Friday, July 8, 2011

TheAppleBlog — Apple and iOS News, Tips and Reviews (12 сообщений)

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  • iOS 101: Using your iPad for on-the-go entertainment

    It’s travel season. Maybe you’ve got a cross-atlantic flight planned, a long drive ahead and need to keep the kids occupied, or your secluded getaway has a TV made during the Kennedy administration, or, you just have a long train ride to work every day. I’m going to show you different ways you can get all sorts of entertainment on your iPad.

    Video

    iTunes. The easiest way to get video content onto your iPad is to simply buy or rent it from the iTunes Store. You can initiate the transaction on either your computer or your iPad. Keep in mind if you copy a rental to your iPad, it won’t be available for watch on your computer, and if you rent a video on your iPad, it cannot be copied to the Mac. This FAQ from Apple has more information on rentals. To copy videos to your iPad, select your iPad in the sidebar in iTunes, choose the Movies (or TV Shows) tab, and choose what videos you want copied. To watch them, simply launch the Videos app on your iPad. This method of transfer is also how you’ll copy movies you convert in this next step.

    Handbrake. Handbrake is a great video converter. It can convert most encrypted DVDs and any movie you may have that’s not in the .m4v file format. Choose the Universal preset on the right, press Start and let ‘er, um, rip.

    Reading

    Instapaper. This is one of my top five iOS apps. Instapaper is a way to save web pages to be read later, and presents them to you in a nice, easy to read layout. You can install a bookmarklet on your favorite browser to save pages for later reading, and many Mac and iOS apps will send your links to Instapaper — if the app supports it, it will have a Read Later option. Before you head out, just open the Instapaper app to download the content and you can read it even without an Internet connection.

    Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook. Both of these proprietary e-book readers are good for one thing: reading books bought via their online stores (naturally, they can’t read content from each other’s stores). To download a book go to the retailer’s web site, purchase the book and when you open the app on your iPad, the book will automatically download. If you have one of their hardware e-readers, you can download previously-purchased books with the app as well. As an aside, if you have a non-DRM .mobi e-book, you can side load it into the Amazon app via iTunes.

    iBooks. I’m separating iBooks from the other book reader because it’s the only one that can take the popular epub format (without DRM) and PDF files directly. This has made iBooks my preferred e-reader. If you have an e-book in another file format, you can use Calibre to convert it to epub. Once you have an epub or a PDF file, just drag the file into iTunes and sync it to your iPad. One other nice feature in iBooks is the ability to sort your files into collections.

    Zinio. While individual magazines like Wired have their own apps, Zinio is my go-to magazine reader for the simple fact that most magazines I read are available via this service. Unfortunately, Apple’s influence spreads to this app. Apple pressured Zino to not allow certain magazines to be copied to iOS devices. Which is a shame, because those magazines have some fantastic articles I’m sure I’m missing out on. Even so, there are lots of good content to be found there.

    Games for the whole family

    While Angry Birds is fun and all, I’m going to list some games you can play with your family, too. Or, could play, if someone would give me my iPad back and put down “the Angry Birds machine” for a few minutes. The games can all be played on a single iPad via pass-and-play mode. While there a ton of multiplayer games available for iOS, I’m just going to mention a few here. Any slights are unintentional, it just means the I didn’t have enough space to mention it.

    T Chess Pro. This is the app my girlfriend uses to beat me at chess. T Chess Pro lets you either pass-or-play or use Game Center. During a fairly frustrating process getting some of the free multiplayer chess apps to work for multiplayer, we decided on this one. Setting games up via Game Center is very easy, and the graphics are great. As a bonus, it also has an analysis mode to help you improve your game.

    Scrabble. This is one of my favorite iPad apps. One of the great features it has is if everyone playing the game has an iPod Touch or an iPhone, you can download the free Scrabble Tile Rack app. This lets each player keep his or her tiles on their device, and you can leave the iPad in the center of the table. Scrabble also lets you Pass-N-Play as well as connect via Facebook. No Game Center support, sadly.

    These are my choices for basic approaches to getting entertainment on your iPad. There are no shortage of options, so get out there and find your own, too.

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  • How to get the most out of Google+ on your Mac and iOS devices

    Google+ is already popular, and it isn’t yet showing any signs of slowing down. If you’re already in, or if you’re eagerly awaiting an invite, there are a few ways you can improve the experience when accessing Google’s new social network from Mac and iOS devices.

    Mac

    Create a Google+ Mac app with Fluid. Earlier this week I talked about the newest version of Fluid, which lets you create full-screen web apps for Lion using specific websites. Even if you don’t have Lion, Fluid is a great way to create a Google+ application that looks and feels more like a native Mac app than a website. You can even grab a nice Google+ icon to use with your Fluid app, like this one from deviantart user KillaAaron.

    Better interaction with bookmarklets and extensions. You can change how Google+ looks and how it behaves with custom extensions for Chrome and other browsers. Go2Web20 has a great list of some of the best tools out there. One of the best is a +1 extension that lets you save any web page you come across to your +1 list in Google+, but that specific link on the Go2Web20 site is currently broken, so check out this similar option from the Chrome web store instead. If you’re not using Chrome, you can grab this bookmarklet for +1 recommendations that should work with most other browsers.

    Import your iPhoto albums with Picasa for Mac. You’ve got a lot of iPhoto events, and now you want to share those photos on Google+, which actually has a great photo viewer. Apple has built Facebook support into iPhoto, but obviously there’s no direct method for getting that content to Google+. But with Picasa’s free native Mac app, you can import your iPhoto content and share it to your Picasa Web Albums right from your desktop. Depending on your sharing choices, the pictures will be visible in your Google+ galleries.

    iOS

    Use third-party Picasa apps to upload your photos. There’s no instant upload for iPhones and iPads as there is for Android devices. But you can get your photos from your mobile to your Google+ account without having to upload to a computer first. Just choose one of the available iOS Picasa photo uploading tools, like Web Albums, and then upload the pic you want to share to a public gallery on Picasa. Once you’ve done that, navigate to the photo in the Google+ mobile browser app and comment on the photo to share it to your stream.

    Bookmarklets for sharing. For sharing sites and saving content to your +1 list, bookmarklets that work with mobile Safari are your best bet. The one I mentioned above should work for your iOS devices, too.

    Share from desktop to mobile. You can use Google+ as a handy way to quickly share links between your desktop and mobile devices, by adding an email address that you have registered on your smartphone to one of your sharing circles on Google+. So, for instance, you could create an iPhone reading list and re-share interesting links in your Google stream to a specific circle called “for iPhone” that just contains your own email address, or you could set up a circle with the email addresses of your coworkers or project team for easy forwarding of interesting links and notes.

    Google+ will likely improve as it iterates, and it will offer even more avantages for Mac and iOS users, especially when (and if) Apple approves the official Google+ iOS application. But even at this early stage, I’ve found that it enriches my computing experience on any Apple platform. Any advice you can add based on your own use of Google+?

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  • Mobile app distribution evolves in the wake of Apple's incentivized install ban

    Apple’s ban on incentivized installs of mobile apps, once a growing model for app distribution, has killed off one tool for iOS app marketing, but the need to get apps noticed and distributed hasn’t gone away. In fact, with the App Store closing in on half a million apps, it’s only become more imperative.

    That reality is pushing app distribution and monetization companies to continue to evolve around Apple’s ban. W3i, once a leader in incentivized installs, has come up with a new alternative app discovery service that it hopes will aid game developers to push downloads while staying within Apple’s rules. The new product, called Mobile App Ad Network, allows game developers to offer their apps for free for a 24-hour period in customizable banner ads that appear in other gaming apps. The new “free app of the day” ads are going into beta today.

    Advertisers and publishers have a number of options as to when and where they run the ad so that it is most effective. Instead of just a persistent banner, an advertiser can have the offer run when the app is launched, when the user hits a milestone or in exchange for an achievement. This targeted use of the ad means it works more within the flow of an app and is less intrusive. And because it only advertises free games for one day in other games, it is more likely to be downloaded because it is more relevant to the target audience. W3i said this model can boost conversions to 48 percent, though we will have to see if that bears out over time.

    W3i believes the new ad product won’t run afoul of Apple’s ban on incentivized installs because it is basically a banner ad for an app that is on sale. Incentivized installs, which allowed a user to download an app in exchange for virtual currency or goods, was targeted by Apple for apparently gaming the App Store rankings, boosting apps that paid for those ad campaigns.

    “It's difficult to predict Apple’s behavior but they have no problem with recommending apps and they have no issues with publishers putting their apps up for sale,” said W3i product manager Melissa Johnson.

    Johnson said that incentivized installs also enticed people to download unrelated apps they may not have been interested in to gain virtual goods. By offering games that may have appealed to a gamer, they increased the chances that the user would continue to engage with the app, making the investment more worthwhile for advertisers.

    W3i’s product illustrates how the mobile app distribution market is shifting in response to Apple. Tapjoy, another leader in incentivized installs, said it has had to move away from pay-per-install campaigns on iOS, and it now targets other platforms and runs more cost-per-action ads, which allow users to gain currency in exchange for watching a video. It is also doing more-traditional banner ads for apps, Tapjoy’s CEO Mihir Shah recently told me.

    This new campaign by W3i shows that mobile advertising is also becoming more contextual, something I’ve noted with products like Kiip and Tap Me, which use very targeted moments in apps to offer up real rewards or sponsored in-game power-ups. There is more creativity happening now in mobile advertising, some of it by necessity in the case of W3i. With a booming market for mobile apps, the marketing of those apps is a big opportunity that can’t be ignored, and marketing will always find a way.

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  • Why OS X Lion is the biggest test for digital downloads

    Sometime next week, most likely July 14, we could see the anticipated arrival of Mac OS X Lion, according to multiple reports. But this is no ordinary major software launch. The twist is that Lion will be distributed digitally, the first version of OS X ever for which that is true. Not only that; it will only be available as a download from the Mac App Store, and that’s why this is the launch everyone will be watching with bated breath.

    Ready to ditch discs?

    Apple is putting a lot of faith in the fact that its customers are ready to leave physical install media behind, and instead wholly embrace a digital distribution model. That’s the whole idea behind the Mac App Store, of course, and it has worked out very well for mobile software with the original App Store for iOS devices. But will Mac users be willing to take it to the next level, and welcome digital delivery even for that most essential software component, the core desktop operating system?

    Our recent poll on the subject indicates that many will be upgrading, and that most will do so as soon as the 10.7 update becomes available. Only a tiny 3.4 percent of all those surveyed didn’t plan on upgrading at all. Those results favor Apple’s decision pretty highly, but they also probably aren’t a terribly accurate representation of the population at large, since our readership here at GigaOM tends to lean toward the early adopter end of the spectrum.

    The old barriers, and some new ones

    Typically, new operating systems are greeted cautiously by consumers. For example, take a look at the chart below, taken from a Net Applications report on OS market share in May. It shows the trajectory of Apple’s last few major OS updates, and you can see that adoption of each tends to start relatively slow and grow steadily over their lifetime. People can be hesitant about major OS changes, since it’s the software they depend on most heavily, and unfamiliarities necessitate an adjustment period some would rather not deal with. But Apple may be setting itself up for a lower than normal initial pool of upgraders, because Lion is digital-only, and because it requires 10.6.8, the most recent update, to be installed.

    Because OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is already so well represented among OS X users, it’s good for Lion’s prospects. Installing Lion requires the Mac App Store, which is only available for Macs using Snow Leopard, but a good number of Macs should fall into the category of those technically able to upgrade.

    We’ve also talked about the risk Apple is taking with regard to customers who may have poor Internet connections, or severely restricted bandwidth allowances for their home connections. Some reports suggest Apple might get around that for some notebook users by offering Apple Store wireless as a means to download the update, but that’s not a practical solution for everyone.

    Digital supply and demand

    Apple has also had hiccups with major digital software launches in the past. Download speeds have been slow for past iPhone OS (now known as iOS) launches, and in some cases demand brought Apple servers down for extended periods. Apple now has a new data center facility which should help alleviate the strain, but at around 4 GB per copy, Lion stands a chance of causing a strain on the Mac App Store servers as early adopters rush to grab it.

    The Lion launch, whether it comes next week as rumored or later on, could represent a major turning point in how we approach software distribution. But there’s also a small chance that it could turn out to be a moment when consumers say “we’re not ready for this just yet,” sort of like what pro users have been saying about Final Cut Pro X. Which way do you think the wind will blow?

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  • How to prepare your Mac for OS X Lion

    With the next major release of Mac OS X, 10.7 Lion, on the way, it’s a good idea to start preparing your Mac for the transition soon. Here are some steps to make sure your Mac is ready for Lion.

    Step 1: Get up-to-date

    Make sure everything on your Mac is up-to-date before upgrading to Lion. First of all, make sure you’re running the latest version of OS X, which is Snow Leopard 10.6.8, using Software Update. Software Update will not only check for updates to OS X, but also firmware updates or new versions of Apple applications such as iTunes or iLife. You can find Software Update under the Apple logo in the menu bar. You should also check that your applications are all up to date, but for that you’ll need to check in the apps themselves, since Software Update only works for Apple products.

    Also note that you can only install Lion if you have Snow Leopard installed; you can’t go straight from Leopard to Lion.

    Step 2: Backup

    You’re about to replace the entire operating system on your computer with a new one, so it’s a good idea to make a backup, just in case something goes wrong. The best thing to do is to create an exact copy of your Mac’s hard drive using a tool such as SuperDuper!. SuperDuper! can either perform a regular backup, or create a bootable clone of your hard drive, meaning that if something does go screwy, you can boot from the external drive you made the backup on. From there, you’d be able to try to sort out the problems with the Lion install.

    If you don’t want to, or can’t, make a full copy of the entire hard drive, then backup your most important files and folders. Your Home folder is a good place to start, since it probably contains a lot of files that are irreplaceable, like photos and home movies. The Home folder is the folder named with your username, and is found in /Users on your hard drive, or under Desktop in the Places menu in your Finder sidebar.

    You can either use Time Machine or SuperDuper! to do this backup, or simply just drag and drop a copy of the folder onto another hard drive. You might want to look around in the Finder to check for other important folders which aren’t in the Home folder, as well.

    Step 3: Remove incompatible apps

    Lion is going to be the first version of OS X which doesn't support PowerPC applications. That means any application without an Intel-specific version won’t work on Lion, and is best uninstalled.

    In order to find which of your applications are PowerPC only, you can use System Profiler. Hold down the Option key, then click the Apple menu. The top item in the list should be System Profiler. Click that, and System Profiler will open. In the sidebar, find Applications under the Software heading. After a few seconds, a list of every application installed on your Mac will appear on the right. Now go through the list and for each application, look at the Kind in the bottom pane. Applications which say either Intel or Universal are fine; they’ll work on Lion. You’re looking for anything which says PowerPC.

    If you find any PowerPC applications, you’ll want to uninstall them before you install Lion. You can also check your other apps as well to make sure they will work with Lion; some applications are bound to have issues, even if they aren’t PowerPC applications. A great way to check is using RoaringApps, a website which is gathering data about which apps are compatible with OS X 10.7.

    Step 4: Make space on your hard drive

    A typical install of OS X usually takes somewhere between 6 GB and 10 GB of hard drive space. You’ll need to make sure you have at least that amount, and preferably more, free on your hard drive in order to install Lion. To quickly check how much space is available on your drive, open a Finder window to any folder on the drive. The amount of free space available will be shown a the bottom of the window.

    If you find that you don’t have enough space left, you can use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper to find the biggest files and folders on your hard drive. Once it’s been through your hard drive, you’ll see a list of everything, sorted by size. Anything that has a large file size and you no longer need, delete in order to make room for Lion. Remember, the more space you have available when it comes to upgrading, the better.

    Step 5: Install Lion

    Once you’re sure that everything is as ready as it possibly could be, your Mac is now prepared for the upgrade to Lion, which should arrive sometime within the next couple of weeks. Are there any vital extra steps I missed? Shout out in the comments.

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  • Hands on with Amazon Cloud Player for iPad

    When Amazon began offering MP3 song downloads without digital rights management (DRM) back in late 2007, I quickly jumped on the bandwagon. Even as an iPhone owner at the time, I ceased buying my music from iTunes, which later dropped DRM. Amazon continued to lead the way in mobile music this year by introducing its Cloud Player software for Android devices and integrating its music store with the online storage service. Amazon’s Cloud Player website can stream stored music as well, but until now, it hasn’t worked well on Apple’s iPad.

    Amazon changed that yesterday with the introduction of Cloud Player support for the iPad browser. While you’d think the website might work for other iOS devices, too, it really doesn’t based on trying it on my iPod touch. Using the iPad, however, brings a solid, but basic, music streaming experience. Hitting the http://www.amazon.com/cloudplayer link on my iPad brings up a clean two-paned interface: categorized music and playlists on the left, and track details on the right. Both of these areas are scrollable, so you can view long lists of albums, tracks or playlists. The web-based app works in either portrait or landscape mode.

    Click to view slideshow.

    Simple controls run along the bottom of the web page. You can play, pause, or skip/rewind tracks with touch buttons or enable random and repeat playback. The currently playing song appears, along with a progress meter for scrubbing or skipping around the song. Unlike a native music application however, you scrub through the song by dragging the progress button. Instead, you have to tap on the meter to jump to a specific point in the song.

    Creating a new playlist is simple, as is adding songs or whole albums to an existing playlist. There’s also a link at the top right to buy the MP3 album from Amazon, but that seems silly to me: If you already own the song or album and have it stored on Amazon’s servers, why would you need a link to the album in Amazon’s MP store? The only benefit I can see is for people looking to see additional artist or album information, although this could be handy for those that own just a few tracks and want to complete an album.

    For all intents and purposes, outside of the track scrubbing, the Amazon Cloud Player site on iPad simulates a basic music application reasonably well. The music quality sounds no different from when I stream my tunes on a desktop browser, and thanks to iOS multitasking, I can use other apps on my iPad while streaming music over the web. I have noticed that the service runs best if it retains the focus, however. When using another app, the music tends to stop after a song or two. A quick return to the web page nudges the stream to start up right away: something I hope is addressed in the future.

    In contrast to the service in a desktop browser or the native Amazon MP3 app for Android, there’s no function to either upload music or download music for local storage in the iPad web version. I’ll stick to using iTunes for that as needed, but for now, I’m happy to enjoy my Amazon stored music on the iPad. And although in 2007, I felt very “locked in” to Apple’s hardware when it came to music and media, thanks to Amazon, I feel I have some real options today.

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  • Freemium titles generate two-thirds of App Store gaming revenues

    The rise of freemium or free-to-play apps has been dramatic over the last year, becoming the dominant revenue model for the top gaming titles in Apple’s App Store. Mobile analytics and advertising company Flurry said in June, free-to-play games, which monetize through in-app purchases, now account for 65 percent of revenue among the top 100 games in the App Store, while paid downloads account for 35 percent of revenue.

    That’s a big reversal from January, when paid download revenue brought in 61 percent of revenue for the top 100 games. But it shows how developers have embraced the freemium model, and at least for the top publishers, they’re finding it more lucrative than charging for downloads. As I wrote about last October, one-third of the top 100 grossing apps were freemium, and by the end of 2010, Distimo reported 49 percent of the revenue on iPhone apps came from in-app purchases in both free and paid apps.

    Mobile games are following in the footsteps of social games, becoming games as a service that continues to be updated over time. The free-to-play model ensures a lot of users can try out a game for free, greatly expanding the number of potential users. But it comes down to extracting money from just a small fraction of them, selling them on virtual items, currency and goods that enhance the game play.

    Flurry said only 0.5  to 6 percent of gamers actually spend money in free games, depending on the quality of the game and its mechanics. That’s a small percentage, but it works for game developers who can build engaging titles that keep people coming back.

    That’s been the secret to companies like Pocket Gems and Playforge, which I’ve written about before. They focus on holding on to users for long periods of time through updates and features, which can pay off as they get users to eventually open up their wallets. As I noted earlier, the industry needs to value engagement more rather than pursue pure download numbers, because developers can’t monetize users who abandon a game after a couple of weeks.

    This isn’t to say free-to-play is the only way to make money. Paid downloads are still an important revenue source and won’t go away. I, for one, still like to pay for quality titles. And mobile advertising, while still just emerging, can also bring in dollars for big titles. But the money in the mobile gaming market is clearly tilting toward freemium. Gartner estimates mobile gaming will be the fastest-growing gaming segment, accounting for 20 percent of the expected $112 billion in overall gaming revenue by 2015, fueled in part by the shift to free-to-play games.

    Developers need to figure out if this makes sense for their apps and how they can implement it well, because it’s not enough to just adopt this model. A lot of tinkering and tuning is necessary to make it really pay off. But when you get it right, it seems the dollars are increasingly there.

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  • Report: Verizon already accounts for nearly one-third of U.S. iPhone 4s

    Verizon’s early success with the iPhone 4 could very well be something to write home about, according to recent findings shared with us by app analytics firm Localytics. The company discovered that of all traffic through its clients’ applications on iPhone 4 devices in July, 32 percent came from Verizon. Verizon also reportedly got off to a very good start with a nearly 20-percent share in the first week.

    Localytics is represented on around 70 million iPhone handsets worldwide, with clients like News Corp., Skype and Turner (which makes titles like Robot Unicorn Attack and Adult Swim, among others), so it’s drawing from a fairly large pool to come up with these numbers. It seems surprising that Verizon should have such a big slice of the iPhone 4 pie, since AT&T had an eight-month head start on Verizon with the device.

    But perhaps it was to be expected, since so many were so dissatisfied with AT&T’s service for so long. And, since Apple waited before releasing a new iPhone, many more iPhone owners would’ve seen their contracts expire than is usual during Apple’s upgrade cycle. Freed of commitment and without any new hardware in the immediate future, many might have seen an iPhone 4 on Verizon as a good opportunity to jump ship. If Verizon can attract switchers even with a significant timing disadvantage, we can expect it to fare even better should the iPhone 5 comes out on both networks at the same time, which will happen according to Verizon’s own CFO.

    Another possibility is that customers are rushing to secure Verizon iPhones in an effort to lock in grandfathered unlimited data plans. Localytics notes that Verizon’s iPhone 4 share has jumped quite a bit in June and July, up 2.8 and 3.6 percentage points vs. the previous month, respectively. Verizon was first reported to be planning to end unlimited data soon back in March, though the company had discussed the possibility even last year. The end of unlimited plans was confirmed in June. The new usage-based pricing model for smartphone data took effect Thursday, July 7.

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  • iPhone SLR mount is kind of expensive, kind of awesome

    Is it wrong that I want this new iPhone 4 SLR mount from Photojojo so badly? The new accessory provides a simple case/adapter combo that allows you to use either Canon or Nikon lenses with your iPhone 4. It’s a bit pricey at nearly $200, but also potentially a very cool add-on for consumers looking to up their mobile photography game.

    The aluminum case itself features a tripod mount and hooks for a pro camera strap, so you can wear it around your neck and take night shots like a true pro. Just think of how jealous your Instagram followers will be when you snap some quality wildlife pics with your $3,000 telephoto lens. You might doubt the ability of the iPhone 4′s 5-megapixel camera to deliver the goods, even with your expensive SLR lens collection attached, but the Photojojo demo pics are actually pretty impressive.

    As with previous prototypes, this solution runs up against the fact that you can’t replicate an internal mirror system with the iPhone’s built-in camera. However, it should be better than just your iPhone 4 acting on its own, especially when you’re trying to use digital zoom to capture a far-away subject. You could probably also shoot some pretty cool HD video with this lens adapter.

    As of this writing, the check-out process is down but a fix is in the works, according to a Photojojo.com service rep. Maybe it couldn’t keep up with overwhelming demand for the iPhone 4 SLR mount. Anyone thinking about a purchase? I have a bag full of seldom used Canon-mount lenses that suggest it might be worth considering.

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  • Apple working on a fix for potential iOS security threat

    Apple is already working on a fix for a security flaw reported by the German Federal Office for Information Security Wednesday. The Mac maker said in a statement that it “takes security very seriously,” and is “aware of this issue and developing a fix that will be available to customers in an upcoming software update.”

    There isn’t a specific timeline for when the update will be released, but when it does arrive, it’ll also shut down the ability to jailbreak iOS devices using the most recent JailbreakMe browser-based method. The jailbreak takes advantage of the same exploit which poses a potential security threat and involves the way in which Safari and Mail manage PDF file downloads.

    Apple will likely be quick with an update, considering the nature of the German IT agency’s warning. The organization called the flaw a “critical weakness,” and one which is “sufficient to infect the mobile device with malware without the user’s knowledge.” It affects users running iOS 4.3.3, and possibly older versions as well, according to the German agency.

    While users await a software update to patch the hole, the best way to avoid any potential security threats is to avoid downloading PDF files from any untrusted sources, either via email or mobile Safari. As mobile web access becomes more popular, it’s generally a good idea for users to practice the same kind of safe browsing that helps avoid malicious attacks on desktop computers as well, part of which means not downloading content when its origin is at all suspect or hazy.

    A similar flaw was discovered in August 2010 that also allowed for web-based jailbreak, and also caught the attention of the German government. Apple took about a week to issue an iOS update to patch the problem at that time, so it’s reasonable to expect a similar timeline for release with a 4.3.4 update.

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  • 15B downloads for Apple's App Store

    Apple passed the 15 billion download milestone for the App Store on Thursday, reaching the lofty mark only seven months after it exceeded 10 billion downloads. For some sense of how much recent growth has ramped up, consider that the App Store took two years to reach its first five billion.

    As TechCrunch notes, the App Store has seen about a billion downloads in just the last month alone, which indicates that the continued sales success of iOS devices, including iPhones, iPads and iPod touches, is driving the App Store economy to new heights. Apple’s growing mobile software library, which includes 425,000 iPhone apps and more than 100,000 iPad apps according to Apple’s official count, is also likely helping drive customer downloads. For their efforts, iOS application developers have been on the receiving end of more than $2.5 billion in revenue.

    As for Apple’s competition, the closest anyone has come is the Android Market. Google’s mobile software storefront just recently reached the 4.5 billion total download mark. Google’s Ian Carrington, director of mobile advertising sales for northern and central Europe, told a press briefing that it reached the 4.5 billion mark in a three-year span, and that it added the most recent billion in a 60-day period. Apple’s App Store downloads are then growing at twice the rate as Android downloads, according to official number from both companies.

    Apple may have experienced a setback in its efforts to defend its App Store trade mark, but it’s clear that the mobile software marketplace is still one of the company’s biggest strengths in the competition for smartphone customers. If app lock-in, library breadth and quality factor into people’s buying decisions, this 15 billion milestone is a crucial indicator of Apple’s ability to continue to outperform the competition in the cut-throat mobile market.

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  • What iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 could have

    Apple’s next iPhone will be thinner and lighter, with an 8 megapixel camera, according to a report on Thursday by the Wall Street Journal. The article bears many of the hallmarks of an intentional Apple leak, and it is the surest sign yet that we’ll see new iPhone hardware in September. Plus, the information it relates resonates with what we’ve been hearing from other sources in recent weeks.

    The report, co-authored by Lorraine Luk and Yukari Iwatani Kane (co-authorship is often used in orchestrated leaks to defray responsibility, should the company’s plans change from what has been reported), says that Apple has placed orders for important components ahead of a launch in late September. People familiar with the matter told the WSJ that the new iPhone should be fairly similar to the iPhone 4, only with a smaller, thinner design and an 8 megapixel camera. This confirms what we’ve heard from other sources, like France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard back in May.

    The WSJ also claims that the new iPhone will have Qualcomm wireless chips, which is again something we’ve heard before. Qualcomm chips are currently used for Verizon iPhones, but the GSM model iPhone 4 uses an Infineon chip instead.

    The company’s fifth iPhone model was supposed to arrive in the summer, as per the usual upgrade cycle, the report asserts, but it wasn’t yet ready for mass production. That’s due partially to assembly issues that manufacturer Hon Hai had with the new design, according to “two people familiar with the situation.” These new claims echo what the WSJ reported yesterday about Apple’s manufacturing plans for its next-generation handset.

    Beyond the iPhone arriving in the fall, buyers can expect bigger changes in store for 2012′s iPhone release, the WSJ says. A “major iPhone revamp” is planned for next year, the report says, including new methods for charging, which Electricpig suggests might mean inductive charging. Also in keeping with what we’ve heard before (even from Apple itself), the WSJ reports that Apple is working on a cheaper phone, one that boasts an edge-to-edge display. No word on when such a device might be expected.

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Блог о мелкой бытовой технике для кухни

Техника — дело не женское. А что если она создана для нас и призвана помогать нам, а мы в ней все равно ничего не смыслим? Выход есть! В этом блоге я буду публиковать статьи, которые помогут дамам чувствовать себя увереннее на собственной кухне.
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