Amazon unleashes Cloud Service before Google or Apple

We’ve continually heard that Apple (After acquisition of Lala) was looking forward to launch a Cloud based locker service which would align itself with iTunes.com or maybe MobileMe. Rumors were that Google was also planning for something like this. Suddenly, out of the blue we have Amazon which unleashes the Cloud Drive and a Cloud based Music player too.

So what is Cloud?

You’ve been hearing about this since few years. What is it exactly?

“Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a computer network.” – From WikiPedia.

Cloud Computing revolves around around data. It’s not physically with you but on the “Cloud” servers and you do not mandatorily need your computer to access it but varied types of devices for example, Your smartphone or tablets can also access the data using appropriate applications. This makes it easier to access data quickly from different devices.

What is Amazon offering?

It’s offering a cloud drive with 5GB worth of free space to upload and store your media (Music and Videos) and documents safely. All you need is a Amazon Account which is free and a browser to access the website and push content up or download it to other computers. They are offering tools to make your migration to cloud much easier. Once such tool scans you computer and auto-uploads all the music files to the cloud drive.

You can upgrade your plans. Well, pricing is $1 per GB. Yes, that simple.  It doesn’t work on iOS but works on Android based devices. The service is surely better than the competitor DropBox which does not allow such flexibility as Amazon. There’s some cool offer going on which lets you buy a MP3 album and upgrade to 20GB plan.  Give it a try here, it’s surely worth it.

Blame it on Apple. Blame it on iTunes : U.S. Justice Department

When you spread your hands wide and far, you’ll have antitrust cases against you waiting to be defended! That’s the game with Music Industry’s game changer, Apple.

In 2001, they introduced iTunes which was to sell and organize music on your Mac. Now it’s spread all over to PC’s and has most of the worlds music labels signed on to sell creations of all artists for a price of $0.99 a song. It’s hell lot of change from those walkmans to the iPods and iPhones. Wow, hats off Apple.

Now, the bad part. Perhaps Apple has been spread it’s wing far and wide, too wide. It holds abot 26.7% of the music market share which makes it the biggest music vendor online and offline too, in terms of sales figures. But recently, Apple has been playing the role of the culprit.

Amazon was working with labels to gain exclusive rights for selling music a day before they would release all over. This didn’t make Apple happy, and they decided to warn labels that if they did something like that they would penalized by Apple. It would cease all it’s marketing campaigns for the songs belonging to the label on iTunes.

With Antitrust regulators jumping on board, clearly cards aren’t going right for Apple.

One simple reason why Apple did not make iPad technologically fat [Myth Buster]

Everyone’s frowning over Apple’s decision to not add camera, multitasking etc.. to the iPad. But you know there’s one man somewhere smiling, in the dark and the reason is because everything is going just as he wished.

It’s not a joke that humans more than the capabilities look over disabilities first but finally, whatever it is they have to accept it and if you ask me, then Apple has added a lot of features to the iPad and it has focused a lot on not what is currently existing but what is going to be there with you, in your hands in the future and you will desire for it.

If we fly back to 2001, when iPod was first released people said that it was called a big fat storage device for “fat” people to store their huge libraries. The first review from Slashgear also highlighted all the negative points about the iPod which convinced people quite well. Lastly, ask me who won? Selling over 240,000,000 pieces from 2001 till last month, Apple clearly did and they know quite well that they will.

If we see Apple’s iPad is the perfect for everything it does. iPad’s large screen size made it to be called as an oversized iPod by everyone, including me, said that but well it did take me sometime to realize it’s potential. a 9.7 inch is capable of doing things which you did earlier on other devices too, but there is something impressive and un-noticed about it unless you actually start using it. I have often desired the iPod and iPhone screens to be larger while i was watching videos and something less heavy and more portable than my laptop and television. Here’s where the iPad steps in. Guess what else? It does nearly most of what all the devices do, sort of.

iPhone and iPod touch OS being used on iPad was lamented all over by all experts as people wanted innovation. Well, iPhone OS itself was a innovation but it’s true that it has grown 3 years old but it’s always evolving. Amidst all this, one most not forget that whenever something new enters the market, you need to teach your consumers how to use it and the iPhone was as simple, a 12 year old kid or a 70 year old man could just unlock and start using it easily and i couldn’t have imagined for anything much simpler than this for the iPad. It’s a real smart move.

Next on the track. Where’s the camera? I know if i say that not adding a camera was a brilliant move by Apple, there will be people waiting to kill me. Wait, read the rest of this. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad at the keynote he showed you a picture. He said that he wanted to introduce something, a new product line which was between the MacBook and the iPod, iPhones and not a replacement for the rest of the products. Get that right, it’s not a replacement.

That will surely answer all of your questions. Steve Jobs is a shrewd businessman. He knows what to sell, when and most importantly he knows what not to sell. Just imagine, if iPad had multitasking and a camera, people would think twice before going for a iPhone. Also the larger screen gives it a huge advantage over the iPod touch, so if it had additional features, would people buy iPod Touch’s?

If iPad had a OS somewhat similar to the MacBook’s and MAC OS X do you think the Mac sales will continue to be as they were? Obviously not. They would see some amount of sales drop and those people will be the one’s the buy iMacs.

What I have learnt from history, it shows that Apple always wants to sell most of it’s products to one customer at a time, like iPhone and Macs have real tight integration via iTunes and so does iPad. It’s like a family and without any member it cannot survive so Apple is trying to do something like that.

Apple is reknowned for the simplicity of it’s products and I have never seen any gadget made by Apple crammed with all features. The art of segregating is very well known by those at Apple and they know what is important for the product and not.

The last thing that i have always noticed is that Apple would not add anything to it’s army till it’s competitors force it to, like the Video Recording feature to the iPhone. It’s this simple game that Apple always plays and wins, either you accept it or not. Overall Apple is seriously a marketing genius!

Then there is this saying,

If your product is great, it doesn’t need to be good.

iTunes to hit 10 Billion Song Downloads soon : Win $10,000 Gift Card from Apple!

Apple has revolutionized the Music industry with iPod but if we say, it was just the iPod then we’re quite mistaken. It’s iTunes which went hand in hand with the iPod to create history.

History will be created again soon when iTunes crosses 10 Billion music downloads after the App store for iPhone and iPod touch crossed 3 Billion downloads. From 2001, it has been an amazing journey.

9 years back no one ever know it would ever reach here. This was one of the greatest inventions which changed the way we manage our massive playlists. Apple fought against huge titles and smart campaigns were launched and records were broken. Individual purchase of songs for $0.99 was made possible. All this with iTunes.

Now by the time i refresh my page, over 700 songs are sold. It’s that quick!

Apple is celebrating it too and if your the lucky one to buy the 10th Billion Song then you get a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

Palm Pre re-enables media synch feature with iTunes 9 thanks to Palm WebOS 1.2.1

iTunes-9-Palm-Pre

A long battle has been going on between Apple and Pre. First Palm Releases Pre with Media Sync Feature with iTunes. The Apple in it’s next upgrade bashes it up, and disallows Pre sync. Then in the Next Pre upgrade, it re-enables the sync feature with iTunes. Finally then with the release with iTunes 9 the feature is kicked off.

But for sure, Palm did not take it lightly and there comes Palm WebOS 1.2.1 which re-enables media syncing with iTunes 9! So just update your Pre handset with WebOS 1.2.1 and start connecting! Along with that Palm also promises a Better sync feature for Photo Albums in their next update

Apple’s Music event to solve many mysteries!

Now here’s something interesting. We had all those Rumours around about

Well, if you really want to know, what is actually happening then Apple has confirmed their iPod Event more popularly know as the Apple Music Event. It’s been confirmed for September 9 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California. Proof? Press Invitations.

The Image on Top, is the one from the Press Invitation which has a piece of text, “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it” – famous lyrics from Rolling Stone.

If you really want to know, is there any iPod touch coming out with camera, or you want to know iTunes 9 will have social capabilities, Blu-Ray support or not, and finally the Apple’s Tablet. Who knows which one might be true!

Discovery Channel app hits the app store

Discovery communication has released a Discovery Channel app that is now available on the iTunes App Store. This app brings a huge amount of video content of the non fiction quality, quizzes, photo galleries, programming schedules and updates from Discovery News. Just when you think that this is all, it gets more interesting.

It also allows you to share content you liked via e-mai and share it with your loved ones. It also allows you to save your loved and liked content to favorites, thus allowing you to easily rewatch the content when you want to do so.

iTunes 9 : Most likely to have Blu-Ray Support

Apple’s Mysteries are all what Bloggers around the Blogosphere are solving. But in Midst of this their is another Rumor popping in and it’s not about iPhone or the Web Tablet. It’s about iTunes 9.

Itunes 9 is supposed to have many new features.

  • Blu-Ray Support
  • Users will get the ability to visually manage their applications on their iPhone and iPod touch
  • Along with that, some social media integrations to take place too. Twitter and FaceBook are more likely to be added.  We are not sure about this feature in particular as to what it might be, something like broadcast your playlist, or perhaps twitter what your listening too.

iTunes is more likely to be out in the september time when apple has many iPod events and it is also being said that Apple may refresh it’s iMac lineup. Let’s Get ready for it!

iTunes 8.2.1 Back on Palm web OS 1.1 : But how?

Apple’s Latest release of iTunes 8.2.1 had disabled Palm Sync but the web OS 1.1 re-enabled it! Anyone wondering how?

Palm’s Web OS simply identifies itself as a Apple’s Product by  using Apple’s vendor id as it’s own.  Here’s what you will see when you plug a Palm Pre into your iTunes 8.2.1

Product ID:    0×8002
Vendor ID:    0x05ac  (Apple Inc.)
Version:    0.16
Manufacturer:    Palm Inc.

So it’s clear, that’s the Trick Palm is using. Earlier, before Apple blocked the device it was a Palm’s Product named iPod but now it’s a Apple’s Product named iPod.

But the Vendor Sign-up form clearly states that

Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited.

Well the fight get’s more and more interesting with every step, we’ll keep you updated on this!

Links : Palm Punches Apple on it’s face | Apple’s iTunes Broke my heart!

Credit : PreCentral

My comp got infected by small.bog virus because of iTunes : Avg, WTF?

AVG, one the most popular Virus protection software’s recently identified some 180 files as Viruses, all of these were iTunes Files. The Antivirus quarantined  the File’s which later prevented the Software from working. small.bog virus infection

Well it’s a Bug in AVG’s Database which wrongly mentioning iTunes files as virus files named “Trojan Horse small.bog”. It’s soon going to be corrected so don’t worry. But if you quarantine the file’s your iTunes will stop working. Here’s a tip how to stop it from the Apple Discussion Forums -

1. Open AVG

2. Go to Resident Shield -> Manage Exceptions -> Add Path

3. Add C:\Program Files\iTunes and C:\Program Files\iPod

Thanks LanceLord for the ScreenShot!