Posts tagged with "apple"

Adobe Releases ‘Edge’, A New Tool To Create HTML5 Animations And Webpages

Despite some significant opposition to Apple’s push for HTML5 web development (and rejection of Flash on iOS devices), Adobe has in recent times made some significant moves to embrace HTML5 including the recent release of a Flash to HTML5 conversion tool. However this past weekend Adobe released Edge, a new piece of software that aims to help web developers create HTML5 web pages and animations.

Adobe Edge is a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.

The move by Adobe is a significant one, and whilst at the moment is only in a ‘1.0’ beta, Edge will likely become a core piece of Adobe’s software repertoire. In its current form, Edge, is fairly limited to basic animations and can only handle a single page layout – however just like Adobe’s Dreamweaver, web developers can view and modify the code generated by Edge. TUAW, asking about integration with other Adobe products received a response that said integration would come, but at a later date.

However despite the promise of Edge, Adobe remains adamant that Flash is not dying. Instead, John Cole, creative solutions architect at Adobe claims “Flash and HTML5 will co-exist in the long term” – despite also admitting that HTML5 “will be big”. You can download the first beta of Edge from Adobe’s Lab website here.

[Via TUAW, The Inquirer]

AllThingsD: iPhone 5 Actually Set For An October Launch?

In recent weeks there have been rumors that the iPhone 5 will debut in late September – that timeframe sounded more likely than previous rumors of an August launch. But according to AllThingsD, the iPhone 5 will actually be an “October surprise”.

Claiming to have a source “familiar with Apple’s plans”, AllThingsD claims that any AT&T employee blackout during the last two weeks of September is unrelated to an iPhone launch. However despite citing October, the source declined to offer a specific date of launch – other sources of AllThingsD claim that the launch date would be later in October.

Last month DigiTimes reported that the iPhone 5 supply chain was ramping up for production runs in August for a late September unveiling and October launch to market – in line with today’s AllThingsD report. General rumors of the iPhone 5 have been suggesting an A5 processor, Qualcomm dual-mode GSM/CDMA baseband and an 8 MP camera.

[Via AllThingsD]

Apple Finally Begins Rolling Out 90-Second Song Previews In International iTunes Stores

Nearly eight months after 90-second song previews started rolling out on the US  iTunes Store, Apple have today started transitioning a number of international iTunes stores over to the 90-second previews, a vast improvement on the 30-second previews. Currently we’ve noticed that the iTunes stores in Australia, UK, Canada, New Zealand and France and a handful of other European stores.

However, despite the beginning of this international rollout there are still a lot of songs that haven’t transitioned to 90-second previews – looking at the top 10 songs on iTunes in Australia found just half now have the longer preview period. For comparison all top 10 songs in the US have the 90-second preview, although keep in mind that not all the 10 songs were the same in the two stores.

That difference could just be because Apple has only just started to transition to 90-second previews in the international stores or because licensing deals are (as is very typical) delaying the transition to longer previews.  Nonetheless international iTunes users will no doubt welcome this change that has been awaited for quite some time.

[Via MacRumors, 9to5 Mac]

Leaked Photos of Supposed iPhone ‘Light’ Surface Online

On Vietnamese forum Tinhte, a user has uploaded the above photo which he claims is a new “light” version of the iPhone 4 - potentially the rumored iPhone 4S that has been milling around in recent months. The photographs posted seem to show a nearly identical product to the iPhone 4, with the exception that there is no glass front and back panel. Instead the iPhone is plastered with a translucent plastic on either side with the familiar stainless steel banding around it.

According to information leakage, predictable from the English website, the more likely Apple will introduce the iPhone 4s (cheap version) and the iPhone 5 next month. And it looks like the iPhone that you see below is the iPhone 4s.

On the whole we’re fairly skeptical of this photo, except for the fact that in the past, Tinhte has been somewhat successful at leaking Apple prototypes, including this internal iOS 4 build and last year’s MacBook refresh. As for the possibility of a cheaper iPhone launching this year, not only has the rumor mill been churning out stories fairly frequently but Tim Cook conceded in this month’s earning call that Apple would be doing “clever things” to address the pre-paid mobile market and wouldn’t “cede any market”.

[Tinhte via TechCrunch]

BBC Rolls Out iPad iPlayer App To 11 Western Europe Countries, Coming To The US This Year

Last month we reported that the BBC was preparing to launch its iPad video-on-demand service iPlayer internationally for a fee under $10 by the end of the year. That day has come with the BBC today (Thursday, July 28) launching the iPlayer iPad app in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.

Some iPlayer content will be available for free, but for full access users will need to pay either €6.99 a month or €49.99 a year. The program’s director spoke with The Guardian about the launch and reinforced previous statements by noting that the international version of iPlayer is a video-on-demand service, not a catch-up service as it is in the UK (primarily). The catalogue will include popular shows such as Top Gear and Doctor Who but will also offer a deep catalogue of shows that the BBC has aired over the past decades. At launch that catalogue is roughly contains roughly 1,500 hours of content – the BBC says it aims to add another 100 hours to that each week.

“What we’re trying to test in the pilot is the ability to drive exploration and discovery through a programming approach rather than an algorithm-based approach,” said Bradley-Jones. “We’re not trying to compete against a Netflix or a Hulu. This has to be tailored and hand-crafted, so we can create a tone of voice.”

Unlike the UK version of the app that was released earlier this year, the international version allows users to stream shows over 3G and even pre-download (cache) shows that they want to watch later, helpful for downloading a bunch of shows for a trip. For that feature they worked closely with Apple due to problems with iPad’s auto-sleep functionality interrupting downloads - ultimately Apple was happy with the app disabling the iPad’s ability to sleep whilst downloading shows.

If you don’t live in one of those 11 Western European countries that today got access, don’t stress because the BBC is going to continue to launch the iPlayer iPad app in further countries this year. In particular, Australia, Canada and the United States (the BBC notes it will probably charge around $7.99, roughly comparable with Hulu and Netflix) will see the iPlayer iPad app by the end of the year.

[The Guardian via The Next Web]

Google Testing Clean New Google Search Design For Tablets

Multiple users are today reporting that Google is trialing a new tablet-optimized Google Search page that merges the recent design changes from the desktop version with a more touch-friendly design for tablets. Digital Inspiration managed to take a few screenshots of the new design running on their iPad which we’ve included above and below the break.

The new look uses just a single column layout, keeping the old sidebar options minimized below the search box instead. The new orange, dark gray and blue color theme is also present in this new design, which certainly feels cleaner with large amounts of white space. The one final design change that is of note is that the rather famous ‘Goooooooooogle’ at the bottom of the page that links to following search pages is gone – instead all that exists is the numbers one to ten.

This new design is currently being tested, and as is normal with Google product changes, is being randomly presented to a certain percentage of users. It may yet be a few weeks or possibly even months before this rolls out to everyone. Jump the break for some more screenshots.

[Digital Inspiration via The Next Web]

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