Mac Season

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Apple’s shares fell 18% according to the Wall Street Journal. With the weakening economy, the effects are starting to be seen even more in the electronic sector.

Apple’s stock decreased $22.98, to its current state of $105.26. Morgan Stanley credits this dive, mostly due to the state of how people feel towards electronics. With PCs being at the low end of the market, they are being considered the better deal compared to Mac’s prices.

One of the major critiques of the 3G iPhone, is the hullabaloo involved with the initial signup. When the phone launched, the lines were backed up to epic levels. The reason for the long lines, of course was demand, but also the time it took to have people sign up for service and activate their phones.

Activations, unlike the previous iPhone all had to be done in store. These could take anywhere from 5-10 minutes, which of course didn’t help the problem with long lines.

It might be too late to help with launch, but Apple is allowing customers to sign up with 3G iPhone service online, before going to make their purchase. Activating your 3G iPhone will still have to be done at the store though.

The newest attempt from Microsoft to reach the masses is out. They keep trying, and I will say that the commercials have gotten better each time. That’s not saying a whole lot, this one definitely needed more Eva Longoria. What are your thoughts?

Here are some official pictures of the iPod, from their media event. There have been no surprises as of yet, besides the rainbow looking iPod lineup

Real or fake? You be the judge.

Kevin Rose is famous/infamous among the Apple community. He seems to get information before anyone, and is a pretty big thorn in Steve Jobs’ side. He now has new information released about the new up and coming iPod Nano.

Here is a video of his leaked information:

Apple is moving its’ retail space into China starting tomorrow. It will the first official Apple store in the country, and looks quite impressive so far. The build will be situated in Beijing, at the Sanlitun entertainment district. The store will open at 10 AM.

Apple is looking to expand into China even further, saying they will be adding more stores in Beijing, Shanghai and beyond. The store will have almost the exact same features of other Apple stores. One big highlight missing when the store opens will be the iPhone. Apple is still in talks with China’s primary wireless provider to lay out plans for the introduction of the iPhone. The largest obstacle will be implementing the 3G iPhone as China has no standard 3G network as of now.

The 32 GB iPod Touch will be available when the store opens, which will retail for 4,488 Chinese yuan (USD $647.33). This will be a story to keep an eye on going into next week, to see how successful Apple is with their first official foray into the Chinese market.

For those of you who are still teetering on the fence about whether or not to pick up the 3G iPhone are in luck. The first reviews for the phone are in, and so far everything looks to be peachy keen. Here is a few key quotes from the reviews, and what the consensus is.

Walter Mossberg’s Review Synopsis - “If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge, if you can live with the higher service costs and the weaker battery life. The same goes for those with existing iPhones who love the device but crave faster cellular data speeds. But if you already own an iPhone, and can usually use Wi-Fi for data, you probably should hold off and get the free software upgrade before deciding whether it’s worth getting the new hardware.”

Edward Baig’s USA Today Review - “Apple’s claims that 3G speeds are twice as fast as Edge were confirmed by my own download tests. It generally took 10 to 30 seconds to load popular websites through 3G, a lot zippier than when I accessed the sites on Edge. Oddly, parts of the pages sometimes showed up first on the older iPhone screen”

“The physical size and shape of the new iPhone hasn’t changed much. There’s the same lovely 3 1/2-inch multi-touch display. The new device is a bit curvier on the back than the first one.”

“Apple has improved overall audio quality of the device. The speaker phone sounded better, as did music played directly through the phone’s speaker.”

“As with its predecessor, iPhone 3G doesn’t support popular Web browsing standards such as Adobe Flash, Windows Media Video or Java. And there’s still no removable battery.”

David Pogue’s New York Time Review - “So the iPhone 3G is a nice upgrade. It more than keeps pace with advancing technology, and new buyers will generally be delighted.”

“Above all, the iPhone is about to become a dazzling hand-held game machine. The games revealed so far feature smooth 3-D graphics and tilt control; in one driving simulator, you turn the iPhone itself like a steering wheel, and your 3-D car on the screen banks accordingly. Other games exploit the multitouch screen, so you and a buddy can sit at opposite ends of the screen and fire at each other.”

“Unfortunately, most of the standard cellphone features that were missing from the first iPhone are still missing. There’s still no voice dialing, video recording, copy-and-paste, memory-card slot, Bluetooth stereo audio or phone-to-phone photo sending (MMS). And when the battery needs replacement after a couple of years, you’ll still have to pay Apple $86 for a replacement.”

Rhapsody has officially announced the DRM-free MP3 store today. According to Rhapsody it was because of the incompatibility to the iPod that hurt their market share. Before this announcement, Rhapsody was a purely subscription based company. You could stream all sorts of songs on your computer, but could never put them on a music player.

The new MP3 store has a normal pricing structure at /$.99 person, and an album being $9.99. They boast a 5 million song library which will all have MP3 files available to download. While this might just sound like another carbon copy of other music download services, Rhapsody offers full track previews instead of 30 second clips.

As I’m typing away at this article, there’s no doubt a iPhone dev company working away at the next killer app. At the WWDC, there were some iPhone applications announced that sounded very intriguing. Here are a few apps being release; via the Software Development Kit (SDK).

Super Monkey Ball - This game was announced when the SDK was first launched. Now Sega released even more details at the WWDC. Apparently there will be 100 levels to playthrough. To navigate the character, Sega has utilized the iPhone’s accelerometer.

Loopt -  This app sounds like something that might potentially be used by a stalker. Basically it’s a social networking app that can let your friends know where you’re at, by way of a push-pin map. Your profile shows places you’ve been, along with blogging, texting, and other social networking devices.

(via: MacRumors)