Just as we all thought the Apple-Google relationship had officially ended with an interesting report by John Gruber contributing to the speculation that Jobs & Schmidt hate each other's guts (General's War - Daring Fireball), one tipster snapped up photos of the two billionaire executives enjoying a coffee together in Palo Alto. When asked to comment for the technology blog, Steve just smiled and said "No thanks" (Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt Spotted Together Again - Gizmodo).
One of the topics of discussion between the two may have been Apple's rumoured upcoming plans to try and destroy Google's market share in the mobile advertising industry. Word on the street is that the platform will be built upon the recent Quattro Wireless purchase, will be named iAd, and "has been described as "revolutionary" and "our next big thing" by Apple chief Steve Jobs". According to unidentified sources, the plan is set to be unveiled on April 7th to Madison Avenue advertising executives (Apple Poised To Unveil 'iAd' - MediaPost).
There are only five days left until the iPad gets released in the United States, so Apple's been very busy preparing the iPad App Store for launch. Over the past few days, a few leaks have sprung from within the virtual shelves of Apple's app superstore, giving us a sneak peak into the first apps to be released with the device. First, there were screenshots posted of the home page and top fifty charts (iPad App Store Screenshots - App Annie). Then, reports of a possible 'explicit' category for iPad software surfaced (Explicit Apps category being wheeled out for iPad launch? - 9to5Mac) and now screenshots are emerging of Bento, Brushes, Omnigraffle and Yahoo! on the iPad (Exclusive: Screenshots from the iPad App Store - MacStories).
Being able to purchase iBooks on the iPad is going to be very cool, but do you know what would be even cooler? Being able to download over 30,000 of those iBooks for free. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, that will soon become a reality as more leaked screenshots have shown (iPad iBooks Features The Gutenberg Project Catalog – AppAdvice).
Your last piece of iPad news comes from Dan Lyons this week, who just published a fascinating article about the future of computing. In the split-page opinion piece, he talks about Jobs' vision for the iPad and other devices, including speculation of larger and smaller iPads arriving as early as this year (apparently, a smaller iPad*? iPhone). To summarise his story into just one sentence: "this elegant little device comes loaded with Jobs's grandiose ambition and is yet another example of his willingness to defy conventional wisdom and bend the ethos of Silicon Valley to his own will." (Why the iPad Will Change Everything - Newsweek).
Elsewhere in the world of Apple this week, it looks like the iPhone has quite an impact on the war in Afghanistan. While the U.S. Army is visiting Cupertino to try and get more iPhones into soldiers' hands (Army, Apple meet to discuss hand-held solutions for Soldiers - Army.mil), our own Department of Defence's Chief Technology Officer tells us the Taliban is "making better use of available data by "using iPhones and applications — and multiple SIM cards — and going much faster than we are" (iPhone-wielding enemy trumps Defence - ZDNet Australia).
If you're just as excited about Steam for Mac as many of my recently converted friends are, you'll be very pleased to know that Valve is looking for beta testers of the online gaming system. It will be released in April for the public, but impatient gamers can get in on the action by logging in to Steam and filling out a questionnaire for the company (Valve calls for Steam for Mac beta testers - TUAW).
With the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and App Store under their control, Chris Foresman believes that Apple is well and truly a force in portable gaming that Sony, Nintendo and the rest of the big players should be afraid of. According to their statistics, sourced from mobile analytics firm Flurry, "iPhone games now account for about one-fifth of all revenue for portable game software in the US." (Apple a force to be reckoned with in portable gaming - Ars Technica).
Despite the fact there's still no Blu-ray love on the Mac in terms of hardware, that doesn't mean there's no software to strip all that nasty DRM and convert discs into the MKV format (with some additional HandBrake trickery) for OS X. One software package is free while in beta, and when used in conjunction with an external Blu-ray drive, will help put your HD movies into iTunes with a little more ease (MakeMKV Rips DVDs And Blu-Rays With Just Two Clicks - Lifehacker).
Finally, you might want to be a little bit careful when it comes to lifting and moving the Mac Pro. One man tells a story of his friend being pinned down by Apple's power machine, having "found her laying flat on her back on the staircase with the Mac Pro crushing her chest. I ran up there to pull the tower off her and I couldn’t help but to laugh" (Funny True Story: Woman Pinned To Floor Under Heavy Mac Pro - Cult of Mac).
This week's Apple executive is Senior Vice President of Legal & Government Affairs and General Counsel Bruce Sewell. Photo from MSNBC.
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