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Posts tagged with "iPad"

Official Basecamp Mobile Web App Launches

37Signals has announced the exciting launch of Basecamp Mobile, an official web app that works universally across Webkit browsers on mobile smartphones. With experience in designing mobile applications, 37Signals’ goal was to release a strong, universal HTML5 app that didn’t require in-house iPhone & Android developers. The end result? Basecamp works across WebOS and Blackberry devices too!

A big part of this initial release was nailing the basics that mattered the most. We had to make a bunch of hard calls about what was important enough to make version 1. That meant leaving some things out and not bringing full functionality to other things. For example, you can view Milestones but you can’t add new ones. But you can view, add, change, and assign to-dos. We plan on rounding out the functionality as time goes on.

Jason Fried notes that this version will launch without every editing feature under the sun, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have the ability to view Writeboards, reply to messages, or browse attached PDFs. At MacStories, we’re very excited that there’s finally an official mobile solution for one of our favorite products, and we can’t wait to see where the company takes us. If you breath the 37Signals mantra, read up on the launch notes via the Signal vs. Noise blog before catching the “Works Without Apps!” seal of approval on the mobile landing page. Read more

Apple Possibly Tightening the iOS Walled Garden

Apple seems to be tightening its control over the App Store ecosystem after telling some developers including Sony that the selling of e-books within their app must go through Apple. The move is somewhat contradictory of recent movements by Apple to open up the App Store and gestures of collaboration with publishers.

Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division told the New York Times that Apple rejected Sony’s e-book reader iPhone application on the basis that the app would have let users buy e-books bought from the Sony Reader Store, bypassing Apple and that any purchases made from within an app must go through Apple from now on.  Mr. Haber said; “We always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store.”.

[Updated and points clarified in light of responses to the NYT article]

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iPad ‘Real Positive’ for USA Today’s Future

The Telegraph reported yesterday that Gannett, publisher of USA Today has been enthused by the iPad’s impact on their business, despite having to initiate cost-cutting measures in other aspects of their business. Their free iPad App, available worldwide, has been downloaded more than 1.4 million times since launching April last year.

Gannett, like many other Newspaper organizations had to cut 130 jobs in August at USA Today and lost 6% advertising revenue worth $722m in the last quarter. Yet Gannett’s chief operating officer, Gracia Martore said that “The iPad has been a real positive for USA Today, we expect this will translate into much more significant improvement.”

At this stage USA Today remains free and it’s revenue comes from generating ad revenue from within the app. Gannett’s Chief Executive however couldn’t rule out charging users in the future, saying “We’re looking across the board at this.” Gannett and other newspaper publishers will no doubt be watching closely at tomorrow’s announcement of News Corp’s The Daily and this month’s pay-wall that the New York Times is implementing.

[Via The Telegraph]

Hockey: An Open Source Platform For Distributing Ad-Hoc iOS Betas

Buzzworks has announced version one of a new open source platform for distributing ad-hoc betas to iOS testers called Hockey. As an alternative to TestFlight, Hockey faces stiff competition from developers seeking a “happy meal” solution for rapidly exchanging the latest iterations of applications with minimal setup. The immediate difference between TestFlight and Hockey comes down to the developer’s willingness or want to host their own their own apps: Hockey requires initial (though minimal) setup in combination with a PHP5 server. Arguably every developer has their own hosted nameapp.com website which they can utilize for this purpose, but what benefit does this provide to the developer? Satisfying the testers.

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Motorola Prepares Another Jab at Apple with Super Bowl Commercial

It looks like Motorola is back to its usual business of launching commercials with clear and direct pokes at Apple’s products. After the “giant iPhone” argument for the iPad, here comes a teaser of the ad Motorola will run during Super Bowl for its upcoming Honeycomb tablet, the Xoom.

The ad / teaser, called “Goodbye 1984”, says:

2011 looks a lot like 1984. One authority. One design. One way to work.

It’s time for more choices. It’s time to explore. It’s time to live a free life.

In the video, you can see planet Earth wearing Apple-white earbuds slowly fading from colors to black & white. The “one design” and “one authority” Motorola mentions is an obvious reference to the popular Super Bowl commercial Apple ran in 1984, quite possibility the most famous tech commercial of all time. Tech specs of the Xoom are presented in the ad, like Android Honeycomb support, 5 MP camera and 3G connectivity upgradable to 4G.

Check out the video below. [Youtube via Engadget] Read more

Android Gains 22% Of Tablet Market, Becomes #1 Smartphone Platform by Shipments

According to two different reports surfaced this morning, Google’s Android mobile operating system has gained 22% of the tablet market share and has become the world’s leading smartphone platform with 33.3 million shipments in Q4 2010.

The first report, as noted by The Loop, details how Android-based tablets grabbed 22% of the market in the fourth quarter of 2010, and while the iPad is still “dominant”, the Samsung Galaxy Tab drove sales of tablets running Google’s OS.

Strategy Analytics sees continued growth for Android-based tablets in 2011 with the release of Motorola’s Xoom and other high-profile devices. The company expects that as more Android devices hit the market, media developers in the United States and elsewhere will increasingly support the devices with content.

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The iPad As A Company, Apple’s Products As A Platform→

The iPad As A Company, Apple’s Products As A Platform

From a piece about Apple’s platform strategy on The New York Times:

Hit products like the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad are fueling Apple’s logic-defying growth. The latest entry — the iPad, introduced in April — is on track to deliver $15 billion to $20 billion in revenue in its first full year of sales, estimates A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

At that size, if the iPad were a stand-alone company, it would rank within the top third of the Fortune 500.

Think about it: for any company on the planet, having a product like the iPad in its line-up would be the greatest success. Yet the iPad is one of the products in Apple’s chain, and like others is deeply integrated with software, MobileMe, the App Store. This platform strategy creates the following win-win situation:

The more people buy iPhones and iPads, the more software developers and media companies want to write applications for them, as various as games and digital magazines. And consumers are more likely to buy iPhones and iPads when more entertainment and information applications are available on them.

So the value of Apple’s products doesn’t lie in the products themselves, but in the platform that supports them all. This extends to internet services, App Stores, media management, support, accessories.

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Omni Group’s Huge 2011: OmniFocus 2, New OmniPlan, OmniOutliner for iPad


Stronger than ever thanks to an incredibly successful launch of OmniFocus for iPad, the constantly increasing OmniFocus userbase on all platforms and the hype surrounding all their products, Omni Group’s CEO Ken Case gave some details of the company’s roadmap for 2011 at Macworld Expo. The three key products seem to be OmniFocus 2 for Mac, coming later this year and highly inspired by the iPad app, a brand new OmniPlan with cloud sync and collaboration features, a version of OmniOutliner for iPad. Personally, I’m really excited about the overhaul of OmniPlan, which will also get OmniFocus integration:

The new syncing back-end is also designed to work with OmniFocus, which will let individual team members sync tasks assigned to them with either the desktop, iPhone, or iPad versions. “All three versions use the same underlying engine, so once we have that update in place, we’ll be able to roll out OmniPlan syncing to all versions of OmniFocus,” Case told Ars.

The current version of OmniPlan allows syncing via CalDAV, but the new engine will offer much better integration with OmniFocus. For project team members who don’t need to see what all other team members are working on, they’ll be able to see just the tasks assigned to them. When tasks are marked as complete in OmniFocus, the project manager will get a notification of the change in OmniPlan.

We can’t wait to see what will the new OmniPlan look like, and the two-way sync with OmniFocus sounds like a killer feature to me. Not to mention OmniOutliner for iPad, which will be demoed for the first time at Macworld today and is set to ship sometime in the next few months. What you see above is a screenshot of an early build Ars Technica was provided, but I guess the UI will change come the final release (remember the first mockups of OmniFocus for iPad?).

Last, OmniFocus 2 for Mac will be released “later this year”, although the Omni Group (as usual) doesn’t set any deadline. When it’s ready, it’s ready. We just know the feedback for the iOS apps (especially the iPad version) has been huge, and OmniFocus 2 will be built on top of that.

Looks like the Omni Group is off to a great start in 2011.