Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Wireless

Fresh off an extensive corporate decaffeination downsizing and a scaling back of its foray into music sales, it’s a fair question to ask: just how ironclad is Starbucks’ commitment to rolling out iTunes WiFi Music Store integration across its entire chain? We just happened to notice that the Starbucks page on Apple’s site is now stone-cold gone, redirecting to the standard iTunes 8 stuff. You might say “no big deal, Apple’s just playing down an agreement that’s now been in place for a full year,” but there’s some other weirdness, too — the company’s iTunes WiFi Music Store at Starbucks FAQ, for example, still references the dead link. The partnership was kinda ill-conceived to begin with; getting access to the store meant hooking up to AT&T WiFi, which you wouldn’t normally have configured unless you actually had an AT&T WiFi account. We haven’t heard any official word here that the deal is in danger, but really, would anyone be welling up if it fell apart?

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Despite AT&T’s best attempts at completely failing its free WiFi promises eternally, iPhone owners can finally fire up Mobile Safari in their local Starbucks, or, um, that one other place we heard about with AT&T WiFi, and get browsing. Of course, that’s not to say the service won’t crash horribly in the next 10 minutes, but at least AT&T stuck by its word, and can now move on to more pressing issues.

Update: Yeah, turns out this isn’t true, and AT&T has pulled the page. Free WiFi? That’s just silly.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Just when we thought things were kosher between Starbucks, T-Mobile, and AT&T over the Wi-Fi switchover, it turns out that T-Mobile isn’t so happy with how the deal is playing out. They claimed Starbucks secretly colluded with AT&T to offer free WiFi access and left T-Mobile in the lurch. The lawsuit, filed last week in New York state court, alleges that AT&T and Starbucks weren’t sticking to the terms of the original agreement, which would have allowed T-Mobile customers to freely roam on the new AT&T service. Now, it seems, they’ve all entered into a “memorandum of understanding to resolve their disputes and are committed to providing a high quality WiFi experience for customers.” So far, though, we don’t know any details as to what this agreement will mean for T-Mobile WiFi subscribers, but we’ll keep an eye on this.

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Filed under: Wireless

That deal AT&T whipped out of their hats to take over T-Mobile’s position as sole provider of WiFi at Starbucks? Turns out T-Mo is pissed about how the transition has gone down, and has filed suit against the buxx alleging collusion with AT&T, despite their supposedly exclusive agreement. Apparently T-Mo was basically allowed to run out its time serving and promoting WiFi service while Starbucks shops slowly converted over to AT&T. But T-Mo feels like it’s basically been pushed out (you don’t say!), claiming only two markets (San Antonio and Bakersfield) have actually legitimately transitioned to AT&T — far too little for Starbucks to come off like T-Mo service is done and over. We don’t know how much the suit’s worth in damages, but it sounds like they’ll be after a lot more cash than their magenta-related filings have brought in.

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Filed under: Wireless

Remember that WiFi pact brewed up between AT&T and Starbucks earlier this year? How could you forget, right? As if it wasn’t official enough already, the two have announced that the rollout has begun at company-operated Starbucks locations, and the nationwide effort will continue throughout 2008. Effective May 1st, qualifying AT&T high-speed internet / WiFi customers — that’s those who subscribe to one of the three higher-speed residential broadband packages, a small business broadband package or a U-verse offering with high-speed internet — will have free WiFi access at over 7,000 coffeehouses across the US. Unfortunately, we’re not given any real insight into what kinds of potential deals are in the works for AT&T wireless customers (if any at all), but here’s to hoping you all can get a little love, too.

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Filed under: Wireless

Starbucks said it would transition to AT&T-provided WiFi sometime this spring, and it looks like T-Mobile’s getting the boot right on schedule. The first Starbucks to switch over is just 4.2 miles away from AT&T corporate headquarters in San Antonio, at 5321 South Broadway Road, and the rest of the country should come on market-by-market. Anyone else seen any activity? T-Mobile customers still getting access, as promised? Let us know in comments!

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Filed under: Desktops

Continue reading Pranksters invade Starbucks with desktop computers

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Filed under: Handhelds

You’re already well aware that Apple and Starbucks are buddy-buddy on at least some level, but this application would really cement their friendship. Quickorder, as you can probably imagine, would enable iPod touch users to swing by their local Starbucks, order up their favorite drink and avoid a good deal of that always questionable human interaction. Granted, what you’re peering at above is still a mockup for now, but it’s brimming with potential, no? Hit up the read link for lots more pics.

[Via DVICE]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Wireless

Remember how Apple and Starbucks announced their partnership to sell music to Apple customers through the eighty ‘Bucks locations per square city block? Well, the rollouts have begun, and as of today iPhone, iPod touch, and iTunes users can roll into just about any Starbucks in Seattle, New York, and now the SF bay area — all in all about 800-900 spots — and see what’s playing over Starbucks radio and download a bunch of Starbucks-programmed music. We got a chance to sit down with Apple and Starbucks folks at a participating location in downtown San Francisco, here’s what we learned:

• Connecting iTunes through Starbucks is eminently simple: connect to the T-Mobile AP. That’s it. It’s all done behind the paywall, so you don’t have to fork out $10 to get online to use the service. (You can also visit apple.com behind the paywall, but not .Mac services.)
• As soon as you connect to the Starbucks T-Mobile AP with your iPhone / iPod touch / desktop machine running iTunes, you’ll see Starbucks music show up in your iTunes Store interface. (Hit the gallery to see how it works.)
• Downloading a track was reasonably fast, but the WiFi kept dropping with both our iPhone and MacBook Pro, leading us to believe there were some issues with the T-Mo hotspot. The download recovered fine through multiple disconnections, but it took us a little over 7 minutes to grab a single 8.5MB iTunes Plus track — so be careful before grabbing an entire album.

More info after the break; check out the gallery for shots of the Starbucks store on a hacked iPhone (of course it works) and from iTunes on a Mac.

Continue reading Apple and Starbucks iTunes WiFi integration hands-on

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Features, Portable Audio

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

The iPod and iTunes haven’t ostensibly suffered for (and have arguably gained from the) lack of a subscription music service. However, while such services have proven a tough sell to consumers at large, they have their benefits. One is the general liberation from the 30-second sample, a tiny prison of time that makes it difficult to engage in meaningful music discovery, the silver lining in the digital cloud that has been raining on the music industry for so many years.

In contrast to Rhapsody, Napster and Microsof’s Zune Pass, which offer several ways within their software for subscribers to hear full tracks in which they might be interested, Apple has recently turned “out of band” for music discovery. The high-profile announcement with Starbucks at the introduction of Apple’s latest round of iPods brings the portable devices to where the free music is rather than vice versa. Among Apple’s portable music players, the automatic track identification works only with the iPod touch and the iPhone. However, the flat-panel televisions in New York City Starbucks locations also note PCs and Macs as suitable (and prevalent) clients for purchasing music played at the popular coffee retailer.

An encouraging aspect of the collaboration between Starbucks and Apple is that the right company is making the brown product. However, one hot spot of trouble brewing in this Half-n-Half is that one can listen to the music only at a Starbucks location. This begs whether Apple would continue such a partnership when the iPhone finally gets access to 3G (perhaps to the scandalous exclusion of AT&T) or whether it or another device such as the iPod touch embrace WiMAX. But extending access to Starbucks’ percolated playlists need not wait for such wireless advances. The two companies could enable access via a simple option in iTunes that would stream Starbucks’ Hear Music XM station — or an equivalent — via any broadband connection.

Continue reading Switched On: The DAP, the Frap, the pap and the gap

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!