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Apple Releases iOS 5.0.1 [Direct Links]

Apple has just released iOS 5.0.1. The update is available now on Apple’s iTunes, although at the moment of writing this the new software version still has to show up on iOS 5’s built-in Software Update preference panel. iOS 5.0.1 is, however, appearing as an update on iTunes. iOS 5.0.1, as previously announced by Apple, brings battery life fixes for all devices running iOS 5, as well as security improvements and multitasking gestures on the original iPad. Battery life issues were especially reported in the past weeks by iPhone 4S users, and a number of unofficial “tutorials” have surfaced on how to improve battery life for the device. With iOS 5.0.1, Apple is saying battery life issues weren’t specific to the iPhone 4S, but to iOS 5.

Update: iOS 5.0.1 is now appearing as over-the-air update for several users.

Update #2: Apple has posted the security contents of this update, and among the fixes it appears to be one for the bug discovered by Charlie Miller, which allowed execution of unsigned code in App Store apps.

A screenshot of the official changelog below:

iOS 5.0.1 direct download links below (build number 9A405).

Nuance Releases “Dragon Express” On Mac App Store

Nuance today released a new product of the “Dragon” dictation family for OS X, called Dragon Express and available at $49.99 on the Mac App Store. Dragon Express lives in the OS X menubar and can be activated with a single click or keyboard shortcut, allowing users to open the utility and start talking into a Mac’s built-in or external USB microphone. Using Nuance’s speech recognition technology, Dragon Express will transcribe the spoken text into the app’s window, with options to forward the text to other apps, search it with Spotlight or Google, email it, copy it to the clipboard, or share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Nuance is positioning Dragon Express as a lightweight version of the popular Dragon Dictate, which has more features and comes at a higher price. Dragon Express should be an “introduction” to speech recognition for OS X customers, and the company has even posted a handy comparison chart to see the functionalities available in Express and Dictate.

Dragon Express works locally (it doesn’t require network connectivity) and according to Nuance it’s “easier to use” than the full-featured Dragon Dictate. From the press release:

Dragon Express is a great app for those who are new to speech recognition or who are looking for an easy-to-use dictation tool that allows them to use their voice instead of typing,” said Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager, Dragon, Nuance. “For those looking for a more full-featured speech recognition program, we recommend Dragon Dictate, which provides the full capabilities of advanced speech recognition technology.

Those looking to try Nuance’s speech recognition technology and services for the first time might want to try Dragon Express, available at $49.99 on the Mac App Store. Nuance is also offering Dragon Express customers the opportunity to upgrade to Dragon Dictate for $99. Nuance isn’t new to Apple customers, offering a variety of iOS and OS X apps and also powering OS X Lion’s built-in voices.

Hack Brings Auto-Correct Bar To Default iOS 5 Keyboard

As reported by 9to5mac, it appears Apple’s iOS 5 comes with a software functionality to enable an Android-like extra keyboard row for auto-corrections and common suggestions systemwide.

Screenshots of the feature, first posted by Australian developer Sonny Dickson, seems to suggest the feature had been present in iOS 5 since the first beta seeded to developers, but have only been recently re-discovered. The images posted by Dickson show an additional row on top of the standard system keyboard on the iPhone and iPad, which in the provided examples includes suggestions to auto-complete “Hel” with common options like “He’ll”, “Help” or “Gel”. It appears that once enabled, the keyboard bar replaces iOS’ standard auto-correction popup. 9to5mac shares a method on how to enable the feature without a jailbreak.

The extra keyboard row, however, isn’t completely new to iOS 5. The OS already uses a similar (if not the same) system for the Japanese Kana keyboard, with text suggestions displayed in a bar that you can scroll, and expand with the arrow icon also seen in Dickson’s screenshots. For this reason, we believe the hack simply extends the Japanese keyboard’s functionalities to other iOS 5 keyboards.

As usual with unofficial iOS 5 features discovered by developers hacking around the system, don’t expect complete and reliable functionality from the keyboard bar. As Panorama Mode has shown earlier this week, there’s a reason Apple has decided not to include a certain feature in the final version of iOS 5, and early reports from users who have activated this tweak indicate the keyboard bar may crash the iOS Springboard. Still, this is an interesting discovery that we’d be curious to try out with the new iPad split keyboard, also a new feature in iOS 5.

Steve Jobs Nominated for Time “Person of the Year”

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams nominated Apple’s late co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs to be Time’s “Person of the Year” 2011, CNET reports. Other nominees in this year’s selection include U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, Mohamed Bouazizi (a Tunisian fruit vendor who kicked off the Arab Spring) and the “angry people”. Alongside Williams, ”Saturday Night Live” writer Seth Meyers and actor Jesse Eisenberg presented the nominations this year.

One guy, who changed our world, and I said to Seth Meyers as we walked across Sixth Avenue, ‘Just look with me on this one block walk at how he changed the world around us. Look at how he changed the world.’ Not only did he change the world, but he gave us that spirit again that something was possible that you could look at a piece of plastic or glass and move your finger– that’s outlandish. You could make things bigger or smaller like that. ‘Oh the places you’ll go’ and oh the way you will change forever the music and television industries. So may he rest in peace, Steve Jobs, and the spirit he represents, are my nominee for Person of the Year,” said Williams during his nomination speech.

Steve Jobs would be the first person to receive the award posthumously. Time’s Person of the Year will be revealed next month, and previous winners include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (2010), Barack Obama (2008) and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (1999). As Wikipedia describes the award, Person of the Year “features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that for better or for worse, …has done the most to influence the events of the year.”

[Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com]

IGN Goes Hands-On with Infinity Blade 2, Coming December 1→

IGN Goes Hands-On with Infinity Blade 2, Coming December 1

IGN’s Justin Davis got to spend some time with Chair’s upcoming iOS sequel to Infinity Blade, aptly named Infinity Blade 2, and says the game is a huge improvement over its predecessor:

It’s impressive what Chair has been able to pull off. The original Infinity Blade launched with about 10 combat locations. The sequel has over 40. It seems virtually every element of Infinity Blade 1 has been blown out. The company has aggressive post-launch plans far beyond just adding more swords and football helmets, as well. Clash Mobs are one teased feature. Players might fight an enemy with “10 million or more” hit points. If Infinity Blade players around the world whittle down the shared health pool, all participants can be awarded with special bonuses.

Infinity Blade 2 is due out December 1.

Infinity Blade 2 will feature more levels – or, in the game’s parlance, “loops” between areas and enemies – new weapons, an updated combat system and graphics completely re-engineered for Apple’s A5 chip. Indeed, Infinity Blade 2 was demoed at Apple’s “Let’s talk iPhone” media event in October to showcase the iPhone 4S’ graphics capabilities.

The original Infinity Blade was a success on the App Store (grossing $1.6 million in five days) and the first game to truly show what the A4 processor, Apple’s Retina Display and the Unreal Engine could do for mobile games. The game received a series of updates, including multiplayer support, but was criticized for its repetitive gameplay and tedious cut scenes. Infinity Blade 2 seems to have a fix for these issues, so make sure to read Davis’ preview to learn more.

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Apple Storefronts Photos→

Apple Storefronts Photos

Thomas Park (via MacRumors) has created an impressive gallery of storefronts photos from every Apple Store around the globe as of September 2011. The 357 stores, organized by opening date thanks to ifoAppleStore’s database and presented through Apple’s original photos from its website, include the most recent additions such as IFC Mall in Hong Kong and Centro Sicilia in Italy. The full gallery, available here, allows you to filter stores by country with a navigation menu at the top.

Way back in August of 2001, some good friends and I took a road trip down to Virginia to attend a Radiohead concert. Unfortunately the rains came, the venue got flooded, and the concert was cancelled. Disappointing, but as something of a concession prize, I got to check out the very first brick & mortar Apple Store, which had opened in Tysons Corner just a few weeks earlier. At the time, most analysts considered Apple’s fledgling retail initiative to be doomed. But though Tysons Corner seemed like a modest start, it was a blueprint for big things to come.

Park notes that in taking a look at the gallery, it’s clear Apple follows some design conventions but they’re not afraid of breaking them and trying something new according to a retail location’s unique properties and features. So whilst most stores in the United States and Europe follow a consistent design trend, others have seen a kind of experimentation that has lead to beautiful and original designs like Regent Street, Fifth Avenue, or State Street in Santa Barbara.

Apple’s next flagship store in Grand Central Terminal is currently undergoing construction and is set to open soon. At the Q4 2011 earnings call, Apple announced that they opened 30 new retail stores in the September quarter, 21 of which were international (non-US) stores. Average revenue per-store was $10.7 million with overall revenue from retail up 1% at $3.6 billion.

Check out Thomas Park’s gallery here.

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Chitika: 38% Of iPhone Users Have Updated To iOS 5

According to a new study by advertising firm and data analytics company Chitika, in the week of October 22-28 iOS 5 adoption rate has jumped to 38% between iPhone users, 30% on the iPad, and 12% on the iPod touch. Chitika, which monitors a subset of web traffic from iOS devices, claims that in two weeks iOS 5 adoption has grown from 20% on the iPhone to 38%, whilst iPod touch users have shown less interest in upgrading to Apple’s latest software update. Furthermore, Chitika data seems to show that iOS 4, which was released last year, is still installed on nearly 80% of the monitored iPod touch user base (63% on the iPad, 58% on the iPhone) with smaller numbers for iOS 3.

To put Chitika’s numbers in perspective, it’s important to understand that the company can’t monitor every single iOS device out there (over 250 million), as its stats are largely based on devices that appear in Chitika’s web logs. However, the percentages reported by the company may still provide a good insight into the upgrade pattern of iOS users after the release of iOS 5. iOS 5 was first seeded to developers in June, and it’s likely that a portion of Chitika’s initial data was made of developers running the latest betas of iOS 5 prior to the public release. On October 12th, Apple released iOS 5 for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, iPad 2 and iPod touch 3rd & 4th gen, alongside iCloud and a software update for OS X. On October 17th, five days after the initial iOS 5 rollout, Apple announced 25 million customers were already “using” iOS 5, with more than 20 million customers signed up for iCloud.

As Chitika and Apple don’t break down their numbers by device model, here’s two more pieces of information worth considering: older iPod touch models given away with previous Back to School promotions won’t be able to upgrade to iOS 5, and the iPhone 4S was released in seven countries on October 14th, running iOS 5 out of the box. In the first weekend, the iPhone 4S topped 4 million sales, more than doubling last year’s iPhone 4 numbers. It’s likely that the success of the iPhone 4S has affected both Chitika’s study (performed between October 22 and October 28) and Apple’s own iOS 5 usage numbers, released on October 17th. In this regard, there may be some truth to Chitika’s report that more iPhone owners have upgraded to iOS 5, especially considering the wide compatibility of the OS with phones released in 2009 and still capable of running the latest version of iOS (the iPhone 3GS).

The numbers posted by Chitika may also be affected by how iPod touch owners use their devices. Back in April, Apple said over 60 million iPod touches had been sold since 2007, and it’s widely believed a large percentage of these units were sold to teenagers and kids too young to own an iPhone or iPad, but still interested in Apple’s iOS platform, especially for games and social apps. Apple itself positioned the iPod touch as a gaming device selling more copies than Sony’s PSP or the Nintendo DS. If the iPod touch demographics are really made mostly by teenagers, a possible interpretation of slower iOS 5 adoption rates is that these users aren’t interested in upgrading to the latest version as soon as possible as other “tech savvy” owners of iPhones and iPads and early adopters. It’s likely that most owners of compatible devices will eventually upgrade to iOS 5, but they haven’t in the weeks following the iOS 5 release.

Last, two other possible factors that may have influenced the upgrade process of some users could be iOS 5’s battery life issues and the lack of a proper jailbreak for iOS 5. As for battery life, Apple has already promised a software fix and iOS 5.0.1 is being tested by developers and select end users. A subset of users may also be waiting for an “untethered jailbreak” for iOS 5 before they decide to upgrade: in April, it was reported Cydia – an unofficial marketplace for all sorts of jailbreak apps and modifications – had been installed on roughly 10-15 million iOS devices, with over 1.5 million users logging into Cydia daily. JailbreakMe, a web-based tool that allowed users to jailbreak iOS 4.3 devices including the iPad 2, was used over 2 million times shortly after its release.

You can check out Chitika’s numbers and full study here. As iOS 5 adoption grows in the next months, so will the number of App Store apps that require the latest version of iOS to be installed, and it will be interesting to see which devices Apple will support with the next major version of iOS – especially the iPhone 3GS, which came out in 2009 and is still available for sale.