iTunes 10.7 Now Available

While a major new version of iTunes (coming in October) was announced at today’s media event in San Francisco, Apple has already released version 10.7 of the software. Labelled as “coming soon” on its website, iTunes 10.7 is actually available for download from the iTunes Download webpage.

iTunes 10.7 is a minor compatibility update for iOS 6 (which is coming next week) and the new iPods announced today.

iTunes 10.7 adds support for iOS 6 running on compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models. This update also adds support for the latest iPod nano and iPod shuffle models.

You can download iTunes 10.7 from Apple’s website.

Apple Announces New iTunes for OS X, iPod Touch 5th Generation, and a New iPod Nano

Apple hasn’t forgotten about the iPod or iTunes, announcing Wednesday a new iPod touch and a new iPod nano.

After the iPhone’s introduction, Tim Cook brought on Eddy Cue to talk about iTunes, introducing it as the #1 music store in the world, with over 200 million customers using iTunes, worldwide availability in 63 countries, and over 26 million songs available. “Two thirds of our downloads come from iOS,” Cue said on stage, while showing off brand new iTunes and App Store designs on the iPad, then on the iPhone 5. Launching September 19th, the visual refresh brings better performance when browsing through the store, and also includes the ability to preview music browsing and share store links with friends.

Apple also showcased an updated iTunes application for OS X, which features a new edge-to-edge design that looks similar to the iPad’s refreshed music app as of iOS 5. Album art flows across the display — clicking on an album expands album info as opening a folders does on iOS. iTunes also brings popovers that present a drop down of upcoming songs, and improved search results as you filter through music in your library. Cue also showed off a brand new mini-player design, which unlike previous designs, shows album artwork and gives the option to manage playlists and see upcoming songs as well.

More and updates past the break!

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iPhone 5: Our Complete Overview

Apple’s Phil Schiller took the stage today at Apple’s media event in San Francisco to officially unveil the iPhone 5, Apple’s major upgrade iPhone family. As widely rumored, the iPhone 5 features a taller display to visualize more content, a thinner profile, and a new metal backplate. While similar in the overall aesthetic to the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, the changes made to the iPhone 5’s body construction, display, and glass design represent a major change from the industrial design first introduced in 2010. Read more

The Numbers and Facts From Apple’s September 12 Event

As usual with every Apple product announcement, keynotes start with “state of the business” introduction that, through various numbers and facts, reveals how the company is doing in several areas such as retail, the App Store, and hardware sales. At today’s media event in San Francisco, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared some interesting details on a variety of subjects.

  • The new Apple retail store in Barcelona is made of limestone from a local quarry.
  • Apple is opening a new retail store in the 13th country (Sweden) this Friday.
  • There are 380 Apple retail stores worldwide.
  • Customers’ response to Mountain Lion has been “fantastic”. Seven million copies have been downloaded to date.
  • 17 million iPads have been sold in the last quarter (April-June).
  • More iPads were sold than any other PC maker sold of their entire line-up.
  • 84 million iPads have been sold to date.
  • iPad’s share of the tablet market went up from 62% last year to 68% in spite of the competition.
  • iPad accounts for 91% of web traffic from tablets.
  • 94% of Fortune 500 are testing or deploying iPads.
  • The App Store has now over 700,000 apps. 250,000 are made exclusively for the iPad.
  • 90% of all apps are downloaded every month.
  • More than 100 apps are downloaded per customer on average.
  • 400 million iOS devices have been sold through June 2012.

For more coverage, check out our September 12 news hub and follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter.

“iPhone 5”, “New iPod Touch and Nano” Appear On Apple’s Website

As noted by 9to5Mac, search queries for “iPhone 5” on Apple’s website are returning links to press releases and product pages that haven’t been released yet. With a media event scheduled for later today in San Francisco, it only makes sense that Apple is getting ready to update its website with information on the new iPhone, rumored to be a major upgrade to the iPhone 4S.

There’s been some speculation as to whether Apple would call it “iPhone 5” being the device the sixth iteration, but, at this point, there seems to be little doubt in regards to the monicker chosen by Apple. It could be a well-played “fake leak” orchestrated by the company, but it seems unlikely.

Other search queries for iPod Nano and iPod Touch reveal similar results, with links press releases and webpages not available yet.

This isn’t the first time Apple let product names and details slip a few hours ahead of media events. Last October, the “iPhone 4S” name, image, and release date briefly appeared on Apple’s Japanese website before they were pulled.

As noted by MacRumors, different search queries are also returning results for a press release called “Apple Unveils New iTunes”, dated September 12, 2012.

Favstar Redesigns→

Favstar Redesigns

Favstar is one of my favorite web services. Alongside Evernote, Simplenote, Cue, and Dropbox, it has become an essential part of my daily workflow. Today, Favstar has launched a major redesign that will surely come in handy in monitoring tweets from tomorrow’s Apple event.

Favstar works with Twitter. By default, it monitors the “faves” and retweets your tweets receive, by which users, and when. It then provides a clean interface to access these statistics, and, aside from “ego-boosting” purposes, it can actually be a great tool to see the kind of tweets and content your followers like and engage with the most. However, if you decide to unlock the Pro functionalities for $30 every six months, you’ll gain the option to give the “tweet of the day award”, see older tweets in your timeline, see retweet details, tweak your profile, get custom notifications, and a lot more. For me, it’s 30 bucks well spent on a service that has enabled to understand Twitter besides wasting time making fun of Samsung.

Matthew Panzarino has a good overview at The Next Web about today’s redesign:

The tweet view now lets you see the profile pics of those who have retweeted/fav’d you, which is standard, or provides you with a detailed analysis of the first 1k retweets of a tweet, with the account, its followers, a profile pic and text profile for reference. This can be cool as it shows which accounts are ‘first responders’ in retweeting you, allowing you to perhaps reciprocate with a follow of your own.

The old Favstar was feeling a little long in the tooth, and the new version looks great both in terms of design and features. The new Favstar offers more data and simpler navigation; the mobile website has been updated to a new design as well, sporting a panel-based layout that’s a terrific improvement over the old Favstar. I use Favstar’s mobile site every day through Tweetbot (double-tap on the Profile tab), and this is a welcome improvement that doesn’t sacrifice any functionality of the desktop site.

You can sign up for Favstar here.

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Diet Coda 1.1→

Diet Coda 1.1

Earlier today, Panic released a nice update to Diet Coda, its iPad version of popular web development app for the Mac, Coda. I’m not a web developer, but in my initial look at the app I appreciated the workflow it enabled to copy URLs for images uploaded to my web server.

Diet Coda, finally, allows me to copy the public URL for images uploaded to my FTP server. That’s a small feature, but you’d be surprised to know how many FTP iPad apps end up lacking it amidst dozens of other “power user options”. I wish Diet Coda would let me upload from the Camera Roll — hopefully that’s coming in a future update.

And in version 1.1, uploads have indeed been enabled. By tapping on a + button in the upper right corner of the UI, you can choose to upload photos or videos from your Camera Roll. Before uploading, you’ll be asked of you want to convert a .png file (such as an iOS screenshot) to .jpg, or if you want to keep it as it is. If you’ve been looking for a way to upload images from the iPad for, say, a mobile blogging workflow, this is the Diet Coda update to check out (too bad the app doesn’t support CDN providers such as Rackspace yet).

Also in this version, among other things, there’s an option to display folders on top, a toggle to show hidden files, a light theme, and code indentation as you type.

Diet Coda 1.1 is a substantial update that improves on many aspects of version 1.0. Check out the app at $19.99 on the App Store.

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Take Screenshots At 1x and 2x Resolutions Simultaneously On Retina Macs→

Take Screenshots At 1x and 2x Resolutions Simultaneously On Retina Macs

If you have a new MacBook Pro with Retina display, you’ve likely stumbled upon the issue of sharing screenshots that are too large in size for friends or coworkers who don’t have a Retina Mac yet. Or, perhaps you’ve wanted to be able to take both 1x and 2x screenshots for, say, a blog post served to Retina and non-Retina devices.

RetinaCapture is a new, free utility for Mountain Lion that does just that: it enables you to easily take crisp screenshots at both resolutions, at the same time. On a Retina Mac, just fire up the app, and choose whether you want your screenshot to be at 1x, 2x, or both. You can take a normal screenshot, timed screenshot, capture a window or a portion of the screen. Hit the button, and save your image. If you’re saving 1x and 2x files at the same time, the app will offer two naming schemes to name your images correctly. Either at 1x or 2x, screenshots will always be crisp and detailed.

RetinaCapture is available here for free. As a side note, if you’re not on a Retina Mac, you can test the app’s 2x mode by enabling HiDPI using Quartz Debug.

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The Reality Check Of Google’s New YouTube App

In an unsurprising move considering Apple’s upcoming iOS 6 update, Google released an official YouTube app for iPhone last night. Announced on the YouTube blog, the app is available for free on the App Store, and it runs natively on the iPhone; according to The New York Times, an iPad version is also in the works.

I have taken the YouTube app for a spin, and I was quite impressed with what Google accomplished in this first version. While not excellent in terms of performances, the key to this first release of YouTube for iOS is access.

One of the most controversial aspects of the former, pre-installed YouTube client for iOS was that, as Google started monetizing the YouTube platform with “official” videos from channels like VEVO, the pre-installed iOS client couldn’t display such videos due to a lack of agreement between Apple and Google in regards to ads shown to the users. On the standard desktop YouTube website, users could watch, say, music videos from official channels because the company embedded banners or pre-roll ads to monetize; on iOS devices, official videos were omitted from search results, and links to these videos would return the infamous “this video is not available on mobile” error message. As Google goes free from Apple’s restrictions with standalone apps, this is about to change. Read more