At its keynote in Cupertino, Apple has confirmed the next major version of iOS, iOS 5, will be available on October 12th for all customers.
iOS 5 is the next major release of Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, bringing new features like PC-Free setup, iCloud, Notification Center and direct Twitter integration to iOS devices.
Update: Alongside iOS 5, Apple’s new suite of cloud services, iCloud, will be available for free on October 12th.
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Tim Cook reported at today’s Apple keynote that iPod sales have exceeded 300 million units, with 45 million of those iPods sold since June of 2011. Also reported was that the iPhone 4 now accounts for over half of all iPhones sold.
iTunes has also seen significant growth. There are now over 20 million songs in iTunes. The number of features in the iTunes store has also increased; iTunes remains the number #1 music store worldwide and customers have downloaded over 16 billion songs.
Apple has sold over 250 million iOS devices. Tim Cook reported that 92% of Fortune 500 companies are testing and deploying the iPad. Apple’s Senior VP of iOS Software, Scott Forstall, reported over 500,000 apps are now available on the App Store, with 140,000 of them made specifically for the iPad. 18 billion apps have been downloaded so far, and over 1 billion are downloaded each month from the App Store. Apple has announced it has paid $3 billion to developers so far.
Apple’s Senior VP of iOS Software Scott Forstall took the stage today at Apple’s media event to announce Cards, a new iOS app to create a card on your phone, with Apple printing it, embossing it, and mailing to you. Users can choose between 21 different designs, and the app will support iOS 5’s new push notification system. The app will be available on the App Store on October 12th; Apple says mailing cost for cards will be $2.99 in the United States.
We’ll have a more detailed look at Cards for iPhone once it’s available on the App Store.
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At Apple’s media event in Cupertino, CEO Tim Cook just announced that OS X Lion, released on July 20th, gained 6 million downloads so far on the Mac App Store, a 80% growth over the previous version, Snow Leopard. Tim Cook has also reported the iMac and MacBook Pro are the #1 desktop and notebook in the US, best representing the Mac’s 23% growth over the last year.
With the fast adoption of OS X Lion, which is sold at $29.99 on the App Store, and the popularity of the MacBook Air, Tim Cook announced Apple is nearing 60 million Mac users worldwide.
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We’re only 30 minutes away from Apple’s iPhone keynote, but it appears the company has already started uploading material for the new iPhone 4S on its website. First off, we noticed the following banner on a Japanese retail page: [Thanks, Ady]
A rough Google Translation for the banner says:
iPhone 4S, appeared.
October 14, from 8:00 am to launch the Apple Store. To help you choose the carrier and rate plan is right for you. staff because it sets the iPhone, and is ready to start using before leaving the store. Learn more
The link to the image, however, can’t be accessed from the Apple’s Japanese website. As MacRumors also notes, there seems to be another image detailing an upcoming iPod nano refresh with new user interface and more fitness functions. 9to5mac has found images for the black and white iPhone 4S somewhere else on Apple’s website, showing an iPhone 4-like device with iOS 5 screenshots. Changing the URL of those direct links from “4s” to “4” reveals older promotional images for the iPhone 4, suggesting these iPhone 4S images are indeed real, and that the device will run iOS 5 out of the box.
Update: Additionally, iDownloadBlog has found another image on Apple’s servers, this time for U.S. carrier Sprint. Sprint has long been rumored to be getting the next-generation iPhone, and this image seems to confirm that Sprint will be a new carrier option in choosing the new iPhone model. You can find the image here.
Stay tuned for more Apple announcements at 10 AM Pacific time.
Following a series of announcements from Adobe MAX yesterday, the company has released new versions of Flash Player and Adobe AIR, reaching versions 11 and 3, respectively. Initially seeded as betas in July, Flash 11 and AIR 3 bring a series of improvements, including hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics rendering through Stage 3D in what Adobe claims to be up to 1,000 times faster rendering performance over Flash Player 10 and AIR 2. With the Stage 3D API, Adobe promises console-quality browser games and apps with possibility for developers to animate millions of objects simultaneously at 60 frames per second.
Additionally, these two releases bring optimizations for HD video, improved 64-bit performances and, for AIR 3, native extensions to allow developers to take advantage of a hardware’s native capabilities such as gyroscopes, light sensors, multiple screens, and NFC if supported. The inclusion of H.264/AVC software encoding for cameras will enable higher quality real-time communications from within Flash Player as well.
You can read more on Flash 11 and AIR 3 directly on Adobe’s blog. The download are now live on Adobe’s website here, and here.
Back in July, we reported the next version of Growl, a popular notification system for OS X, would be available exclusively on the Mac App Store as a paid app. The reason behind the choice to go Mac App Store-only at $1.99 was to provide users with an app up-to-date with Apple’s technologies and standards for software that can released on the Mac App Store. As we noted in our article, that meant the Growl team had to rewrite the app completely, and start contacting third-party developers – over the years, Growl has generated its own ecosystem of apps compatible with desktop notifications – to make sure their software would be compatible with Growl 1.3.
The new Growl is now available on the Mac App Store at $1.99. While we’ll have a detailed, in-depth review of the app later this week, it’s worth noting now that Growl has indeed made the transition to paid app, but it’s also sporting a whole new architecture, UI, notification list, and themes.
Growl 1.3 comes in a new app form that has a menubar icon to activate/pause notifications, and a new Preferences window to see notification history, supported apps, configure themes, and more. History can be customized to show only a certain amount of recent items and days, and you can even search past notifications and events. The new Growl comes with almost 20 themes pre-installed, and you can style an application’s overlay notifications (the ones that Growl will briefly display on screen) in Growl’s Preferences. You can also create and install your own themes with basic CSS/XHTML/Javascript language.
One of the biggest new features of Growl 1.3 is the Rollup window – from a first look, it appears to be Growl’s unofficial response to Apple’s Notification Center for iOS. Because Growl keeps working even while you’re away from your computer, the Rollup window will collect the notifications you’ve missed in a single place, allowing you to review them later. There’s also a new Network option that enables you to forward notifications to another Mac, or to receive them from another computer running Growl.
Other features mention in the App Store’s description:
Growl 1.3 is available on the Mac App Store at $1.99. Make sure to check out the app’s new website and Screenshots page, whilst Developers can visit this links to learn more about Growl 1.3 and its technical changes. Looks for a full review of Growl 1.3 on MacStories soon.
It was previously reported the next-generation iPhone would be available on U.S. carrier Sprint, and today The Wall Street Journal adds some details to its initial report, claiming that Sprint is “betting the company” on a $20 billion iPhone deal that will see Sprint purchasing 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years.
New details, not previously reported, give a rare look at Apple’s closely guarded dealings with carriers, and reveal just how high the stakes are for Sprint.
Mr. Hesse told the board the carrier would have to agree to purchase at least 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years—a commitment of $20 billion at current rates—whether or not it could find people to buy them, according to people familiar with the matter. In order to keep the price people pay for the phone low and competitive with rivals, Sprint would be subsidizing the cost of each phone to the tune of about $500, which would take a long time to recoup even at the high monthly fees iPhone users pay.
Sprint’s board called the iPhone “project Sony” internally, and a person familiar with the matter has been quoted by the WSJ saying “We have to have it”. The deal’s hit on Sprint’s operating income is “staggering”, according to another source. In a lawsuit filed against the AT&T / T-Mobile merger in September, Sprint said the company “has had to compete without access to the iPhone for nearly five years”.
Apple is expected to introduce a new iPhone tomorrow in Cupertino at 10 AM Pacific time. Check out our roundup for a breakdown of rumors and predictions.
Apple won’t provide a public webcast of tomorrow’s “Let’s talk iPhone” media event, according to an Apple PR representative contacted by 9to5mac. The company will make a private feed available for the European press in its Covent Garden retail store in London, but there won’t be a public live stream on Apple.com.
Apple streamed the September 2010 music event as well as “Back to the Mac” in October 2010, but didn’t provide a live stream for the iPad 2 announcement and iOS 5 preview earlier this year. The 2010 live streams were based on Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming technology and required a Mac or iOS device running Safari.
However, Apple is expected to make streaming and downloadable versions of the event available a few hours after the keynote. Apple has a dedicated webpage for media events, and Apple Keynotes can also be found on iTunes.
MacStories will offer real-time tweeting of updates tomorrow through the @MacStoriesLive Twitter account. Come back at 10 AM Pacific tomorrow for our complete coverage of Apple announcements on the site’s front page.
