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.

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.