Appletell

And the rumors of the October 14th Apple notebook event appear to be true. Apple will hold an invitation only town hall event in San Francisco at 10am Pacific this upcoming Tuesday, featuring what is likely to be a major revision to their portable Macintosh line. The invite sent out today, pictured above, out and out says what the event will be about; a departure from the otherwise furtiveness of Apple’s prior event invitations.

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When Podcaster was rejected as an iPhone app for duplicating features found in iTunes, the developer, Al Sokirynsky, didn’t just sit there and take it. He began distributing it via Apple’s “ad hoc” program until Apple made him stop doing that, as well.

Well, Sokirynsky, channeling the rebellious power of a Quiet Riot video, is back again. This time he’s distributing Podcaster to jailbroken iPhones via Cydia, an open source project that allows people to put whatever program they want on their iPhones. What a crazy idea—that people could have the ability to install whatever programs they wanted on a computer they paid for, rather than rely on some secretive program to tell them what is or isn’t good enough (or what might potentially take business away from iTunes) for them to use.

Ahem.

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MacRumors has gotten word that the newest version of the beta for iPhone firmware 2.2 contains more than just bug fixes. The update was marked as “compatibility testing,” and we’re finally finding out just what Apple is testing the compatibility of.

Check out the new features after the break.

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If TUAW’s sources are to be believed then the upcoming MacBook’s coming from Apple may just have Nvidia graphic chips in them.

More after the break…

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9to5Mac claims to have received some information about Apple’s newest secret product, codename Brick. They say it best:

We have received more information. This will be huge.

Well, you can’t argue with that, now, can you? They say they’ll be elaborating on their information this weekend. For now, all they supply is the teaser pic above.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what this means. Here are my first thoughts. Maybe the green symbolizes Apple’s effort to become more “green” with their products. The laser? I have no idea.  And as for the Apple logo, maybe it’s actually on the back of something, like a MacBook Touch. I can only hope. One thing is for sure, the book has nothing to do with it, as mentioned in the teaser. But, I think this image is really just that, a teaser. Something to get us all excited again. I don’t know about you, but it worked on me. Always does.

Read [9to5Mac]

iTunes is up to version 8.0.1. The update addresses bug fixes, mainly focused on Genius and VoiceOver for the iPod nano.

Apple provides all the details of what this update does right along with the package.

iTunes 8.0.1 improves stability and performance and provides a number of important bug fixes, including:

• Seamlessly plays the current song when creating a new Genius playlist.
• Improves syncing spoken menus to iPod nano.
• Addresses an issue of deleting HD TV episodes when downloading.
• Improves checking for updates from the App Store
• Improves accessibility with VoiceOver.
• Addresses problems syncing Genius results to iPod.

Overall, you can expect iTunes to run with greater stability, though I haven’t personally had any problems with iTunes 8 thus far. If your automatic updates haven’t already prompted you to update iTunes, then click the Apple icon in your menu bar and select Software Update to bring your iTunes up to 8.0.1.  Alternatively, you can click the link below to download the update manually.

Product [iTunes]

A Thursday ruling from the Copyright Royalty Board could force Apple to follow through on a threat to close down the iTunes Music Store. The Board, a three-judge panel, which will determine how much money creators are paid for their works, could follow through on a request from the publishers association to increase payments from 9 cents to 15 cents a track. Apple has said that move would make the ITMS unprofitable, and that it would be shut down rather than operate at a loss.

CNN has this statement from Eddy Cue Apple’s VP for iTunes:

“If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the ... royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all,” Cue wrote. “Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.”

To which I reply, yeeeeeeeah, sure.

More after the break.

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Paul Betlem, Sr. Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems, says that his team is not only “working on Flash on the iPhone,” but, with Apple’s approval, it could be available “in a very short time.”

Betlem was speaking at the Flash on the Beach conference when he dispenced this information. Apparently, Adobe has been working on Flash for the iPhone since March, despite Apple’s seemingly unlikely approval. Three months after starting, they were pleased with their progress. But now it’s down to final touches.

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Apparently, iPhone Firmware 2.2 beta 1 is more than just bug fixes, as originally reported.  So far, not much more, but we’ll take every little bit we can get.

According to iPhoneAtlas, in the latest iPhone firmware for registered developers, Safari has experienced a few interface tweaks. As you can see at right, the address bar has been changed to more closely resemble the desktop version of Safari.

Gone are the refresh and search buttons. Take out your iPhone and have a look. There used to be a magnifying glass for searching to the left of the address bar, and there used to be a refresh button to the right.

The new mobile Safari has two input fields. The standard address bar now holds a refresh icon to the right, and a search box off to the right side.

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As recently as yesterday, Apple made a much needed improvement to the App Store. The change is subtle, but necessary.

Developers of non-free apps everywhere will rejoice when they hear that users are now required to actually own an app to be able to review it.

I say non-free apps, because there really is nothing stopping you from downloading a free app just to badmouth it in the reviews. But paid apps will now benefit from reviews from actual users.

But developers aren’t the only ones benefiting here. No no, you and I benefit just as much. Now app reviews and scores will be more accurate and trustworthy. Previously, anyone with an iTunes account could review any app on the App Store. So, if you wanted to complain about the price of an app and give it a terrible score so that other people would be deterred from buying it, you could. This is no longer the case.

This policy change really makes sense, and should have been the policy from the beginning. The only suggestion I can make to Apple is to somehow include further verification that the user actually installed the app and at least attempted to launch it on his device. Reviews from nonusers are essentially worthless, so I’m glad to hear they will be a thing of the past.

Read [TUAW]