The latest in a series of vicious rumors about Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs involved a heart attack. The news was only online for about 30 minutes on a CNN affiliated site but was enough to send the Apple stocks plummeting 5%. According to a CNN affiliated website, iReport.com, Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack. Before you panic, let me assure you that this is totally fake. Steve Jobs is alive and well (sorta) atop the Apple throne in their completed Death Star currently orbiting Earth. Jobs’ fake Heart Attack was only up on iReport for about 30 minutes and still managed to cause enough panic to send Apple stock spiraling down over 5%. According to a statement made by CNN:

iReport.com is an entirely user-generated site where the content is determined by the community. Content that does not comply with Community Guidelines will be removed. After the content in question was uploaded to iReport.com, the community brought it to our attention. Based on our Terms of Use that govern user behavior on iReport.com, the fraudulent content was removed from the site and the user’s account was disabled.

Since it was proven fake, Apple’s stock has risen again. Steve’s heart attack speaks volumes about the fragile confidence of the stock market in these closing days of the Bush administration. Once again, the rumors of Jobs’ death have been greatly exaggerated.

-Derek

The App Store has become a good way for developers to make a name for themselves and to make a good amount of cash but now politics has made its way onto the App Store. With the new Obama iPhone App and all the other political apps out there it seems the App Store is just another place to keep political savvy Americans in the know. Check out the App Store for all the newest political iPhone apps.

-Ray

[Source: topiphonenews]

Looks like the memory card makers are in a world of hurt. The memory market has had a downward spiral and it seems like it’s only getting worse, even the big boys in the industry like SanDisk are not safe from the trend. The article below from CNET talks about the causes of this memory card demand meltdown.

Memory chip makers are fighting for their life.

The memory chip market–and industry–is caught in a particularly brutal downward price spiral that is threatening the viability of even the largest players.

“Memory manufacturers who have already been losing money for several quarters are now looking at another six months to a year of absolutely ominous conditions,” said Avi Cohen, managing partner at Avian Securities.

…..Click here to read more

This official video of the HTC Touch HD was just released by HTC. While it is pretty brief it does shows us maps, images, browsing and the huge 3.8-inch 480×800 resolution screen. I can’t wait to see this phone in person.

-Ray

[Source: gizmodo]

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was interviewed by CIO magazine recently and he talked about the future of the Zune. He has some interesting things to say about the Zune.

CIO: Why has Microsoft developed Zune?

Ballmer: At the end of the day, one of the big trends is that all content is going digital. And if we don’t have the software and services that are useful, helpful and valuable for the consumption of music and video, we are sort of not really a player.

Now, we built the Zune hardware with the Zune software - and what you’ll see more and more over time is that the Zune software will also be ported to and be more important not just with the hardware but on the PC, on Windows Mobile devices, etc.

CIO: It seems to me to be a tricky one because Apple is out there, and they have a pretty good product - but also they have this kind of cult following of people who are just going to buy, because it’s Apple. That must be a frustrating thing to compete against.

Ballmer: They may have a cult following in the music business, and we got about 97 percent of PC users using our stuff. 97 percent may not constitute a cult! But I wouldn’t trade that for a cult!

-Ray

[Source: gotzune]

Sure there are apps that help you make ringtones for your iPhone but sometimes they don’t always work well. You could use iTunes 8 for your Mac or PC to make ringtones as well. This video from CNET shows you how to use iTunes for making ringtones

-Ray

[Source: cnet]

The first Facebook app was a great app. It was one of those must-haves for anybody with an iPhone and a Facebook account. Well now 2.0 is here and it is better than ever. I just downloaded the app and it is absolutely miles ahead of the previous one. The new features include:

• Chat
• News Feed
• People Search
• Notifications
• Address book search
• Friend requests
• Photo Tagging

And much much more! You can now basically do everything you can on Facebook sitting behind a computer! There really isn’t a reason to log in from your computer anymore! My only small complaint so far is that I had to do a soft reset before the app worked properly, but that goes most apps out there anyways! This comes highly recommended

-Derek

Big Nerd Ranch Europe is planning to hold a week-long iPhone Bootcamp for developers in Frankfurt, Germany. The bootcamp runs from December 8 - 12, 2008. The iPhone Bootcamp features Mac developer and instructor Alexander von Below. Attendees do not need any previous experience in coding Objective-C, coding for the Mac or coding for the iPhone. They should be familiar with C and object-oriented languages such as Java or C++ however. The class is said to cost $3905 and includes all materials, a luxury room, all meals, a shirt and transportation from the airport. No flat tops required.

-Ray

[Source: macworld]

After a lot of outrage in the developer community, Apple has decided to drop the NDA that had been at the forefront of controversy over Apple’s outlandish control issues. This looks to be a step forward in Apple’s reconciliation with many developers who have felt alienated. The fine print is still there however as the NDA only applies to “released” software which means unreleased software will most likely still have the NDA apply. The progress of the iPhone in the up-coming years will depend largely on their third party apps. Apple’s move came as great news to many developers and was generally touted as a positive move albeit insufficient by itself.

-Derek

The review policy for apps have finally been changed by Apple; to review a product, the reviewer must actually own it now. After all, the internet is full of people who abuse the power of their anonymity so this decision comes as a no-brainer. A lot of people have written horrible one-line reviews for undeserving apps and Apple’s decision seeks to balance the system a little. It does make people think twice before buying an app just to give it a bad review now. But it won’t do anything to deter people from downloading one of the many great free apps and writing a bad review only to then delete the app from the iPhone or iPod Touch.

-Derek