Apple has updated its Cards app to promote Mother's Day more prominently, as well as putting new Mother's Day ads on the Apple Online Store. Mother's Day in the United States occurs on Sunday May 12th this year.
What's new
• Improves address verification on multi-card orders sent to recipients in different countries • Fixes several issues that caused the app to quit unexpectedly • Improves application performance
Apple currently offers 34 styles of greeting cards for Mother's Day, as well as dozens of others for different holidays.
In 2011, Apple announced a worldwide repair program for MacBooks with a defective bottom case, which caused the rubber surface to separate from the hard plastic casing.
The program originally stated that Apple would replace the bottom case of any affected MacBook for two years from the date of purchase, but the company recently extended the replacement period to four years from the original date of purchase.
Apple has determined that under certain circumstances the rubber surface on some MacBooks may separate from the bottom case of the system. MacBooks shipped between October 2009 and April 2011 may experience this issue.
Apple will replace the bottom case of any affected MacBook, free of charge, that exhibits the issue.
This program covers affected MacBooks for four years from original purchase date. Apple will continue to evaluate the service data and will provide further extensions to this program as needed.
Apple is offering several different repair options, which include visiting an Apple Retail Store, an Apple Authorized Service Provider, or ordering a replacement kit online.
To celebrate the one year anniversary of its rebranding, Pocket (formerly Read It Later) has implemented new sharing capabilities.
Pocket has long had tools to share articles via social networks like Facebook and Twitter, but has added a new "Send to Friend" function along with a redesigned Share Menu.
Send to Friend offers a way to share annotated content from Pocket with anyone. Select an article, add comments or highlights, and then email it to a friend. If it is sent to another Pocket user, the notification will be received directly in the app.
A year ago today, we became Pocket. It seems only fitting that we'd celebrate with a new feature designed to rethink another core element of the Pocket experience: Sharing.
INTRODUCING SEND TO FRIEND Send to Friend is a new, simple way to share content with the people who matter to you most. With just a couple of taps you can share content from Pocket with friends and family, along with a comment and a highlighted quote. They'll receive an email with the link, and if they have Pocket, they'll also be notified right inside the app.
RECEIVE SHARED CONTENT IN POCKET Once a friend sends content to your Pocket with Send to Friend, it will appear in an inbox, where you can see their comments along with any highlighted quotes they chose to share with you.
NEW SHARE MENU WITH MORE ACTIONS Pocket's redesigned Share Menu adds Send to Friend, as well as actions for the selected item: Copy Link and Open in Browser.
BUG FIXES & PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS This update also includes a number of bug fixes and performance updates.
Pocket is a universal app that can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Apple today issued build 12E33a of OS X Mountain Lion to developers, eight days after build 12E30 was released. Build 12E33a marks the third beta iteration of OS X 10.8.4.
Apple continues to ask users to focus on Wi-Fi, Graphics Drivers, and Safari.
The update is available through the software update tool in the Mac App Store and it should appear on Apple's Developer Page shortly.
StackSocial has launched its second 'Name Your Own Price' Mac bundle, offering 10 Mac apps to any purchasers who pay more than the average purchase price (currently $7.99). Anyone paying less than the average price receives just three apps.
The deal ends in just over 7 days and it's likely the price will rise slowly because buyers need to pay at least the average price in order to get the full selection of apps.
TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon has acquired Evi, a natural language search platform that is similar to Apple's Siri, for $26 million. The Evi app was originally posted on the App Store but Apple had threatened to remove because of similarities to Siri, but later said it would "work with" the company to reduce similarities. Evi remains available on the App Store.
TechCrunch understands from sources that the company has been sold to Amazon for $26 million. However, calls to Amazon PR, backers Octopus Ventures and the founders of Evi have ben met with a stoney silence. A spokesperson for Octopus told us: “On this occasion Octopus will decline to comment on this specific portfolio company”.
True Knowledge, the company behind Evi, licensed the same Nuance voice recognition technology that Apple uses in Siri and offers an array of information that seems to compare favorably to Siri's abilities. Evi first launched in early 2012.
Amazon has a number of possible uses for Evi, including building the service into its Kindle Fire tablet, or a possible Amazon phone.
MacHeist has launched nanoBundle 3, offering eight apps with a total retail value of $260 for $9.99. The first six are available immediately, with the final two (Little Inferno and Path Finder) being unlocked after a set number of bundles have been sold.
The MacHeist bundle can be purchased for the next six days from the website. 10% of each purchase can be donated to a partnering charity of the customer’s choice.
Rolocule's Rolomotion is designed to convert an iPhone or an iPod touch into a motion controller, similar to a Nintendo Wii Remote. The iPhone motion controller combines with games streamed over AirPlay using the Apple TV, allowing for motion-based gaming directly on a television.
The Rolomotion concept takes advantage of the iPhone's gyroscope, magnetometer and accelerometer to track movements, which are then translated on the screen.
Motion Tennis, the first game that incorporates Rolomotion, plays similarly to Wii Sports Tennis on the Wii gaming console. The iPhone is used as a tennis racket, and when swung, the character on the screen will swing as well.
According to Rolocule, Motion Tennis uses in-game optimizations to minimize mirroring lag and will also feature a multiplayer mode.
As with all products of this type, enticing developers to use the technology is a significant hurdle to overcome. Rolocule is planning on releasing additional games in the future, but there is no word on whether an SDK will be made available.
The company is planning on sending out a limited number of beta invites during the last week of April to prospective gamers who sign up on the website.
Apple's stock price hit new lows today, setting 52-week records and hitting the lowest points seen since late 2011. The price has traded beneath the $400 level several times this afternoon, with AAPL having not traded that low since December 23, 2011.
Today's slide follows a lower-than-expected revenue forecast for Cirrus Logic, a major supplier for chips used in the iPhone and iPad. Traders believe the lower forecast indicates weak Apple sales over the next several quarters.
Apple will announce its second quarter earnings on April 23rd. The earnings release typically occurs just after 4:30 PM Eastern Time following the close of regular stock trading, and the conference call is scheduled to follow at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific.
A number of tidbits related to Apple's retail store initiative have surfaced in recent days, with Apple apparently making progress on several new stores in Germany and the Netherlands as it opens a new store in the United Kingdom this weekend.
Meanwhile, a tipster in Hanover, Germany reports that Apple's delayed retail store project there appears to be seeing some progress, with signs of work showing up behind the plain black barricades typically used by Apple.
Barricades at Apple's retail store in Hanover, Germany (Thanks, Roman!)
Over in the Netherlands, One More Thing reports [Google translation] that Apple has posted job listings for upcoming stores in The Hague and Haarlem, suggesting that Apple is moving forward on those projects. Grand openings are, however, likely six months away based on Apple's usual hiring timetables.
Of more immediate concern, Apple will be opening a new store in the United Kingdom this Saturday, with its Drake Circus store in Plymouth scheduled to open to the public at 9:00 AM. The store will add a new shopping option for residents of South West England, with the new store location roughly 45 miles southwest of the closest current store in Exeter.
App Annie today released its latest data on mobile app downloads, finding that continued momentum for Android has allowed the Google Play marketplace to nearly match Apple's App Store in download volume. But while Google Play is making great strides in generating revenue for developers from these downloads, the App Store remains far out in front, indicating that iOS device users in general remain much more willing to pay for content than Android users.
While the iOS App Store and Google Play both had solid gains in app downloads last quarter, Google Play had a higher percentage growth rate as well as a greater gain in absolute downloads. As of Q1 2013, Google Play’s app downloads were close to 90% of iOS App Store downloads.
From Q4 2012 to Q1 2013, iOS App Store quarterly revenue grew by roughly one-quarter. Meanwhile, Google Play app revenue grew by roughly 90%. While Google Play had the higher growth rate, the iOS App Store gained more in absolute revenue and earned about 2.6x that of Google Play in Q1.
The stark revenue split between Apple and Android was also highlighted in an AllThingsD's interview with MLB.com boss Bob Bowman at the Dive Into Mobile conference yesterday. Bowman noted that while Android is starting to gain some momentum, Apple users continue to represent an outsized share of revenue for Major League Baseball's subscription services.
- His user base, which used to split 80/20 in favor of iOS over Android, has now moved to 70/30. “The Samsung phone is quite a good Android phone,” Bowman said.
- But the uptick in Android users, he said, doesn’t track with revenue. That still splits 80/20 in favor of iOS users. “Maybe even 85/15.”
MLB.com had a significant head start on iOS compared to Android, and Bowman also notes that the lack of low-end iOS devices creates a self-selecting group of users more willing to pay for content.
After being delayed yesterday, Funny Or Die's Steve Jobs movie "iSteve" has now been released online. The movie stars Justin Long as Steve Jobs and Lost's Jorge Garcia as Steve Wozniak.
The film is the longest video produced by the humor site and runs nearly 80 minutes long. The script for the film was written in three days and filmed in five.
The filmmakers have joked that the film may not be the best Steve Jobs movie, but that it would be the first. A Jobs film called "Jobs", starring Ashton Kutcher, is set to debut this year while Sony Pictures is making an Aaron Sorkin-written film based on the biography by Walter Isaacson.
Former Apple employee Richard Williamson has been hired by Facebook, reports Bloomberg. Williamson, who was in charge of Apple's iOS mapping team, was fired in November after Apple Maps faced extensive criticism for its poor performance.
Williamson joined Facebook in the past couple of weeks to be a manager within its expanding mobile-software group, said two of the people, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public.
Other former Apple employees brought in by Zuckerberg include Greg Novick, a former iPhone manager who helped develop the device’s touch interface; Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, software designers who joined when Facebook acquired their company Push Pop Press; and software engineers Scott Goodson, Tim Omernick and Chris Tremblay.
Facebook has also reportedly hired former Twitter employee Loren Brichter, who designed Twitter's original iPhone app and popular word game Letterpress. Brichter is a former member of Scott Forstall's iPhone team.
At AllThingsD's mobile conference today, executives from both Google and Facebook said they would like to have deeper and more extensive integration with Apple's iOS -- and both would like to be featured more prominently in the operating system, though neither company seemed to think such a development was very likely.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt, according to CNET, spoke today about Google and Apple's interactions related to apps:
Schmidt … declined to say why Apple decided to go with its own mapping system rather than working with Google as it had in the past. But he said his company is still pushing Apple to use Google Maps as the primary navigation tool on iOS.
"We would still really like them to use our maps," Schmidt said. "It would be easy for them to take the app in the store and put it as their basic one."
While of course Google wants to be featured more on iOS, it seems the company has accepted Apple's decision to develop its own mapping app.
Talking about Facebook's rollout of Chat Heads and other features in its iOS app today, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer and mobile head Cory Ondrejka were repeatedly asked by Kara Swisher if Facebook had ever actually asked Apple if it could have Chat Heads appear universally throughout iOS, like it does on Facebook Home.
Kara Swisher: But did you even ask them? Did you even ask Apple if you could put the … Chat Heads on the screen persistently? Or did you not even go there with them?
Cory Ondrejka: I think it's more a discussion about how to make a great product experience.
Kara: Did you ask them to do that? Do you imagine the possibility?
Cory: We know what their lead times are. So, we only ask for things that have some possibility--
Kara: Do you imagine the possibility that they'll have those heads wandering over their screen?
Cory: I think that's a great question for them.
Kara: I'm asking you. Are you even going to hope for that?
Cory: Am I going to hope for that?
Mike Schroepfer: Apple is a great partner, we both have a lot of products hilt together. We can't talk about what we've talked about.
Apple does have deeper ties with Facebook than most companies, offering significant integration of the service into iOS, but building Chat Heads into the iPhone would be an unprecedented expansion of that relationship.
Apple today updated both of its photo editing and management platforms. Aperture has been updated to version 3.4.4 while iPhoto has been updated to version 9.4.3. The updates contain several bug fixes and stability improvements and can be downloaded via the Mac App Store or Software Update.
Aperture 3.4.4:
-Addresses an issue that could cause Aperture to quit unexpectedly during image import -Nikon P7700 RAW images are now displayed correctly in the Import window -Thumbnails with version names longer than 250 characters are now displayed correctly -Fixes an issue that could cause multiple warning dialogs to appear when web albums are synced after waking from sleep -Addresses an issue that could cause Aperture to quit unexpectedly when uploading photos to Photo Stream -Shared Photo Stream invitation lists now scroll correctly -Includes stability and performance improvements
iPhoto 9.4.3:
-Photos can now be deleted from My Photo Stream by dragging to the Trash -Photos can now be exported from Photo Stream using the Export command in the File menu -RAW images manually imported from My Photo Stream are now editable -Fixes a bug that could cause manually-rotated photos to appear unrotated when shared to Photo Stream -Addresses an issue that could cause iPhoto to quit unexpectedly while syncing to Facebook -Resolves an issue that could cause calendar text to appear at the wrong font size, resulting in order cancellation -Fixes an issue that could cause books to have an incorrect number of pages after rearranging two-page spreads -Includes stability improvements
Aperture is available for $79.99 on the Mac App Store. [Direct Link]
Apple today released a series of updates for both Safari and Java, addressing continued issues with Java security.
The Safari updates arrive as version 6.0.4 for OS X Mountain Lion and Lion and version 5.1.9 for OS X Snow Leopard. The updates, which can be obtained through the Software Update mechanism in OS X, add new site-specific options for enabling the Java plug-in.
Safari 6.0.4 and 5.1.9 allow you to enable the Java web plug-in on a website-by-website basis, with four settings to choose from.
Full details on how to use the site-specific options are available in an associated support document.
Alongside today's Safari update, Apple has also released updated versions of Java 6. They arrive as Java for OS X 2013-003 for OS X Mountain Lion and Lion users and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 15 for OS X Snow Leopard users. The updates bring the Apple-provided Java 6 up to the latest Update 45 version of the software from Oracle, which released the update for other platforms earlier today. Java 7 updates are now handled by Oracle directly, and users should update through Oracle's site.
Back in 1983, Apple's Macintosh team attended a retreat at the La Playa Carmel hotel in Carmel, California, where employee shenanigans resulted in a 30-year company gathering ban from the resort.
According to SFGate, the La Playa Carmel, which is located about two hours south of Cupertino, recently lifted the restrictions preventing Apple from using the spot for corporate retreats. Apple has already booked an upcoming meeting at the hotel.
When [Elliot] was eating dinner in the La Playa's primly starched dining room and saw a dozen Macintosh people swimming nude in the lighted pool outside, he chuckled softly and went on with this meal, oblivious to the polite strangling sounds of the blue-haired ladies all around. He was, after all, the official guardian of Apple's corporate culture, and if this was what he was supposed to guard, he was ready for the task.
Following the hijinks, the Macintosh team was asked to leave and to never return, a ban that has been revoked after the hotel went through both a remodel and a change of ownership.
The new La Playa Carmel hotel offers ocean view hotel rooms, meeting facilities with team building activities like golf and sailing, lush gardens, and the infamous pool where Apple employees once skinny dipped.
NPD has released its most recent report examining digital music downloads in the United States.
The research firm reports that Apple continues to hold a 63% share of the market down from 66% in 2010, with Amazon at 22%, up from 13% 3 years ago. Some 44 million Americans bought at least one song last year, with NPD saying that number has remained stable over the past three years.
“Since the launch of Apple’s iTunes store, digital music downloads have become the dominant revenue source for the recorded music industry and iTunes continues to be the dominant retailer,” said Russ Crupnick, senior vice president of industry analysis at NPD. “There’s a belief that consumers don’t need to buy music because of streaming options, when in fact streamers are much more likely than the average consumer to buy music downloads.”
However, only 38 percent of consumers said it was important to own music, while 41 percent of users of streaming music services like Pandora or Spotify said they had purchased music they discovered on such a service.
The relatively low number of consumers who find it important to own music may be part of the impetus to Apple's development of an 'iRadio' streaming music service. Apple is rumored to be pushing hard for a Summer 2013 launch.
Former Apple employee Richard Williamson has been hired by Facebook, reports 
NPD has released its 
