The Daily Won’t Be Announced Next Week

Looks like we called it: citing “sources familiar with the companies’ plans” All Things Digital reports that The Daily, the joint venture between Apple and News Corp. for an iPad-exclusive newspaper, won’t be announced next week:

Apple and News Corp. have made a joint decision to push back next week’s planned launch, according to sources familiar with the companies’ plans. The delay is supposed to give Apple time to tweak its new subscription service for publications sold through its iTunes platform.

Plans to hold debut the iPad newspaper at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art next Wednesday have been tabled “for weeks, not months,” I’m told.

As we expected, the issue seems to be lying in app subscriptions for iTunes, which aren’t ready at the moment. And with such a feature supposedly being scheduled to ship with a software update to iOS, it appears that we’ll have to wait for weeks before actually reading The Daily. iOS 4.3, in fact, was released as “beta 1” only yesterday.

News Corp. PR confirmed the delay, and Apple declined to comment. Apple is reportedly tweaking the iTunes subscription feature that will allow publishers to push new content to users automatically, with recurring billing in iTunes.

App Store Updates: “Previous Picks” for Apps Of The Week, More Sections

Just like every Thursday, Apple has updated the homepage of the iPhone and iPad App Stores to include this week’s featured apps, updated New & Noteworthy sections and staff picks. This week’s refresh, though, comes with a few more surprises.

First off, we’re one week into the Mac App Store: Apple started refreshing the homepage of the new Store as well, although no custom sectionshave been launched. Guess Apple is still waiting for more Mac apps to become available. Anyway, go check out the updated Mac App Store homepage, as some sweet apps and games like Compartments and The Incident are being featured. Read more

Get Lion’s Launchpad On Your Mac Now with QuickPick

One of the most intriguing features of Lion that Apple previewed at its “Back to the Mac” event in October was, in my opinion, the Launchpad. In pure iPad fashion, Launchpad will be “a home for your apps”, with fast and easy access to software downloaded from the Mac App Store, or folders created to better organize these apps. It all looks like an iPad’s Springboard brought to the Mac, with pages and iOS-like folders.

QuickPick, a $9.99 app available on the Mac App Store, brings some of the features we’ll see on Lion’s Launchpad this summer to OS X now. QuickPick lets you access apps and folders through an overlay interface that will sit on top of your currently opened apps, Finder windows and Spotlight searches. Once installed, QuickPick can be invoked either through a keyboard shortcut, a click on its dock icon or an active OS X corner. As QuickPick’s grid comes in the foreground, you’ll be able to arrange apps and create pages for your most used apps, folders or documents. Almost any file that can be dragged out of the Finder can be taken into QuickPick’s grid. In the app, you can adjust the grid’s spacing and text size. You can even create multiple pages of apps / documents thanks to a “Page Dock” that allows you to set up as many “grids” as you want. Alternatively, you can move between pages with a three-finger swipe. Again, just like the Launchpad in Lion.

QuickPick, of course, doesn’t bring all the features and details we saw demoed in Launchpad, such as the iOS folders or page indicators. If you drag a folder from the Finder to QuickPick, in fact, that folder won’t open in-app but will launch a new Finder window instead. I guess it’s a fair trade-off, considering that this app is running on Snow Leopard and we haven’t seen enough of Launchpad anyway. Still, everything’s smooth and works just as advertised.

QuickPick is available at $9.99 in the Mac App Store, and it gives us a taste of things to come in Lion by providing an alternative solution for OS X 10.6. Will Launchpad be different and more refined come Lion’s public release? For sure. But until then, you should give QuickPick a try. Check out our brief demo video of the app below.
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Gameloft Brings Interactive World War II Archive To The iPad

With their latest release for the iPad, Gameloft has temporarily decided to put games on the shelves and focus on a more historic subject like World War II. And instead of re-creating the conflict through another first-person shooter videogame, Gameloft created a completely interactive and immersive 56-page book filled with photographs, maps and fac-simile documents.

The app, War in the Pacific, features a foreword by Senior Military Advisor Dale Dye and was curated by Richard Overy, Professor of History at the University of Exeter. As you can see in the promo video below, the app (which also happens to be a 463 MB download, not exactly “lightweight”) comes with original video footage from 1945 detailing the battles against the Japanese Empire and sports some neat multi-touch gestures to navigate between pages, move documents on screen and re-arrange content. There are also animated maps showing the most important events in the Pacific and, overall, the photo archive really looks impressive.

War in the Pacific is available exclusively for the iPad and will cost you $9.99. I wonder if in the future we’ll see, for example, schools adopt this kind of single-subject interactive publications as a way for kids to learn faster, in a new way. Read more

First Leaked Image of “The Daily” for iPad

The Daily by News Corp. is one of the hottest rumors in the Apple tech sphere these days. Initially rumored to launch in December 2010 alongside iOS 4.3 and now apparently scheduled for a late January official announcement (with iOS 4.3 now out in beta), The Daily has been making the rounds also thanks to speculation that Steve Jobs might be directly involved in the realization of the iPad-exclusive newspaper. The Daily is also expected to bring a new feature based on “app subscriptions” that would allow users to set up automatic, recurring payments within iTunes. Read more

Apple Launches Special One-Day Shopping Event In Asian Stores

To celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year (which in our calendar drops on February 3, 2011), not only are Chinese stores planning a series of events from January 26 to February 13 such as workshops and One to One trainings – Apple has also launched a special one-day shopping event in several Asian online stores. The event offers discounted prices on a variety of Apple devices and computers, accessories, games and software.

Shopping event prices are solely available on 14 January 2011, are subject to change, and are listed in Thai Baht. Promotional pricing cannot be combined with any other offers. Product specifications are subject to change. Sale prices are limited to stock on hand and while supplies last. Quantity of products purchasable by each customer may be limited, please see our store for more details.

The offer is now live in various Stores: Thailand, Taiwan and Malaysia have the deal page available. The offer is valid today only, and it’s organized in different sections like Apple Essentials, iPad Anywhere, Made for iPod and iPhone Essentials. Apple is also discounting peripherals like the Magic Trackpad, iPad Camera Connection Kit and Time Capsule together with the usual iPads, iPods and MacBooks. The offers seems, overall, to be similar to 2010’s Black Friday for the Apple Online Store.

App Is 2010’s Word Of The Year

The American Dialect Society has chosen “app” as 2010’s word of the year, which isn’t surprising considering the media’s focus on all things “apps.” Apple took the phrase and injected it straight into the heart of commercial marketing as they continually aired commercials for both the iPhone and iPad showcasing apps available on the App Store, while Verizon’s Droid Does commercials showcased the “limitless potential” of the Android Marketplace. 2011 will continue this trend as devices like the iPad introduce more powerful gestures, and as the iPhone penetrates Verizon for the first time. If 2010 wasn’t the year of apps, do you think it would have been the year of the iPad? I think so.

[MSNBC via TUAW] Read more

Listings For iPhone Is The Better Way To Browse Craigslist

Craigslist is a very weird and scary place depending on what you’re looking for. If it’s not the poor man’s eBay, then it’s definitely somewhere down the alley of sketch-city. The website looks terrible and it’s hard to navigate, listings include everything from broken computer parts to iPhone repair services, and you never know what creepy people you’ll end up meeting in person when its time to exchange goods. What Craigslist needs is a better way to organize and clearly display information.

Listings for the iPhone makes Craigslist easier to navigate while providing tools to help you keep track of items you want to continually check up on. Whether you’re searching for a used MacBook Pro, a new Motorcycle, or looking for a web designer, Listings is a much more intuitive way to search Craigslist.

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