Posts in news

Judge Denies Apple’s Attempt For Injunction Against Amazon Over ‘Appstore’ Name

Reuters

is reporting that a Californian judge has denied Apple’s attempt to quickly stop Amazon from using the term ‘Appstore’, which they have been using for their Android app download service. Apple had earlier this year filed a trademark lawsuit that claimed Amazon was improperly using the ‘App Store’ name in a way that will “confuse and mislead customers”. Amazon had claimed that the term was generic and therefore not protectable.

Whilst the full trial is set to take place in October of next year, this decision was in response to Apple’s request of an injunction against Amazon from using the name. In her decision, U.S. District court Judge Phyllis Hamilton said she did not agree with Amazon’s claim that it was “purely generic” but similarly found that Apple had not established “a likelihood of confusion” required to get an immediate injunction against Amazon’s service.

If the injunction had been successful, Amazon would have had to nearly immediately ceased using the name for their service. Neither Apple nor Amazon responded to Reuter’s requests for comment on the news on the injunction. This trial has attracted the attention of other players in the smartphone app market including Microsoft, Nokia and HTC, all of whom have filed complaints against Apple’s attempt to file a trademark for the term ‘App Store’.

[Via Reuters]

The Hit List 1.0 Now Available for iPhone

After a long wait, and a seemingly long approval process from Apple, Potion Factory’s The Hit List is now available for iPhone. It was only a little over a month ago that the Mac counterpart was released as well. The Mac version of The Hit List features Smart Folders, iCal Sync, Quick Entry, a built-in Timer, and AppleScript support among many other great features.

The app(s) features a $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year cloud sync service that syncs with all your Macs and iOS devices wherever The Hit List is installed. NOTE: MacHeist customers can receive 3 months of sync subscription by entering a license key here.

The iPhone counterpart is very much like the Mac version but made for a smaller screen. It features Lists, the Today and Upcoming List, Tags, Tasks and Subtasks, Smart Folders, Start and Due Dates and Cards. The Hit List for iPhone is available in the iTunes App Store for $9.99. We’ll have a full review in the coming weeks (now that the iPhone app is out).

Airfoil 4.5 Released: Extended AirPlay Support & Enhanced Remote Controls

Back in December we reviewed Airfoil 4, an update to Rogue Amoeba’s powerful audio tool for OS X that streamlined the process of sending audio content from various applications to external speakers, computers or Apple TVs, also using the new AirPlay technology. Airfoil 4.5, a major update released today and free for existing customers, builds upon the excellent feature set of version 4 to deliver an even easier AirPlay integration that will allow iOS users to beam any kind of audio from any iOS app to the Airfoil Speakers app running on a Mac. This new functionality may sound very similar to other desktop AirPlay receivers like AirServer, and indeed it is, with the exception that Airfoil Speakers runs in its (beautiful) standalone window that, among other things, visualizes music controls and album artworks even during a wireless AirPlay session.

Rogue Amoeba explains:

First and foremost, Airfoil Speakers for Mac can now receive audio from your iOS device! Launch Airfoil Speakers, and it will appear in the list of AirPlay devices on iOS. When you play audio in an app on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, you can select Airfoil Speakers from the AirPlay list, and you’ll hear the audio right on your Mac.

The new, powerful Airfoil Speakers are now compatible with iTunes on any Mac or PC and MacStories favorite Radium as well. Similarly to The Iconfactory’s latest update to Take Five for Mac, Airfoil 4.5 can now control apps like Spotify, Rdio and Radium so you’ll see control buttons alongside album artworks and track titles when grabbing audio from these sources. This change is welcome as you won’t be forced to switch to the original application to see what’s playing anymore.

Last, Rogue Amoeba says they’ve added support for AirPlay devices “from companies like iHome, JBL, and many more”, and that AirPlay-enabled hardware will work with Airfoil out of the box with no further configuration needed.

Airfoil 4.5 is a free update for licensed owners of Airfoil 4, and a license key can be purchased here at $25 to unlock the full app (free trial is available). With the much improved Airfoil Speakers utility, at this point we can’t help but recommend Airfoil if you’re looking for a simple, good-looking and powerful solution to manage audio in your house, room or office, and integrate it with Apple’s AirPlay.

3 Column Reader Safari Extension Makes Google Reader Beautiful

Based on the Pure Reader mod for Google Reader we covered back in December, 3 Column Reader is a new Safari extension released in June and updated last week that enables you to turn the Google Reader website into a beautiful, three-column reading experience for your RSS feeds. Developed by Zackary Corbett, 3 Column Reader is only compatible with Safari for now, and it’s got a minor glitch with the settings icon from Google’s new sharing toolbar launched alongside the Plus social network. However, the extension is being actively developed so we wouldn’t be surprised to see a fix for users logged into Google+ soon.

For everything else, 3 Column Reader looks great: the extension takes Pure Reader’s color scheme (which reminds us of Reeder’s sepia background and monochrome icons) to lay out a three-column setup perfect for widescreen monitors: folders and feeds are listed on the left, a mid panel visualizes the feeds’ titles and excerpts, and the full articles with images are displayed on the right. You can hide the source list by hitting an icon in the mid panel, and most of Google Reader’s web app functionalities are retained, such as popup menus to sort articles, or buttons to mark items as favorite. I didn’t encounter any other compatibility issues when using 3 Column Reader on Safari 5.1 for Lion GM. Read more

Ahead Of “Awesome” Launch, Screenshots Show Facebook’s Project Spartan

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:

Transmit 4.1.6

  • 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

Coda 1.7.1

  • Improves compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

Unison 2.1.5

  • 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.