AirPlay Devices To Explode in 2011→

AirPlay Devices To Explode in 2011

Engadget reports some statements from an interview with BridgeCo’s VP of Sales and Marketing Jordan Watters. BridgeCo is the company behind AirPlay that has signed an exclusive deal with Apple.

According to Jordan Watters, AirPlay devices could ultimately dwarf “made for iPod” audio docks by 2x to 4x.

“The ecosystem is already there,” he said smiling. And unlike iPod docks which are usually sold at a rate of one per iOS device, Watters sees consumers purchasing multiple AirPlay devices for every iOS device sold in order to enable whole-home distributed audio. In fact, growth could come as a “step function ramp sucking into the market,” Jordan enthused. In other words, he expects AirPlay growth to be explosive.

Personally, I agree with him. Since my first iPod, I haven’t felt the need of multiple docking systems as much as I’d like several AirPlay-enabled devices in my house and office now. I have an audio system plugged in my AirPort Express right now, and that’s it. As soon as Apple figures out a way to extend video through AirPlay to all apps and external devices, we’re going to see even more kinds of AirPlay devices.

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Tweak Brings Mail Rules to iOS | Cydia Store

One feature iPhone (and iPad) owners have been asking Apple to implement in iOS for a while now is the possibility to create “rules” for the Mail application, just like on the desktop. On Mac OS X, users can assign rules to incoming messages on Apple Mail so that certain pre-defined actions will be applied to messages that meet specified criteria. Rules allow users to quickly process emails and mark messages from frequent sources as important, for example. The customization offered by rules on the Mac made many users wish the feature would find its way to iOS. It never happened.

Luckily for us, Cydia developers have (once again) fixed what Apple didn’t want to. Or maybe is just waiting to implement in iOS 5. Whatever the reason is, Mail Rules is a package sold at $1.99 in the Cydia Store that allows you to play around with a pretty decent list of rules to assign to your incoming mail messages, organized by account. This tweak doesn’t come with the plethora or criteria and actions found in Apple Mail for the Mac, but it provides a good amount of options that should be enough on the iPhone and iPad. The Rules options can be accessed directly from the iPhone Settings app, and they support the following criteria: Sender, Recipient, Account, Headers, Subject. Actions you can apply to messages include: Delete Messages, Mark as read and unread, Copy or Move to folder. Setting up a new rule takes seconds.

Mail Rules works fine on the iPhone and iPad and, most of all, rules really go through. I’ve been running the tweak for over a week now, and the few rules I created allowed me to keep a cleaner inbox, when possible, thanks to actions that automatically delete or mark certain messages as read. At $1.99 in the Cydia Store, it should be a no-brainer if you’ve always wanted to have Rules on iOS.

What The Mac App Store Effect Looks Like

The Mac App Store is off to a great start. More than 1,000 apps already available, some of them ports of old and popular Mac applications, some of  them new ones specifically built and designed for the new Store. Some long-time Mac developers even decided to ditch their previous distribution systems and go Mac App Store-exclusive. More than 1 million downloads happened on the Mac App Store’s first day, and the first sales numbers show that the effect on the popularity of existing Mac apps has been incredible.

The developers of Alfred, an application launcher and Spotlight replacement for OS X, reported thousands of new downloads in the first 24 hours, while Evernote, a cross-platform “memory tool” and digital assistant, announced a 1800% increase of sign-ups through the Mac client, released for free in the Mac App Store. But a picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words, so here’s the Mac App Store effect visualized in a simple graph. Read more

Spotted: History of Apple’s Devices

Spotted by TUAW at iLounge’s CES booth, here’s a gallery of Apple’s mobile devices through the years. The collection starts from the original iPod in 2001 and goes straight to the latest iPhones and iPods released in 2010, with the exception of the iPad, which is probably not considered a mobile device by iLounge either.

Looking at the photos, it’s clear how much is changed in 10 years. Even more than iTunes’ interface. Look at the original iPod, or a model from 2005 and 2006 and then take a look at the devices listed under 2007 and 2008. The difference is enormous. Sure, the iPod Classic is still alive and kicking (I have a 160 GB one right here), but we know the majority of consumers are buying iPod touches or Nanos now. These photos are the best example of Apple’s evolution and refinement process from 2001, and then 2007,  through today.

Check out the full gallery here.

Happy Birthday! iTunes Turns 10

On January 9, 2001 Steve Jobs announced the first version of a new music player and organizer called iTunes at the Macworld Expo. Ten years later, iTunes has reached version 10.1.1 and it has evolved into media organizer and aggregator capable of storing music, movies, podcasts, apps, books, radio stations and playlists. Some say iTunes is bloated, and maybe it is. But truth is, it looks nothing like the brushed metal, young and tiny version we first saw 10 years ago.

iTunes has become the center of our “digital lifestyle”, a strategy Apple CEO Steve Jobs started in 2001 with the “Digital Hub” revolution. And looking back at those promises, there’s no doubt a single software running on our Macs has become the most important part of our workflow. We sync iPhones, iPods and iPads to iTunes, we store media in it, we stream content from iTunes to a variety of speakers and devices. Feature-rich or bloated, it’s undoubtedly deeply integrated with the Mac and iOS ecosystem.

So here’s to iTunes, and the digital lifestyle that’s now synced and stored on our computers and mobile devices. It’s been 10 incredible years, and we look forward to what’s next. Happy Birthday, iTunes. Read more

CoverSutra: A Fistful of Dollars


Developer Sophia Teutschler is having a hard time trying to deal with her most popular application for the Mac, CoverSutra, becoming a Mac App Store exclusive. As we discussed here, the latest CoverSutra 2.5 version is only available in the Mac App Store at $4.99, instead of the $20 it used to be on Sophia’s website. The problem is, years ago Sophia promised to customers who bought a license for CoverSutra 2.0 that they would get the 3.0 upgrade for free; CoverSutra’s development slowed down, Sophia got involved in more projects and won an Apple Design Award in the meantime, Apple introduced the Mac App Store. CoverSutra 3.0 isn’t out yet, but the 2.5 version is a paid app in the Mac App Store. Clearly, that is not the free upgrade until 3.0 Sophia once promised.

This is a very serious issue that doesn’t originate specifically from Sophia, but provides a good example when looking at CoverSutra because of the way Sophia decided to handle things. As you may be aware of, Apple is not offering trials, upgrade policies and existing customer migration on the Mac App Store. You can release apps, for a price or for free. That’s it. You have been selling apps on your website all this time? Good for you. But there’s no way to migrate people who already bought a license to the new Store. Read more

Social Radio Reads Your Friends’ Status Updates Aloud

Social Radio for iPhone is a new app developed by @anshuchimala which is available at $0.99 in the App Store. And it has to be one of the weirdest, most original and useful utilities for Twitter and Facebook I’ve seen in a while. Or should I say “listened to”. This app, in fact, once granted authorization to access your Twitter and Facebook timelines, can read your friends’ status messages aloud. And, you can control the app with your voice, too. That’s it.

What’s cool about Social Radio, besides the fact that it’s developed by our friend Anshu, is that it looks minimal, it’s got Helvetica and it really reads Twitter and Facebook with iOS’ built-in accessibility features. I also appreciated the fact that each status updates comes with the original author, so you’ll listen to the app say something like “Federico Viticci wrote”. Usernames will be spoken aloud, http:// links will be excluded. Smart. The app plays a continuos stream of messages from your timeline starting from the most recent ones, until you hit pause or tell it to stop. You can swipe on the screen to move between status updates or just let Social Radio do its job and auto-play them.

Social Radio may look like a silly experiment to get iOS to read Twitter and Facebook messages. If you think about it, though, the app can be very useful for the visually impaired (just set it up once, then listen to it) or for when you’re driving and you really want to stay on top of your social networks.

Social Radio is a cool app that can be yours for just .99 cents. Give it a try.

iCade iPad Arcade Cabinet Is Real, Coming This Spring

Remember the iCade? It was one of the few dozen of fake iPad arcade cabinets we covered here on MacStories last year. But while many of those cabinets will never see the light of day, or at least won’t ever be produced for public release, the iCade has become a reality that will ship to consumers this Spring. As reported by Engadget in their CES 2011 coverage, the Bluetooth-based controller will be available at $99 and realized by Ion, who has teamed up with ThinkGeek to make the iCade (which was born as an April Fools’ joke) a real, working peripheral.

The first games specifically built for the iCade and iPad will be developed by Atari; they already have a working demo of Asteroids that seems to be working very well on the tablet’s screen through iCade’s retro buttons and sticks. Any game that support Bluetooth controls, however, should support the iCade out of the box. An API will also be released to allow iOS developers to create iCade-compatible games.

More details are available on ThinkGeek’s website. Check out Engadget’s hands-on with the cabinet below. Read more

VLC for iOS Pulled From The App Store, Now on Cydia

Just like we expected in October, VLC for iOS has been removed from the App Store. But this time, the removal of one of the most popular free apps for iPhone and iPad has nothing to do with Apple and the app review team’s rules. Instead, we have to thank developer Rémi Denis-Courmont, who since October has been busy trying to get the app out of the App Store because it violated VLC’s GNU public license. Rather than keep calm, carry on and let other developers (Applidium, the guys behind the VLC port to iOS) distribute VLC for iOS for free, he forced to get the app removed. Read more