All this bad weather in the US must be keeping App devs from dropping their prices! Here’s today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot! Read more
Posts tagged with "iOS"
#MacStoriesDeals - Wednesday
QNAP’s NAS Streams Media To iOS via WiFi and 3G
If streaming music and movies remotely to iOS devices is your thing, QNAP’s latest NAS offering is something to keep an eye on. The new series, which will be available for sale later this month, comes with up to 8 TB of storage, 1.2 GHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM. Other than these interesting specs, the TS-x12 model can stream all kinds of media to iOS devices via WiFi or 3G, or to your PS3 and Xbox 360 with UPnP. Sounds pretty cool.
The Mac platform doesn’t lack media centers that through mobile companion apps can stream content to the iPhone and iPad. But if you don’t want to install apps like Plex on your Mac and you prefer having a solution like a full-featured NAS, QNAP’s upcoming products might just be what you need. [via Gizmodo]
iOS, Android and RIM Deadlocked in US Smartphone Market Share
Nielson has revealed its latest statistics on smartphone ownership in the US and there is some fascinating information contained in the report. 31% of all mobile consumers in the US owned a smartphone as of December last year. Ethnic and racial minorities also dominated ownership of smartphones with Asian/Pacific Islanders and Hispanics having 45% smartphone penetration, African-Americans also had higher numbers at 33% whilst White Americans were at a much lower 27%.
The smartphone war between RIM’s BlackBerry, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating system was also at dead heat by the end of 2010. Apple was just ahead at 28% of the mobile operating system share but has been sitting steady at around that rate for a year. RIM’s BlackBerry OS market share continued diving and was at 27% and Google’s Android continued steaming upwards reaching it’s highest share of 27%.
Google Shopper for iPhone Now Available
Back in November, Google announced their Shopper app for Android. Millions of Android users have downloaded it and now it’s time for us iOS users to get a taste. Thats right, Google Shopper is now available for iPhone. The Google Mobile Blog has just posted a formal introduction to the app. In case you didn’t know, Shopper turns your iPhone into a shopping assistant so you can learn more about products and read relevant user reviews, compare prices at online and local stores, and save and share products for later consideration.
Shopper checks your searches by cover art, barcodes, typing or voice search then after you get your results you can choose a specific product that you like. It also lets you compare prices from other retailers and even locate nearby shops that sell your product. Some retailers will even provide inventory information so you can check and see if your trip across town will be worth it. Read more
Apple’s “Integrated” In-App Purchases, eBooks and iOS Users
Jason Snell, reporting for Macworld about Apple’s statement regarding ebook reading apps and in-app purchases:
For a couple of years now, Apple has been boasting about how many millions of iTunes IDs are linked to credit cards. Recent rumblings suggest that the company is seeking to expand the footprint of its financial services, too. It’s clear that Apple is tired of seeing companies make money on content served to iOS devices without using its system or cutting it in for a piece of the action. The current 30-percent cut of all content purchases would seem to be an impediment to getting partners to embrace Apple’s system; on the other hand, Apple’s the gatekeeper to its platform and if other companies don’t want to play ball with Apple, they’ll be on the outside looking in.
That’s exactly the point. You have to look at this whole Sony / Apple / everyone else story in two separate ways: the business perspective and consumers’ expectations. Apple does business, and it wants publishers selling content on its iOS platform to pay the fee all developers pay. The fee is 30 percent. Whether or not Apple will ease this fee and allow for lower revenue cut on ebook content is unclear, but it’s a possibility. Maybe tomorrow’s event won’t just be about The Daily, who knows. Read more
Apple Releases iOS 4.3 Beta 3
A few minutes ago Apple seeded the third beta of iOS 4.3 to developers. It’s available now in the iOS Dev Center. Build number is 8F5166b . Updated versions of the iOS SDK and Apple TV pre-release software have been released as well. The release comes after nearly two weeks after the previous beta; iOS 4.3 beta 1 was seeded to developers on January 12. iOS 4.3 is expected to introduce a rather small set of new features like AirPlay video streaming for third-party apps, HTTP live streaming statistics and full-screen iAds. In the developer betas Apple also enabled support for multitasking gestures on the iPad, although the feature won’t be part of the public release of iOS 4.3. The software update has also been rumored to carry support for the iTunes subscriptions that will power The Daily, but no references of such functionality have been found in the SDK so far.
Last week, several reports indicated that Apple is already accepting iOS 4.3-compatible apps in the App Store. We will update this story as we find out more about the new beta. Read more
#MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday
iOS Devices Accounted for 2% of Worldwide Browsing in January
A new report by NetMarketShare has revealed that the iOS ecosystem of devices has broken 2% of all browsing on the web. The January figures published by the analyst revealed the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch reached 2.06% of global browsing, accelerated by the holiday period.
Singapore had the highest percentage of iOS devices at virtually 10% and Australia was one of the highest countries at 5.6%. The UK was also close at 5.1% and the US had 3.4% in January.
See above for a graphic of world browsing by iOS devices and head over to NetMarketShare for a full breakdown of each country’s percentage of iOS device usage.
[Via 9to5Mac]
The New Readability Has Ambitious Future
Readability, the Javascript library that stripped websites of unnecessary graphics and elements to provide the user with a simple, easier to read page, has today revealed the next step in it’s future. The ambition plan includes fundamental new advancements including; usage on mobile devices, saving Readability-enhanced pages, social features, a subscription service that supports writers and a partnership with Marco Arment’s Instapaper.
One of the biggest new features of the new Readability is it’s subscription service which is a new model that aims to give back to the writers and publishers that you read from. The subscription starts from $5 but can be as high as you want to pay, and 70% go back to writers and publishers, so obviously the more you pay the more goes back to the content creators. There will still be the basic Readability which does not require a subscription.
Jump the break for full details.