EFF Calls On Apple to Protect iOS Developers→

EFF Calls On Apple to Protect iOS Developers

This is a problem that lawyers call a misallocation of burden. The law generally works to ensure that the party in the best position to address an issue bears the responsibility of handling that issue. In the copyright context, for example, the default assumption is that the copyright owners are best positioned to identify potential infringement. This is because, among other reasons, copyright owners know what content they own and which of their works have been licensed. Here, absent protection from Apple, developers hoping to avoid a legal dispute must investigate each of the technologies that Apple provides to make sure none of them is patent-infringing. For many small developers, this requirement, combined with a 30 percent fee to Apple, is an unacceptable cost. Even careful developers who hire lawyers to do full-scale patent searches on potential apps surely would not expect to investigate the technology that Apple provides. Instead, they would expect (with good reason) that Apple wouldn’t provide technologies in its App Store that open its developers up to liability – and/or would at least agree to defend them when a troll like Lodsys comes along.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) thinks Apple should stand up for its developers and protect them from patent trolls like Lodsys, who are asking for licensing fees on a technology provided by Apple itself to developers through the SDK. We’ve been following the debate surrounding Lodsys for over a week now, and whilst The Guardian reported Apple would issue an official response this week, nothing has come out of Apple’s legal department yet – though Apple is well known for taking its time before addressing issues publicly. Several bloggers in the past days have suggested Apple may use the WWDC stage to speak directly to developers and explain the situation with in-app purchases, patents and Lodsys, even if the company previously announced that the WWDC would simply offer a preview of the future of iOS and OS X.

The EFF’s letter to Apple resonates with a common sentiment among developers and the tech press – Apple should defend developers and the iOS ecosystem from being threatened by trolls and patent infringement claims.

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Weather HD for Mac Brings Beautiful Forecasts to the Desktop

Weather HD is a popular weather application for iPhone and iPad by development studio vimov which, unlike most weather tools that display current conditions and weekly forecasts through icons and data sets on screen, comes with a selection of beautifully animated videos that depict the weather conditions of your location. Weather HD animates a cloudy and dark sky when a thunderstorm is coming, and lets you view a green field with grass moving in front of you in case of a windy but sunny summer day. If you’ve tried the iPad app last year, you know what to expect – a very few numbers, lots of video and animations.

The Mac version of Weather HD, released today, takes where the iOS counterparts left off to offer even more videos, and bigger ones with new scenarios and conditions. The app is a 225 MB download for a reason: it’s full of video content that will be displayed on your Mac’s screen as soon as you enter your ZIP code or city name. In the Mac app, though, there’s more than the iPad version. You can set up notifications to be alerted when temperature drops below a certain amount of degrees, and quickly check out the hourly forecasts from an icon in the menubar. You can enter multiple locations, as well as choose to run the app in windowed or fullscreen mode. In the main screen, animated forecasts run on the right panel, and a series of tabs in the upper left hand corner get you access to a slew of other functionalities. You can check out severe conditions and moon phases in-app, or switch to the Map view and apply different layers on your location like clouds, temperature, humidity and wind. When you’re done, the additional panel slides back to reveal video forecasts in their full glory again.

Weather HD has never been an app for weather professionals and geeks, but the Mac app packs more features than its iOS siblings. Videos look good, and whether or not the whole concept can become annoying after a few days of usage it’s totally up to you. But at $3.99, I think vimov is off to another success in the App Store. Read more

Mac App Store Developer Reports 1 Million Downloads

According to Industry Gamers, development studio EnsenaSoft has announced today they’re first developer to reach 1 million app downloads in the Mac App Store. Since arriving on the Mac App Store months ago, EnsenaSoft has released 31 educational and puzzle games / apps for the Mac, totaling 7,000 downloads on average each day.

We have incredible talent within our organization. The applications that they developed have become so popular, so quickly, with Mac consumers,” said Blanca Valencia, President of EnsenaSoft.  “The Mac App Store has allowed us to compete with much larger developers and reach out to a much broader audience than we could have ever imagined. Through the store, Mac users throughout the world can now learn from, and experience, our tremendous applications first hand.

EnsenaSoft has both free and paid apps in the Mac App Store, and the large selection of software surely helped the developers achieve the important milestone. It still surprising however, that the announcement of 1 million downloads is coming from a relatively unknown name like EnsenaSoft, rather than more popular devs like Rovio (developers of Angry Birds) or Pixelmator, a popular image editor for OS X that generated $1 million in revenue in the first 20 days of Mac App Store availability. EnsenaSoft’s success could be a sign detailing the nature of the Mac App Store, which with recent updates to the homepage from Apple has proved to be the perfect platformfor games and kids-oriented products.

Soon after the launch of the Mac App Store on January 6, other stories of success confirmed the theory that a unified app marketplace for the Mac was something users had been looking forward to. Digital organizer Evernote reported 40,000 new Mac users in the first days of 2011, and the developer of Compartments, another Mac app, said he went from 7 sales a day to 1,500. Apple itself announced 1 million app downloads during the first day of Mac App Store. [via Macgasm]

Apple Also Negotiating with Music Publishers for Cloud Service

Following last night’s report on Apple signing a deal with the third music label, Sony, over the launch of the rumored iTunes cloud service after inking similar agreements with EMI and Warner Music Group, Peter Kafka at All Things Digital reports negotiations won’t be over once Apple also signs Universal, the biggest music label in the United States; whilst Apple is clearly in advantage when compared to Google and Amazon thanks to its music deals, the company still has to finalize agreements with music publishers, which own different rights on songs and albums than labels. As Kafka explains, publishers are different entities, usually shared within the same label but still residing in separate buildings, that own rights to the songs’ compositions, as opposed to the labels who own rights to the recordings. Once music is distributed either physically or online, both get paid with different fees and terms; once example is the Beatles music catalogue, with recordings owned by EMI and compositions by publisher Sony/ATV.

Kafka claims Apple simply started negotiating with the labels first, and deals with publishers are currently being worked on ahead of a rumored WWDC launch.

While Apple came to terms with Warner Music and EMI Music weeks ago, and has now struck a deal with Sony Music, industry sources tell me the company doesn’t have agreements with labels’ associated publishing companies — Warner/Chappell, EMI Music Publishing and Sony/ATV. The deal Apple is about to sign with Universal, also won’t include publishing, I’m told.

Music industry sources I talk to think Apple wants to launch, or at least announce, the cloud service at its developers’ conference in early June. And if the hang-up is truly just about money, then that still gives dealmakers time to hammer things out. But remember that this is the music business, and simple things always take longer than they should.

As reported several times in the past few weeks, Apple’s upcoming cloud-based music service is rumored to offer both uploads of a user’s music collection and access to songs not previously purchased, but available for streaming through a subscription system.

Tweed for iPad Filters Your Timeline, Integrates with Instapaper

Released earlier today at $2.99 in the App Store, Tweed is a Twitter client for iPad aimed at presenting you links from your Twitter timeline. Instead of visualizing all tweets from people you follow, mentions and direct messages as most Twitter clients do, Tweed filters links out of your timeline, enabling you to “drag them” onto a stack on the right that will generate previews for the selected webpages. As you log in with your Twitter credentials, Tweed will display tweets that contain links in a narrow sidebar on the left; if you place your finger on a tweet, you’ll be able to move in on the right, and go back to the timeline. The more tweets you save in the right panel, the more pages Tweed will stack on top of each other, letting you tap on them to read the original article. Very simple. When in web view mode, you can check out the normal page or switch to text-only mode. When you’re done reading, you can tap on the tweet bubble and flick it to delete it from the stack.

One cool feature I’ve noticed in Tweed is direct Instapaper integration. Tweed comes with a Read Later tab, but unlike other apps that support Instapaper and also have their own reading queue, Tweed’s reading list mirrors every link to Instapaper – if you save 5 articles in there, those 5 articles will be immediately sent to Instapaper. If you can’t find enough reading material in your timeline, Tweed’s developers have baked some curated Twitter lists into the app showcasing relevant Apple and tech news, world news, and so forth. The selection is pretty good, although limited for now given the early nature of the app.

Tweed won’t replace your default Twitter client, but it may come in handy if you’re looking for a way to turn your timeline into a list of links you’re likely interested in. You can download Tweed at $2.99 from the App Store.

Google Completely Revamps Maps on Mobile Browsers

Announced a few minutes ago on the official Google Mobile Blog, the Maps web app for iOS and Android devices has gone under a major update that enables new features and menus when viewed on mobile browsers. As Google reports, 40% of Maps usage happens on mobile browsers, and that’s why the company decided to update the maps.google.com website to offer a more consistent experience across smartphones and tablets. The changes, however, are exclusive to the web app and we can’t see anything new on the native Maps app for iOS, which uses Google’s backend but is developed by Apple.

The new Maps website displays a bar on top to get your current location, enable and disable layers like satellite, labels, traffic and points of interest, and another button to get directions to a specific location or learn more about places that support additional information and photos (like restaurants). Provided you give Safari access to your location, you can easily get directions as you would on a desktop browser, sign out of your Google account and access the “My Maps” interface from Google.

Now, when you visit maps.google.com on your phone or tablet’s browser and opt-in to share your location, you can use many of the same Google Maps features you’re used to from the desktop.

The new features include:

  • See your current location
  • Search for what’s nearby with suggest and auto complete
  • Have clickable icons of popular businesses and transit stations
  • Get driving, transit, biking, and walking directions
  • Turn on satellite, transit, traffic, biking, and other layers
  • View Place pages with photos, ratings, hours, and more
  • When signed into your Google account, access your starred locations and My Maps

You can try new Maps mobile website by heading over to maps.google.com on your iOS or Android device. Check out more screenshots below. Read more

Tweet It Makes Tweeting from iOS Simple and Integrated

There’s no shortage of Twitter clients with embedded web views on the iPhone and iPad: most Twitter apps nowadays allow you to check out a webpage inline without leaving the timeline and jumping to Safari, thus making it easy to follow links from people you follow and go back to the main view in seconds. However, most of the time I still find myself discovering articles and stuff I want to tweet when browsing the Internet using Safari or iCab mobile: whether it’s a new post by Ben Brooks or Shawn Blanc, or a cool video I stumble upon on YouTube, I want to be able to easily send a webpage from the browser to my Twitter client of choice. But that’s usually not possible, as Twitter clients typically don’t offer integration with the system browser in the way I want – that is, being able to send both the webpage title and URL from Safari to the client. And those apps that do offer bookmarklets to send a link from the browser straight to the app are often limited to the link itself and not the title, which I always have to copy and paste manually.

Tweet It, a new $1.99 universal app released today, provides a sweet solution to tweet links to webpages including the title of the original source, also allowing you to set up a custom URL shortening service for a bit of personalization, and other options to make tweeting super simple. Tweet It is solely focused on enabling you to tweet links: the app supports multiple Twitter accounts but there’s so timeline at all – it’s an app to tweet links you found interesting. Sure you can send regular status updates too, but the focus on browser integration is made obvious by buttons to shorten a link using CloudApp, bit.ly and goo.gl, or an embedded web view that, through another button, lets you open webpages within Tweet It and choose to insert a title, URL or title+URL in the message. Alternatively, if you’ve copied a link from Safari and you launch Tweet It, the app will detect the link in your clipboard and offer you the possibility to fire it off to Twitter. There’s more: with the installation of a bookmarklet, you’ll be able to send a webpage title and URL from Safari to Tweet It in seconds. In any way you want to share a page, Tweet It has you covered.

Tweet It is minimal, simple and powered by a delicious UI. It runs both on the iPhone and iPad, and it’s got some clever ideas to make tweeting links a real pleasure. You can download Tweet It at $1.99 from the App Store.

Picturescue Recovers Photos from iOS Backups

When an iPhone or iPad gets stolen or lost, we immediately worry about our personal data stored on the device (like email, contacts, passwords and history) being accessed by someone else with no good intentions. Whilst Apple’s free Find my iPhone service allows us to easily block and wipe a device that’s no longer with us, the loss of personal media like photos and videos is something we can’t fix remotely, at least not yet. Picturescue, a new Mac app by developers Pádraig Kennedy and John Ryan, provides a dead-simple solution to recover photos from an iOS device: rather than plugging directly into an iPhone or iPad, Picturescue reads the backup stored locally on your computer to retrieve photos and export them in their original format to a new location. This means that, provided you’ve synced your device with iTunes and you’ve decided to save an unencrypted backup (Picturescue can’t read encrypted iTunes backups for now), you’ll be able to view photos and export them at any time. It’s as easy as firing up the software, selecting the device in the sidebar, and choosing the photos to export.

Picturescue can be downloaded for free if you only want to view photos found in the backup file, and a $4.99 purchase gives you the possibility to export. The lack of support for encrypted backups is a major downside, but considering iTunes defaults to unencrypted backups on Mac and Windows machines, this shouldn’t be a problem for all those people that don’t care about password-protecting their iOS device backups. Get the app here.

3do: A Reminder App with a 3D Twist

There’s no shortage of reminder apps on the iPhone: from the excellent Due app that also works on the iPad with Dropbox synchronization of alerts and tasks to Notificant, a cloud solution that fires off notifications on iOS devices, Macs and web browsers, one could say reminder apps are the new Twitter clients or GTD apps of the App Store ecosystem. As the iPhone is always with us, being able to be easily reminded of important things has become a priority for iOS software developers. 3do, a new app by Cleversome, aims at reinventing the mobile notification space by offering an innovative interface based on swipe gestures that, instead of forcing you to switch between multiple screens to get your alarms and due dates going, allows you to do everything in one screen thanks to beautiful 3D animations within a single menu.

3do is made of two screens: the reminders you set up, and the settings, accessible with a pull-up gesture from the main screen. Think of Twitter’s popular pull-to-refresh gesture, only applied at the bottom and aimed at opening a new window. It works pretty well, though it may be unintuitive at first. The easiest way to get how 3do works is by adding a new reminder: tap the + button, and begin typing to add a description. Once the reminder is written down, swipe on it to rotate the view and get to another menu with icons to mark a reminder as complete or favorite, share it via email or SMS, or delete it. If you swipe again on the reminder, the view rotates a second time to reveal the alarms you can assign, and I deeply appreciate the fact that you can set up two by default – say one 15 minutes before and one “on time.” But there’s more: keep swiping and the cube rotates to show due settings like “due once”,  “due daily”, “due weekly” and “due monthly”, which are pretty useful to create repeating timers and reminders for the future. One last swipe, and the 3D view gets you back to the original screen. Is 3D a gimmick in 3do? Maybe, but at least it works well. I’ve been beta testing the app, and whilst there’s no doubt the whole thing has fancy effects to capture your attention, I believe using animations to save space and put everything in a single window is actually quite clever. Like I said, using 3D effects surely isn’t “necessary”, but in this app is functional to the main purpose.

3do has also got an intelligent implementation of alarm notifications and snooze options. Besides letting you assign multiple alarms and due dates, when a reminder is due you’ll get the standard iOS notification that brings you to app; but once a reminder nears its overdue time, 3do displays a menu telling you that’s the last alarm, and you can choose to set up a new one in 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or just mark it as complete.

You can download 3do at $4.99 from the App Store. The app might be a little pricey for the average iOS user looking for a simple reminder solution that works across devices (3do doesn’t have iPad or web counterparts at the moment), but if you’re looking for an innovative way to manage and schedule reminders on the iPhone 3do has got you covered. Check out more screenshots below. Read more