Posts in news

What’s Going On With Apple and Best Buy?

An article published by CrunchGear last night suggested Apple “blacklisted” Best Buy over a misunderstanding between the company and the retailer which, allegedly, had been holding off on selling iPad 2 units they had in stock. Apple didn’t like the strategy, and stopped sending new iPad 2 shipments to Best Buy altogether. CrunchGear also reported it was unclear why Best Buy would keep iPads in stock without selling them (telling customers iPads weren’t available at all), with this information coming from “a reader who works at Best Buy.” The report also went on to claim that – according to the tipster – Tim Cook was involved in negotiations with Best Buy, and the situation was pretty bad for the American retailer.

As it usually happens with rumors involving Apple, the report got picked up by several blogs last night. But since CrunchGear posted the tip they received from a Best Buy employee, it all got more interesting. CrunchGear updated their original report with a purported email from Tim Cook sent to the tipster. Read more

Apple Design Award Winner Star Walk Brings Augmented Reality to iPad 2

We’re huge fans of Vito Technologies’ Star Walk products here at MacStories: winner of an Apple Design Award in June 2010 and released on the Mac under the “Solar Walk” brand a few months ago, Star Walk  is an incredible product that enables you to explore the universe (stars, constellations, planets, satellites) with swipes and taps thanks to iOS multitouch integration.

If you own a copy of Star Walk for the iPad and you recently bought an iPad 2, a brand new update is awaiting in the App Store. Released 2 days ago, Star Walk 5.2 (also available on the iPhone, the app is not universal) celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight (completed by Yuri Gagarin in his Vostok spacecraft on April 12, 1961) by adding several features like full Augmented Reality support. Similarly to how the SkyView app we reviewed in March allowed you to point your device to the sky and see the position of stars and constellations in real-time, Star Walk now lets you do the same and it works really well on the iPad 2. Among various bug fixes and enhancements to the control buttons, Star Walk 5.2 also includes a calendar of celestial events to plan your stargazing sessions within the app, and the possibility to search through all categories at once. We feel the Augmented Reality introduction is, however, the biggest and most important addition in this update, and you should consider giving a try to the app if you’ve heard of Star Walk in the past, and you just got an iPad 2. Exploring the universe is way more comfortable and elegant on the tablet’s large screen.

Star Walk for iPad is available at $4.99 in the App Store. The iPhone version is available at $0.99 here.

Apple Releases Boot Camp Update for MacBook Pro 2011 Owners

Boot Camp, the utility OS X users rely on to natively install Windows on their hard drives, was updated late last night to address several issues with the MacBook Pro 2011 models released in February. The update, available here, fixes some issues with unexpected shutdowns and Japanese / Korean keyboards, and it’s highly recommended for owners of the new MacBook Pros.

For more information about Boot Camp, visit Apple’s dedicated webpage.

PhotoSync 1.1 Lets You Upload to Dropbox, AirPlay Videos

PhotoSync is a universal iOS application I reviewed a couple of months ago which allows you to share photos and videos shot on an iOS device in a completely new way: thanks to its powerful feature set, PhotoSync can send media from iOS to iOS, and from iOS to a Windows PC or Mac. Unlike several other iOS apps that usually launch a WebDAV server locally to share photos with a computer, or only enable you to send files over to another machine through a standalone utility running on the desktop, PhotoSync can do an actual iOS-to-iOS communication as well as standard desktop sharing. It requires a companion app if you want to send items to your computer, but configuration is painless if you just want to share photos and videos between iPhones and iPads using WiFi or Bluetooth.

The latest update to PhotoSync, released a few hours ago in the App Store, adds the possibility of uploading files to Dropbox or FTP servers directly from the app – a highly requested feature I’m sure will come in handy for those large photo collections that need to go into Dropbox. Uploads in original size (and even RAW) are also supported. Multiple files at once can now be uploaded from the app’s web interface, and videos can be streamed to an Apple TV thanks to AirPlay integration (iOS 4.3 is required).

PhotoSync 1.1 is available at $1.99 in the App Store. Full changelog below. Read more

Analysts: Did Apple Sell 19 Million iPhones in Q2 2011?

Two weeks ago, Apple officially announced the Q2 2011 conference call, where the company will unveil the financial results for the quarter that ended on March 26. The second fiscal quarter usually marks a decline in sales after the holiday season, but this year analysts are facing an interesting scenario: in the second quarter, Apple released the Verizon iPhone after years of rumors and speculation, and launched the iPad 2 both in the United States and internationally. Whilst previous Q2s have followed the unspoken standard of lower sales than the big boom of Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping, this year’s conference call is set to provide more insight into Verizon iPhone’s sales (which were rumored to be “below expectations”, although many disagree) and the (allegedly) huge success of the iPad 2, which is still nowhere to be found in most Apple retail stores and has a 2-3 weeks shipment delay on Apple.com.

Just like last quarter, Fortune has posted the predictions of pro and “amateur” analysts about how many iPhone units did Apple sell in the quarter. According to the analysts contacted by Fortune, Apple might have sold between 13 million and 20 million iPhones, with most predictions averaging around 16 million devices sold.

The health of Apple’s quarterly earnings – and its stock price – will depend heavily on how those two factors balanced out. The iPhone is the company’s biggest money maker; in Q1 2011, it represented nearly 40% of total revenue.

The 43 analysts we polled – professionals and amateurs – were split on the question of whether iPhone sales rose or fell in Q2. Twenty five believe Apple sold more; 18 think it sold less. Their estimates ranged from a high of 19.8 million from Susquehanna’s Jeff Fidacaro to a low of 13.24 million from Goldman Sachs’ Bill Shope.

In Q1 2011, Apple posted a record revenue of $26.74 billion with 7.33 million iPads sold, 16.24 million iPhones and 4.13 million Macs; a graphical analysis of the Q1 offers a good overview of where Apple’s sales are and what’s generating profit for the company. In the past weeks, other analysts claimed 2011 could be a $100 billion revenue for Apple. While we look forward to see whether or not Horace Dediu and Turley Muller will go close to Apple’s actual results this time around too, you can check out the full chart if predictions and estimates below. Read more

Jailbreaking iPhones Made This Student $50,000

Can jailbreaking iOS devices become a real business with an actual annual profit? Apparently, yes. And even if we wouldn’t recommend basing your monthly income entirely on the process of hacking phones and installing apps Apple doesn’t approve, $50,000 a year doesn’t sound that bad.

The Washington Post published a piece yesterday profiling Kevin Lee, a George Mason University senior that has managed to earn $50,000 a year by jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones. What started as a hobby to help out friends and relatives eventually evolved into a “real business” with 30-40 clients per week asking for jailbreak, Cydia installations, graphical customizations and “unlocks” to use the iPhone on wireless carriers otherwise unsupported by Apple. The procedure of unlocking iPhones has in fact turned out to be quite lucrative for Lee, thanks to international customers buying an iPhone in the United States, and looking for a way to use the device overseas. Lee says he recently unlocked an iPhone for a member of the Mongolian embassy who was about to go back to Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia’s capital) and needed to have a device compatible with his local carrier.

But how did a student get a massive traction for a business that – let’s face it – can be easily achieved with a computer and a couple of tutorials? With a Craigslist ad, that’s how. By posting a “Get Your iPhone Jailbroken Today” ad on the popular online community, Lee got hundreds of requests from people who didn’t have the knowledge, or simply didn’t have time to mess with redsn0w, Geohot’s tools, or Cydia itself.

Personally, I wouldn’t run a business that’s clearly going against Apple’s rules (even though the Library of Congress ruled last year jailbreaking a phone in the US is legal) and requires my friends to pay actual money for something that can be done for free in 2 minutes. Curiously enough The Washington Post reports the Craigslist ad has been taken offline since the original article. [via iPhoneDownloadBlog]

The New York Times Brings Paywall To iPad App

The official New York Times app for the iPad was updated a few minutes ago to include the new subscription system the publication first announced in March. The latest 2.0.5 version, bug fixes and performance enhancements aside, introduces the so-called paywall that restricts access to several sections of the app and only enables you to check out the Top News and Video section. You can find the updated version in the App Store here.

What’s interesting is that The New York Times still isn’t using Apple’s iOS subscription system to sell digital access to the newspaper. The app still relies on an embedded browser login to unlock all the features or sign up for a new subscription plan, and we guess it’s because developers of existing App Store apps can wait until June before being forced to update their software to include the iTunes subscriptions. From the app’s Settings, in fact, there’s no way to easily purchase a subscription like in The Daily with your iTunes account – you’ll have to manually log in The New York Times’ website from a popup window. We assume an upcoming update to the iPhone app (recently updated to version 3.0) will also activate the NYT’s paywall for sections.

On March 17th, the New York Times announced they will offer three different packages for unlimited digital access:

  • NYTimes + smartphone app: $15 per month
  • NYTimes + tablet app: $20 per month
  • NYTimes full access: $35 per month

At the moment of writing this, however, it appears that The New York Times is running a promotion with discounted access for early subscribers:

The New York Times has also started offering 1 year of full digital access to long-time subscribers of the print edition. Check out more screenshots of The New York Times iPad app below. Read more

Microsoft Releases Bing for iPad

Bing for iPad has just been released onto the iTunes App Store and it is Microsoft’s first app to make it onto the tablet device. Just like their Bing iPhone app and the Bing website, the daily image is the first thing you’ll notice with the app and it looks beautiful on the iPad’s screen. Furthermore the app gives you a quick glance of key information of Weather, News, Movies, Trends and more in a bar at the bottom of the screen.

The app contains a wealth of features and has been exceedingly well-designed to take advantage of the iPad’s strengths - this can definitely not be called just a search engine app. Those bottom tabs of information are a gateway into a full screen of lots more information. However probably the best feature of the app is the Trends page which gives you a very nice, almost FlipBoard-esque, page with all the top searches on Bing, along with a relevant image. Like the iPhone app it features a Voice Search (which works pretty well) and search, whether it be done via text or voice, can be for a website, news, image, video or map.

There is a lot of swiping that can be done in the app and it allows you to go back and forward from your last ‘panel’ of information, whether it be a web search, news page or weather. Bing Maps is included and fully functional letting you search for an address or business, find local business and even get directions.

The iPad app is curiously only available in the US iTunes app store which is certainly odd considering the web version does have international editions, that even have a different daily picture. However even weirder is that I downloaded it from the US store and ran it in Australia and it not only gave me the correct weather but the daily image was the Australian one and even Bing Maps showed my location and correctly showed local businesses, only the movie theatre times didn’t work. Jump the break for some more screenshots of the app.

Read more

ESPN Launches ‘WatchESPN’ App, Commercial for iDevices

ESPN announced today its flagship network ESPN as well as ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN3.com are now available to subscribers of Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Verizon FiOS TV via the new ‘WatchESPN’ App in the iTunes App Store.

WatchESPN has shown up in time for the Masters, the NBA Playoffs and the Major League Baseball season. Qualified subscribers who receive the linear networks as part of their video subscription can now watch the channels from the convenience of their iDevices. They even made a very funny commercial to promote the app, check it out after the break. Read more