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Apple Confirms: OS X Lion Coming Tomorrow

At the Q3 2011 earnings call, Apple just confirmed OS X Lion is launching tomorrow, July 20th. The OS will be available on the Mac App Store at $29.99.

OS X Lion is a major upgrade to Apple’s desktop operating system which introduces over 250 new user features and brings several interface and navigation schemes from iOS devices like the iPad, to the Mac’s multi-touch trackpad and desktop environment. Among the notable changes in Lion, also highlighted on Apple’s website, are the Launchpad and Mission Control, two new ways to launch and organize application and windows, respectively. Lion adds a new file sharing system called “AirDrop” baked into the Finder to share files and documents with nearby Macs, and the Finder itself has been finely tuned and improved to sport a more subtle window UI, new file and folder merging functionalities, and a new “All My Files” view that collects all the documents and media found on your computer in a single screen.

Lion also represents a big change for OS X developers: with new APIs and features like Sandboxing, Automatic Termination and Resume, app makers will be able to rewrite their software taking advantage of the new user experience enhancements brought by Apple to the desktop. For instance, apps can now automatically save their “state” upon quitting – meaning accidental shut downs and force-quits will no longer affect the document you were working on. Combined with Auto Save and Version, this opens to a lot more possibilities when it comes to dealing with documents stored on your computer.

Apple Q3 2011 Results: $28.57 Billion Revenue, 20.34 Million iPhones, 9.25 Million iPads, 3.95 Million Macs Sold

Apple has just posted their Q3 2011 financial results. The company posted record-breaking revenue of $28.57 billion, with 9.25 million iPads, 20.34 million iPhones and 3.95 million Macs sold. Apple reported record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share. Wall Street consensus’ estimate was earnings of $5.80 per share and revenue of $24.92 billion. The company posted record quarterly revenue of $28.57 billion and record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share.

In Q2 2011, the company said they expected revenue of about $23 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $5.03 in the third fiscal quarter of 2011.

From the results, iPhone is growing 142% year over year, and with 9.25 million units sold the iPad saw a 183% increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold sold 7.54 million iPods with a 20% unit decline. The third quarter has been the best non-holiday Mac quarter ever, best iPhone quarter ever, best iPad quarter ever. There are now 28.7 million iPads out there, including 14 million units shipped this calendar year.

In Q2 2011, the company posted revenue of $24.67 billion with 4.69 million iPads, 18.65 million iPhones and 4.69 million Macs sold. In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $15.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion. The company sold 3.47 million Macs, 8.4 million iPhones and 3.27 million iPads, which began selling during the quarter.

Apple will provide a live audio feed of its Q3 2011 conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and we’ll update this story with the conference highlights. Full press release is embedded after the break. Read more

Due 1.6 Adds Natural Date & Time Parsing, We Celebrate With Another Giveaway

The ever popular reminder app Due has recently received another major update, 1.6. The newest version adds natural date and time parsing for reminders, much like Fantastical is doing for the Mac. This method lets you create reminders while the due date fills in automatically by typing into the title directly, i.e. “Wash the car in 20 mins”, “Leave for soccer at 3pm on Friday”, “Buy gift for Ticci’s birthday on July 30 at 1pm”, etc. Due also handles more than 64 reminders and timers as there was a limit before.

There were some tweaks and changes as well like interval on date picker now dynamically changing to accommodate due times that cannot be accurately displayed by a user’s preferred interval setting. Editing the value of a timer with an auto-generated label now updates the label to match the new countdown value. The app now hides any transient animation on quit to prevent jarring transition on next resume. Overdue and Today+Overdue badging is now faster when setting up a new repeating reminder and ‘Repeat from date’ follows the ‘Due date’ automatically.

There were a number of fixes as well and all the full change-log can be found on the Due’s blog. Read more

Official Google+ App for iPhone Now Available

Google has just released the official Google+ app for iPhone on the App Store. The app is free and available here, and at the moment of writing this Google hasn’t updated its Mobile webpage to showcase the new app yet.

The Google+ iOS app provides a native interface to access much of the functionalities of the website, such as the Huddle group messaging feature – which was exclusive to Android devices prior to the app’s approval. The dashboard of the Google+ app presents a grid of icons to access the Stream, Huddle, Photos, your Profile and Circles, as well as a Notifications tab at the bottom that will open a vertical list of all your incoming notifications. Whilst much of the navigation seems to rely on web views optimized for the iPhone and fetched by the device, the animations when switching between sections are quite snappy and fast on iOS 4. Just like on the desktop, the Stream provides recent updates from the people you follow and your Circles, allowing you to check for new posts with the popular “pull to refresh gesture” and comment or +1 others’s posts. You can’t +1 from the home page – you have to open a single post and hit the + button in the upper right corner, while a text field at the bottom will let you leave a comment. You can also “mute” or “report” a post. The app is capable of sending push notifications for new comments, shares, and so forth. Read more

Lion Signage Appears At Italian Retailer Ahead Of Official Launch

As reported by Italian website Macity [a Google translation is not possible as Macity seems to have pulled the article before we could generate a link, Google cache here] the first promotional material for OS X Lion has been set up in advance at Italian retail chain Euronics in Taranto, at the Mongolfiera shopping mall. Whilst recent rumors have pegged the new OS for a Wednesday launch (tomorrow), Apple hasn’t confirmed any official release date, nor did they authorize retailers to showcase signage ahead of the much anticipated launch. It appears, as Macity reports, that employees at Euronics wrongly set up the signage before the rumored launch date, as machines spotted in the electronics section of the shopping mall haven’t even been correctly updated for Lion (they’re still running OS X 10.6.6, whilst 10.6.8 is a requirement to update to the new OS).

The signage touts Lion’s biggest new features such as multi-touch gestures, Launchpad and Mission Control. The banners say “Now on every new Mac”, reinforcing speculation that new computers will be released shortly after the new OS, running Lion by default as a rumor previously claimed. The banners also encourage users to try out Lion, heavily promoting with photos the various multitasking gestures enabled in the OS.

According to recent reports, Apple has shipped hard drives containing Lion to retail stores so that employees can install the OS on store floor machines. Others also report “overnights” are planned later today to train retail staff on Lion, and change in-store promotional material for the (alleged) launch tomorrow morning. New MacBook Airs (as well as new Thunderbolt-equipped Cinema Displays) are expected to launch alongside Lion as well.

Fantastical Adds Lion Support, And We’re Giving Away 10 Codes

Fantastical is a calendar assistant that works with Apple’s iCal and the popular third-party BusyCal software, allowing you to quickly creates event in your default system calendar with plain English. Thanks to a built-in natural language parser, Fantastical lets you write down something like “Get a new MacBook Air tomorrow at Apple Store at 5 PM”, and see the sentence becoming a new event with all the necessary fields already filled in your calendar. And because Fantastical directly plugs into calendar accounts configured on your Mac, you won’t need to enter your information again.

Fantastical 1.0.3, released today, adds full Lion compatibility and a new Lion-only feature that allows you to swipe with two fingers to move between months in the calendar. The animation is really nice, and reminds me of Safari’s new feature for navigating webpages with a two-finger swipe on Lion. Among various bug fixes, Fantastical also adds a new color menubar icon preference, a last-selected calendar option, and several parsing engine fixes.

You can read our initial review of Fantastical here, and buy the app from the Mac App Store. However, the Flexibits developers have been kind enough to offer 10 promo codes to celebrate the next major release of OS X with MacStories readers, so if you’re interested in the giveaway jump after the break for the full details of how to enter. Read more

Saver For iPhone Giveaway: Mundane Expense Tracking Made Beautiful

Two weeks ago we reviewed Saver for iPhone, which was a new expense-tracking app for the iPhone that had just launched in the App Store. In the review, I made particular note of the design of Saver – which I feel has one the nicest user interfaces of any iPhone app I’ve used. For a task that is important (for many) but often dull and boring, Saver not only makes things a little more exciting and vibrant but it also makes it extremely easy (whilst still being fairly powerful) to accomplish various tasks such as adding an expense entry or viewing what kinds of things you spend most on.

You can read our full review of Saver here and purchase Saver on the App Store here. However, the developer of Saver has been kind enough to offer MacStories readers 3 copies of the app so we are running a giveaway. If you are interested, jump the break for the full details of how to enter.

Read more

Sparrow 1.3 Brings Lion Support, Interface Changes

Sparrow started out as a minimal, Tweetie-like email experiment for Mac back in October of last year and, following the success of the public beta, eventually evolved into a powerful desktop solution to access Gmail and IMAP email accounts using new interface concepts inspired by iOS apps, Mac gems like Twitter and Reeder, or other changes previewed by Apple in Lion. As we reported in our previous coverage, the latest big update to the app, Sparrow 1.2, went as far as adding social support with Facebook integration,  Gravatar support, and more.

Sparrow 1.3 was approved yesterday, but the developers had to quickly pull it from sale as a critical bug that caused the app to crash was discovered. After apologizing for the technical error and uploading a patched version for non-Mac App Store users, the team announced a fix had been already submitted with the request of an expedited review from Apple. Personally, I updated to Sparrow 1.3 yesterday and didn’t experience any issues, but I decided to hold my coverage until the promised fix would be available on the App Store – more importantly, the entire app had to come back on Apple’s servers as the developers pulled it to make sure no one would install a “buggy” version. Read more