News for Thursday, 19 February 2009

After several attempt to make their application validated by the AppStore, South Park editor and developers release the made the story public.

Their application allows iPhone owners to play episodes from the serie. It was rejected by the AppStore as some scene might be "shocking". IF Apple did not definitely close the door to South Park application, it demonstrates one more time how confuse and weird the process of validation can be for the AppStore. Indeed, the same "shocking" episodes are available without restrictions from the iTunes Store.
If we want to go beyond the scene, one can imagine that apple does not want to share revenues, and prefer to have customers to purchase South Park Episodes from the iTS than purchasing an iPhone application from the AppStore allowing them to watch the same episodes from South Park servers (potentially for free).

According to a Nvidia representative, the demonstration of the iOn platform to Apple executives was very well received, even claiming that Steve jobs was very excited by the product.

According to this report, Steve jobs might have said that the GF 9400 M was an "incredible chips". Of course, such report should be taken with a grain of salt, but for sure NVidia can only be pleased to have Apple interested by their products. Especially if one consider that relationship between NVidia and Intel are getting more difficult everyday. So, when will we see an Apple TV powered by an Ion?

If you have problems to be heard when calling your friends from you iPhone, you might be interested by this device:

This is the famous SoundClip, a small piece of plastic designed to channel the sound of your voice towards the microphone. According to its manufacturer, the gain might be as much as 10 dB. Some audio files are even available from their website to demonstrate the performance of this product.
It will cost you 7.95 USD

According to Appleinsider, Apple has started to purchase components to be used in the future iPhone. As usual the main part will have to deal with flash memory, and Apple request is to high that price might start increasing as many production lines are currently on hold due to the general economic slow down.
On a more practical point of view, it would not be surprising if Apple would start signing contracts for flash memory, as the current prices are so low, and will most likely not go much lower in the future. As the memory remains one of the most expensive component of the iPhone, any saving will have an impact on the final price of the device (or on Apple's margin...).