All the news we can’t tell you about? Most publishers can’t even get Apple to acknowledge that it’s working on a tablet, but maybe the newspaper of record has more pull. In any event, its top editor is staying mostly mum.
After Michael Jackson died, fans flooded iTunes to snap up his music. And contrary to an earlier report, “This Is It,” the singer’s final work, will also be sold by Apple this month.
It took Apple a year to move its first 1.5 billion apps from its iTunes store. It took a mere 76 days to move the next 500 million.
iPods with cameras? Maybe. iTunes with new features? For sure. iTunes with Beatles? Nope.
I’m sure that Apple will indeed sell the Fab Four’s music via its digital music store one day. But it’s not happening at Apple’s keynote presentation tomorrow.
Ready to toss dirt on the old, unloved CD? You’re going to have to wait a while. Compact discs are increasingly hard to find (at least in physical stores), but someone out there keeps buying them: The ancient format still makes up the majority of music sales in the U.S. And since album-length CDs are a whole lot more lucrative for the industry than iTunes singles, expect to see the industry cling to them as long it can get away with it.
Time to get the rumor mill kicked into high gear: Multiple music industry sources say Apple executives have told them the company is planning one of its famed keynote events for the week of Sept. 7. But in true Apple fashion, the company has been noncommittal about the exact date of the event and what it will be showing off.
So now that the RealNetworks attempt to get into the movie-copying business has been rebuffed by a federal court once again, I’ve got a question: Why, exactly does RealNetworks want to be in the movie-copying business?
The “Iran is Twitter’s defining moment” meme is losing momentum to the “Iran is YouTube’s defining moment” meme. But CNN has a different spin. Time Warner’s cable news channel wants us to know that it isn’t dependent on either the micromessaging service or Google’s video site to report on what’s happening in Iran–it has iReport.
Twitter notched yet another milestone yesterday when it finally showed up on comScore’s index of Web search milestones. The catch: It barely registered, pulling down a search share of just 0.001 percent. But I’m sure that comScore is missing the majority of Twitter’s searches. So what’s the real number?
Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users have downloaded one billion apps for their devices in nine months. Someone other than Steve Jobs and co. ought to be able to make money from that, right? That’s more or less the logic behind Medialets, a start-up that serves up ads on Apple’s mobile applications, and to a lesser degree, programs designed for Google’s Android mobile platform. The New York-based company, founded last June, is announcing a $4 million Series A round led by Foundry Group. DFJ Gotham and angel investor Bobby Yazdani also participated.
Next to no news from the Apple earnings call this afternoon, which is just the way Apple execs like their earnings calls. Once again, the company provided no information about CEO Steve Jobs’s health except to note that he is still scheduled to come back to work in June. And the company continued to pooh-pooh the concept of netbooks–supercheap, supersmall laptops with very little horsepower that are the hottest part of the PC business right now.
First quick look at Apple’s earnings: Tim Cook and company have beaten the Street’s expectations. Apple earned $1.33 per share on revenues of $8.16 billion, beating the consensus of $1.09 and $8 billion. It also outperformed estimates for sales of the Mac, iPod and iPhone. At first glance, a strong quarter. But guidance for the next quarter may be a bit less than what Wall Street was looking for.
Remember last month, when Amazon said it planned to make its Kindle e-book titles available on other devices, but wouldn’t say what devices, or when?
Now we know. As of today, you can now read Kindle titles on your Apple iPhone.
At Steve Jobs’s insistence, the iTunes music store proposition to customers has always been simple: You pay us 99 cents, you get a song. But that’s starting to change. Today’s new wrinkle: Pay us a premium, and we’ll give you a bunch of songs and some other stuff.
Think of how much time you spend on the Web when you’re gainfully employed. How much would that increase if you weren’t? Something to think about as you ponder data from a variety of sites reporting increased traffic in January–the same month that 600,000 Americans lost their jobs.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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