Posts in news

The Numbers From Apple’s October 22 Event

Every year, Apple kicks off their keynotes start with a “state of the business” introduction that, with various numbers and facts, reveals how the company is doing in several areas such as retail, the App Store, iOS device sales and software upgrades, and Mac sales. At today’s media event in San Francisco, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared some interesting details on a variety of subjects.

  • 9 million iPhones sold in opening weekend, making it the biggest launch ever.
  • Apple played a video about the iPhone 5s and 5c launch around the world with OneRepublic’s “Life In Color” playing in the background.
  • Five days after the iOS 7 launch, 200 million devices were running the OS (biggest software launch ever for Apple). As of today, 2/3 of Apple’s iOS devices (64%) are running iOS 7.
  • iTunes Radio has so far had over 20 million listeners that have listed to over 1 billion songs.
  • The App Store now has 1 million apps and users have downloaded over 60 billion apps to date. Developers have earned over $13 billion with the App Store.
  • With Mavericks, the 13-inch MacBook Air can get over an hour of extra battery for web browser.

For more coverage, check out our October 22 news hub and follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter.

Photos Of Apple’s Decorations At Yerba Buena For October 22 Event

Every year, we try to post photos of Apple’s decorations at Moscone West and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for WWDC and other media events. We won’t lie – besides the interest that photos generate among our readers, we like to keep our own archive of past decorations that has been going for a few years now.

We’re a bit late this time, but we didn’t want to miss this year’s photographic archive for MacStories. So thanks to longtime friend and reader Nicola Zaghen, we have collected some high-quality photos of Apple’s decorations at Yerba Buena and embedded them below. As you can see, the decorations match Apple’s invitation graphic for the October 22 event, which carried the “We still have a lot to cover” tagline.

Make sure to click the photos to view them at full size, and thanks again to Nicola for sending them to us. Read more

Apple’s New iPhone 5s Commercial

Aired last night and then posted on Apple’s website and official YouTube channel, “Metal Mastered” is the company’s latest commercial for the iPhone 5s that follows “Plastic Perfected” for the iPhone 5c and a 5s promo video released last month after the device’s announcement.

The commercial focuses on the iPhone 5s’ gold color option and Touch ID with Goldfrapp’s “Ooh La La” playing in the background. The song’s lyrics are timed with the appearance of Touch ID on video, and the commercial prominently features the 5s’ dual-LED flash system as well as iOS 7.

We have embedded the commercial below.

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Google Hangouts For iOS Updated with Support for GIFs

In what can be heralded as the first “major” update to the app since May 2013, Google has today released a new version of Hangouts for iOS that brings support for animated GIFs.

Hangouts 1.3 also lets you make and receive calls using your Google Voice number, it has indicators for contacts that are online and reachable, and it even fixes a pesky bug that caused audio playback to stop when the app was running in the foreground – but the highlight is, clearly, support for inline visualization of GIFs.

Considered a priority over smooth scrolling and proper iOS 7 support (the app sports a lovely iOS 6 keyboard), GIF support works in tandem with the iOS Camera Roll: whenever you’re in need of sending a friend, a co-worker, or a loved one a GIF that can, more than any other static image, prove a point through the use of animated cats, the new Hangouts app can pick a GIF from the Camera Roll, preview it, and insert it in a conversation. The GIF will be played inline across the web and the new iOS app.

In my tests, GIFs that I had archived in Evernote and saved to the Camera Roll weren’t attached as animated GIFs to the Hangouts app; however, it’s possible that this may be an issue of the Evernote app, as GIFs saved from Safari worked well with Google’s client, retaining their beautiful and modern animations.

Support for inline animated GIFs is welcome; based on our first few tests, we can’t pinpoint whether Google also made much-needed improvements to the app’s performance – particularly an issue for long threads and group conversations. On a somewhat related note, Apple released an update to iOS last month, but Google didn’t decide to take advantage on it for version 1.3, deeming inline GIFs the feature worth improving in Hangouts.

Google Hangouts 1.3 is available on the App Store. GIFs are available on the Internet.

CameraSync Updated for iOS 7

CameraSync

CameraSync

In my Boxie review yesterday, I mentioned the role of the official Dropbox app on my devices:

Boxie is so feature-rich, I want more from it: there’s no iPad app at this point, and I would love for Tapwings to consider an automatic upload feature for photos that would allow me to completely eschew the official Dropbox app. Right now, the only reason I keep Dropbox on my devices is for the iPad client and automatic background uploads, but, for everything else, I’m doing just fine with Boxie and I enjoy the increased efficiency made possible by the app’s feature set.

I should clarify two points: the Dropbox app is also the easiest way to authenticate with your credentials for third-party Dropbox-enabled apps; and, in a sweet coincidence, CameraSync has been updated today with a new design and bug fixes for iOS 7, which means I have turned off Camera Uploads from the Dropbox app again. Read more

Apple Confirms: Media Event On October 22

As first reported by All Things Digital, Apple has today sent invitations to selected members of the press for a media event on October 22 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. The invitation, shared on Twitter by Tim Bradshaw, reads “We still have a lot to cover”.

According to rumors and speculation from recent weeks, Apple will announce updates to the iPad line at the event. In particular, it’s been reported by several rumor sites that Apple will unveil a fifth generation 9.7-inch iPad sporting a case redesign inspired by last year’s iPad mini, and a second generation iPad mini with a higher resolution Retina display. Following the release of the iPhone 5s with Touch ID, A7 processor, and gold color option, Apple has been rumored to be considering these features for the iPad as well, although it’s unclear as to whether Apple could bring them to the iPad or iPad mini. According to 9to5mac’s Mark Gurman, Apple has also been testing a new iPad mini based on the A6 CPU and without a Retina display, which the company could sell as an “entry level” iPad mini.

There are other announcements that Apple is expected to make before the end of the year: the company said earlier this year that it would release the new Mac Pro in the Fall, and announced last month their intention to bring the iPhone 5s to over 100 countries and 270 carriers in 2013. OS X Mavericks, recently released as GM to registered developers, is also expected to get an official release date in the Fall, and it’s possible that Apple will showcase updates to some of its App Store-only apps for iOS 7, such as GarageBand or iWork (the iWork suite was made free last month, but hasn’t been updated for iOS 7).

We’ll be covering Apple’s October 22 announcements with a dedicated hub on MacStories.

Status Magic Adds Support for iOS 7 Status Bars

Status Magic

Status Magic

I don’t like screenshots of iOS apps that show status bars cluttered with icons for carriers and Bluetooth, or, worse, red battery indicators. While it’s generally not the most important aspect of an app review, I do think that using screenshots of iPhone and iPad apps with clean status bars shows a level of care that extends beyond the written text. For app developers who only have a few slots for screenshots in iTunes, screenshots that don’t have poor cellular reception and rotation lock or Bluetooth icons are essential for a non-sloppy, professional, thoughtful presentation of their product. It’s a little thing, but I care about it.

Fortunately, other people care about this minor aspect of iOS apps as well. Created by Shiny Development, Status Magic is one of my must-have Mac apps because it solves the status bar problem with ease and a good feature set: once you have the screenshots you need to “clean up”, you can drop them into Status Magic, tweak some options, and export the cleaned up, more professional-looking screenshots with status bar that don’t have six icons in them. Read more

Crunch Resource Extractor Updated with iOS 7 Support

In January 2012, I reviewed Crunch by Pragmatic Code, a Mac app to identify and extract icon and other resources from iOS apps:

Crunch is capable of automatically detecting apps from your iTunes library and filtering them by platform — iPhone, iPad, or Universal. Crunch will also install a QuickLook plugin, so you’ll be able to see each app’s icon overlaying the standard .ipa file preview in the Finder and QuickLook windows. Once you’ve selected an app, you can hit Export, and Crunch will ask you where you’d like to save an app’s resources, and if you’d like to keep all files with their existing folder hierarchy, or only Retina-ready @2x image files. The latter option can be particularly useful to pinpoint images ready for the rumored iPad 3′s Retina Display found inside several Apple apps for iOS.

Today, Pragmatic Code released version 1.5 of the app, which comes with support for iOS 7’s superellipse shape and a new Icon Composer tool to render icons from artwork.

Support for iOS 7’s new icon shape has been enabled in the app’s browser (where Crunch automatically recognizes apps from your iTunes library), Quick Look panel, and Icon Export menu. I don’t think that Apple has published official specifications for the new shape, but the one in Crunch looks just like the real thing to my untrained designer eye. When you hit Export in the top toolbar, you can still find and export assets from inside an app’s bundle, but if you click on Icon you’ll now see options to choose Superellipse (iOS 7), Rounded (iOS 6), or Automatic. Additionally, you can choose to export an icon’s artwork with no shape or no border by clicking on the Style dropdown menu.

The new Icon Composer can be used to drop artwork into Crunch and export it with Apple’s icon shapes. There is a preview panel on the left, and a slider to tweak the size of the icon.

While extracting application assets could be done with built-in tools on a Mac, Crunch is a great utility that simplifies the process and lets you save time. Support for iOS 7 is welcome and handy if you want to take a look at how other developers are managing resources inside their apps – or, with the Icon Composer, if you just want to preview how artwork will look under the new OS. Crunch is $9, and a 15-day free trial is available.

Apple Announces New iPhone 5s and 5c Launches For October 25 and November 1

With a press release, Apple just announced a second round of international launches for the iPhone 5s and 5c on Friday, October 25 and Friday, November 1:

Apple today announced iPhone 5s, the most forward-thinking smartphone in the world, and iPhone 5c, the most colorful iPhone yet, will be available in Italy, Russia, Spain and more than 25 additional countries on Friday, October 25. iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will also be available in more than a dozen countries on Friday, November 1, including India and Mexico.

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