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iTunes and Facebook Credit To Be Transferable For Upcoming Ubisoft Game

AllThingsD is this morning reporting that Facebook credits and iTunes credit will “play nice” with each other, with some minimal transferability of credits set to occur. The news comes from Chris Early, Ubisoft VP of Digital publishing who told AllThingsD that Apple and Facebook have agreed to honor “currency purchased on each other’s platforms for the same game”.

This system of “currency” interoperability will apparently be first demonstrated with Ubisoft’s upcoming Ghost Recon game that will be released on multiple platforms, including on Facebook and mobile devices. Early says that the “new pact” would allow a customer who purchased $20 worth of Ghost Recon credits on Facebook, also have $20 worth of credits for their iPhone version of Ghost Recon, with Facebook receiving the 30% cut of revenue. The reverse would work too, but in either case only the platform that initially received the $20 would receive that 30% revenue cut.

Ubisoft would, according to Early, be the party responsible for managing users’ credit balance across the platform. This may just be Apple and Facebook approving the practice of in-game credits being transferable across platforms, but it certainly opens the slight possibility that iTunes credit could one day be used within the Facebook platform and vice versa.

[Via AllThingsD]

Last Minute iOS 5 Rumors: New Apple Messaging Protocol, Android-like Notifications

The WWDC 2011 keynote kicks off in less than two hours, and people waiting at the Moscone West are being let inside the convention center as we speak. As last minute speculation on what Apple is going to unveil with its upcoming major new version of iOS, This Is My Next claims it has received word from an inside source that iOS 5 will feature a new Apple messaging protocol for free SMS and MMS texts between iOS users – in the style of RIM’S Messenger application that lets BlackBerry owners communicate with each other for free. Just like FaceTime allows iPhone owners to video chat, the new messaging app could enable iPhone, iPad and iPod touch owners to exchange text messages for free using Apple’s own solution:

The word is that Apple is readying it’s own MMS / SMS protocol which will be a native part of the phone. We’re not entirely clear on how this would work, but apparently it will be able to automatically identify iOS users and route the message accordingly. We’re told the functionality would be similar to third party applications like Textie, but with less fuss.

Furthermore, This Is My Next also corroborates rumors we’ve heard about the revamped notification system and widgets, claiming that iOS 5 will feature Android-like notifications with a white pulldown menu from the status bar that will list recent notifications and widgets.

Messages will appear and then slide back up in a unobtrusive manner, similar to webOS. There have been some leaked screenshots floating around the web for the last 24 hours, but those are not the real deal. The actual window looks more like a white, gradient Growl notification.

The notifications will be constantly accessible through a pulldown window which you reach by swiping at the top of the screen downward… just like Android. Not only will this screen house your recent notifications, but it will tout proper widgets like weather, stocks, and more.

Last, according to the website the lock screen will also go under a major refresh with notifications displayed on screen with the app’s icon on the left so users will be able to swipe over them to go to the specific application that sent the message.

We’ll be liveblogging the WWDC 2011 keynote here in less than an hour.

iPhone Now Available On 200 Carriers Worldwide

As reported by John Paczkowski at All Things Digital, according to Apple executives the number of mobile operators carrying the iPhone worldwide has increased to 200, from 186 at the end of March. The expansion, teased by COO Tim Cook in late February alongside the possibility of “lower priced offerings” and other prepaid market offers, is noteworthy for Apple, but still a relatively low figure when compared to RIM’s 500+ carriers selling BlackBerry devices.

Aggressive expansion, actually. Since the end of the March quarter, Apple has expanded the number of iPhone carriers to 200 from 186, according to company executives.

So 14 new customer bases in which to dip, further juicing sales of the device.

Following speculation of low iPhone sales in Q3 2011 due to the rumored lack of a hardware refresh in June (being the WWDC focused on software-related announcements such as iOS 5 and iCloud) with a new iPhone likely coming out this Fall, analysts and investors seem to believe that Apple’s iPhone sales will manage to meet expectations thanks to the release of the white iPhone 4 and the aforementioned carrier expansion. For instance, the iPhone 4 launched in India two weeks ago after an 11-month wait. Apple is also expected to introduce the iPhone 4 on more international CDMA networks to expand into a new market segment, though as of today the CDMA iPhone 4 is only available on Verizon Wireless’ US network.

Unconfirmed iOS 5 Photo Surfaces

TechCrunch posts a photo of what could be the Home screen of an iPhone running iOS 5, set to be officially introduced tomorrow at the WWDC keynote in San Francisco. TechCrunch doesn’t report the original source of the photo and says this might be a well-realized mockup based on recent rumors and speculation, but MG Siegler notes some interesting facts about the image may suggest it is genuine and not another Internet fake:

Could it be? Is this it? iOS 5?! I honestly have absolutely no clue. But it certainly seems like it at least could have the right idea.

Before you go yelling “fake” on the obvious things, a couple notes. First of all, yes, 11:54 PM is in the future — in the United States. But if the Weather app is to be believed, this is clearly a European version of iOS (note the 23 degree Celsius in the icon instead of 72 degree Fahrenheit as you would see in the U.S.). Second, the Camera app icon is totally different, and looks a little odd being all-black, but who knows, maybe it’s changing. The icons are in the “correct” default order. Finally, if the talk of deep Twitter integration into iOS 5 is to be believed (we heard a bit, others have heard a bit more), it’s entirely possible that these new-style Twitter notifications could be working in iOS 5 right out of the box.

It is true the photo above has the icons in the same default order every device comes out of the box with. Another detail: in the Utilities folder next to the iTunes Store, there seems to be another app right below Calculator. In Apple’s default configuration, there are only four apps in the stock Utilities folder. If the image is to believed, iOS 5 would come with the old iOS 4 default wallpaper (as the WWDC banners indicated) and a revamped camera icon. It wouldn’t be the first time Apple updated a stock app’s icon with the launch of a new version of iOS 5.

More importantly, the image shows the rumored Twitter integration with a new notification bar. Several reports in the past week claimed Apple was working on “deep” Twitter integration for iOS 5 with features such as native photo uploading and contact access from the Address Book.

TechCrunch has a pretty solid track record when it comes to Apple rumors and last-minute leaks, though there are always some questionable images showing up before every major Apple event. We don’t put much faith in the photo either, but we’re posting it for discussion as it seems to fall in line with rumors we’ve heard in the months leading up to WWDC 2011.

Update: TechCrunch now says they’re hearing this is the “right idea”. We’ll know more tomorrow.

“Think Of iCloud As The New iTunes”→

“Think Of iCloud As The New iTunes”

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, in a post where he details some of the iCloud features he has “heard” from sources (but doesn’t state as a fact) and other personal wishes about iOS 5, doesn’t describe iCloud as a new music service or “cloud services offering” – rather, he says he’s heard iCloud is something more on the lines of a full replacement for iTunes:

The italicized sentence that follows is fourth-hand information, at best, and also the sort of thing that many of you might have already guessed based merely on your own hunches and hopes. But here goes:

Don’t think of iCloud as the new MobileMe; think of iCloud as the new iTunes.

Instead of simply overhauling MobileMe with a new name, new UI, new functionalities and call it iCloud, Gruber pictures a scenario (again, based on unconfirmed sources) where iCloud becomes the de-facto standard to sync all kinds of media and information to an iOS device:

But in short let’s just think about the ways that iCloud might be a major, dare I say game-changing, step away from USB tethering between iOS devices and iTunes running on your Mac/PC. Consider just the new out-of-box experience. Rather than “Take this out, plug it into your Mac or PC (after first making sure your Mac/PC is running the latest version of iTunes), wait for it to sync before you actually play with it”, you might get something like “Take this out, turn it on, sign into your iTunes account, and start playing with it.

There’s been a lot of speculation around iCloud, iOS 5 and the rumored Time Capsule refresh in the past couple of days. Whilst many had initially pegged iCloud as a standalone music service with streaming features, others later claimed iCloud would be a rebranding of the existing MobileMe service, accommodating options previously reserved to me.com subscribers and new features like music, movie and TV show storage and streaming. A new option surfaced in the iTunes Store earlier this week suggested iOS devices would soon get the possibility to receive automatic app updates, and indeed over-the-air sync of applications and media has long been rumored as a major functionality coming to iOS.

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App Store Reaches 400,000 iOS Apps?

Just ahead of the WWDC keynote that kicks off tomorrow at 10 AM PDT in San Francisco, AppAdvice reports the App Store has passed 400,000 available iOS applications. According to data provided by App Store tracking system AppShopper, there are 401,446 iOS apps at the moment of writing this, though in three years Apple approved just over 500,000 apps – 507,293 to be exact. The important milestone of 400,000 apps (if AppShopper’s figure is to be trusted, but we believe so considering 148Apps reports 398,845 as of May 30, 2011) will surely be part of Steve Jobs’ keynote slides tomorrow as he explains why the App Store is a thriving marketplace for developers willing to monetize their efforts, in spite of the recent Lodsys controversy that, perhaps, will also be briefly addressed by Apple executives on stage for the purpose of clarification. Interestingly enough, however, AppShopper reports 97,946 iPad apps available whilst the App Store app on my iPad says there are 92,483 apps as of today.

The App Store officially launched on July 10, 2008, a day before the release of the iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 2.0.1. In 1060 days – or 34 months and 26 days as Wolfram Alpha calculates – the original App Store has been organized in two different sections in iTunes (iPhone and iPad apps) and a separate one living in its own application, the Mac App Store, launched on January 6, 2011.

iCloud To Be Deeply Integrated With Apple’s Time Capsule?

In an article today by Cult of Mac, the website claims to have a scoop on what iCloud is and how it will work. Their source, which is supposedly ‘close to the company’, told Cult of Mac that iCloud will be deeply integrated with Time Capsule. Apparently iCloud will become less of a local backup and “more of a personal cloud server”. The source corroborates the recent rumors that suggested a refreshed Time Capsule would come with embedded A4 or A5 CPUs.

There will apparently be a “Home Folder” in which files saved on a Mac connected to the Time Capsule will be instantly backed up and then made available to any remote Mac or iOS device. The Time Capsule will archive and serve up any files to any connected device, even if the computer that made the file is off. If you do work on a device outside of your local network, the changes will be automatically made when you get back home.

Then in terms of iOS devices, it will allow you to upload photos and videos from, say, an iPhone to the Time Capsule – making them available to the other devices on the network. iCloud becomes the “conduit” for all your files and media.

“Your computer gets backed up to Time Capsule anyways,” said the source. “Now it’ll serve up your content when you want it, where you want it, right there on your iOS device.”

However the source wasn’t entirely sure if it was going to be announced at WWDC, just saying it was “what’s next in line” despite also noting “I heard that they have [it] ready to go”. The final thing the source noted was that they hadn’t heard of anything “about a Time Capsule holding iOS updates”, calling the rumor “incredibly stupid”.

[Via Cult of Mac]

Authorized Biography of Steve Jobs Now Available For Pre-Order

The previously announced biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, which will be the first ‘authorized’ biography of Jobs, is now available for pre-order. iSteve: The Book of Jobs will be released on March 6th, 2012. The description of the book from Amazon provides:

From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In iSteve: The Book of Jobs, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs’ professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs’ family members, key colleagues from Apple and its competitors, iSteve is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.

You can pre-order iSteve: The Book of Jobs from Amazon right now for $19.80 in paper, or $14.99 for the Kindle edition. Curiously the release date (March 6th), will be on the fourth anniversary of the release of the iOS SDK that allowed developers to build third party apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

[Via Cult of Mac]

Rumor: Lion To Launch On June 14th

In last year’s ‘Back to the Mac’ event, Apple publicly revealed that the next version of OS X, Lion, was scheduled for a summer 2011 release, but didn’t specify an exact launch date. 9to5 Mac today claims to have information that suggests Lion will launch on Tuesday, June 14th, less than two weeks away. It comes after Lion was said to have gone “live for internal testing” less than two weeks ago, suggesting a public release in the near future.

They claim to have heard chatter from several sources, suggesting the June 14th date is a “strong possibility”. Furthermore they report that Apple retail stores will revamp their storefront window to publicise the launch of Lion.

Apple is said to be planning one of their product launch-indicative “visual updates” for the morning of Tuesday, June 14th

The report also suggests that the launch of Lion will mark the beginning of reduced software presence within Apple stores, starting with the possible removal of Snow Leopard. In line with this, another source claims that the retail supplies of Snow Leopard are dwindling, solidifying the possibility of a mid-June launch of Lion. Earlier this year the appearance of several Lion manuals on Amazon had suggested a late-July launch based on their launch dates.

[Via 9to5 Mac]