Big iPhone headache: Waiting for AT&T activation
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Earlier on Friday, I had taken photographs of the throngs gathered outside the San Francisco Apple store at 6 p.m., and the far more sedate crowd outside the Market Street AT&T store, and decided not to bother standing in line for an iPhone that evening.I figured I'd read some more early reviews and then pick one up sometime in the next few days after the lines were shorter. And those reviews were promising, including one that said audio quality was superior. Seeing the iPhone ripped apart was also educational.Then, around 11:30 p.m., I read our News.com article by my colleagues Tom Krazit and Erica Ogg. They had stayed longer than I did and reported that: "Ninety minutes after Apple started ringing up sales of the iPhone at its 24-hour flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York, anyone could just walk into the store and pick up a device with a minimal wait."Well, Apple stores were open until midnight, so why not? Around 11:40 p.m., I persuaded my wife to join me in a late-night dash to the Stockton Street store.Yes, they had iPhones. Yes, the sales staff were exhausted after performing crowd control earlier. Yes, there were still two San Francisco policemen standing guard outside, looking slightly bored by now. But there were only two people in line in front of me, including one desperate fellow who had driven far too fast from Marin County north of San Francisco to make the midnight deadline after finding that an Apple store up there had run out of 8GB models.So far, so good. When I got home, I plugged the 8 GB iPhone into our media-server iMac and typed my information into iTunes. I received an e-mail message at 12:10 a.m. saying: "AT&T is now processing your activation. You will receive an e-mail confirmation once your activation is complete." I had an existing AT&T account, so I figured that adding the $20/month iPhone wireless plan should take only one or two minutes.Then I waited. And waited. And waited.It's now 9:06 a.m., and still no change. Against my better judgment, I even took the God-help-me-now step of phoning AT&T customer support, something you should never do unless you're absolutely desperate and learn that some malcontent is running up calls to Zambia on your mobile account, and probably not even then.Mary-Kay eventually answered. "Unfortunately, sir, you do have to wait," she wearily replied, presumably sick of having to answer this question once a minute since her shift began. "The iPhone will tell you when it is activated."How long would this take, I asked. Five days? Two months? "I doubt that," Mary-Kay replied. "Believe you me, you're not the only one in those shoes. They did get jammed up last night. It's first-come first-served."I began to ask her if my existing AT&T phone would continue to work, but the line seemed to go dead. It could be my sucky VoIP service, or Mary-Kay could have hung up on me. I really wouldn't blame her for iPhone ennui after dealing frustrated my-activation-hasn't-happened-yet customers all day.Now, I've been a computer programmer longer than I've been a journalist, and I find it hard to imagine any system that should take nearly nine hours to perform a database query, do a credit check, and whatever other black box magic is necessary to make this gadget actually work. It's even less likely that the system should take this long in the middle of the night after the east coast iPhone binge should, in theory, have abated hours earlier. And I'm already an AT&T customer, too.Any bets on how long it'll take AT&T to activate this guy's iPhone?Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.orgOccam's razor suggests that the more likely explanation is that AT&T has such antiquated computers that some poor saps in another secret AT&T division somewhere in a New Delhi office park are keystroking in my account update by hand. Seriously. We may never know, but it sounds about right.I'm hardly alone. Some reports indicate AT&T activation is a recurring problem. One local Fox news channel article is titled "iPhone debuts with big headaches." A LiveJournal user entry buttresses my theory by reporting that the AT&T "transfer team" gets in to work at 9 a.m. PDT.There's speculation that existing AT&T SIM cards may work with the iPhone, but I haven't tried that yet. Some posts in that thread are saying AT&T is telling customers they need to wait for 24 hours because of high volume. Some people are saying that their existing AT&T phones become unusable during the transition, though at least that hasn't happened to me so far.It's important to stress that the iPhone can't be used for anything useful, not even iPoddish features such as playing music or movies, until activation happens.The bottom line? Apple did everything it could to ensure that buying and setting up (and presumably using, though I can't attest to that yet) an iPhone is a pleasant experience. It succeeded magnificently.But its key business partner, AT&T, has failed miserably. Computer companies know how to load-test a server to figure out how it will respond under unusually high demand. Why didn't AT&T do the same for its internal procedures to handle iPhone activation?Update +14 hours @ Saturday 2:13 p.m. PT: I received an e-mail message at 12:35 pm PT from the customer-friendly address of do_not_reply@att.com saying: "We are currently processing your order... You will receive an additional e-mail when your order is complete that will provide further instructions to activate your iPhone." That's one informative message.Update +20 hours @ Saturday 10:45 p.m. PT: I received another e-mail this evening from iPhone_Activation_Support@att.com saying: "We're sorry. AT&T has identified a problem with the information you provided. For more information, call 877-800-3701." So I did. And I waited on hold another 45 minutes. "For some reason it's not accepting the rate plan," the AT&T rep said once they actually answered the phone. And there was more bad news: AT&T Web Order Activation could do no more for me. I needed to call AT&T customer service at 800-331-0500. But, naturally, they were already closed for the evening.Update +35 hours @ Sunday 11:34 a.m. PT: After I waited on hold the better part of an hour with AT&T customer service, Noah picked up the phone. I was his first iPhone customer. Great, I thought. He'll know exactly how to help me. My fears were justified: He was friendly yet clueless, and clung to his mistaken belief that iPhone itself had told me my existing rate plan was invalid. It took a while to disabuse him of this notion. He put me on hold and called the activation department at 877-419-4500. After some back and forth, the problem became clear: AT&T had realized, to its collective horror, I was not being charged enough under my current rate plan to permit me to add the iPhone's $20/month wireless plan to it. I had to choose one of the default iPhone rate plans, which I did. Noah cheerfully told me that "we've been told to expect 24 hours" for activation from this point on, which would make it a full 60 hours since I first plugged in my darling little iBrick.Update +36 hours @ Sunday 12:15 p.m. PT: Noah called me back on my existing (elderly) AT&T mobile phone with news. After helping another customer with the same problem, Noah had learned that "I can actually process the activation myself right here." Whoo-hoo! He had me power-cycle the iPhone a few times, which did nothing. But then my existing (decrepit) AT&T phone stopped working and displayed the error "Unregistered SIM," which I suppose can be counted as progress, in much the same way that failure can be counted as success. Noah said I could use the iPhone's SIM card in my existing (ancient) phone. In Noah's defense, he was remarkably pleasant and went out of his way to call me back with more information. It's not his fault he's enmeshed in such a dysfunctional iPhone activation apparatus.Update +38 hours @ Sunday 1:40 p.m. PT: After reading a few more iPhone horror stories, including one on MacSlash about horrific iPhone problems with business accounts, I began to doubt the reliability of my new friend Noah. In my mind's eye I was comparing him to an Afghan hound: eager to solve the problem but utterly lacking the cognitive skills to do so. So I popped a few Valium and called the AT&T Web Order Activation number again. After Yet Another iPhone Interminable Wait (YAIIW), Vanessa finally answered. "Because you do have a business account we cannot activate the iPhone under a business account," she told me. Ah, so poor Noah hadn't fixed things after all.Update +38 hours @ Sunday 2:20 p.m. PT: I've been transferred to Aleecia from "business care" who promises to help me out but, as I expected, utterly failed to do so. It helps to keep your expectations low. I should say, by the way, I pay my own bill and am far too much of a peon to have a corporate account: Only CNET bigwigs have their phones billed directly to the company. But AT&T has been giving me a handsome discount of something like $1.25 a month off my phone bill because CNET is my employer, which is what apparently gummed up the works. I finally found an AT&T post buried deep in their site that says IRU accounts like mine may or may not qualify for the iPhone. SLBers and CRUs definitely can't, but some IRUs can. Get it? Anyway, it was Aleecia's bright idea to transfer me to Apple at 800-MY-IPHONE. "What I'm going to have to do is get ahold of the iPhone support themselves and to have them assist you," Aleecia said. But the Apple rep who answered had no idea what AT&T SLB, CRU, or IRUs are, and I figured was too polite to say what he really thought: "Why the hell is AT&T dumping its problems on me?" He did, however, provide me with yet another AT&T number, 866-539-1468, to call.Update +38 hours @ Sunday 2:35 p.m. PT: YAIIWing. This must be what they mean by the "New AT&T."Update +39 hours @ Sunday 2:45 p.m. PT: Ashley answers after something like 40 minutes, which is a record time by YAIIW standards. I resist the urge to compliment AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson on reducing average YAIIW from a few hours to 40 minutes. This might count as an unqualified customer experience success -- except for the fact that, after 39 hours, my iPhone is approximately as useful a phone as a hunk of asphalt would be. Except the asphalt wouldn't cost $600+tax or require advanced studies in YAIIWing. Ashley replies: "I'm showing everything's OK with your account." Maybe Aleecia fixed things after all? He puts me on hold to call AT&T Web Order Activation, which is the same number I called over an hour ago in the latest round of YAIIWing.Update +39 hours @ Sunday 3:00 pm PT: Success! Email arrives from Apple: "Activation Complete." I walk over to the media center iMac and, yep, the little iPhone is blipping away, just wanting to be picked up and fondled. I called my wife from the iPhone and asked her what I should do with Ashley, who was still YAIIWing himself, kind of recursively, and had me on hold on the VoIP line. She said to hang up (she's a ruthless corporate lawyer, you should know). I did.Another update: We've heard back from Synchronoss, the AT&T activation contractor. They're "extremely pleased" with the way iPhone activation went over the weekend.
PetMatch finds you a cat or dog that looks just like the one who died
PetMatch finds you a cat or dog that looks just like the one who died
I don't want to diminish the death of your beloved kitty or pooch.I just want to diminish the effects. I know that losing your pet can be very painful, but this is a world in which cloning is au courant and apps exist to make your life more complete.So let's put those two as close together as we can. What we come up with is PetMatch. This thoughtful app seeks to find you a pet that looks just like the last one you had before it died of old age, ran away to Zurich, or was run over by a careless tyke on a bike.All you have to do is upload a picture of your loved and lost one. Then the very clever technology from parent company Superfish does the rest. Superfish claims: "Our sophisticated algorithms (and our registered patents) allow us to analyze every picture and provide similar and nearidentical images in real time -- no text tags, no human involvement."The lovely thing about its PetMatch is that it takes your photo and tries to match it with images of cats and dogs in your area (and beyond) that are up for adoption.Once a match is found, PetMatch passes the details on to you and you can find a new but very familiar friend.There are, though, some practicalities. Pets have characters. What if you almost identical new pet has an entirely different character from your last? Won't that seem like your last cat or dog had come out of very difficult surgery that wasn't entirely successful?On the positive side, though, you can just enter an image of your ideal cat or dog and see if, somehow, the app can bring up a match. More Technically IncorrectYour new, fully gay Nintendo world, as revealed by John OliverTeacher allegedly breaks into student's phoneApple-approved drug-dealing game tops iTunes chartTechCrunch tells me that Superfish is populated by very clever Stanford and MIT PhD types, whose ambitions are great. Their next ventures are visual search apps for jewelry and furniture.However, given the joy that PetMatch can bring, surely the next logical step would be LoverMatch.Yes, she might have left you because she didn't realize quite how wonderful you are. But imagine if LoverMatch could find you someone who looked just like her, but appreciated you far, far more. And was, thanks to the myriad dating sites around available. (Or at least apparently available.)It is said, by both men and women, that they have a type. So wouldn't it save so much time, effort, pain, and expensive dinners in pretentious restaurants for an app to help you find precisely the physical specimen you need to make your life truly whole?Wouldn't it at least perform something of an automatic sifting process, without you having to do too much work?Then, just as with the pet-adopters, you'd have to hope for a little character to go along with the looks. I suppose there's only one drawback with this idea. No one on dating sites looks remotely like their picture.The app in action.PetMatch
I don't want to diminish the death of your beloved kitty or pooch.I just want to diminish the effects. I know that losing your pet can be very painful, but this is a world in which cloning is au courant and apps exist to make your life more complete.So let's put those two as close together as we can. What we come up with is PetMatch. This thoughtful app seeks to find you a pet that looks just like the last one you had before it died of old age, ran away to Zurich, or was run over by a careless tyke on a bike.All you have to do is upload a picture of your loved and lost one. Then the very clever technology from parent company Superfish does the rest. Superfish claims: "Our sophisticated algorithms (and our registered patents) allow us to analyze every picture and provide similar and nearidentical images in real time -- no text tags, no human involvement."The lovely thing about its PetMatch is that it takes your photo and tries to match it with images of cats and dogs in your area (and beyond) that are up for adoption.Once a match is found, PetMatch passes the details on to you and you can find a new but very familiar friend.There are, though, some practicalities. Pets have characters. What if you almost identical new pet has an entirely different character from your last? Won't that seem like your last cat or dog had come out of very difficult surgery that wasn't entirely successful?On the positive side, though, you can just enter an image of your ideal cat or dog and see if, somehow, the app can bring up a match. More Technically IncorrectYour new, fully gay Nintendo world, as revealed by John OliverTeacher allegedly breaks into student's phoneApple-approved drug-dealing game tops iTunes chartTechCrunch tells me that Superfish is populated by very clever Stanford and MIT PhD types, whose ambitions are great. Their next ventures are visual search apps for jewelry and furniture.However, given the joy that PetMatch can bring, surely the next logical step would be LoverMatch.Yes, she might have left you because she didn't realize quite how wonderful you are. But imagine if LoverMatch could find you someone who looked just like her, but appreciated you far, far more. And was, thanks to the myriad dating sites around available. (Or at least apparently available.)It is said, by both men and women, that they have a type. So wouldn't it save so much time, effort, pain, and expensive dinners in pretentious restaurants for an app to help you find precisely the physical specimen you need to make your life truly whole?Wouldn't it at least perform something of an automatic sifting process, without you having to do too much work?Then, just as with the pet-adopters, you'd have to hope for a little character to go along with the looks. I suppose there's only one drawback with this idea. No one on dating sites looks remotely like their picture.The app in action.PetMatch
Neil Young's high-def music format Pono due next year
Neil Young's high-def music format Pono due next year
Neil Young expects to launch Pono, a music service based on a new high-definition audio format that the rock musician is spearheading, early next year.Young made the announcement in a Facebook post Tuesday, adding that the Pono team has been focused on fine-tuning the new format, which he said has "liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to its original artistic quality -- as it was in the studio."Young also offered a little more insight into the process behind his new format."Pono starts at the source: artist-approved studio masters we've been given special access to," he writes in the post. "Then we work with our brilliant partners at Meridian to unlock the richness of the artist's music to you. There is nothing like hearing this music -- and we are working hard to make that experience available to all music lovers, soon." Young went on to say that his project planned to launch a Pono portable music player like the one he showed off a year ago on "The Late Show with David Letterman" (see video below), as well as a library of music based on the format. According to Wired, Young has already secured remaster agreements with the "big three" music labels: Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music.The project, which is apparently the result of Young's long-standing dissatisfaction with the quality of MP3s, came to light last year after Young applied for a series of trademarks for what appeared to be potential names for a new high-definition audio format. The description for the trademarks referred to "online and retail store services featuring music and artistic performances, high resolution music downloadable from the Internet, high resolutions discs featuring music and video, and pre-recorded digital media featuring audio and video recordings for storage and playback."Rolling Stone magazine, which first reported on the trademark applications, suggested that "such a service would allow music fans to download audio files that sound like the studio recordings of the past, as opposed to the uber-compressed song files that are currently available at MP3 stores like iTunes and Amazon."Young showing off a portable Pono device last year for Letterman:(Via GigaOm)
Neil Young expects to launch Pono, a music service based on a new high-definition audio format that the rock musician is spearheading, early next year.Young made the announcement in a Facebook post Tuesday, adding that the Pono team has been focused on fine-tuning the new format, which he said has "liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to its original artistic quality -- as it was in the studio."Young also offered a little more insight into the process behind his new format."Pono starts at the source: artist-approved studio masters we've been given special access to," he writes in the post. "Then we work with our brilliant partners at Meridian to unlock the richness of the artist's music to you. There is nothing like hearing this music -- and we are working hard to make that experience available to all music lovers, soon." Young went on to say that his project planned to launch a Pono portable music player like the one he showed off a year ago on "The Late Show with David Letterman" (see video below), as well as a library of music based on the format. According to Wired, Young has already secured remaster agreements with the "big three" music labels: Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music.The project, which is apparently the result of Young's long-standing dissatisfaction with the quality of MP3s, came to light last year after Young applied for a series of trademarks for what appeared to be potential names for a new high-definition audio format. The description for the trademarks referred to "online and retail store services featuring music and artistic performances, high resolution music downloadable from the Internet, high resolutions discs featuring music and video, and pre-recorded digital media featuring audio and video recordings for storage and playback."Rolling Stone magazine, which first reported on the trademark applications, suggested that "such a service would allow music fans to download audio files that sound like the studio recordings of the past, as opposed to the uber-compressed song files that are currently available at MP3 stores like iTunes and Amazon."Young showing off a portable Pono device last year for Letterman:(Via GigaOm)
J.C. Penney apologizes for former Apple exec's moves
J.C. Penney apologizes for former Apple exec's moves
J.C. Penney has launched a new ad campaign apologizing for the decisions made under Ron Johnson, its former chief executive and Apple's one-time retail chief.The new ad, posted to YouTube, focuses people in different locations as a narrator acknowledges the company's recent mistakes that left customers unhappy and pushed revenue down billions of dollars."It's no secret, recently J.C. Penney changed," the narrator says over the ad. "Some changes you liked and some you didn't, but what matters from mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing: to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to J.C. Penney. We heard you. Now, we'd love to see you."The ad is a response to the decisions made by former Apple retail executive Ron Johnson, who took over the J.C. Penney CEO job in November 2011. Although shareholders were initially excited by the sweeping changes he wanted to make to the retail company -- including eliminating sale items and attempting to make the stores "fun places to hang out" -- the decisions apparently annoyed customers and led J.C. Penney to a dramatically poor 2013 fiscal year. Revenue plummeted by nearly $5 billion in fiscal 2013, and its net loss widened from $152 million in the prior year to $985 million.Johnson, who made a name for himself as the chief architect behind Apple's wildly successful retail stores, was ousted as J.C. Penney's CEO last month. His predecessor, Mike Ullman, is his replacement.
J.C. Penney has launched a new ad campaign apologizing for the decisions made under Ron Johnson, its former chief executive and Apple's one-time retail chief.The new ad, posted to YouTube, focuses people in different locations as a narrator acknowledges the company's recent mistakes that left customers unhappy and pushed revenue down billions of dollars."It's no secret, recently J.C. Penney changed," the narrator says over the ad. "Some changes you liked and some you didn't, but what matters from mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing: to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to J.C. Penney. We heard you. Now, we'd love to see you."The ad is a response to the decisions made by former Apple retail executive Ron Johnson, who took over the J.C. Penney CEO job in November 2011. Although shareholders were initially excited by the sweeping changes he wanted to make to the retail company -- including eliminating sale items and attempting to make the stores "fun places to hang out" -- the decisions apparently annoyed customers and led J.C. Penney to a dramatically poor 2013 fiscal year. Revenue plummeted by nearly $5 billion in fiscal 2013, and its net loss widened from $152 million in the prior year to $985 million.Johnson, who made a name for himself as the chief architect behind Apple's wildly successful retail stores, was ousted as J.C. Penney's CEO last month. His predecessor, Mike Ullman, is his replacement.
iTunes U hits 1 billion downloads
iTunes U hits 1 billion downloads
That old college try seems to be working. Content downloads from iTunes U have surpassed 1 billion.Apple today announced the passing of the milestone for the repository of free educational content from schools, libraries, museums, and other sources. iTunes U hosts more than 2,500 public and thousands of private courses from over 1,200 universities and colleges, and 1,200 K-12 schools and districts."There are now iTunes U courses with more than 250,000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn," Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said in a statement.The service is widely used around the world. More than 60 percent of app downloads from iTunes U come from outside the United States, Apple said. The scholastic content can be accessed in 155 countries, and educators can create iTunes U courses in 30 countries, including the recently added Brazil, South Korea, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates. That diffusion of access, as with other online learning initiatives such as the Khan Academy, means that students don't have to be on, say, the Stanford campus to partake in lectures and other coursework."Because of iTunes U, I have been able to introduce students and colleagues in China to research on the links between chronic multitasking, information overload and stress; discuss research publications and degree programs with students in Europe; and exchange information about the influence of neighborhood design on community levels of physical activity and obesity with students in Australia," Dan Stokols, a professor at University of California, Irvine, said in Apple's statement.iTunes U hit 300 million downloads in August 2010.
That old college try seems to be working. Content downloads from iTunes U have surpassed 1 billion.Apple today announced the passing of the milestone for the repository of free educational content from schools, libraries, museums, and other sources. iTunes U hosts more than 2,500 public and thousands of private courses from over 1,200 universities and colleges, and 1,200 K-12 schools and districts."There are now iTunes U courses with more than 250,000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn," Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said in a statement.The service is widely used around the world. More than 60 percent of app downloads from iTunes U come from outside the United States, Apple said. The scholastic content can be accessed in 155 countries, and educators can create iTunes U courses in 30 countries, including the recently added Brazil, South Korea, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates. That diffusion of access, as with other online learning initiatives such as the Khan Academy, means that students don't have to be on, say, the Stanford campus to partake in lectures and other coursework."Because of iTunes U, I have been able to introduce students and colleagues in China to research on the links between chronic multitasking, information overload and stress; discuss research publications and degree programs with students in Europe; and exchange information about the influence of neighborhood design on community levels of physical activity and obesity with students in Australia," Dan Stokols, a professor at University of California, Irvine, said in Apple's statement.iTunes U hit 300 million downloads in August 2010.
iTunes ready for iOS 4; new App helps devs connect
iTunes ready for iOS 4; new App helps devs connect
Apple's iOS 4 will incorporate everything from video calling to multitasking, separating Apple's mobile device operating system even further from the competition, and those apps are now being accepted for the App Store. Developer's are sure to be excited about the many enhancements offered by Apple's iOS 4, including multitasking for background audio apps, VoIP, background and push notifications, task finishing, and fast app switching, Apple's new advertising platform iAds, the new social gaming network GameCenter, and 1,500 new APIs covering calendar access, in-app SMS, photo library access, video playback and capture, map kit improvements, and a new quick look feature.Apple has also released a new App to aid developers in the creation of the next great apps for the iOS 4 platform. According to Apple, the iTunes Connect Mobile App for developers:"Allows developers to access their sales and trend data from iTunes Connect. You can now view your daily and weekly sales data related to updates, paid and free apps as well as In-App purchases. Whether at the office, at home or on the go, iTunes Connect Mobile keeps you informed about your sales numbers right on your iPhone or iPod touch."The iTunes Connect Mobile application will work on iPhone OS 3.x (including on the iPad) and is available on iTunes now.Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.Submit a fix to MacFixIt! Email Us.
Apple's iOS 4 will incorporate everything from video calling to multitasking, separating Apple's mobile device operating system even further from the competition, and those apps are now being accepted for the App Store. Developer's are sure to be excited about the many enhancements offered by Apple's iOS 4, including multitasking for background audio apps, VoIP, background and push notifications, task finishing, and fast app switching, Apple's new advertising platform iAds, the new social gaming network GameCenter, and 1,500 new APIs covering calendar access, in-app SMS, photo library access, video playback and capture, map kit improvements, and a new quick look feature.Apple has also released a new App to aid developers in the creation of the next great apps for the iOS 4 platform. According to Apple, the iTunes Connect Mobile App for developers:"Allows developers to access their sales and trend data from iTunes Connect. You can now view your daily and weekly sales data related to updates, paid and free apps as well as In-App purchases. Whether at the office, at home or on the go, iTunes Connect Mobile keeps you informed about your sales numbers right on your iPhone or iPod touch."The iTunes Connect Mobile application will work on iPhone OS 3.x (including on the iPad) and is available on iTunes now.Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.Submit a fix to MacFixIt! Email Us.
iTunes Radio to go live in September, says report
iTunes Radio to go live in September, says report
Apple's new iTunes Radio will launch next month with several advertisers paying for commercial spots, according to the folks at AdAge.Citing information from "people familiar with the negotiations," AdAge said that Apple has already lined up advertising deals with McDonald's, Nissan, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, and possibly one or two other companies. Advertisers will pay anywhere from millions to tens of millions of dollars to run ads within the music service over a 12-month period, according to AdAge.Related storiesDialed in 110: Lessons for Android (podcast)The 404 Podcast 498: Where Jeff battles the TriadBuzz Out Loud Podcast 1145: China to Google: Suck itNutsie brings iTunes to Android via the cloudThe Real Deal 193: Road Test - CES edition (podcast)The ads themselves will be interactive and take over the user's screen on both computers and mobile devices as well as on Apple TV. iTunes Radio listeners will have to grapple with an audio ad every 15 minutes and a video spot every hour, the sources added.People can avoid the ads on iTunes Radio by subscribing to iTunes Match. The $24.99-a-year cloud-based service lets users access any music from their library not purchased through iTunes on any connected Apple device.Apple already announced iTunes Radio in June at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple iTunes chief Eddy Cue said that the service would launch in the U.S. this fall and expand to other countries soon after that. Rather than offer searchable music on demand, iTunes Music will stream tunes from 200 different stations. Sound familiar? Yep, that means its major rival and challenge will be Pandora.
Apple's new iTunes Radio will launch next month with several advertisers paying for commercial spots, according to the folks at AdAge.Citing information from "people familiar with the negotiations," AdAge said that Apple has already lined up advertising deals with McDonald's, Nissan, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, and possibly one or two other companies. Advertisers will pay anywhere from millions to tens of millions of dollars to run ads within the music service over a 12-month period, according to AdAge.Related storiesDialed in 110: Lessons for Android (podcast)The 404 Podcast 498: Where Jeff battles the TriadBuzz Out Loud Podcast 1145: China to Google: Suck itNutsie brings iTunes to Android via the cloudThe Real Deal 193: Road Test - CES edition (podcast)The ads themselves will be interactive and take over the user's screen on both computers and mobile devices as well as on Apple TV. iTunes Radio listeners will have to grapple with an audio ad every 15 minutes and a video spot every hour, the sources added.People can avoid the ads on iTunes Radio by subscribing to iTunes Match. The $24.99-a-year cloud-based service lets users access any music from their library not purchased through iTunes on any connected Apple device.Apple already announced iTunes Radio in June at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple iTunes chief Eddy Cue said that the service would launch in the U.S. this fall and expand to other countries soon after that. Rather than offer searchable music on demand, iTunes Music will stream tunes from 200 different stations. Sound familiar? Yep, that means its major rival and challenge will be Pandora.
iTunes gets ready for Russia debut, report says
iTunes gets ready for Russia debut, report says
Apple's iTunes platform could make its debut in Russia tomorrow.An Apple PR person in Russia has sent out an event invite to a small number of people in the country for a music event the company plans to host tomorrow night, TechCrunch, which obtained a copy of the invite, is reporting. The invite did not say that iTunes will be launching, but did acknowledge that the iTunes team will be holding the event.Russia is one of the more difficult digital-music markets to crack. The country has several legitimate download services, including one from search firm Yandex, but is also home to rampant piracy. The Intellectual Property Alliance, an organization dedicated to ending piracy, has placed Russia on its "priority watch list" as a major pirate.Related storiesDialed in 110: Lessons for Android (podcast)The 404 Podcast 498: Where Jeff battles the TriadBuzz Out Loud Podcast 1145: China to Google: Suck itNutsie brings iTunes to Android via the cloudThe Real Deal 193: Road Test - CES edition (podcast)Given that, iTunes availability has lagged. However, reports suggested that Apple would launch its music service in Russia in October. It was quickly pushed back to November, but was again delayed.Despite the obvious challenges with piracy, Russia is a huge country with huge opportunities for Apple's iTunes platform. If the company can find a way to get Russians to buy music, Apple might find itself a rather profitable market.CNET has contacted Apple for comment on the TechCrunch report. We will update this story when we have more information.This content is rated TV-MA, and is for viewers 18 years or older. Are you of age?YesNoSorry, you are not old enough to view this content.Play
Apple's iTunes platform could make its debut in Russia tomorrow.An Apple PR person in Russia has sent out an event invite to a small number of people in the country for a music event the company plans to host tomorrow night, TechCrunch, which obtained a copy of the invite, is reporting. The invite did not say that iTunes will be launching, but did acknowledge that the iTunes team will be holding the event.Russia is one of the more difficult digital-music markets to crack. The country has several legitimate download services, including one from search firm Yandex, but is also home to rampant piracy. The Intellectual Property Alliance, an organization dedicated to ending piracy, has placed Russia on its "priority watch list" as a major pirate.Related storiesDialed in 110: Lessons for Android (podcast)The 404 Podcast 498: Where Jeff battles the TriadBuzz Out Loud Podcast 1145: China to Google: Suck itNutsie brings iTunes to Android via the cloudThe Real Deal 193: Road Test - CES edition (podcast)Given that, iTunes availability has lagged. However, reports suggested that Apple would launch its music service in Russia in October. It was quickly pushed back to November, but was again delayed.Despite the obvious challenges with piracy, Russia is a huge country with huge opportunities for Apple's iTunes platform. If the company can find a way to get Russians to buy music, Apple might find itself a rather profitable market.CNET has contacted Apple for comment on the TechCrunch report. We will update this story when we have more information.This content is rated TV-MA, and is for viewers 18 years or older. Are you of age?YesNoSorry, you are not old enough to view this content.Play
Apple owes France $6.5 million in unpaid taxes
Apple appears to be delinquent on a hefty tax payment in France.SACEM, a French society that controls royalties paid to authors, composers, and publishers, said on Friday that Apple owes 5 million euros ($6.5 million) in royalty taxes from iPads sold in France in 2011. The tax, known in France as a copie privee, is levied against all vendors of digital devices that use copyrighted content, according to French blog site The Rude Baguette.That tax then goes to SACEM, which divvies out the money among the various authors, producers, and other creative folks.Apple passed on the extra tax to iPad buyers, SACEM said, but failed to pay out the tax itself. As a result, the Grand Instance Court of Paris has issued a judgment against the company asking it to pay up.This marks the second time in recent weeks that Apple has been on the hot seat over taxes. CEO Tim Cook faced a grilling in Washington, D.C., on May 21 over allegations that Apple exploited tax loopholes to avoid paying its fair share to the government.
Apple outshines Samsung on mobile ad network
The iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Amazon's Kindle Fire were the top three tablets recorded by Millennial Media and were nestled among the top 20 of all mobile devices. A full 95 percent of all tablet impressions came over Wi-Fi connections.Related storiesApple's iPhone dominates mobile ad impressions in Q1Amazon Kindle Fire lights up mobile ad networkAndroid easily outpaces iOS on mobile ad networkAndroid's lead over iOS hits 2x mark on mobile ad networkFinally, smartphones scored 74 percent of all ad impressions, a healthy rise from the 66 percent found in last year's second quarter. Feature phones continued their downward spiral, accounting for only 7 percent of all impressions, down from 17 percent a year ago.Millennial Media compiles data from its mobile ad platform and records "tens of billions of monthly ad requests," according to the company.
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