's iPhone is seeing the bulk of the growth, according to ChangeWave. Companies still love Research in Motion's BlackBerry, as we covered earlier this month, … Read more

Wednesday's report that a Swedish wireless company was planning to add an MMS application to the iPhone now makes a little more sense.

That's because MobiSpine, another Swedish company, announced the availability of a "white label" MMS service for carriers to use on the iPhone. Telia, the iPhone's wireless carrier in Sweden, has said it plans to bring MMS capability to the iPhone in short order, but it wasn't clear how it was going to make that happen. Now they'll be able to use MobiSpine's application under their own brand, sort of … Read more

If Google wasn't Google, there's a fair chance that its new mobile application for the iPhone wouldn't be allowed in the App Store.

That's because Google Mobile is tapping into iPhone technology that is supposed to be off-limits to third-party developers, according to research done by Daring Fireball's John Gruber and Ars Technica's Erica Sadun.

The latest version of the search giant's mobile iPhone application has been well received, but it might be impossible to duplicate or improve upon the application, unless developers are willing to break Apple's rules for iPhone applications.… Read more

Want to watch a high-definition show from iTunes on an older external display? Good luck!

Some Mac users are teed off that they are getting error messages saying the iTunes movie they rented or bought can't be played on their display because it is not HDCP (High Digital Content Protection) authorized.

And some people are complaining they are only able to play certain standard definition iTunes content on their laptop or via an HDMI connection.

As a result, some Apple forum participants have threatened to boycott iTunes.

"And here we are now with Apple users who have spent … Read more

Swedish iPhone users may soon have a way to send each other pictures and video via text messaging.

Telia, Apple's carrier partner in Sweden, is going to develop its own MMS (multimedia messaging service) application for the iPhone, according to a report from MacWorld Sweden. The lack of MMS is perhaps one of the most common gripes about the missing features of the iPhone, second only to cut and paste.

But instead of adding that function itself, or allowing a third-party developer to build it for the App Store, Apple is apparently going to let Telia enable MMS on … Read more

A year after iTunes began offering music without copy protection software from EMI, Apple is in discussions with the other three top recording companies about acquiring DRM-free songs, according to two music industry sources.

The talks are still preliminary and no deals have been finalized, but one source said one of the major labels is close to a final agreement. Rumors have been swirling on the Internet for a week that Sony would soon be offering music without the controversial digital rights management software. My sources could not confirm this.

Spokespeople for Apple and the major labels declined to comment. … Read more

The largest retailer in the world could be getting the iPhone.

Wal-Mart won't have the iPhone at every location come the end of December, if a report from the Boy Genius Report is accurate. But Apple will have iPhones in 2,500 stores in the U.S. and an additional 69 Sam's Club warehouse stores on December 28, according to the report.

It's not clear what price will be charged for the iPhone inside Wal-Mart, but it would be hard to imagine Apple embracing the idea of significant discounts even though CEO Steve Jobs has talked of … Read more

Apple's iPhone jumped to the top spot on the AdMob Network for the month of October, with 4.1 percent of the mobile ads requested from the network, according to the AdMob Mobile Metrics Report released Wednesday.

Requests from advertisers for mobile ads targeted to iPhone users rose to 236 million in October, more than doubling from the 103 million requests recorded in the previous month. Worldwide, AdMob's mobile-ad requests for all device makers grew 13.8 percent in October, to 5.8 billion.

AdMob delivers banner and text ads to mobile devices, and these figures were analyzed … Read more

Apple's OS X Snow Leopard may be on tap for the start of the new year, slightly earlier than expected.

The update appears to be slated for debut in the first quarter of 2009, according to a slide presented by Jordan Hubbard, Apple's director of engineering for Unix technologies, at a conference last week.

Snow Leopard, or version 10.6 of the operating system, is expected to be optimized for multicore processors, include QuickTime X, and offer built-in support for Microsoft's Exchange 2007 software.

Apple previewed Snow Leopard in June. At that time, Apple said that Snow … Read more