MacRumors

CNNMoney.com reports that a new iOS application from Skyfire that converts Flash-based video to HTML5 has been approved by Apple and will go live in the App Store on Thursday. The app, which will be priced at $2.99, activates a function that allows Flash video content in the browser to be sent to Skyfire's servers, converted to HTML5, and sent back to the device for display.

The app won't translate games or other non-video content that runs in Flash, however. Still, Glueck estimates that the number of websites and videos that Skyfire will open up to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users is in the "millions."

As Apple has maintained its prohibition against Flash on the iOS platform, HTML5 has gained momentum, particularly in Web-based video. Even Adobe has demonstrated an early-stage tool for converting Flash projects to HTML5, looking to cater to developers attempting to create sites compatible with multiple platforms that do not always support Flash.

Bloomberg reports on new data from research firm Strategy Analytics showing that Apple held a 95% share of the tablet market in the third quarter of 2010, leaving only 2.3% for Google's nascent Android platform.

Global tablet sales rose 26 percent from the previous period to 4.4 million units, with Apple selling 4.19 million iPads, the company said in a statement. Android's share of the market declined to 2.3 percent from 2.9 percent.

With a slew of high-profile companies just now preparing to enter the tablet market, however, Apple will soon face stiffer competition.

"The tablet wars are up and running," said Strategy Analytics Director Neil Mawston in the statement. Android and other operating platforms "are trailing in Apple's wake and they already have much ground to make up."

A new survey from ChangeWave Research has taken a crack at assessing customer interest in the tablet market, finding its target audience of professionals and early adopters still iPad-focused, with 80% of those surveyed saying they would be most likely to purchase an iPad. Research in Motion's PlayBook, set for launch next year, ranks second with 8% of customers looking to purchase one.

ChangeWave also found that iPad owners in its survey group are very pleased with the device, with 72% registering as "very satisfied" and an additional 23% as "somewhat satisfied".

Overall, ChangeWave has seen interest in netbooks flagging as tablets gain momentum, with only 13-14% of survey respondents over the past few months looking to buy a netbook, down from a peak of 24% in mid-2009.

Apple yesterday released a new iPad commercial entitled "iPad is Electric", airing the ad on primetime television and posting it to the company's iPad site and YouTube page.

The new commercial offers the same soundtrack as several earlier ads and follows the same of theme of displaying a series of quick shots of the iPad's capabilities interspersed with corresponding single-word descriptions relevant to the "iPad is..." theme: cinematic, elementary, academic, full-size, presenting, bought, sold, fantasy, and electric.

In mid-May, Apple released its "What is iPad" commercial, harkening back to an earlier ad for the Newton nearly twenty years ago. Apple then shifted gears, however, releasing the current string of iPads with "iPad is Delicious" in mid-August and "iPad is Musical" in early September.

Apple has quietly dropped the price of the Mac mini in international markets this morning. According to Macerkopf.de, the change is reflected in all markets not priced in U.S. dollars, though Australia seems unaffected.

In the UK, prices of the two Mac mini models dropped from 649 to 599 and 929 to 879, while in other European countries prices dropped from 809 euro to 709 euro and 1149 euro to 999 euro. Prices in the U.S. remain unchanged at $699 and $999 for the two Mac mini models.

Apple's new iOS 4.2 GM comes with a few additional changes. The multitasking bar now adds both Volume and Brightness controls for fast access. Also pictured is the new AirPlay button (on right).

We're hesitant to read too much into this just yet, but there has been one interesting change in iOS 4.2 noted first by a tech company in Southern California. The new MobileMe account setup in iOS 4.2 GM (left) allows you to log into MobileMe settings using an Apple ID. Apple even offers a link to create a free Apple ID right there. Apple ID logins don't seem to work yet, so we're not sure what the intended purpose is. Apple may simple be linking Apple IDs and MobileMe accounts for a consolidated login. However, the a more fanciful interpretation is that Apple would allow any user access to some of the currently pay-only MobileMe features.

Apple has released the Golden Master (GM) version of iOS 4.2 to developers this evening. The GM build is typically the final shipping build that will eventually reach customers. According to MacStories, AirPlay has returned as a feature to YouTube playback -- a feature that was inexplicably missing in the last developer release.

Apple originally detailed the upcoming features of iOS 4.2 back in September. The focus of the update will be to bring the iPad up to speed with other iOS 4.x features such as multitasking and folders, but it also introduces a few new features across all devices. New features include:

- Printing: Print mail, photos, web pages, and more directly to a printer on a wireless network.
- AirPlay: Wirelessly stream videos, music, and photos from iPad to the new Apple TV, and stream music to AirPlay speakers or receivers, including AirPort Express.

iOS 4.2 was expected to be released in November, and with the GM release, Apple appears to be on target.

TechCrunch reports that both Apple and Google are in early talks with mobile payments company Boku. Boku is a startup company that has partnered with mobile carriers to allow customers to purchase goods using their mobile phones.

Customers simply enter their mobile phone number when looking to purchase an item and a confirmation message is sent to their device. The resulting charges are then added to your wireless monthly bill. It would eliminate the need for the use of credit cards for online transactions. According to Boku, their carrier partnerships allow them to service over 1.6 billion customers worldwide. In the U.S., all the major carriers (including AT&T) are listed.

Discussions are described in the early stages, but possible acquisition prices are in the 9-figure range:

It's too early to tell. But like the AdMob purchase, a potential M&A deal would involve a transaction for a nine-digit sum according to one source. We are unable to pinpoint an exact price at this stage of the negotiations, but our source says Apple, for one, could end up spending at least $250 million (and up to $450 million) to acquire BOKU.

Even a $250 million purchase price would only be a small dent into Apple's $50 billion cash reserves.

Retail store chain Target today announced that it will begin carrying the iPhone as of November 7th in its 846 stores that offer Target Mobile centers. Target will carry both the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS, and will offer quick, on-the-spot activation.

"At Target we continue to offer our guests the best in electronics so we're happy to add iPhone to our Target Mobile offerings," said Mark Schindele, senior vice president, merchandising, Target. "With expert support from Target Mobile specialists and in-store activation, our guests will be able to leave the store with a new, working iPhone3GS or iPhone4 in-hand."

Target began selling the iPad in early October, and thus it is no surprise that the retailer has picked up the iPhone as well. Rival Wal-Mart has been selling the iPhone since December 2008, and launched iPad sales just a few weeks after Target.

CNET reports that Apple appears to have settled a trademark lawsuit over the term 'iAds', reportedly paying a firm in excess of $1 million for the rights to the name it has used for its mobile advertising platform for the past several months. The revelation comes in an apparent slip from Consor Intellectual Asset Management, a firm that helps companies worth intellectual property issues, in the form of a promotional posting in which Consor touted its role in achieving the settlement for a client.

We've seen Apple caught up in plenty of these trademark disputes before and just like many of those, this one was settled without a peep from either party about the terms. That likely would have been the last of it but on Thursday, Consor, a company that helps evaluate intellectual property, posted a release to the Web titled "Consor Intellectual Asset Management Secures Success for Four Clients."

In a teaser line under the headline, the company wrote: "iAds, a 7-figure settlement from Apple Computer in a trademark infringement case."

Oddly, when CNET contacted Consor about the deal, the company initially denied that any such announcement had been made. Upon being informed that the information was freely available on the web, a Consor representative claimed that some of the information "wasn't accurate".

The most likely explanation for Consor's attempts to distance itself from the release is that it erred in publishing details what was intended to be a confidential settlement with Apple over the trademark issue, although it is possible that Consor was in fact incorrect about the amount of money involved.

Apple's interest in Near Field Communication (NFC), the short-range wireless technology that supports such services as "tap and go" credit card payments, has been well-established, but a new report claims that Apple maybe be planning to include the technology in the fifth-generation iPhone to allow Mac users to essentially keep a portable version of their Mac on their iPhone and wirelessly allow any compatible Mac to run as if it was their own Mac.

If users wave a NFC-equipped iPhone at a NFC Mac (they need to be in close proximity to interact), the Mac will load all their applications, settings and data. It will be as though they are sitting at their own machine at home or work. When the user leaves, and the NFC-equipped iPhone is out of range, the host machine returns to its previous state.

"The Mac authenticates with the iPhone, which contains a lot of the information the computer needs, such as bookmarks, passwords and other data," said our source, who asked to remain anonymous. "The system would essentially turn any Apple computer into your own - like you're actually working on your own computer. Same settings, look, bookmarks, preferences. It would all be invisible. Your iPhone would be all you needed to unlock your Mac."

The source reports that smaller items of information such as passwords, documents, and preference files would be stored directly on the iPhone, but that larger chunks of data such as applications and music and photo libraries would likely have to be stored in the cloud to be included in the service, given the sizes of those items and the relatively slow transfer speeds used in NFC.

According to the source, Apple has been working on this implementation of NFC technology for "some time", but it is of course possible that it may never see a public release.

Apple is reportedly investigating an issue with a number of Monster-branded headphones designed to use Apple's Remote and Mic technology. According to photo screenshots of an internal Apple service bulletin, headphones included on the extensive list do not meet Apple's technical specifications and can cause iPods and iPhones to play and pause erratically.

Several Monster headphone models using Apple's Remote and Mic technology do not meet Apple's technical specifications. These headphones use conductive flanges, which can result in electrical shorts that cause an iPod or iPhone to pause and play erratically. Customers may not be aware that the issue is caused by the headphones and may believe that the iPod or iPhone is defective instead. There are no known safety concerns and no known risk of damage to the iPod/iPhone or headphones.

The list of nearly two dozen headphone models affected by the issue include representatives of Monster's Lil Jamz, Jamz, Turbine (Pro and Basic), and Heartbeats lines. The service bulletin does not appear to recommend a specific course of action for Apple representatives or the customers affected by the issue, but they should presumably contact Monster for support.

Update: Monster has provided BGR with a statement on the situation:

Monster was recently made aware by Apple that some of our Jamz, Turbine and Heartbeats headphones with ControlTalk may experience some irregularities under certain circumstances (it does NOT affect ControlTalk Universal). This irregularity potentially affects a very small fraction of our headphones and to this date we have received no customer complaints. However, because the customer experience is our top priority, Monster immediately stopped shipment of all potentially affected products.

With the exception of the black or chrome Heartbeats with ControlTalk, this issue does not affect any other of the Beats by Dr. Dre products. If you think you are experiencing a problem with one of the headphones listed below, please contact Monster customer service [http://www.monstercable.com/service] to receive a replacement.

Potentially affected products include ControlTalk versions of Lil Jamz, Jamz, Turbine, Turbine Pro and Heartbeats.

With the release of iTunes 10.0.1 in late September, Apple unveiled the Ping Sidebar, offering users the ability to experience deeper integration between their music libraries and Apple's music-focused social network launched in iTunes 10. The new functionality did, however, do away with the earlier "Genius Sidebar" that had offered users song recommendations based on items in their own libraries.

As noted by MacStories, Apple late last week quietly tweaked the sidebar yet again in an attempt to offer the best of both worlds, offering both Ping and Genius functionalities in a renamed "iTunes Sidebar".

The Ping dropdown menu next to each song in users' libraries also continues to be offered, allowing users easy access to the service's functions and artist profiles.

The new iTunes Sidebar does not requires a revised version of iTunes 10 delivered via software update, as the sidebar's contents are loaded entirely from Apple's servers.

Several weeks ago, we noted that users in New Zealand and Australia had discovered a bug in iOS 4.1 that caused recurring alarms to go off an hour early after those countries switched to daylight saving time beginning in late September.

At the time, Apple representatives in Australia reported that the bug would be addressed in an upcoming software update, which many users had hoped would be a quick iOS 4.1.1 fix rather than having to wait until iOS 4.2 sometime this month. A fix has yet to appear, however, and with the UK and other European countries ending daylight saving time this weekend, the bug is striking a significant new population of users.

And with European users ending daylight saving time as opposed to the earlier groups in the Southern Hemisphere that were beginning daylight saving time, the bug means that European users are seeing their alarms go off an hour late.

Daylight saving time ends in the United States and Canada on November 7th, setting the stage for a fresh spate of oversleepers if Apple does not provide an iOS update this week.

Update: Several forum members in the United States have also reported experiencing the bug, although the reason for it is unclear, as daylight saving time in the U.S. does not end until next Sunday.

If you haven't yet downloaded the VLC Media Player for iPhone/iPad, now's a good time to do so. A formal copyright complaint has been issued against the software by one of the individual contributors to the VLC project. As a result, it seems likely that Apple could pull the app from the App Store:

Today, a formal notification of copyright infringement was sent to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. VLC media player is free software licensed solely under the terms of the open source GNU General Public License (a.k.a. GPL). Those terms are contradicted by the products usage rules of the AppStore through which Apple delivers applications to users of its mobile devices.

The reason for the complaint is an apparent incompatibility between the GPL license and the App Store policies -- at least according to the FSF. The App Store terms have changed since FSF originally posted about the App Store conditions, possibly allowing the GPL and App Store conditions to coexist, but there seems to be dissent amongst the VLC developers on the topic. The official VideoLan site has endorsed the port of VLC to the iPhone and iPad and their official twitter has since posted saying "So far, VLC is not going out of the AppStore" and "Maybe the FSF should actually ask us our opinion instead of writing misleading articles about VLC". The internal debate is being discussed on the mailing list.

At present VLC Media Player for iPhone/iPad remains available on the App Store.

Update: Jean-Baptiste Kempf (a VideoLAN developer) has posted a lengthy analysis of the issue, but the bottom line he gives is "lawyers are boring, FSF is FUDing, AppStore terms have changed, answer is not simple. Jump to Conclusion of II. and III."

if Steve Jobs' latest customer email is to believed, it seems Mac users will have to continue to wait for USB 3, According to an email response inquiring about USB3 for Mac, Steve Jobs reportedly wrote:

We don't see USB 3 taking off at this time. No support from Intel, for example.

USB 3 has been previously rumored to be coming to the Mac Pro and iMac lines, though the latest email casts some doubt on how quickly Apple will adopt the new standard. USB 3 promises higher speeds for external devices.

Apple is continuing its rapid-fire releases of Mac OS X 10.6.5 builds to the developer community, pushing out Build 10H568 as we head into the Halloween weekend. According to those familiar with the new build, this latest version continues to contain no documented known issues and Apple requests that developers focus their testing on the same set of areas as in the last several builds: 3D Graphics, Printing, QuickTime, Time Machine, and USB Devices.

The previous build of Mac OS X 10.6.5 was seeded on Monday, with that build coming only four days after its predecessor. Apple appears to be continuing with daily internal builds of Mac OS X 10.6.5, as the new version offers an increment of five builds since Monday's developer release.

It appears that Apple may be racing to put the final touches on Mac OS X 10.6.5 for a release in the near future to support iOS 4.2, which itself is due for release sometime in November. In a rather unusual move, Apple has been providing registered iOS developers with access to select Mac OS X 10.6.5 developer builds alongside iOS 4.2 builds, as the updated Mac operating system is required to support the AirPrint feature coming to iOS devices with iOS 4.2.