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Sony Releases Official Crackle App for iOS

In spite of previous rumors suggesting Sony would never consider releasing an iOS app again after the rejection of their eBook reader application a few months ago, the company pulled the trigger today on the official Crackle app for iPhone and iPad. Crackle, a growing digital entertainment platform that offers movies and TV shows from Sony’s library (including series from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics), allows you to stream content over WiFi and 3G, it’s universal and has “unlimited, on demand viewing.” Crackle, however, is only available in the United States and with “selected content” to viewers from the UK, Canada and Australia.

You can browse by Movies, TV shows, Originals and Genres, or build your queue to organize the content you want to watch later. The design looks decent from the screenshots, and there are some sharing options as well. Alternatively, you can buy movies and episodes on iTunes with the tap of a button.

You can find Crackle in the App Store here. [via Cult Of Mac]

Google Brings “Undo” Bar To Gmail iOS Web App

With a post on the company’s official Mobile blog, Google announced a few minutes ago that they’re bringing the popular “Undo” action to the Gmail web app for iOS and Android devices. You can check out the new feature by opening mail.google.com on your iPhone now.

Sometimes when I’m using Gmail on my phone, I delete a message by mistake or label it incorrectly. Sure I can fish the message out of my Trash or remove the label and apply the correct one, but that takes several steps. Even just a few seconds is usually enough time to catch those annoying mistakes.

The new Undo feature works with labels, archived and deleted messages, as well as moved messages or conversations. Undo appears in the same bottom bar that Google added a few weeks ago to display the status of a mobile connection. It all works fairly well, and the bar stays on screen for a few seconds even if you move to another section of Gmail – like starred items from the Inbox. Google also recently brought Priority Inbox to mobile devices through Safari, although support for Retina Display graphics is still nowhere to be seen.

iTunes 10.2.2 Released with Bug Fixes

A few minutes ago Apple released an update for iTunes, which reaches version 10.2.2 and adds a number of stability enhancements and bug fixes to improve the overall performances of the app. From the changelog:

  • Addresses an issue where iTunes may become unresponsive when syncing an iPad.
  • Resolves an issue which may cause syncing photos with iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to take longer than necessary.
  • Fixes a problem where video previews on the iTunes Store may skip while playing.
  • Addresses other issues that improve stability and performance.

You can find the update here, on Apple’s iTunes webpage or through Software Update on your desktop.

Apple Sues Samsung Over Galaxy “Look & Feel”

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Apple has filed a lawsuit against Samsung on April 15 in the Northern District of California claiming that the South Korean company copied the “look and feel” of iPhones and iPads with its Galaxy devices – smartphones, tablets and media players.  A very few details are provided in the original report, but the WSJ claims the lawsuit indicates products like the “Galaxy S 4G,” “Epic 4G,” “Nexus S” and “Galaxy Tab” are violating Apple’s intellectual property.

Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple’s technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products,” the lawsuit said.

Representatives of Apple and Samsung didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Samsung is one of the big players in the current Android landscape – the company came out last year with a 7-inch tablet and recently announced two new models (Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1) that will also support Android’s Honeycomb 3.0 update. The relationship between Apple and Samsung is quite complex, as the South Korean tech giant makes the processors that go into iPhones and iPads sold by Apple. Several rumors in the past pointed to Apple willing to move the production of A4 and A5 CPUs away from Samsung (the iPad 2’s A5 CPU comes from Samsung), and this lawsuit might be a sign of things changing between the two companies. This lawsuit could also imply Apple is targeting Android indirectly by suing OEMs instead of Google itself – manufacturers like HTC, Samsung and Motorola are free to use Android, but they usually apply their custom graphical skins to differentiate their products. Apple is suing Samsung, a manufacturer of Android-based devices which applied its custom TouchWiz user interface to Android. TouchWiz, however, was also used on proprietary and Bada-based devices, but Apple is suing over the “look & feel” of the Android Galaxy line. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t specify whether or not TouchWiz was mentioned in the lawsuit.

A few weeks ago, Apple also sued online retailer Amazon over the usage of the term “App Store” in its new Android digital marketplace. Read more

Mac Sales Up 27% In First Quarter of 2011

Quoting a research note issued by Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster to clients this morning, BusinessInsider reports the Mac platform has seen a terrific rise in sales during the first quarter of 2011 in the United States. By summarizing data from NPD, the report details how the release of the new MacBook Pros in late February drove a 47% increase in sales year-over-year in the month of March, with an average 27% growth in the first quarter.

That 47% uptick followed growth of 20% in January and 12% in February, for average of 27% over the first quarter of 2011. That stands in stark contrast to the 3.2% drop in worldwide sales reported last week by IDC.

Bottom line: Munster expects Apple (AAPL) to report Mac unit sales in the range of 3.6 to 3.7 million, ahead of the Street’s consensus of 3.6 million.

So while the worldwide PC industry was seeing a serious decrease in sales in Q1 2011, Apple apparently managed to achieve a 27% growth with (allegedly) high Mac sales in the US. Like previous reports suggested, however, overall iPod sales should be down from last year – quite possibly because of the media playback capabilities of iPhones and iPads.

Analysts polled by Fortune two weeks ago claimed Apple could have sold nearly 4 million Macs in the second fiscal quarter of 2011 (which ended on March 26). Apple is set to announce the Q2 2011 financial results on April 20th.

Microsoft Releases New iPhone App To Create Panoramic Photos

In its ongoing effort to support the iOS platform with a steady flow of new releases and updates, Microsoft released earlier today a new app for iPhone called Photosynth which is aimed at letting you create panoramic, 360-degree photos with your device’s camera. The concept and overall execution are very similar to Occipital’s 360 Panorama for iPhone: you hold your iPhone, and rotate it to capture what’s around you. The app will then “stitch” the panorama to offer a zoomable image that you can pan with your fingers to see the complete result. Unlike Occipital’s software, Microsoft’s application comes with sound effects for each photo (in fact, Photosynth does nothing but capturing a series of photos and making a collage after processing them) and simpler on-screen guides. I’ve used the app for a couple of hours now and, lack of gyroscope aside, it seems to me that Occipital’s app still produces better panoramas both in direct sunlight and low-light conditions. There’s some serious overlapping of photos in Photosynth, and the underlying processing algorithm doesn’t look very smart to me.

However, if you’re a fan of Microsoft’s new Metro style, the Photosynth app will please you with Windows Phone 7-like menus and buttons. The animations are quite nice, but not exactly “iOS native.” Photosynth also comes with several sharing functionalities: you can send panoramas to the Photosynth.net service (requires a Windows Live ID login), Facebook and even Bing Maps. Microsoft actually encourages you to share through Bing Maps, as “millions of people could see your panoramas on maps and in search results for locations you’ve captured.”

Photosynth is an interesting experiment, and I look forward to future updates. Get the app here.

iHub: A USB Hub with Apple Appeal

M.I.C. Gadget is now selling the second revision of their iHub; a small, 4-port USB hub with a bit of Apple branding on it. The iHub has a light-up Apple logo on top that’s reminscent of many Apple laptops. Version 2 of their iHub looks very nice and could almost pass for a legitimate Apple accessory, even the packaging looks familiar.

Video and another picture after the break. Read more

Apple Using New App Store Ranking Algorithm?

According to Inside Mobile Apps, Apple may have recently tweaked the algorithm that determines ranking of iOS apps in the App Store embracing more factors than simple download numbers to present the most popular free and paid apps. Noticing a sudden change in how the Facebook iPhone app jumped to #1 after months of sitting between the #10 and #20 spots, the website contacted various mobile advertising networks inquiring about the possibility of a new algorithm put in place by Apple in the past week. While it’s not clear which new factors Apple is using to generate the App Store charts, Inside Mobile Apps speculates the Store’s backend may now be heavily based on ratings and active usage of an app, rather than download stats.

We’ve been noticing changes in the Top Free rankings for at least three days now,” said Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, which serves 80,000 applications with its analytics product. “From our point of view, Apple is absolutely considering more than just downloads, which we believe is the right direction go to measure true popularity of an app.” Other pay-per-install networks tell us they’ve been detecting these changes too.

Apple also recently adjusted the App Store mobile experience by allowing users to browse the top 300 apps from a mobile device. Still, this rumor doesn’t address specific aspects of the story like how it would be possible for Apple to track usage, and what kind of ratings are being considered exactly. It’s well known that positive reviews in the App Store have always helped developers in gaining more exposure and better rankings, so it’s unclear how Apple could have tweaked its algorithm to influence the position of apps in the charts through ratings. Furthermore, besides leaving a rating and a review in the App Store, users can also mark others’ reviews as “helpful.” Is this factor being considered by Apple in its (allegedly) new ranking system? We don’t know.

If the rumor’s true, however, this would lead iOS developers to create better, more engaging apps that result in a better experience on a user’s end – who is likely to leave a positive review in the App Store and use an app more. If Apple’s really tweaking its algorithm to promote quality, rather than raw numbers, it’ll be interesting to see how this will play out for the thousands of iPhone and iPad developers out there. [via 9to5mac]

GoodReader for iPad Adds AirPlay for Video, Encryption, Better PDF Annotations

GoodReader, the popular file manager and document previewer for iOS, received an update last night in its iPad version that, reaching version 3.6, adds support for enterprise-class encryption for files and documents, alongside many other features and bug fixes aimed at improving the performances and stability of the app.

Encryption in the new GoodReader for iPad is based on Apple’s implementation of data protection (introduced with iOS 4.2) that requires a passcode to unlock an iOS device. To put it simply, whilst Apple’s passcode feature is responsible for encrypting and decrypting files as soon as a device is locked / unlocked, GoodReader can apply an additional security measure in the form of app-specific password and documents’ passwords. GoodReader doesn’t encrypt data – iOS’ encryption functionalities do that – but with this update the app integrates Apple’s advanced security with its own restricted access features in a single package. So while iOS will do all the work of encrypting your files when a device is locked (and until it stays so, not even a jailbreak can decrypt those files with direct access to the filesystem), GoodReader now takes full advantage of iOS’ capabilities to protect your documents and folders in case of a stolen or lost iPad (the iPhone version hasn’t been updated to version 3.6 yet).

On the server side of things, GoodReader 3.6 features better support for all online services like iDisk and Dropbox, more stable SugarSync connections and faster SFTP downloads. In case you haven’t tried the app, GoodReader is a pretty sweet way to gain access to files stored in the cloud, download them locally, and edit them.

The biggest new feature of 3.6, however, is the improved support for PDF annotations. GoodReader for iPad now offers an option to “flatten annotations”, meaning that all the drawings and annotations you take on a document – like a PDF – can be flattened into the main body of the file and previewed by Apple’s own iOS apps like Mail, Safari or iBooks. Previously, annotations were only visible in desktop apps like Preview and Acrobat Reader as iOS can’t read by default the annotations’ metadata. GoodReader now offers a workaround to save a flattened copy that’s nothing but the original file with all annotations applied within a page. You can send these annotated documents to other apps with the Open In menu, or share them via email with anyone (GoodReader will even ask you if you want to flatten a document upon hitting the share button – just to make sure).

Last, GoodReader 3.6 can stream videos to an Apple TV in your room thanks to AirPlay support, which requires iOS 4.3 or later. GoodReader might not have the most elegant interface design seen on iOS, but it sure is packed with features, and it’s an app that keeps getting better and more powerful on each release. Get it in the App Store at $4.99.