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Posts tagged with "apple"

The New York Times Will Use Apple’s iOS Subscriptions

With the June 30 deadline approaching for publishers willing to implement recurring subscriptions in their iOS apps, Apple just got the first big name on board with the new iTunes subscription system: the New York Times will comply to Apple’s terms and offer in-app subscriptions by June 30 to give iPhone and iPad users to subscribe to the NYT with the one-click option touted by Apple.

As reported by All Things Digital, the New York Times decided to play Apple’s game rather than pull their iOS apps from the App Store. The New York Times will give 30% of revenue from subscriptions away to Apple, and give up on customers’ data as Apple’s subscriptions are based on opt-in sharing of personal info with the publisher. Read more

2011 MacBook Pro Users Having Issues With iTunes Home Sharing

A support thread in Apple’s Discussion forums is abuzz with 2011 MacBook Pro owners having issues with iTunes Home Sharing. The users are having issues connecting to certain iOS devices as well as having devices disconnect and display error messages.

The user who started the discussion thread; ‘themacbear’, reported that his new 17 inch MacBook Pro initially seemed to work fine using Home Sharing with his Apple TV. However later on in the day “…although the Apple TV could see the name of my iTunes library, it wouldn’t connect to it, or sometimes, would report that “There are no movies in this library”. I tried every solution I could think of, but no dice.” He went to an Apple Store, which managed to replicate the issue on a different MacBook Pro, but couldn’t resolve the problem and consequently gave ‘themacbear’ a full refund. Others too have contacted Apple through their retail stores and via phone support but so far there is no fix for the problem.

Apple recently beefed up its Home Sharing features with iOS 4.3 and iTunes 10.2 and it could be that the issues these users are facing are related to these updates. Furthermore there are also some users with older Mac’s also having similar issues, although this seems to be a more isolated group of users.

[Via AppleInsider]

New “If You Don’t Have An iPhone” Ads Feature Apple’s Three E-Commerce Stores

Apple has today added three new adverts for the iPhone to their website and YouTube which have the general theme of “If you don’t have an iPhone” and what you miss out on. The three specific features that the ad’s highlight are the App Store, iPod + iTunes and iBooks which highlight Apple’s strong integration between the iPhone and their three e-commerce stores.

Jump the break to watch the three 30 second ad’s which also all finish with the “Yup, if you don’t have an iPhone, well, you don’t have an iPhone.” phrase - which in typical Apple style is a little self-congratulatory (which you either like or dislike).

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WordPress for iOS Updated, Quashes Bugs and Improves UI

The WordPress iPhone and iPad app just got updated to version 2.7 and it’s a big bug-quashing update that supposedly fixes 117 bugs to vastly improve performance and reduce crashes.

UI has also been retooled with the ‘Post Editor’ interface improved to “make it easier to write and edit posts and pages” with quick access to edit post settings, view attachments and add media. Finally multiple attatchments can be added simultaneously, you can use the “pull down to refresh” feature to quickly update comments, posts and page lists and email and URLs left in comments are now able to be clicked on.

[Via WordPress Blog]

The Daily Launching in the UK by June 2011

Are you iPad owners still using the over-hyped and very criticized iPad newspaper, The Daily? Well, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is going to launch The Daily in the UK by June 2011. You can read MacStories’ thoughts on The Daily here.

Jonathan Miller, the chief digital officer at News Corporation, said “Western Europe is up first in not too long from now,” saying that a launch will be in the first half of 2011.

The European version of The Daily is dependant on the geographical roll-out of Apple’s subscription model, which is only US based right now.

Mr. Miller said that charging for The Daily in the US will begin next week. “We will charge for it but we haven’t started yet. We have our beginning moment of truth next week when we start to ask people to get out their wallets,” he said.

The Daily, which will be begin charging next week in the US, is aimed at a younger, mobile audience. He added that there are hundreds of thousands of people reading The Daily, I think that number will drop significantly once the trial period ends this week.

It does skew younger. If you follow what’s happening with news consumption around the world, it’s aging. And younger people as a generalisation are not consuming news at least in the ways they used to. So we want to make a product that has broad appeal and that means it has liveliness to it, its very graphic and is very pictoral - a lot of video on it, all media in the same place. It is skewing much younger than newspapers.

For anyone that doesn’t already know, The Daily brings users more than 100 pages of daily content, including news, opinion and sports. It also has video, 360 degree photography, 3D technology, interactive charts and read-later functionality all built into the app. If you’re interested in checking it out or subscribing, here’s a direct link.

[via The Telegraph]

Analyst Predicts Apple To Be Tablet Market Leader Until 2013

According to at least one research firm, DisplaySearch, Apple will remain firmly as the market leader for tablets for at least the next two years with substantial market share and sales. The firm believes the market will grow at a very rapid rate, accelerated primarily by the iPad, which it believes that Apple will sell 40 million units of this year – a very significant increase from last year’s 15 million units.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating statistics that the firm is floating is that by 2016 the tablet market will be selling 260 million units per year worldwide. That is a very considerable figure considering that in 2010, 351 million PCs were shipped. Indeed if these suggested figures ring true, it could be the case that tablets in 2016 replace a number of PC sales and perhaps even exceed PC sales.

As for Apple’s competitors, DisplaySearch believes that somewhere around the beginning of 2013 would be when they match Apple’s sales volume (combining all Apple’s competitors together though), which would still leave Apple as the market leader for presumably some time. Whether indeed Apple’s competitors can catch up by early 2013 will rely heavily on how well they do this year in launching their first iPad competitors. If they fail, the tablet market could well become similar to the MP3 player market in which Apple has strongly dominated for a decade with its iPod family.

[Via The Apple Blog]

Report: iPad 2 Display Almost Identical In Perfomance To iPhone 4

Whilst many have complained of the lack of resolution increase from the original iPad to the iPad 2, a report by Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies claims that, excluding pixel density, the iPad 2’s display delivers “almost identical performance to the impressive iPhone 4 Retina Display.”

In quite an in-depth and thorough examination of the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPad 2 displays, it was revealed that for most specifications from hardware color depth to black levels to contrast ratio, the iPad 2’s display matched or was close to the iPhone 4’s specifications and both were classified as ‘Excellent’ by the report. There were, however, two issues with the iPad 2’s display that Dr. Soneira believed could be improved by Apple through a software update.

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Photoshop Express For iOS Updated To 2.0, Adds Enhanced Camera Features

Adobe’s Photoshop Express

for iPhone and iPad has today been updated to version 2.0 and it brings a few substantial, and much needed improvements, to the mobile photo editing app. Perhaps of most importance is the addition of full Retina display support and multi-tasking support, which is a feature that all apps really should have had a few months ago.

Also included in the update is a new camera workflow for what they describe as “rapid in-app photo-taking” but in addition to that is the inclusion of a $4.99 in-app purchase for an ‘Adobe Camera Pack’. This pack improves upon the apps in-built camera functions by adding the features of reducing noise, self-timer and auto reviewing functions.

The app remains free and the 2.0 update can downloaded now, but to get the Adobe Camera Pack you’ll need to fork out the cash for that in-app purchase.

[Via The Loop]

iPad 2 Shipping Times Blow Out To 4-5 Weeks

Its not even a week since the iPad 2 launch and the shipping times for online orders have slipped from the original 3-5 days as it was when it was released to 2-3 weeks 5 hours later, 3-4 weeks over the weekend and now to a whopping 4-5 weeks. This shipping time applies to all the various models available whether it be WiFi or 3G, Verizon or AT&T or whether it is 16GB or 64GB which effectively means if you order one today it would be late April before you get your hands on the iPad 2.

With the international launch of the iPad 2 on March 25th one must wonder whether Apple will, as they have done so frequently in the past, delay the international launch citing insufficient stock. At this stage it certainly isnt out of the realm of possibility.

[Via 9to5 Mac]