Posts in news

What Happened To App Subscriptions? [Video]

Last night we reported Apple is already working on a new build of iOS that should be coming as early as mid-December to support plans for recurring subscriptions in App Store apps. The first app to take advantage of these new options? The Daily by News Corp.

Well, at least that’s what the rumors say, and of course we won’t be hearing anything official from Apple until the day the collaboration with News Corp. goes public. But plans for recurring subscriptions have been going around for a while at Cupertino, although they didn’t play out the way we wanted. Or perhaps Jobs and Forstall wanted. As a matter of fact, yesterday I remembered Forstall had mentioned “subscriptions” as a new business model for developers in iPhone OS 3.0. At the iPhone OS 3.0 preview event in March 2009, he clearly stated that many developers (especially magazine app publishers) were asking for a way to renew subscriptions in-app. So what did those publishers get? Recurring subscriptions? No, they got in-app purchases, which are far from being a way to automatically renew a subscription.

So we took the part from the preview event video where Scott Forstall mentions subscriptions and re-uploaded it. Looking back, it’s not clear whether Apple really saw in-app purchases as a way to automatically renew magazine subscriptions in-app or not. Maybe they wanted recurring subscriptions to be part of the in-app purchase system but they had to remove them from the final version of iPhone OS 3.0. I mean, blogs back then really seemed to think subscriptions were a go. Thing is, Apple hasn’t changed its position since then (not even when the iPad came out) and we think it’s about time to have a proper system for recurring subscriptions tied to iTunes accounts.

Check out the video below. Read more

iPad Drawings on Display in Paris

The iPad drawings of David Hockney are being displayed at the Pierre Bergé in Paris. The Yves Saint Laurent Foundation dedicated its 14th exhibition to over 200 of Hockney’s iPhone and iPad drawings. It’s showing now thru January 30th, 2011. If I lived there, this would be so cool to go see. If you’re close, check it out!

Hockney used the Brushes.app to create these digital paintings and the way he carried his iPad around was very original - custom pockets in his suits, which you can read more about here. His jacket pocket has a deep inside pocket that the iPad, or as he calls it ‘sketchbook’, fits snugly into.

Another cool thing about the exhibition is that it is being presented on iPhones and iPads; the brightness and vibrant color originally intended by the artist are respected. To see a video from the exhibition, click here. This is just another example of what a great product Apple’s iDevices are, they can be used in so many ways and people keep coming up with great ideas to use it for.

[via kottke.org via Fondation Pierre Bergé]

Beatles In iTunes: 2 Million Songs Sold, 450,000 Album Downloads

Unless you’ve been living in a yellow submarine for the past three weeks, I guess you heard about the Beatles coming to iTunes. In fact, Apple thought the day the Beatles’ library was released in iTunes would be a day we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.

Life-changing event or not, the Beatles in iTunes have sold over 2 million songs so far and generated 450,000 album downloads, Billboard reports.

In US the best-selling album was Abbey Road and best-selling song was Here Comes the Sun.

Backed by a strong advertising campaign which also happens to promote iTunes, it looks like there was room for The Beatles in people’s music libraries, after all. One could argue whether 2 million songs sold with all that campaign are much or not, we’re just going to wait for Billboard to provide additional numbers and information before judging.

Steve Jobs Says They’re Taking A “Giant Leap To Driverless Printing”

Ok, so AirPrint’s removal from OS X 10.6.5 left a few people disappointed. Users were expecting to be able to print from iOS 4.2 to any printer shared through a Mac or PC, but the feature didn’t make the cut in the final version of 10.6.5. Sure, you can achieve the same functionality using 3rd party tools like Printopia, but unofficial tweaks – even if well developed and stable – are never quite like Apple’s own implementation. In the case of AirPrint, mostly because it takes huge resources and teams to achieve stable and fast driverless printing.

That is exactly what Steve Jobs allegedly told a MacRumors forum member in a recent email exchange. Apple is doing the best they can to re-introduce the feature in the next iterations of OS X, and we have to wait. Read more

Jobs and Ive Rejoice: Apple Granted Patents for iPhone 4 and iPad Industrial Design

Apple wins dozens of design and tech patents every week, and most of them are about unannounced features and products the engineers at Cupertino may or may not use in the future. Think about the hybrid iMac: we haven’t heard anything about it yet, but the patent is out there. Same applies for hundreds of different patents: they’re cool to look at, but it’s likely that you’ll never see them in action.

Today’s patent, though, is a major win for Apple’s design team and Steve Jobs: as Patently Apple reports, Apple was granted patents for the iPhone 4 and iPad industrial design and the iPhone UI overview. Read more