April 2012 In Review

April was a little bit of a slower month, with no keynotes or big announcements from Apple - with the exception of yet another huge earnings call. However, MacStories did celebrate its third birthday on April 20th, and welcomed our seventh MacStories writer, Lukas Hermann, who is focused on reviewing some great apps with Inspiring UIs - you’ll see a list of those articles below the break. In news, we did see the announcement of WWDC this month (it sold out in less than 2 hours) and some incredibly successful Kickstarter projects. On the apps front there continued to be a number of app updates for the new iPad, two Tweetbot updates, Clear 1.1 and Read It Later relaunching as Pocket. Lastly, we had a number of great stories this month including a great one on iCloud in which Federico interviewed some of the developers who have implemented it and what their thoughts on it are.

WWDC 2012

On April 25th, Apple “finally” announced WWDC 2012, to be held over June 11th to 15th this year in San Francisco. The $1599 tickets went on sale immediately at around 8:30am EDT and promptly sold out in less than 2 hours. Along with the WWDC dates and tickets, Apple also announced that nominations for the 2012 Apple Design Awards were open - so if you are a developer an want to suggest an app for the award you can do that here. If you’re a student and missed out on WWDC tickets (or they were too expensive), you have until tomorrow May 2nd to lodge an application for a WWDC Student Scholarship.

Apple’s Q2 2012 Earnings Call

Yet again, Apple had a stunning quarter - its second best ever, only beaten by the last (holiday) quarter. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones, 11.8 million iPads and saw $39.2 billion in revenue for the quarter. Our full post includes the usual graphs that really highlight the growth Apple has had in nearly all aspects of their business over the past few quarters and even years.

Flashback

April saw what was perhaps the most serious malware incident the Mac has ever seen with ‘Flashback’. Apple, after taking some time to respond, eventually revealed they will provide a Flashback removal tool - which they soon did, as well as provide a Java update to remove various Flashback variants. F-Secure also released an automated Flashback removal tool (and did so before Apple released their tool).

Kickstarter Projects

The Pebble e-paper watch saw an absolute explosion of support when it launched on Kickstarter this month. As of today, about $7.5 million has been pledged to the project - far exceeding the initial goal of $100,000. Then there is the Bydge, an iPad dock that’ll turn your iPad into somewhat of a MacBook look-a-like. Not everyone is a fan of the premise, and it hasn’t set the world on fire, but it has also easily surpassed the $90,000 goal on Kickstarter with about $360,000 pledged so far (and there’s still a month to go).

Everything Else:

 

 

The Really Big Reviews

Everything Else

Lukas’ Inspiring UI Series

 

iTunes Match Launches In Italy [Update: Coming To Greece, Portugal, Austria and Slovenia Too]

Earlier today, Apple updated its Terms and Conditions for the Italian iTunes Store to include information about iTunes Match, the company’s music service powered by iCloud. Launched in November 2011 in the United States (here’s our original hands-on), the service was later brought to more countries on December 15 and January 17, including South America, the UK, and other European countries.

Lei può abbonarsi a iTunes Match pagando un canone annuale. Per abbonarsi Lei deve aver registrato una carta di credito valida nell’archivio di iTunes. L’abbonamento non è rimborsabile (salvo richiesto dalla legge applicabile), e si rinnoverà automaticamente per periodi di un anno finché Lei non lo cancellerà. Il Suo account sarà addebitato non più di 24 ore prima della scadenza del periodo di abbonamento corrente. Lei può annullare il rinnovo automatico modificando le impostazioni dell’account iTunes Store sul Suo computer. Lei non sarà più in grado di accedere ai Suoi Contenuti iTunes Match su iTunes Match dopo la scadenza del Suo periodo di abbonamento.

Back in March, it was reported that Apple was holding a series of meetings with SIAE – the Italian association that represents “artists and editors” – to get the green light on launching iTunes Match in Italy.

According to Apple’s official support document about iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud availability, Italy still isn’t listed among the countries with support for Match and iTunes in the Cloud; as of today, iTunes Match is available in 37 countries worldwide.

Whilst the update of iTunes’ terms and conditions to include additional iTunes Match certainly confirms the company has made progress on obtaining rights to launch the service, it should also be noted that, back in February, Japan was rumored to be getting support for iTunes Match soon. In the case of Japan, however, only support for iTunes in the Cloud was spotted (and was eventually launched), whilst today’s updated agreement specifically mentions iTunes Match in Italy. Read more

Should Apple Acquire Square and Foursquare?→

Should Apple Acquire Square and Foursquare?

Mor Naaman makes the case for an acquisition of Square and Foursquare by Apple:

To summarize: after the deal, Apple will immediately become a giant payments company, with an installation base that is expected to encompass half of all mobile devices sold. The company will have the best local search abilities, far exceeding any existing recommendation engine. And due to its enormous reach, it will possess a payment system that merchants will line up to support. Who’s betting against this holy trinity? Not me.

The possibilities are certainly intriguing, and Naaman crunches some interesting numbers to show how making these two products “native” on iOS would benefit all the parties involved in terms of adoption, financials, and innovation. Obviously, while the possibility of Apple acquiring other companies always leads to interesting speculation and discussions, we should also keep in mind how Apple has been considering integration with third-party services lately. Twitter, for instance, didn’t get acquired by Apple, yet its mobile usage surged since the native implementation in iOS. While not nearly as “mainstream” as Twitter, Foursquare would certainly make for a possible third-party candidate to be directly supported in iOS, at least in theory (in practice, how would Apple implement a check-in service at a system level?).

It gets even more intriguing with Square. The company is very Apple-like in its approach to design and marketing, but it relies on extra hardware to work securely with credit cards. Assuming Apple would like, someday, to enter the mobile payment scene with the iPhone – perhaps through the oft-rumored NFC – wouldn’t it make more sense for Apple to consider an all-iPhone technology that handles payments exclusively through iOS and embedded hardware? A while ago, some people suggested Apple could even play around its marketing taglines and call an iOS payment feature “AirPay”. I actually believe such strategy would be perfect to push a possible next iPhone as an independent, no-extra-dongles-necessary payment device.

Location and payments are two areas that Apple will eventually address via new hardware and software, and Naaman makes a good case for the two biggest players in the field. Apple is also expected to show new features of iOS and OS X Mountain Lion at the WWDC 2012, which kicks off on June 11 in San Francisco.

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Tweetbot 2.3 Adds New Gestures, Integrations, UI Refinements

Less than a month after a major 2.2 update that added iCloud sync for timelines, DMs, and mute filters, Tweetbot is back today with a significant update on the iPhone and iPad that redefines some of the gestures and interactions introduced with the original version 1.0 (2.0 on the iPhone). Overhauling the standalone tweet detail and conversation views that, based on intuitive gestures, were two of Tweetbot’s hallmark features, Tweetbot 2.3 unifies single tweets, actions, replies, and conversations within redesigned screens that, with a bit of practice, I believe will ultimately help saving time and precious taps around the app.

New Tweet Detail View

Quick access: swipe right to left on a tweet.

The single tweet view – the screen that displays a user’s single tweet alongside the action bar, geo-location and client info, and other data – has been redesigned to accomodate inline conversations and replies. Providing the usual context for author, buttons to reply, retweet, fave, share, and view, the new tweet detail view elegantly puts a banner-like notification up top to indicate how many replies a specific tweet received; if the tweet belongs to a conversation, Tweetbot 2.3 displays a “In reply to…” section at the bottom (down to the original tweet that started the conversation), with additional replies above.

The developers have managed to cram a lot of information and elements into a single screen without sacrificing usability and clarity – unlike other apps, it’s always clear which tweets belong to a conversation and which ones generated other replies.

To go back to the timeline from the tweet detail view, you can now quickly swipe with one finger from left to right. Here’s a recap of all the gestures and tap actions supported in Tweetbot from our review of the iPad version (interactions are mostly the same on iPhone).

New Conversation View & Sharing

Quick access: swipe left to right on a tweet.

Similarly, the new conversation view of Tweetbot 2.3 displays both conversations and replies inline. Accessible with the usual swipe-to-reveal action, the conversation view loads replies in a neatly separated section just like the aforementioned tweet detail view.

New in 2.3, conversations can now be uploaded directly to social curation platform Storify for further sharing with the world; the uploading process is automatic and doesn’t require a dedicated login, meaning that Tweetbot will simply publish a conversation, such as this one, to Storify using your Twitter account. Whilst I hope for a future version of Tweetbot to let me save “all replies” to a specific tweet from the detail view (right now, it’s only enabled in the Conversation window), I think Tapbots did the right thing in simplifying the curation aspect of Storify and make it available as a direct option without additional configuration required.

Also new in the 2.3 conversation view (but enabled for single tweets and DMs as well): the app now has an improved email format when sending tweets to someone else via email.

More Features in 2.3

Several additional refinements and improvements went into the development of Tweetbot 2.3. First off, Droplr support: for URLs, images, and videos, users have now the option to choose Droplr as a sharing service in the Settings. When shared, videos now have a dedicated “play” thumbnail to differentiate them from images, and thumbnail support has been added for Vimeo links, too.

The app now correctly recognizes $stock links, allowing you to easily fire up a search for $AAPL or your favorite stock, and save it for future usage.

The tweet drawer has been reorganized, with the last two buttons gaining more order in the process.

Last, some minor touches in version 2.3 will contribute to improving usability and to allowing users customize their timelines to their needs and tastes: retweets from specific users can now be disabled at any time, and it’s possible to quickly open the last saved draft by holding down the tweet compose button. The timeline sync bookmark icon is now an optional setting, and Tweetbot is capable of uploading high-res images when on WiFi.

With important improvements and UI refinements aimed at increasing the app’s ease of use and display of information, Tweetbot 2.3 is another solid and rich update that adds powerful functionality without compromising the app’s interaction and workflow. You can get Tweetbot 2.3 on the App Store today.

- Tweetbot for iPhone

- Tweetbot for iPad

DevRocket Is A Photoshop Plugin To Boost Your iOS Design Workflow

Just a few hours ago I wrote a bit about Screeshot Journal, an app to easily manage and investigate your iPhone and iPad screenshots in order to ease your design workflow. But to take pictures of an app which deserves to be viewed in such large resolutions, such app must have a solid UI design. To speed up and simplify the process of creating iOS UIs, developers at UI Parade — one of the greatest resources for UI inspiration by the way — just released their own Photoshop plugin called DevRocket.

DevRocket is a sweeping blow of all design presets and saving possibilities iOS UI designers could need for their process of designing new apps. It supports designing for all devices (iPhone and iPad) and Retina resolution presets as well. With DevRocket, you can:

  • generate portrait, landscape and splash display canvases, which include the native iOS status and navigation bars
  • design the same interface for Retina and non-Retina devices at the same time
  • save those designs with one click cut down the complete UI to individual “UI snips” for Xcode
  • create icons out of preset canvases (with adjustable corner radius and correct naming for Xcode)

Besides all these features, DevRocket looks nice and easy to use. It is definitely worth a try for all iOS designers who use Photoshop to design their app UIs, and who are constantly after a nitro boost for their productivity and workflow. There’s also a little demo video on Vimeo (and embedded after the break) showing the plugin in action. You can get DevRocket for $10 (payment via PayPal).
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Rovio: Angry Birds Space “Fastest Growing Mobile Game” with 50 Million Downloads in 35 Days

Angry Birds maker Rovio has today announced the impressive milestone that the latest entry in the Angry Birds franchise, Angry Birds Space, has become the “fastest growing mobile game yet” with 50 million downloads in 35 days.

Angry Birds Space hit 50 million downloads within 35 days, making it the fastest growing mobile game yet and breaking all our previous records. This has been simply amazing, and the whole Rovio team is thrilled to see such a fantastic reception for the game.

It’s unclear whether Rovio is counting desktop versions in the total number of downloads for the mobile game, but the figure is still impressive and substantial nevertheless of how iOS, Android, PC, and Mac downloads have been split so far. Considering Rovio’s previous numbers, it is safe to assume the majority of downloads are really coming from mobile platforms like iOS and Android.

Angry Birds Space was released on March 22. In the three days following the launch, the company announced users had already downloaded the game over 10 million times.

Organize And Investigate Your Mobile Screenshots with Screenshot Journal

The first thing I have to mention about Screenshot Journal is that the developers at UIForge who are responsible for this handy and beautiful iPhone and iPad app do a really fast and good support work. Otherwise, I would not have been able to write this review at all, because to my surprise, the app didn’t work at all when I installed it for the first time. Fortunately, I just had to re-activate the location option for my Camera Roll to allow Screenshot Journal to journal my screenshots and myself to finally test it.

Screenshot Journal is a tool for UI designers, artists, and other pixel addicts who care a bit more about their iPhone (or iPad) screenshots than the integrated Camera Roll archive does. The app archives all your screenshots and organizes them chronologically or by marking favorites. After the first launch, Screenshot Journal imports all your existing screenshots within a few minutes, and new ones will immediately get imported after you took them and the app is running in the background. This way, it can handle an immense amount of images — the exact amount and overall data size is also displayed at the top — and you’ll never need to have a look into your Camera Roll again.

When selecting a screenshot, you’ll find the same interaction options as in the system Camera Roll, but all are slightly (one, in fact, immensely) improved. You can copy images, additionally send them via mail or Twitter to the world, and delete them, either individually or via a bulk delete in the trash window. But the real deal of Screenshot Journal is its zooming feature. You can zoom in an image until you can see (and optionally grid) single pixels, which equates an optical enlargement of up to 400 percent. Every detail of your screenshot becomes visible and analyzable; this feature is the reason why Screenshot Journal is a very handy companion utility for designers on the go: you can check any detail, flaws and bugs of beta designs, websites or other releases – wherever you are, almost instantly.

This powerful feature set is packed into a very beautiful UI, just as if Screenshot Journal itself wants to give an example of how such pixels should look like. For the first time, an app I test is that simple, I don’t consider the absence of preferences a drawback. Screenshot Journal doesn’t need preferences: its features are intuitive and arranged well within the app. Unfortunately, Screenshot Journal did not perform quite well on my 3rd-gen iPod running iOS 5. Changing from the main window to an image (and back) always took its 5 to 10 seconds and got pretty annoying after some time.

But nevertheless Screenshot Journal is a very good take on serving UI designers’ needs on the go. This app marks an important step forward in the area of mobile app and UI design, and I recommend it to anyone who needs to take and check a lot of screenshots on his iPhone or iPad.

Screenshot Journal is available as a universal app for $1.99 on the App Store.

The NYT Investigates How Apple Sidesteps Billions In Taxes→

The NYT Investigates How Apple Sidesteps Billions In Taxes

The New York Times this weekend published an in-depth article about Apple’s tax practices and specifically, how they have been able to “sidestep” billions in taxes through carefully chosen office locations for certain financial activities. For example, a small office in Reno, Nevada (shown above) manages and invests some of the companies cash - in a state where corporate tax rate is zero - compared to California’s 8.84% where Apple’s headquarters are.

Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year. As it has in Nevada, Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world.

The New York Times doesn’t suggest that there is anything illegal about what Apple does, every company tries to minimise the taxes they owe. Rather, it paints a picture of how tech companies in particular have been taking advantage of tax codes “written for an industrial age and ill suited to today’s digital economy”.

Apple, for instance, was among the first tech companies to designate overseas salespeople in high-tax countries in a manner that allowed them to sell on behalf of low-tax subsidiaries on other continents, sidestepping income taxes, according to former executives. Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations — some of which directly imitated Apple’s methods, say accountants at those companies.

A particularly stark is example is to compare Apple to Walmart, Apple paid $3.3 billion in taxes from profits of $34.2 billion compared to Walmart who paid $5.9 billion in taxes from their $24.4 billion in profits last year. Apple was able to achieve that because it’s much easier to move digital products to low-tax countries than it is for Walmart to do the same, with their physical products.

When someone in the United States buys an iPhone, iPad or other Apple product, a portion of the profits from that sale is often deposited into accounts controlled by Braeburn, and then invested in stocks, bonds or other financial instruments, say company executives. Then, when those investments turn a profit, some of it is shielded from tax authorities in California by virtue of Braeburn’s Nevada address.

In their response to the NYT’s request for a comment, Apple focused on their US job-creation activities, stressing that their innovation and growth was providing benefits that go beyond just paying taxes. You can read their full response here.

Over the past several years, we have created an incredible number of jobs in the United States. The vast majority of our global work force remains in the U.S., with more than 47,000 full-time employees in all 50 states. By focusing on innovation, we’ve created entirely new products and industries, and more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers — from the people who create components for our products to the people who deliver them to our customers.

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Typeli Is A Questionable OS X Note-Taking App

I really thought a long time about the question whether I should review Typeli by Lukasz Dmowski or not. When I looked at the app website for the first time, I was quite impressed by its design and feature set, but after trying it out for some time, most of the magic the website conveys is gone. What remains is just another note taking app with innovative, but very uncomfortable and unfinished styling and organizing features. Read more