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Looks like wireless carriers have something to be worried about. In the US cellphone market people sent and received more than 1 trillion texts in the second half of 2010 and this is according to CTIA which is a wireless industry trade group. That is an 8.7% increase from the last six months but it was however the smallest gain since texting became the thing to do. The big issue with all of this that Apple and Android are creating a new service that will let you text over the internet and bypass the carrier, which means if you can connect to wifi you can text to your heart’s desire and lower your monthly plan in the process. This will be a big blow to the major carriers if this comes to pass, with texting already on a downward trend could we it start to go down even more with these new texting technologies that will be on the horizon for Android and Apple? Only time will tell.

Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the “same price or less than it is offered outside the app”. There are no longer any guidelines about price at all. Apple also removed the requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase.

When Apple sent out the new subscription plan, however, it placed quite a few requirements on developers – from the App Store Review Guidelines — in regards to pricing of any subscriptions. Enforcement of the new policies were to go into effect on June 30 of this year. By far the most controversial was section 11.13:
“11.13 Apps can read or play approved content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is sold outside of the app, for which Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues, provided that the same content is also offered in the app using IAP at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app. This applies to both purchased content and subscriptions.”

You have to wonder if this change is mainly due to the fact that Android is gaining ground and had a much lesser subscription pricing plan. Is Apple scared of Android? Could this be the first step in Apple’s superior dominance dwindling? Apple has always been very strict with their rules and regulations when it came to app developers and to loosen the reigns a bit could show Apple is not taking Android lightly.

Well Apple on Monday announced so very great things but one thing that was interesting is that iOS 5 is available to developers. But what would you say if you could get it without being a developer? Well it looks like Mert Erdir has found a backdoor. Anyone can do this and the instructions are extremely simple.

Warning: While this operation should be simple and inconsequential, we are not responsible for what you do to your iPhone. Proceed at your own risk.

Download and install iOS 5
1. Download the iOS 5 IPSW file from the web (it’s easy and readily available. Just Google it and torrent it down).
2. Update your iPhone using iTunes. To do this, connect your iPhone to your computer, click on the Check for Update button with the Option (Mac) or Shift (PC) key pressed. Select the iOS 5 IPSW file from the place you downloaded it to.
3. Wait until it upgrades. A new activation screen will appear.

Activate iOS 5
1. Triple click the home button. This will activate the Voice Over.
2. Triple click the home button and Emergency Call will appear.
3. Click on Emergency Call and, while it’s switching, swipe with your three fingers down.
4. The Notification Center will appear!
5. Click on the Weather widget. The Weather app will load.
6. Click on the home button to exit to the iPhone’s springboard.

That’s it. Your iPhone is activated and fully operative. Enjoy and thank Mert Erdir for this.

Once again this is just information I have found and we are not responsible for anyone who try’s what Mert Erdir has found. I just find it funny that Apple wouldn’t protect the OS better for anyone to really get it.

Yesterday Apple announced all of the information on the new iCloud service and what it will have to offer you this fall. A huge difference of iCloud’s music capabilities is that you can’t play songs from within a Web browser you can with both Amazon and Google’s offerings. You’ll either need an iOS device or iTunes running on a computer. True, this does include Windows PCs running iTunes, but forget any non-Apple tablets or phones. This lack of Web access is just less flexible. Nor can you stream music from its online storage—the music must be fully downloaded to play.

One point strongly in Apple’s favor, though, is how you get music up to the cloud. With Amazon and Google, you have to wait for the actual data to upload from your computer or device, which can take many days if you have a large music collection. Apple, by contrast, has high-resolution (256 kbps AAC) versions of 18 million tunes already stored on its servers, so once iCloud checks that you own a song, it uses that copy for future downloads. This means no wait for lengthy uploads, and keep in mind that even broadband connections usually have much slower upload speeds than download speeds.

Today will be a bid day for Apple, as Steve Jobs steps to the mic to show where Apple is headed and the great new products that will be released hopefully this year. Those being iCloud, iOS 5, and of course the much anticipated OS X Lion. There will also be updates to some of the products you already know and love which the biggest rumor so far is the wireless Time Capsule backup/router updates. According to sources the iCloud service and Time Capsule will work together. It is said that Apple has developed a system to make users’ Time Machine backups available through its new iCloud service. The system will be based on Time Capsule, Apple’s wireless router and hard drive backup that’s currently sold in 1TB and 2TB versions. As rumored, Time Capsule will be updated, becoming less of a local backup and more of a personal cloud server, like the newer souped-up NAS (Network Attached Storage) drives from companies like Iomega. The new Time Capsule is rumored to run on iOS and come with embedded A4 or A5 CPUs. The most amazing thing here is that it might be that Lion maybe introduced on Tuesday June 14th to the general public for sale. So Steve Jobs looks like he will have a lot to talk about today. I can’t wait to hear what he has to say about this.

In an interview Thursday, June 2nd, Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke about the fact that even with Apple’s early lead in the tablets market he feels in the long term Google’s Android will win out. It’s no coincidence that he would make such statements as the Android runs Adobe flash.
“What you saw with smartphones hitting an inflection point with Android, you’ll see it again with tablets,” he said.
“There will be another 20 tablets that will come by the end of the year that will push the industry in different directions,” he said.
With the Android OS being on the majority of tablets out on the market it is hard press to see Apple keepings stranglehold on the market forever. Although Android has put a big dip into the mobile phone market for Apple is not unreasonable to think it could happen with the tablet market as well.

The SEC has received an S-1 from the company Groupon in order to raise $750 million in an IPO. Will there be a nice coupon to go along with that? From what I understand here is some of the details on why Groupon has decided to file for an IPO.
• Groupon lost $413 million in 2010.
• 2010 revenues totaled $713 million.
• Groupon’s first quarter 2011 revenues reached $645 million.
• Groupon’s international business accounted for 37.2%, or $265 million, of the company’s total revenues in 2010.
• In 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, Groupon spent $241.5 million and $179.9 million, respectively, on online marketing initiatives relating to subscriber acquisition.
• Groupon counts customer acquisition costs as a capital investment. This kind of “hair” on Demand Media’s IPO didn’t slow that one down, though.

Yesterday Microsoft actually demonstrated Windows 8 for the first time at the D9 Conference. The breakdown of what was showed is as follows.
• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.

• Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.

•Fluid, natural switching between running apps.

•Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.

•Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.

•Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

Microsoft also showed the ease of movement between existing Windows programs and new Windows 8 apps. They are also optimizing the new user interface for touch, it works equally well with a mouse and keyboard. With people getting into the touch screen more and more and the affordability of the touch screens coming I wouldn’t be surprised that Windows 8 will come mainly with all-in-one PC’s or with touch screens if you prefer a tower. Below is a Windows 8 Preview of sorts, enjoy!

In an earlier blog I was talking about the Apple Keynote speech and what was to come of it. Well it is now known that no other then Steve Jobs will be delivering this address. This is a very exciting time for Apple and who better then Steve Jobs to be able to present the newest Apple service, the iCloud. It looks like by the end of this week Apple will have everything locked up with four major music labels to do the share. Although if you read my earlier blogs you would know I think the music companies shouldn’t care about music you already own but music you have yet to purchase, but with the music industry crying poor I guess this is the only way to be profitable again. Now to those who may not be in the know you would think Steve Jobs doing the presentation is no big deal but he has been on medical leave since January.

People familiar with the new iCloud service have previously described it as an online offering that would allow users to store digital files such as photos, music and videos in remote computer databases and access them from Internet-connected devices.