The only Apple news worth reading…

CNET is reporting that Apple may be scaling back its initial plans for a cloud-based iTunes service as it continues to struggle to reach agreements with record labels.

From CNET:

After Apple acquired Lala.com last December, the thinking among some music insiders was that Lala’s streaming-music technology could easily be plugged into iTunes–once Apple obtained the proper music licenses. Lala.com, a music service launched in 2006 and shut down by Apple last May, possessed technology that scanned hard drives for existing music libraries and then enabled users to play back the same songs from Lala’s servers via Web-connected devices. Read more

9to5mac has a nice hands-on and impressions video of Apple’s new Magic Trackpad that was released yesterday.

Source

Joel Johnson at Macworld.com gives reasons why he thinks we will look back at the iPad in a few decades as being the first real computer.

From Macworld:

I don’t have a pundit’s drunken courage to say that this first iPad is going to be a smash hit. But I don’t think it puts me too far out on a limb to say that we might look back on it in a few decades and say, “Hey, that was the first real computer.”

That’ll be a gross simplification, of course. Nerds of 2040 will sigh and rattle off any number of previous computers if someone makes that claim. But even those nerds will have to concede that the iPad marked the beginning of appliance computing, when physical devices and interfaces receded into the background and touch gave us an entirely new intimacy with our information.

Open and Closed

The strangest thing about the iPad is that Steve Jobs is still wearing blue jeans. When Jobs and Woz founded Apple over 30 years ago, surely no one thought that we’d be stepping out of the swirling mists of 2010, full-featured computers firmly in our hands, swaddled not in skintight jumpsuits but in Levi’s.

Automobiles had been around for 30 years before Henry Ford put together the first Model T. Those previous attempts at a mass-market car were critical to Ford’s success, but it’s Ford we remember.

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Gizmodo has an interesting article explaining why they think the iPad is the future of computing.  They give examples of how each time computers have become simpler to use, more and more people start using them.

From Gizmodo:

Normal people don’t like today’s computers. Most loathe them because they can’t fully understand their absurd complexity and arcane conventions. That’s why the iPad will kill today’s computers, just like the latter killed computers running with punchcards and command lines.

The problem is that the desktop metaphor is not good enough. Despite its relative ease of use, most people still find computers difficult to use. Now, if you actuallylike computers, you probably don’t sense much of a struggle when managing Mac OS X or Windows. But watching some of your friends and family will make it painfully obvious: Most people are still baffled by conventions that many of us take for granted.

The iPad fully embraces that solution. It puts that idea—photos, music, movies, documents of all kinds stored into task-oriented specialized databases—together with the fully modal, task-oriented interface of the iPhone, loaded with amazing applications that will let you do everything you can imagine, for pleasure or work. It’s the realization of universal information appliance proposed by genius like Alan Kay and Jef Raskin in the ’70s. The Holy Grail of Computing.

Read the entire article here.

iPhone app development has nearly tripled, from less than 600 new apps in December to over 1,600 in January.  Many are viewing this as a result of the iPad and it’s support of iPhone apps.  Developers are trying to come out with that one app that everyone will have to have on their iPad.  Hmm, maybe a MacDaddyNews app?

From Electronista:

The launch of the iPad has been a catalyst for an unprecedented surge of iPhoneapp development compared to Android, analysts at Flurry found today. Following the anticipation of the iPad and its immediate wake, iPhone app development nearly tripled from less than 600 new apps in December to over 1,600 in January. Many likely view the iPad launch as a potential land rush where an early app will get more sales.

Google’s platform saw its own large uptick in development and saw development jump by about 33 percent to 300 new apps, helped in part by the launch of phones like the Nexus One. However, the sheer growth in interest for Apple devices spurred on by the iPad has potentially eliminated any near-term hope for Android of closing in on iPhone for the sheer number of new apps. It also shows “a positive early indicator” for iPad sales as customers are drawn to the apps on offer.

“The recent spike in Apple iPad support has swung the pendulum back in Apple’s favor to a level not seen at Flurry in six months,” the researchers said.

Actual usage habits are however fairly similar, according to the study. Android phone owners start up an app a slightly higher number of times each month and play games for longer, but iPhone apps are used slightly longer on average.