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“First half (1H) revenues from music streaming services surpassed $1 billion for the first time,” the report said, “growing 23% in 2015 to $1.03 billion – up from $834 million for 1H 2014.” Total sales were up 0.8 percent year-over-year to US$2.3 billion. All told, streaming music accounted for 32 percent of revenues, while physical…

Apple is refunding all Peace app purchases “Apple notified me this afternoon that they’ll be proactively refunding all purchases of Peace,” Mr. Arment said in a blog post. “As far as I know, this effectively never happens. When I decided to pull the app, I asked some Apple friends if this was even possible, and…

Peace was an app that enabled iOS 9's Web content blocking feature. It sped up website loading by using Ghostery's database to block superfluous content which includes some on-site ads, but didn't offer fine-tuned controls for choosing exactly which content would be blocked. Mr. Arment said in a blog post on his website, Peace required…

Neither company is officially in the car business, but both companies are on everyone's lips at this year's event. Google has been openly working on autonomous vehicles since 2009, but Apple is technically only rumored to be working on a car. Apparently, even knowing that Apple has a team working on this project has “changed…

Part of what I'm happy about is the change this will bring to our industry as a whole. I'm also happy about some of the specific changes it will bring to TMO.  Ad blockers are, of course, a slippery slope. It's easy to start by saying, “well, I'm going to use it on sites that…

Apple buys another map company: Mapsense Mapsense is a San Francisco-based company founded in 2013. Here's how it describes itself: There are over 10 billion devices on the planet streaming location data on a daily basis. While collecting location data has become mainstream, the traditional tools to visualize, understand, and harness it have been hampered…

Episode #141   The theme for Apple’s event in San Francisco last week was, “The only thing that has changed is everything.” It sounds like marketing hype, but by the end of the event most of the audience (including me) seemed to agree. You’ve surely heard about the announcements: a collection of Apple Watches from…

Steve Wozniak Here's the comment in full, which was made on Robert Scoble's Facebook post about the movie: One thing nobody likes to point out is that John Sculley himself, as well as almost all of us at Apple, believed that the Macintosh was Apple's future. We all sacrificed the growing personal computer market (10x…

Note that most folks can get more by selling their devices themselves to friends or family, or through Craigslist or Ebay, many others prefer the ease of the hassle-free mail-in programs. Your mileage will vary considerably on that assessment, but either way the following chart can help you make your decision. The chart below shows…

Image credit: Apple Writing for The Verge, Mr. Mossberg delights us with several crisp insights here: “What I learned this week about Tim Cook’s Apple.” For example: 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s is going to change the way we use our iPhones. Siri's voice control is maturing and can do a lot of things…

_______________________ iPhone 6s/Plus. While the list of enhancements for each new iPhone to the next may not seem spectacular, the thing to remember is that Apple's messaging is also directed towards all the owners of previous models. In that case, the quantum leap from, say, an iPhone 5 from 2012 will be compelling. That's especially…

Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs The film, which is based on Mr. Isaacson's biography in the loosest sense, includes a powerful cast and is the “monstrously sel-aggrandizing movie [Steve Jobs] deserves.” Variety goes on to offer up the obligatory comparison to the two year old Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher, and gives us the…

Episode #140 Most companies, including Apple, do their best to attract media attention when announcing a new product. But Apple isn’t like most companies when it comes to product announcements. Instead of using press releases, trade shows, press conferences, and other traditional forms of media outreach, Apple typically introduces its new products at extravagantly-produced invitation-only…

His expectations for the next generation iPhone models are in line with other analysts. Mr. Um said, “We expect the biggest internal hardware addition to be Force Touch alongside memory, CPU, and camera upgrades and capacity to remain unchanged at 16GB, 64GB, and 128GB.” He expects we'll also see a refresh for the iPad mini,…

We've come a long way since Steve Jobs told us we already have ten styluses on our hands thanks to the creative efforts of many companies. Over time, iPad and iPhone styluses have become more complex, gained pressure sensitivity, and trimmed down the size of their tips. Adonit's latest addition to the stylus world is…

______________________ Vidity is the product of the Secure Content Storage Association (SCSA). This organization was founded by both movie studios, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment as well as storage companies SanDisk and Western Digital. It currently has over 50 member companies, most notably Intel, Qualcomm, Comcast, Samsung and Walmart. The goal of…

The story began with Lil Weezyana Fest, a benefit for Tha Carter Fund, a charity managed by the Greater New Orleans Foundation. The Fest was part of the memorial events organized around the 10th anniversary of the Katrina hurricane disaster. Tidal, a streaming music service owned by Hip Hop mogul Jay-Z and other big-name artists,…

Apple Music's boss leaves in surprise move Apple confirmed Mr. Rogers is leaving the company, but isn't offering up any details, according to the Financial Times. Unnamed sources said that instead of moving to another company in the music industry, he left for a company in an unrelated market. The resignation came as a surprise…

Good news from Apple's invitation. The key here is a technology issue. Apple has been using an Internet technology called HTTP live streaming or HLS. The Apple devices listed above support that, but Windows and IE never have. In Windows 10, Microsoft added HLS support to its Edge browser, and so that's why Apple's invitation…

In August of 2014, I reviewed, in healthy detail, the Amazon Fire Phone. Even though it was missing some key features, like Google Maps and hardware encryption, I found it to be a solid smartphone with good looks and a good looking GUI. What quickly doomed the Fire Phone was the creepy factor of a…

Amazon's Fire Phone lost its connection. Forever. Dozens of engineers have been laid off from Amazon's Lab126 center where the Fire Phone and other devices including the Kindle ebook reader were developed, according to the Wall Street Journal. Amazon jumped into the smartphone market in June 2014 with the Fire Phone. The phone shipped with…

Mac Geek Gab listener Andrew illustrated this advice with an example: while recently attending a busy sporting event, Andrew and others had difficultly accessing online services like Facebook and Twitter. Andrew's iPhone was successfully connected to his mobile carrier's 4G network with plenty of “dots” of signal strength, but the process of uploading or downloading…

There's just one more thing, according to Columbo Apple co-founder Steve Jobs occasionally said “one more thing” before unveiling surprise product announcements at media events, and it turned into a catch phrase people expected to hear at every Apple event. Current CEO Tim Cook has used the line, too, when announcing new products. The Columbo…

Spotify took it on the chin for privacy changes it didn't explain ahead of time Here's what Spotify wants to get at on your smartphone: Information stored on your mobile device. That can include contacts, photos, and media files. Location and sensor information such as GPS, Bluetooth, motion tracking. That sounds pretty ominous, like Spotify…