What's happening?
I'm Brian Chang here and welcome to the Apple Byte.
It's all the good stuff, all the bad stuff, you know, and everything else inside the World of Apple, so on to the show.
Now, we've been waiting patiently for an iTunes music subscription service.
Well, we got iTunes Match instead.
But, look out Apple.
The European music service, Spotify is now officially here in the U.S. and I'm loving it.
Now, we've had a good amount of time to play with the service that's
available on your iPhone and Android devices.
So, let's just show it to you in our iPhone App of the Week.
Alright, check out Spotify.
You guys can access it by either signing up for their Premium Plan that's $9.99 a month or their unlimited plan that's $4.99 or you'll need an invite from someone special who is already a member to access the free ad-supported version.
Now first, download the desktop app through their website.
It looks similar to iTunes.
It even downloads all of your iTunes songs and playlist into the app.
You can create playlist and search
for music from Spotify's Library of over 15 million songs that are streamed and plugged in your iDevice and sync your entire collection through the app.
Now, if you want to take your music with you wherever you go, go with the Premium Plan.
That will let you play your music from the free Spotify Mobile App with an internet connection and the best part is that you can use the Offline feature which copies your playlist and downloads your music to your device wirelessly, so you'll have a local version of the songs you want and you won't need an internet connection at all.
There's plenty of
other things you can do like send songs to Spotify friends to check out and more but this is a music subscription service done right in.
It is really that capture me out.
Spotify is the new shiny toy to play with.
Unlike Mac OS X while we're waiting for it to come out soon, very soon as in.
I know the date but I can't tell you because of a non-disclosure agreement and if I do, I'll get fired.
The show will no longer exist and I'll end up sleeping in the Tahoma Alley outside of our building.
Now, Apple also ask the developers to submit their OS X Lion apps for approval last week and apps like WordCrasher are now taunting their Lion compatibility, so we're getting even closer to the date.
Rumors of the new hardware that will launch with Lion are still going strong and conquered securities is reporting that the new MacBook era will come with a minimum 128 GB hard drive, 4 GB of RAM, and the best feature everyone is talking about-- the return
of the backlit keyboard.
Nanofied Mac also jumped the gun on a little with their discovery of new Apple Part numbers taunting them as the new Mac Pros that would come this week but they now say they are revamped.
That's why MacBook and Mac Mini Part Numbers which signals a release coming soon as well.
Now, my retail sources have confirmed that at this moment, no new hardware has reached their inventory yet but we could see some action coming this week.
And, why talk about computers when you can talk about small components for new products.
According to Apple website, Apple Pro, they claim this is the dock connector and ribbon cable for the next-generation iPad and the connector portion is white and not black.
Can you tell it's a little slower week with the Apple News?
Shoot me now.
Alright, on to the quick fights.
Apple released the iOS 5 beta this past week and some of the new tweaks that include custom text tones for your contacts like Spell.
You can create a mailbox within the Mail app and you'll also be able
to use AirPlay to see your face time calls on your TV with an Apple TV.
There's also a code in iOS 5 that would allow users to connect a Bluetooth keyboard to the second generation Apple TV.
It already contains a combination of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip but Bluetooth is not enabled in its current state.
Now, Apple continues its surge increasing its share of the U.S. PC market to almost 11 percent during the second quarter of 2011 according to IDC.
The MacDaddy represented the only major PC manufacturer
to post double-digit growth year over year.
It plays some third behind HP and Dell and the numbers don't even factor in the iPad.
Of all sales from Mac and iDevices continue to be strong.
It doesn't mean that consumers even know what they have.
A new survey from Retrevo found that 34 percent of iPhone users think they already have 4G technology in their iPhone 4s.
Android owners and Blackberry owners are suffering from the same problem but no one is dumber than the iPhone crowd.
Think about it, how many times have you had to correct someone after they call it the iPhone 4G?
Well, if it feels like one out of every three, then this number is right on the money and if the rumors are correct and Apple doesn't even make their next phone 4G compatible.
We'll have nothing to worry about because dumb-dumbs already think they have a 4G iPhones.
Alright, that's gonna do it for this week's show.
Send me your emails to the applebyte@cnet.com <mailto:applebyte@cnet.com>.
Ask me anything and I mean anything for our upcoming email show.
I'm Brian Chang.
Thanks for watching and we'll see you guys next week
for another bite of the apple.
