Service Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Disney will not be a part of iCloud launch

by Mike Schramm (Jun 3rd, 2011)

Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke at the D9 conference this week, and said that while he considers the cloud to be a huge force in technology going forward, he's not sold enough to be included in the first round of Apple's almost-announced iCloud service. Whatever Steve Jobs announces for iCloud on ...

Is it possible? AT&T drops lower in customer satisfaction survey

by Mel Martin (May 19th, 2011)

It's a bit of a surprise. AT&T has dropped below Sprint in consumer ratings, at least according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, as reported by the Associated Press. Both T-Mobile and AT&T are ranked at the bottom, which makes you wonder about the wisdom of the announced sale ...

Rumor: Apple's cloud service comes with subscription fee

by Mike Schramm (Apr 26th, 2011)

CNET has heard from "music industry insiders" that Apple's long-rumored cloud service is indeed coming, but with a subscription fee. When it first launches, the service, which supposedly will act as a "music locker," allowing you to store and access a music collection in the cloud, may be ...

MLB offers free MLB.tv trial during April for buying app

by Mike Schramm (Apr 3rd, 2011)

Baseball season started this week, and things are already off to a rip-roaring start, with the Yankees in first place. My Cubs are, well, losing as I write this (Dempster's grand slam on Friday didn't help my fantasy baseball team, either). We've already reported that the terrific MLB apps for ...

AT&T CEO promises improved service from T-Mobile deal

by Mike Schramm (Mar 30th, 2011)

Businessweek had a chat recently with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, and he told them that the pending merger with T-Mobile would have the intended effect of improving service and capacity on the networks for all of AT&T's devices, including, of course, the iPhone. "Virtually on the day ...

Former Lala CEO says Apple bought them 'for the people'

by Mike Schramm (Mar 29th, 2011)

Lala's Bill Ngyuen had a short video interview with Fortune, and in it Nguyen says that Apple picked up his company specifically "for the people," not for the streaming cloud music service or any of Lala's other assets. Fortune confronts him on the idea of Apple running its own cloud music ...

Time Warner's iPad TV service cut back due to overwhelming demand

by Mike Schramm (Mar 16th, 2011)

Earlier this week, Time Warner Cable released its new iPad app, which allowed users to watch live TV on the device if they met certain key conditions. The app only works when connected to residential networks that are connected to TWC's RoadRunner cable modem ISP service, or the parallel ...

iOS 4.3 spotlight: Personal Hotspot

by Mike Schramm (Mar 9th, 2011)

Perhaps the biggest feature available in the iOS 4.3 update today is the Personal Hotspot -- Verizon iPhone users have had access to the feature before now, but as of iOS 4.3, AT&T users can find the hotspot feature under the Network tab, inside the General Settings app on the iPhone. Note ...

iTunes could get cloud-based backup solution

by Mike Schramm (Feb 26th, 2011)

Late last year I predicted 2011 would be the year of the cloud for Apple, and so far I've been right. I said OS X Lion would be sold via the App Store, and it certainly will. Here's the other part of Apple's cloud strategy: the company is reportedly looking to use the cloud for iTunes, not as ...

Rhapsody won't sing Apple's subscription tune

by Mike Schramm (Feb 15th, 2011)

Hit the fight bell, because here we go -- Harry McCracken reports that Rhapsody is the first company to pass on Apple's new subscription rules, saying in a statement that Apple's arrangement is "economically untenable." Typically, they say, a Rhapsody subscription only costs them a 2.5 percent ...

How to go music hunting for Shazam and Pandora

by Mike Schramm (Feb 15th, 2011)

The New York Times has an interesting writeup of a growing new trade built around services commonly used as smartphone apps: music-tracking, or music-identifying services. You've probably played with Pandora or Shazam on your iPhone already, and the article profiles just how all of that music gets ...

Xmarks finds new owner, isn't going anywhere

by Mike Schramm (Dec 15th, 2010)

Look at that -- while I was sad to hear that my favorite bookmark syncing service Xmarks would be calling it quits after trying and failing to find a profitable business model, its users stepped in to support the service, and at the beginning of this month, Xmarks announced that it would be ...

AT&T's Richard Lindner: "Exclusive arrangements end."

by Mike Schramm (Dec 7th, 2010)

If you agree with Consumer Reports' take on AT&T's terrible wireless service, the good news is that you might not have that much longer to wait. "Exclusive arrangements end," AT&T's CFO Richard Lindner told the UBS Media and Communications Conference earlier this week. If you think that ...

AT&T rated worst cell phone provider by Consumer Reports

by David Quilty (Dec 6th, 2010)

Remember when Consumer Reports couldn't recommend the iPhone 4? Well, now Consumer Reports has released the results of a satisfaction survey which shows that according to over 50,000 of their readers, AT&T is the lowest-scoring cell phone carrier in the United States. In fact, AT&T scored a ...

OpenFeint announces in-app content service, infrastructure to support freemium games

by Mike Schramm (Dec 1st, 2010)

Social gaming network OpenFeint has finally unveiled its OpenFeint X service, which will allow developers on the App Store (and a few other mobile platforms) to add cloud-based microtransaction content to their games on top of Apple's own in-app purchase service. This is apparently a system that ...