All posts by Gavin Fabiani-Laymond

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About Gavin Fabiani-Laymond

President, CEO & Editor of https://gavinsgadgets.com Reviews & News of Technology

Nokia Music+

Jan 2013, Tech News, Windows

Nokia has announced Nokia Music+, an upgrade to its free Mix Radio for $3.99 monthly in the United States and €3.99 internationally. Music+ features unlimited skips, access to higher quality streams, lyrics, and a desktop web app. Unlimited downloads are also an exclusive for paying subscribers. Nokia says this lets you save a massive supply of offline music. Music+ will be available soon.

Now hopefully this will be another service to tempt people towards the windows phone and it might work if you are not too demanding on the app front.

Jail breaking – is it Game Over?

Apple, Jan 2013, Tech News

The iPhone 5 running iOS 6 has been released now for several months. And no jail break has been officially released. Private jail breaks exist supposedly, but there seems a reluctance to release anything officially.

Obviously Apple has made this harder with each new iOS release and with the newer hardware, but are we reaching a point that as the deficiencies in iOS get plugged with each new update, that the need to jail break is less and less. Maybe this in turn makes it less a need for time to be spent jail breaking. Or have the youngsters who did all the jail breaking grown up and moved on to android.

Update. It seems that since writing this article, a jail break is in the wings when Apple releases iOS 6.1.

Update 2. iOS 6.1 was released yesterday and the untethered jail break is due to be released this weekend.

Apple Update, Adoption, iTunes & PassBook

Apple, Tech News

iOS 6.1 was released yesterday.

iOS 6 currently resides on 300 million devices. That level of adoption is from Sept 2012. Now Google can only dream of such an adoption rate for Jelly Bean, which is mainly due to its fragmentation.

Another tidbit is Apple now earns twice as much income from iTunes sales & it’s services as it does from its own iPods.

New with the iOS 6.1 is the dedicated passbook apps page. Open up the passbook app and select view apps. You will now be taken to a tiny list in the UK. The annoying part is there are a lot more but they are not shown. The lock screen now has new music controls. Wifi is stronger and the no service update is fixed.

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Twitter to launch Advertising API

Jan 2013, Tech News

There is strong speculating that 2013 will be the year that Twitter will earn $1 billion in advertising revenues. Not only that but Twitter is finally gearing up to launch its advertising API some time in Q1. Aimed at large advertisers and their agencies, it will give them the ability to launch scaled-up campaigns across the social network, and it also opens the door to more sophisticated targeting and analytics tools in the process.

I worry about this, since twitter is a free service meaning they have to make money at the expense of our data. Is Twitter moving towards Facebook where issues around ownership of data and photos becomes a problem.

I guess the only way we will find out is later on, if twitter changes its terms of service.

iOS 6.1 arrives and an Apple TV update

Apple, Tech News

Apple has just released iOS 6.1.

LTE support for additional carriers (36 for iPhone, 23 for iPad), the ability to purchase movie tickets through Siri (US-only) and the opportunity for iTunes Match fans to download individual songs from iCloud. Also a new button to reset advertisers.

At first glance nothing seems that new but the bug fixes are substantial. Wifi and loss of service signal are all addressed properly.

Also of note is that Apple TV update bringing cloud integration and support for Bluetooth keyboards. Now where is the Apple TV heading I wonder?

Blackberry World news update

RIM, Tech News

RIM is really ramping up a gear now. Fresh off their press release is the news you will be able to rent or buy films the same day the are released on DVD. TV shows will be available the day after they are shown.

The full news release –

New BlackBerry World for BlackBerry 10 to Include Extensive Catalogue of Songs, Latest Movies and TV Shows

January 28, 2013

Unified Multimedia Storefront Will Carry Music and Video Content from All Major Studios, Labels and Broadcasters

Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX:RIM) today announced that the new BlackBerry(R) World[TM] storefront (formally BlackBerry App World[TM]) for BlackBerry 10 will offer one of the most robust music and video catalogs in mobile today. The new BlackBerry World will include an extensive catalog of songs as well as movies and TV shows, with most movies coming to the store the same day they are released on DVD, and next day availability of many current TV series. The competitive offering will feature content from all major studios, music labels and top local broadcast networks. Customers will be able to preview tracks and access the content using multiple payment options.*

“Music and video content is an integral part of a rich mobile experience. People want easy and convenient access to their favorite music, movies and TV shows wherever they are,” said Frank Boulben, Chief Marketing Officer at Research In Motion. “RIM is committed to working with content providers to bring the best, most up-to-date content to our customers with BlackBerry 10, and to make it easy for them to get what they want.”

The video download and rental section in BlackBerry World will initially be available in the US, UK and Canada. Varying by region and distributor, customers will have access to movies from the following studios and independents: 20th Century Fox, Entertainment One (eOne), Lionsgate, MGM, National Film Board of Canada, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (US), Starz Digital Media, STUDIOCANAL, The Walt Disney Studios, Universal Pictures (UK), Warner Bros. Customers will also have access to TV shows from the following broadcasters and studios: ABC Studios, BBC Worldwide, CBC/Radio-Canada, CBS, DHX Media, ITV, National Geographic, NBCUniversal (UK), Nelvana, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (US), Starz Digital Media, Twentieth Century Fox Television, Univision Communications Inc, and Warner Bros.
The BlackBerry World storefront’s DRM-free music download section will feature an extensive catalog from all major and independent labels including: 4AD Records, Domino Recording Company, finetunes, Matador Records, [PIAS] Entertainment Group, Rough Trade Records, Sony Music Entertainment, The Orchard, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, XL Recordings and Zebralution. The music section will initially be available in 18 countries: Canada, USA, UK, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Australia, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Behind the Apple Share Price

Apple, Jan 2013, Tech News

Apple’s share price tumbled on news of its last quarters financials. 800,000 Apple shares worth $300 million were executed in 17 second intervals, just before the announcement. Coincidence. Inside information.

Many financial bloggers have offered an alternative explanation for Apple’s decline, suggesting the company has run out of growth prospects, highlighting flat quarterly earnings, as reported in comparison to the quarterly income statements from last year.

However, Apple’s earnings for the winter quarter of 2012, included an extra, 14th week. This extra week is added to Apple’s fourth calendar quarter (Apple’s fiscal Q1) every five or six years. That means Apple’s revenue was $4.2 billion in the recent December quarter versus $3.3 billion in the prior-year period. On an equal week basis, revenue in the quarter rose 26.7%. So much for a decline.

Lets not forget Apple’s sizable $132 billion cash pile, the $2.5 billion distribution to shareholders and $2 billion allocated to the company’s stock buyback plan. As part of being a well managed company, Apple defers revenue for Mac and iOS devices, totalling $7.274, it has sold in order to provide free software updates over the course of those products. This aspect adds great value to the longevity of a hardware purchase. This revenue is counted as net sales over the next 8 fiscal quarters.

Apple also declares US tax expenses on its cash holdings in advance, even though it doesn’t have to pay those taxes until it chooses to bring those earnings into the US. In the December quarter, Apple deferred $1.179 billion in income tax expense, resulting in a total of $14.712 billion in tax expenses that Apple has preallocated, but not actually paid. This means should Apple bring the money back into the USA, there will be no further tax expense.

Due to the above, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Apple’s share price stabilise after 2 quarters. By then we should also have seen the release of new products from Apple and its competitors. And hopefully we will see something special.