MacRumors

In a blog post yesterday describing the Microsoft team's attendance at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, Microsoft MacBU's Jake Hoelter reveals that the company's forthcoming Office for Mac 2011 will be a 32-bit only release. Hoelter blames the lack of a 64-bit version of the next-generation productivity suite on the need for his team to focus on compatibility between Windows and Mac versions of Office, a focus that has prevented Microsoft from fully transitioning Office to the Cocoa API required for 64-bit.

In Office 2011, we've made investments in better compatibility between Office for Mac and Windows Office, which is the largest request we receive from customers. We think we have some outstanding improvements to show you in this area, and we'll continue to share details in coming weeks. Our work to increase compatibility means we haven't completed the transition of moving the entire user interface over to Cocoa yet. And because Apple's frameworks require us to complete the move to Cocoa before we can build a 64-bit version, Office 2011 will be 32-bit only.

Hoelter notes that the primary difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit version of Office would be memory availability, but that the vast majority of users do not work with large enough documents and files for performance to be an issue on 32-bit versions. Those users working with very large files, such as "Excel files with data in millions of cells, or PowerPoint presentations with thousands of high resolution images", would, however, experience a performance hit working in 32-bit.

Office for Mac 2011 is scheduled to ship by the end of this year. The company has released several beta versions, with the most recent one issued a few weeks ago revealing that the company is beginning to finalize the look of the release with new icons and graphics.

Yesterday, we noted that Apple has again revised its developer agreement, and among the changes were adjustments to its rules on analytics data collection. The changes appear to allow applications to send data back to analytics companies to assist in advertising and other efforts, with the limitation that analytics companies receiving data must be "independent" and not owned by or affiliated with a developer of mobile platforms or devices. The limitation would appear to prohibit Google-owned AdMob from participating in analytics data collection on the iPhone.

AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui today responded on the company's blog, acknowledging that the terms as written would prohibit developers from using AdMob and Google advertising products on the iPhone.

This change threatens to decrease - or even eliminate - revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers. The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money. And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well.

Let's be clear. This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it's clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.

Hamoui reports that AdMob will be speaking to Apple about its concerns over the impact of the change in terms as the advertising company looks to continue working with developers on a broad variety of platforms.

During a presentation at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last night, Apple announced the winners of its annual Apple Design Awards. While the awards had their roots in Mac applications and expanded to included iPhone OS applications in recent years, WWDC 2010 saw Apple at least temporarily do away with its Mac categories to focus on iPhone and iPad applications, which have been the primary focus of the entire conference this year. This year's winners include:

iPad
- Financial Times iPad Edition
- Flight Control HD
- Pinball HD
- Star Walk for iPad
- TabToolkit

iPhone
- 20 Minute Meals - Jamie Oliver
- Articles
- Brushes
- Doodle Jump
- Real Racing

Applications can be nominated by any member of the iPhone Developer Program, and awards are determined based on evaluation of four core areas of excellence: technology adoption, design and user experience, innovation, and performance.

PreCentral.net notes that Rich Dellinger, a former user interface designer at Apple who left in 2006 to join Palm and subsequently developed the banner notification system used in webOS, has returned to Apple. In addition to his contributions to notifications, Dellinger's other work at Palm included:

Acted as visual designer, interaction designer, and engineer on Palm webOS.

Co-developed the Application Framework used by webOS. Created the CSS structure and defined HTML layout and structure conventions in Mojo Application Framework, and for core Palm applications.

Co-invented software and hardware interaction models for a new generation of Linux-based, Palm-branded mobile devices.

The webOS banner notification system invented by Dellinger has received considerable positive publicity for its sleek design and unobtrusive nature compared to the pop-up notifications used on Apple's iPhone operating system.

Dellinger is the latest in a string of high-profile departures from Palm in wake of HP's acquisition of the company. He has taken on a job title of "Senior User Interface Designer" at Apple, although it is unclear exactly what projects he will be working on. He previously worked at Apple from 1999 through 2006 in a variety of capacities, initially focusing on technical support engineering and a revamp of the company's online support site before moving to user interface design for Mac OS X, iPhone and iPod.

Apple today seeded a new version of Mac OS X 10.6.4, termed Build 10F566, to developers. Those familiar with the new build note that it carries the same highlighted fixes included in the previous build issued one week ago, and continues to list no known issues.

As has been true for the past several builds released to developers, testers are asked to focus their efforts on Graphics Drivers, SMB, USB, Voice Over, and VPN. Today's release marks the seventh build of Mac OS X 10.6.4 to make its way into the hands of developers since seeding began in late April.

A public release of Mac OS X 10.6.4 had been rumored for WWDC, but it appears that Apple is not quite ready to push it out to the general public. The continued lack of documented known issues, small interval in build number since the last seed, and stability in featured fixes and focus areas all suggest that Apple may be wrapping up development on the latest maintenance update to Mac OS X Snow Leopard, but the company's development schedule is unpredictable and thus we are unable to say with any degree of certainty when we can expect to see a public launch of Mac OS X 10.6.4.

After all of yesterday's news regarding iPhone 4, iOS 4, Safari 5 and other topics, things are beginning to settle down a bit today, allowing details and smaller items of interest to come to the foreground. In particular, Apple released a number of software updates for both developers and general users yesterday, and details of these releases are beginning to come to light.

- Safari 5: Released to all users yesterday, Safari 5 offers speed enhancements, increased HTML5 support, Reader functionality for facilitating reading of articles on cluttered pages, and new support for third-party extensions to add functionality to the browser application. One of the highlights demoed during Apple's Safari session last night at WWDC was Panic's "Coda Notes", an extension for annotating and sharing webpages. Developers are already quickly pushing out useful extensions for Safari, listings of which are being collated on several sites around the Internet. Some interesting ones:

- Gmail Checker
- Reload Button
- Amazon Search Bar

- Xcode 4: Released yesterday to developers at WWDC, the developer preview version of Xcode 4 is subject to Apple's non-disclosure policy for conference attendees, and thus only a few details have managed to leak out so far. Among the interesting claims coming out, however, is that Interface Builder has been integrated into Xcode, creating a single-window "unified interface" for the development environment.

Xcode 4 Developer Preview is the revolutionary new development environment for building Mac, iPhone, and iPad applications. With it, you can write better code, faster. WWDC attendees can log in and download this new version of Apple's Integrated Development Environment.

- iTunes 9.2: A beta version of iTunes 9.2 was seeded to developers alongside the iOS 4 Golden Master Candidate. iTunes 9.2 will be required for iPhone 4 compatibility and supports a number of new features, including support for iBooks enhancements such as PDF compatibility and syncing of bookmarks and other data across iOS 4 devices, app folder organization within iTunes for iOS 4 devices, faster backups for iOS 4 devices, and scrolling and other performance improvements.

One of the major enhancements included in iPhone 4 is a new camera system, integrating a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera including LED flash with a VGA-quality front-facing camera. While the rear-facing camera fails to match the resolution of other smartphones moving to 8 or even 12 megapixels, Steve Jobs was careful to mention during the iPhone's introduction that image quality also depends in large part on other factors, and the iPhone's backside-illuminated camera sensor with large pixel sizes allows it to deliver excellent image quality under normal and low-light situations.

As part of its feature page on the new camera, Apple has posted several example photos, noting that they are actual, unretouched photos taken using the iPhone 4. The images show clear, high-quality photos taken under optimal light conditions. Gizmodo took a look at the metadata included on one of the photos and offered its perspective on the image quality.

The performance under obviously optimal light is very good. The processing leans a bit to over-saturation and over-exposure, which is not a bad thing. Nikon goes for a similar image processing treatment in their cameras.

However, keep in mind that this image doesn't confirm Apple's claims about higher ISO and better performance under low light conditions, which is supposed to be a lot better thanks to the bigger backlit sensor. We will have to wait to see this in our review.

In addition to the image quality enhancements in the new rear camera, the system also supports 5x digital zoom, tap to focus, and simple sharing options.

And besides the still image features, iPhone 4's rear camera is also capable of HD video recording in 720p at 30 frames per second. With tap to focus, LED flash for video, and iMovie for iPhone for editing footage, Apple touts the new iPhone's ability to shoot, edit, and share high-quality video all on a phone with no need for access to a computer.

All Things Digital reports that just hours after being mentioned as a prominent example of the promise of App Store applications for the iPad early in Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote address at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference, Pulse News Reader disappeared from the App Store. According to the report, the removal was the result of a copyright complaint filed by The New York Times over the application's use of RSS feeds, which are used in a "visual mosaic" format to display news content to users.

But by the afternoon, that flush of entrepreneurial success had turned sour, after Apple (AAPL) informed the two that Pulse was being pulled from the App Store after it received a written notice from the New York Times Company (NYT) declaring that "The New York Times Company believes your application named 'Pulse News Reader' infringes The New York Times Company's rights."

The report also notes with some amusement that The New York Times just last week published a feature profile on the application and its developers.

The application's developers, a pair of Stanford University graduate students, are planning to contact Apple today to determine exactly what is going on and whether they can simply remove New York Times content from the application.

Richard Samson, lawyer for The New York Times, argues in his complaint to Apple that the application's paid nature results in unlicensed usage of the newspaper's content, a violation of the Terms of Use. In addition, Samson complains about the application "framing" Times content in violation of the Terms of Use and objects to the featuring of Times content, which comes preloaded in the application, in App Store screenshots.

Update: Pulse News Reader is back in the App Store, and as All Things Digital notes, the restored app appears to be the same as the previous one despite the developers having already submitted an updated application without New York Times content pre-loaded.

The report also posts comments from The New York Times confirming its specific objections to the application. The newspaper and Apple have yet to comment, however, on the application's reappearance in the App Store.

Update 2: The New York Times believes that the application was restored in error. No comment from Apple or the developers yet.

"We want to be clear that we are willing to work with Pulse, but only under our terms of use," said Robert Christie, a spokesman for the Times Company.

On Tuesday afternoon the app reappeared in the App Store. When asked about the reversal, Mr. Christie said: "We think it has been reinstated by error, and we have asked Apple for an explanation."

Back in mid-April, Apple updated its developer agreement for iPhone OS (now known as iOS) to ban analytics companies from gathering data from iOS devices being used on their ad networks. The result of the change initially appeared to be a crippling of third-party networks in favor of the company's own iAds platform, as advertisers rely heavily on analytics to assist them in their advertising efforts.

As last week's interview at the D8 conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs forcefully noted that the change was sparked by analytics company Flurry's publication of data showing devices in use on the Apple campus. Jobs was apparently referring to was January report from Flurry showing approximately 50 tablet-style iPhone devices being used at Apple. Acknowledging the value of analytics data for a number legitimate uses, however, Jobs said that Apple would be willing to revisit the topic of data collection with those companies once Apple had cooled down over the issue, "but it's not today."

MediaMemo now reports that Apple's has again modified the relevant portion of its developer agreement, Section 3.3.9, to at least partially open the door to limited data collection for analytics purposes.

If you compare and contrast with Apple's earlier version, you'll see the message is clear: It's OK to collect user data to help sell ads -- though you will need to get their permission to do so.

There is a catch, however, as Apple's new wording requires that any analytics company receiving data be an "independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads (for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent)".

The "independent" qualifier would would seem to prohibit AdMob from receiving such analytics data due to its status as a subsidiary of Google, which is clearly a developer of mobile operating systems. Smaller competitors such as Greystripe and Medialets, however, should be free to obtain analytics data upon receiving appropriate permission.

Apple has posted the QuickTime stream for Monday's keynote address for WWDC 2010.

The keynote has also been added to Apple's podcast feed.

Apple announced a number of items including:

- Apple's iAds Going Live on July 1
- iBooks Update to Include Notes, PDF Compatibility
- iPhone OS 4 Becomes iOS 4, Available June 21 for Free
- Apple Announces iMovie for iPhone 4
- Apple Announces FaceTime for iPhone 4 Video Calls
- Apple Announces iPhone 4 with Retina Display, HD Video Recording, More

Just hours after Apple released Safari 5 with support for extensions created by third-party developers, Panic has demoed 'Coda Notes', an extension allowing for website annotation and sharing.

When you install Coda Notes, you'll get a new button in your toolbar. Click it to see all our annotation tools, built right into Safari. Draw some notes on your favorite website. Communicate changes, ideas, concepts, or problems. Then, when you're done, hit the Send Notes button and the whole page flips over as a postcard.

Panic notes that Coda Notes is buit entirely with JavaScript, HTML and CSS and was built in only four days. The extension is still considered a "quick and dirty" implementation, however, and Panic will continue to refine it before releasing it to the public.

Apple has seeded the Golden Master Candidate version of iOS 4 to developers today as well as iTunes 9.2 Beta. The releases are available to registered iPhone developers. iOS 4 contains many new features which were detailed during today's keyote.

Features include multitasking, unified inbox, folders, and more. The final release on iOS 4 will be released June 21st and will be a free upgrade for iPhone and iPod touch owners.