Appletell

Apple’s successor to .Mac, MobileMe, announced during WWDC and touting a release date of one week ago, has faced some difficulties with stability. Thus, Apple is offering a 30-day service extension to eligible users, gratis. An e-mail was sent out to all MobileMe/.Mac users, apologizing and informing them of the 30 day increase in their subscriptions. If you were a .Mac member whose account was active as of July 9, 2008, or a new MobileMe user who created your account on or before July 15, 2008 at 7:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time, the 30-day extension will be added to all qualifying accounts (surprisingly, including free trial accounts) in a matter of weeks. In the same e-mail, Apple has also apologized to the time lag of the “push” features of MobileMe, citing that they will not use the term until it is completely true.

Can you name another company besides Apple that would go to such lengths?

Jump ahead to read the full e-mail.

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Apple had themselves quite a nice weekend, even if many of its customers didn’t. The company reported today that over one million iPhone 3Gs were sold by Sunday.

“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”

I’m not sure exactly how they pulled this off, considering the long lines and iPhone activation delays caused by server problems for those trying to activate their new iPhone 3G (and for those of us just trying to get the iPhone 2.0 upgrade). Considering many people were turned away or left in frustration, imagine the weekend Apple would’ve had. These numbers are further indication that a popular, well-made product can survive early troubles. I’m sure most iPhone 3G owners would tell you it was worth the hassle.

That same weekend, iPhone and iPod touch customers downloaded more than 10 million applications from the new App Store. The groundbreaking App Store now has more than 800 native applications, including over 200 offered for free and more than 90 percent available for less than $10. I expect sales will taper off once the excitement wears off, but I’ll admit I did download some free apps I’ll probably never use to just to see iPhone 2.0 in action. The only app I paid for was Freeverse’s Wingnuts Moto Racer, and it’s been a hit with those to whom I’ve shown it...and has won over a few iPhone converts.

How about all you iPhone and iPod touch owners? What was the first app you downloaded from the App Store?

Via [Apple] Product [iPhone]

FROM GAMERTELL - Jobs tells the New York Times that 25 percent of the first 500 applications at the store are free and the other 90 percent of applications are offered for $9.99 or less to help entice customers and developers…
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Poor, poor, UK customers, first you’re offered an extremely buggy pre-order site to try and satisfy your 3G iPhone needs, then o2 tells you that you need to send scans of your most sensitive information (passports, bank cards) through e-mail, and now you can’t even pick one up from a shop hassle free.

It seems that that Apple’s flagship store in London has had huge trouble trying to activate 3G iPhones. iPhones must now be activated before leaving the store, a change from the previous method of customers activating when they got back home. The problems arose due to a web-based activation system from o2 that isn’t compatible with Safari! Ironic, no?

More after the break.

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Freeverse announced its Moto Racer and Big Bang Sudoku games for iPhone and iPod Touch are now available from the new Apple App Store. Video trailers and screenshots for both games are available on the Freeverse website.

“Over the years, we’ve always tried to be among the first to adopt new Apple technologies and platforms, but we’ve never been more excited than we are at this moment with the launch of the Apple App Store,” said Ian Lynch Smith, President of Freevese. “The iPhone is an amazing gaming device, and Freeverse is committed to building great titles for it. Moto Racer exists on no other platform but the iPhone, and, as designed, there is just no other mobile platform for which it even could exist.”

Details after the break.

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Yes, it is true. Apple has launched the App Store, the NDA is lifted and now everyone can finally talk about their applications! The store went live this morning with about 550+ applications, ranging from Super Monkey Ball to an Abacus (for only $0.99, you can count and calculate on this fully customizable abacus!).

If you would like to get in on all of the App Store good-ness, downloading iTunes 7.7 (Apple’s site still lists 7.6, but Software Update has 7.7) will let you purchase applications from the store. At the time of writing, there wasn’t an “official” link to the App Store from the iTunes homepage, but you can access it by following one of the links above, or by going into preferences of 7.7, and checking the box that will have “Applications” show up in your iTunes sidebar. Searching for an application in iTunes will also bring up it’s information page.

There is quite a selection available right off the bat, so those of you who have iPhones and iPod Touches have plenty to play around with. Now all that’s left is for Apple to release the iPhone 2.0 update so that you can actually use these applications on your device. Keep an eye out on the App Store, as more applications are expected to be added in the coming days.

It seems o2 are blaming Apple for a shortage of UK iPhone 3G stock. In an e-mail response to an inquiring customer, Steve Shurrock, sales director of o2 had the following to say,

“We have been working continuously with them [Apple] to get as much stock for the UK as possible. Unfortunately, they have only been able to supply a small proportion of the number of phones we asked for, because they are launching simultaneously in 22 countries.”

Shurrock goes onto say that he is confident that the volume of iPhones will increase over time and become sufficient for customer demand.

More after the break.

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Sunday, we reported that Apple would be diverting shipment of the iPhone 3G from Canada to Europe as a slap on the wrist to Rogers Communications over their ridiculous rate plans. Now, that slap has become a punch in the gut. Apple Insider is reporting that Canadian Apple Stores will not be selling or activating or marketing or supporting or apparently even acknowledging the iPhone’s very existence. Rogers will still be able to sell the iPhone and gouge its customers, but they’ll get no marketing help from Apple, Inc.

Apple is giving Rogers the corporate equivalent of the silent treatment.

Juicy details after the break.

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Following in the footsteps of Electronic Arts, Ubisoft has signed a deal with Trangaming to wrap their titles in Cider and port them to the Mac. The news has already received mixed reviews. The list of Cider games for the Mac is underwhelming, and it really hasn’t proven itself when it comes to Mac games.

When I heard the news, I was excited. Ubisoft has a lot of game titles that I would love to play on my Mac: Prince of Persia, Assassins Creed, Far Cry 2, and Beyond Good and Evil (which is currently in the pre-development stage.

My initial excitement took an unexpected nosedive when I logged onto the Transgaming website. Find out why after the break.

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Looks like it might be time to invest in a Macbook Air, that’s if you’ve been holding of. Apple quietly, and without explanation, has slashed the price of the 1.8GHz model to just $2598 which is $500 than it’s previous price at $3098. Adding the solid-state drive to the 1.6GHz model will now cost just $599 from its previous $999 and will reduce the price of upgrading the 1.6GHz processor to the faster 1.8GHz model from $300 to $200.

Apple hasn’t officially noted the price drop, but it’s obvious that the increase in SSD production has led the to the cheaper price points. All the Air needs now is a larger storage capacity (and more power), but the wait shouldn’t be too long as Samsung, which currently produces the SSDs for the Macbook Air, have said they could be delivering cheap 256GB SSD drives later this year, as well as a 128GB model.

Product [MacBook Air]