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Facebook Has A Working iPad App Hidden In The iPhone Version

As revealed by TechCrunch, it appears the official Facebook app for iPad may become available in the App Store relatively soon, as the iPad app is actually hidden away, inside the iPhone app and actually executable! It is unclear when and how Facebook will announce the availability of Facebook for iPad, however as MG Siegler explains, it is a completely re-imagined Facebook experience for the tablet that takes advantage of the iPad’s screen to lay out a different view for your photo albums, friends, profile, and more. The app does seem to use an iPad optimized web view in the main Facebook interface (just like on the iPhone), but several other UI elements are native to iOS and built specifically for the iPad.

Facebook for iPad uses a concept not too dissimilar from Twitter’s iPad app – rather than displaying all content vertically, the app heavily relies on horizontal navigation to access various Facebook sections, the news feed, chats, liked posts, and so forth. For instance, a sidebar on the left contains tabs below your main profile to open your News Feed, Messages, Events, Places, Friends, and Photos. In the same sidebar, there are links to jump to the groups you’re subscribed to – it almost appears as Facebook wants to put the focus on Groups as much as Google gave Circles, its friend-organization tool, a huge role in Google+. There are two top bars in the middle panel: one has buttons to upload photos from your iPad’s camera and library, the other two are associated with a regular status update and check-ins. In the blue toolbar, the app has a series of additional icons to open the friend requests panel, messages, and notifications – this looks very similar to Facebook on the desktop, and the design is very distant from Facebook’s implementation on the iPhone. There is also a search function in the app, though it’s been placed at the top of the sidebar, rather than the toolbar. As for the stream, judging from the screenshots it seems to be a web view optimized for the iPad’s new app UI.

Facebook for iPad includes a Chat sidebar on the right and a full interface for Messages, which look very similar to Apple’s own iMessage model – at least as far as the design goes – with recipients listed on the left and the actual message inside a larger panel on the right.

UPDATE: TechCrunch has posted an album-full of screenshots of the app here. We’ve embedded a sample of these below the break, but here’s one:

[Via TechCrunch]

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Wall Street Journal And Kobo Fall Into Line, Will Remove Purchase Links To Content Outside The App Store

It appears that Apple has finally decided to start forcing apps to abide by its new in-app purchase and subscription rules that became enforceable at the start of this month. It appears that the first big casualties will be the Wall Street Journal and Kobo apps. The Wall Street Journal has reported that their apps will soon remove all purchasing options from their apps and Kobo, the Canadian e-Book retailer, has already done something similar. Both apps had been linking users to their website to purchase subscription content which had been forbidden in Apple’s new rules, as detailed below.

Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchasing content to be used in the app, such as a “buy” button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected.

Neither app has or had been rejected, instead Apple seems to have opted to talk directly with Kobo and News Corporation, as both have or will soon be updating their apps to remove the offending links. Curiously both apps will not be using Apple’s own in-app purchasing system to allow users to purchase content or subscriptions. Both firms still feel as though the terms are too onerous, despite Apple relaxing the restrictions in June to allow content to be sold through the in-app purchasing at a different price. Previously the rules were going to require all subscription content to be available for purchase through the in-app system and at the same or lower price (despite Apple’s required 30% cut).

Kobo’s Mr. Serbinis said to the Wall Street Journal that roughly 50% of their iOS app users already bought content through their website, but that this change “will inconvenience those customers accustomed to buying their books directly from our apps on Apple devices”. Similarly, a News Corp spokeswoman said “We remain concerned that Apple’s own subscription [rules] would create a poor experience for our readers, who would not be able to directly manage their WSJ account or to easily access our content across multiple platforms”. Both companies seem reluctant to offer in-app purchases and cede 30% of revenues to Apple, despite even being allowed to charge customers more if purchasing in this method. It follows other publishers such as The New York Times and various Conde Naste magazines, which have embraced Apple’s in-app subscriptions and purchases.

[Via The Wall Street Journal]

Apple Posts New iPad 2 Commercial: “We’ll Always”

We’ll never stop sharing our memories. Or getting lost in a good book. We’ll always cook dinner, and cheer for our favorite team. We’ll still go to meetings, make home movies, and learn new things. But how do all this, we’ll never be the same.

Apple posted a new iPad 2 commercial on its website and YouTube channel, once again highlighting how the device is changing the way people do things in their lives. With the “We’ll always” ad, Apple wants to show how the iPad has changed, and perhaps improved, the most basic tasks like cooking dinner or editing a quick video in iMovie. Just like other commercials like “Now” and “If You Asked”, Apple’s focus is on apps – the software – rather than technical specifications and hardware features. In this latest video, the iPad is seen organizing photos in the native Photos app, streaming a baseball match and flipping pages of an iBook – among other things. The built-in iOS and the apps – not the screen or the thin form factor – are the real stars in Apple’s iPad commercials.

Apple’s previous iPad 2 commercials were called “We Believe”, “If You Asked” and “Now”. Check out the new video below. [YouTube via 9to5mac]
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OS X Lion 10.7.2 Shows Up On Dev Center

As first noted by BGR, a link to download OS X Lion version 10.7.2 has briefly appeared in the iCloud section of the Developer Center, which is unaccessible at the moment of writing this. However, a screen taken by BGR confirms that Apple – it’s not clear whether mistakenly or not – inserted a link to download a new developer seed of Lion, which was publicly released earlier this week on the Mac App Store.

According to Apple, this new version of Lion “is being provided solely for testing iCloud”, which has received an update to beta 5 today as a standalone control panel to install on OS X. iCloud is due this Fall as announced by Apple at WWDC in June. It is unclear whether this build of Lion for iCloud testing will be released alongside iCloud later this year, but considering Lion has yet to see a maintenance update to version 10.7.1, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see 10.7.2 scheduled for launch when iCloud is ready, too.

Since the launch of new hardware last Wednesday, it was noted the new MacBook Airs carried a different OS X Lion build number, version 11A2063.

Apple to open Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal

The last time we heard evidence of a Grand Central Apple Store was back in May, when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA) was contacted by Apple who was interested in retail space. Today, according to the New York Post, Apple will open a 23,000 square-foot store in the terminal’s north and northeast balconies. Affected is the Metrazeur restaurant, bought out in the apparent deal. Apple’s rent will initially cost $800,000 for the retail space during a ten-year lease.

It should be noted that the deal isn’t finalized yet: the MTA still has to ask their financial committee to approve the deal on Monday before receiving a final okay from the board of directors on Wednesday. With the deal likely to rake in $5 million in profits (at minimum), and with the renter being Apple, the MTA is undoubtedly going to vote “yes”. I don’t think there’s any question there.

[via NY Post]

Apple Releases iOS 5 Beta 4

 

Apple just seeded iOS 5 beta 4 to developers. The new build, carrying number 9A5274d, is available now in the Dev Center. iOS 5 beta 3 was seeded to developers on July 11, introducing a series of tweaks to Location Services and several optimizations to the underlying code of the OS, which resulted much snappier and more responsive than previous betas. However, some developers reported that bugs with Notification Center found in iOS 5 beta 1 were still not fixed in beta 3. iOS 5 will ship in the fall, as announced by Apple at WWDC.

We’ll update this story with more information and details as they become available. Read more

An Overview of Automator Improvements In Lion

Automator, the suite of automation tools for OS X that can create user workflows, services or apps, has received a series of interesting improvements in Lion, some of them useful additions that will likely eliminate the need for certain kinds of third-party software for many users. In spite of Lion being described as a “user-friendly” OS thanks to the implementation of gestures or full-screen apps, as we’ve seen in our review and other articles following the Mac App Store launch it’s clear there’s still much room for tweaking and “taking control” of the OS when you want to get the most out of it. Take the Option key for example: Option has been capable of reversing certain behaviors in Mac apps for quite some time, but in Lion it gets a whole new usage as it can reverse the entire Resume system, show the Library in the Finder’s menubar, or change the Finder’s “Arrange By” feature to “Sort By”. And that’s just the Option key. Personally, I disagree on the assumption that Apple is “dumbing down” the operating system only by introducing functionalities that make interacting with a computer easier. The way I see it, Lion is the most powerful and feature-rich version of OS X to date (and several developers, from a technical standpoint, agree with this) and, actually, the gestures themselves can appease any power user when correctly mastered. Lion may look simpler on the surface (and to an extent, I can see why the addition of the Launchpad doesn’t help as far as this argument goes), but it’s a very powerful entry in the OS X family once you take a peek under the hood. Read more

Mono, Beautiful Growl Theme, Updated for Lion

Mono by Christopher Lobay is a beautiful theme for Growl, the popular notification system for OS X, that I’ve been using on my MacBook Pro and iMac since it was first released last year. Of all the Growl themes I’ve used, Mono was the one that provided a good compromise of gorgeous interface and usability – I like my Growl themes to be informative, beautiful to look at, unobtrusive and definitely not “sticky” on screen. I typically set my Growl preferences to display a notification for 1.5 seconds, which plays very well with Mono’s animation that makes alerts slide into your Mac’s screen from the side.

Mono has been updated to version 2.0, and while this update doesn’t bring any major visual change from Mono 1.0, it does add full Lion compatibility. Indeed I tried to configure Mono with Growl on Lion last week, but couldn’t get it to work – that was particularly unfortunate for me as my favorite theme couldn’t be tested with GrowlMail, which has been updated to version 1.3 to, again, work with Lion and the new Apple Mail. With Mono 2.0, everything works: notifications show up correctly on Lion, as do new messages from Mail. As a side note, I noticed I had to manually restart the Growl process and all associated apps to get notifications to work on OS X Lion.

Meanwhile, the Growl developers are busy building a new Mac App Store version that won’t be free, and it’s supposed to come out soon with several enhancements and new features. While waiting for the all-new Growl, you can download Mono 2.0 here.

Verizon Activates 2.3 Million iPhone 4s In Q2

As noted by ZDNet, Verizon reported its second quarter earnings today, delivering strong results and reporting revenue of $27.53 billion. The company added 1.3 million postpaid customers, with data revenues up 22.2 percent year-over-year and 189,000 FiOS Internet and 184,000 FiOS TV net additions. As with the iPhone, the earnings reveal Verizon activated 2.3 million iPhone 4 units in the second quarter, a 100,000 units increase from the 2.2 million iPhone 4s they activated in the previous quarter after roughly two months of availability in the US since the February 10 launch.

Verizon’s relatively flat growth rate with activated iPhone units doesn’t surprise when compared to AT&T’s similar trend - AT&T activated 3.6 million iPhones in the last two quarters. The difference, however, is that Verizon only has access to the CDMA iPhone 4, both in black and white, whereas AT&T sells both the black/white iPhone 4 and the older iPhone 3GS model, which is still on sale and considered a good entry option for new iPhone users that don’t want to spend a ful $200 on an iPhone 4 with a two-year contract. AT&T’s offer is diversified, Verizon Wireless doesn’t have a cheaper iPhone 3GS to sell to its customers.

Moreover, with increasing rumors of a new iPhone coming out in September (allegedly confirmed by Apple’s “product transition for the September quarter” revealed at the Q3 earnings call), it’s likely customers are holding off new purchases (and thus, contracts) as they wait for a new device to become available in the Fall. The iPhone 5 has been rumored to have worldphone capabilities with an integrated GSM/CDMA chip, and most recent speculation has also claimed Apple could be considering a new, cheaper iPhone to sell off contract at less than $200 to attract the masses of the pre-paid market.

[ZDNet - PRNewswire]