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Apple Announces Location-based “Find My Friends”


Previously rumored to be an upcoming feature of iOS 5 and iCloud, Apple has just formally introduced Find my Friends, a new service to “find” the people that have opted to share their location with you. According to the presentation, you’ll be able to invite friends to share their location with you for a limited time, so, for example, you’ll be able to see them in real-time as they’re driving to your house; there are privacy options and parental restrictions to make sure the user has control over what’s being shared and how location appears on a map.

Find my Friends will be available when iCloud launches – October 12th.

Update: Here’s a lot more information about Find my Friends available directly from Apple. First, the proper PR introduction:

Find My Friends is a new app available as a free download from the App Store that lets you easily share your location with people who are important to you. Friends and family appear on a map so you can quickly see where they are. Find My Friends also lets you temporarily share your location with a group of friends, whether it’s for a couple of hours for a dinner or a couple of days on a camping trip; when the time is up, the sharing ends. With Find My Friends, you get a notification every time you get a new friend request and if you give them permission, they can see your location. With a simple tap you can hide your location. Parental controls help you manage how your child uses Find My Friends.

Apple has also put up a dedicated webpage alongside Find my iPhone, detailing the features of Find my Friends. The new app is integrated with Contacts and Maps, has a preference panel inside Settings -> General, and will allow you to find friends on a map, but also control how your location is shared, and for how long. You can choose to “temporarily share your location with a group of people”, and when a notification for a new friend request appears, you can accept it to let the new friend see your location. Otherwise, flipping the switch to off will hide your location. And about the aforementioned parental restrictions:

Parental restrictions help you manage how your children use Find My Friends. Controls are quick and easy to set up and require a password to override your settings. That way your kids can have fun — and you can make sure they stay safe.

Apple Confirms: iOS 5 and iCloud Launch on October 12th

At its keynote in Cupertino, Apple has confirmed the next major version of iOS, iOS 5, will be available on October 12th for all customers.

iOS 5 is the next major release of Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, bringing new features like PC-Free setup, iCloud, Notification Center and direct Twitter integration to iOS devices.

Update: Alongside iOS 5, Apple’s new suite of cloud services, iCloud, will be available for free on October 12th.

[image via]

250 Million iOS Devices Sold, 18 Billion Apps Downloaded So Far

Tim Cook reported at today’s Apple keynote that iPod sales have exceeded 300 million units, with 45 million of those iPods sold since June of 2011. Also reported was that the iPhone 4 now accounts for over half of all iPhones sold.

iTunes has also seen significant growth. There are now over 20 million songs in iTunes. The number of features in the iTunes store has also increased; iTunes remains the number #1 music store worldwide and customers have downloaded over 16 billion songs.

Apple has sold over 250 million iOS devices. Tim Cook reported that 92% of Fortune 500 companies are testing and deploying the iPad. Apple’s Senior VP of iOS Software, Scott Forstall, reported over 500,000 apps are now available on the App Store, with 140,000 of them made specifically for the iPad. 18 billion apps have been downloaded so far, and over 1 billion are downloaded each month from the App Store. Apple has announced it has paid $3 billion to developers so far.

Apple Announces New “Cards” iOS App

Apple’s Senior VP of iOS Software Scott Forstall took the stage today at Apple’s media event to announce Cards, a new iOS app to create a card on your phone, with Apple printing it, embossing it, and mailing to you. Users can choose between 21 different designs, and the app will support iOS 5’s new push notification system. The app will be available on the App Store on October 12th; Apple says mailing cost for cards will be $2.99 in the United States.

We’ll have a more detailed look at Cards for iPhone once it’s available on the App Store.

[image via]

OS X Lion: 6 Million Downloads So Far, Apple Approaching 60 Million Mac Users

At Apple’s media event in Cupertino, CEO Tim Cook just announced that OS X Lion, released on July 20th, gained 6 million downloads so far on the Mac App Store, a 80% growth over the previous version, Snow Leopard. Tim Cook has also reported the iMac and MacBook Pro are the #1 desktop and notebook in the US, best representing the Mac’s 23% growth over the last year.

With the fast adoption of OS X Lion, which is sold at $29.99 on the App Store, and the popularity of the MacBook Air, Tim Cook announced Apple is nearing 60 million Mac users worldwide.

[image via]

iPhone 4S Name, Images, Launch Date Appear on Apple’s Website

We’re only 30 minutes away from Apple’s iPhone keynote, but it appears the company has already started uploading material for the new iPhone 4S on its website. First off, we noticed the following banner on a Japanese retail page: [Thanks, Ady]

A rough Google Translation for the banner says:

iPhone 4S, appeared.

October 14, from 8:00 am to launch the Apple Store. To help you choose the carrier and rate plan is right for you. staff because it sets the iPhone, and is ready to start using before leaving the store. Learn more

The link to the image, however, can’t be accessed from the Apple’s Japanese website. As MacRumors also notes, there seems to be another image detailing an upcoming iPod nano refresh with new user interface and more fitness functions. 9to5mac has found images for the black and white iPhone 4S somewhere else on Apple’s website, showing an iPhone 4-like device with iOS 5 screenshots. Changing the URL of those direct links from “4s” to “4” reveals older promotional images for the iPhone 4, suggesting these iPhone 4S images are indeed real, and that the device will run iOS 5 out of the box.

Update: Additionally, iDownloadBlog has found another image on Apple’s servers, this time for U.S. carrier Sprint. Sprint has long been rumored to be getting the next-generation iPhone, and this image seems to confirm that Sprint will be a new carrier option in choosing the new iPhone model. You can find the image here.

Stay tuned for more Apple announcements at 10 AM Pacific time.

Adobe Releases Flash 11 and AIR 3

Following a series of announcements from Adobe MAX yesterday, the company has released new versions of Flash Player and Adobe AIR, reaching versions 11 and 3, respectively. Initially seeded as betas in July, Flash 11 and AIR 3 bring a series of improvements, including hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics rendering through Stage 3D in what Adobe claims to be up to 1,000 times faster rendering performance over Flash Player 10 and AIR 2. With the Stage 3D API, Adobe promises console-quality browser games and apps with possibility for developers to animate millions of objects simultaneously at 60 frames per second.

Additionally, these two releases bring optimizations for HD video, improved 64-bit performances and, for AIR 3, native extensions to allow developers to take advantage of a hardware’s native capabilities such as gyroscopes, light sensors, multiple screens, and NFC if supported. The inclusion of H.264/AVC software encoding for cameras will enable higher quality real-time communications from within Flash Player as well.

You can read more on Flash 11 and AIR 3 directly on Adobe’s blog. The download are now live on Adobe’s website here, and here.

Grazing 2.1 & Grazing for OS X: Push Links Back to the Mac

When Grazing 2.0 was released in July, I wrote it was my favorite iOS browser. Three months into this summer’s major update, it still is: Grazing, available on the iPhone and iPad, managed to find the right combination between offering “alternative features” that would make a paid app worth its price (Apple’s Safari, a more than fine browser, comes pre-installed on all iOS devices and is gaining some sweet improvements in iOS 5), while at the same time being simple enough for the average user to be able to approach it without feeling overwhelmed by a custom interface and overly designed functionalities. Grazing doesn’t look like Safari and it’s got a few more buttons and actions than Apple’s browser, but it does feel and work like a regular desktop browser, only ported to the iPhone and iPad. Things I loved about Grazing included tabs, gestures, combined search/address bar, possibility to push links between devices, and several customization options for the sharing menu and settings.

With the 2.1 update released last week and a new free Mac companion app for push notifications, my favorite features of Grazing have been taken to the next level, offering a simple solution for something I’ve been looking for since February. Read more

Dialvetica 2.0→

Dialvetica 2.0

Dialvetica is one of my favorite iPhone apps – it has replaced Apple’s Phone app in my dock thanks to its powerful search functionality and built-in dialpad. If you missed my previous article about it – it’s basically a continually updating list of most-contacted people in your Address Book that is kept up to date based on your habits. So, in my Dialvetica, the top entries are my parents and close friends, with anyone else down in the list.

The new 2.0 version released today adds an iPad version, which I’ll never use in spite of Dialvetica’s support for email adresses, and, more importantly, a completely rewritten engine. Search is visibly faster on my iPhone 4, and the custom keyboard feels snappier, too. Also from the 2.0 changelog:

- Google voice support.

- Search by company title.

- Slight interface improvements. Check out settings to customize.

- Tighter control over data. You can clear your history, reset a contacts call count, etc.

Apple is expected to unveil Assistant tomorrow, and I wonder if there will be some voice-related functionalities to ask iOS to call or text someone in your Address Book, and let the OS figure out on its own which phone number or address to use. We’ll see. In the meantime, you can download Dialvetica 2.0 on the App Store. It’s $2.99.

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