According to a Cult of Mac source, Apple might be buying an App Store app developer in order to improve iOS notifications. This… sounds a little strange. Notifications are certainly one of the weakest remaining elements in iOS, handled better by Android and far more elegantly by webOS. It took Apple until iOS 3 to get copy and paste and iOS 4 to get 3rd party multitasking so my assumption has been notifications were on the list for update but probably not until iOS 5. (Especially after Apple hired back the engineer who developed webOS’ notification system.)

What is there in an iOS 5 notification system Apple can’t build internally? Still, Cult of Mac says:

Our source, who asked to remain anonymous, didn't know the identity of the company, except it already has an iPhone app in the App Store.

One candidate is Boxcar, a free app from Appremix that enables push notifications for Twitter, Facebook, and email. Boxcar's system has been highly praised, especially the new iPad version.

Boxcar is fabulous — I use it all the time — but it’s a third party solution, not something designed and integrated into the OS deeply, the way a new notification system would need to be. I just don’t see it…

…unless this is another one of Apple’s famous talent acquisitions — more and better people to work on what will become iOS 5’s new notification system. That I can see.

What do you think?

[Cult of Mac]

Apple looking to improve iOS notifications… by buying an iPhone app? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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It appears as if Sony is at war with Apple and is threatening to pull its music from iTunes and their games from the App Store as well. Sony has plans on opening their own version of iTunes, an online streaming service called Music Unlimited, and a service that will bring Playstation titles to mobile platforms starting with Android.

Perhaps Sony is not happy about having their reader app rejected by Apple and is taking their frustration out on the end users? Or perhaps Sony just wants a piece of the enormous pie that is mobile downloadings including music and apps. Sony’s CEO, Michael Ephraim, had the following to say about Apple and iTunes.

If we do [get mass take up] then does Sony Music need to provide content to iTunes? Currently we do. We have to provide it to iTunes as that’s the format right now.

Publishers are being held to ransom by Apple and they are looking for other delivery systems, and we are waiting to see what the next three to five years will hold.

Strong words there. Mr. Ephraim also said their Music Unlimited service right now is planned for Sony’s mobile products and may or may not go to other platforms but we can assume that now we will not see it available for use on any iOS device.

So it appears as if Sony and Apple are starting into some unfriendly times and it will seemingly only hinder the consumer. What are your thoughts on Sony’s threats to pull its stuff from iTunes all together? Does it matter or is there already enough content that you won’t even notice their departure? Sound off below!

[ Digital Life, thanks Anthony! ]

Sony at war, could pull music from iTunes is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Following the epically brutal “our platform is burning” memo, Nokia announced today it’s going to start using Windows phone in an effort to better compete with — and disrupt if they can — incredibly successful upstarts like Apple’s iPhone, iOS, and iTunes App Store ecosystem. Nokia makes great hardware and Windows Phone is about as elegant a piece of software as Microsoft has ever written. That’s a powerful combination — if they can execute (and that’s a big if).

Video after the break and for complete coverage see our sibling sites:

• WPCentral on Microsoft/Nokia alliance
• Nokia Experts on Nokia/Microsoft alliance

Then come back and let us know what you think, is the new Nokia Windows Phone going to be greater competition than the sum of its parts?

Nokia goes Windows Phone to better compete with Apple iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

The TiPb forums are naturally a great place to talk, commiserate, celebrate, get help, and offer advice to your fellow iPhone users. In order to create a new thread of your own or reply to any of the existing threads, you must be a registered member. Becoming a member is easy and free so if you haven't already, head on over and register now!

• Most of you have your Verizon iPhone 4 in hands right about now so what are your thoughts? Happy? Not happy? Sound off with your very own review here!

• For myself battery life of my iPhone 4 is nothing short of spectacular, how long does your battery last?

• Whether you’ve just purchased a Verizon iPhone 4 or have had your device for a while now, if you are interested in the possibility of jailbreaking your device, this is the forum for you – Jailbreak and Unlock Forum.

• The rumors regarding an iPad 2 and 3 are running rampant as of late, what are you purchasing plans on these devices? Will hold off until the 3rd generation if it does get released as soon as September? Sound off in this thread.

See you in the forums!

Review your Verizon iPhone 4, Battery life, Jailbreak, iPad 2 and 3 – From the Forums is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

No doubt to quell rumors and steady the stock price, the Wall Street Journal’s always well informed Yukari Iwatani Kane reports that Steve Jobs is still at the helm of Apple, running it from home and working on iPad 2 and iPhone 5.

The 55-year-old Mr. Jobs, whose ailment hasn’t been disclosed, has been taking business meetings at home and on the phone, these people said.

He also has been seen on Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., campus and in public in Palo Alto, Calif., with a company executive, said people familiar with the matter.

Steve Jobs has been on medical leave since January 17, his third since returning to Apple. TiPb continues to wish him a fast and full recovery.

Steve Jobs still running Apple, working on iPad 2, iPhone 5 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

One of the news features introduced with the Verizon iPhone is personal hotspot. Personal hotspot allows you to connect up to 5 devices to Verizon’s 3G network through your iPhone 4 via Wi-Fi. Watch the video above for a quick look at how to connect a Mac and iPad to Wi-Fi with personal hotspot.

Connecting with Wi-Fi personal hotspot is a breeze. After enabling it in the iPhone 4’s settings, you just find the network with the device you want to connect with, enter in the password, and you’re good to go. Check out our tip on how to use Wi-Fi personal hotspot for more details and follow on after the break to see how it works…

Speed

So, personal hotspot is easy and convenient, but is it fast? Absolutely. I am very impressed with how quickly websites load on both my MacBook and iPad while connected with Wi-Fi personal hotspot on Verizon’s 3G network. I was expecting much slower results. Ally’s doing speed tests so check back soon for more details on the exact numbers,

Battery life

Personal hotspot does make an impact on the iPhone 4’s battery. In 20 minutes, I lost 7% battery life while connected to my MacBook. Because of this, when using a device that can double as a power source for your iPhone, like a laptop, I recommend doing so. You might think this defeats the purpose of Wi-Fi and doesn’t make it any different than tethering via USB – the speeds are comparable. However, the biggest advantage to Wi-Fi personal hotspot over USB tethering is the ability to connect devices like iPads or other mobile phones that don’t have USB ports. Additionally, Wi-Fi personal hotspot allows the connection of up to 5 devices at once. So if one device is helping power your iPhone that still leaves room for up to 4 others over Wi-Fi.

(If you really hate the idea of connecting for power, you can use an external battery case like the mophie juicepak air or juicepak plus)

Pricing

Personal Hotspot requires a 3G Mobile Hotspot plan on Verizon and is an additional $20 on top of your required voice and data plans. This plan includes a separate 2GB reserved just for 3G Mobile Hotspot and if you exceed 2GB, it’ll cost you an extra $20.

Simultaneous voice and data

Because Verizon’s CDMA EVDO Rev A network is incapable of handling voice and data simultaneously, the personal hotspot connection will be unavailable for the duration of any incoming and outgoing phone calls. You can ignore calls and continue using data but if you accept a call, the data gets paused. Once the call is ended, personal hotspot will automatically reconnect.

Personal hotspot on AT&T

As of now, Wi-Fi personal hotspot is not available on AT&T, but it has been announced that the feature will indeed be available soon, but no dates have been given yet, and it will require an iOS 4.3 update. However, AT&T does offer tethering over USB and Bluetooth.

Verizon iPhone 4 Personal Hotspot is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Yahoo! has announced that it will be launching an iPad application that could rival News Corp’s recently launched The Daily.  Coming in the first half of 2011, Livestand will be available for the iPad and will deliver news personalized to your interests, location and even time of day.

Livestand will take the form of a highly visual magazine. Yahoo! will use the app to entice advertisers, by offering ads within the digital pages. The ads served will include media rich interactive content that can even be based on location. We assume the ad revenue will enable Yahoo! To deliver the content as a free app without subscription, this has not been confirmed.

Livestand should be available for the iPad in the first half of this year and will include Sports, News, Finance, Flickr and omg! content.

Would you be happy to have ads in your daily news paper if the content was good enough and the app was subscription free? Let us know in the comments!

[Yahoo]

Livestand from Yahoo! set to take on The Daily is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Every day, TiPb gets flooded with announcements for new and updated iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps and games. So every day we pick just a few of the most interesting, the most notable, and simply the most awesome to share with you!

• BBC iPlayer (UK): Watch and listen live, or choose your favourites from over 400 hours of BBC TV and Radio programmes on your iPad. [Free - iTunes link]

• eMailGanizer – intelligent email reader: An intelligent email program that not only gives you all the controls you need for receiving and sending emails, but learns your email filing behaviors and provides the best filing choices right on your iPhone. [Free - iTunes link]

• GoFun: An iPad app for children, ages 2-6, utilizing Montessori and Scientific approaches to learn in a fun way and on the go. [Free - iTunes link

• Fruit Frenzy: Addictive puzzle game of matching fruit, great graphics, and toe-tapping music for iPhone and iPad. [$0.99 - iTunes link]

• Echofon for Twitter: Updated to a universal app for iPhone and iPad as well as background streaming (iPad only), push notifications for social events, and more. [Free - iTunes link]

Any other big apps or game releases or updates today? If you pick any of these up, let us know what you think!

New and updated iPhone and iPad apps for Friday, February 11 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Could Apple be planning to expand and round out the iPhone and iPad families by adding higher and/or lower end devices that could appeal to additional segments of the market? While the rumors have been around for as long as the iPhone and iPad themselves, the latest incarnations — a Retina Display iPad 3 in fall and a cheaper iPhone nano in summer — make the concept worth looking at again.

iPhone and iPad (and iPod touch) are currently singular offerings. While you can pay extra for more storage, and sometimes last year’s model lingers, there’s really only one version of each product. Conversely you can get two physical sizes of iMac (though the design is the same), MacBooks, MacBooks Air in 11- and 13-inch, and MacBooks Pro in 13-, 15-, and 17-inch sizes the latter of which has additional ports. On the mobile side, while Apple originally only offered a single iPod they eventually expanded the line, introducing lower price versions like the iPod mini and iPod nano, and an extremely cheap version in the iPod shuffle.

So while Apple never chose to compete with the bargain basement, razor-thin profit margins of low end PCs they did suck all the air out of the MP3 market using massive economies of scale and brilliant supply chain management to keep healthy profits at the same time.

So the question is, will Apple do with the currently singular iPhone and iPad what they did with MacBooks and iPods? Will they offer higher end, pro-style iPads and cheaper nano-style iPhones?

For over 3 years the iPhone was only available on AT&T in the US. Eventually Apple probably figured they’d sold an iPhone to everyone who wanted AT&T or were willing to put up with AT&T just to have an iPhone. They needed a new market. This week they got one with the launch of the Verizon iPhone.

Now while Apple didn’t let Verizon put an ugly logo sticker on the iPhone casing, load with bloatware, or lock down its features, they did make a major (for Apple) concession — they put in a CDMA radio. CDMA is a dying technology. In Canada Bell and Telus have already switched to HSPA+ and in the US Verizon is busy switching to LTE. And if Apple is ruthless about anything it’s ruthless about shedding dying technologies (floppy disks, optical disks, Firewire, Flash, etc.) For Apple to invest in designing, engineering, producing, and marketing a CDMA iPhone means they anticipate a huge return on that investment.

But at a certain point everyone who wants an iPhone on Verizon will have one as well. Sure the clichéd RAZR (aka feature phone) users will migrate towards smartphones but not all of them will want the iPhone’s singular form factor and not all of them will want the currently still expensive data plans that go with it. Unless Apple addresses their needs, they’ll go elsewhere the same way smartphone users who insist on a physical keyboard go elsewhere already.

Apple may not care about them any more than they care about losing bargain PC shoppers to the Acer and ASUS of the world, they may care enough to come up with nano and shuffle-esque solutions, or they may think differently enough to come up with something else entirely.

Likewise Apple may not care about the higher-end tablet market or they may decide they want to do with iPad what they did with MacBook and go pro.

The idea of an iPhone counterpart to the iPod shuffle — a phone that hooks into iTunes but doesn’t require data, just plays music and makes calls and is great to take jogging is interesting and would no doubt capture some of the massive if dwindling feature phone market. But would Apple ever want to field an iPhone that isn’t tied into the App Store and the still growing smartphone market? I doubt it.

An iPhone nano — even if it’s just keeping the iPhone 3GS around another year like Georgia suggested on iPhone Live! last night — is even more interesting. A “free” (subsidized down to $0) iPhone that can use all those App Store apps and has reached such scales that it’s incredibly cheap to produce is almost compelling. Whether Apple would want to waste any margin actually making it HP Veer small is debatable but given Jobs’ derision of smaller tablet form factors and the user hostility of shrunken UI it doesn’t seem likely. Given iPhone 4 went Retina and iPhone 5 will again raise the spec bar, a 3.5-inch 480×320 iPhone could be nano enough.

iPad pro on the other hand is enticing. If Apple can nail the economics of 2x Retina Display on the same 9.7-inch screen it could be downright gorgeous. But what else would differentiate it? Many would love a 7-inch variant but that doesn’t say “pro”, does it? Others want a version that runs full on Mac OS X but even post-Lion the Mac UI just isn’t made for touch. And an iOS that does more Android 3.0 Honeycomb desktop-style computing would have to be universal across all iPads or risk real fragmentation issues. Once an iPad, any iPad, goes Retina, it doesn’t seem likely the non-Retina, older generation devices would stick around more than a year or two anyway.

So we’re left with there being markets for extended iPhone and iPad families, price points and hardware variations that would appeal to wider user bases, just like the Verizon iPhone is doing right now. Each brings challenges along with it — some that Apple traditionally wants no part of. But Apple is great at solving challenges in non-traditional ways. Apple will stick to one iPhone and one iPad until they need (not want) to make more. Then they’ll expand in a way the rest of the industry doesn’t expect — just like when they brought an iPad to the netbook fight, and an 11-inch MacBook air to the pro portable space.

Expanding the iPhone and iPad family is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Rene and Georgia talk Verizon iPhone launch, battling TV commercials, iPhone 5 rumors, HPs new phones and Nokia’s burning platform, the greenpois0n Jailbreak, Angrier Birds, and we give away an iPhone! The is iPhone Live!

Show notes and the week in iPhone after the break!

Verizon iPhone

• Verizon iPhone 4 most successful first day sales in Verizon history
• Verizon iPhone now available for order online
• Walmart will carry Verizon iPhone 4 starting Feb. 10
• Poll: Are you ordering a Verizon iPhone today?
• New Verizon iPhone commercial hammers home the network
• AT&T fires back at Verizon with simultaneous voice and data commercial
• TiPb Answers: Verizon iPhone, antennagate, and death-touch vs. death-grip
• Verizon iPhone tear-down — could have been a world phone!

iPhone 5

• WWDC 2011, iPhone 5, iOS 5 GM to be announced June 5-9?

The competition

• HP (not Palm!) announces Veer, Pre3, webOS 3.0 TouchPad
• New Nokia CEO offers brutally honest assessment of their post-iPhone future

Jailbreak

• How to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 iPhone, iPad untethered via greenpois0n [Mac users only]
• Updated: Verizon iPhone iOS 4.2.6 Jailbreak via greenpois0n RC 5?
• TiPb asks: Are you going to Jailbreak your iOS 4.2.1 iPhone or iPad with greenpois0n?

Tips and How to

• Daily tips

Apps

• Angry Birds update brings 15 new levels, Super Bowl commercial will bring special level
• Angry Birds Seasons for iPhone, iPad gets a Valentine's Day update
• Google launches native Google Translate app for iPhone
• Top 5 iPhone apps for Droid/Android switchers
• Top 5 iPhone apps for BlackBerry switchers

Hosts

• @reneritchie
• @GeorgiaTiPb

Credits

Thanks to the TiPb iPhone accessory store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

iPhone Live 137 – We can hear you now! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog