The Daily, News Corp.’s much anticipated iPad-only newspaper, will be announced tomorrow with a media event at New York’s Guggenheim museum. The publication is the result of months of collaboration between Murdoch’s News Corp. and Apple, which will send VP of Internet Services Eddy Cue to join Murdoch on stage for the presentation. The Daily, in fact, will be based on a new subscription system created by Apple that will allow users to receive fresh content every morning through an iTunes’ push feature. Read more
First Details of The Daily: Six Sections, Sudoku, Interactive Articles
iOS Devices Accounted for 2% of Worldwide Browsing in January
A new report by NetMarketShare has revealed that the iOS ecosystem of devices has broken 2% of all browsing on the web. The January figures published by the analyst revealed the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch reached 2.06% of global browsing, accelerated by the holiday period.
Singapore had the highest percentage of iOS devices at virtually 10% and Australia was one of the highest countries at 5.6%. The UK was also close at 5.1% and the US had 3.4% in January.
See above for a graphic of world browsing by iOS devices and head over to NetMarketShare for a full breakdown of each country’s percentage of iOS device usage.
[Via 9to5Mac]
The New Readability Has Ambitious Future
Readability, the Javascript library that stripped websites of unnecessary graphics and elements to provide the user with a simple, easier to read page, has today revealed the next step in it’s future. The ambition plan includes fundamental new advancements including; usage on mobile devices, saving Readability-enhanced pages, social features, a subscription service that supports writers and a partnership with Marco Arment’s Instapaper.
One of the biggest new features of the new Readability is it’s subscription service which is a new model that aims to give back to the writers and publishers that you read from. The subscription starts from $5 but can be as high as you want to pay, and 70% go back to writers and publishers, so obviously the more you pay the more goes back to the content creators. There will still be the basic Readability which does not require a subscription.
Jump the break for full details.
Report Says 26% of Mobile Apps Are Only Run Once
Analyst firm Localytics decided to investigate how many apps are downloaded and then used only once, never to be touched again. What they discovered was that a surprisingly high percentage of 26% of all apps downloaded were only ever used once.
The research Localytics did involved thousands of apps from every major mobile platform and over a period of a year. In fact interestingly throughout 2010 the number of apps that were only run once increased from 22% in the first quarter to 28% by the fourth quarter.
Apple Possibly Tightening the iOS Walled Garden
Apple seems to be tightening its control over the App Store ecosystem after telling some developers including Sony that the selling of e-books within their app must go through Apple. The move is somewhat contradictory of recent movements by Apple to open up the App Store and gestures of collaboration with publishers.
Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division told the New York Times that Apple rejected Sony’s e-book reader iPhone application on the basis that the app would have let users buy e-books bought from the Sony Reader Store, bypassing Apple and that any purchases made from within an app must go through Apple from now on. Mr. Haber said; “We always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store.”.
[Updated and points clarified in light of responses to the NYT article]
iPad ‘Real Positive’ for USA Today’s Future
The Telegraph reported yesterday that Gannett, publisher of USA Today has been enthused by the iPad’s impact on their business, despite having to initiate cost-cutting measures in other aspects of their business. Their free iPad App, available worldwide, has been downloaded more than 1.4 million times since launching April last year.
Gannett, like many other Newspaper organizations had to cut 130 jobs in August at USA Today and lost 6% advertising revenue worth $722m in the last quarter. Yet Gannett’s chief operating officer, Gracia Martore said that “The iPad has been a real positive for USA Today, we expect this will translate into much more significant improvement.”
At this stage USA Today remains free and it’s revenue comes from generating ad revenue from within the app. Gannett’s Chief Executive however couldn’t rule out charging users in the future, saying “We’re looking across the board at this.” Gannett and other newspaper publishers will no doubt be watching closely at tomorrow’s announcement of News Corp’s The Daily and this month’s pay-wall that the New York Times is implementing.
[Via The Telegraph]
Apple Job Posting Suggests LTE for iOS Devices
As noted by 9to5mac, a new job listing on Apple’s website suggests support for LTE is being considered at Cupertino as a “specific duty” for iOS cellular protocol engineers. While LTE-related job listings have surfaced before, this is the first time LTE is mentioned among the “specific duties” for an applicant.
Specific Duties
- Implementation, Integration, customization, enhancement and maintenance of L1-3 Protocols for one or more of the following air interface: GSM/UMTS, CDMA (1x/EVDO), LTE etc.
- Carrier specific features implementation
Job listings shouldn’t be considered as the ultimate proof of a new feature Apple is working on, but they provide good indication of things to come sometime in the future, or that are at least being tested. LTE 4G connectivity seems pretty obvious at this point, considering that carriers in the US are updating their networks to support it and several European carriers have confirmed LTE will be launched during 2012 and 2013.
It is unclear whether the next-generation iPhone will feature LTE or not, but the rumors have been intensifying lately with China Mobile making the bold statement that “Apple will support LTE” and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak saying “LTE will come”.
Apple Releases iOS 4.2.6 For Verizon iPhone
It seems like Apple just released a new iOS firmware for the Verizon iPhone. The iOS version is 4.2.6 and it’s available for direct download here. Apple apparently did some subtle tweaks to the operating system for the CDMA iPhone, which was running iOS 4.2.5 at the Verizon media event where the iPhone was officially announced. iOS 4.2.6 is a modification to the original 4.2 OS that can run on Verizon’s CDMA network, and includes the Personal Hotspot feature that allows users to turn their devices into mobile hotspots capable of sharing a 3G connection with nearby phones.
The firmware posted online is for the “iPhone 3,3”, which is the model name of the Verizon unit. It’s a 642 MB download, build number 8E200.
Rumor has it Apple sent out review units to selected journalists and bloggers earlier today, and that’s probably why the firmware has been posted online.
PhotoToMac Is The Fastest Way To Transfer Photos to OS X
I share a lot of screenshots and photos between my iPhone and Mac every day. Up until today, I’ve relied on third-party apps like iFiles to import pictures into its library and get them on my Mac using Cyberduck, which can connect to iFiles’ built-in WebDAV server. PhotoToMac, a $1.99 app by Galarina, improved my workflow with a system that allows me to import photos and videos without using additional Mac apps. Files shared with PhotoToMac, in fact, end up directly in the Finder. Read more