SiliconBeat

(updated below)

My colleague John Boudreau is feverishly writing a story about Apple’s earnings. But here’s my quick take:

1. Very good quarter for the Mac. Apple sold 2.6 million Macs in the quarter, coming within spitting distance of the most the company has ever sold in a quarter. Unit sales were up 4 percent from the same quarter last year.

That may not sound like much, but given the terrible economic environment in general and the slumping PC market in particular, the Mac results are solid. Read the rest of this entry »

Universal Studios Home Entertainment today announced a plan to deliver iPhone and iPod touch-enabled features on its upcoming Blu-ray releases that can be accessed with applications from the App Store.
The new functions will be launched July 28 to coincide with the 2-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray release of the box-office hit Fast & Furious, starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. For the first time, iPhone and iPod touch users will have the ability to control interactive content on their Internet and Wi-Fi connected Blu-ray players.
Later this year on select Universal releases, consumers will also be to access bonus content found on their Blu-ray disc and download it into their iPhone or iPod touch; use the devices as a remote to control their Blu-ray disc features; and access additional detailed information about the film, including its cast, while watching the movie.
These releases will also integrate with social network applications or sites such as Facebook and Twitter to allow users to update their friends about movie-related activities.

IPhone and iPod Touch users will be able to use the interactive technology tied to the Fast & Furious “Virtual Car Garage” bonus feature. They also can use their devices’ touch screens to control 360-degree views of the movie’s street-racers and get technical specs for the film’s high-tech cars.

T-Mobile myTouch 3G

Google and T-Mobile this morning showed off the myTouch 3G, the second phone in the United States to run on the search giant’s Android operating system.

The companies debuted the phone at a small press event in San Francisco. The event started with a panel discussion that focused on the new phone, Android and the evolving role of carriers in an era of increasingly open phone platforms.

I got some hands-on time with the new phone and got a fairly favorable impression of it. The big difference between the myTouch and the G1, the first T-Mobile Android phone, is that the myTouch lacks a keyboard. Thanks to that, it’s slimmer, sleeker and seemingly lighter than the G1.

Read the rest of this entry »

SlingPlayer for the iPhone

The problem with Sling Media’s new new iPhone application has nothing to do with the fact that it’s running on the iPhone, an AT&T spokesman, responding to the controversy over the new program, told me today.

Sling today released its long awaited iPhone application, which allows users to stream live television signals to the iconic smartphone. But unlike beta versions of the program, the final release is critically hobbled by the fact that it can’t use AT&T’s 3G network. Instead, it can only access the signals over WiFi networks.

Company spokesman Mark Siegel explained to me this afternoon that AT&T considers the streaming of television signals to any device over its wireless data network to be a violation of its terms of service.

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SlingPlayer for the iPhone

iPhone owners can now watch live television with the iconic smartphone, thanks to a new application from Sling Media, the makers of the Slingbox. But the feature has some serious drawbacks and limitations.

Sling announced in January that it would be releasing an application for the iPhone that would work in tandem with its Slingbox devices. Those devices attach to cable and satellite set-top boxes and allow users to watch both live and recorded television programs from them on Internet-connected devices, such as PCs and some phones.

Sling’s decision to bring the feature to the iPhone appeared to address a big hole in the lineup of Sling-compatible devices as well as a sizeable gap in the iPhone’s features. Although you can buy many recently aired TV episodes in Apple’s iTunes store and watch some others through the YouTube and Joost applications, you generally can’t watch live television programming on the device.

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JBL On Stage 400P

I just swapped out the Altec-Lansing inMotion Max iPod speaker system I’ve been testing for JBL’s new On Stage 400P.

Like the inMotion Max, the 400P works with — and will charge — iPhones and iPods. But at the 400P has a different set of features than the inMotion Max.

Unlike the inMotion Max, the 400P doesn’t include and LCD display or an FM tuner (it does have an auxiliary port, though). It also doesn’t have a rechargeable battery pack, so unlike the Altec-Lansing device, it’s not portable. Nor does it have the inMotion’s “Expanded Sound Stage” technology, which is supposed to “fill a room with sound” (but which I found underwhelming in my tests).

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Altec-Lansing inMotion Max

As I mentioned before, I’ve been testing out one of Altec-Lansing’s newest iPod speaker systems, the inMotion Max. I was hoping to write up a full review of the inMotion Max this week, but I now plan to postpone it. The reason: The device has repeatedly had the same glitch I reported before, and I don’t think it’s fair to judge it on what might be a single faulty unit.

The glitch is pretty annoying. At seemingly random intervals, the inMotion Max will seize up, no longer responding when I press buttons on the remote control or the device itself. Instead, it repeatedly turns itself on and off until it’s unplugged and reset. 

When I first experienced the glitch on the inMotion Max, I chalked it up to bad luck. But I’ve now experienced it four or five times, seemingly every time I spend a decent amount of time with the device.

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Altec-Lansing inMotion Max

As I forecast on Friday, I started testing out the Altec-Lansing inMotion Max iPod speaker system over the weekend. As might be expected, it was easy to set up.

I haven’t really put the device through its paces yet, but my initial impression is somewhat mixed. The sound quality seemed fine. Unlike many iPod speaker systems, it’s fully compatible with my iPhone, meaning that not only will it charge my iPhone, but it doesn’t prompt an annoying incompatibility message on the iPhone that asks whether I want to turn off the iPhone’s antennas everytime I plug my iPhone into it. So that’s nice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Speaking of Altec-Lansing, I’ll likely be playing around this weekend with a new speaker system from the company, the iPhone-compatible inMotion Max.

In coming weeks, I also plan on testing out a handful of new headphones, including a pair of new models — the 200 and the 300 — from SoundID.

Finally — and I realize I’m a little late to this — but I’ve been playing around this week with Apple’s new iPod shuffle. My first take: I love the ultra-slim size, and I generally like the new VoiceOver feature, which uses a computer-generated voice to tell you what song is playing or what playlists are available.

But I hate that Apple’s decision to incorporate the volume, VoiceOver and play/stop/fast-forward/reverse controls into a button on the headphone wire means that I can’t use my noise-isolating headphones with the shuffle.

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The latest iPhone app reviewer site will officially launch next week.
AppReview – available here – has information about more than 16,000 iPhone and iPod applications. In some cases, the review site, which recently was blessed with Apple’s official OK to be included in the App Store, provides demonstration videos.
The site claims it has one of the largest databases of user reviews.
So far nearly one billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store. And according to AppReview, there are 29,684 applications available from the Apple Store.