Apple Offering Free iOS Development iBooks

If you’re a Mac or iOS developer and happen to have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad running the iBooks app, go open the iBookstore and search for “apple developer”. As you can see, Apple is offering iOS / Mac development iBooks completely for free.

The six books, published by Apple Developer Publications, include “iOS Technology Overview”, “Cocoa Fundamentals Guide” and the popular “iOS Human Interface Guidelines”. Some books report a release date of “November 2010”, but Apple is making sure you’re running the latest iBooks version by writing in each description “This book displays best with iBooks 1.2 or later”.

Indeed the books are elegant and come with a lot of detailed graphics and screenshots. Sure they’re not illustrated books (supported in iBooks 1.2), but I can see why Apple is recommending the latest version of their ebook reading software. Read more

AT&T Changing iPhone 4 Eligibility Dates?

Well this only fuels the hot coals in the Verizon iPhone fire. I have had my iPhone 3GS since June of 2009 and my upgrade eligibility is not up until mid-February, 2011. I know because I check, often. It’s always been that … until today. I just got an email not 30 minutes ago from AT&T and is said that I am now eligible to upgrade to the new Apple iPhone 4. Why 2 months early? Could this indeed mean Verizon could be showing off their iPhone after Christmas? The email is pushing me to get it NAO. Could they be trying to lock people into another 2 year contact before some other carrier gets their hands on Apple’s iPhone? We’ll see soon enough.

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Apple Tweaks Online Store With “Popular Configurations”

As noted by TUAW , Apple silently updated the online Store to introduce a neat little feature: popular configurations for Macs. Just right ahead of Christmas, Apple is now showcasing popular setups such as “MacBook with larger hard drive” or “MacBook with more RAM” to make it easy for people to get around specs and “build the system of their dreams” (actual words from the Apple Store).

I think this is a very welcome new feature in the Store which will surely help the less tech-savvy wanna-be Apple users get the most out of their computers, and wallets. Not everyone knows what HDD 320GB 5200 rpm means, MacBook “with larger hard drive” just sounds better. Typical Apple move to streamline the experience, if you ask me.

Check out the new Configure page here.

Verbs For IM Launches But It’s Not Quite There

It’s not every day that a beautiful, elegant, new app comes out on the iPhone and I’m willing to spend $2.99 to purchase it. When I saw Verbs available in iTunes a few minutes ago, though, I couldn’t help but play Apple’s game and hit the Buy button. I wanted Verbs, for a reason: I know the first version wouldn’t support AIM, the chat system I use on a daily basis in iChat, but I really wanted to see how a nice Google Talk client would fit in my workflow. After all, it’s not every day that a Google Talk client for the iPhone is released, and it’s even got a UI to lay your eyes on.

So I bought Verbs. Is it beautiful to look at? It sure is. Is the ultimate Google Talk experience? More on that below. Read more

Airfoil 4 Streamlines Audio, Video Experience

Apple may have introduced AirPlay, but that doesn’t mean Rogue Amoeba is out of the game. In fact, AirPlay is rather limited unless you enjoy hacking your way out of a paper bag, and by no means can it expand its territory outside of iTunes. If you ever wanted to sit back on the couch and watch CNET TV on your 27” Cinema Display through your iPod’s headphones, you’re out of luck. But with Airfoil, streaming audio anywhere allows one to achieve a state of wireless bliss.

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Sony Announces Official PlayStation App Coming To The iPhone

Good news, PlayStation fans and Marcus aficionados: there’s an official PlayStation app coming soon to an iPhone near you. As Sony reveals on the official European PlayStation Blog, the app will be available soon for iPhones and iPod touches running iOS 4 and Android devices running 1.6 and above.

The app will let you check on the PSN for your trophies and friends’ status updates, read news about games and hardware for PS devices, get the latest updates from the official PlayStation Blog. It will also have Facebook and Twitter sharing built-in.

The first version of the app will be released in UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and The Netherlands. The next version, already in the works, will support more countries and languages.

If you’re looking for something more than a simple app to check on the PlayStation Network, the PlayStation Phone is still real.

The iPad: 50,000 Apps In 8 Months

The iPad was released on April 3rd in the United States. That was 257 days ago. The iPad App Store, launched on the same day, now has over 50,000 apps. It’s got 51,295 apps to be exact, at the moment of writing this. It only took 8 months for Apple to reach this milestone, but it’s been kind of an unstoppable growth.

In the past months, in fact, we have seen how the iPad App Store was growing to accommodate more apps every month. 10,000 apps in June. 20,000 apps in August. Then, more than 40,000 apps only 24 days ago, when iOS 4.2 was released to the public. We can argue that the App Store (for iPad and iPhone) is increasingly becoming a place for games, rather than standard “apps”, but still – these are the numbers. And even if using and getting a device to fit in our daily lives has really nothing to do with numbers, this is an achievement Apple is going to rely on for months to come.

50,000 apps available for the iPad isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Thinking about the Mac apps ready to go on sale in another App Store.