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Posts tagged with "apple"

Square Wants To Get Rid Of Old POS Systems With Its New Square Register App

Mobile payments company Square has today stepped up its game of disrupting payment services with its new Square Register app and service. Directly targeted at retailers, merchants and small business owners, this new iPad app is aimed at replacing the old clunky registers and point-of-sale (POS) systems with the infinitely more flexible and appealing iPad accompanied with the Square reader.

“I truly believe POS, as you know it today, is dead,” says Megan Quinn, director of products at Square. “This will bring Square to an entirely new, small-market audience (bricks-and-mortar stores).”

Integrating support for their existing Card Case app, Square Register can recognise when customers arrive at their store, as well as send the Card Case app information about the business for new customers who haven’t been before. The actual app itself has a main transaction screen that lists “favourite” items (this is completely customisable), but if there are thousands of items, that isn’t a problem either because there is also a list view available. The app has support for loyalty programs to reward loyal customers and customers don’t necessarily have to pay by card, with the app also supporting some cash drawers that can be connected up.

For the business owner or manager, Square Register can require a PIN for staff to access certain functions and custom permissions can be given to staff. The service also offers powerful analytical tools with interactive charts so you can view when the store is busiest and what days may be under performing. Square Register is available for free, with the standard 2.75% processing fee for all card transactions processed through Square, just the same as their existing apps.

[via TechCrunch, USA Today]

Apple: 25 Billion Apps Have Been Downloaded From The App Store

Apple announced a short time ago that 25 billions apps have been downloaded from the App Store since it launched in mid-2008. Apple has updated their homepage with the above graphic and slogan of  “A billion thanks. 25 times over” and the App Store Twitter and Facebook accounts have also publicised the milestone. Interestingly, the graphic used by Apple varies depending on whether you are viewing an international version of Apple.com (such as Japan) or whether you see the standard US website.

Apple will announce within a few days, who the lucky winner of a $10,000 iTunes voucher will be. Users could enter the competition by either simply downloading an app or filling out a form on Apple’s website - the winner will be the person who downloaded the 25th billion app or the person who first filled out the form after the 24,999,999th app had been downloaded but before the 25th billion app.

In Apple’s previous App Store and iTunes competitions, Eddy Cue (Senior Vice President, Internet and Software Services) has called the winner and congratulated them on winning. Shortly after this has happened Apple releases a press statement announcing the download milestone and who the winner was. When Apple ran the competition to mark 10 billion apps downloaded, the winner initially hung up on Cue, thinking it was a scam call.

February 2012 In Review

February sure went by quickly, but that certainly doesn’t mean there was a shortage of news, reviews and editorials - in fact it was quite the opposite. After a pretty big January with their education announcement and financial earnings, Apple didn’t slow down in February. They released new ads, previewed Mountain Lion, continued the PR battle over supplier responsibility and confirmed the (presumed iPad keynote) media event for March 7th. February was also a big month for Apps with an updated Tweetbot for iPhone and new Tweetbot for iPad, Clear, Photoshop, Vimeo 2.0 and VLC amongst others. Whilst we continued to focus on providing you, our readers, with great editorial content we discussed topics such as the iPad as a PC, supplier responsibility, greed and iOS 6 wishes amongst others.

Jump the break to view the full review of February 2012. You can also view January 2012 in Review here.

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Apple Confirms: Media Event on March 7

According to The Loop, Apple has just sent out invitations for a media event in San Francisco on Wednesday, March 7th. The event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, starting at 10 AM PDT (1 PM EST).

Earlier this month, it was reported Apple would hold an event in the first week of March to formally introduce the next-generation iPad, so far unofficially dubbed iPad 3, to a selected press audience in San Francisco. The new iPad, reportedly set to launch later this month, has been rumored to carry a high-resolution Retina Display; MacRumors even posted photos of what they claimed to be a production unit of the display, showing an increased number of pixels when put under a microscope. The device has also been widely rumored to share the same design aesthetics of the iPad 2, with tapered edges and a flat aluminum back. Back in January, Bloomberg reported the iPad 3 would come with a faster processor, presumably quad-core, and LTE connectivity, which was also confirmed in a separate article by The Wall Street Journal. Similarly, Rene Ritchie at iMore claimed Apple would hold an event on March 7th to announce an A6-powered, LTE-enabled iPad 3.

We have collected a series of iPad 3 rumors and theories here.

We’ll cover Apple’s media event on March 7th on MacStories’ homepage.

Exploring MoneyWiz: Complete Personal Finance Control On Your iPad

It wasn’t originally a New Year’s resolution to keep better track of my spending, but by the way things have turned out, it almost seems as if it was one. Early in January I began looking for a good Mac app for exactly this task. Originally I had hoped that Saver, an app I reviewed last year had since released an iPad app that I had not heard about – I really liked the app but wanted it on the iPad or Mac. Unfortunately Saver is still iPhone only, so I looked around a bit longer, asked around and tried a few apps on the Mac. I wasn’t thrilled with what I found. They all seemed a little to complex for what I wanted, so I kept looking. I forget how, but I eventually stumbled upon MoneyWiz which is available on the iPad and iPhone (at the time it was called SilverWiz). The developers haven’t yet released a Mac version (they’re working on it and expect to launch it in Spring this year), but they did give me an early look at the recent update to MoneyWiz for iPad (version 1.3), which launched late last week.

MoneyWiz for iPad does a couple of things: it keeps track of your expenses, allows you to set budgets (and track your progress), and provides you with the ability to create reports on various aspects of your financial situation. More importantly, I found MoneyWiz to be very flexible, not overly complex like some of the Mac apps I tried, and, at the same time, full of a wealth of features that should be sufficient for most individuals. Read more

Adobe Photoshop Touch Review

When I first heard that Adobe was bringing Photoshop to the iPad sometime last year, I was sceptical. I presumed it would be a very limited app compared to the powerful desktop app, or maybe just a slightly improved version of Photoshop Express. At best I thought it might give you some good editing tools to fix and correct photographs, perhaps with some layer support and effects. I didn’t think Adobe could pull off creating a great tablet version of Photoshop, and I wasn’t sure the iPad would be a good fit for the tasks in Photoshop.

So when I finally got to try out Adobe Photoshop Touch, I was intrigued to see what Adobe had accomplished. After a couple of hours playing around in the app (it accidentally went live yesterday, then Adobe pulled it) I’ve come away very impressed with what Adobe has accomplished. Photoshop Touch is a powerful and capable version of Photoshop for the iPad, without a doubt. To me, it is the latest iPad app that has demonstrated that the iPad is for more than “content consumption” — that’s just an old myth now.

It’s the apps that make the iPad great and Photoshop Touch is perhaps the prime example of the potential of the device and how flexible it is at becoming a great machine for a whole slew of different tasks, from reading, to writing, to viewing to editing and now, to using Photoshop for more than just basic photo edits. Sure, Photoshop Touch is still not as powerful as the desktop version, in fact it’s quite a distance away from reaching such parity — but it all comes down to the car Vs. truck analogy that Steve Jobs rather famously explained. Photoshop on your Mac or PC is still available for when you need to do complicated and advanced tasks, but for a lot of other tasks, you could probably migrate to the iPad and Photoshop Touch.

Enough with the introduction, let’s dive into our review of Photoshop Touch.

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Apple Purchases Land In Oregon For Another Large Data Center

An Apple spokeswoman has confirmed to news agency KTVZ.com that it has purchased land in Prineville, Oregon and plans to build a data center. The land, purchased from Crook County covers 160-acres and was purchased for a reported $5.6 million. Apple confirmed the purchase after they were named as the purchaser in a February 15th filing in Crook County.

Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet confirmed Tuesday that “we purchased the land and it’s for a data center,” but could not speak to details beyond that, other than to say it will be a “green” facility.

Rumors of Apple scouting out land in Prineville for another large data center emerged in December last year when it was reported that Apple was in discussions over purchasing the land. The land Apple purchased is nearby Facebook’s data center in Prinneville, which is pictured above.

[KTVZ.com via MacRumors]

Microsoft Office For iPad Coming Within Weeks? [Updated]

Microsoft’s Office Suite could be launching on the iPad App Store within weeks according to a new report in The Daily. Originally rumoured in November of last year by The Daily, Matt Hickey today says that the design team has “wrapped up the project” but an exact launch date was not known.

Hickey claims to have had a brief hands-on with a working prototype of the Office Suite app and notes that whilst the UI is similar to OneNote for iPad, it has hints of Metro. He notes that Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be created and edited either locally on the iPad or online (presumably using Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service).

According to his sources, OneNote will also receive an update soon to reflect the Metro design. Those same sources also noted that no Android version was in the works.

[The Daily via The Next Web]

Jump the break to view all updates to this story.

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Rovio Teases Angry Birds Space, Launching March 22

It may be on every platform under the sun and there may already be three versions of Angry Birds, but Rovio isn’t stopping any time soon with their Angry Birds franchise. In fact next month they will be launching the third game in the series: Angry Birds Space. Teaming up with NASA and the National Geographic, the new app will (naturally) feature some twists on the physics used in the game, including zero gravity and a new “lightspeed destruction” feature.

Angry Birds Space is a completely new game with innovative new gameplay, but with some of the familiar Angry Birds elements that fans already know and love – plus some surprises!

Rovio is planning on making it their biggest game launch since Angry Birds was first released and is targeting a launch on not only multiple platforms but also push the retail and publishing aspects of the game as well. Rovio will reveal more details about the game in early March, but until then you can visit the teaser site or view Angry Birds Teaser trailer below the break.

[Venture Beat via Eurogamer, Engadget]
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