Apple has released a number of updates to several of its apps for the iPhone and iPad. The iLife apps, iPhoto, Garageband, and iMovie, all received minor updates, while Apple also pushed out bug fixes to the Cards greeting-card app, and to iTunes U.
None of the updates offer any significant new features -- the updates mostly offer "performance and stability improvements" or fix other bugs. All the updates can be obtained via the App Store app on the iPhone and iPad.
MacRumors is pleased to announce the third annual MacRumors Blood Drive, for the month of May 2012. We encourage forum members and site visitors to donate blood or platelets at any hospital or blood donation center in their city. We want to increase the number of life-saving donations by our online community for the benefit of people in their real-world communities. We also ask donors to post photos or stories in our Blood Drive thread. Saving a life is its own reward but accepting recognition as a donor helps spread the message to others. Please join us in showing the spirit of our community by donating blood or platelets this month and letting us know. Details are in the MacRumors 2012 Blood Drive thread.
Most blood drives are specific to a physical organization at a particular location. Ours is online and worldwide. You can help people in your city who are in need of life-saving blood and platelets in less than an hour of your time. If you are eligible to donate blood you can go to a hospital, community center, the Red Cross, or an independent donation center near you. If you are not eligible to donate yourself, please help the Blood Drive by encouraging other people to donate; see the Blood Drive thread for ideas.
Donated blood and platelets are needed every few seconds, all year, not just when calamities occur. They save the lives of people recovering from accidents, undergoing surgery, or struck by illness, including MacRumors forum members who have let us know that their lives were saved by donated blood. There's no gift more precious than the gift of life.
Specific donor eligibility requirements vary by country. For links and general information see our Blood and Platelet Donation Guide. You can also save lives by registering to donate your organs and tissue and by registering to be a bone marrow donor; see our Organ, Tissue, and Bone Marrow Donation Guide.
Apple's health, relief, and charity efforts over the years have included donations for 9/11 workers in 2001, the fundraising Songs for Sudan effort in 2004, (PRODUCT) RED participation since 2006, help for victims of the Haitian earthquake in 2010 and Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, and most recently a $50 million donation to Stanford University hospitals and a charitable donation matching program that are part of Apple's recent emphasis on corporate philanthropy.
Last year, the Financial Times, a major business newspaper, announced it would discontinue its iOS app in favor of an HTML5 based web app. The move was in response to Apple's requirement that it get a 30% cut of any subscription sold through iTunes, as well as Apple's refusal to pass along the personal information of subscribers without their permission.
The FT's sleek HTML5 web app has been very well received. The FT said it had no difficulty driving users to the mobile app, noting that "the world outside the App Store is not cold and desperate."
Though the FT's native iOS app continued working for customers who had already downloaded it, that support will be discontinued as upgrades the FT is making over the next month will render the app unusable, according to PaidContent.
It is taking the step because only a relative handful of users remain and because it can no longer continue to maintain features inside the app.
The HTML5 web app has been a success for the Financial Times, with mobile accounting for 12% of new paid subscriptions and 19% of FT.com web traffic.
In the early '90s, one of the premier PC games was 7th Guest. It was the first game to use full rendered 3D animation and navigation, and Bill Gates called it "the new standard in interactive entertainment". Trilobyte, the company that made 7th Guest and its sequel, The 11th Hour, eventually went out of business.
However, some members of the original Trilobyte team have ported The 7th Guest to iPhone and iPad, as well as the Mac App Store. For May Day, Trilobyte is offering both the iOS and Mac versions of their games for free, down from $4.99 and $9.99. Also free is 7th Guest: Infection, a specially rebuilt puzzle built for the iPad.
"Welcome to my ... house!" Old Man Stauf built a house and filled it with his toys. Six guests were invited one night, their screams the only noise…
In the world of The 7th Guest, you are an active and mysterious entity known only as "Ego". Your role, identity and purpose is not known or explained, rather, it is experienced as a seamlessly integral part of the total environment that is the Stauf mansion. Because you are looking out from within, you cannot see yourself, but your inner spirit has a voice. Listen to it.
The house of The 7th Guest is filled with 19 devilishly clever puzzles that will test your wits and scare you out of them as well. To complete the game you must solve every puzzle in the house - only then will the secrets of the madman Henry Stauf be revealed to you.
The 7th Guest is available as both a universal iOS app (normally $4.99, Direct Link) and on the Mac App Store (normally $9.99, Direct Link).
The 7th Guest: Infection is available for the iPad, normally $2.99. [Direct Link]
In March, a number of regulatory organizations announced they were looking into Apple's advertising claims surrounding the 4G capabilities of the new iPad. The Advertising Standards Authority in the United Kingdom has announced it doesn't feel Apple has adjusted its iPad 4G advertising to comply with local laws, reports the BBC.
Apple's UK site still offers consumers the chance to buy a "wi-fi + 4G" version of the iPad.
A footnote explains that "4G LTE" is supported only on certain networks in the United States and Canada.
The ASA said it had since been contacted by several complainants who had identified other "potentially problematic claims" about the iPad and 4G on the website.
"If it appears that the problem claims we asked Apple to remove are still appearing," the regulator said, "we will investigate these new complaints."
4G networks haven't arrived in Britain yet, and when they do, the networks won't be supported by the new iPad. The iPad only connects to 4G LTE networks in Canada and the United States. Apple has been offering refunds to consumers who feel misled by the company's 4G claims.
The UK has strict regulation of advertising claims and Apple's marketing has been the subject of several decisions from the ASA. In 2008, the agency banned an iPhone ad over misleading claims, while a more recent decision regarding claims of the world's thinnest smartphone came down in Apple's favor. The ASA also ruled in Apple's favor earlier this year in a dispute over advertising for Siri on the iPhone 4S.
The Travis County Commissioners Court has just given official approval for a package of tax incentives designed to secure Apple's commitment to expand its Austin, Texas campus and add over 3,600 new jobs at the site. The approval comes after development officials expressed concern last week that the deal was "in peril" as concerns over loopholes in the contract delayed approval by the county.
Apple governmental affairs representative Jason Lundgaard was on hand for the session and answered several questions for the county commissioners.
Travis County is the final governmental entity to approve its portion of the total tax incentive plan, which is estimated to yield $35-36 million for Apple in exchange for adding the jobs and facilities. The State of Texas and the City of Austin previously approved their pieces of the deal.
Antivirus firm Symantec has published a new blog post examining how the Flashback malware affecting hundreds of thousand of Macs has been generating revenue for its authors by hijacking users' ad clicks. According to the report, the widespread nature of the infection means that malware authors could have been generating up to $10,000 per day from the scheme at its peak based on previous analysis of malware click redirection.
The Flashback ad-clicking component is loaded into Chrome, Firefox, and Safari where it can intercept all GET and POST requests from the browser. Flashback specifically targets search queries made on Google and, depending on the search query, may redirect users to another page of the attacker's choosing, where they receive revenue from the click . (Google never receives the intended ad click.)
Symantec's work on the ad-click hijacking aspect of Flashback comes after Russian firm Dr. Web, which was responsible for the initial publicity about the malware, published its own report examining some of the early data on infected computers seeking to connect to command-and-control servers.
The report looks at nearly 100,000 connections that came in on April 13, finding that close to two-thirds of the infected machines identified themselves as running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which was the last version of OS X to ship with Java enabled by default. OS X Lion does not include Java by default, and thus was responsible for only 11% of infections seen during the survey period.
[W]hile Snow Leopard's and Leopard's infection rates are higher than their usage shares, the opposite's true of OS X 10.7, or Lion. The 2011 OS accounted for 39.6% of all copies of OS X used last month, yet represented only 11.2% of the Flashback-compromised Macs.
Dr. Web's data on OS kernel versions being reported from infected Macs also demonstrates that many Mac users do not keep their systems up-to-date, with roughly 25% of Snow Leopard and Lion systems seen in the survey reporting themselves as at least one version behind Apple's most recent updates (10.6.8 for Snow Leopard and 10.7.3 for Lion).
Research firm IDC today released its estimates of global mobile phone and smartphone shipments for the first quarter 2012, revealing that Apple set a record high in taking 8.8% of the overall mobile phone market. The performance just barely topped Apple's 8.7% share in the previous quarter, which was the launch quarter for the iPhone 4S.
"The race between Apple and Samsung remained tight during the quarter, even as both companies posted growth in key areas," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Phone Technology and Trends program. "Apple launched its popular iPhone 4S in additional key markets, most notably in China, and Samsung experienced continued success from its Galaxy Note smartphone/tablet and other Galaxy smartphones. With other companies in the midst of major strategic transitions, the contest between Apple and Samsung will bear close observation as hotly-anticipated new models are launched."
Samsung's shipment numbers suffer from significant uncertainty, however, as the company no longer releases official data on its sales for competitive reasons. Consequently, analysts have had to resort to rough estimates for Samsung's numbers, and IDC believes that Samsung registered 42.2 million smartphone shipments to easily top Apple's publicly-released number of 35.1 million units.
Research firm Strategy Analytics last week offered a similar estimate of Samsung's shipments at 44.5 million units for the quarter, but IHS iSuppli painted a very different picture with its estimate of only 32 million smartphone units for Samsung, which would have left Apple atop the rankings for the quarter.
Houston NBC affiliate KPRC reports that five businesses along Westheimer Road in Houston were hit by random gunfire early Monday morning, with Apple's new Highland Village retail store being one of the targets.
The Houston Police Department confirms it is investigating five random shootings at business in southwest Houston.
Between 4:40 and 5:40 a.m. Monday, several windows were shot out. The targets were from gas stations to swanky furniture store Cantoni, officials said. [...]
The brand new Apple store at 4012 Westhiemer was also hit.
ifoAppleStore reports that Apple is planning to open a new retail store in the Cornwall Centre shopping mall in Regina, Saskatchewan. The location is a notable one for being the first in the vast province in the heart of Canada, with no other Apple retail stores located within a 300-mile radius.
Cornwall Centre is located in city center and has 90 retailers in an enclosed mall. City planning documents mention the new store, but the exact location within the mall isn’t known. Based on construction schedules, the store could open by November 2012.
Regina, the provincial capital with a population of roughly 200,000, is the second-largest city and part of the second-largest metropolitan area in Saskatchewan, just behind Saskatoon.
Update: As noted in our forums and confirmed by The Regina Leader-Post (via iPhoneinCanada.ca), the forthcoming store is actually a reseller and not an official Apple retail store.
Regina's Cornwall Centre is getting a store selling Apple products — though, contrary to rumours that circulated Tuesday morning on the web — it won't be an Apple store.
Krista Bebeau, the downtown mall's marketing manager, said it will an outlet of a firm called iWorld Connect — the website of which (http://iworldconnect.com/) confirms the company is opening a store in Regina.
A pair of filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that Apple executive Scott Fortsall and board member Mickey Drexler each sold off tens of thousands of shares of Apple stock on Friday, netting millions of dollars each.
Forstall, who serves as senior vice president of iOS Software and has been a fixture in Apple's keynote presentations and media events, sold off 64,151 shares of Apple stock on Friday, netting roughly $38.7 million. Forstall gained 120,000 shares of Apple stock last month as a 2008 retention bonus of restricted stock units converted to actual stock. 55,849 shares were immediately sold off at that time to account for the taxes due on the conversion, and Forstall held on to the remaining shares until last Friday.
Following Friday's transaction, Forstall holds 2,988 shares of Apple stock, worth roughly $1.75 million at today's share price and the same number of shares he held prior to last month's vesting of his 2008 retention bonus. Forstall is also in line to receive a number of other stock grants should he remain with the company over the next several years, including a 150,000-unit grant that will vest in equal portions next year and in 2016. A separate grant of 100,000 units will vest in 2014.
Meanwhile, longtime Apple board member Mickey Drexler, who serves as Chairman and CEO of J. Crew and was previously President and CEO of The Gap, has cashed in on stock options dating back nearly a decade in order to reap a substantial windfall.
Drexler exercised a set of 20,000 options from 2003 priced at $9.16 each and a second set of 20,000 options from 2004 priced at $14.205 each, selling off all 40,000 shares on Friday for $24.1 million. After accounting for the exercise prices on the options, Drexler netted close to $23.7 million. Drexler continues to hold 584 shares of Apple stock worth roughly $384,000 at today's share price.
Apple today sent out an email encouraging Mac developers to sign up for the company's Developer ID program so that their apps can be properly signed ahead of the launch of OS X Mountain Lion later this year. Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper feature gives users the ability to set limits on app installation, with the new "Developer ID" program providing a middle ground of security by which developers can certify that they are the developer behind a given application package.
Should the developer be found to behave maliciously, Apple will be able to revoke the Developer ID associated with that developer, preventing applications signed with the ID from running and causing further harm to users.
The Mac App Store is the safest place for users to get software for their Mac, but we also want to protect users when they get applications from other places. Gatekeeper is a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion that helps protect users from downloading and installing malicious software. Signing your applications, plug-ins, and installer packages with a Developer ID certificate lets Gatekeeper verify that they are not known malware and have not been tampered with.
This marks the second such mass emailing to encourage adoption of Developer ID among the Mac developer community, as Apple sent out a similar mailing back in late February following its announcement of OS X Mountain Lion. The next major operating system is due for public launch in "late summer" and will undoubtedly be a featured topic at Apple's sold-out Worldwide Developers Conference in early June.
Apple closed a number of U.S. retail stores last week, and is closing another half dozen more this week for undisclosed renovations. All of the stores closing are street-level locations and the most likely reason is to retrofit the stores with Apple's new security grate system. Apple closed a number of other stores last fall for the same reason.
Last week, Bethesda Row (MD), Village Pointe (NE), and Crocker Park (OH), and perhaps others were all closed, apparently for the same reason.
MacRumors has begun receiving reports that iTunes Match has started going live in several new countries today. So far we have heard from users in Austria, Greece, and Italy, with some users reporting that they have been required to agree to updated iTunes Store terms and conditions addressing the service while others have even been able to sign up for the service.
As part of the new rollout of Apple's paid iTunes Match service, users in these countries should also be receiving access to the free iTunes in the Cloud services for music and music video, which allow users to re-download purchased content any number of times to devices associated with their iTunes Store accounts.
According to former Apple executive Tony Fadell -- these days remaking the thermostat -- Apple's designers had extensive discussions about including a hardware keyboard on the iPhone, but ultimately decided against it. Fadell discussed the iPhone design process in a sit-down interview on Josh Topolsky's On The Verge show.
I wanted to try [a touchscreen keyboard]... I wanted it to work. It made sense that you wanted a full screen, you didn't want a keyboard.
Apple's designers make many prototypes that never hit the light of day. We didn't know it at the time, but the iPod with click-wheel dial that Steve Jobs jokingly showed at the original iPhone announcement wasn't too far off from something Apple had actually created.
In his biography, we learned that Jobs had set up two competing teams to find the best iPhone design. One based its designs off the existing iPod, while the other designed a brand new touchscreen system that ultimately became the iPhone.
Earlier this year, Apple began revealing more information about its Mastered for iTunes program, requesting that music professionals supply Apple with higher-quality recordings as source material for the compressed tracks made available for sale through the iTunes Store. The higher-quality source material, processed according to Apple's guidelines, is being requested to allow Apple to create better-sounding tracks in the 256 kbps AAC format used for the iTunes Store.
Ars Technica takes a thorough look at the Mastered for iTunes program and whether it truly does make a difference to consumers. While the whole article is an interesting read on some of the technical details of audio formats and mastering and the varying perspectives of several music industry professionals, Ars' conclusion is that the Mastered for iTunes program can make a difference in quality of iTunes Store music.
We enlisted Chicago Mastering Service engineers Jason Ward and Bob Weston to help us out, both of whom were somewhat skeptical that any knob tweaking could result in a better iTunes experience. We came away from the process learning that it absolutely is possible to improve the quality of compressed iTunes Plus tracks with a little bit of work, that Apple's improved compression process does result in a better sound, and that 24/96 files aren't a good format for consumers.
Ars worked with a number of audio engineers on test projects comparing various combinations of original 24-bit, 96 kHz master recordings, uncompressed WAV files ripped from CDs, standard iTunes Store tracks, and tracks created by applying Apple's Mastered for iTunes process to the master recordings. In one example, a standard iTunes Store track sounded "boxy" or "muffled" compared to the original CD master WAV file, but after processing through Mastered for iTunes tools, the resulting track sounded significantly better and more "alive" on a subjective basis.
Part of the difficulty in assessing sound quality comes from the emotional response involved in how sounds register to human ears. Some differences in sound quality can be quantified using various tools to analyze the waveforms generated by different audio files, but the ultimate measure of sound quality lies with the human ears receiving and interpreting the sounds.
Nevertheless, Apple markets the Mastered for iTunes program as providing a path for musicians and music professionals to have iTunes Store content more closely match "music as the artist and sound engineer intended", and more and more musicians are taking advantage of the program in attempting to improve the quality of their music available through the world's most popular music vendor.
Rovio today announced that Angry Birds Space has reached 50 million downloads, marking yet another milestone for the popular franchise. The title debuted on a number of platforms, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac, on March 22.
Angry Birds Space hit 50 million downloads within 35 days, making it the fastest growing mobile game yet and breaking all our previous records. This has been simply amazing, and the whole Rovio team is thrilled to see such a fantastic reception for the game.
The iPhone version of Angry Birds Space continues to top the App Store charts in markets around the world, while the Mac version has dropped to #9 on the U.S. paid app chart after peaking at #2.
Microsoft and Barnes & Noble today announced the formation of a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary focused around the existing Nook digital e-reader and e-book business, as well as Barnes & Noble's college business. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, which is preliminarily being called Newco until an official name is chosen, and receive 17.6% ownership of the business.
One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.
The inclusion of Barnes & Noble’s College business is an important component of Newco’s strategic vision. Through the newly formed Newco, Barnes & Noble’s industry leading NOOK Study software will provide students and educators the preeminent technology platform for the distribution and management of digital education materials in the market.
As part of the deal, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have also settled their patent dispute, which saw Microsoft suing for infringement by the Nook reader in a move Barnes & Noble had positioned as an attack on all Android-based systems. The new deal will see Barnes & Noble and Newco holding a royalty-bearing license on the Microsoft patents in question.
The Microsoft/Barnes & Noble venture seeks to increase competition in the e-book market, taking on both Amazon's dominant position and Apple's upstart status that has seen the iPad become a popular e-reading option for consumers but much lower adoption of iBookstore content. Barnes & Noble has had some success with Nook, but its momentum has slowed recently and recent antitrust suits against Apple and book publishers breaking down the new agency model for e-book distribution have raised concerns that the industry will quickly return to a near-monopoly for Amazon.
Apple Intelligence is what Apple is calling its artificial intelligence feature set, previewed at WWDC in June 2024. Here's everything we know.
Find all of the season's best Apple and Apple-related gifts in our 2024 Gift Guide.
Image Playground is Apple's dedicated image creation app that can build cartoon-like pictures based on text descriptions.
The end of the iPhone Home button as Apple shifts its final model to an all-display front with a notch and Face ID.
Apple appears to be skipping the M3 generation and waiting to launch an M4 Mac Studio in mid-2025.
18 hours ago by Joe Rossignol
18 hours ago by Joe Rossignol
18 hours ago by Joe Rossignol
2 days ago by Joe Rossignol
2 days ago by Joe Rossignol
Apple Intelligence is what Apple is calling its artificial intelligence feature set, previewed at WWDC in June 2024. Here's everything we know.
Find all of the season's best Apple and Apple-related gifts in our 2024 Gift Guide.
Image Playground is Apple's dedicated image creation app that can build cartoon-like pictures based on text descriptions.
The end of the iPhone Home button as Apple shifts its final model to an all-display front with a notch and Face ID.
Apple appears to be skipping the M3 generation and waiting to launch an M4 Mac Studio in mid-2025.
18 hours ago by Joe Rossignol
18 hours ago by Joe Rossignol
18 hours ago by Joe Rossignol
2 days ago by Joe Rossignol
2 days ago by Joe Rossignol
