#MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday
Financial Times Says iPad App Can Go “Somewhere Else”
The executives over at the Financial Times don’t like Apple’s new terms for app subscriptions. Even with an iPad app that’s generating 20% of the publication’s subscribers and millions in revenue, Financial Times owner Pearson expressed his concerns about Apple’s policy in a way that suggest the Financial Times may soon launch its app on other tablets and abandon the iPad, the Guardian reports.
It is unclear how their proposal is going to work, we are still talking to them,” said Scardino. “The important thing to remember is there are many, many tablets coming out and multiple devices … [from] Kindle to mobiles. If indeed Apple are not happy to give us customer data then maybe we will get it somewhere else.
Chief executive Scardino argues that as competition to Apple’s iPad increases over time, there will be no need for publishers to only consider the App Store ecosystem. Admittedly, Apple’s new terms with a 30% fee on every transaction and the impossibility to just link an external web store inside an app are turning out to be quite problematic for newspapers and magazines. Only a few of them have implemented the new subscription technology (which handles everything, from recurring payments to customers’ data, through iTunes), and with a deadline set by June it will be interesting to see which ones will stay on board, and those who will prefer Android tablets instead. For those looking for a reminder of Apple’s new rules:
Publishers who use Apple’s subscription service in their app can also leverage other methods for acquiring digital subscribers outside of the app. For example, publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their web sites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple. Publishers must provide their own authentication process inside the app for subscribers that have signed up outside of the app. However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.
Antitrust enforces have been rumored to be “looking at” Apple’s new subscriptions for apps as well.
AViiQ Announces Four New Products For iPads, Laptops, And Mobile Devices
Even if I already wasn’t an acclaimed fanboy of AViiQ’s Portable Laptop Stand (review and giveaway), I’d still be excited to announce that AViiQ is pulling out all the stops with four new products tailored towards your mobile lifestyle. The 2011 lineup is impressive, and includes the AViiQ Portable Quick Stand, AViiQ Portable Case Stand for iPad, AViiQ Portable Charging Station, and new shades of AViiQ’s Portable Laptop Stand. From the press release, the Original Portable Laptop Stand will see a price reduction to $59.99, making the cost of entry even lower if you want a foldable stand for your laptop.
You’ll find new product photos and a press release after the break. For more information on AViiQ, check out their website at www.aviiq.com.
OS X Lion To Bring Direct iOS-Finder Integration?
After the release of the first Lion developer preview last week, we have seen Apple is bringing several aspects of iOS to the desktop: the Launchpad mimics iOS’ Springboard and folders, gestures allow you to move between apps like in the iOS 4.3 beta, Resume lets Mac OS save the state of apps (window, position, content) even after a logout or restart. We did a little bit of digging in the Lion preview, and we found some files in the Finder’s resources that suggest a direct connection between iOS devices and Lion’s Finder could be coming in the future.
The files, located in the System folder, clearly show iPhone, iPad and iPod touch icons at three different sizes, likely to be used in the Finder’s sidebar. Other icons currently not used by Lion like “Mobile Documents” (first spotted by 9to5mac) are in there as well. While the presence of mobile documents suggests a Dropbox-like functionality for the Finder is coming with MobileMe / iWork.com, we speculate these iOS device icons might be for a future direct connection between iPhones, iPads, iPod touches and the Finder itself.
Basing on pure speculation, we wouldn’t mind seeing Apple implementing the AirDrop functionality (which lets you share files between Macs running Lion with a single drag&drop) for iOS devices as well. Users with a Mac and a nearby iPhone or iPad could drop files into the Finder and instantly share them. A direct iOS-Finder connection opens to many possibilities, though: what about PDFs, photos, mobile downloads, documents coming from apps? Currently, these things are all handled by iTunes. While many users appreciate the comfort of a single application to manage all kinds of media ending up on their iOS devices, there’s no doubt having an iPad accessible in the Finder would be much more convenient for certain tasks like document sorting or sharing. Perhaps with a little bit of cloud integration.
Again, we’re just speculating here – but the icons are there and ready to be implemented in some way through the Lion Finder. There’s an Apple event tomorrow, iOS 5 is rumored to be previewed alongside the iPad 2 – maybe we’ll see what this connection between iOS and the Mac could be about.
iPad To Be Used By Pilots for In-Flight Mapping Data
The iPad is a magical device and a new one is set to be announced tomorrow (hey, don’t miss our liveblog!), but that didn’t stop the Federal Aviation Administration from confirming that the current-gen tablet can now be officially used by pilots instead of paper charts while on duty. That’s right: after hundreds of hours of tests that put the iPad under “rapid decompression” and “electronic interference testing” with 55 pilots on 250 flights, Apple’s mythical slate got a thumbs-up from the FAA and can now go on board without being restricted in any way.
While electronic devices used instead of paper charts are nothing new to the FAA, the iPad and its relatively cheap price set it apart from the competition, allowing pilots to quickly open a dedicated app to receive live information and details about the flight. The device’s form factor and OS helped during the adoption as a replacement unit can easily be carried around and, apparently, the software developed by the FAA never crashed during testing. I’m pretty sure they didn’t use the buggy iOS 4.3 beta – although gestures for pilots would be awesome, in my opinion.
So there you have it. An iPad 2 may be announced tomorrow, but the iPad 1 is ready to fly. This time not just off the shelves. [via Engadget]
Evernote’s iPhone App Updated With Extensive Redesign
Evernote, the popular note taking service has just updated its iPhone and iPod Touch app with a completely redesigned user interface. Everything aspect of the the app has been reconsidered and improved for this 4.0 update to improve functionality, speed and utility.
One of the key improvements has been the addition of a snippet view when browsing through notes. It does a great job at providing as much information as possible into a compact space so that many notes can be skimmed over at once. As the Evernote team says;
If the note only contains an image, then we’ll take a slice out of the image and present it full width. If the note has a mix of text and other forms of content, then we’ll show you the title, some text and a thumbnail.
The other fundamental redesign is present in the new note screen which is presented in a split-screen view, the top half being text entry and the bottom half for additional information or the keyboard. You can attach images, a voice recording (up to 90 minutes long!), a location, tags and assign a notebook for the note.
Rovio CEO Thanks Apple, New Angry Birds Games This Summer→
Rovio CEO Thanks Apple, New Angry Birds Games This Summer
At the Game Developers Conference 2011 in San Francisco, Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka spoke to a large crowd about the success of his company’s franchise, Angry Birds, and the results of going from developing games for others (they used to do work for hire) to having millions of people downloading your own mobile game. Vesterbacka thanked Apple for creating the App Store model and disrupting the Soviet-like market that was imposed by carriers years ago.
We really have Apple to thank,” said Vesterbacka – not just for helping to promote Angry Birds, but for creating the App Store to begin with.
“We got away from this carrier-dominated Soviet model,” he explained – before the App Store, the carriers were responsible for figuring out what software would run on their phones. “Other people decided on our behalf what was a good game and what was a bad game,” Vesterbacka said.
As for new entries in the Angry Birds world:
You won’t have to wait too long,” said Vesterbacka – Rovio plans to release new Angry Birds games this summer.
Angry Birds Rio is set to come out on March 22, and an update to Angry Birds Seasons was released a few weeks ago. Here’s my theory: does the fact that Vesterbacka is in San Francisco and that Apple’s iPad 2 event is tomorrow sound interesting to you?
New Cydia App “TruPrint” Extends Apple’s AirPrint Support
With iOS 4.2 Apple introduced AirPrint, a new system-wide technology that allows iPhone and iPad users to print emails, photos and just about any kind of document wirelessly without having to worry about drivers or configurations. The problem is, while Apple initially announced that AirPrint would work with a set of “officially supported” printers from HP and any printer also shared on a Mac or PC, issues arose with the OS X 10.6.5 update and Apple was forced to pull support for shared printers. The result: AirPrint only works with a bunch of printers from HP. Okay.
TruPrint is a new Cydia hack from the Intelliborn developers (the folks behind popular tethering and hotspot app MyWi) that promises to bring AirPrint support to hundreds of printers not officially listed by Apple as “compatible with AirPrint”. The app relies on Apple’s AirPrint technology, so iOS 4.2 is still needed to run it, but the support for Canon, Brother, HP and additional printers Intelliborn has baked into TruPrint looks impressive.
TruPrint is available in the Cydia Store at $9.99 with a 3-day free trial. If you’ve been looking for a solution to print to your favorite machine and you have a jailbroken device, this should be it. Check out the cool promo video below. [via iPhoneDownloadBlog] Read more
Opera Debuts On The Mac App Store
A new release to the Mac App Store today is the Opera web browser that can be downloaded for free. The app seems to be exactly the same as the non Mac App Store version and identifies itself as version 11.01 and build 1206.
The app also includes its Presto layout engine, which would have been thought to be an infringement on Apple’s Mac App Store guidelines that state, “Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected.” This raises the distinct possibility that browser engines may not fall under the private API category, in which case other browsers could soon be heading to the Mac App Store including Firefox that uses another layout engine called Gecko. Alternatively it is possible that an Apple reviewer has let Opera slip through without realizing, which has happened before with app reviews.
When bringing the Opera browser to the iPhone and iPad, they had run into similar guideline restrictions and were forced to only release Opera Mini that does not use their own browser engine but instead directs traffic through Opera’s servers to compress data. The more fully featured Opera Mobile which is available for Android and other mobile phones could not be released on the iPhone because of its reliance on their own APIs .