It turns out that his hobby 9to5Mac blog was always his favorite and in 2011 he went full time adding his Fortune Google followers to 9to5Google and adding the style and commerce component 9to5Toys gear and deals site. In 2013, Weintraub bought one of the Tesla’s first Model S EVs off the assembly line and so began his love affair with the Electric Vehicle and green energy which in 2014 turned into electrek.
In 2018, DroneDJ was born to cover the burgeoning world of drones and UAV’s led by China’s DJI.
From 1997-2007, Weintraub was a Global IT director and Web Developer for a number of companies with stints at multimedia and branding agencies in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid and London before becoming a publisher/blogger.
Seth received a bachelors degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in Multimedia and Creative Technology in 1997. In 2004, he received a Masters from NYU’s Tisch School of the Art’s ITP program.
Hobbies: Weintraub is a licensed single engine private pilot, certified open water scuba diver and spent over a year traveling to 60 cities in 23 countries. Whatever free time exists is now guaranteed to his lovely wife and two amazing sons.
AT&T is still the “iPhone network,” according to numbers from its quarterly earnings report. AT&T sold 5.5 million smartphones in the quarter, but 4.3 million of the smartphones activated were iPhones. That means the iPhone represented a whopping 78 percent of total smartphone sales (although some “iPhone activations” could have been hand me downs). Additionally, AT&T’s postpaid customers are almost 60 percent smartphone customers, which means AT&T’s iPhone customers represent a huge percentage of its base—nearly 5o percent and growing.
Verizon announced numbers last week including 3.2 million iPhones sold. While the iPhone is down significantly from the holiday quarter, it is up from 3.6 million activations in Q1 2011. Apple’s earnings will be reported at the end of the day today.
Cargo-Bot is a puzzle game where you teach a robot how to move crates. Sounds simple, right? It features 36 fiendishly clever puzzles, haunting music and stunning retina graphics. You can even record your solutions and share them on YouTube to show your friends.
The app itself looks good but where it gets interesting is that it was made entirely on an iPad using Codea ($9.99 App Store). Codea uses the Lua programming language and has called the GarageBand of iPad coding for its visual ease of use. Until now, apps built using Codea were only able to play inside the app. Using a preview of a new Open Source exporter tool, Codea exported the Cargo-bot app and submitted it to the App Store where it was recently approved.
It’s the first game of its kind, prototyped, programmed and polished on iPad. Cargo-Bot was created by Rui Viana, a Codea user who developed his initial prototype and shared it with the Codea community. Two Lives Left reached out to Rui in order to turn his prototype into a published App Store game. They also enlisted the aid of Fred Bogg, a composer who developed a music library for Codea, to create the music for Cargo-Bot.
Coinciding with the release of Cargo-Bot, Two Lives Left is releasing the Codea Runtime Library source code under the Apache License Version 2.0. Registered Apple iOS Developers will be able to export their Codea projects into the Codea Runtime Library in order to release them as standalone apps, just like Cargo-Bot.
How long until iPad game creation is mainstream? Xcode for iPad certainly couldn’t be too far off?
Adobe today begins taking pre-orders for its CS6 line of its popular line professional design products. Adobe combines 14 different individual applications, including its venerable Photoshop CS6 (free Beta download), Illustrator CS6, and InDesign CS6, in a variety of bundles.
United States pricing is as follows (matrix below): Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design and Web Premium for $1,899, Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design Standard for $1,299, Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium for $1,899, and Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection $2,599. Meanwhile, upgrades from previous version of CS5.5 range from $300 to $550 for the Master Collection.
However, Adobe now offers what is likely to be an even more popular pricing option, the Adobe Creative Cloud, which also offers online storage, versioning, and sharing along with all the Master Collection of applications. Starting at $29.99 a month for the first year for those updating from just about any version of Adobe CS3+, the Creative Cloud annual membership is $600 a year billed monthly or $75 a month on a month-to-month basis.
At those rates, Master Collection users would still be ahead of the $2,600 stand alone price after four years and would have access to all of Adobe’s online storage and some Creative Cloud specific options as well.
Sprint, the third-biggest U.S. mobile service provider, failed to bill customers for more than $100 million of taxes for its wireless services over seven years, according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Sprint’s problems continue, as it seems the company might have been giving its customers an unfair break over the past seven years.
Update: Sprint has a response:
“This complaint is without merit and Sprint categorically denies the complaint’s allegations. We have collected and paid over to New York every penny of sales taxes on mobile wireless services that we believe our customers owe under New York state law. With this lawsuit, the Attorney General’s office is claiming New York consumers, who already pay some of the highest wireless taxes in the country, should pay even more. We intend to stand up for New York consumers’ rights and fight this suit.”
Verizon announced its earnings today coupled with some interesting new information. Verizon’s Chief Financial Officer Andrew Davies told investors that a data-sharing plan would be available this summer. Family Data sharing has been in the cards for a while, but this is another indication of an imminent launch.
During the call, Verizon announced that it activated an additional 3.2 million iPhones for the quarter, which is 1.1 million units down (or 24 percent) from the blowout Holiday quarter when the carrier activated 4.3 million iPhones.
Verizon activated 6.3 million smartphones overall, and 9.1-percent of those were on LTE. Data revenues were $6.6 billion, which is up $1.1 billion (or 21.1-percent) year-over-year and represents 42.9-percent of all service revenues. Total revenues were $18.3 billion, up 8.2-percent year-over-year.
Verizon is now at 47 percent smartphones overall. It is near the tipping point where smartphone customers outnumber dumbphone counterparts.
Like some of you, I am limping by on my 2010 MacBook Air, but I have been anxiously waiting for this Ivy Bridge lineup of MacBooks to get released before buying a new Mac. As Walt Mossberg said, it is a good idea to wait until the new Apple products come out to upgrade, but it is starting to feel like forever (I know—it has only been a few months).
Are you waiting for Ivy Bridge before buying a new Mac?
Tim Cook, Apple COO, in january 2009, after Macworld Expo keynote. Picture by Valery Marchive (LeMagIT) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Forbes brings up the point that Apple may have snubbed China in its new iPad launch plans over the iPad trademark lawsuit it is fighting with Proview. While there are many other factors likely in play —like logistics—it certainly would not be out of character for Apple. Plus, Apple gets to sell them cheaper in Hong Kong anyway.
Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook recently toured China and met Chinese officials about issues concerning trademark and copyright infringement, which seems to overwhelmingly favor China.
Great post over at Fortune on all of the shaky evidence surrounding Apple’s panel (iPanel?) TV. More to the point, the reasons why Apple wouldn’t choose to make a TV
The market is crowded with low-cost producers
The margins are terrible
The machines are big and heavy and often require professional installation
They need large retail display areas and lots of warehouse space
There’s no single global market. (It’s NTSC in the U.S., PAL in Europe.)
People tend hold on to the TVs for decades. (Apple prefers to sell products that get frequently replaced — every two years for iPhones, every three years or so for Macs.)
Dealing with the cable companies that control the local delivery of content is like dealing with mob.
What if “Jobs cracked the TV” just means an inexpensive Siri-controlled set-top box that does Airplay really well?
Well, now the poor iPhone 4S has some armor that can stand up to a .50 caliber machine gun. At $650, it costs the same as a new iPhone and it is heavier than an EVO. So, it is not for everyanyone. As mentioned below, though, you should probably not worry too much about your iPhone if you are getting .50 cal bullets shot at you.
Update: a commenter with legit accents in his name, indicating superior knowledge of Swedish to mine (yet inferior sense of humor), says “Uppleva” is actually “Experience”, as in “Experience a cable-free solution”.
Although Nokia may or may not be having some success in the United States with its heavy Lumia 900 marketing campaign under AT&T, it does not appear to have made any headway on its home turf in Europe. AT&T will give you $50 to take one of its Lumia 900 phones in the United States, but it has already fallen off the Best Selling list at Amazon.
Yesterday, the credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded Nokia’s debt to near junk level citing a “sharp decline in first-quarter cell phone sales that led to a 35 percent fall in revenue.” Standard & Poor’s announced a similar downgrade in March. Nokia’s share prices plunged another 20 percent in recent days on news that it would not come close to its forecasts.
Things do not seem to be looking up, either. Reuters talked to four European carriers that said Nokia phones simply could not compete with Apple’s iPhone and the Android devices already available.
“No one comes into the store and asks for a Windows phone,” said an executive in charge of mobile devices at a European operator, which has sold the Lumia 800 and 710 since December
When the Nokia 900 launched, we asked: “What question does the Lumia 900 answer? Why would you buy a Lumia over an iPhone or Android device?” Expand Expanding Close
Samuel L Jackson stars in his first Apple commercial using Siri. We still like the one below much, much better (NSFW) where Jackson plays the part of Siri: Expand Expanding Close
“We are thrilled that Zane Rowe will be joining us as one of our vice presidents of sales,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told AllThingsD. “He built a great team at United and we think he is going to do a fantastic job at Apple.”
The Vice President of Sales, huh? So, Peter Oppenheimer should not start sweating?
One of the biggest problems that we, as technology writers, face is choosing exactly what to write about on the site. What specifically is worth covering, and what should we leave for other pubs/Twitter/Facebook/Google Plus, etc.? We often pass on the smaller stories or the ones that do not directly relate to our core mission, even though we find them valuable or interesting. We do not want to stray too far from our core idea.
Nevertheless, we have long been after a way to cover the smaller stories, but more importantly give a forum to discuss these general topics, especially if they are interesting. Now that we have 9to5Forums, we have come up with something we call “Asides.” The idea is to bring together a “linked list” type of format coupled with gratuitous linking and the PandoTicker or AllthingsD Voices method of spreading the best of the Web.
Here are the types of topics we will cover on Asides:
Mid-minor, but still interesting, Apple/Google news, tips, rumors—especially where there is not much to add from the source.
General technology news covering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. (if it is big and relates to our readers).
Quick observations that we would normally Tweet or retweet.
App promo codes or hardware giveaways.
Author news like “Mark will be writing/tweeting from Poland this week.”
Minor site news like outages or minor updates.
Anything interesting we do not find deserving of a full story.
We think we have found a new way to present these minor stories in a manner that has not been done before. Asides will appear chronologically on the website interspersed between regular posts (and in feeds and social media).
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However, you will only see the title on the web site, and it will be smaller than a full-sized story. We are working with WordPress on a way so these can open inline, but —for now— clicking on an Aside link will open a new page.
Our expectation is to post 20 or more of these per day. We hope you like Asides and find them useful. Expand Expanding Close
Came across an interesting job posting by Microsoft on the Microsoft Talent Network that seems to point to a web app being developed by the Microsoft and Skype team. Running Skype within a web browser would be huge and would likely use HTML5 along with some Javascript.
Facebook already has Skype connected into a webpage, and —of course— Google Talk has happened in a web page for quite a while now. Skype is already behind. Expand Expanding Close
Kokatu translates a Chinese report on the often-rumored iPad mini tablet:
Chinese net portal, NetEase, has a story on a rumored new mini Apple tablet. NetEase claimed that the device will be released around the third quarter of this year to “counter attack” the upcoming Windows tablets. The report further claims that the devices will cost anywhere from US$249 to $299 and that there will be an initial 6 million units ready for launch.
The consensus is that Apple will use these to counter the mid-range tablet market that Amazon and others are now having some success in. The screen at 7.85 inches could hold the original iPad pixel dimensions and allow Apple to cut costs considerably.
The biggest argument against this type of product comes from Apple’s former Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, who asserted one would need super-small fingers to navigate smaller 7-inch tablets.
Le Figaroreports that renowned designer Philippe Starck (pictured, right) is working with Apple on a “revolutionary” product due in eight months.
French designer Philippe Starck announced today on France Info that it is working with the U.S. computer group Apple in a project “revolutionary” that would emerge in eight months. “Indeed, there is a big project together which will be out in eight months,” said the designer in the show “Everything and its opposite.” Invoking the “religious cult of secrecy” of the California firm, he declined further detail, except to talk about a project “quite revolutionary (…) if not very”.
Interestingly, Stark reveals that he had a close collaborative relationship with Apple’s former Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs with whom he met on a monthly basis for seven years.
Philippe Starck, who has revamped hotels, restaurants, toothbrushes or even the last Parisian Navigo travel card, has revealed that he regularly met in California Steve Jobs, Apple’s legendary founder who died last October. “For seven years I came to see him once a month in Palo Alto and elsewhere I go Monday, because even though he is dead, now I will see his wife. We liked to talk all things interesting, “he said.
While this is beyond tantalizing, much can be lost in translation here. Starck already sells products in the Apple Store, and we could be talking about an iPod dock or iPad case or something less exciting than an Apple HDTV or new camera.
Update: More lost in translation/buzzkill: Remember Philippe Starck was working with Steve Jobs on his boat and that would explain the monthly meetings that are ongoing with his wife. The 75 meter yacht is due in the same 2012-2013 timeframe. It isn’t clear if this is the revolutionary product he was speaking of.
Update 2: Apple says WTF: Reached for comment, an Apple spokeswoman said the company is not working on a new product with Starck and declined to speculate about what the designer might have been referring to when he told France Info Radio that he and Apple “have a big project together that will be out in eight months.”
Apple suffered a significant blow in the ongoing patent battles with Android competitors today when a Mannheim regional court in Germany ruled against an Apple appeal.
The court backed an earlier decision that banned Apple from offering the service for synchronizing emails on Apple’s mobile devices that use iCloud.
The court said Apple must pay damages to Motorola Mobility, but didn’t specify the amount.
The judge adjourned a decision on mobile communication standards, which Motorola Mobility regards as standard-essential. He didn’t say when the court will rule on this patent case.
With 1080P hitting the new iPad and Apple TV last month, some of you are perhaps now looking to send your Blu-ray collection over to iOS devices.
Here is the easy part: Buy a Toshiba Lightscribe Blu-ray Player for just$42 with free shipping (via 9to5Toys). It also burns DVDs, and Lightscribe media will even do some art on the cover. Oh, and it is USB bus-powered, so it is nice and portable.
AT&T’s new policy of unlocking iPhones that are out-of-plan is big news, but there is no company that could reap more rewards from this new policy than the United States’ other GSM carrier T-Mobile could. Magentaa happens to carry iPhone compatible Micro-SIMs and is rapidly developing its HSPA+ 1900MHz spectrum for just such an occasion. In fact, even with EDGE speeds and AT&T’s previous locks, over a million iPhone owners and counting have chosen to go to T-Mobile.
A T-Mobile spokesperson told 9to5Mac today:
Today we have more than one million unlocked iPhones running on our network. T-Mobile currently offers microSIMs for customers who already have a GSM phone they want to use on the T-Mobile network, including an iPhone. In order to set up an unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile’s network, customers simply need to purchase a microSIM card and select a T-Mobile Value plan that suits their needs.
T-Mobile’s Value plans enable customers who bring their own smartphone, such as the iPhone, to save money. For example, T-Mobile’s Value family plan with unlimited talk, unlimited text and unlimited data with 2 GB of high-speed data is just $49.99 per line for two lines.
In addition, we will continue to deliver more value to customers as we expand and modernize our 4G network. Beginning this year, we will introduce HSPA+ service in our 1900 MHz PCS spectrum. When we do, our 4G network will be compatible with a broader range of devices, including the iPhone.
The $99.98 Family plan is a pretty incredible deal, especially when the lowest two-person family deal on AT&T runs about $130 (2x 3GB) before the taxman cometh.
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