Friday, June 10, 2011

TheAppleBlog — Apple and iOS News, Tips and Reviews (9 сообщений)

TheAppleBlog    TheAppleBlog — Apple and iOS News, Tips and Reviews

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  • You wanted apps on your Apple TV? Apple delivers with AirPlay Mirroring.

    Since the second generation Apple TV was released back in September of last year, people have wondered if and when apps would arrive on the device. After all, it runs on iOS software, so the underpinnings of app support are already present. But Apple hasn’t opened up the Apple TV to third-party developers; or at least it hadn’t before it unveiled iOS 5 on Monday.

    iOS 5 doesn’t bring native support for apps on the Apple TV, but it does introduce AirPlay Mirroring for the iPad 2. Mirroring is a feature that was introduced alongside the iPad 2, and it allowed users to display exactly what was on their tablet on an external display, too, using the Digital AV Adapter Apple released that provides an HDMI connection for video and audio out. When it was announced, I said the mirroring ability was the iPad 2′s killer feature. That’s even more true now that Apple has promised to make the technology wireless.

    I’ve had a chance to go hands-on with AirPlay Mirroring, and it works as advertised. Once you select your Apple TV as an output source in the multitasking menu bar, everything you do on your iPad will be transmitted to your Apple TV-connected display. Even in this early beta form, it works remarkably well, with very little lag time and without any interruptions in the connection during my test. It does seem to be fairly taxing on the iPad’s battery, but by no means to such an extent that it affects the usefulness of the experience.

    It does require that users have both an iPad 2 and an Apple TV in order to work, however. The cost of the Digital AV Adapter from Apple’s retail store is $39, but the Apple TV is itself only $99. That’s still just shy of $100, and even basic wireless video transmitters that don’t provide any additional functionality start at around $80.

    Note also that while the home screen and most apps display in the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad 2′s screen (or in 3:4 when viewing in portrait orientation), full-screen video outputted to the AirPlay-connected TV automatically adjusts to fill the screen if it is formatted for widescreen. Developers can also specifically tell their apps to adjust to a widescreen aspect ratio, as Firemint has done with Real Racing 2 HD, which it has announced will support HD wireless output in iOS 5.

    iCloud may be hogging the tech press spotlight, but AirPlay is Apple’s big play in the living room, and one of the most significant and potentially disruptive new technologies the company has introduced in a long time. iOS 4.3 brought third-party developers access to AirPlay video streaming, a major step in attracting consumer attention to the tech. Now with AirPlay mirroring, Apple will completely change the way users and the market think about its Apple TV relaunch. With the help of Apple TV, the iPad 2, and future Apple mobile devices that support AirPlay Mirroring could become the Google TV that actually works for consumers, and one that users can easily take with them.

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  • Apple antes up in Lodsys developer lawsuits

    Apple has made its move in support of the seven small app developers sued by Lodsys over in-app purchases in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas on May 31, filing a motion to intervene in the proceedings on June 9 according to FOSSpatents’ Florian Mueller. If granted, Apple would be added to the Lodsys suit as a defendant and counterclaim plaintiff.

    Mueller believes that even though Lodsys may oppose Apple’s motion to intervene, the Mac maker is likely to be admitted as a defendant, in which case it has already submitted its answer to Lodsys’ complaint of infringement, and its counterclaim. Apple also cites a number of other precedent-setting similar cases where tech companies were allowed to intervene in patent disputes, which back up and strengthen its motion. If Apple joins as a defendant, Mueller thinks it’s very likely it will take on any legal costs incurred by its developer partners.

    Apple’s answer to the Lodsys complaint basically echoes what Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell said in a public letter from the company to Lodsys, claiming Apple is licensed to use the patents, and that the license “expressly permits Apple to offer and otherwise make available to its Developers products and services that embody the inventions contained in the patents in suit.” Apple’s argument rents on the doctrines of patent exhaustion and first sale, which would allow the products and services provided by Apple to developers to be used free of any patent infringement claims. As Mueller has noted before, it isn’t necessarily an airtight defense against the claims made by Lodsys, but Apple appears to be sticking with it, rather than trying to invalidate the four patents held by Lodsys, as analysts firm ForeSee Results Inc. is attempting.

    I talked to Mueller about why Apple is sticking so closely to this defense. He said, “Apple does a lot of inbound patent licensing,” and the Lodsys patents are actually part of a batch of “30,000 other patents from Intellectual Ventures” that it also licensed, and Apple also “regularly does license deals with many others.” It’s key that Apple win on these grounds, then, to avoid being made to pay twice for patents already licensed in other cases, too. In fact, as mocoNews points out, Apple states upfront that this case could have tremendous impact on its fortunes, when it says in its filing that “Apple's interest is direct, very real, and of extraordinary importance to the continued success of Apple's business.”

    When asked how far he thinks this might escalate, Mueller said that while “usually the most probably outcome would be a settlement,” in this case it’s “possible that Apple makes this a matter of principle, with a view to many other cases in which patents that Apple has licensed might be asserted against iOS developers.” Apple would then want to score a precedent-setting win against Lodsys, rather than just agree to pay a settlement to make it quietly go away, in which case others could come calling looking for double-dip license payouts.

    Since Lodsys clearly seems to have targeted small developers first in a district court that appears to decide quickly and historically favor patent holders with the aim of overwhelming the developers, it’s great to see Apple support those developers in a way that also offsets their financial burden. Mueller points out that one Android app is included in the current lawsuit, and Google has yet to act. “It’s important that Google make this a matter of principle and defend, alongside Apple, [...] and clarify what it will do if other Android app developers also get sued,” Mueller says.

    Any company that depends on the support of third-party developers and makes use of software development toolkits will want to watch this case closely, because the outcome could have a significant impact on development as a whole.

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  • WITH takes photo sharing off the beaten Path

    WITH screenshotThe makers of Path – the social network that was somewhat anti-social in that it limited your network to 50 of your closest friends — have released a new app that goes to the opposite end of the spectrum by allowing anyone with a Twitter handle to play. WITH (or w/ for short), now available for iPhone and iPod touch, is designed around the idea of sharing whom you’re with, whether they’re part of your personal network or not.

    Basically, WITH lets you tag another Twitter user (or users), and optionally take a photo of or with said user, then post it to both the WITH network and Twitter itself. You can also like the posts of other users, and use free and premium (available through in-app purchase) filters to add Instagram-style effects to the photos you include. The more you check in with specific people, the higher they rise in your profile. If you get close enough with friends through multiple check-ins, you can receive “special benefits,” according to Path. You can also follow and unfollow people on WITH, independent of whether or not you follow them on Twitter. There’s also a with.me web-based presence for the app, although at the moment it just points you to the App Store.

    WITH is more useful than Path, because it doesn’t have any arbitrary limit to the size of your network. But WITH is also far more dependent on Twitter than Path, or Instagram, which is probably closer in concept. That’s a strength because it lets you sign on quickly and easily (you do have to provide your email in addition to your Twitter credentials, so it isn’t quite one step), but it also means that in many ways, WITH feels like a cool user-created feature for Twitter, rather than an independent, standalone product. Twitter’s @ replies and hashtags started out from similar, albeit more organic, roots.

    WITH seems a little rough around the edges (figuring out how to post took a little while to figure out; it’s the person icon at the bottom in case you were wondering), but it seems like a more generally appealing product than Path. Plus, now that Apple has announced system-wide integration for Twitter in iOS 5, the fact that it relies on Twitter for its existence might not be such a bad thing, though Twitter itself is racking up a nasty reputation when it comes to playing nice with outside devs. We could see more apps like WITH betting heavy on Twitter now that it has the Cupertino seal of approval, however, so we’ll have to wait and see how the social network handles more attempts to exploit its services.

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  • Report: Convenience means iTunes users will pay for iTunes Match

    Though some iCloud functionality is already available to iTunes users (purchase history and Automatic Downloads, specifically), the paid iTunes Match service doesn’t launch until fall. But The NPD Group thinks there will be ample demand for such a service when it does arrive, according to details from an upcoming report it shared with us. But why are users so eager to sign up?

    Forty-six percent of iTunes users surveyed by The NPD Group for its upcoming “iTunes User Report” expressed interest in signing up for a paid cloud music service, were Apple to offer one. Of course, since Monday, we’ve learned Apple does intend to offer such a service, in the form of iTunes Match. iTunes Match will scan a user’s local iTunes library, and provide access to high quality AAC files of songs found for direct download to any device associated with their iTunes account. Scanned music doesn’t necessarily have to come from the iTunes Store, either, which is a cause for concern for some, and excitement for others.

    It’s easy to say that users are interested in iTunes Match because it seems like it could amount to a possible amnesty regarding pirated music, but the details of Apple’s scan-and-match service weren’t known when NPD posed its question. Instead, it seems more likely the motivation stems mainly from the convenience a subscription cloud music service provides, owing to the success of mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.

    NPD entertainment industry analyst thinks the survey is a good indication that Apple chose the right time to launch a fee-based service that provides cloud music access to iTunes users:

    It's notable that even before Apple's announcement this week, nearly half of iTunes users had some interest in a paid cloud-based music service. As device penetration continues to grow, and as consumers demand easier access to their music from multiple devices, we can expect interest in these services from Apple and others to continue to rise.

    That nearly half of iTunes users said they were willing to pay for cloud music access is very promising for Apple, considering how much of a shift it represents from the current way of doing things. It’s even better news for the company that younger iTunes customers appear even more amenable to the idea: 57 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 responded positively to the idea, indicating that there’s a good chance cloud music adoption will grow with time.

    The only hurdle might be that NPD’s analysis found that the ideal average price for paid iTunes cloud music service is $17 per year, which is a fair bit shy of the nearly $25 Apple is asking. Also, NPD’s question to iTunes users did include the word “streaming” in its definition of a cloud service. iCloud and iTunes Match don’t provide streaming per se, but they do provide access to your entire library from any device where you have internet access, another condition set by NPD, and, as Cult of Mac points out, streaming just isn’t that useful to most Americans because of bandwidth data caps.

    If Apple can sign up anywhere near half of the 160 million iTunes users it had at last official count, iTunes Match will be a considerable success. Are you planning on contributing to that success?

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  • The future of Mac is not for the faint of heart nor the spinning drive

    Apple teased the next installment of OS X, 10.7 Lion, once again at WWDC on Monday. This time around, we got a more concrete release window: users will be able to upgrade come July. But this upgrade might leave a lot of users cold, even as it paves the way for wider adoption of OS X down the road.

    Lion is a significant change for OS X, both from a development back-end perspective, and for end-users, too. In fact, it may represent the most significant update of any point release since the introduction of Mac OS 10.0. And as the saying goes, you can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.

    In this case, the eggs in question might be some technologies that users aren’t quite ready to let go. Lion is demanding, especially with all the visual flourishes, like transitional animations, enabled. Apple has already said that older Intel Macs (those that don’t use the Intel Core 2 Duo processor or higher, or that have less than 2 GB of RAM installed) won’t be able to come to the party, and even those that aren’t so old (two years or more) might not be able to handle the demands without some customizations or after-market upgrades. Users won’t be able to jump right from Leopard to Lion, either, as they’ll need to have Snow Leopard and the Mac App Store (which arrived with a later Snow Leopard update) installed in order to even run the Lion upgrade software, which will be available only through digital distribution.

    Don’t get me wrong, Lion should technically work for Macs that are just starting to show their age, so long as they meet the minimum requirements, but they probably won’t shine, and they won’t be as good at playing nice with the features that make Lion so desirable.

    Let me say it plainly: Lion seems very much designed for use with modern processors, lots of RAM, and, most importantly, computers with SSD storage, and the presence of each of these components definitely improves the experience. The whole point of feature additions like Resume, Auto Save and Versions is that the Mac become, like the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, a machine that can be turned on and off as desired, without undue waiting, loading or having to worry about traditional startup / shutdown procedures.

    It also obviously couldn’t care less about your Mac’s optical disc drive, turning that hardware feature from a must-have to a quaint convenience thanks to the Mac App Store. The reality of solid state, disc drive-less personal computing became more tangible with the arrival of the new MacBook Air. But it’s still not the dominant model, and Lion is clearly designed for a future where it is. Luckily, you can take a shortcut to the future by replacing your existing MacBook’s optical drive with an SSD, which should help greatly improve instant-on startup times when you upgrade to Lion.

    I’m glad Apple is taking a bold step forward with Lion, since hopefully it means big changes are in store for how we approach personal computing, even if it means some of my Macs won’t be able to come along for the ride. But if you’re planning to upgrade, keep in mind that more than any update since perhaps the introduction of Intel processors to Mac computers, Lion bring with it a significant adjustment period, for developers and uses alike.

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  • Zwapp builds a social network for app discovery

    Appsfire and others have helped tackle the issue of mobile app discovery by bringing new social and sharing tools to bear on the task. Now, Zwapp, a new startup, is trying to go one step further by building essentially a social network around app discovery.

    The app, which is iOS only right now, with plans for Android soon, is similar in some ways to Appsfire. Both detect what apps you have and let you share your apps and see what friends are downloading. But Zwapp is attempting to be even more social by building in a news feed that lets you see app activity in real time and allows people to comment and respond to the updates.

    App pages not only allow you to share the app with friends on social networks but users can comment on the app and like it right on the page. User pages show what apps someone else has that you might be missing and who they’re following and who’s following them.

    Zwapp also provides tools for discovering new and popular apps downloaded by friends as well as a look at top iTunes rankings for paid and free apps. In some ways, it’s trying to be a social interface to Apple’s App Store, said Alexander van Elsas, founder and CEO of Zwapp.

    “When people put their iPhones on the table, they look at what apps they have. Zwapp allows you to do that easily and it makes the App Store a lot smaller,” he said.

    Like Appsfire, Zwapp starts by detecting the apps on a user’s device. Zwapp does this by checking the processes on the phone to see what apps are running. It also identifies custom URL schemes for apps to recognize them, something Zwapp needs to do because Apple sandboxes, or isolates apps. The custom URLs are like a shortcut that allows apps to open other apps. Zwapp said it can detect about 25-50 percent of a user’s apps right away with more added over time.

    Van Elsas is trying to improve that auto-detection with a new website called 1 Million App Schemes, which will ask users to run an open-source tool for Macs that will scan a user’s iTunes library to locate custom URL schemes. The anonymous data will help Zwapp better identify apps but it will also be made available to developers as an open resource for inter-app communications.

    Improving auto-detection of apps will certainly be helpful for Zwapp, which must get noticed in a field of app discovery tools. And it will face stiff competition from Appsfire, Chomp, Appolicious and others who have a lot of experience identifying and recommending good apps to users. And they have a number of features that cover some of the same ground as Zwapp. But overall, I think Zwapp brings some good ideas to the table. It’s built from the ground up to be social and real-time. And it has a clean interface that easy to navigate.

    I’m not sure everyone has the time to invest in a separate network like Zwapp, but with app discovery becoming more complicated with the flood of apps, it’s good to have another option available.

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  • Reeder for Mac arrives, looks like the future of Mac apps

    Even with Twitter, Facebook and so many other social discovery tools popping up, I’m still a big fan of good old-fashioned RSS for my news and entertainment reading needs. That’s why I’m excited about the release of Reeder for Mac, which became available via the Mac App Store on Thursday.

    Reeder for Mac is the desktop version of the popular iOS application, and it lives up to the terrific example set by its predecessor in all regards. The interface is clean, simple and intuitive, and the program loads and works with a snappy quickness that makes scrolling through long lists of articles a pleasure. It uses your Google Reader account to populate its content, but you can also register new RSS feeds to follow directly from within Reeder, and manage and remove your existing subscriptions, too. Note that making changes to your subscriptions in Reeder even syncs back to your Google Reader account.

    Reeder also features built-in Readability support, which allows you to apply Readability’s distraction-free algorithm to any content from your feeds, and lets you set up full Readability synchronization if you have an account with that service. There’s also a built-in browser for viewing additional linked content in stories, and the app features lots of customization offers so picky users can fine-tune the experience to get it just right. There’s are two viewing modes, once of which is a compact view where all your browsing takes place in one pane, which can be very useful if you have limited screen space.

    If you want a look at the future of OS X Lion Mac apps and you don’t have access to the developer preview, Reeder is a great place to start. The interface is perfect for using full-screen on a Mac laptop, and the multitouch gestures really add to the experience without being overdone or feeling clumsy. It’s probably the iOS roots of Reeder that make it such a nice fit for the iOS-inspired Lion, but you can definitely expect more iOS developers to follow suit when 10.7 arrives in July.

    Like the iOS versions, Reeder for Mac isn’t free. It costs $9.99 in the Mac App Store, which, although more expensive than either of the iOS versions, is still a great price for what you get.

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  • iTunes Match and iCloud: Pirate reward or anti-theft measures?

    Apple’s new iCloud service comes with the ability to download your iTunes music purchases to any Mac, PC or iOS device associated with your account, and iTunes Match will extend that courtesy to your entire music library, regardless of where it comes from, when it arrives in the fall. Some claim the iTunes Match service amounts to a reward for music pirates, since it provides users with access to high-quality 256 Kbps tracks regardless of the source or quality of their originals. Others think that far from rewarding pirates, iCloud access to iTunes music provides a compelling legal alternative that should act as a piracy deterrent. So what’s the deal?

    Speaking at the World Copyright Summit in Brussels this week, Victoria Espinel, the coordinator of U.S. intellectual property enforcement, said cloud music offerings like that unveiled by Apple on Monday “may have the effort of reducing piracy by giving value to consumers — the ability to own forever and access almost anywhere — that cannot be obtained with legal copies.” Espinel suggested that “the flexibility of the cloud may help spur the development of compelling legal alternatives.”

    But wait, isn’t iTunes Match just “complete pirate amnesty?” After all, Apple didn’t specify any limitations on the ability of iTunes Match to scan and match ripped tracks and mirror them with 256 Kbps AAC tracks from its own iTunes library. In theory, those ripped tracks could’ve easily been ripped by someone else and shared via torrent or other less-than-legal solution. Also, the replacement tracks that Apple provides will be DRM-free, unlike those it gives current legitimate iTunes music purchasers using iCloud’s purchase history feature.

    If iTunes Match does indeed process pirated music without issue, there’s no question that legitimate iTunes shoppers are the ones that end up looking dumb. Let’s say you download 50 albums from illegitimate sources, like torrent sites. With the $25.95 iTunes Match annual fee, you can download high-quality legitimate copies for about $0.50 per album. Compare that to probably around $9.99 per album when purchased legally through the iTunes Store, plus the $25 iTunes Match fee if you want that service.

    Framed like that, it’s very hard to mount a convincing argument that iTunes Match doesn’t reward piracy. But it doesn’t only reward piracy. It also monetizes it.

    Imagine a scenario where Apple hadn’t introduced support for content from sources beyond the App Store in iTunes Match. Would such a restriction discourage pirates? Hardly. Music piracy has been on the rise basically ever since it became possible, and shows no signs of abating. iTunes Match wasn’t likely to inspire music pirates to turn over a new leaf, no matter what.

    What it does do, however, is allow record companies to recoup some of the losses associated with piracy, by effectively charging for music that was already stolen. In the example above, we saw how 50 albums works out to just $0.50 per year with iTunes Match if the music is pirated, but that’s still a massive increase when compared to the big goose egg.

    Of course, iTunes Match amnesty could also actively encourage piracy, because of the obvious value proposition referred to above, and lead to an even steeper rise in the rate at which digital music is being stolen. But just like Apple may ultimately have sacrificed the Mac in order to score a victory in the larger future of cloud computing, it also might be willing to hasten the demise of traditional digital music sales (which seems inevitable anyway) in order to move to a more future-proof, subscription-based model. To use an old maxim, Apple may have cut off the limb to save the body with iTunes Match.

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  • Apple eases up on in-app subscriptions and purchases

    Back in February, Apple announced its in-app subscription API, which allowed developers to offer content subscriptions within their apps. At the time, the company also amended its App Store Review Guidelines in such a way that any publisher that offered a subscription or content purchase (such as an e-book) outside of an app had no choice but to adopt the system, or face expulsion from the App Store come June 30. But now the latest version of the review guidelines contain an amendment that indicates Apple has decided to abandon that hard-line approach.

    Under section 11 of the App Store Review Guidelines, we’ve confirmed that there’s a new section (hat tip to MacRumors) that allows apps to access and provide content subscribed to or purchased outside of the App Store, with one caveat:

    11.14 Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app.

    Apple still says apps that link to outside stores, subscriptions or purchasing methods will be rejected, but it’s no longer requiring that publishers offer subscriptions or purchases in-app if they also do so in another venue (like the Amazon Kindle store, for example).

    Apple has been steadily winning magazine and newspaper publishers over to its in-app subscription method. But it’s unclear if any of the decisions made by publishers were influenced by the fact that before today, Apple seemed ready to turf them out of the App Store entirely come June 30. Still, magazines seem to be doing well using in-app subscriptions, so Apple may have accomplished what it needed to on that front by demonstrating the value of its subscription system.

    Some users had feared that Apple’s ultimatum on this issue would result in the loss of key apps from the App Store, including Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, and could possibly affect relationships with other great content providers like Netflix and Hulu. Thanks to these revised guidelines, it looks like those apps will remain available to iOS users relatively unchanged, though Amazon will have to do something about the link to their web store that they provide in the current Kindle app.

    Whatever the reason, I’m glad Apple backed down on this one. It’s probably better off making the App Store such an attractive vector for in-app sales that content providers opt to use it, rather than trying to force the issue and hurting users in the process.

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