Wednesday, June 8, 2011

TheAppleBlog — Apple and iOS News, Tips and Reviews (10 сообщений)

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  • WWDC 2011: 5 Programming terms explained for non-programmers

    With WWDC well underway, you might have heard a few programming terms that even Mac experts have trouble understanding, but it happens to the best of us. Once someone mentioned they had a problem with “deprecation,” and I suggested a self-esteem book. Here's a quick glossary of the terms that gave me the most trouble:

    1. Source code. Great movie, eh? But also, when a developer writes software, source code is the actual program as it is being typed into the computer, written in a programming language. Source code is usually kept secret and closely guarded by companies, although "open source" software bares its code to the world.

    2. Regression. A programmer friend once mentioned that a bug was "regressed." I had vivid images of animals regressing to primordial ooze. Software regression is a bug that makes things stop working correctly after an event that changes the operating environment, like a system update. Not to be confused with regression testing, which in the programming sense, generally means making sure updates to software don’t introduce new bugs to existing, working features, and that previously identified bugs have been fixed. So it actually has nothing to do with science fiction.

    3. Deprecated. "Cheer up!" might be your first reaction to your friend who tells you a critical programming library he or she relies on has been deprecated. That actually isn’t a bad instinct, because when something is deprecated it means it’s no longer supported by the manufacturer and may disappear in the future. If your program relies on a feature Apple has deprecated, your program could "break" in new OS versions unless you update it to use newer programming libraries. Generally speaking, if something is deprecated, it means it's still there, but is no longer supported.

    4. Release Candidate. No this isn't about politics. Many readers probably know that a "test" phase of a program is a Beta. At some point, though, a product moves past the Beta phase (and the even earlier Alpha phase) and becomes a Release Candidate, usually designated RC. It might also be referred to as a Final Candidate or FC by some. Marking a build an RC or FC is the developers' way of saying "we think this is probably good enough to ship." Apple often releases several Final Candidate builds, the last of which becomes the…

    5. GM. No this isn't the General Manager (my first thought!), but rather the Gold Master. The code is frozen, and the FC designated the final GM is what ships. There should be no code differences between the last FC and the GM. Having the GM installed is pretty much equivalent to having the product. It's the master version which is turned into the product: shipped on disk, downloaded or sold via the Mac App Store. You might hear people say software has “gone gold”; this is what they’re talking about.

    So to review, when someone says "After we regressed our app in the new Mac OS, we found out that a library we relied on had been deprecated, so we went back to the source code to recompile our program. Now we have a solid FC and hopefully we'll go GM next week!" you’ll know exactly what you’re talking about.

    What other programming terms have slipped you up in casual conversation, and what are some other definitions you think people might appreciate?

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  • The web's watchful eye fixes on Apple's cloud gear

    When Steve Jobs flashed inside images of Apple’s new cloud data center during his WWDC keynote on Monday, he ignited a mini firestorm of speculation about just what kind of hardware is filling its immense surface area. No one outside of Apple and its hardware partners know for sure what it houses, but it appears as if HP and Teradata were among the big winners in Apple’s big cloud build-out. Here’s what the experts had to say:

    • It’s full of HP servers. Storage analyst Stephen Foskett and ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan both noted as much, even going into some detail on models and specifications. Both suggest Apple bought a large number of HP’s commodity ProLiant DL 300 series boxes. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. I spoke with HP Vice President of Industry Standard Servers and Software recently, and he explained to me just how prevalent HP gear is among the world’s largest web sites, search engines and social media sites. He also highlighted HP’s major partnership role in helping Facebook design its cutting-edge data center and servers. Certainly, HP has the cloudscale chops to be part of Apple’s cloud foray.

    • It has a large Teradata data warehouse. Foskett and fellow storage analyst Robin Harris agree on this. Both identify the gear as Teradata’s Extreme Data Appliance, and there appear to be about 30 of them. Harris noted that, fully configured, just the number of appliances visible in the picture could store about 8 petabytes. Harris astutely notes that the Teradata analytics appliances aren’t for storing music, but likely are for storing personal data, perhaps even of the geospatial variety. It’s difficult to say for certain that he’s right or wrong, but perhaps this fresh job listing from Apple can shed some light on the situation:

    The Global Business Intelligence (GBI( team within Apple’s Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) organization is implementing a 250+ terabyte database to support analytical and reporting needs of hundreds of global Apple users. To drive this effort, GBI is looking for a senior architect with expertise in designing and implementing big data solutions using technologies like Hadoop, Teradata, Memcache, Casandra, Informatica and Java. . . . The ideal candidate will have a bachelors degree in computer science and seven or more years experience with at least three of them being on big data, NoSQL platforms like Hadoop using Hive and HBase. A good understanding of relational databases is required. Experience with MPP databases like Teradata, ETL tools like Informatica, and BI tools like Business Objects will be a big plus.

    Earlier job listings from Apple suggest that it’s using Hadoop, as well as other advanced analytics techniques for improving the iAds mobile-advertising platform and iOS, so there’s no guarantee that Apple has all that Teradata gear solely for storing personal data that it ultimately wants to sell.

    • Maybe there’s some NetApp in there, as well. Foskett thinks he spotted a variety of NetApp storage products in Apple’s data center, which is somewhat interesting because Apple reportedly bought 12 petabytes of Isilon file storage from NetApp rival EMC. Of course, there’s no requirement that Apple go single-vendor across its storage infrastructure and, in fact, Apple customers might take solace in the fact that it appears to have gone best-of-breed for its various storage needs.
    • It’s efficient. Data Center Knowledge’s Rich Miller noted some of the data-center-design principles that Apple employed, including “a slab floor and a cooling system in which cold air enters the equipment area from overhead. Apple is using containment systems to separate the cold supply air for the servers from the exhaust heat, a strategy which dramatically improves the efficiency of data center cooling systems.”

    What’s certain is that Apple didn’t approach its iCloud infrastructure build with a light wallet or the mindset that it has to build its own gear and software like Google and Facebook have done. As Jobs said during his keynote, “It’s full of stuff. Full of expensive stuff.” Indeed, it cost Apple $500 $1 billion. Apple’s customers can complain about iCloud’s features, but it doesn’t look like they complain too much about Apple’s investment in the infrastructure that supports it.

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  • Evernote releases an app for your iPad's Smart Cover

    In a clever twist, Evernote introduced a new app Wednesday that does something cool using not only the iPad 2, but also one of its constant companions. Evernote Peek works with the Apple iPad 2 Smart Cover, using the magnetic screen protector to hide information as well as your screen.

    Peek is a question and answer app that’s designed to help people study and learn new things. It works like a series of flashcards, but with the help of the Smart Cover, it makes the process both easier and more fun. The app works by revealing a one line clue or question when you lift just the edge of the iPad Smart Cover. Once you lift the cover entirely, the answer is revealed. Close the cover and it advances to the next question automatically. Evernote ships a sample sushi quiz with the app, that gives you the English name of a type of fish, and then provides the Japanese name as the answer.

    You can create your own quizzes based on your Evernote notebooks right from within the app (though you’ll need an Evernote account, of course), and you can also get additional content from StudyBlue, a company that partners with Evernote to bring notebook content to flashcard apps. Evernote recently announced that it had hit the 10 million user mark, so there should be lots of people with notebooks ready to take advantage of Peek.

    The app is free, and fun to use even if you’re not studying with any particular goal in mind, and the way it uses the Smart Cover is amazing. Making apps that use accessories and outside devices for core functionality is a big risk, but Apple pushes the Smart Cover very hard with the iPad 2, so it’s probably the best choice if you’re going to pick a secondary device to work with.

    Anyone have any other ideas about how the Smart Cover might benefit from app integration?

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  • As MobileMe closes, Google rescues new iOS users

    With all the fanfare for the move from MobileMe to iCloud, new iOS users — or at least those new to over-the-air syncing — will find themselves without an Apple option for several months. Although Apple discontinued new signups for MobileMe on Monday, iCloud syncing won't be available until the fall, and most likely will only be available for those running iOS 5 and Lion (current MobileMe subscribers will, of course, still be able to use the service). What's an Apple fan to do in the meantime? Go to a competitor.

    Crazy as it sounds, Google, Apple's chief rival in the smartphone market, will be the one saving iOS users stuck in this donut hole. Moving to Google syncing requires only minor modifications to your iOS gadgets and your Mac, and you’ll be able to keep your contacts, calendars and email in step across devices. You'll need to sync your iOS device to Google as well as sync your Mac to Google, and you should always backup the data on both before doing so. Note that doings so requires at least Leopard for Mac users.

    Google has excellent instructions on how to set up your iOS device with a Google account. You'll need to set up the Google account first of course, but most people already have that. Note that other email addresses you happen to be using on your devices that aren’t tied to your Google account won’t have their data backed up.

    Setting up your Mac to sync with Google is also quite easy again due to excellent instructions, in particular on how to sync your calendars and how to sync your contacts.

    While you’re at it, you might consider moving from iCal to BusyCal, as BusyCal syncs simply with Google using only your login credentials, while syncing with iCal is a multi-step process.

    Google has a great opportunity to get users signed up in this window between Apple’s announcement and when its service goes live. Both Google and Apple will soon be battling for the right to store users’ data, a much different fight than that going on between operating systems. Any advantage in that coming fight could be a significant one.

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  • Apple's iCloud punishes honest iTunes users with DRM

    Apple has rolled out phase one of its cloud music offering this week, allowing iTunes users to download additional copies of past purchases on up to ten devices.

    However, users that bought their music on iTunes before Apple abandoned DRM some two years ago better get ready for an unexpected surprise: Files originally bought with Apple's Fairplay copy protection are also once again downloaded with DRM.

    Apple still charges users $0.30 per track to get rid of DRM.

    A number of users complained about this strange behavior on Twitter and on the web, with one stating that this would bring back "bad memories." We were able to confirm it by re-downloading a DRMed track as well. Apple introduced the ability to "upgrade" copy protected tracks to DRM-free AACs by paying $0.30 per song in early 2009. The so-called upgrade to iTunes Plus is still available, so it might make economic sense for the company to not offer free upgrades as part of the new ability to download additional copies of previously purchased songs.

    However, the fact that iTunes still serves up DRM to users who were honest enough to pay for their music may add fuel to recent criticism that Apple's iCloud offering rewards piracy. Beginning this fall, customers will be able to synchronize their entire music library with iCloud without uploading a single song to Apple's servers as part of the iTunes Music Match subscription. iCloud will instead match songs by title and audio fingerprint, allowing users to download higher-quality copies of songs even for those 128 kbps files they originally downloaded from LimeWire back in the day. Music Match will cost users $25 per year.

    ZDNet blogger David Gewirtz called Music Match "complete music pirate amnesty" this week, and Evolver.fm’s Elliot van Buskirk said that the offering "reinforces the practice of downloading music without paying for it" (hat tip to AllAccess.com).

    The good news is that iCloud's Music Match will likely also work for DRMed iTunes purchases (Apple PR didn't respond in time to requests for comment), meaning that paying subscribers will be able to free their existing iTunes libraries from DRM by paying $25 per year instead of $0.30 per track.

    Until then, Apple's practice of serving up DRMed downloads to paying customers more than two years after the company announced with big fanfares that it would abandon DRM serves as an important reminder: Once businesses and consumers buy into a copy protection scheme, they’re gonna have a hard time getting rid of it.

    Image courtesy (CC-BY-SA) of Flickr user Ben Cumming.

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  • 3 reasons why iMessage won't kill SMS

    We've seen some eye-catching headlines in response to to Apple's new iMessage, which enables iOS 5 users to send unlimited texts and other content to fellow users without incurring carrier charges. The biggest noise surrounding the service is that bloggers and industry insiders claim that SMS revenues "are going away" because iMessage "makes texting obsolete" and — for good measure — that "Apple has finally stuck a dagger into SMS."

    Don't believe the hype. Let me be clear: I'd like to see SMS snuffed out, too, given the outrageous prices that carriers charge for transmissions that barely impact the network. (One blogger determined in a 2008 analysis that carriers charge roughly one cent for every byte of data in an SMS message when charged per message. At that rate, downloading a song would cost about $6,000.) And it appears there's a lot to like about iMessage, from its integration with SMS (so messages are sent through the platform automatically and marked as such in the user interface) to the fact that it gives iPad and iPod touch owners another way of communicating on their devices. But iMessage won't impact SMS usage and revenues much more than BlackBerry Messenger (which boasts 35 million users) has. With that in mind, let's examine a few reasons why iMessage isn't about to ring the death knell for SMS.

    1. It works only on iOS devices. Yes, there are more than 200 million iOS gadgets in use, but Apple's mobile operating system accounts for a little less than one-fourth of the overall U.S. smartphone market, according to new data from ComScore. Smartphones are still outnumbered by feature phones in the U.S., so Apple's share of the overall handset market is much smaller. And while smartphone users consume far more mobile data than their feature phone–toting counterparts, nearly everybody sends text messages.
    2. SMS is typically bundled. Service operators sell text messages to consumers in bulk or package them with voice services, so it's highly unlikely that users who text often are paying 20 cents or so per message they send or receive. There are a few scenarios where iMessage could replace SMS — families or small businesses where everyone carries an iOS device, for example — but those cases are not as common. The vast majority of users will be highly unlikely to change their messaging plans.
    3. Carriers can tweak their SMS plans accordingly. As Sascha Segan at PCMag.com noted, carriers control the networks. So they could identify iMessage missives and count them as SMS if they choose to, or they could simply raise overall data charges for all users to offset any lost revenues.

    For more thoughts on why iMessage doesn't pose a mortal threat to the cash cow that is SMS, please see my weekly column at GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

    Image courtesy Flickr user russeljsmith

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  • Lodsys making enemies besides Apple as patent challenges begin

    Lodsys, the patent holding firm targeting iOS developers individually after deciding it isn’t making enough money on the licenses it already holds from Apple , Google and other large tech companies, is on the receiving end of some legal action Wednesday. A Michigan analytics firm called ForeSee Results Inc. has filed a declaratory judgment suit against the four patents Lodsys owns, according to FOSSpatents, because its clients received threatening letters like those sent to independent app developers by Lodsys.

    But ForeSee’s clients aren’t small app developers with limited means to defend against patent infringement claims and little choice but to agree to demands for licensing fees; they’re major companies with lots of capital and legal expertise at their disposal, including Adidas, Best Buy and WE Energies, and with this declaratory judgment filing, ForeSee has gone on the offensive against Lodsys on their behalf.

    FOSSpatents’ Florian Mueller explains that a declaratory judgment, which doesn’t incur any penalties but is crucial to setting precedent, is a smart way to begin the process of potentially invalidating all of Lodsys’ patents. ForeSee filed suit in Illinois before Lodsys actually filed against any of its clients, too, which means that Lodsys doesn’t get to set the stage in the Eastern District of Texas, where the company has filed against iOS developers, and where the law favors the patent holder. Mueller also notes that McDermott Will & Emery, a “top-notch law firm that does a lot of work for major technologies” will be representing ForeSee. The law firm previously engineered a successful patent settlement for its client Creative Technology against Apple, in fact, resulting in a $100 million payday for Creative.

    I asked Chicago tech and intellectual property attorney Evan Brown of Internet Cases what he thought about his filing, and he suggested that it could be a litmus test to see just how far Lodsys is willing to take this thing:

    A declaratory judgment action like this gives Lodsys the chance to test its own resolve, whether it wanted to or not. We have to think that it considered the possibility of a declaratory judgment action (any reasonable party that sends a threatening letter should be ready for that risk). But given that Lodsys was generally targeting the smaller fish rather than Apple itself, one is left to think it may not have thought it through as much as it should have. Needless to say, Lodsys probably wishes things were going more smoothly for it, what with Apple’s swift and firm letter talking about patent exhaustion, and now this lawsuit. Maybe Lodsys might realize it’s better to actually use a technology rather than just sue others over it.

    Apple’s response to Lodsys’ initial threats only prompted Lodsys to step up its timeframe and sue seven independent app developers ahead of schedule, and we’ve heard nothing from Cupertino on the subject since. But Craig Hockenberry, one of the developers behind Twitterific, tweeted just prior to WWDC that affected devs can’t talk about what’s going on, so presumably Apple is acting behind the scenes.

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  • 2011 Apple Design Award winners announced

    One of the many traditions of Apple’s WWDC is the presentation of Apple Design Awards (ADA) for “excellence in iOS and Mac OS X app design and development.” It’s a matter of pride to be awarded with the simple silver cube, and also nice to receive the accompanying awards of a MacBook Air, iPad 2, and iPod touch. Apple has three primary criteria for the selection of winners:

    • Design. Well-designed apps are delightful, elegant, intuitive, engaging, exciting, compelling, and reliable.
    • Innovation. Innovative apps are revolutionary, inspirational, unique, and do things in completely new and exciting ways.
    • Technical excellence. Technically advanced apps have excellent performance and make extensive use of the latest Apple technologies to deliver innovative, platform differentiating, and advanced features.

    The winners are chosen for Student, iPhone, iPad, and Mac categories from apps available for sale in the iTunes App Store and the Mac App Store (app links below are to the respective App Store). The 2011 ADA winners are:

    Student

    • Grades 2 by Tapity – a GPA calculator.
    • Pennant by Vargatron – an interactive history of baseball.
    • Pulse News by Alphonso Labs – an innovative and beautiful news reader.

    iPhone

    iPad

    • Osmos for iPad by Hemisphere Games – a physics-based game of survival.
    • Our Choice by Push Pop Press – an interactive book platform featuring Al Gore’s latest publication on the environment
    • Djay by algoriddim – DJ software for your iPod library.

    Mac

    • Capo by SuperMegaUltraGroovy – a learning tool for musicians.
    • Pixelmator by Pixelmator Team – an outstanding image editor.
    • Anomaly Warzone Earth by 11 bit studios – a highly rated game with a “mixture of action and strategy in a tower offense formula.”

    Congratulations to the winners! Anyone you think was overlooked this year? Let us know in the comments.

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  • OnLive Player will be the iPad's answer to the gaming console

    If you want to see the future of gaming, you might consider looking at Nintendo’s newly announced Wii U console, which features a controller with a built-in 6.2-inch touchscreen. But Nintendo is essentially selling a tablet/content transmitter combo, since you can’t buy the controller separate from the Wii U itself. The new OnLive Player unveiled at E3, on the other hand, starts with the tablet players already have, and goes from there.

    The OnLive Player app can be used with OnLive’s streaming gaming service, which handles all the heavy lifting for graphics-intensive games on remote servers, and beams the action over an active broadband connection to your device. OnLive has already released a Viewer app to preview its iPad service, but the fully interactive playable version arrives this fall, the company announced at E3.

    The key to the OnLive Player app’s appeal lies in its versatility. It allows you to use the tablet as both screen and touch / motion controller, just like you do for most native iPad games, or as a standalone controller for games displayed on an external source, or as a screen for use with a new wireless universal gamepad.

    Thanks to the iPad 2′s ability to output its display via the Apple Digital AV Adapter, and even over AirPlay when iOS 5 arrives this fall, it could act as both portable and home gaming console all in one convenient device with the Player app arrives. Not to mention the app will be available for the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as Android handsets and tablets, too. If OnLive or another partner built a case/controller combo for those device and targeted top-tier mobile games developers, an iPhone running OnLive could compete with the likes of Sony’s new PlayStation Vita  (formerly known as the NGP), especially if we get updated hardware in the fall.

    Nintendo and Sony are both addressing the threat posed by versatile tablet and smartphone devices by integrating hallmarks of that hardware into its next-gen devices: touchscreens, cellular data connections and two-screen media viewing are all on the docket. But unlike traditional gaming companies, OnLive is free to make use of the tech consumers are already using, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and sell them a brand new device that looks and feels a lot like the ones they already have. Of course, OnLive has to deal with the rising costs of bandwidth, so we’ll have to see how that drama continues to play out before declaring it a winner.

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  • The last things missing from Apple's perfect cloud storm

    iOS 5 and Lion are both great updates that are sure to please consumers, especially because they make it even easier to use computers without thinking too much about what goes on behind the scenes. But while the platforms feel deeply and productively intertwined, there are a couple remaining last steps Apple could and should take that would make working back and forth between both seamless.

    iMessage

    iOS 5 features iMessage, which is a direct messaging platform that can replace text messages when used between iOS devices. You can send photos, videos, contact cards and more, and you also receive sent and read receipts. If you’ve used BBM  on a BlackBerry device, it’s very similar.

    Apple did a great job with iMessage, but the fact that it’s missing from Lion doesn’t make any sense. Lion still comes with iChat, Apple’s IM client, but it doesn’t plug into iChat. It’s great being able to receive messages from mobile devices across all your iOS hardware, but if it could make the leap to the desktop, I could leave behind other IM services and maybe even leave my phone in my pocket more often when I sit down to do work.

    Facebook and Google are likely to be battling for the true cross-messaging pie, and this would be a perfect opportunity for Apple to leverage its user base to get in on that action, too. Let’s hope it comes with an update to Lion once it’s released.

    Notification Center

    Everyone’s impressed with the new notifications system on the iPhone, myself included, but this is another place where I’m left wondering why Apple didn’t borrow more from iOS in the design of OS X Lion.

    OS X has no native cross-app notification system, although the third-party system extension Growl does the job nicely. But I’d love to see Notification Center on the desktop, and I’d love to see it be able to tie into iMessage and your other accounts. Receiving a notice once and seeing it on whatever device you happen to be using at the moment would be ideal. Especially if a Mac Notification Center could also display content like missed calls from your iPhone, though that might require more cooperation from carriers than Apple can secure.

    Apple’s latest software updates are very impressive, and that’s why the above two items are really the only things I can think of that are lacking at the moment. But those last two pieces would make for a much more complete picture, so I’m still hoping to see them arrive somewhere down the road.

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