A judge upheld a ruling to let Steve Jobs raze a crumbling mansion in Woodside, California, though a preservation group may appeal the decision, again. The saga of the sagging 30-room Jackling mansion is a long one. Jobs bought it in 1984 and lived there for about a decade, then rented it until 2000. Built in

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Steve Jobs Regains Permission to Raze Mansion

Even though a single iPad hasn’t actually been shipped, that won’t stop the questions over the success of initial orders from being asked. Considering how Apple has positioned the iPad in the product lineup, on par with the Mac, iPod, and iPhone, Steve Jobs better have a press-release answer ready. On Friday, Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 started following people following the numbers, though whether those numbers are real or imaginary is yet to be determined. The data thus far derived has come from InvestorVillage , an Internet forum for “self-directed investors.” By using orders numbers from an admittedly small number of purchasers, and accounting for purchases of other products at the Apple Store, the initial estimate was 51,000 in the first two hours, 74,000 after four and a half hours, and 91,000 in six hours. According to Apple 2.0 , by the end of Friday the estimated number of iPad pre-orders was approximately 120,000. That’s the good news, assuming it’s true. Apple 2.0 also passed along metrics for 110 iPads that are what you’d expect, Wi-Fi over 3G by two to one, the cheapest iPad at $499 being very popular. Somewhat surprisingly, the most expensive model, 64GB/3G at $829, was also popular but, hey, these are self-directed investors spending their hard-earned dividends that we’re talking about.

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Was the iPad Launch a Success?

Looks like the House of Jobs’ hype machine worked. According to estimates by Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity board , Day One pre-sales totals for the iPad topped out at just under 120,000.  In the first two hours alone, 50,000 units were bought.  (Note: these numbers do not include iPads reserved but not actually purchased.) The graph shows some interesting facts: sales were evenly spread among the 16, 32, and 64 GB models, while Wi-Fi sales were more than double that of the 3G version.  (Remember: the Wi-Fi is definitely coming out on April 3, while the 3G is still sporting a “later in April” release date.) Victor Castroll, an analyst with Valcent Financial Group, summed it up best: “Apple has been able to generate over $75 million in revenue in one day on a product that 99.9% of purchasers haven’t touched or for that matter, even seen in person.  And, we’re still three weeks away. That is amazing.” [Via Fortune Brainstorm Tech ]

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iPad Pre-Sale Day One: 120K And Counting

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iDevice Accessories , iPod , iPod Accessories , Reviews Provides: External battery power for USB devices Developer: Just Mobile Minimum Requirements: iDevice or other USB device Capacity: 4400mAh Price: $69.95 Availability: Now As your iDevice ages, you may find yourself needing a little extra battery life.  Even brand new iDevices may have a hard time keeping up with your demanding lifestyle. Thankfully, you have many options for extending your mobile (un)productivity with an external battery. As such, it’s pretty hard for individual options to stand out among the sea of batteries, but Just Mobile’s Gum Plus Power Pack most certainly does. Designed to fit right in with your MacBook Pro, the Gum Plus Power Pack will keep you topped off for days in style. Before I get started, I think I’ll let Just Mobile introduce their own battery, since they have such a nice video put together just for this purpose. Now, what are the two things you care about most concerning external batteries?  I think most of us would say capacity and how it looks, with an emphasis on the first.  If it doesn’t have a large battery, it’s not useful. And if it doesn’t look nice, you probably won’t want to use it.  Well, that’s clearly what Just Mobile thought was important, because the Gum Plus has a capacity that makes most batteries feel insufficient, and a style that speaks directly to the little bit of Steve Jobs that may or may not be inside of you. I was instantly impressed by the Gum Plus from the moment I opened the box.  It comes with all necessary accessories, which are simply a mini USB cable and an iDevice cable.  Both are black and noticeably shorter than what you’re likely used to.  The only thing that might be missing in this box is an AC charger, which would help recharging times go down.  Still, you have everything necessary, and that’s enough. The outer shell of the Gum Plus is grey plastic made up to look exactly like the aluminum on your MacBook Pro.

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Appletell reviews the Just Mobile Gum Plus Power Pack

For the past twelve years, the Independent Games Festival has been a platform upon which indie game developers could showcase their work and receive some constructive feedback in return. The event is held annually at the Games Developer Conference and is the best place to see up-and-coming developers strut their stuff. This year, we got to talk to a developer whose team used Utility on their Macs to produce an engaging top-down platformer, and two developers who are utilizing the accelerometer on the iPhone to develop imaginative mobile games.     Puzzle Bloom puzzlebloom.com First up, we have a game from a team of students from The National Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment (DADIU), who managed to put together this artsy looking puzzle game in no more than four-weeks time. The game is called Puzzle Bloom, and the premise of it is to assist a kindred tree spirit named Canotila in restoring the vitality of the land in which she lives. You control her using your mouse, and you can use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out. The protagonist moves by jumping on top of various animals and moving them around the map, solving puzzles along the way. Unfortunately, the team of developers have disbanded, as most of them have graduated since finishing the game and moved on to full-time jobs. However, both levels of Puzzle Bloom have been left up on the internet for passersby to casually play, so head on over to the Puzzle Bloom site, or watch our video for a quick demo.

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Independent Developers Show Off their Mac and iPhone Games

Steve Jobs may be one of the most admired CEOs in the tech industry even if he’s not the richest. Jobs ranked 136 — down from up 43 spots since last year — in the annual Forbes list of billionaires, far behind Bill Gates (no. 2), Larry Ellison (6), Google founder Sergey Brin (24), Steve

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Steve Jobs #136 on Forbes World Billionaire List

Former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is laying claim that the current Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, threatened action against his company in 2003, in regard to desktop OS technologies, according to Apple Insider . Back in 2003, Schwartz said that Jobs contacted him personally "to let me know the graphical effects [in Sun's Project Looking Glass project] were ’stepping all over Apple’s [Intellectual Property].’"  If Sun had opted to release it for commercial purposes, Jobs was reportedly going to sue for infringement. Schwartz went on to say that Sun opted not to launch the product, but it was not because of Jobs’ accusation.  In place of that particular project, Sun decided not to launch the Linux desktop UI shell as it came to the conclusion that there wouldn’t be a place for a competitor to the Windows desktop amongst businesses. Image courtesy of enterprisenetworkandservers.com  

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Former Sun CEO Claiming Steve Jobs Threatened To Sue Over Patents Too

Filed under: iTS , Retail , iTunes , Apple This feature over at GigaOM has quite a few interesting insights about the iTunes LP program — while Apple sells it wholeheartedly as “the visual experience of the record album,” it appears the story behind the story is not quite so clean. According to an anonymous source in the industry (note, not Apple themselves), the service didn’t come from Cupertino. Instead, it was designed by record companies, and agreed to by Apple as a “concession” to “make a gesture in favor of album sales.” The piece also states that Apple subsidized the creation of the first few “LPs,” some of which cost up to $60,000 to assemble and license. As you might expect with any other less-than-popular product at Apple, iTunes LP isn’t exactly being thrown into the spotlight, either. While a much more visual music experience would be perfect for the iPad, GigaOM notes that it didn’t even merit a mention by Jobs at the iPad announcement. It’s certainly possible that iTunes LP could find a new home in the future, if bands really get behind the service and make their own (a few have, as noted, but the cost seems pretty prohibitive , especially if sales aren’t that impressive), but from what this anonymous source says, the LP service is a record company concession that hasn’t paid off for Apple even in the way its originators hoped. [via iPodNN ] Report: RIAA pressured Apple into creating iTunes LP originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Report: RIAA pressured Apple into creating iTunes LP originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Report: RIAA pressured Apple into creating iTunes LP

Via Apple 2.0 , Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner asserts in a research note that Apple’s lawsuit with HTC over the iPhone interface was the culmination of “blunt talks” with other phone manufacturers. According to Reiner, starting in January Apple began closed-door discussions with OEMs regarding the company’s “growing displeasure” with the theft of Apple’s intellectual property. That displeasure was first noted a year earlier at a conference call. Apple COO Tim Cook responded to a question about the Palm Pre by stating that “we will not stand for having our IP ripped off,” though Cook wasn’t necessarily talking about Palm, or just Palm, anyway. Earlier this month, Steve Jobs publicly accused HTC of theft in a press release associated with the iPhone lawsuit . Unfortunately, that lawsuit may not ultimately protect the iPhone the way Steve Jobs thinks. However, in the short term tough talk and legal action has, according to “industry checks” by Reiner, resulted in hardware manufacturers reassessing their positions regarding Google’s Android operating system. Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses.

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Analyst: Apple “Disrupting” iPhone Competitors With Legal Threats

Almost as soon as the iPad was shown in Steve Jobs’ hands back in late January, speculation ran rampant about whether or not some of the stock iPhone applications were missing in action, or simply consolidated into some kind of secret “widget mode.” MacRumors is letting the air out of the so-called “secret widget mode,” a theory that missing iPhone applications have been included on the iPad, revealed only by way of some kind of Mac OS X Dashboard-style magic (with a five-finger gesture being proposed). Among the missing apps are Stocks, Weather, Voice Memo, Clock and Calculator. But according to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber , his sources dispute that there’s any kind of “secret widget mode” and that the missing apps were in fact scrapped by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “It’s not that Apple couldn’t just create bigger versions of these apps and have them run on the iPad,” Gruber writes. “It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem. There were, internally to Apple (of course), versions of these apps (or least some of them) with upscaled iPad-sized graphics, but otherwise the same UI and layout as the iPhone versions. “Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated,” Gruber continues. “So they were scrapped by you-know-who. Perhaps they’ll appear on the iPad in some re-imagined form this summer with OS 4.0, but when the iPad ships next month, there won’t be versions of these apps. At least that’s the story I’ve heard from a few well-informed little birdies.” Furthermore, Gruber notes that while iPhone games will work well on the iPad, simpler “non-game iPhone applications” may feel strange on the new device, regardless of which method they are run (blown up to full screen or at native resolution as a small box in the center of the screen). It seems like the iPad will be an entirely new user experience, which will likely require a lot more app tweaking to make enhanced versions of existing apps work well. We’ll all know soon enough, as the Wi-Fi enabled iPad will finally be available on April 3…

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Widgets Are Indeed Missing From iPad, Says John Gruber