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iOS 5.0.2 Coming Soon With More Battery Fixes, iOS 5.1 To Bring New Siri Features?

According to German website Macerkopf [Google Translation], Apple is quickly pushing towards the next release of iOS 5, likely iOS 5.0.2, to bring additional battery life fixes, and the update may come out as early as next week. Additionally, the website also claims the next major update to iOS 5, dubbed iOS 5.1, will include new Siri functionalities tied to the iPhone’s hardware such as camera and Settings integration.

In addition, a larger Siri update is planned, where the hardware is heavily involved. As examples here are “do a photo,” “make a video”, “turn on wireless” or “turn off Bluetooth” to call.

In spite of Macerkopf missing the iOS 5 and iCloud announcement date earlier this year, we believe there are some facts that could back their latest rumor. Software updates, for one, are always “in the works”, so it should be no surprise that Apple is “already working” on iOS 5.1 and perhaps even something after that. But the specific claims of iOS 5.0.2 and iOS 5.1 aren’t too far from what Apple has already confirmed either: the company has said they’re continuing to investigate battery life issues on iOS 5 devices – which, apparently, weren’t completely fixed by iOS 5.0.1 – and has posted a Siri FAQ, detailing how some limitations will be lifted for international users in 2012 with support for new languages. Apple hasn’t said anything about new Siri functionalities, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see a beta service gaining new features over time.

In the meantime, users who are still affected by battery life issues on iOS 5 can head over Apple Support Communities to report back on their experience with the iOS 5.0.1 update.

Gmail for iOS Is Back In The App Store

Following an unsuccessful launch on November 2, Google has re-released its official Gmail app for iOS in the App Store, which was pulled due to a bug that affected push notifications. In spite of the criticism received by the app, it appears Google didn’t make any substantial changes, as reported by this version’s changelog:

If you already have the Gmail app 1.0.1 released on 2 Nov, you will need to uninstall or log out of the old app prior to installing the new app.

We’re currently re-testing the Gmail app for iOS and we’ll update this post with more details if necessary. Update: push notifications are now working in this version (as you can see I have a badge on my Home screen), but there are no new features. The app is still web-based as in the first version, with no support for multiple accounts and poor scrolling performances, among other issues.

Download Gmail for iOS here.

Evernote Introduces “Clearly” Chrome Extension for Easier Web Reading and Clipping

Earlier today Evernote, note-taking/clipping/memory service that comes with a variety of web, desktop and mobile apps, has announced a new standalone product after Peek: Clearly. Available as a Chrome extension for now, but coming soon to other browsers, Clearly allows users to enjoy a distraction-free reading environment on the web so that articles, like this one, will be displayed as just text and images without other graphical elements, ads, or page breaks. Conceptually similar to Instapaper, Readability and other tools that aim at making reading on the web more elegant and clutter-free, Clearly is integrated with Evernote’s existing platform in that, once activated, a sidebar on the left will appear containing a button to forward an article directly to your Evernote inbox. The article will appear in Evernote as it looks in Clearly: just text and images.

Clearly is nothing new if you’re used to Instapaper or Read It Later, but it makes sense from Evernote’s perspective as it’s integrated in the browser and it makes clipping, ultimately one of Evernote’s main features, easier and nicer. Clearly even comes with three different font options and sizes, capability of turning multi-page articles into single-page ones, a Print button and settings to customize its themes and appearance. The overlay opened by the extension can be closed at any time (even with a keyboard shortcut) and the animations are fairly smooth in the latest Chrome stable build.

With Clearly, you now have two Evernote buttons for your browser bar. Our Web Clipper will help you capture anything you see online and Clearly will give you a clean reading experience. We hope you like it. We plan on bringing Clearly to more platforms and more languages soon. Let us know what you think.

In the past months, Evernote has been revamping its set of tools and apps, giving a completely new interface to its Mac and iOS clients, more features to the web app, and enhancing the Android client with Skitch functionalities after the acquisition of the service, which will soon be integrated in Evernote for iOS as well. You can download Clearly from the Chrome Web Store here. Read more

Official Minecraft: Pocket Edition for iOS Coming Today

Mojang’s Minecraft, a popular sandbox building game that gathered quite a following in the past year since its “beta” release, is coming to iOS as a universal app later today, GamePro reports. Minecraft: Pocket Edition is already available in the New Zealand App Store and, as usual with timezone releases in iTunes, it should become available in the United States later today at 11 PM. The game is currently propagating in the various international App Stores.

In the past year, several unofficial clones of Minecraft surfaced on iOS. Ever since developer Notch and his company, Mojang, announced an official mobile version – the aforementioned Pocket Edition – buzz started building around the game as fans of desktop Minecraft were anticipating a way to enjoy Minecraft’s game mechanics (an open world where you can build virtually anything using “blocks”) on mobile devices. Minecraft: Pocket Edition was initially released on the Xperia Play and, with Minecraft hitting 1.0 version this week and MineCon underway, is now coming to the iPhone and iPad.

Early feedback on TouchArcade seems to suggest Pocket Edition isn’t nearly as complex as regular Minecraft, lacking several features such as enemies, animals and online multiplayer. Pocket Edition comes with local WiFi multiplayer, 36 different kinds of blocks, and randomized worlds.

Minecraft: Pocket Edition is available now at this link, and is expected to go live worldwide today.

Nintendo 3DS From An iOS User’s Perspective

Last week, I bought a Nintendo 3DS with Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. And coming back to “regular” portable console gaming after four years of multitouch iOS gaming felt strange.

As I explained in my Aquaria review yesterday, I started playing with a Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was six. Actually, my home console gaming experience started with the SNES, but my parents had already bought me a Game Boy. I grew up with Game Boys (classic, Pocket, Color, Advance, and various iterations of the latter), Nintendo’s consoles (SNES, N64, Game Cube, Wii) and Sony’s PlayStation (PSX and PS2). I skipped SEGA’s Dreamcast and Microsoft’s original Xbox, albeit in 2008 I decided, for some reason, to buy an Xbox 360. I basically never touched it. In fact, I’m pretty sure my 360 still has the original Dashboard view – I don’t even know how to update the thing.

I’ve been a “regular” gamer from 1994 to 2007. Four years ago, something happened: as I graduated from high school and got a job, I found to have less time for gaming. Things got even worse after I started MacStories, gaming time-wise. At the same time, whilst my DS and PSP and 360 were catching the dust, I started playing the casual game for iPhone that you can get at $0.99 in the App Store and doesn’t make you fell all guilty about it. After all, it’s just a .99 game that you can play for 20 minutes, not hours. You didn’t spend $60 and 40 hours on a game – I bet a lot of people know the feeling. At least initially, casual iPhone gaming was the cure for ex-gamers that still wanted a quick bite off the digital entertainment scene.

So for nearly four years I bought nothing but iPhone and iPad games. I was quite happy with the results: I could play the latest hit for 30 minutes a day, and say that “I enjoyed it”. I clicked the Buy button on a lot of games: most of them I never finished. But they still gave me the illusion of enjoyment as they were little $0.99 gems I couldn’t feel guilty about. It’s easy to say you’ve “enjoyed” something that costs less than a dollar. So my iTunes library grew larger and full of half-finished, presumably enjoyed iOS games. Read more

Readability Goes Free, Submits New iOS App To Apple

Earlier this year, web reading service and platform Readability found itself in the middle of a debate regarding Apple’s newly launched subscriptions for apps and in-app purchasing rules, which forced the developers of Readability – a web-based tool to organize and read articles found online – to either follow Apple’s guidelines and give a 30% of their revenue to the company, or give up on the idea of having a native iOS client for iPhone and iPad. Because Readability’s unique twist was that, with a monthly fee, 70% of the revenue would go to the publishers of articles consumed through Readability, the developers decided to change direction and create a full-featured HTML5 app with offline access and most of the features they originally planned for the native Readability app. Readability’s revamped service was promising, but its developers didn’t expect subscriptions and in-app purchase rules to apply to them. And so they chose HTML5.

Today, however, Readability is announcing major changes to the platform, which include a new price point: free. Users that still want to support publishers will be able to create a Premium subscription that will also give them “additional features”; Readability says that going free will allow more people to enjoy the service, and solidify Readability as a platform for web reading.

With this release, Readability is available at no cost. Sign-up and you’ll have your own profile and reading list in no time. Both Readability accounts and our companion apps will always be completely free, but we also offer a premium experience for users who want additional features and an easy way to support their favorite writers and publishers.

Another big change for Readability is that, by going free, this time they have a chance of being approved by Apple. In fact, the developers explain in a blog post that a new iOS app – built in collaboration with Teehan+Lax – has already been submitted to Apple, and is awaiting approval. Considering the aforementioned Premium option for users, we assume it’ll be built directly into the app as well as in-app purchase (as only publishing apps with recurring subscriptions are accepted into Apple’s Newsstand).

Alongside the new iOS app, work continues on Readability’s HTML5 website and the entire Readability feature set, which is now open to developers and publishers willing to “enrich their own services and apps with Readability.”

Since its re-launch earlier this year, Readability has always looked like a viable alternative to more popular “read later” solutions like Instapaper and Read It Later, both available on the web as well as iOS devices. Currently, Readability comes with an array of browser-based tools such as bookmarklets and a Chrome extension, whilst the website has a landing page for the iOS app “coming soon” for free.
Read more

Apple Begins Testing OS X 10.7.3 With Developers

As noted by AppleInsider, earlier today Apple seeded the first version of Lion’s next update – 10.7.3 – to registered Mac developers. The build, labelled 11D16, is available both for Lion and Lion Server configurations.

According to developers familiar with the release, the focus areas for 10.7.3 testing are iCloud document storage, Address Book, iCal and Mail. Apple warns developers that by installing the 10.7.3 seed, they will be unable to revert back to older versions.

The latest version of OS X Lion, 10.7.2, was released on October 12th and delivered support for iCloud on the desktop, alongside other new features, fixes and optimizations. As with 10.7.1 before, 10.7.2 was released both through Software Update and the Mac App Store. If Apple’s testing period for 10.7.2 (the OS was first seeded in late July) and 10.7.1 release are of any indication, 10.7.3 testing should require at least one month before it goes public.

Apple Names Arthur D. Levinson Chairman of the Board

With a press release, Apple has announced that Arthur D. Levinson is the company’s new non-executive Chairman of the Board. Levinson has been a co-lead director since 2005; Apple also announced Bob Iger, President and CEO of Walt Disney, is joining the board.

Levinson is Genentech’s current Chairman and has served as CEO from 1995 to 2009. Named by BusinessWeek “one of the best managers” in 2004 and 2005, Levinson was a close friend to Steve Jobs and also served as a director of Google until he resigned from the board in 2009. Changes in Apple’s board have already appeared on the company’s Leadership page. Levinson fills the role of Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs, who resigned as CEO in late August, was named Chairman of the Board, and passed away in early October.

As for Iger, Disney’s corporate profile reports:

As President and CEO, Mr. Iger is the steward of the world’s largest media company and some of the most respected and beloved brands around the globe. His strategic vision for The Walt Disney Company focuses on three fundamental aspects: generating the best creative content possible; fostering innovation and utilizing the latest technology; and expanding into new markets around the world. Mr. Iger has built on Disney’s rich history of unforgettable storytelling, with the acquisition of Pixar (2006) and Marvel (2009), two of the entertainment industry’s greatest storytellers. Always one to embrace new technology, Mr. Iger has made Disney an industry leader at the forefront of offering its creative content across new and multiple platforms.

Readers of the official Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson may be already familiar with Bob Iger, who is often quoted in Steve Jobs’ negotiations between Pixar and Disney.

Press release after the break. [image via] Read more

Review: Aquaria

When I was 6, my parents bought me a Super Nintendo. I didn’t know much about video games back then, but I knew that after Nintendo’s Game Boy I wanted the SNES. Sure enough, I got a European SNES for my birthday with some games to go with it, including Stunt Race FX and Super Metroid. Stunt Race FX eventually got reconsidered as a “gem” from the SNES era years later, but I remember I didn’t like it much back then. I did love Super Metroid, and even if the challenge was a little too hard for a six year old kid, I got away convinced that games like Super Metroid were the ones I liked. In the years that followed, I played Super Metroid on an emulator (somehow, I lost my original SNES cables) with a much better understanding of its plot, and all the Metroids that were released on the Game Boy Advance (Fusion and Zero) Game Cube and Wii (the Prime series). I even went through that pain that was Metroid Prime Hunters for the original DS. I loved Metroid.

At the same time, I tried to explore other offerings from the genre that Metroid and Castlevania nurtured. That meant going through Symphony Of The Night on the PSX, and other less inspired titles for Nintendo’s GBA. But I loved the so-called “Metroidvania” games – characterized by large maps with areas that you have to explore and unlock through upgrades to your main character, 2D side-scrolling, crazy hard boss fights and generally decent plots – so I kept playing.

As I grew up and got a job, I found to have less time for gaming. I bought a Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 but never really got to fully enjoy them. In fact, I’ve only recently started to get back into portable gaming thanks to iOS devices and a Nintendo 3DS, which I acquired last week (but more on this in another story). So it was with a mix of curiosity, excitement and, after years of non-playing, apprehension that I approached Aquaria for iPad, a porting of a popular, award-winning PC game. Would a Metroidvania game for iOS still hold up to my old expectations and renewed interest for multi-touch based adventures and puzzles? Read more