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Don’t Be Stupid: Keep App Reviews To Yourself While Using an iOS Beta

These past few weeks of iOS 5 testing and casual talking with my fellow writers and Twitter followers had me thinking about the fact that some people really don’t get the difference between “public previews” and “developer-only betas”. I’m talking about those people who are leaving negative reviews in iTunes for apps that are allegedly “broken” under iOS 5, which reached the beta 2 status last Friday.

There’s an important difference between previews and developer betas. With previews, like iTunes in the Cloud, Apple feels confident enough to release a new piece of software with new features to the public and let everyone enjoy it until the final version (with more features) comes out. Example: automatic downloads and past purchases. In spite of Apple calling it a “beta”, this is in fact a public preview (that requires iTunes 10.3, also public) of the new iTunes in the Cloud system that will gain the additional Match functionality this Fall. So why is Apple letting regular users mess with a beta? Because it’s not really a “beta”, not in the sense we geeks are used to when seeing the beta label on Apple’s various Dev Centers. iTunes in the Cloud is a public preview of something that will grow even bigger in a matter of a few months. The company knows it’s stable enough for everyone to play with. All the systems are in place. No third-party support is required. All users can benefit from it now, and will get to use more functionalities once the faux beta label goes away. It’s a good deal. Read more

Fring Releases iPad App with Group Video Calling

After teasing a brand new iPhone version of its mobile app with support for fullscreen video calling and dynamic video quality and then releasing it in the App Store for free back in April, fring today announced the availability of its first official iPad app, which takes advantage of the device’s bigger screen to lay out a larger and taller contact list, as well as visualize participants in a group video call in a wider UI.

As usual, fring is completely free and cross-platform, which means you’ll be able to call from your iPad on WiFi or 3G to other fring users running iOS or Android devices. Text chat is enabled as well, with a split interface that allows you to quickly switch between your buddy list and what a contact is saying. An activity log button in the upper left corner gives you access to your previous activities on fring and chats. The fringOut system has been integrated to call mobile and landline phones using fring’s low rates (you can buy credit on iTunes with in-app purchases), but perhaps the most intriguing addition is the possibility of dragging & dropping new contacts onto a video calling session, as also seen in the app’s promo video. The new app works with the iPad’s cameras in both orientations, and can display multiple video calls on screen simultaneously.

You can download fring for iPad here. Check out the video below.
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MacBook Air Supplies At Best Buy And Others Dwindle, Refresh Creeps Closer

It is pretty clear that a refreshed MacBook Air line is coming soon, based on the numerous rumors and reports that have come in over the past month or so. Further evidence of an imminent refresh came late yesterday night when 9to5 Mac discovered that Best Buy had stopped shipping all MacBook Airs from its website. Although they are still selling them from their retail stores, stock is reportedly low, with some “exceptionally low on MacBook Air stock”.

The UK Best Buy online store is also completely out of stock except for the 128GB version, which is low in stock and can only be collected from certain retail locations.  The story is similar with Canadian retailer Future Shop which is also low on stock as well as Amazon, which has low stock in a number of countries. 9to5 Mac also speculated in its post that July 4th could be a potential release date for the refreshed models, other rumors had suggested the launch would correlate with the launch of Lion.

The refreshed line of MacBook Airs is widely expected to include the new Sandy Bridge processors from Intel, as well as the new Thunderbolt I/O port which made its debut in this years refresh of the MacBook Pro models, and more recently in refreshed iMacs – both refreshes also brought new Sandy Bridge processors.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

Apple Blocks SHSH Blob Method Of Downgrading Firmware Versions In iOS 5

Apple and the jailbreak community have always enjoyed somewhat of a cat-and-mouse game between them and today we are learning that Apple has pounced to fix up one of the common circumventions used by jailbreakers. The circumvention in question doesn’t involve an actual exploit to jailbreak devices but rather a way that people were using to downgrade from one iOS version to another – often to a version that was capable of being jailbroken.

Apple had implemented a system where it would only authorize certain iOS builds to be installed, making it nearly impossible for downgrades. The circumvention was that by using SHSH blobs people could use iTunes to restore to a previous firmware version. According to what the jailbreak Dev-Team has said in a blog post today, that is all changing in iOS 5 as Apple moves to a new signing process. As the Dev-Team explains, the new process will become much more like the BBTicket (Baseband Ticket), which will make it much more difficult to reverse engineer:

Starting with the iOS5 beta, the role of the “APTicket” is changing — it’s being used much like the “BBTicket” has always been used. The LLB and iBoot stages of the boot sequence are being refined to depend on the authenticity of the APTicket, which is uniquely generated at each and every restore (in other words, it doesn’t depend merely on your ECID and firmware version…it changes every time you restore, based partly on a random number). This APTicket authentication will happen at every boot, not just at restore time. Because only Apple has the crypto keys to properly sign the per-restore APTicket, replayed APTickets are useless.

It isn’t all bad news though, restoring to pre-iOS 5 firmware versions will still be possible (although it will probably require an old version of iTunes) and tethered limera1n exploits will not be affected by this. As for why Apple has decided to now change this process, the Dev-Team explains that it was only a matter of time before Apple made the changes and that with delta iOS updates, it was made all the more necessary. The Dev-Team ends the post by noting that whilst Apple has “stepped up their game”,  there may be ways to combat this move.

[Via Dev-Team Blog]

iOS 5 Beta 2: New First-Boot Animation, Native Scrolling in Web Apps

Among the changes spotted in the second iOS 5 beta seeded to developers on Friday, a couple of new additions had developers and Apple fans alike buzz with excitement over what could be coming in the final release of the OS expected this Fall. The first new, slight change in the iOS 5 code is a new startup animation that, upon a device’s first boot after it’s taken out of the box or restored from iTunes, will display a glowing Apple logo, before taking the user to the new Apple ID-based setup process with iCloud integration. The same setup process introduced in beta one has been overhauled to enforce the requirement of an Apple ID and visualize a device’s IMEI and ICCID codes. You can check out a video of the (brief) animation after the break.

A major change in iOS 5 could be the possibility of doing OTA software updates over 3G. Whilst Apple had already confirmed that iOS 5 would be capable of updating devices wirelessly, with delta updates, and even displayed an iPhone on 3G while doing so with an iOS 5.1 placeholder, there wasn’t any carrier support confirmation by Apple at the WWDC ‘11 keynote, leaving tech pundits wondering whether, especially in the much trafficked US networks, AT&T and Verizon could be demanding Apple to block even the smallest software updates over a cellular network. According to 9to5mac, some code strings in the iOS 5 beta seem to confirm Apple is baking the functionality to update a phone or iPad over 3G, though it’s obviously not clear whether the carriers could limit this feature.

Last, iOS 5 beta 2 has introduced a new CSS property that will allow web developers to build web apps powered by native-style momentum scrolling, as noted by Johan Brook. The code is the following:

overflow: scroll;

-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;

Brook writes:

This is huge for web apps. No more custom Javascript to fake the native behavior, like iScroll and lately Scrollability from Joe Hewitt. Even Apple has written their own internal web framework (“PastryKit”) to patch up things like scrolling and fixed positioned elements. Scrollability is the best fake-native scrolling I’ve seen so far, and the one in apps built with Sencha Touch is pretty sharp as well, but I don’t think they can beat this alternative provided by Apple.

There’s indeed a noticeable difference in momentum between scrolling in native apps and in web pages. It’s maybe the one single thing that makes you think: “Oh right, this is a web app”.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber detailed the efforts Apple had been putting into creating a better JavaScript framework to improve behavior of web apps for iPhone in 2009, called PastryKit. The framework was aimed at bringing things such as position-fixed toolbars and momentum scrolling to Apple’s own web apps (video demos), features that the company is now baking into iOS 5.

The JavaScript source code has been minimized/optimized, but it’s not obfuscated, per se, so it’s easy to see that the framework is called PastryKit, and even a dilettante JavaScript hacker like me can follow along and see some of what’s going on. PastryKit accomplishes all three of the aforementioned things — hiding the MobileSafari address bar, providing fixed-position toolbars, and providing scrolling with momentum — by disabling regular scrolling and setting up its own view hierarchy and implementing its own scrolling.

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New Apple Store Opens In Reading, UK

Reported earlier this week after a five-year wait that saw several rumors constantly claiming Apple had finalized work on the location, a new Apple retail store opened this morning in Reading, UK, at the Oracle Shopping Centre. The Oracle Reading centre “is located in Reading town centre on the banks of the River Kennet, just inside the A329 ring road”.

The Apple Store is located in the upper level of the building and, as usual with recent retail grand openings, saw a long line of Apple fans and customers for its debut this morning. ifoAppleStore, who broke the news this week, has some photos and a video of the new Store, and we’ve collected other shots from people who were there from Twitter.

Check out the photo after the break, and visit Apple’s official page for The Oracle Apple Store here. Read more

Apple Releases iOS 5 Beta 2

Less than three weeks after the first seed, Apple just released iOS 5 beta 2 to developers. Build 9A5248d is available now in the Dev Center for registered iOS developers.

From what we’ve been able to see in the release notes so far, it looks like iMessage on iOS 5 beta 2 won’t be able to communicate with iMessage users on beta 1, and the new iTunes 10.5 beta won’t be able to sync with devices running the old beta 1:

iMessage seed 2 will be unable to communicate with iMessage users on seed 1.

The version of iTunes that comes with beta 2 cannot sync devices that have the beta 1 software installed.

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High Costs Slowing Down Adoption of AirPlay and Thunderbolt?

According to iLounge, developers of peripherals for iOS and OS X claim high licensing and production costs for the relatively new AirPlay and Thunderbolt standards will slow down the adoption of such technologies from third-party manufacturers.

AirPlay, officially introduced with iOS 4.2.1 in November 2010, allows iOS users to beam audio or video content to compatible AirPlay speakers, AirPort Express stations, and Apple TVs 2nd-gen. By working closely with a company called BridgeCo, Apple built a wireless system that directly interacts with iOS and Mac devices to receive audio streams, as well as artist’s information and other playback data. For video, AirPlay enables users to send video stored locally or from the web to an Apple TV on the same WiFi network. Since AirPlay’s announcement in September at the iPod event, both Apple and BridgeCo stressed how third-party adoption would bring hundreds of AirPlay-enabled products to the market. Until now, however, most of these products have been in high-end range of consumer prices, with Philips only recently exploring price points below $300. iLounge reports implementing AirPlay adds $100 to the final product’s price:

Our sources have described the AirPlay technologies as considerably more expensive to incorporate than Apple’s standard docking Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad Dock Connectors, and noted that Apple is very heavily pushing developers to adopt the wireless technologies despite the costs involved.

Similarly, the cost of adding a Thunderbolt port to an external drive is said to roughly match the price of a low-end drive, which we assume is somewhere below $99 as well. For this reason, it’s likely Thunderbolt will only find its way in high-end professional products in the immediate future, and quite possibly the factor behind Apple’s decision to leave the iPad 2 without a Thunderbolt port, rather relying on wireless sync introduced with iOS 5 (you might remember rumors before the iPad 2 announcement suggested the device could get Thunderbolt – back then codenamed Light Peak).

A variety of Thunderbolt products from LaCie and Promise, among others, were unveiled in the past months, with all of them seemingly oriented to the pro market and audio/video professionals. Thunderbolt is an I/O technology developed by Intel and Apple that allows for bidirectional 10 Gbps connection over a cable, plus a 10 Watt feed to power other devices and attached peripherals.