Perhaps the best improvement for me is the “better editing, copying, pasting and more”, which translates to faster editing and improved preservation of styles. I’ve been plagued with some weird lag issues when editing large notes, particularly when copying and pasting, so this is much appreciated on my part.

Also new is “predictive note titles” which means Evernote now uses contextual information to create a more appropriate title if you leave the field blank – so no more “Untitled Notes”. Instead it will look at calendar events, location, note contents and other info to create a contextual title that is far more useful and informative. Similarly handy is the new, easier method of sharing a notebook on the iOS app. Now you just need to go to the notebook list, tap on the desired notebook and you’ll see a share icon in the top right corner of the screen.

Notebook Stacks, which work well on the desktop are now better represented on the iPhone. They have existed but were hard to enable, now, viewing notebooks will use the Notebook Stacks view as default. Finally this update also includes the standard bunch of bug fixes and also improved stability – including faster and more reliable synchronisation. Now, if only we could get a new design for the iPad app…

For more information the Evernote Blog covers all these new features and improvements to the app in a little more detail.

- iMac EFI Update 1.8

This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on iMac (Mid 2010) models.

- MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.3

This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on MacBook Air (Late 2010) models and addresses an issue where the system could restart if the power button is pressed immediately after waking from deep sleep.

- MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.6

This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on MacBook Pro (Early 2010) models.

Lion Internet Recovery was first released last summer alongside OS X 10.7, allowing users to re-download the OS directly from Apple’s servers without the Mac App Store. The feature was initially only available on Mac models refreshed during the summer, but eventually found its way to older models through software updates.

HoverBar can be used with an iPad 2, iMac, or an Apple external display, and Twelve South says it can also be installed independently as, for instance, a kitchen mount. Obviously, the silicone lined clamp of HoverBar will work best when directly attached to an iMac, as it seems like Twelve South really wanted to place this product as a desktop Mac companion to achieve an iOS/OS X workstation worth of Apple’s design polish.

HoverBar turns iPad into the ultimate sidecar for an iMac or Apple display, presenting more ways to use iPad more often. Connect HoverBar to your Mac, snap iPad 2 into the secure clip and you now have one powerful dual-computer work setup. Having iPad floating next to your Mac allows you to monitor your Twitter stream, stocks and local weather — or run FaceTime on your iPad while you email, edit a file, or cut a video on your Mac. There is no reason to leave iPad in your computer bag when you have a HoverBar. This accessory expands the way you use and interact with iPad 2.

The HoverBar’s flexible arm allows you to place the iPad both in portrait and landscape orientation, and whilst some might argue that reaching out with your arm to touch an iPad can be uncomfortable over time, I actually believe there is a market for iOS desktop accessories that enable you to enjoy the rich selection of iPad apps when using a Mac at your desk. Plus, Twelve South’s promo video (which we have embedded after the break), shows some interesting additional usage scenarios for the HoverBar, such as attaching it to a desk and use it with AirPlay Mirroring to an Apple TV, or mounted on a bed for hands-free reading. I look forward to getting one of these things and see if it’ll turn out to be weird, or incredibly useful. Either way, it’s a very interesting product decision from Twelve South.

The HoverBar is available at $79.99 from Twelve South’s website. Read More

Adobe Creative Cloud will be available worldwide in the first half of 2012. While traditional licenses of CS software will still be offered, a membership to Creative Cloud provides more benefits than simply owning desktop software. You’ll get all the CS tools, Adobe Touch Apps, and services, plus new features, products, and services as soon as they are released — meaning immediate access to the latest Adobe innovations at no extra cost.

The Adobe Creative Cloud will also include all of Adobe’s touch apps, the Business Catalyst, TypeKit and the Digital Publishing Suite. Lightroom 4 and new web-authoring apps Muse and Edge will also be included in the service’s offerings once they launch. Users will be able to download all the apps individually and on up to two different machines.

Adobe is promising to deliver major new feature updates to their CS6 apps after they launch, many of which will be exclusive to the Creative Cloud service – they blame subscription accounting issues as the reason why it won’t also be delivered to up-front customers of CS6. For businesses, Adobe is set to also introduce a team option that will include additional collaboration and security features for the service – that will set companies back $69.99 per user.

[via The Verge]

Adhering to Guidelines on Third-Party Marketing Services

Feb 6, 2012

Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts. Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership. Get helpful tips and resources on marketing your apps the right way from the App Store Resource Center.

Yesterday, PocketGamer noted that one company was offering a service for $5000 where they would utilise bots to download an app repeatedly until it breaks into the top 25 charts. That report followed on from a TouchArcade post, where users warned others from using such fraudulent app promotion services which use automated scripts or bots.

[iClarified via MacRumors]

Glazier makes sure to point out that the boost isn’t due to Apple simply replacing another restaurant (the Apple Store is located where the Metrazur restaurant used to preside). He says “the jump only happened after Apple opened” – not during the months whilst the space was being renovated for Apple.

So far it seems that the “sweetheart deal” that the New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s worked out with Apple is paying dividends — despite initial criticism of the deal. That deal saw Apple agree to a $60-per-square-foot lease agreement, with no revenue sharing agreement. The MTA made the argument that such a flagship store would bring in more customers, benefitting other tenants, so far, it seems that argument has been reflected in reality.

[Crains New York via MacRumors]

Favs for Mac is in beta, so don’t expect a full review now — the developers are still polishing the interface and adding features, and it wouldn’t make sense to give a final verdict whilst the app is still being worked on. But the underlying concept is there, and it’s one of those things I’ve been looking for: a single app that collects favorites from a variety of services.

Currently, Favs lets you fetch favorite items from:

• Delicious
• Dribbble
• Facebook
• Flattr
• Flickr
• Github
• Google Reader
• Instagram
• Pinboard
• Stackoverflow
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• YouTube
• Zootool

The list is pretty impressive already, and I assume it can only grow before the final release. I don’t know what else I’d add to that list (multiple accounts are already supported) as most of the services I use are already covered — perhaps some kind of Evernote and Instapaper integration, though I honestly can’t imagine how Evernote could work with Favs. Right now, I’m just happy Favs is shipping with a solid selection of services, and I like how the developers also implemented a unified inbox for all your favorites.

Favs, in fact, uses the old Tweetie-like interface with narrow sidebar + right panels (the one we’ve already seen in a multitude of Mac apps such as Sparrow and Reeder) to lay out service icons, unified inbox, and controls to manage settings and refresh all services. The app supports Lion’s full-screen mode, which is probably a good choice considering you’ll want to run Favs as a standalone app that is not your main Twitter or Google Reader client, as it’s focused on letting you view items that you wanted to save for later. Obviously one could easily dismiss this interface approach as “easy” or not innovative, but I believe this design can work for an application like Favs where you’re supposed to quickly switch between sections (sidebar), take a peek at headlines (mid panel) and read the actual content (right panel). As I’ve said this is a first public beta, which means features like keyboard navigation, sharing and contextual menus haven’t been implemented or refined yet. I was able to test Favs with my huge collection of Twitter favorites and it reliably loaded items from 500+ days ago without a single slowdown. I can only imagine things will get even better come the final release.

To me, Favs is a web nerd’s dream come true already. It’s got my Twitter favorites, my Google Reader stars, the stuff I like on Instagram, and it even lets me add multiple accounts if I really want to keep tabs on everything I save online. I look forward to reviewing a final version in the future, and I hope the developers are at least considering an iPad version for this.

For now, you can download the Favs public beta for free here.

The new iPad app is claimed to be a “distilled” version of their more complete film-editing applications available on the desktop. This certainly won’t be a replacement for Avid’s full-featured tools, but it may be good option for small projects or for people who want something a little bit more than what Apple’s iMovie for iPad offers. Avid believes the app is a complement to their existing offerings with users able to transfer project files between the apps through iTunes or iCloud.

“We’ve seen a shift in how creation is happening, and it’s really happening on almost any device,” said Tanguy Leborgne, vice president of consumer and mobile technology strategy at Avid. “We think the tablet is more than just a consumer device; more and more people are creating on it.”

Priced at just $4.99 for the first month and $7.99 after that, the app is also priced at a very competitively for its capabilities. Pro-sumer video editing apps on the desktop start at least $60 and go up to $299, with Avid’s desktop app itself at $129.99.

[Via AllThingsD]

A few minutes ago Apple released an update to OS X Lion, which reaches version 10.7.3 and brings a number of bug fixes and improvements. This new version of Lion includes “general operating system fixes” and support for more languages; 10.7.3 also addresses compatibility issues with Windows file sharing and directory services.

The 10.7.3 update is recommended for all OS X Lion users and includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac including fixes that:

Add Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian language support

Address issues when using smart cards to log into OS X

Resolve issues authenticating with directory services

Address compatibility issues with Windows file sharing

Extended release notes from Apple’s website note that Safari 5.1.3 is included with the update and mention more fixes in detail:

• Add Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian language support
• Address issues when using smart cards to log into OS X
• Address compatibility issues with Microsoft Windows file sharing
• Address an issue printing Microsoft Word documents that use markup
• Address a graphics performance issue after sleep on some earlier iMacs that use ATI graphics
• Resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep
• Address an issue that may prevent Safari from opening before joining a wireless network
• Fix a potential issue authenticating to an SMB DFS share
• Include RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras
• Improve binding to read-only Active Directory Domain Controllers
• Improve binding and login speed for Active Directory users in a domain whose name ends in “.local”
• Improve reliability of Dynamic DNS (DDNS) updates by Active Directory clients
• Allow login with an Active Directory username that contains a space
• Improve compatibility with Active Directory schemas that have been extended with the “apple-user-homeDirectory” and “apple-user-homeurl” attributes
• Fix home directory Dock item for Active Directory users with mobile accounts
• Allow NIS users with MD5-hashed passwords to log in

Direct links to the 10.7.3 update below:

• OS X Lion Update 10.7.3 (Client)
• OS X Lion Update 10.7.3 (Client Combo)
• OS X Lion Update 10.7.3 (Server)
• OS X Lion Update 10.7.3 (Server) Combo

Other software updates released today:

• Apple Remote Desktop 3.5.2 Client
• Server Admin Tools 10.7.3
• Security Update 2012-001 Server (Snow Leopard)
• Security Update 2012-001 (Snow Leopard)

The localised recommendations aren’t just for the News section but the other categories such as Business and Tech & Science too. Similarly, it doesn’t mean that no international publications are recommended anymore, it just means that local publications are now recommended more prominently. Flipboard now has six Content Guides for countries outside the US with France, Taiwan and Hong Kong previously receiving localised Content Guides. Flipboard also has a dedicated app for the Chinese market which also has its own Content Guide.

Users in these countries needn’t do anything to receive the new content guides – they are automatically loaded based on the Region Format of the iPad (you can change yours in Settings > General). The Flipboard team does note that they are working on a way to easily change regions from within the app so you can look at recommendations for other regions.

[Flipboard Blog via The Next Web]

Following a controversial launch in June (when the company even made an exception with refunds), Apple responded to negative FCP X feedback promising that more functionalities and improvements would be released in the following months. Today’s update brings multicam editing from up to 64 different angles of videos and photos, and XML for advanced interchange with different plugins and applications that support the Final Cut Pro X ecosystem, such as DaVinci Resolve, CatDV (color correction and media management), and the 7toX app from Intelligent Assistance which “uses XML to import Final Cut Pro 7 projects into Final Cut Pro X”.

Final Cut Pro X v10.0.3 includes a collection of groundbreaking new tools for editing multicam projects. Final Cut Pro X automatically syncs clips from your shoot using audio waveforms, time and date, or timecode to create a Multicam Clip with up to 64 angles of video, which can include mixed formats, frame sizes and frame rates. The powerful Angle Editor allows you to dive into your Multicam Clip to make precise adjustments, and the Angle Viewer lets you play back multiple angles at the same time and seamlessly cut between them.

Final Cut Pro X builds upon its robust, one-step chroma key with the addition of advanced controls including color sampling, edge adjustment and light wrap. You can tackle complex keying challenges right in Final Cut Pro X, without having to export to a motion graphics application, and view your results instantly with realtime playback.

The Loop has more details on Apple’s implementation of multicam editing using audio waveforms:

What’s really different in Apple’s implementation of multicam is how the company does its automatic syncing. Of course, you can sync camera angles by using the timecode or the less accurate method of using the time of day, but Apple has a new way of syncing camera angles — audio waveforms.

Townhill explained that with Final Cut Pro X, you can now sync scenes using the audio waveform captured with the camera. This doesn’t have to be the final audio used in the scene, but it can be used for syncing purposes. Of course, manually syncing cameras is still available at any time.

Furthermore, Apple states in the press release that ”broadcast monitoring in Final Cut Pro X is currently in beta and allows you to connect to waveform displays, vectorscopes, and calibrated, high-quality monitors to ensure that your project meets broadcast specifications. Final Cut Pro X supports monitoring of video and audio through Thunderbolt I/O devices, as well as through third party PCIe cards.” This update also allows users to import and edit layered Photoshop graphics, and import/export effect parameters through XML 1.1.

At the moment of writing this, the Mac App Store still reports 10.0.2 as the latest FCP X version available. The update should go live later today at this link.

The Obama re-election campaign will begin using Square straight away, initially with campaign staffers and “some approved volunteers”. But the ultimate goal is to develop their own Obama Square app that they can distribute on the App Store – allowing anyone to get the app and Square attachment and go around collecting donations. To comply with the Federal Election Commission’s (F.E.C.) rules, the app will need to collect the name, address, city, state, ZIP code, occupation and employer of the contributor, along with contribution size and collection date.

If the Square rollout is successful, and others follow, campaigns could send out armies of volunteers brandishing the Square credit card reader and collecting millions of dollars in micro-payments from political supporters.

The Romney campaign similarly announced today that they will also be trialling Square and likely developing their own, Romney-themed Square app. They will conduct a “beta-test” of the Square app and accessory on Tuesday night’s Florida primary election.

Daniel Rubin, strategic partnerships manager at Square, who works with political campaigns and major nonprofit organizations, said Square was partnering with a number of campaigns to make 2012 the year mobile payments change the way donations are collected on the ground. “It’s now easier than ever to give to campaigns of any political stripe,” Mr. Rubin said. “At a campaign, or any political event, donors will be able to give on the spot. They won’t have to run home and get a check or fill out long paper forms.”

[via The New York Times]

“Our retail stores are all about customer service, and John shares that commitment like no one else we’ve met,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are thrilled to have him join our team and bring his incredible retail experience to Apple.

Browett will become responsible for the retail strategy at Apple and lead the expansion of Apple retail stores around the world. He will be taking over the position that Ron Johnson had held until he left Apple last November to become chief executive of JC Penney.

Apple’s full press release and Dixons’ full press release are included after the break.

Read More

AirPort Utility has been updated to both version 5.6 (latest one was 5.5.3) and 6.0,the latter  available now as 14.3 MB download in Software Update. Whilst 5.6 is a minor update that ”resolves an issue with using network passwords stored in the Keychain” and ”works with AirPort Express 802.11g and AirPort Extreme 802.11g base stations”, AirPort Utility 6.0 is a major rewrite of the application that now resembles its iOS counterpart released in October of last year.

Above: AirPort Utility for iOS 5 on iPad. Below: the new AirPort Utility for Lion.

We’ll update this story with more details and screenshots in a few minutes. In the meantime, you can find the download links below. Apple also updated the AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule firmware, which reaches version 7.6.1 and brings the following changes:

This update is for all 802.11n AirPort Express, 802.11n AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule models. It fixes an issue with wireless performance and provides support for remote access to an AirPort disk or a Time Capsule hard drive with an iCloud account.

Direct links:

- AirPort Utility 5.6 for Mac OS X Lion

- AirPort Utility 6.0 for Mac OS X Lion

- AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule Firmware Update 7.6.1

ExtremeTech wrote about the new tab page:

The Firefox home tab is a lot more exciting. Basically there are two phases: The first phase will add “launchers” at the bottom — one-click links to your downloads, settings, apps, and so on (pictured right). Phase two is a complete reworking of the home page paradigm, weaving in favorite apps, recent websites, and even instant messaging (pictured below). Phase one is expected to roll out with Firefox 12, but at the time of writing the code still hasn’t been committed.

However, as also noted in an update to the original post, it appears Mozilla has pulled the functionality from the Nightly release of Firefox, leaving it in the “UX version” available for download on Mozilla’s servers. Upon comparing the standard Nightly build to the UX one, I noticed the latter already contains the grid design for top websites pictured above, and full-screen support for Lion.

I wasn’t able to activate ExtremeTech’s home tab page design with search, Top Apps, Top Sites and Chat in a single window; the current Firefox UX Nightly build features shortcuts along the bottom of the window to open History, Settings, Add-ons, Apps, and Downloads. A new “Restore Previous Session” button is also provided in case you haven’t set Firefox to automatically re-open previously open tabs on launch.

Changes that appear in Firefox Nightly builds typically carry over to the other stages of development and are further tweaked with refinements and bug fixes, but there could be changes in the features that Mozilla decides to implement once version 12 hits the beta channel. As for Lion support, Mozilla failed to deliver any significant optimization since the OS’ release back in July, unlike competitor Chrome which added new scrolling, full-screen support and gesture navigation (among other things) fairly quickly. A designer at Mozilla mocked up some ideas that the company could deliver in a future version of Firefox for Lion, but as of version 12 nightly (Firefox stable is currently at version 9) it seems those ideas haven’t been taken into consideration yet.

Significantly, this was the first full quarter where Apple offered a “free” iPhone in the US to customers going on contract — the iPhone 3GS. Previously Apple had offered the 3GS alongside the iPhone 4 at a reduced price, but with the 4S the iPhone 4 fell to $99 and the 3GS became free. One would have presumed that the iPhone ASP would thus fall with the addition of another lower-priced iPhone model but in fact the ASP increased from the previous quarter and at $660 the iPhone ASP is near the highest it has ever been.

How has the ASP risen despite the presence of the “free” 3GS?

There are a few reasons as to why the ASP has increased and a big reason is that in addition to the new lower-priced 3GS ($345), Apple also introduced the 64GB iPhone 4S that is at a higher price-point ($849) than the previously most-expensive iPhone. This new higher-priced model would seem to have offset any reduction in the ASP that the iPhone 3GS would have caused – particularly given Q1 2012 was the 4S launch quarter and demand was very high for the new iPhone model.

Whilst Apple didn’t give out details on what the breakdown was of sales between the iPhone 4S, 4 and 3GS, an estimate from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners suggests that in the last quarter the iPhone 4S represented 89% of all iPhone purchases in the US. The report showed that only 4% of iPhone purchases last quarter were for the 3GS and 7% for the iPhone 4. This backs up the notion that the higher-priced iPhone 4S 64GB model (estimated to be 21% of iPhone 4S purchases) actually offset any decrease in the ASP and probably drove the increase in ASP to $660.

How will the iPhone ASP fare in the following quarters?

As Horace Dediu of Asymco points out, there is usually a slight uptick in the iPhone ASP during a launch and holiday season. This would suggest that in the following quarters the ASP may decrease a little as the high launch demand for the 4S subsides a little. It is unlikely to drop that much though, with the iPhone ASP typically hovering somewhere between $620 and $660. Dediu also investigated the historical ASPs for the iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac and found that “Apple does not change pricing but rather stakes out a specific price point as resonating with consumers given their positioning”. The above chart demonstrates this point quite well.

[Sources: MacRumors, Asymco, AllThingsD]

With the free Steam app for iOS, you can participate in the Steam community wherever you go. Chat with your Steam friends, browse community groups and user profiles, read the latest gaming news and stay up to date on unbeatable Steam sales.

Steam Mobile for iPhone brings the Steam experience from the web to iOS, allowing users to check on their friends’ status, chat, browse the Steam game store and manage their wish list, and even add new items to the cart. Judging from the screenshots — we can’t try the app yet, as it’s in “closed beta” — it appears you can easily open a game’s page and check out its description, screenshots, add it to the wish list or your Steam cart; the Catalog section has tabs to browse Featured, New, Popular games and “Specials”, whereas other navigation options are located in a Facebook-like sidebar that contains links to Friends Activity, News Feeds, and more.

You can download Steam Mobile here, but it’s likely you won’t be able to use the app right away as you have to “express interest” in the beta first. Steam Mobile has also been released for Android today.

And today with version 1.1 it gets even better. Launch Center 1.o, in fact, allowed you to create shortcuts through custom URLs and activate them with a single tap. But you still had to remember you had to do something — you’ve got your nice action to call your dad, but what if you forget to call him? The shortcut becomes useless. Similarly, your iOS device comes with alarms, but you can’t associate actions to them; it’s easy to set an alarm in three hours for something “important”, and forget what it was all about. Launch Center’s new scheduled launch actions are a fantastic mix of shortcuts and alarms: you can now assign a custom alarm to each of your shortcuts. When the time comes, Launch Center will fire off a local iOS notification that will show up in Notification Center, and take you to the configured action…which will activate and call your dad with one tap, to finish the example above. It’s genius.

I use Launch Center every day and I can already see scheduled launch actions becoming an integral part of my workflow — imagine setting up alarms for emails, messages or just about any app you know you’re going to use at a certain point in time. Launch Center 1.1 combines the speed of custom URLs with local notifications to create smart alarms that have both context and the appropriate speed to feel immediate and intuitive.

Launch Center 1.1 is available in the App Store at $0.99.

During the past year, note taking/memory management service Evernote set out to build a platform around its services, which span the web, iOS devices, OS X and Windows through a set of cross-platform tools and native applications. The company launched Trunk, a unified showcase of third-party applications that integrate with the Evernote API, and updated its iOS and Mac offerings with richer user interfaces and new functionalities. Furthermore, Evernote acquired image annotating service Skitch and released an iPad version of it; they also launched four standalone Evernote-based apps: Food and Hello, for remembering meals and people, respectively; Clearly, to read web articles in an elegant format; Peek, to help students learn more through Evernote’s visual presentation.

Whilst it sounds fairly obvious for Evernote to be considering new platforms and opportunities to expand upon the concept of preserving human memory — a subject that offers itself to a broad range of implementations — Alexia Tsotsis over at TechCrunch shares some juicy details behind Evernote’s various acquisitions that led to the dedicated Evernote apps we see today.

As it turns out, Evernote CEO Phil Libin has confirmed the company purchased four startups in the past year alone: among those, Readable became Evernote Clearly, Notable Meals became Evernote Food and an another one, called Minds Momentum, was acquired in order to get the assets for an upcoming Evernote todo list application. TechCrunch doesn’t share any more details, however a quick Google search confirms that Minds Momentum was the company behind Egretlist, an iPhone app to manage todos based off Evernote that we reviewed here.

We wrote:

This isn’t an application meant to replace Evernote with a prettier interface, but rather complement it. Egretlist is strictly focused on managing to-do lists with your various notebooks. On the surface, that might pretty tame. But when you combine to-do lists with Evernote, suddenly the functionality becomes stellar. As you read in the real-estate example, being able to just sync not only with yourself, but others using Evernote’s service, makes for an always online, always updateable task-list not dissimilar to Basecamp to-dos and milestones.

Basically, Egretlist provided an effortless way to create todos and format them in a native interface that would, however, sync back to Evernote’s main client to make those todos readable, and possibly editable as well, from your desktop computers. Interestingly, Minds Momentum also developed another paid Evernote-based app, Egretlinks, which ran universally on the iPhone and iPad and allowed users to manage web clippings from their Evernote notebooks. Both Egretlist and Egretlinks haven’t been updated in months, the developers’ Twitter account is silent, and the website is still showing iPhone 3GS screenshots for the apps.

Evernote isn’t new to this kind of acquisitions. iOS text editor Essay, for instance, was bought by Evernote to power their iOS rich text editor and few people knew about it until the developer published a blog post.

From my perspective, it only makes sense for Evernote to look forward to revamping the todo management aspect of the service. Note taking and memory management often overlap with todo creation and completion these days, and Evernote’s built-in checklist/todo support is stripped down to minimal functionality without really offering a compelling way to add tasks and reminders. I’m first to admit I’ve used Evernote to remember things to do more than a couple of times in the past.

Minds Momentum’s acquisition, I believe, also plays well with Evernote’s plan in the long term. Rather than supercharging the main client with hundreds of features, Evernote has taken the ecosystem approach in choosing to offer a centralized service with a main general purpose client and several different standalone apps for more specific purposes. The Evernote app itself isn’t the proverbial Swiss army knife: the whole service is. Honestly, I don’t want the Evernote app to incorporate a text editor and a task management tool and food diaries, and it appears that the company seems to be thinking the same thing — nurturing an ecosystem can be much more profitable and rewarding (both for the company and its users) than feature creep.

I look forward to Evernote’s “upcoming” todo list application, just as I can’t wait to get my hands on a public version of the latest Mac beta (which adds some sweet improvements in the text editing UI) and refreshed iOS clients. Expect more Evernote news soon.

Based on numerous interviews, the book offers exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers and is handling the transition into the Post Jobs Era. Lashinsky, a Senior Editor at Large for Fortune, knows the subject cold: In a 2008 cover story for the magazine entitled The Genius Behind Steve: Could Operations Whiz Tim Cook Run The Company Someday he predicted that Tim Cook, then an unknown, would eventually succeed Steve Jobs as CEO.

Inside Apple is available on the iBookstore for $12.99 and is also available on Amazon. We’ll be publishing a full review of Inside Apple sometime in the coming week, so stay tuned for that. A full description of the book is available below the break.

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However, the earnings call itself is an interesting one hour, with Tim Cook (CEO) and Peter Oppenheimer (CFO) also answering a number of questions from select investors and analysts. In this Q&A section, a number of details are revealed – including additional statistics. We’ve re-listened to the call and have compiled the following post that highlights the more interesting aspects of this Q&A section and it is all below the break.

Further Reading:

MacStories: Apple Q1 2012 Results

MacStories: “Our Next Big Insight”

MacStories: More iPhones Than Babies Born Every Day

Apple’s Q1 FY12 Earnings Press Release

Audio Webcast of the Earnings Call

SeekingAlpha: Transcript of the Earnings Call

ReadWriteWeb: Apple’s Growth Rate Is Simply Incredible… And It’s Accelerating

Macworld: This is Tim: Apple’s CEO in his own words

Read More

Apple has just posted their Q1 2012 financial results. The company posted record-breaking revenue of $46.33 billion, with 15.43 million iPads, 37.04 million iPhones and 5.2 million Macs sold. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The company posted quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share. iPhone represented a 128 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter, while iPad reported a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.

This is Apple’s best quarter ever. Until today, Apple’s most profitable quarter had been Q3 2011 with $28.57 billion revenue.

Estimates and Previous Quarters

Wall Street consensus’ estimate was earnings of $10.08 per share and revenue of $38.85 billion; six institutional/independent analysts polled by Fortune expected earnings per share of $11.57 and $41.87 billion revenue. In Q4 2011, Apple said they expected revenue of about $37 billion and diluted earnings per share of around $9.30 in the first fiscal quarter of 2012.

In Q4 2011, Apple posted revenue of $28.27 billion, with 11.12 million iPads, 17.07 million iPhones and 4.89 million Macs sold. The company posted quarterly net profit of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share. iPhone represented a 21 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter; iPod sales were down 27 percent from the year-ago quarter, and Apple reported the best iPad quarter to date with over 11 million units sold and a 166% increase over the year-ago quarter. In the year-go quarter, Apple posted revenue of $26.74 billion with 7.33 million iPads, 16.24 million iPhones and 4.13 million Macs sold.

Apple will provide a live audio feed of its Q1 2012 conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and we’ll update this story with the conference highlights. You can find the full press release and a graphical visualization of Apple’s Q1 2012 after the break. A recap of estimates and product releases happened during the quarter is available here. Read More

I have been able to test Fantastical’s natural language recognition (my original review) both in English and Italian, and the results are surprisingly well done. Whereas most apps that claim to feature “natural language input” fail miserably at parsing content from syntaxes other than plain English, Fantastical’s support for Italian has, indeed, turned out to be pretty fantastic. An event called “App Journal ogni Venerdì alle 6 del pomeriggio” (App Journal every Friday at 6 PM) was correctly recognized, processed and synced back to iCloud directly within the app thanks to Fantastical’s own calDAV engine. Without going into detail too much, I can say that Fantastical is able to recognize different variations of the same kind of input (such as “di mattina” and “di pomeriggio” for AM/PM switches) and definitely doesn’t stop at standard expressions for entering events but tries to understand common, real-life ways of telling an app to do something at a certain point in time. I can’t speak for French, German and Spanish support, but I assume it’s equally well done.

Version 1.2 comes with other bug fixes, performance and parsing improvements that make the app more stable and smoother in transitioning from text entry to event creation; the app can now automatically update subscribed calendars, and automatically hide calendars disabled in iCal. More importantly, Fantastical 1.2 brings better support for recurring events — such as my example above — and dims timed events that have already passed in “today” view. Those who often add URLs to events will appreciate the fact that Fantastical now correctly recognizes links and makes them clickable in event view.

Fantastical remains an amazingly lightweight yet powerful calendar companion that’s gradually getting more functionalities without becoming cluttered and confusing. You can get the app at $19.99 on the Mac App Store.

A new sorting panel is also present in PDF Expert 3.2, now allowing you to reorder your files by name, date or modified date. If you use a Bluetooth keyboard with your iPad you can now use those “Tab” and arrow keys for faster data entry, particularly for PDF forms.

Readdle has also improved the Handwriting and Wrist Protection features in PDF Expert so they work better with less accidental annotation because you have rested your wrist on the iPad’s screen. Included in this is a new eraser tool for your handwriting, so if you do make a mistake it is now easy to erase just what you want. Finally, yesterday’s update included the use of data protection APIs, so all your PDFs are now stored securely inside the app.

PDF Expert for iPad is available for $9.99 on the App Store.

An Airbus A320 plane (tail number N845VA) that Virgin America owns and runs, has been named “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, with the quote emblazoned on the front of the plane, as seen above. A Virgin America spokesperson explained to MacRumors that the name was chosen after an internal naming competition.

The quote originated from the 1970′s magazine The Whole Earth Catalogue as Steve Jobs noted in his commencement address:

On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

[Via MacRumors]

According to developer and hacker Joshua Hill, the latest jailbreak for devices running Apple’s A5 processor has been downloaded more than one million times in one day, Cult of Mac reports. The new jailbreak — dubbed Absinthe — was released for Mac OS X on Friday after months of speculation as to whether it was possible to hack into Apple’s new CPU architecture. The Absinthe jailbreak supports the latest version of iOS, iOS 5.0.1; iOS 5 was released in October, and users of iPhone 4S and iPad 2 have been waiting for a fully untethered jailbreak solution compatible with their devices since then.

According to Cult of Mac, one million downloads were achieved on Mac OS X alone as a Windows version of the jailbreak was released after the initial 24 hours. As Alex Heath notes, this figure is noteworthy as it seems to confirm that interest in jailbreaking devices hasn’t died down after the release of iOS 5; the operating system introduced more than 200 new features for iPhone and iPad as we detailed back in October. If anything, it was iOS 5 itself that led developers to create new apps and tweaks that are taking advantage of the latest features offered by Apple such as Notification Center and Twitter integration.

To put the A5 jailbreak’s numbers into context: one million downloads were reached in 24 hours by JailbreakMe 3.0 as well when it came out for iOS 4 devices last summer. Currently, the Absinthe jailbreak is available for OS X and Windows machines over at Greenpois0n.com.

Update: With a tweet, MuscleNerd says that 205,000 new Cydia accounts were created by Sunday morning, suggesting that a large percentage of Absinthe early adopters were users who had jailbroken their devices in the past, thus likely already having a Cydia account. See update below.

According to @saurik‘s server, there were 205K new Cydia installs by Sunday morning

— MuscleNerd (@MuscleNerd) January 23, 2012

Update #2: Whilst we assumed “new Cydia installs” referred to the amount of new accounts created last weekend, MuscleNerd has clarified the figure indicates how many times Cydia was launched on a unique A5 device.

@SebastienPage it’s how many times Cydia was launched at least once on a unique A5 device — MuscleNerd (@MuscleNerd) January 23, 2012
 

@SebastienPage right, that 205K is just new A5 installs, nothing A4 or lower

— MuscleNerd (@MuscleNerd) January 23, 2012

Update #3: Cydia creator Saurik chimes in with more numbers, clarifying that 205,000 were the iPhone 4S units with Cydia until Sunday morning.

So, @MuscleNerd‘s 205k number was just the number of on-Cydia iPhone 4S’s; I believe that is now 494k. iPad 2 5.0.1 adds an additional 463k.

— Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) January 23, 2012

Update #4: And last, the Dev-Team has published a blog post with the official numbers since Friday morning:

• 491,325 new iPhone 4,1 devices (4S)
• 308,967 new iPad 2 devices
• 152,940 previously jailbroken (at 4.x) iPad 2 devices

For a total of 953,232 new A5 jailbreaks in over three days. At this point, if the previous 1 million/24 hours figure is to be believed, it’s possible 1 million downloads actually happened in 24 hours, but many users couldn’t immediately run Absinthe due to the server problems that affected Greenpois0n.com.

When I reviewed Realmac’s Analog, a lightweight photo sharing app, back in September, I was impressed by the execution of a simple concept — applying filters to your photos to share them online — that was made popular on iOS by apps like Instagram and Camera+. From my review:

Analog offers 20 filters, which have been carefully researched by Realmac over the past months to make sure each one of them has its own personality (something we know that matters in this kind of apps) and will make your photos look great. Now I’m no photography expert, but I can recognize a nice filter when I see it. Analog’s filters range from washed out (Hefga, Golden Hour) to black & white (Noir, Dark Knight, Bromide — three B&W variations with different grey scales and contrast) to contrasty (Memory, XProcess) and other interesting options that I can’t quite classify (Kyoto, Hawkeye). Analog’s filters look good, and I definitely like the choice of 20 different filters offered by Realmac. You might argue some of them look similar to each other, but the developers have also implemented a system that ensures scratches, noise and other effects are always randomized on each processing session.

I had a chance to try out a pre-release version of Analog 1.1, which is coming out tomorrow, and it looks like those who liked the workflow and polished design of version 1.0 might have to hit the Mac App Store’s Update section as soon as the app goes live. Analog 1.1 improves on several aspects of the first version: performances and memory management have been improved, making the app snappier and more responsive when adding filters and switching between edited and non-edited versions of a photo.

The update will bring three new filters (I tested them, they look good), two new borders, and, more importantly, a new slider to adjust the intensity of your chosen filter. In my tests, this has turned out to be quite handy to manually refine the amount of modifications I wanted to make to an image. Obviously, Analog 1.1 retains the filter randomization capabilities of the previous version (so that scratches, noise and other effects are randomized on each processing session) and all the other features that made Analog 1.0 intuitive and fun to use.

Analog 1.0 is currently available on the Mac App Store at $6.99. Analog 1.1 will be available tomorrow (January 24th) as a free update for existing Analog customers.

Last week, Apple unveiled its iBooks Textbooks initiative alongside a new desktop application for OS X, iBooks Author, aimed at offering a single solution for authors willing to edit and design iBooks for the iBookstore or manual distribution through exporting options. Some limitations of iBooks Author have sparked a debate that we’ve covered extensively on MacStories last week, also through articles in our Reading List.

Proprietary file format controversies aside, it was already clear that iBooks Author would undoubtedly facilitate the creation of textbooks and eBooks heavily relying on graphics with its easy-to-use align tools and familiar interface.

Today, cartoon and t-shirt designer Richard Stevens has published an iBooks adaptation of its popular webcomic series that’s been entirely converted and tweaked using iBooks Author as an initial experiment.

Waking Up With the Diesel Sweeties is a tiny little free ebook for the iPad. It contains all my comics from last month with a few tweaks, formatted in iBooks Author. This version only works on the iPad. It’s not in the iBookstore, so you’ll need to download the file and sync it to your iPad.

The eBook is available for download through Dropbox, and it can be installed on an iPad running iBooks 2. You can manually sync the file from iTunes to your iPad, or use an app like GoodReader to download it directly on your device and open it in iBooks. Whilst Stevens’ first iBook is an experiment, it shows the possibilities opened by iBooks 2 and iBooks Author: the book fully supports iBooks’ new annotations, highlights and study cards, and you can pinch on pages to access iBooks’ new navigation with thumbnails displayed at the bottom of the screen.

I wrote last week that I wouldn’t be surprised to see iBooks Author-based eBooks be used for something else other than regular books — for instance, I’ve heard more than one developer say that they’d be interested in using the software to create interactive manuals and help tools for their apps, among other things. iBooks Author may have been criticized and there’s still a lot of features Apple has to clarify and implement (especially for independent authors and publishers), but the interactivity and WebKit-based functionalities offered by the format look more promising every day.

The long-awaited jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, both devices running Apple’s A5 processor, has been released. As posted by hacker p0sixninja a few minutes ago on Twitter — p0sixninja and other developers including Cydia’s Saurik contributed to the release of the latest jailbreak tool — users can head over greenpois0n.com to download the OS X version. A Windows version is said to be “coming soon” and, at the moment of writing this, greenpois0n seems to be down/very slow.

The A5 jailbreak, teased in the past weeks, comes with a graphical user interface called “Absinthe” that guides users through the process of jailbreaking A5 devices running iOS 5.0 and iOS 5.0.1. Absinthe has been developed by the Chronic Dev Team, whereas the iPhone Dev Team has created a CLI (command line interface) for more advanced users and diagnostic purposes. As usual with jailbreak releases, a backup of your data is advised and you should probably wait a few hours before rushing in to jailbreak your devices, so that any possible bugs left will be fixed.

The A5 jailbreak is available now, it is an “untethered jailbreak” and it’s currently out for OS X users on greenpois0n.com. [image via]

Following iBooks 2.0, iBooks Author and iTunes U for iOS, Apple just released a new version of iTunes, 10.5.3. We’re downloading the update to get our hands on a proper changelog but it’s likely that this new version will simply bring support for textbooks and, perhaps, manual syncing of books created through iBooks Author.

Update: iTunes 10.5.3 does indeed enable textbook syncing to iPads.

iTunes 10.5.3 allows you to sync interactive iBooks textbooks to your iPad. These Multi-Touch textbooks are available for purchase from the iTunes Store on your Mac or from the iBookstore included with iBooks 2 on your iPad.

iBooks textbooks are created with iBooks Author — now available as a free download on the Mac App Store.

iTunes 10.5.3 should hit Software Update shortly; a direct download is available on Apple’s website here.