iTunes 10.3.1 Released

Following reports of iTunes 10.3 having some issues with iOS devices in the syncing process, Apple released iTunes 10.3.1 a few hours ago, quite possibly trying to fix the errors reported in the original 10.3 version made available earlier this week. After the WWDC keynote Apple seeded iTunes 10.5 beta to developers to enable sync with devices running iOS 5, but iTunes 10.3 was also released to the public to bring initial iCloud features like basic support for iTunes in the Cloud in the United States, Automatic Downloads, as well as a refreshed UI.

iTunes 10.3.1 is available for Mac and Windows machines, and can be downloaded from Apple’s support site of the Software Update control panel. The official changelog doesn’t include any details on what’s been updated, simply reporting the new features introduced in iTunes 10.3.

Angry Birds Rio Gets 15 New Levels→

Angry Birds Rio Gets 15 New Levels

We’ve been tracking the releases and development of Angry Birds here at MacStories, and it looks like Rovio really won’t give up on updating its insanely popular franchise (which surprisingly didn’t win an Apple Design Award) for iPhone and iPad. Recently dethroned by the blockbuster-selling The Heist, Angry Birds is back with a new update for the Rio version, both on phones and tablets. Angry Birds Rio 1.2 gets 15 shiny new levels with a samba setting that reminds of Rio Carnival – I’ve been playing around with them and they look great, with the usual amount of fun provided by Rovio’s clever level design.

Or, to use Rovio’s iTunes changelog:

A whole new episode! It’s time to Samba!
15 all new levels
New bird type

You can download the full version of Angry Birds Rio for iPhone ($0.99) or iPad ($2.99).

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The Best of the Best: Apple Design Awards 2011 Winners Announced

The Apple Design Awards “recognize outstanding achievement and excellence” in apps made specifically for Apple platforms and devices. For the first time, this year’s ADAs (which will be announced tonight at the WWDC 2011 in San Francisco) will award developers of applications for all iOS devices and Macs: whilst last year’s edition skipped the Mac to focus on iOS, 2011 is back at full speed to celebrate great, usable, and well-designed apps available in the Mac and iOS App Stores. For the full list of 2010 ADAs winner, check out our previous coverage here.

So what’s in for tonight? As you may be aware of we’re not in San Francisco to attend WWDC (let’s leave that to developers), but we’ll be following the events as they unfold on Twitter, also thanks to a few developer friends who are actually there to enjoy the show. We will update this story with the fresh names of winning apps and devs as soon as we get them, as well as Apple’s official statements about this year’s ADAs once the official page gets updated later today or tomorrow.

So follow us on Twitter as @macstoriesnet, come back to this post in around 10 minutes from now, and let’s wait and see who’s going to grab the prizes this year at WWDC.

You can check out the full list of winners after the break.

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Apple’s 3rd Data Center

At around one hour, fifty-five minutes, and fifty seconds into Monday’s Keynote, Steve Jobs riposted, “If you don’t think we’re serious, you’re wrong.” The audience, wide-eyed with the announcement of iTunes Match, quickly hushed as Jobs paced across the stage. “This is our third data center that we just completed. It’s in Maiden, North Carolina.” Steve Jobs emphasized the enormous size of the data center, briefly revealing some of the technology inside. “We’re pretty proud of it.”

Apple’s 3rd data center had been at the center of speculation in the months leading up to Monday’s keynote, and while everyone agreed that the servers packed inside would host a myriad of iTunes content, no one really understood its true purpose. Many expected a much bigger announcement from Apple yesterday, with many eager to see music, video, and movie streaming at their fingertips. Instead, the iTunes services offered present a solution that met the demands for streaming half way: while files are still stored natively on devices, they’re available for access from iCloud itself. iTunes Match is agreeably head scratching, but the promise of a service that will just work by a Fall release gives me the feeling Apple hasn’t shown us everything there is to the un-locker service.

So with the focus on pushing content rather than streaming, the question that many are now asking is, “What exactly does Apple’s 3rd data center do if they’re not (yet) streaming content?” It’s a fair question, especially when Apple’s equipment is examined more closely. Many of the racks shown in Apple’s data center are capped with nothing but filler panels, and there’s an obvious mix of machines presented that were chosen more for show than to reveal Apple’s inner workings. With the brief glimpse Jobs gave us, however, it is possible to make a couple good guesses as we identify all of the equipment. Read more

WWDC 2011 Keynote Becomes 4-Minute Musical

If you’ve missed the WWDC 2011 keynote video (it’s available for streaming and download) but you’ve already read all the announcements, and yet you feel like you’re up for one of those funny recreations of Apple keynotes that usually pop up online a few hours after Steve Jobs has stepped off stage, this time we recommend checking out Jonathan Mann’s WWDC 2011: The Musical. You may remember him as the guy who puts up a new song on YouTube every day; in fact, his popular iPhone 4 Antenna song was even featured by Apple at the “Antennagate media event” last year.

The musical edition of the WWDC 2011 keynote is four minutes long, is based off MacRumors Live event transcript and it actually manages to put the right emphasis on the major and less-exciting announcements about Lion, iCloud, and iOS 5. It’s very well done, funny, entertaining. Perhaps Apple will feature it at the next WWDC opening keynote.

Check out the video below.
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iOS 5 Code Reveals Two New iPad Models

TUAW reports USB configuration files found in the iOS 5 beta seeded to developers last night reveal two new, unreleased iPad model identifiers labelled “iPad3,1” and “iPad3,2”. Considering that existing iPad 2 models are indicated in iOS as iPad2,1 (WiFi-only model), iPad2,2 (GSM) and iPad2,3 (CDMA), the discovery seems to indicate that earlier rumors of next-generation iPad getting a universal GSM/CDMA chip were correct. If that’s the case, iPad3,1 could point to the new WiFi model, with the iPad3,2 device being the one with dual GSM/CDMA capabilities.

In the same report, TUAW notes iOS 5 contains mentions of iPhone4,1 and iPhone4,2 models, though these were already spotted by Engadget in the iOS 4.3 beta code. However, the article also notes there’s no mention of iPod touch 5th generation in the current iOS 5 beta, leading to speculation that a new iPhone could be announced this Fall, but not a new iPod touch. On the other hand, Apple could still insert model identifiers in future iOS 5 betas set to be seeded this summer.

Model identifiers are usually a good indication of new products to come in the next months, and they correctly pinpointed new hardware before. The iPad 3 was initially rumored to be scheduled for 2011, although Apple made it clear at the March 2 event that 2011 would be the “year of the iPad 2” and a recent report claimed certification for iPad 3 components is only starting now, for a 2012 release.

Find My Mac Gets Real on Lion, Lets You Remote Wipe & Lock

Initially discovered a few months back after the first developer previews of OS X Lion, “Find My Mac” was rumored to be a new service that, following the path of “Find My iPhone”, would allow users to geo-locate their computer, remotely lock and wipe it just like it’s already possible with an iOS device, and perhaps even control it using Lion’s multi-user access features. Following last night’s release of Lion Developer Preview 4 with iCloud integration as announced at WWDC, 9to5mac details some of the aspects of Find My Mac, which apparently will behave exactly like its iOS counterpart in the way it’ll let users lock and wipe lost & connected Macs.

Setting it up is pretty straightforward. Interestingly, Apple lets guest users use Safari if you have this set up. That is a trick to help the Mac figure out where it is (IP address) and let you connect to it.

Once you connect to your lost Mac, you can then “Play a Sound or message”, “Remote Lock” or “Remote Wipe” the Mac.

Safari integration sounds like a clever solution to force a Mac to connect to the Internet, though we’re curious to see how this feature will look like in practice. On the iOS side of things it appears everything will work from the standard Find My iPhone app with the usual “remote” and “play sound” functionalities, and assuming there will also be Mac and web-based counterparts to control Find My Mac, the new option is shaping up to be quite powerful and user-friendly at the same time. Taking in consideration Backblaze’s recently announced feature to locate stolen Macs and stories of success with tools like Hidden, it’ll be interesting to see how Apple will market the (free?) Find my Mac against the competition.

From the screenshot above it looks like Find my Mac will be an iCloud service, although Apple hasn’t officially announced anything in addition to old MobileMe sync & push functions, OTA purchases and iTunes in the Cloud. Find my Mac could come this July when Lion is released, or this Fall, when iCloud is expected to go live for everyone.

iBooks 1.3 Released: Adds Read-Aloud Feature, Enhancements

A new update to iBooks for iPhone and iPad has started propagating in iTunes, bringing the app to version 1.3 after the major announcements from yesterday’s keynote, which also noted iCloud’s capability of pushing book purchases across devices with the new Automatic Downloads feature. iBooks 1.3, available here, adds a read-aloud option with real narrators’ voices to read a book to, say, your children, with some books even highlighting words as the narrator speaks. Alongside media improvements to enhanced books, the changelog reports:

  • Help your children learn to read with the new read-aloud feature included in select children’s books from the iBookstore.
  • The read-aloud feature uses a real narrator to read the book to you, and in some books, it will even highlight the words as you read along.
  • Enhanced books can now automatically play audio or video included with the book.
  • Makes iBooks more responsive when opening very long books.
  • Addresses an issue where some books may display the same page twice.

We heard last night several reports of iOS 5 beta “corrupting” books and .epub files in iBooks, so it’s likely that this update will also bring early iOS 5 compatibility and fix those issues. Get iBooks 1.3 here.

Hands-On with iTunes’ Purchase History for Apps, Songs, and Books


iTunes 10.3 was released a couple of hours ago and one of the new features it brings is a ‘Purchased’ screen that lists every song, app and book that you have ever downloaded from the iTunes Store, App Store or iBookstore. You can get to the ‘Purchased’ screen simply by going to the iTunes Store homepage and clicking “Purchased” from the sidebar on the right of your screen(see below), it should also have a ‘New’ tag beside it, at which point it will take you to ‘Purchased’ screen.

The ‘Purchased’ screen is a really  handy feature to easily and quickly find a previous purchase and instantly download it or even download all of your previous purchases with just one click. The feature, which is also included in iOS 5, is part of Apple’s iCloud, which was unveiled at yesterday’s WWDC keynote. The ‘Purchased’ screen also gives you some fairly powerful tools to find the exact purchase you want, either from just searching, only displaying items not downloaded to your iTunes library or just list the purchases alphabetically.

Make sure to jump the break for a whole slew of screenshots that demonstrate the new feature from iTunes 10.3 (for developers, this feature is also present in iTunes 10.5).

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