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Quick! Download AirView Now, It Turns Your iOS Device Into An AirPlay Receiver

AirView is a universal application available for free in the App Store that does something iOS users have been asking since the original release of AirPlay: it turns any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch into AirPlay receivers capable of playing videos streamed from another device. With AirView, in fact, video can be streamed from iOS device to iOS device (iPhone to iPad, iPhone to iPhone) or from iTunes, something that Apple only does with the Apple TV 2nd generation.

AirView must be running on a device in order to show up as receiver on a local network. The app doesn’t enable music streaming, a feature we managed to activate in the past with a jailbreak hack. Photos aren’t supported either.

AirView is a neat little app that we guess Apple will soon remove from the App Store. When used in combination with Erica Sadun’s apps that extend AirPlay’s functionalities, it can become a quite powerful tool. Go grab it here now.

TV Show Tracker 2.0 for iPhone: One To Add To Your Homescreen

Not having cable, keeping tabs on the shows that appear on cable TV bites because I have to constantly check in on online schedules (all on different networks) just to see when the next episode of House is going to air. What sucks is that when having only Hulu as my prime source of entertainment, December was a month devoid of any content as weekly shows began to grind to a halt. With the exception of Saturday Night Live and a maybe two other shows, I’m paying for nothing. Shows will come back, but when?

We’ve already covered TV Show Tracker on MacStories, but the 2.0 update is worth mentioning since it delivers a much improved interface, a notification system alerting you before or after a show ends, inline video previews of episodes, and quick iTunes links so you can rent those shows quickly from the interface. TV Show Tracker consolidates all of the shows you watch into an instant access panel where you simply search for the popular program you watch and add it to your list of shows. TV Show Tracker displays the artwork for the program’s season, displays previous and upcoming showtimes, and keeps tabs on what episodes you’ve already seen. This is an app to add to your homescreen if you’re at all interested on keeping track of your favorite shows – it’s super convenient to have only the show listings you care about all in one place.

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More Alleged iPad 2 Cases Appear, Hint at Mini DisplayPort

Rumors and leaks surrounding the forthcoming second generation iPad continue to spread like wildfire across the blogosphere with the latest coming from AppleInsider and MIC Gadget. Both received photos of iPad 2 cases that had openings that would suggest the addition of a rear facing camera, larger speaker, possible SD card slot and most intriguingly a small port at the top of the device that could be for a Mini DisplayPort receptacle.

The two tech blogs received photo’s of cases from China that whilst different had virtually identical port openings and further back up reports by Engadget that the second generation iPad would have an SD card slot and rear facing camera. The larger opening on cases around the speaker is also a recurring feature of such leaked iPad 2 cases and seems to be a likely improvement on the iPad 2.

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Analysts and Bloggers Share Q1 2011 Predictions

With Apple’s financial results for Q1 2011 only a few hours away, Fortune has posted its usual chart of predictions from professional and amateur analysts regarding Apple’s sales for the last quarter. To give it a bit of context, in the last quarter (pre-holiday season) Apple sold 3.89 million Macs, 14.1 million iPhones, 4.19 million iPads, 9.05 million iPods. The company posted record revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion.

Looking at Fortune’s chart, it appears that most analysts are predicting revenue between $23 and $27 billion, 14 to 16 million iPhones sold and 6 to 7 million iPads sold. Horace Dediu from Asymco, for instance, is predicting $25.50 billion revenue, 16.16 million iPhones sold, 18.87 million iPods, 4.30 million Macs and 6 million iPads.

Official numbers will be provided by Apple later today. An audio-only webcast of the conference call will be available here.

Reminder: Apple Q1 Financial Results Today – 5 PM ET

Later today starting at 5:00 PM ET (2:00 PM PT) Apple will hold the Q1 2011 earnings call to announce their financial results, shortly after the markets close. An audio-only live streaming will be available at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq111/. We will offer a breakdown of the results and have a post in the homepage with continually updating notes from the earnings call.

Apple is expected to post blockbuster sales from the holiday season, with iPads and iPhones to lead and the new MacBook Airs to follow. In the last quarter, Apple posted record iPhone and Mac sales with 14.1 million iPhone sold, 3.89 million Macs and 4.19 million iPads.The company posted record revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced yesterday that he’s taking another medical leave of absence to focus on his health.

Bump Data Suggests 90% of iOS Devices Running 4.x

David Lieb, founder and CEO of iPhone app Bump yesterday posted some data on Quora to a question about what percentage of users of iOS devices were on 4.x, his answer revealed that 89.7% of Bump users were on the latest major iteration of iOS, 4.x.

Although Lieb didn’t note how big the sample size is, the latest known figure of Bump downloads was 15 million back from August last year. That’s a large sample size and one that includes users of iPhones, iPod Touch’s and iPads, a sample that would suggest the ~90% is a close approximation to the real percentage of iOS device users on the latest major iteration of iOS, version 4.

Ian Peters-Campbell of Loopt, another iOS app backed up Lieb’s data but said for his users take-up was even a little higher. Anyway you cut it such a high take up rate in about six months is impressive. It also highlights concerns over how fragmented Android is compared to iOS which back in December 2010 when Froyo (2.2) was the latest Android OS only had 43.4% take up, let alone Gingerbread (2.3) which as of today ReadWriteWeb says only has 0.4% take-up.

Lieb of Bump, posted a full breakdown of iterations and percentages of users, which is posted after the break. The key data is that 53% of users are on the very latest software update of 4.2.1.

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Creators Of “The Glif” Share The Story Behind Their Popular iPhone Accessory

The Glif is a tripod mount / stand for the iPhone we have covered on MacStories quite a few times in the past months. Several accessories are announced and released every day; none of them goes from idea to the market in 5 months. None of them comes from an idea of two guys with no marketing, retail or manufacturing experience.

The Glif quickly jumped from cool Kickstarter project to Internet all-star thanks to the dozens of blogs and publications that thought the accessory was cool and deserved to be noticed by people in order to be manufactured and then sold. The creators have now posted an interesting “behind the scenes” article with all the details, pictures and videos of the Glif, from idea to actual product.

From the beginning, it was clear that simplicity was going to be a key tenet of our design. Not just for philosophical reasons, but to keep the design focused, and quite frankly, achievable. We knew that any complication to the manufacturing (moving parts, assembly, etc.) would make the project less likely to succeed.

After a round of sketching, we arrived at the general shape rather quickly: something that affixes to the corner of the phone and runs along the long edge, with a tripod screw roughly centered on that edge. One key component of our early design was a small peg located inside the shoe of the Glif, meant to be inserted into the headphone jack for extra stability. We were both in love with this feature, but in an example of killing your darlings, realized the design was better served (and more versatile) without it.

In case you haven’t considered a Glif yet, go check out the website here. This neat accessory with double functionality can be yours for just $20.

During Steve’s Absence, Apple Will Be Just Fine

News broke earlier today that Steve Jobs is taking another medical leave of absence to focus on his health. And just like the last time, he has appointed Apple COO Tim Cook as the head of day-to-day operations. This time around, though, Steve Jobs will maintain the CEO position. Long story short: Steve Jobs has to focus on his health and personal life, something you would expect from a man who beat cancer in the past and successfully underwent a liver transplant. Apple employees will have get used to not seeing Jobs on campus or in his office for a few months. But I don’t want to speculate on Jobs’ conditions, habits and role at Cupertino. Instead, I would like to point out how out of this complex and much-talked story Apple as a company will be doing just fine. Read more

Delivery & Smaller: Object Dock Batch CSS & Javascript Compressors

Javascript & CSS developers looking to batch minify their files may already use the command line, but others will prefer an OS X inspired drag & drop solution. These YUI Compressor’s will gobble down your web files and spit them out with a smaller byte footprint, though the choice between these two compressors may be difficult because they’re… very similar. Quickly running through the features, we’ll leave you to decide if Delivery or Smaller will be better for your workflow.

Delivery:

Delivery is the least expensive (free), but provides the fewest options when minimizing your files. Dragging in Javascript & CSS files onto its Object Dock icon, a couple badges emerge notifying you of how many files you’re compressing, along with how much space was saved at the end of the operation. Delivery uses two compression algorithms, and decides between the one that will leave you with the smallest files. While you don’t have a choice for output (there are no preferences), Delivery places the compressed files back in their working directory with .min appended to the file names.

Smaller:

More expensive at $15, Smaller offers a GUI and allows you to compress files to a new location if you desire. As you add files to a graphical queue, you initiate the minify process (and you have the option to obfuscate Javascript as well) manually, but you don’t get a nice badge notifying you like Delivery. We like Smaller though as you can acknowledge the minimize process before committing, and has preferences that allow you to chose the resulting suffix.

Conclusion:

We suggest you give them both a try, and I have to thank our web guru Alessandro Vendruscolo for the rundown. Overall we like Delivery because it’s free and takes less actions to use, while Smaller gives you some additional options that removes the terminal barrier for web designers. You can check out Delivery and Smaller at their respective home-pages for more information.