Apple may be preparing a subscription plan for newspapers says the Mercury News. When iBooks was announced alongside iPad, but no similar offering for magazines and newspapers, it was curious. When friction resulted from magazines trying to roll their own subscriptions, it was noteworthy. Now, however, a solution might just be in place:

What makes this so much more complicated than apps or books is that newspaper and magazines aren’t just after transactional money — they want subscriber data. Their business is as much about who subscribes as how much. Apple is much the same, which is why they often talk about how many credit cards they have on file for iTunes accounts. There’s gold in that data, in being able to segment and slice and dice it, aggregate and market on it. Media doesn’t want to lose their subscribers to Apple and Apple doesn’t want to lose their buyers to media. So how will they resolve this?

The Cupertino company has agreed to provide an opt-in function for subscribers to allow Apple to share with publishers their information, which includes vital data that news organizations use to attract advertisers, industry sources say.

It’s not a done deal and it could get ugly. It’s not how media is used to doing business, but then again this is a brave new world of online, app-centric business. Ironically, iTunes rise has disintermediated the traditional media middlemen, yet it’s introducing Apple itself as a new, digital middleman.

That’s it’s opt-in for subscribers is good. Typically when you subscribe to a print edition, you’re automatically opted-in.

What would you prefer, dozens of independent media apps with different accounts and methods of handling subscriptions, like the current print model, or a single solution tied to iTunes to handle all the digital media you want?

[Mercury News]

Apple prepping subscription plan for newspapers? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Apple TV is indeed running iOS according to a TUAW tipster who has confirmed the 2010 model is the iprod2 previously seen in code strings.

So… Jailbreak and run apps? How would that boost sales?

[TUAW]

New Apple TV confirmed to be running iOS is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Yahoo! perhaps doth protest too much as CEO Carol Bartz thinks Apple’s iAds will self-destruct:

“That’s going to fall apart for them,” Bartz said about Apple’s iAd service. “Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads.”

Because that strategy has worked so poorly for Apple in the past, what with the dismal failures of iTunes and record labels and iPhone and carriers, right?

[Reuters]

Yahoo! CEO: iAds will fall apart on Apple is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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iOS 4.2 will finally give iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad the ability to find text on a Safari web page. It can be hard to find a specific snippet of text on a long, paragraph strewn web page. On Windows or Mac, you just hit CTL-F or CMD-F, type your text, and off you go. Now in iOS 4.2 beta 1 you just use the regular old search field (still confusingly labeled Google by default) and start typing the text you want to find.

Where previously you only got suggested search terms, now you get a second list at the bottom for words you can search on the page. Tap one and the first match on the page is highlighted in yellow and a set of buttons slide up on the bottom for “Next” and “Done”, as well as a counter for how many matches of the word there are on the page, and which one is currently highlighted (e.g., 7/16). Hit next until you find the one you want, hit done when you’re finished. If you want to change the find term, the search box is repositioned alongside the controls to make it convenient.

No more manual scanning, no more javascript bookmarklets. Just happy surfing.

One more pic after the break.

iOS 4.2 features: Find text on Safari web page is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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iPad continues its international roll-out, heading for China, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru on September 17.

China gets Wi-Fi only:

iPad Wi-Fi models in China will be available for a suggested retail price of CNY3988 for 16GB, CNY4788 for 32GB and CNY5588 for 64GB. iPad will be sold in China through Apple's Retail Stores, and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

Latin America gets all models:

Todos los modelos iPad estarán disponibles en Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador y Perú este viernes 17 de septiembre. Para conocer la disponibilidad específica por tienda, por favor visite: http://latam.apple.com/la/buy/

Given pervious international iPad rollouts, and that iPad 3G has been sold unlocked and carrier free even in the US, no doubt there are plenty roaming these nations already. Still, nice to have it all local and official-like, right?

[Apple PR, Apple PR via AppleInsider]

iPad coming to China, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru on September 17 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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