Apple

AT&T's decision to allow Major League Baseball fans to stream games live onto their iPhones while restricting video streaming using another video application has one advocacy group crying foul.

With the release of the 3.0 version of Apple's iPhone operating system this week, subscribers to a popular application from Major League Baseball called At Bat will now get the chance to stream live video feeds of baseball games directly to their iPhones or iPod Touches. The first game was streamed Thursday afternoon, featuring a match up between the Chicago Cubs and White Sox.

But unlike other video streaming applications, such as SlingPlayer, the MLB At Bat live video can be accessed regardless of whether a subscriber is connected to the Internet via AT&T's 3G network or a Wi-Fi connection.

The SlingPlayer app, which allows iPhone users to redirect cable and broadcast TV from their TVs at home to their iPhones, is only permitted by AT&T to operate over a Wi-Fi connection. When the SlingPlayer application was first released last month, AT&T said that it restricted the application to Wi-Fi because streaming live broadcast TV over its 3G wireless network "violated the company's terms of use."

But now AT&T is allowing MLB to do exactly what it would not allow Sling to do, which is stream live broadcast TV over its 3G cellular network onto iPhones. So what gives? Is AT&T playing favorites?

That's exactly what Ben Scott, policy director for the advocacy group Free Press, thinks. The group issued a statement Thursday expressing its concern over what it sees as an inconsistent policy.

"We are troubled that carriers like AT&T are playing gatekeeper to the next generation of wireless Internet applications," Scott said in a statement. "No Internet service provider should be allowed to pick winners and losers online."

Free Press has long supported the notion of a free and open Internet. And the company has pushed the Federal Communications Commission to confirm that its Net Neutrality principles also apply to wireless networks. The FCC's Internet Policy Statement protects consumers' right to access any online content and services on any device of their choosing. These principles were used effectively last year to punish broadband provider Comcast for deliberately slowing some of its customers' BitTorrent traffic, a move that other broadband providers including AT&T has pointed to as evidence that no further regulation is needed to protect consumers' access to Internet applications.

AT&T has also publicly supported the notion that these Net Neutrality rules should also apply to wireless Internet access. In fact, Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, said as much during a panel discussion hosted by a Washington Post reporter in November.

"The same principles should apply across the board. As people migrate to the use of wireless devices to access the Internet, they...certainly expect that we treat these services the same way," the Washington Post reporter quoted Cicconi as saying in her blog post.

Free Press's Scott, who appeared on the panel with Cicconi in November, pointed out AT&T's contradiction in his statement.

"AT&T has acknowledged that open Internet principles should apply to wireless and that consumers expect unfettered mobile access," Scott said. "So why is AT&T deciding what online video its iPhone customers can watch and what they can't?"

The argument put forth by Free Press is a compelling one. And right now, AT&T doesn't have an answer or an explanation as to why the MLB streaming video would be treated differently from the Sling video. Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman, said the company could not comment yet until it looked into the matter further.

But earlier this year, Siegel had plenty to say about Sling and streaming video in general. As a guest on the Clark Howard radio show, Siegel compared using Sling's service over a wireless connection to sending bulk e-mail and spam, activities that he said eat up too much of the network's bandwidth. "You can't use a service called 'Slinging,' where you redirect a wireless TV signal to your phone. We do not allow that type of application on our phones," he said. "It's absolutely cool (technology), but if we allowed these kinds of services, the highway would quickly become clogged."

Indeed, streaming video eats up a lot of bandwidth. Because cellular networks are divided into cells, users in a particular cell share the available bandwidth in that cell or region. This means that streaming a lot of high-quality video over the network could potentially eat up all the available bandwidth and degrade service for other subscribers in that cell.

This is why MLB.com is using a standards-based streaming technology that will detect the speed of the network and adjust the quality of the video to the bandwidth that is available. The latest version of the SlingPlayer submitted to Apple for the App Store used similar technology that would cap the bit rate to ensure it was below Apple's and AT&T's threshold, according to David Eyler, a project manager for Sling Media, who commented for an earlier story on CNET News on this topic.

Eyler also said during that earlier interview that the explanation he had been given for not allowing the SlingPlayer to be used over the 3G network was that AT&T doesn't allow video services that redirect TV signals onto its network.

What's even more puzzling about why AT&T would allow MLB's At Bat application to be used over its 3G network and not the SlingPlayer, is the fact that the MLB application is likely to put a lot more strain on the network than the SlingPlayer App. Here's why. The MLB At Bat application is likely to have more subscribers streaming video than the SlingPlayer app. MLB.com At Bat 2009 ranks among the top 100 overall paid applications in the App Store, according to the MLB's own Web site. And the application, which costs $9.99 to download, has only been available for about two months.The new, free streaming capability is likely to encourage even more downloads.

Meanwhile, the SlingPlayer app, which costs $29.99 to download, is likely to appeal to only a niche audience, since it also requires users to have a $150 SlingBox device in their homes to redirect the TV signals to their iPhones.

But more importantly, MLB At Bat subscribers will be tuning into the same video event at the same time. And since sports fans often root for teams in their own city, there is a good chance that many fans tuning into a particular game on their iPhones will be in the same geographic area, which is exactly the kind of scenario that could bring a cellular network to its knees. AT&T struggled to keep its 3G network up and running in Austin during the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference earlier this year when there was a high concentration of iPhone users.

By contrast, SlingPlayer users are not likely to be accessing the same video content at the same time in the same exact cell or region, which is actually less taxing on a wireless network.

But this isn't the first time that AT&T has shown preferential treatment to one application over another. OrbLive, which is offered on the App Store, also redirects TV signals onto the iPhone using a Wi-Fi network or the 3G cellular network. The application is designed to allow people to stream media from a PC to the iPhone wirelessly, much like how the SlingPlayer works.

For right now, iPhone users are simply left to wonder "why?" But stay tuned for more updates. I'm confident that AT&T will have an explanation shortly.

Concept art for an Apple touch-screen Netbook.

(Credit: Gizmodo)

Over the last few months rumors have continued to swirl around a possible Verizon-Apple deal to bring the iPhone to Verizon once Apple's exclusive pact with AT&T expires in 2010. But Tuesday BusinessWeek added a new twist to the rumor, reporting that Verizon and Apple are in talks to develop two new wireless devices that may hit the market this year.

Allegedly, one device would be a thinner, lighter, and lower-priced version of the iPhone--an iPhone Lite, if you will. While the other device would be something akin to the jumbo iPod Touch that we wrote about previously. BusinessWeek's anonymous source describes it as a "media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos."

The source, who claims to have seen the new media pad, says it's "smaller than an Amazon Kindle electronic reader, but its touch-screen is bigger than the Kindle's." It would be able to place calls over Wi-Fi and a high-speed wireless data connection from Verizon.

In discussing the latest rumor, BusinessWeek and some analysts seemed to downplay the possibility of the iPhone Lite coming to Verizon as long as Apple has an iPhone deal in place with AT&T. While details of that agreement remain scant, the assumption is there's a clause that very likely imposes "strict limits on Apple's ability to introduce an iPhone on a rival network," according to BusinessWeek. There's also a strong possibility that Apple is using all the Verizon talk to put pressure on AT&T to extend its deal with Apple at better terms.

All that said, with all the chatter, it seems more likely we'll see that media pad--or what some people are calling Apple's version of a Netbook--this year. And the wireless portion of it might very well be powered by Verizon--or AT&T.

Comments?

(Source: BusinessWeek via Silicon Alley Insider)

(Credit: CNET)

Apple Insider has unearthed proof that YouTube uploading will be built into the upcoming version of QuickTime that ships with OS X 10.6.

According to beta testers, several video-sharing options will be baked into the latest release of Apple's QuickTime media playback and editing software, including the capability to directly upload to YouTube. With the new QuickTime, you will be able to convert and upload any supported video file type to the online video service and all you will need is to be a registered YouTube user. You also will be able to seamlessly upload supported video to the MobileMe Gallery.

In addition to these new sharing options, iTunes also will offer ways to convert and export your video files to work on your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. All of these options will be available to you from the same convenient location and will automatically be imported to iTunes before being synced to your supported devices.

With this latest discovery, Apple will effectively offer built-in support for YouTube across all of its main products. Both the iPhone and Apple TV already offer YouTube support, along with some of Apple's other software including recent releases of iMovie. With the addition of direct uploads through QuickTime, Apple is providing support for desktop and laptop Macs.

The iPhone software roadmap laid out by Apple CEO Steve Jobs one year ago has allowed 15,000 applications to flourish.

(Credit: Corrine Schulze/CNET Networks)

Apple's success with iPhone applications wasn't preordained, but the company had a huge leg up on the competition with a hit device, a mature software platform, and the one of the biggest online stores on the planet.

"They had all three sitting there, and that's very difficult to create in this industry," said Travis Boatman, vice president of worldwide studios for EA Mobile, creator of iPhone games such as Spore and Sim City.

But for all the work Apple has done to make the iPhone a success over the past year, its future lies in the hands of outside developers. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs and iPhone software head Scott Forstall first publicly described the parameters of the iPhone software development process a year ago, they set the stage for the stunning growth in iPhone applications that has allowed the iPhone and iPod Touch to become truly personal computers for both work and play.

Apple has since made iPhone applications the centerpiece of its marketing campaign for the device, with pitches tailored to consumers and business users showing off the breadth and depth of iPhone applications. The rest of the industry has noticed; virtually every other major smartphone company is scrambling to set up their own App Store-like experience.

Those companies have also learned a few things not to do from Apple, and iPhone developers have encountered more than a few headaches along the way, from a misguided nondisclosure agreement to confusing policies on App Store requirements.

However, the rampant success of the platform has made it very easy for developers to focus on the positive. "If you would have asked me a year ago if I saw myself making $250,000 selling a fart app, I would have said, 'you're nuts'," said Joel Comm, CEO of Infomedia and iPhone zeitgeist application iFart Mobile.

Tools for the job
It seemed clear that Apple wasn't ready to let developers start playing with the iPhone in June 2007. The company was more concerned with meeting its June shipping deadline than making it accessible to developers, said Craig Hockenberry, principal/software engineer at Iconfactory, developer of popular iPhone applications such as Twitteriffic.

Games such as EA Mobile's Spore are among the most popular iPhone and iPod Touch applications.

(Credit: EA Mobile)

In the months that followed, however, iPhone developers learned just how easy it was to create unofficial applications through the jailbreaking process. But an SDK was an inevitable move, and when Apple was finally ready to let the SDK loose in March 2008, Hockenberry said developers found a set of tools and technologies that borrowed much of the mature technology found in Mac OS X and brought it to the iPhone.

"From day 1, I was very impressed with the whole set of tools, and how easy it was to transfer from doing Mac software development to doing iPhone software development," Hockenberry said.

Developers still faced a learning curve in appreciating the differences between developing for the constraints of a mobile platform and developing for a PC or Mac, but the close ties between the iPhone's OS X and Mac OS X made it much easier for developers to get started.

Road to market
Apple had a huge advantage when it came to distributing those iPhone applications. After all, bits are bits, whether they are songs, movies, or applications, and Apple was wise to work iPhone application distribution into a familiar framework already installed on millions of computers: iTunes.

Apple also retained the exclusive right to distribute iPhone applications, which gave it a free hand in deciding which applications were suitable for the App Store, and which weren't. There are excellent reasons for taking that approach: as the recent tempest over rogue applications on Facebook shows, allowing developers unfettered access to your platform isn't always a good idea.

However, Apple has used its hammerlock on distribution in confusing ways.

Comm and Infomedia were all set to submit iFart Mobile to the App Store on the same day that a rival fart application, Pull My Finger, was rejected. So the company decided to hold off for a few weeks, eventually resubmitting the application only to be surprised when Apple, without further comment, accepted the application into an "In Review" category, or "iTunes purgatory," as Comm called it. It was later approved along with Pull My Finger, and for a period of time iFart Mobile was one of the best-selling applications on the App Store

The point is that one day fart jokes were off limits on the App Store, and then another day, they were fine, and Apple never explained why. Comm doesn't really care now that the app has been downloaded over 400,000 times, but Apple's tight-fisted control of iPhone distribution is both a blessing and a curse to iPhone developers.

On second thought....
As with most massive endeavors, Apple made a few decisions over the past year over which, if the company ever discussed its business in public, it might acknowledge some regret. (As usual, Apple representatives declined requests to participate in this article.)

Under the terms of Apple's iPhone developer NDA, knowledge-sharing events such as iPhone Dev Camp could have been imperiled.

(Credit: Andrew Mager/ZDNet)

Perhaps the single biggest mistake Apple made in a year of iPhone development was the decision to impose a nondisclosure agreement on developers, prohibiting them from discussing tips and tricks with their fellow developers under some misguided notion that this would enable competitors to get the scoop on the iPhone.

Rather, all it did was frustrate developers who wasted their time trying to implement a certain function when a simpler fix could have been provided by a more experienced developer through a simple e-mail to a discussion list or a Twitter post. Hockenberry, who was particularly vocal when it came to expressing his distaste for the NDA, called Apple's decision to leave that in place following the July launch of the App Store "a low point" over the past year.

Apple got the message in October, and now hosts evangelist talks and developer forums that let fellow iPhone owners connect with each other and share ways for improving their products.

The company's other big mistake was in the number of resources it allocated to the App Store approval process. It was apparent right away that Apple's decision to vet every single iPhone application was a huge undertaking, but it's fair to say that no one--even Apple--correctly estimated the growth that would take place in this market.

Unfortunately for Apple and developers, that growth quickly overwhelmed the people inside Apple responsible for processing application approvals and advising developers on development--one developer who wished to remain nameless even reported significant delays in getting their share of the revenue garnered by their application. The problem appears to be easing, but it's surprising that Apple failed to properly prepare for the success of its own strategy.

The once and future app
So where can Apple improve the App Store and iPhone application experience for both developers and users? Here are four items on developer wish lists.

• Demo applications: Right now, developers who want to entice iPhone or iPod Touch users to try their application tend to develop a free "lite" version of that application that expires or comes with limited functionality. Developers would prefer to have something similar to a downloadable game that's free to use for a while with all the bells and whistles, but can only be used beyond a certain point in time for a fee.

• Genius for applications: Greg Yardley of Pinch Media came up with this one, explaining that "discovery right now is the biggest issue on the App Store." Yardley advises iPhone developers, and he reports that they would like to see Apple introduce something like the Genius feature--which recommends songs you might like based on your music library--for applications. "One of the biggest challenges that Apple's going to face is figuring out the best way to feature (thousand of application) on a screen that's 320 (pixels) by 480," he said.

• Better promotional opportunities: EA's Boatman hopes Apple will decide to start promoting iPhone applications more aggressively on the main iTunes Store home page. Newly released music and movies tend to get top billing on that page, and a list of the Top 10 paid and free applications appears way, way down on the right hand side of the page. "It's a little like when you watch someone walk into a Border's book store, you don't start walking down the aisle reading each book spine" when you're looking for a new book, he said.

• A real review system: My colleague Josh Lowensohn touched on this the other day. Right now, App Store reviews are a mess, based partly on the fact that the music review system carried over from the other parts of the iTunes Store doesn't make as much sense for software. Right-of-response and better sorting options could dramatically improve the chances of good developers being rewarded for making quality products, and of users finding the app that's right for them.

iPhone and iPod Touch applications have changed the notion of how Apple and its customers perceive the devices; suddenly they are gaming consoles and medical diagnostic tools, instead of mere phones or music players. Still, Apple has taken a cautious approach to making decisions about the product that could be its profit engine for the next decade.

"They realize that every decision that they make is going to have long-term repercussions, and they aren't rushing to decisions," Hockenberry said. With competitors such as Research in Motion, Google, Microsoft, Palm, and Symbian gearing up to court developers with their own mobile application platforms, the solid foundation laid by Apple and its partners should ensure that as long as iPhones are popular, applications will flourish.

The sometimes bizarre rules produced by the inherent contradiction between Apple's culture of secrecy and its need for media attention are nothing new.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

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 CNBC's Jim Goldman loudly complaining about the fact that Apple doesn't allow laptops into its annual meeting, held earlier Wednesday at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

Goldman's right about one thing: in this day and age, it's pretty silly for Apple to pretend that a public event can be held away from the reach of the Internet. Indeed, two shareholders published text-message updates of the meeting, which although quickly snapped up by the tech media hungry for any scrap of information related to Apple merely confirmed one thing most business reporters know about annual meetings: they are usually very boring.

But the ban on computers is nothing new for Apple: this is the third year I've attended an Apple annual meeting, and each year they've had the same restrictions in place spelled out for all attendees in the proxy statement that announces the date of the meeting. Similar bans on "electronic devices" have been in place since at least 2004, and before then, wireless mobile computing was relatively rare among the press corps.

Attendees at the meeting were herded into two lines just inside Apple's executive briefing center: one for shareholders, and one for the media. All guests were required to sign in with Apple, pass through a metal detector just like at an airport, and check any cameras, laptops, and phones with security after a bag search.

Several people managed to keep their phones, but Apple representatives in the overflow room--where media members were herded to watch the meeting on closed-circuit television--roamed the aisles asking anyone texting or checking e-mail on the sly to refrain from using those devices while the meeting was going on.

Those restrictions, while very silly, didn't prevent the media from thoroughly covering the event, which Goldman is alleging. "More like a 'prevent' than 'event,' I suppose," he wrote.

Rather, the restrictions prevented the media from live-blogging the event, which Goldman seems to think is the apex of transparent reporting but which in many cases produces a frenzied burst of typing and incomplete sentences that don't necessarily deliver a clear picture of what is happening. Does the public really want to read breathless minute-by-minute updates of Apple general counsel Dan Cooperman asking attendees to second a proposed motion?

Veteran reporters (Goldman has been in this business since I was in junior high) are well acquainted with the art of the call-in, where breaking news can be relayed quickly and clearly to a colleague at home base over that old-fashioned but still relevant device, the telephone.

If anything had actually happened at the event, there was nothing preventing reporters from doing just that within a matter of a minute following the news, and quickly getting that information out to the public. In fact, a bank of old-fashioned telephones was located just outside the overflow room where Goldman sat two rows behind me, watching the meeting.

Unlike other companies that covet press attention, Apple does not go out of its way to make it easy for reporters to cover the company. It never has, or at least it hasn't in the company's rise to the top of the tech industry over the past decade.

The fact that this is only now dawning on Goldman says an awful lot about the rare level of access to Apple to which he and CNBC have been accustomed over the past several years, access which prompted him to declare quite forcefully two months ago that rumors of Steve Jobs' ill health were insidious market manipulation when, in fact, they were true. Goldman's demeanor toward Apple seems to have soured since he was dressed down on his own network by Dan Lyons, the Newsweek columnist best known as the author of the Fake Steve Jobs blog, regarding his reporting on Jobs' health.

Are Apple's restrictions on computers at the annual meeting odd and excessive? Absolutely. Most big public companies provide a Webcast of their annual events so far-flung shareholders who have already voted their shares can watch.

But they are nothing new, and only delay, not prevent, reporters from filing stories that nothing happened at the meeting. And they are only in place for this one event a year; after initially balking at the idea of live-blogging at its regular press events--which were touted by Apple COO Tim Cook as a competitive advantage during Wednesday's annual meeting--Apple now bathes its press events in Wi-Fi and recently started providing power strips for the rows of live-bloggers. That might seem like a minor accommodation to other companies that provide lavish food, drink, and entertainment at their events to help draw press attention, but this is an idea that's only about a year old for Apple.

It seems as long as the famously private Steve Jobs is in charge, there are always going to be weird rules governing Apple's love-hate relationship with the media. Apple knows it needs media attention to help promote its products, but wants to prevent reporters from getting too close to the company and its executives lest they discover the company's Next Big Thing (or, even worse, the lack thereof).

It's frustrating, but challenging, and simply part of the game of covering Apple.

iPhone users have very short attention spans.

Just 30 percent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased, according to Pinch Media, which analyzed over 30 million downloads from Apple's App Store. And the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than 5 percent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it. The drop-off is worse for free applications.

Those are amazing numbers. It's not a new pattern--GigaOm and TechCrunch noticed this last August--but back then, with the App Store just a month old, it was hard to know whether that usage model would last.

Now it's clear that seven months, 15,000 applications, and 500 million downloads later, things haven't changed. App Store activity continues to be huge; Apple has made the App Store the centerpiece of its iPhone marketing over the last few months, highlighting the breadth and depth of applications that are available on the App Store for business and entertainment.

But if most people don't find iPhone applications very compelling, does it matter how many exist? It's enough to wonder if the App Store is starting to get a bit saturated.

Pinch Media CEO Greg Yardley looks at it a little differently. In his view, Apple has built such an easy-to-use distribution (as well as payment processing) platform for iPhone applications that people find it very easy to move onto the next thing that catches their fancy. The lack of a "try-before-you-buy" feature means iPhone users have no choice but to take the plunge, and given that most iPhone applications are free and the ones that do cost money are very inexpensive, there's little incentive to carefully shop around for the one application that best meets your needs.

Only about 10 percent of iPhone applications appear to retain an audience over time, and most of those are games, entertainment applications such as movie listings, and things like Facebook ("their user sessions must be off the charts," Yardley said).

But developers are still making plenty of money from the other 90 percent, he said. As noted, people are very willing to try new iPhone applications, meaning that building a better mousetrap is still a very viable business model for the world of mobile computing. His advice for developers is to get your money up front, and charge something for your application rather than trying to depend on a free/ad-subsidized model, because the number of people viewing those ads will plummet the day after the application lands on their iPhones.

At some point, however, Apple will need to find a better way to help developers promote their applications within an ocean. "The App Store fails as a promotional mechanism. There's only so much screen real estate" that Apple can use within the App Store window to promote applications, Yardley said, and if you don't get on those Top 100 or Staff Favorites lists, your application languishes.

Yardley thinks there is still a great deal of opportunity for developers on the App Store, which isn't that surprising given he makes his living by advising iPhone developers. And it's true that if the installed base of iPhones continues to grow, there will be more and more niche opportunities to cater to the needs of high-school students and seniors, and everyone in between.

Still, how many more currency conversion (37), recipe (67), and fart-joke (30) applications do iPhone users really need, especially if they aren't using the ones they've already got?

Come this summer, Apple is expected to dip its toe in the entry level market for its popular iPhone, according to a report by RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple is expected to debut a $99 iPhone, as well as an iPhone 3G with updated performance, sometime in June or July, according to Abramsky's research note on Tuesday.

Abramsky, in his report, states:

Checks reveal further entry-level iPhone details, including launches on existing carriers June/July with a data plan, entry-level pricing and a lower subsidy. Also expected is a 3G iPhone performance upgrade (performance, features, form factor).

An entry level iPhone could increase Apple's overall iPhone unit sales by 25 percent to 69 percent and bump up its slice of the smartphone market from an estimated 12 percent to 14 percent to 19 percent, the report notes.

But it could come at a price.

Apple could find itself cannibalizing its iPhones/iPod business. For example, Apple would need to sell three $99 iPhones to replace the gross profits of one 3G iPhone, Abramsky notes in his report. And it could also create a situation where Apple would need to lower its iPod pricing to sustain the momentum with its media player since the iPhone also offers such capability.

Apple has reached a $22.5 million settlement agreement in the class action iPod Nano scratch lawsuit and potential claimants began receiving settlement notices this week, according to the plaintiffs attorney.

The lawsuit, filed in October 2005 in a California Superior Court in Los Angeles County, alleges Apple's iPod Nano is prone to scratches and its alleged defects were not disclosed by the company.

A $22.5 million cash settlement agreement was reached in late October and a court has preliminarily approved the agreement, said the plaintiffs attorney. But it wasn't until this week that notices of the settlement agreement began going out to the potential pool of claimants, estimated to be a few million people.

A court hearing is scheduled for April 28 for final court approval on the settlement agreement.

Under the settlement agreement, potential claimants must have purchased an iPod Nano that was subject to scratches that affected the enjoyment of using the media player device, or impaired its operation.

Users who opt to file a claim may be eligible to collect one of two types of payments.

Tier one payments of $25 per iPod Nano purchased, may be distributed to claimants who did not receive a free slip case when they originally purchased their iPod Nano.

Tier two payments of $15 may be distributed to users who received a free slip case with their original iPod Nano purchase.

Those payment figures, however, may shift in one direction or the other, depending on how many users file a claim.

If there are additional funds leftover, after all tier one and two users file a claim, then the remainder will be distributed to those claimants--but that additional payout will be capped at 150 percent of the type of tier they filed under. And any money left in the fund after those additional payouts will be award to charities.

But if the number of claimants outstrips the $22.5 million fund, then the payouts will be reduced on a prorated basis.

Apple declined to comment on the settlement agreement.

However, on the lawsuit Web site, Apple denies all allegations in the lawsuit and in the class action, noting it is "entering into this settlement to avoid burdensome and costly litigation. The settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing or an indication that any law was violated."

Apple has issued a critical security update for QuickTime media player, aimed at resolving vulnerabilities that could potentially allow a malicious attacker to take control of a person's computer, according to an Apple advisory released this week.

People running QuickTime 7 for Windows and for Mac OS X, are affected, as well as those who are using Mac OS X 10.4 or Mac OS X 10.5, according to Apple.

Apple is advising people to update to QuickTime 7.6 for Windows, QuickTime 7.6 for Leopard, or QuickTime 7.6 for Tiger.

The update seeks to address QuickTime security flaws that could potentially allow a malicious attacker to launch a buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code on a user's system.

The attack could potentially occur via a maliciously crafted movie file, AVI movie file, QTVR movie file, or an RTSP URL, according to Apple.

Security researcher Secunia, in an advisory released Thursday, noted the vulnerabilities are considered "highly critical."