Last week, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg revealed the company was preparing for an “awesome” launch this week. A formal announcement is expected today at a media event at Facebook HQ, but several blogs in the past few days have claimed Facebook is set unveil a partnership with communication giant Skype (recently acquired by Microsoft) to bring video chats to the social network, an interesting possibility at the light of Google’s new Plus foray into the social sphere, which among other things features a Hangout functionality to start group video chats with multiple contacts at once. TechCrunch, however, seems to believe that Project Spartan, an HTML5-based development and distribution platform that’s being built with Mobile Safari for iOS in mind, won’t be part of the announcements today, which may or may not also include the long-awaited official iPad app, supposedly nearing a public release. Read more
Fluid App Adds Lion Compatibility and Full Screen Mode
With OS X Lion expected to make its public debut on the Mac App Store in the next few weeks, it is no surprise developers are starting to release updates to their applications to support the new OS and introduce features built upon the new APIs created by Apple. Last night, Panic released four updates to bring Lion support to Coda, Candybar, Transmit and Unison. Fluid App, the popular tool to create native applications for OS X off any website or web app, has also been updated to bring proper Lion compatibility, a few bug fixes and, more importantly, support for Lion’s full screen mode.
Whilst Lion compatibility can be seen in the Fluid changelog here, full screen support is listed under changes to Fluid apps. Indeed,when I opened the Google Plus Fluid app I created earlier this week, I was prompted to perform an update in-app to enable Lion and full screen support, as well as new URL handlers in the Preferences. As with most Apple apps on Lion, full screen mode can be entered by hitting a keyboard shortcut, or pressing an icon in the upper right corner. To return to the standard window view, you’ll have to click the (blue) full screen icon in the menubar again. Animations for my Fluid app on my late-2008 MacBook Pro with SSD were fast and smooth.
Fluid App is available for free, but you can purchase a license at $4.99 via Paypal to unlock additional features like the aforementioned full screen on Lion, separate cookie storage and possibility of pinning apps to the OS X status bar.
JailbreakMe 3.0 Released, Jailbreaks iOS Devices Including iPad 2
The long-awaited new version of popular jailbreak tool JailbreakMe has been released today and, as previously announced by developer and hacker comex and the Dev-Team, it is capable of jailbreaking a variety of iOS devices running iOS 4.3 and above, including the iPad 2. The procedure of jailbreaking allows users to install unauthorized software on their devices, like Cydia, an alternative marketplace that contains apps, tweaks and graphical modifications Apple can’t approve for sale in its App Store. The popularity of JailbreakMe raises from the fact that the tool is entirely Safari-based, enabling users to press a button in their browser to install Cydia with ease, without having to plug the device into a computer, restore, and follow other additional steps. JailbreakMe takes a few minutes to install Cydia, and it’s completely reversible in iTunes with a restore.
Because of the issues with people leaking the hack behind JailbreakMe 3.0 in the past week, creator comex was forced to accelerate the release, fearing a patch from Apple coming soon with a software update. Just like JailbreakMe 2.0, in fact, the new tool uses a vulnerability in iOS’ PDF display engine to allow the installation of Cydia from Safari. The hole will likely be fixed soon by Apple with a software update, perhaps iOS 4.3.4, but the same Cydia developers are offering a tweak called PDF Patcher 2 (available in Cydia) which patches the JailbreakMe vulnerability after the jailbreak.
JailbreakMe 3.0 supports the following devices as explained by a Dev-Team blog post:
- iPad1: 4.3 through 4.3.3
- iPad2: 4.3.3
- iPhone3GS: 4.3 through 4.3.3
- iPhone4: 4.3 through 4.3.3
- iPhone4-CDMA: 4.2.6 through 4.2.8
- iPod touch 3g: 4.3, 4.3.2, 4.3.3
- iPod touch 4g: 4.3 through 4.3.3
The Dev-Team also illustrates the current scenario of restoring a device to older versions and SHSH blobs:
Q: Will I permanently lose the jailbreak if I need to restore my device?
A: For all except the iPad2, saving your SHSH blobs should let you always restore your device to iOS versions where this jailbreak works. The iPad2 is a little more complicated. If you have a wifi-only iPad2 and saved SHSH blobs, you’re in good shape. But if you have the GSM or CDMA iPad2, you won’t be able to restore to 4.3.3 or lower once Apple stops signing its baseband. There are a few ideas that might work to get around this limitation, but for now it’s best to assume there’s no going back to 4.3.3 once 4.3.4 is out for iPad2 GSM or CDMA owners.
As we said above, the exploit will likely be fixed soon by Apple (some bloggers are already claiming as early as this week), so if you’re willing to jailbreak your iPad 2 on iOS 4.3.3 or iOS device, head over JailbreakMe.com now, and follow the steps to install Cydia. For Cydia app & tweak recommendations, check out our coverage from the past months, and give a try to Cydia Search to browse available software for your jailbroken device from your desktop.
Analysts Forecast 17 Million iPhones, 8 Million iPads Sold in Q3
According to the latest estimates by amateur (non-Wall Street) Apple analysts at The Mac Observer’s Finance Board as relayed by Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune, Apple is on track to sell more than 8 million iPads and 17 million iPhones in the third fiscal quarter of 2011. Apple has confirmed that the Q3 2011 financial results will be announced in two weeks, on July 19, and Wall Street’s consensus already claims “the company earned $5.69 per share on sales of $24.67 billion”.
According to the Finance Board (which, among the polled members, includes Horace Dediu of Asymco), Apple will post revenue of $26.5 billion with a 69% year-over-year growth, as outlined in two different reports by Paul Leitao at Posts at Eventide.
The June quarter represents the first fiscal quarter in which Apple iPad sales are a factor in the prior-year performance. This factor alone will will have an impact on year-over-year revenue growth. iPad unit sales and the resulting revenue were not a factor in the prior-year financial performance comparisons in the December (FQ1) and March (FQ2) quarters.
In Q2 2011, Apple posted revenue of $24.67 billion, with 4.69 million iPads, 18.65 million iPhones and 3.76 million Macs sold. Overall, the company posted quarterly revenue growth of 83% and profit growth of 95%. For the third quarter, the Apple Finance Board estimates the Mac’s sales will be consistent with the platform’s recent growth, whilst as far as the iPad 2 goes, Apple’s ability to meet demand (following the alleged supply issues due to the Japan earthquake and tsunami) will play a key role in determining a growth for the device’s sales up from roughly 5 million in Q2. As for the iPhone, Leitao writes:
The average estimate of AFB members suggests the March quarter unit sales growth trend will continue in the June quarter. Last year Apple significantly reduced iPhone unit shipments in the June quarter ahead of the release of the iPhone 4, leading to favorable conditions for year-over-year unit sales gains in the June quarter this year.
We will know more on July 19, when Apple is expected to post the official financial results for Q3 2011.
Panic Updates Transmit, Candybar, Coda and Unison for Lion
Panic, makers of popular software for the Mac like website creation tool and code editor Coda or UI & icon customization manager Candybar, have released four updates to their flagship applications for OS X tonight, adding Lion compatibility ahead of the upcoming Mac App Store release for the new OS. As tweeted a few minutes ago by the company’s Twitter account, Transmit, Candybar, Coda and Unison have all been updated with a series of bug fixes and 10.7-related improvements.
Candybar, the desktop app to change system icons and other graphical files, has received a substantial update to version 3.3 that prevents the application from doing “harmful customization” to Mac App Store icons (this has been an issue since January when the Mac App Store came out and users found out changing applications’ resources could be a problem for the Store’s update mechanism) and also introduces other interface changes. Candybar was last updated on October of last year, and today’s new version brings a smarter slider that presents common export sizes as you interact with it, and copy of icons onto Collections in the Info window.
Other changelogs for the updates Panic released today:
- Improved compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
- Added support for AWS Tokyo region
- Added bookmark importing from Cyberduck 4
- Dates are now read properly on SabreDAV servers
- Improved Unicode filename support with download Syncing
- Improves compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
- Fixed an issue that could cause preferences to be reset
- Fixed a possible crash when playing an audio file
- Improved decoding of Chinese messages
- Sped up the performance of header loading with lots of “Ignore Sender” rules
- Images without filenames in HTML messages are now shown properly
Currently, the new updated versions can be only downloaded from Panic’s website. The Mac App Store counterparts will likely receive the updates as soon as Apple processes them, so make sure to keep an eye on the developers’ Mac App Store page.
Bing for iPad Gets New “Lasso” Search Feature
Originally released in April and quickly acclaimed by the press as one of Microsoft’s best examples of innovation in user experience in the past months, the official Bing app for the iPad has managed to capture the attention of both regular Bing users and the blogosphere thanks to its compelling set of features that turned a rather simple activity like searching the web into a visually rich experience that combined local information, images, weather data and search trends to lay out beautiful search results based upon an intuitive interface and fast animations.
Today, Microsoft is announcing the release of Bing for iPad 1.1 which, among some interface optimizations and various bug fixes, brings a new search functionality called Lasso that, according to the company, should allow users to search for any keyword on the web by simply drawing a circle around it. Lasso sounds like a very innovative project and it looks good from Microsoft’s own promo video that you can check out here, but on my two iPads running the stable iOS 4.3.3 and the iOS 5 beta, I could only get it to work a couple of times in all my tests. When it did work, Lasso indeed matched the keyword I marked with a circle with a search result on Bing. As usual, the Bing app for iPad comes with an elegant design that makes it easy to swipe between searches and webpages, or jump to smart results like weather info and movie theater showtimes which, in this version, can be viewed with multiple days and theaters at once.
Microsoft writes on its blog:
In this release we made some improvements that you asked for and are excited to introduce a new feature called Lasso. Designed for touch-friendly devices, Lasso is a new way to search with the touch of a finger.
From our research, we know that many searches are inspired by things people see on the web. Today, it can be somewhat painful to search on a tablet when you’re engaged in reading something; just copying and pasting pieces of text from a webpage to a search box can take up to nine steps on the iPad. With Lasso you can circle and search in just two steps.
Microsoft keeps innovating with its Bing apps for iOS and I’m sure the issues I’ve stumbled into when testing the new Lasso capture tool can be easily fixed with an update. You can find the Bing app for iPad on the App Store. Check out more screenshots of the app after the break. Read more
The New Brain Behind Your Photos
One of the new features of iCloud that was announced at WWDC but was slightly overlooked by bloggers and iOS users is Photo Stream. Built into the native Photos app for iOS devices, iPhoto for Mac and the Pictures folder on Windows PCs, Photo Stream will allow you to automatically find on any device the photos you’ve taken on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. With the addition of the Apple TV 2nd gen, Photo Stream will let you watch these photos on the bigger screen with your friends and family. How does it work? For those that missed the announcement, here’s a quick recap: because iCloud automatically stores, updates and pushes your content on all your registered devices (be them iPhones, iPads, or Macs and PCs running the iCloud control panel), Photo Stream acts as an extension of the mobile Camera Roll that, rather than just storing pictures locally, also pushes them to the cloud as soon as they’re taken, provided you’re on a WiFi connection. If you’re not on WiFi, Photo Stream will upload the photos from the Camera Roll to iCloud as soon a a new connection is established.
As explained by Steve Jobs on stage, and later demoed by Eddy Cue, the main purpose of Photo Stream is that of easing the process of importing photos shot on, say, an iPhone to an iPad or Mac for better viewing. With previous versions of iOS, users were forced to email pictures themselves and open the message on OS X to save the photos (facing at the same time a risk of quality loss due to email limitations); create an account on social services like Flickr or Facebook to upload photos from their mobile devices to avoid a desktop transfer process; even worse, users had to go home, find a USB cable, connect their iPhone to a computer, launch iPhoto or Image Capture and manually import the most recent photos. That’s a long and tedious process Apple wants to eliminate with a smart, automatic system that always puts the most recent photos on all your devices. In fact, Photo Stream can display the 1,000 most recent photos on iOS devices, whilst files are stored on iCloud for 30 days due to storage limitations on both ends (iOS and Apple’s server farms). On desktop computers, which come with more storage, Photo Stream stores all photos. Again, this new functionality works out of the box with any iOS 5 device configured with an iCloud account, and Photo Stream can be enabled in the Settings app. On the desktop’s side, right now Apple is requiring developers to download a special beta version of iPhoto and the iCloud control panel to test Photo Stream, but once iCloud publicly launches this fall everything will be baked in with no further configuration needed.
Read more
BeachWeather: A Weather App To Check On Your Favorite Beaches (With A Huge Database)
In the past few weeks, I’ve bought, reviewed and overall enjoyed a couple of different weather apps for my iPhone. Let alone the useful weather widget Apple is introducing with iOS 5, I’ve found myself going back to apps like WeatherSnitch and the recently updated Shine (which now includes data for international locations) to check on forecasts and the simple weather data I need to get by on a daily basis. This new app by StudioDalton, however, called BeachWeather, might just be what I was looking for this summer’s vacation: rather than a new default weather app to tweak by adding the locations of the beaches I’ll visit throughout this summer, a beautiful and focused weather utility that’s specifically aimed at checking how’s weather like…at the beach. By weather, I mean forecasts, UV index, wind speeds, and air & sea temperature – not the most complex data points when having to check on whether or not you can go to the beach with your friends and family.
BeachWeather, released today, impressed me because of its colorful design (which kind of reminded me of Robocat’s Outside for the general color scheme) and, more importantly, huge database of locations available inside the app. See, every year I go with my friends to a beach 45 minutes away from my town, and that’s not exactly a “popular” beach. Not one of those you see on television or rendered on tourist guides. It’s next to the camping I spent most of my summers in, and I still enjoy going there when I’ve got some free time. But it’s certainly not one of those beaches you constantly stumble upon on Google Image Search when you’re looking for “vacation in Italy”. Yet, BeachWeather’s database had this very specific beach available, alongside others a few miles away from it. None of those can be deemed as “popular”, nor do they often appear in other weather apps for the iPhone. In fact, unlike other weather apps, BeachWeather is, well, focused on beaches, not cities and towns. I don’t know what kind of online database/service the developers are using, but I was definitely impressed with my (local) results. Obviously, your mileage may vary depending on your location, but after taking a peek inside other countries’ locations I can say the database is really, really huge.
In the app, you can add multiple locations by browsing by country, or getting recommendations based on your location. Recommendations were accurate and, in fact, I added the first three ones the app suggested. When dealing with multiple locations configured in BeachWeather, the app presents a “card” interface to swipe between available beaches and check on weather forecasts. The app provides a 3 day forecast with data organized in tabs and associated with an icon or color depending on what’s the weather like. At the bottom of the card, you can navigate between Today: Morning, Today: Afternoon, Tomorrow: Morning, Tomorrow: Afternoon, and a forecast for the third day. A screenshot of the card can be shared on Twitter, Facebook, or via email, and you can tap on the forecast’s icon to get a translucent black popup telling you what does it mean – e.g. “clear” or “mostly cloudy”. In my tests, weather data from BeachWeather seemed to fall in line with those of other websites like the Italian Meteo.it or the universal Yahoo Weather. Other apps like WeatherSnitch, Apple’s Weather and Shine reported forecasts similar to BeachWeather.
BeachWeather is a real gem if you’re like me and you need an answer to the question “What’s the weather like at the beach today?”. You can download BeachWeather at $0.99 on the App Store.
PhotoForge 2 Update: iPad Version and iOS 5 Fixes
Back in May I covered the release of PhotoForge 2, the successor of a popular image editor for iOS that, with the point-upgrade, gained a completely redesigned user interface, as well as a broader set of options aimed at turning the application into the most powerful image editing software for iPhone and iPod touch. Released as a standalone app (as the App Store doesn’t allow for paid upgrades) and sporting revamped social sharing functionalities with an OS X-like dock UI, PhotoForge had an incredibly successful launch – but one piece was missing: the iPad version. The developer teased the app ahead of the launch as a universal application for iPhone and iPad, yet in May users only got the “smaller” iPhone counterpart that, due to the limitations of the device, couldn’t fully take advantage of real screen estate for image editing.
Released today as the promised universal update, PhotoForge 2 now runs on the iPad as well and it’s available for download right now at $1.99. The iPad version of PhotoForge 2 doesn’t surprise, but it’s better than the iPhone version: whereas most of the times I’d despise an iPad porting that only makes the iPhone UI bigger, this time the conversion seems appropriate for PhotoForge: controls are made bigger but don’t get in the way because of the iPad’s large screen, toolbars provide a nice minimal frame around the photo you’re editing. And because the iPad 2 comes with cameras, this means you’ll be able to edit and improve photos shot with your device. Furthermore, the new PhotoForge 2.0 fixes several bugs reported by developers running iOS 5. The same features of the iPhone version have been ported over: layers, exposure control, brightness and contrast, or standard RGB levels are all there. The app comes with a selection of effects similar to those seen in Instagram and Camera+ that you can apply to your files in real time, in seconds. As also tested on the iPhone’s original version, the app has full layer management capabilities with handy controls on the side, a detailed info panel to check metadata of an image, and various sliders and menus to tweak the appearance of a file with levels, curves, brightness and noise regulation, or noise reduction. There’s a lot to explore and play with in PhotoForge 2, and I like I said the iPad’s screen makes the whole experience ultimately better when it comes to tapping, sliding and moving your finger around to edit an image.
Other changes in this release include:
- Mask painting has been dramatically improved. Painting is now incredibly fast even on super large images.
- New composition mode while mask painting allows you to see the layers below, making masking the easiest way to selectively apply filters and effects to your photos.
- Cropping handles have been redesigned and implemented making cropping much easier to control than before.
- The rotation gesture in the cropping tool has been removed and replaced with 1 degree rotation buttons.
- Added ability to save photos back to the documents directory. Making it very easy to get your images back onto your computer.
- Can now save images in JPEG, PNG and TIFF. PNG and TIFF will maintain any transparency in your images. (Not all upload locations support all image formats).
- Can now control compression quality of JPEG.
PhotoForge 2 was the image editor to have on the iPhone, and the universal update is simply a must-have at this point. You can download PhotoForge 2 at $1.99 on the App Store. Check out more screenshots of the app after the break. Read more