Apple

The fact that Opera Mini was admitted to the App Store was a huge surprise, but judging from the popularity of the app, it was the right move, at least from the users’ point of view. At one point, Opera Mini was the most popular free app in all regional App Stores, as you can see in the screenshot below. Right now, the situation has changed slightly, but Opera Mini is still on top everywhere except in Australia, where it holds the second place. ...

Disney’s ABC television network was the first in the industry to market on the iPad with their impressive app. Downloaders can stream TV episodes free of charge and early data is showing that they’re doing so in droves. According to data shared with the Wall Street Journal, the ABC iPad app has been downloaded 205,000 times and users have already streamed 650,000 television episodes. Those streams have translated into several million ad impressions for the network’s iPad advertisers, including AT&T, Sears and Target. ...

If, like me, you live outside of the U.S. and you’re waiting for your chance to purchase the iPad, you’re out of luck. Apple has delayed the international launch of the device until the end of May because it has sold more iPads (over half a million) than it anticipated. Here’s the official announcement: “Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April. ...

Although there’s a heated Adobe vs. Apple discussion going on, creative professionals are probably much more excited about the latest version of Adobe’s Creative Suite, which is now officially available. Besides the new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro and Dreamweaver, Adobe Creative Suite 5 also brings Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR® 2, which are “optimized for high performance on mobile screens and designed to take advantage of native device capabilities for a richer, more immersive user experience.” ...

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed that his company is developing a tablet device based on the Android operating system, according to friends that spoke to the executive at a recent event in Los Angeles. The New York Times reports that Google has “been working with several hardware manufacturers,” and “hopes to make its own apps marketplace available for new slate-like devices.” Although Google is yet to publicly announce such a device, many signs point to its likely launch. For starters, Google has been rumored to be developing a slate device with HTC – the same company it brought Nexus One to market with – since January. Moreover, the company has already announced plans for an e-book store expected to launch within the next few months. ...

Barnes & Noble confirmed that its Nook e-reader is coming to Best Buy retail stores beginning April 18. Last week we reported on rumors that both the Nook and Amazon’s Kindle would be hitting retail stores, but it looks like the Barnes & Noble device has secured a presence at the large electronics retailer first. Released last December, the Nook has already been available for purchase in Barnes & Noble retail and online stores. The move to a major consumer electronics retailer like Best Buy, however, potentially opens the device up to a whole new market. ...

In an e-mail to a German customer, Steve Jobs confirmed what most of us surmised last week: There will be no iPhone OS 4.0 support for original 2G iPhone owners. At last week’s iPhone OS 4.0 announcement, Apple let iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod touch owners know that those devices will not support multitasking, although they will support other new features. For owners of the nearly three-year-old original iPhone, it looks like iPhone OS 3.1.x will be the end of the line in terms of official OS updates. Jobs didn’t explain why Apple is no longer going to offer software updates for the original iPhone, though we suspect it’s part of a plan to phase out the product line. ...

Twitter has just announced that it has acquired Atebits, the company behind the popular Tweetie iPhone app and Mac desktop application. Tweetie’s creator, Loren Brichter, will be joining the Twitter team as well. The app will be renamed “Twitter for iPhone” and be made free in the next few weeks. Twitter CEO Evan Williams explained the move in a blog post: “We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world.” ...

Apple has been challenging Google on many fronts this week — first with its mobile platform, then with its advertising platform. Earlier today, its developers launched the first volley in the battle’s third front, releasing the first public code for the next WebKit rendering and processing kernel that will likely drive the Safari 5 browser. With Google Chrome using a reworked form of WebKit, the Apple team did something that perhaps any other free and open source developer would be publicly stoned for doing, but which Apple might just have the savvy to get away with: It openly one-upped another developer’s open contribution. ...

Sure, that Apple-flavored brushed aluminum finish might work for most iPad owners, but what if you’re a unique snowflake whose extremely non-conformist identity must be reflected in every item of consumer electronics you own? Enter the folks at ColorWare, who want to help add some serious Technicolor flair to your shiny new Apple tablet. You can customize your own look and feel by picking your a color scheme for the back, logo and home button separately using the company’s web-based Design Studio. ...

Microsoft has made the right decision to temporarily turn off Hotmail’s vacation (e.g., out-of-office) reply feature. Flip the switch off permanently, I say. “In our fight against spam, we sometimes have to make hard choices, and we had to make one this week. We discovered that spammers were using Hotmail’s automatic vacation reply feature to send spam from their Hotmail accounts,” Krish Vitaldevara, Windows Live Hotmail lead program manager, blogged late yesterday. I missed the post because of Apple’s iPhone OS 4 launch. I spotted the announcement first at LiveSide about an hour ago. ...

Adobe has fired back against Apple’s recent ban on building iPhone apps via Flash. And this time, Adobe’s not pulling any of punches. In a recent blog post on The Flash Blog, Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow goes on the offensive for seven paragraphs, ripping into Apple’s recent change to its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement that only allows for applications to be written in Objective-C, C, C++ or Javascript and executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine. In fact, the post was so strong that Adobe asked Brimelow to delete a segment. ...

The new release rental is officially dead. As expected, Netflix has signed new deals with Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Studios Home Entertainment — similar to its deal with Warner Bros. — that delay new release rentals by 28 days and add new titles to its streaming collection. Both deals go into effect later this month; Netflix will start the 28-day hold for Fox titles with Avatar’s release and Universal flicks with It’s Complicated. ...

One of the finer points Steve Jobs let loose at the end of the iPhone OS 4.0 announcement today is that only the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch third generation (the most recent iteration from fall 2009) will have the capacity to support the iPhone OS 4.0’s new multitasking features. In other words, owners of the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G, and first or second generation iPod touch models will not be able to multitask. ...

Multitasking, the feature that has been the absolute top of every iPhone user’s want list –which, by proxy became a major marketing point for both Android and webOS — has made its way to iPhone OS 4. “We figured out how to implement multitasking for third party apps and avoid those things [battery life and lag]. So that’s what took so long,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs this morning. While it’s not actually full background processing, Apple has devised a way to reproduce the feeling. The company provided 7 APIs to developers which constitute the always-on services that apps can communicate with. These include: background audio, VoIP, Background Location, push notifications, local notifications, task completion, and fast app switching. ...