As is all but customary in September, Apple hosted a press event this week centered around its consumer music and media lines of products. iPods, iTunes, and the Apple TV were the order of the day today, and we got some surprises out of Apple as well.

For example, a new iPod Touch with a camera on the back had been widely leaked, mostly because a number of case manufacturers had put cases in their stores earlier than they probably should have that showed space in the back for a camera. We even saw square cases for what looked to be a square, fat iPod Nano, and the truth behind those leaks was revealed as well.

Apple’s culture of secrecy is starting to show a few cracks, but not really of Apple’s own doing – it’s just impossible to get as large as Apple is and have as many partners as Apple does and not have breaches here and there – especially when your company is so popular yet so secretive that people are actively looking and scouring the web for possible leaks and clues into what your next move will be.

With that being said, let’s dive into today’s announcements. All in all, there’s little that’s earth-shattering here, mostly updates and changes that are evolutionary and not revolutionary, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth getting excited over.

Continue reading Apple Music Event: New iPods, New iTunes, New AppleTV!…

The original Motorola Droid was an amazing device (full disclosure: I own one and love it, so I’m a little biased) and here we are less than a year later and Motorola has already end-of-lifed the original Motorola Droid and has unveiled its successor, the Droid 2!

The new version of the Droid will look much like the original – the same screen size, same 5-megapixel camera, and with a slide-out keyboard, but the new version will eliminate the d-pad on the original Droid (a lot of people disliked it – I don’t mind it so much, I just don’t use it often) in exchange for a wider keyboard with higher keys, and will sport a faster 1GHz mobile processor in it, a substantial upgrade from the 600Mhz processor in the original Droid.

Additionally, the Droid 2 will come with Android version 2.2 “Froyo,” which is rolling out to existing Droid devices as we speak, have its wi-fi hotspot feature turned on (for an extra $20/month to Verizon Wireless) that lets your other mobile devices use your phone as a wireless base station, and a bit more onboard storage that will hopefully also improve performance.

I’ve mentioned before that Verizon Wireless has come a long long way, baby, and this is more evidence to the fact. Verizon isn’t as afraid to put high-end premier devices on their networks as they used to be, and their speedier hardware approval process has put them in the driver’s seat when it comes to top notch devices. The Droid 2 is available now in Verizon Stores and online, and if you’re a Star Wars fan, there’s a special R2-D2 version of the Droid 2 coming next month!

[ PC Mag :: Verizon, Motorola Introduce Droid 2 ]

Fans of Google’s Android mobile phone operating system have a lot to cheer about, as the NPD just announced that in the United States, Android devices outsold Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry phones for the first time ever. The race had been largely between Apple and RIM with RIM still in the top spot, but Android’s had the wind under its wings in the last few months with several strong devices launching across multiple carriers from multiple hardware manufacturers.

Here’s a little snippet lifted from PC Mag, who covered the story:

During the second quarter, about 33 percent of new smartphone purchases were for Android-based phones, compared to 28 percent for BlackBerry, and 22 percent for Apple’s iPhone.

“For the second consecutive quarter, Android handsets have shown strong but slowing sell-through market share gains among U.S. consumers,” Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD, said in a statement. “While the Google-developed OS took market share from RIM, Apple’s iOS saw a small gain this quarter on the strength of the iPhone 4 launch.”

The most popular Android phones were the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Incredible, the HTC EVO 4G, the HTC Hero, and the HTC Droid Eris.

A number of folks *coughcoughMASHABLEcoughcough* are incorrectly headlining this news as “Android is number one now,” which is only true if you apply the conditions of sales during Q2 2010 and sales in the United States only – it’s important to note that in the rest of the world, the battle is really a three-way between the ever-dominant Nokia and their Symbian OS which has never really caught on in the US and Canada and two upstarts named RIM and Apple.

Even in the United States more broadly and outside of Q2 2010, RIM is still on top and Apple is still number 2, but Android is making a very strong showing – and the longer Apple remains locked in to a single carrier (one that no one likes, at that), the worse off they’ll be.

[ PC Mag :: Android Tops RIM for First Time in Q2 ]

During Apple’s press conference earlier in the week, they claimed that the infamous “death grip,” or the common name given to the signal loss you get when holding the iPhone 4 a certain way, is by no means exclusive to the iPhone 4 – they claimed that just about any mobile phone manufacturer suffers from the problem, and that you can find a way to hold any phone that will reduce signal and force calls to drop.

Almost immediately, Apple’s competitors in the mobile space, like Nokia, Samsung, and HTC, all fired back claiming that this was anything but true and their handsets were immune from any sort of “death grip.” So what does a smart tech columnist do? They put it to the test!

The fine folks over at PC Mag grabbed a bunch of phones they have for testing (and other hilarious objects) and decided to see if they could death grip the signal out of them as well. The results are in the fantastic video above – those with a sense of humor only need apply, but the results are pretty interesting – sure, if you pretty much wrap both hands around some phones you can force some signal loss, but in most cases it’s slight or the grip is so unwieldy that you’ll never find yourself holding the phone that way. Even so, other phones suffer from the death grip pretty substantially. You’ll have to watch the video to see the results!

[ PC Mag :: Death Grip Testing on iPhone Competitors Shows Mixed Results ]

Today’s a big day for Firefox enthusiasts: Mozilla announced the first public beta of Firefox 4, which includes a new, revamped UI, faster rendering engine, enhanced security, and some features that already exist in some of the competition like Chrome and Opera – things like crash protection for individual tabs and plug-ins (so, for example, Flash can crash without bringing down your entire browser, or one tab can die without bringing all of the rest down with it), and support for HTML5.

Of course, all of those things aside, most people will first notice the new interface, which brings tabs to the top of the window a-la Chrome, adds a “Firefox” menu that replaces the actual menu bar, and overall just looks like it fits with Windows Vista and Windows 7 (although it looks horrible in Windows XP – the massive titlebar ruins the look.) The new interface and new features may make Firefox competitive again in a world where Chrome, Safari, and Opera have been all gaining ground against it.

[ AppScout: Firefox 4 Beta Released ]

If you haven’t heard the news, (and a lot of people heard the news and thought “what’s that?”) Microsoft killed the Kin, the smartphone designed to be a semi-smartphone for young people and teenagers looking for a device that had a focus on social networking and staying in touch with friends but didn’t need enterprise-level features.

Most people in the tech sector saw the announcement (and still see the commercials on TV) and shake our head sadly at what could have been a good product if it had been given the right attention, resources, appropriate marketing, and aggressive prices.

I’m completely agreed with the notion that the Microsoft Kin could have been an amazing product, and could have been the pioneer for a new generation of feature phones that could have stood alongside devices like the LG Envy and dominated them. Instead, Verizon took them and put them on the same stage as smartphones that were way more powerful, at the same price-point, and forced owners to have expensive smartphone-level data plans to support them.

The price was something I would have been able to get over if it weren’t for the fact that Verizon charged data fees on top of them when they don’t for phones that are more like the Kin. The Kin, at least in my perspective, was less of a mini-smartphone or smartphone-lite as it was a super feature phone that would help teens send messages to their friends, send them photos, take video, and then manage all of that content from a Web app powered by Microsoft.

The Kin could have been rolled in with Zune and Zune Marketplace and as a precursor to Windows Phone 7, and positioned as the first in an aggressive new generation of feature phones that would have forced LG and Samsung to up their ante and bring feature phones to the market that would really be fun and useful for young people who don’t necessarily want (or whose parents don’t want them to have) BlackBerry devices or Android phones or iPhones.

Instead, the Kin died a slow and painful death because it was horribly marketed to no specific target group, generically labeled as a “social phone” without any real look at what made it stand out or what the companion Web app was good for, it was priced too high on shelves at Verizon stores, and the requirement of a full data plan for it was the final nail in the coffin. They didn’t sell, and Microsoft pulled the plug.

Over at Engadget there’s a beautiful retelling of the true and inside story of the life and death of the Kin, which includes how things went wrong from the very beginning and the entire project turned into a “just get it finished and out the door” kind of project, even if it was flawed and even if people at Microsoft and Verizon both knew that the way it was positioned meant it wouldn’t go anywhere. It’s worth a read, if not for lines like this:

While it’s hard to argue that Kin is an awful product, the saddest part of the story is that many of the people responsible for it knew it was — they were largely victims of political circumstance, forced to release a phone that was practically raw in the middle.

[ Engadget :: Life and Death of Microsoft Kin: The Inside Story ]

The long-predicted subscription offering from Hulu has arrived, and while it’s not the service changer I think we all feared or expected, depending on how the private beta goes, it could define the future direction for the service.

It’s called Hulu Plus, and as expected, will run you $9.99 USD per month, and give you access to entire seasons of popular series, and will extend to other devices for which Hulu is making streaming video apps like the iPad and iPhone.

From PCMag:

When they are available, the Apple apps will run over 3G or Wi-Fi, Hulu said.
Shows will play in high-definition 720p resolution and content will also sync between devices.

“You can start watching a show on your HDTV one night, pick up where you left off on your laptop at lunch, watch another chunk on the bus ride home on your iPhone, and finish watching in bed on your iPad. The time to watch your favorite shows is any time you want,” [Hulu chief executive Jason] Kilar wrote.

Kilar said Hulu Plus will not replace the original Hulu, but will instead provide access to an extended library of content. At this point, Hulu users typically have access to the five or so most recent episodes of a given TV series. With Hulu Plus, subscribers will have access to every episode of the current season.

Hulu will also add back seasons or full runs of certain TV shows, including The X-Files, Arrested Development, Law & Order: SVU, Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Roswell, Grey’s Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives. The company will also make available skits from the first five and most recent seasons of Saturday Night Live.

“This is all on top of hundreds of shows already on Hulu.com today,” Kilar wrote. “It’s a treasure chest in the cloud for TV lovers.”

It makes sense that Hulu is looking for some way to broaden its reach and make a little money in the process. A number of people have complained that any subscription Hulu service should come ad-free, but it’s not clear whether or not Hulu Plus will be – the service is still in private beta and was only released this week, so more details are sure to follow.

[ PC Mag :: Hulu Announces Subscription-Based 'Hulu Plus', iPad App ]

The court presiding over the $1 Billion lawsuit Viacom levied against YouTube has finally ruled…in YouTube and Google’s favor, dismissing the case.

In a post at the YouTube blog, Kent Walker, Vice President and General Counsel at Google, had this to say:

Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.

This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other. We’re excited about this decision and look forward to renewing our focus on supporting the incredible variety of ideas and expression that billions of people post and watch on YouTube every day around the world.

Obviously Viacom could very well appeal the decision, and it’s likely that they will if Viacom and Google lawyers can’t come out of this with some kind of mutual agreement, but even if Viacom does appeal, that just means the standard of proof is going to be that much higher for them in an appeals court, which would have to determine if there’s some new evidence or specific reason why the lawsuit wasn’t handled properly or the correct decision was made in the first place.

Only time will tell, and this certainly isn’t the last volley in this battle, but here’s hoping both parties can settle out of court – clearly this hasn’t put much of a dent in either of their businesses, aside from the legal fees both sides must have incurred.

(thanks to Mashable for the tip!)

[ The Official YouTube Blog ::YouTube Wins Case Against Viacom ]

In a press conference today, Motorola and Verizon, along with special guest, Google’s Eric Schmidt, announced the newest member of Verizon’s Droid family, the Droid X – Motorola’s next generation Droid handset, which by the looks of it will be leaps and bounds past the current Droid by Motorola.

There have been rumors abound about the Droid X and the Droid 2 (they’re two different phones), and which one we would see today – turns out the Droid X is a new slab-phone with physical keys at the bottom, a bigger, higher-resolution screen, a 1GHz processor, 720p video recording, an 8-megapixel camera, 24GB of storage (8GB on-board and a 16GB SD card, upgradable to a 32GB SD card), and 3 microphones for superior call and recording quality. The Droid X will be available July 15th for $199.99 after a $100 rebate for new contracts or – thanks to Verizon – any Droid owner with a “new every two” upgrade coming in 2010.

The Droid X will also serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot for an extra $20 per month, which is a huge feature, and will support Android 2.2 “Froyo” and Adobe’s Flash 10.1 when they’re both made available later this summer (but not at launch.)

The Droid 2 continues to be un-announced phone, and although a few blogs claim to have had their hands on it, nothing official from Motorola or Verizon has been announced. The Droid 2 appears to be more of a direct upgrade to the existing Droid by Motorola – with a slide-out physical keyboard and a faster processor than the existing Droid but not as powerful as the one coming in the Droid X. The Droid 2 will retain most of the features of the original Droid by Motorola, and it looks like Motorola is positioning it as an upgrade and an additional device in the market as opposed to positioning it against some of the kings of Android phone performance like the Droid Incredible and the Droid X.

Regardless, if you’re looking for an upgrade to your Droid (although not many original Droid owners will have an upgrade coming this year) or want your hands on the most powerful smartphone on the market, you may consider the Droid X. Still, it was just announced today, so the reviews have yet to roll in.

UPDATE: PC Mag has some first impressions and video, live from the unveiling event!

[ Verizon Wireless :: Droid Does ]

In the same vein as The Fastest Mobile Networks 2010, PC Mag has now tested the fastest Internet Service Providers around the country to come up with a list of ISPs give you the most bandwidth and the most speed regardless of where in the United States you live.

The lowdown and the straight answer is clear and should be obvious to everyone who’s paid any attention to ISPs in the past several years – the fastest national ISP is Verizon FIOS. Not their DSL service, which I think everyone understands is universally awful, but FIOS. Cable providers took the number two and three spots, but Comcast didn’t make an appearance until number four.

The picture definitely changes though depend on where in the United States that you live – the survey breaks down the country into regions and includes some regional ISPs as well as national ones, and depending on where you live the results might be a little surprising. Again, keep in mind that the PC Mag crew was testing for speed, not necessarily availability, price/performance (bang-for-your-buck), or reliability – just who you should sign up with if they’re available where you are for the fastest possible connection you can get. They also list some average connection prices in the story as well, so you can see how much you should be spending on your ISP on average.

[ PC Mag :: The Fastest ISPs in the US 2010 ]