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iOS 5: Safari Improvements

Apple has unveiled a number of improvements to the iOS version of Safari and in particular is proper tabbed browsing for Safari on the iPad. As can be seen above, you will now be able to switch tabs with just one touch.

Other new features include ‘Reader’ which will strip a website down to the bare basics of just the text and image, similar to Readability and Instapaper functions. You can then email that “streamlined” article to any friends or family.

The second is the ‘Reading List’ which allows you to save articles for reading at a later time. It works on the iPhone, iPad or Safari and you can access the Reading List from any of those versions of Safari.

iOS 5 Gets Twitter Integration: Photos, Contacts, Direct Tweeting

Rumors about iOS 5 getting “deep” Twitter integration were also true: the WWDC keynote revealed a few minutes ago that iOS 5 will indeed come with a new Twitter settings panel to authorize with your account on-device, and start tweeting pictures or web pages right away with the “Tweet Sheet”, a new system-wide popup menu used on the iPhone and iPad to send tweets. Twitter will also be integrated in the contacts to fetch profile pictures, as well as Maps, YouTube and Safari.

 

Official update from Twitter’s blog:

And today we’re working with Apple to make sharing on Twitter even easier: Twitter is built right into iOS 5, coming soon to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices worldwide.

This means that you’ll be able to sign in to your Twitter account once and then tweet with a single tap from Twitter-enabled apps, including Apple’s apps—Camera, Photos, Safari, Contacts, YouTube, and Maps. And developers of all of your favorite apps can easily take advantage of the single sign-on capability, letting you tweet directly from their apps too.

Photos courtesy of This is my Next.

iOS 5: Newsstand, Subscription Magazines and Newspapers In One Place

New to iOS 5 will be a feature dubbed “Newsstand” which promises to put together all your digital Newspapers and Magazines together in one easy to find place. Scott Forstall, who introduced the feature, said that Magazines from the National Geographic to Vanity Fair to Popular Science will be available whilst Newspapers such as the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph will be available in Newsstand.

Read all about it. All in one place. iOS 5 organizes your magazine and newspaper app subscriptions in Newsstand: a folder that lets you access your favorite publications quickly and easily.

You get the Magazines from the App Store but once added will live in your ‘Newstand’ which lives as an icon on your Homescreen. New issues will be downloaded in the background so that when you pick up “your iPad, the newspaper is ready for you to read it offline”.

iOS 5 Gets “Notification Center” With Completely New UI

The rumors were true: at the WWDC keynote Scott Forstall has just unveiled the new notification system of iOS 5, which as reported earlier today looks similar to the way Android deals with notifications through a pulldown menu from the status bar. The new system reminds us of Cydia plugins LockInfo and Mobile Notifier (who creator Peter Hajas was recently hired by Apple) in the way it presents notifications in a single place, both anywhere on the Springboard and in the lock screen.

As a rumor from this morning suggested, you can swipe on messages in the Lock screen to launch the associated app, check out weather and stock widgets in the Notification Center pulldown menu, quickly dismiss notifications when they become visible at the top with a white interface.

Photos courtesy of This is my Next.

Over 200 Million iOS Devices Sold, 25 Million iPads And $2.5 Billion Paid To Developers

Scott Forstall has just come on stage at WWDC and revealed that in just 14 months, Apple has sold over 25 million iPads. That has brought the total number of iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) sold to over 200 million since the original iPhone launched in 2007. That brings iOS’s ‘Mobile Installed Base’ to 44% of the total market, with Android in second place at 28% of the market and RIM at 19% of the market.

Our customers couldn’t wait to get their hands on the iPad 2. In the first 14 months, we’ve sold 25 million iPads

Furthermore the iTunes store has now sold over 15 Billion songs, whilst the iBookstore (that launched last year) has seen over 130 million downloads. Apple now has 225 million accounts aggregated from the iTunes, iBooks and App Stores.

Moving to the ever-popular App Store, there have been over 90,000 apps built just for the iPad. This all contributed to what is now over 14 billion App downloads from the store - leading Apple to pay developers over $2.5 billion dollars since launching the App Store in 2008.

Lion Will Be Mac App Store-only, $29 - Coming In July

At the WWDC keynote, Phil Schiller has just announced that OS X Lion will be available only through the Mac App Store as a 4 GB download. The surprising news comes after rumors of Lion also set to be distributed on DVDs and portable USB keys – that is no longer the case.

With 3000 new APIs and 250 new features, Lion will be released in July at $29 in the Mac App Store. A new developer preview will be available later today.

Photos courtesy of This is my Next.

Mac App Store Adds In-App Purchases, Push Notification And Delta Updates

The apps in the Mac App Store are set to receive some solid enhancements including push notifications, sandboxing and delta updates.

For enhanced security, apps will have a built-in sandbox mode whilst developers will have the ability to send “delta updates”, which are effectively ‘patch based’ updates, meaning the entire app will not have to re-downloaded with every update.Apps will also be able to send push notifications to users and just like iOS apps, can also have in-app purchases.

Phil Schiller also touted that the Mac App Store has become the number one retailer for PC software, overtaking even Best Buy.

Lion: New Photo Booth Goes Full Screen and Does Face Tracking

At Apple’s ongoing demo of OS X Lion at the WWDC, the company has announced the new OS will come with 250 new features, highlighting 10 of the most important ones on stage. Among them, a new version of Photo Booth that goes fullscreen thanks to Lion’s new functionalities and is able of some basic face-tracking for a new “dizzy” effect that puts a nice bird animation around your head.

We expect a new Lion build to become available later today. Photos courtesy of This is my Next.

Macs Outgrowing The PC Industry


Starting the WWDC keynote is a discusion about Lion, and Phil Schiller has started out by throwing out some sales numbers surrounding the Mac platform. As of today there are 54 million active Mac users and Macs are defying the trend of the rest of the PC industry.

In terms of year-over-year numbers, Mac sales grew by 28% whilst the PC market actually shrank by 1%. Phil Schiller touted that the Mac is “outgrowing the PC industry”. Notebooks are the big success for Apple with 73% of all Mac sales coming from the MacBook range, whilst 27% are desktop Macs.