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Posts tagged with "apple"

Why Do Movie Trailers Debut on Apple.com?→

Why Do Movie Trailers Debut on Apple.com?

If you’ve ever wondered why so many movie trailers become available on Apple’s website and not anywhere else, the answer is provided on Quora by a former Apple employee. It’s got Star Wars in it:

It started as a showcase for QuickTime, at the time of first launch we only had a handful of trailers and one or two studios. It was really the Phantom Menace trailer that put apple.com/trailers into the spotlight. Lucasfilm had posted a rather crappy trailer on their site, the team at Apple was appalled. Through DNS records, the web team at Apple managed to contact the Star Wars web team and set up a meeting. That single trailer showcased QuickTime’s quality over RealVideo by leaps and bounds, and quickly surpassed over 1 million downloads to become the most popular web video of the internet in that time.

He also mentions the Akamai distribution technology (a little startup at the time) made the difference when talking to movie executives and showing them the speed and reliability of Apple’s network. Plus, the webpage design is also pretty sweet these days. [via]

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iPad Becomes More Enterprise Friendly With VMWare View

In what is definitely a big win for the iPad in the Enterprise world, the fairly ubiquitous VMWare has released a new iPad app named VMWare View. The iPad app allows users to access and use virtual desktops from a company’s VMWare servers.

VMWare joins Citrix another fairly ubiquitious company that offers enterprise virtualisation services in offering a similar iPad app. As Robert Scoble notes (and you can watch him talk with some of the VMWare executives after the break) these virtualisation apps will become more usable and functional with the iPad 2’s external display function, cameras and speed increase.

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Australian Government Wants To Classify Mobile Games

The Australian Government has today revealed that it plans to enforce a classification of review of any mobile games (and possibly apps) that are referred to the Australian Classification Board after a complaint. Any app referred for review would have to receive a rating of MA15+ or lower to remain on sale legally in Australia.

The Government has said that if the proposal goes through it would force Apple and Google to comply by removing any app that is banned by the Classification Board as well as ensuring that any app that has gone through classification would have its classification displayed for consumers to see.

Currently there is ambiguity over classifying new online content including mobile apps for the iPhone or for Google’s Android OS in Australia with some suggesting that technically every game should be classified, an impossible feat with the number of apps in the App Store alone. The new proposal by the Home Affairs Minister would only require classification of game apps that the Classification Board receive complaints about and the Minister believes that there would be “very, very few games” that would be refused classification (banned).

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Instaprint Could Well Be The Coolest Use Of Instagram’s API Yet

Just like the launch of Instagram itself, the Instagram API has enjoyed some substantial success with a number of cool web apps that have utilized it. But none of those really matter much at all once you see Instaprint, its not a webapp but an actual printer that can print any Instagram photo onto Polaroid-esque paper for those tagged at a certain location or with a specific hashtag.

Right now Instaprint has set up a demo box at SXSW and plans to eventually offer to rent the printers out, which sounds great for big events or promotional campaigns that want to utilise social media in a new and unique way. You can try it out right now by tagging any Instagram photo with the hashtag #Instaprint and see it being printed live in the Ustream video after the break (although as of writing it wasn’t live).

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Celeste Brings Tightly Integrated Bluetooth Sharing To iOS

Coming later this week to the Cydia Store is a new tweak from CocoaNuts called Celeste, a handy little tweak that will allow you to send and receive various audio, video and image files to and from your iOS device using Bluetooth. Whilst there have been other apps and tweaks distributed through Cydia that brought Bluetooth sharing to iOS such as iBlueNova, Celeste seems to be a much more tightly and neatly integrated tweak.

Celeste keeps it simple by just indicating, via an inverted Bluetooth icon on the status bar, that the tweak is running and then to share files is just a click or two away. Another feature that others have lacked is that Celeste will also make sure any songs and videos you receive over Bluetooth will automatically be synced over into iTunes, as if you had purchased it. Jump the break for a demo of how the tweak works.

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iOS 5 and MobileMe Media Event in April?

According to German website Macerkopf.de, Apple will hold a media event at the corporate headquarters in Cupertino to give a sneak peek of the upcoming major version of their mobile operating system, iOS 5, and the new MobileMe. The website reports [Google Translation] invitations will be sent out in the second week of April, and admittedly this rumor corroborates several blogs’ speculation that Apple wanted to save iOS 5 for a proper dedicated event instead of a quick preview at the iPad 2 event on March 2.

Previous rumors suggested iOS 5 would get a completely new notification system, deeper integration with the cloud (thanks to the data center in North Carolina) and several location-based features. As for design changes, patents Apple had been awarded showed new scrollable menus and other interface styles. MobileMe is also widely believed to come with a new, free version for all customers with cloud backup support for iTunes and other media. Steve Jobs once said in an email to a customer that MobileMe would get “a lot better” in 2011.

Code references found in early iOS 4.3 betas pointed to a new feature in development called MediaStream for photos and videos. In the past months speculation also indicated Apple was working on a smaller version of the iPhone strongly based on cloud services, although the rumor has been debunked from various sources since then.

There is no doubt, however, that Apple will prefer holding a single event focused on iOS 5 rather than including the preview in other product announcements. With an iOS 5 preview and beta likely to ship in April, developers will have plenty of time to update their applications for a possible launch of the new OS at the WWDC in June alongside the new iPhone.

Former Apple VP Shares Thoughts on Steve Jobs→

Former Apple VP Shares Thoughts on Steve Jobs

Former senior vice president at Apple Jay Elliot shares some details and thoughts about Steve Jobs’ “modus operandi” in a recent article at Forbes. That’s an interesting read that, overall, seems to confirm what most people think about Jobs’ way of leading Apple to success:

Rare among corporate leaders, Steve has never made decisions based on a concern for market reaction. He simply is not influenced by whether investors and market analysts will think he’s doing the right thing. But the financial community has come to have confidence in him: his track record for making the right decisions is hard to argue with.

Now Steve is following the same frustrating modus operandi about the question of who will take over the helm of Apple should be be forced to step down for health reasons. Everyone who has ever worked closely with Steve knows that, for him, relinquishing control over any aspect of the company or its products is — well, difficult, to put it politely.

The key point, however, is this:

Over the years, Steve has generated a nearly uncanny ability to recognize talent and to recruit almost everyone he has ever set his eye on. The result is a team that inspires confidence for the future.

Many people still think Steve Jobs does everything at Apple from coding to design to marketing and app development, but they don’t understand Apple as a company is “simply” a well-oiled and functioning machine made of talented people.

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Adobe Releases Its Flash To HTML5 Conversion Tool

Adobe has released its Flash to HTML5 conversion tool to its Adobe Labs website for designers and developers to easily produce HTML5 (and thus iOS compatible) content from a Flash project. John Nack, the Principal Product Manager at Adobe said back in October last year (when the tool was announced) that Adobe’s goal was to “Cut the cost of targeting multiple runtimes & we’ll deliver real wins”.

The tool, codenamed “Wallaby” is limited and far from complete but it should work fine with most Flash banner ads, however projects utilizing ActionScript are currently not supported by the tool. The tool allows simple drag and drop conversion and Adobe says that it “allows you to reuse and extend the reach of your content to devices that do not support the Flash runtimes.”

Whilst Adobe is not at all backing off from backing Flash, it certainly seems that they have been forced into implementing HTML5 support in order to please its customers who see the wide usage of devices such as the iPad and iPhone which don’t support Flash. It is also evident that at least part of Steve Job’s ‘Thoughts on Flash’ article from last April is coming true;

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

[Via The Loop]

iPad 2 Launch Details Roundup

There has been an avalanche of information regarding the iPad 2 launch since the Apple event last week so if you are confused, unsure or just want a refresher on the launch details just jump the break for a full roundup of all the important details!

Also be sure to check out our iPad 2 roundup to get all the details what exactly is new and awesome about the iPad 2.

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