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- Apple Opens Doors to iTunes LP for Indie Labels and Artists
Apple said it was going to allow independent content producers open access to the tech and process behind iTunes LP and iTunes Extras, and it has done good on that promise, as TUAW reports. Today Apple has created a dedicated page on its website that offers devs interested in the format “everything you need to know to create a rich, interactive experience around your music and movies. All right in iTunes.”For those who may have missed it, Apple introduced the iTunes LP and iTunes Extras rich media formats for albums and movies when it released the latest major update to iTunes, version 9. Both LP for music, and Extras for movies, package extra content with a customer’s purchase, including videos, behind-the-scenes info, commentary and more.
There was some speculation shortly after the launch that Apple was purposely keeping the enhanced formats closed, and letting only major labels in on the party, in exchange for a $10,000 per album/movie admission charge. Apple denied the allegations, and it turns out it wasn’t lying.
Anyone who wants to can now head over to Apple’s site and check out three documents that should help even well-motivated amateurs work their way through the creation of the new value-add formats. There’s a template for both, and also a template how-to document that provides step-by-step instructions about how to create your LP or Extras.
For now, each and every artist and label that wants to create either an LP or an Extra for their album or movie will have to go through a manual submission process. And that’s only if you’re able to submit at all. The submission process is currently limited, with Apple directing people to contact their label or studio reps to see if they have access. Apple intends to have automated, electronic submission in place in the first quarter of 2010, but until then, most people will probably be stuck creating without any real hope of publishing.
Переслать - Pie Guy: Web Apps as Viable Alternatives
Pie Guy is an excellent little game that’s causing a small stir among developers. The game has completely bypassed the App Store and is available to download, right now, as a Web App.
It’s a cute 8-bit-era game with deliciously retro graphics that clones Pacman with a pie-themed twist. Eat the pies, don’t get caught by the cooks, and try to beat your high-score. The game can be installed for free simply by visiting http://mrgan.com/pieguy/ on your iPhone’s browser.
The surprising thing is that all of this was achieved without the App Store. I’ve never come across an iPhone web app that feels so much like a native app. From the install process, to the icon and graphics, the attention to detail is impressive.
Admittedly, Pie Guy is no Rolando, but nevertheless it’s just the sort of 99 cent app I’d expect to find riding high in the App Store charts. Except it’s not in the App Store — Pie Guy is free from the constraints and anguish of Apple approvals and it’s just as polished and professional as we’d expect, but perhaps rarely find, from a native premium app.
What's amazing is seeing what has been achieved without the App Store. A great user experience and a great product, all without running natively. Plus, it even works offline, despite being a web app. It’s worth noting though Pie Guy is iPhone 3GS only, the app apparently takes advantage of the significant improvements Apple made to WebKit performance on the device.
Of course, iPhone web apps are nothing new. Way back when, before the glorious mess that is the App Store, Jobs announced that developing on iPhone was effectively as simple as creating a web site.
After a rather disgruntled reaction from the dev community, and much purported rushing on Apple’s part, we ended up with the App Store. The very notion of web apps, on the other hand, seemed to get tossed aside in the free-for-all gold-rush that ensued.
Many months later, attention is beginning to swing back around to the untapped potential of web apps. It may be that developers are looking for a route to take their concepts to users without running the rejection gauntlet that is Apple’s app approval process. However, it’s also likely that developers want to take advantage of those handy WebKit performance improvements on the 3GS.
Earlier this week on Twitter, David Kaneda, a WebKit developer, claimed, “I could write a pretty competitive Tweetie clone, pretty quickly.” Loren Brichter, developer of iPhone Twitter-client Tweetie, promptly responded by saying, “I dare you.” What resulted from the ensuing exchange was a coder battle that may go some way in illustrating the real potential of WebKit, with Kaneda already producing promising results.
In the meantime though, users are caught between a somewhat chaotic App Store and a predominantly lackluster selection of web apps. There’s clearly room for improvement in both arenas and it’ll be interesting to see what developers manage to squeeze out of WebKit in the coming months.
Переслать - No Flash on Your iPhone? How About Silverlight, Instead?
It's been a double-edged sword, this no-Flash-on-the-iPhone business. On the one hand, we don't get the complete Internet. On the other hand, the web pages we do get are less likely to crash or drag-along at a snail's pace. And really, who wants to see yet another "Smack the monkey" banner ad?
Just as we bemoaned the lack of MMS functionality, some of us complain endlessly about the absence of Flash support on the iPhone. But following a demonstration at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference, it looks like we may see that software giant's Flash competitor, Silverlight, appearing on the iPhone in the not too distant future.
Reporting for Betanews.com, Scott Fulton writes:
It was an impressive demonstration, once they got it working: H.264 video streaming wirelessly (and slowly, at least during the caching sequence) using Microsoft’s Silverlight video streaming, to an Apple iPhone… You’d think Apple would have stood firm against Microsoft at least as aggressively as it has against Adobe, if not more so. How did this happen? We asked Microsoft User Experience Platform Manager Brian Goldfarb last week at PDC 2009, and the answer was a huge surprise…followed by some caveats. But it contained these four amazing words: “We worked with Apple.”
OK, quick recap for those of you who don't know what Silverlight is all about. Silverlight was launched by Microsoft in 2007, and provides a toolset developers can leverage to build rich multimedia and interactivity into websites. In this sense, it's like Adobe's venerable Flash. But unlike Flash, Silverlight content is based on a flavor of XML which means…well, it all gets very nerdy from here on in, so I'll stop there. The take-home message is that, for the most part, Silverlight is a more modern, powerful and less crash-tastic alternative to Flash. It's also more standards-compliant than Flash, depending on who you get to build your Silverlight web apps, and that matters a lot in an age when more and more of what we do happens in the browser. (Before I get flamed in the comments, please note — I didn't say Silverlight is standards compliant — it's just less horrible than Flash. And yes, I do realize that’s hardly a ringing endorsement.)
It's precisely the browser technology in the iPhone that helped make Silverlight video streaming a possibility. Brian Goldfarb told Betanews:
“The promise of Silverlight is that it’s a cross-device, cross-browser, cross-platform solution, and it works the same on Macs as it does on Windows. The iPhone is a unique scenario. We talked to our customers…and they said, ‘Look, we just need to get our content there, and it’s mainly in the media space like broadcasting, and we want to put it on the iPhone.’ They have a great solution for that; if you’re surfing the Web, and hit YouTube and hit ‘Play,’ it’ll play your video because [Apple] created an environment where they can safely play media, and they’re comfortable with that.
Goldfarb is talking about the native YouTube app found on every iPhone. The YouTube app sorta helps, but usually only for YouTube-hosted video. Want to play videos hosted elsewhere? Good luck. Some H.264 QuickTime-encoded videos will play, but as you likely already know, it's all a bit hit-and-miss.
“So we’ve worked with Apple to create a server-side based solution […] and what we’re doing is taking content that’s encoded for smooth streaming and enabling the content owner to say, ‘I want to enable the iPhone.’ The server will dynamically make the content work – same content, same point of origin – on the iPhone. We do this with the HTML 5 tag, in many ways.”
And there's the magic bullet right there. Silverlight works because (in conjunction with Microsoft’s Internet Information Services technology found on Windows Servers) it exploits HTML 5's native video support — and Mobile Safari is a decent HTML 5-compatible browser. All the video encoding trickery is taking place on the remote server; it identifies when an iPhone is requesting a video stream and bundles it into a format the device can handle.
Silverlight-powered streaming video on an iPhone – image from Betanews.com
Although Goldfarb says Microsoft "worked with Apple," he elaborated on the degree of that collaboration. Turns out, it wasn't a lot; ”We did all the work. We just made sure Apple was comfortable with it.”
Could this represent a potential lesson to learn for Adobe? Despite the enormous market penetration of the Flash player technology (Adobe claims 99.7 percent of browsers are capable of displaying Flash content) it's widely criticised for being an antiquated, less-than-optimal platform for delivering multimedia. (Except, it seems, in L.A. Have you noticed how many Hollywood Studios doggedly insist on building their movie websites entirely in Flash?)
Who would have thought that the best solution, and lead runner in the race to provide non-YouTube video streaming for the iPhone, would be Microsoft? There's something about that which is almost… poetic.
Переслать - Crime Doesn't Pay, Except When You're Rick Rollin'
iPhone Malware has been getting an awful lot of coverage lately, hasn't it? I'm sorry to add to it, but sophos.com reports that the author of the Ikee iPhone worm has (somewhat predictably) earned himself a nice new job for his troubles.
Ashley Towns is twenty one years of age, Australian, sports a fair bit of lip-and-nose-metalware and is also the latest employee of mogeneration, a company that specializes in iPhone application development.
The Ikee worm was widely reported as the world's first iPhone worm. It affected only iPhones that had been jailbroken, replacing their wallpaper with an image of 80s pop sensation Rick Astley and the headline text "Ikee is never going to give you up." (Whether that makes it malicious or not depends entirely on your opinion of that coiffed crooner.)
While Ikee didn't do anything too nasty, an understanding of the precise security weakness the worm exploited was shared quickly on the Internet via widespread reporting in the tech press. Only a matter of days later, the Duh worm (also known as Ikee.B) was found in the Netherlands. Researchers discovered the Duh worm was based largely on Ikee, exploiting the same weak-password method; however this variant of Ikee was much more sinister, acquiring iPhone owners' online banking information.
Of course, Towns' can't be held responsible for the Duh worm, but would Ikee.B have existed if not for Ikee? Didn't Towns open the door for opportunistic malware authors looking for a way to take advantage of less diligent iPhone jailbreakers? Furthermore, is it appropriate he has been rewarded for his actions?
It's that age-old argument; should malware authors be punished with heavy fines and jail sentences, or should they be gainfully employed by security companies, where their mad programming skillz can be used to benefit society?
Переслать
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