Apps

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Before left and after right.

You kind of knew this was going to happen: Google Books is now back in the  iOS App Store, but without ability to buy books directly from online.  Note the missing button at the top left.

Apple, you win. Google, Users lose.

Cross-posted on 9to5Google.com
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new screenshot left, old screenshot with Kindle Store link (right)

It looks like not only is the WSJ and the Kobo App store relenting to Apple, but so is Amazon.  In the latest release, they’ve pulled out the link to the Kindle Store.  The remaining holdout?  Google.

Update: Nook got the same treatment which render the current screenshots outdated.:

You can read any NOOK Book you have purchased on this updated NOOK for iPhone app, however the Shop link has been removed so to buy NOOK Books from your iPhone, open your Safari browser and go to nookbooks.com. 

There are some other updates for the Kindle App release notes accompanying the Kindle update (iTunes):
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Dragon just updated its Dictate software for Mac with some interesting new additions.  Most notable is the ability to dictate with your iPhone using an iTunes app.    Also, updated is the ability to Tweet or post to Facebook or search the web with just a command:

• “Post to Facebook [I love Dragon]”
• “Post to Twitter [Tweeting is so much easier by voice]”
• “Search Google for hula dancing lessons”
• “Search Bing for wedding dress repair”
• “Search Yahoo for gondola rentals”
• “Search Mail for RSVP”
• “Search Mac for history term paper”

The 2.5 update is free for 2.0 users.  For new users, the digital download is $180 and the physical box is $200.  A package with a Bluetooth headset is $300.

Full list of improvements below:
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As Apple expands its businesses, with the iPhone and iPad reaching more nations, and their upcoming iCloud service, Apple has opened up the iOS App Store and Mac App Store in 33 new countries. Developers who wish to sell their applications in these new territories can do so by adding them to their sales territory lists in the iTunes Connect web application. Here are the new countries:

Algeria, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua, and Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Dominica, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Iceland, Montserrat, Nigeria, Oman, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Suriname, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, Uzbekistan, Yemen

Thanks, Doug!

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According to Bloomberg, Apple is currently considering the purchase of Hulu. The popular online video playing service has reportedly been up for sale for a few months now, with potential buyers like Google in the running. Adding Apple to the mix just spices things up with Apple’s $76 billion in the bank and hints at some “neat” new iTunes-related features. Apple also has their Apple TV platform, which they are still exploring, and this potential Hulu purchase would take that to the next level.

Apple is in early talks that may lead to an acquisition offer for Los Angeles-based Hulu, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Hulu has a an iOS application in the App Store that delivers their web content to users of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Hulu also began signing deals in late 2010 for set-top-box manufactures to include support for their service. Namely, Roku did this but Hulu still seems to be an omission from the Apple TV. After all, Apple’s little black TV box features support for iTunes, YouTube, and Netflix video playback.

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FOSSPatents reports that the patent trolls over at Lodsys have just upped the ante: they have just sued five more iPhone application makers over their use of in-app-purchases. These five new companies include major game makers like Rovio, the gang behind the widely popular Angry Birds game, Electronic Arts (EA), Atari, Square Enix, and Take-Two-Interactive.

EA was sued over the use of in-app-purchases in their game Sims 3 for iPhone, Atari was sued over their ‘Greatest Hits’ iOS application, Square Enix was sued over Big Hit Baseball for iPhone and Big Hit Baseball for iPad, and Take-Two was sued over their very popular NHL 2K11 for iPhone. These new lawsuits demonstrate that Lodsys is not afraid to attack big names like EA and Rovio, and this trend is seemingly not coming to an end even though Apple has stepped in.

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Apple’s OS X Lion is off to an amazing start with one million copies of the operating system being downloaded on day one. These are all downloads from the Mac App Store and user feedback has been tremendous so far, as we noted yesterday. In just its first day, 90% of customers gave OS X Lion a five star Mac App Store review.

Lion is off to a great start, user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. Lion is a huge step forward, it’s not only packed with innovative features but it’s incredibly easy for users to update their Macs to the best OS we’ve ever made.

According to Apple, people are buying Lion faster than any other operating system in the world. This not only proves how great the Mac App Store is for desktop software distribution, but proves how vital Apple’s $29.99 price point is. This is nearly the same price as Snow Leopard last year, an operating system that was based around under the hood improvements. On the other hand, for the same price, Lion delivers 250 new features like Launchpad, Mission Control, an all-new mail application, and Multi-Touch gesture across the operating system.

Apple has not announced, specifically, how many people bought OS X Snow Leopard, so we don’t have much comparison for that. On the other hand, Apple sold two million copies of OS X Leopard (10.5) in its debut weekend. Leopard was sold exclusively on discs online, at Apple Stores, official resellers and had pre-orders. The announcement in its entirety is after the break.

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Apple’s next-generation Mac operating system, OS X Lion, just launched this morning, and it has already become the top paid app on the Mac App Store and has garnered 6756 reviews as of this writing. The most amazing part to us is the user reaction to the product, as demonstrated by the Mac App Store’s star-based review system. Some have called OS X Lion a leap forward for the Mac and others have called it an operating system that takes some getting used to.

Namely the use of Mission Control instead of features like Expose and Spaces in Snow Leopard, Multi-Touch gestures all around, inverted scrolling, auto-saving, and the lack of application indicators in the dock. These major changes don’t seem to be hurting early adopters of the software product with 6067 of the 6756 reviewers giving OS X Lion a five star rating. That’s just about 90%. Four stars comes in second, followed by three and one stars tied for third/fourth, and two stars being selected by the least amount of users.

Looking at the most critical reviews, the majority are regarding download issues and third-party application compatibility. Not necessarily the new features and major changes in the operating system that are inspired by the iPad’s innovations. The more favorable reviews seem to love the changes, with some calling it the “greatest OS ever,” “mind-blowing,” and saying “it was worth the wait.”

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As pointed out by The Loop, Apple’s App Store volume purchase program for businesses has gone live. The program, which is currently exclusive to the United States, allows businesses to easily purchase and distribute applications – with volume-based pricing – to employees. Businesses that are interested can now enroll and you will need the following to get started:

• Basic contact information to verify your business
• Dun & Bradstreet number (D-U-N-S) number
• Corporate credit card or PCard to purchase apps

App Store distribution through this program consists of iTunes redemption codes:

The Volume Purchase Program makes it easy to distribute apps within your organization. When you buy apps in volume or custom B2B apps, you will receive redemption codes for each app. You can control who gets the apps by providing these codes to users via email or an internal website. You can also use third-party Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions to manage redemption codes centrally.

A guide with all the instructions is also available from Apple.

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In addition to Lion now being available at the App Store (had you heard?) and some new Mac Hardware, today you can also download OSX Lion Server from the App Store for an additional $49.99.  Full description below…

Interestingly, Xcode has disappeared and isn’t even available by search.  We’ll likely see an update to that in the semi-near future.

Update (Noon EST): Xcode is back (free).

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Lion just hit the Mac App Store!!  Ladies and Gentlemen, start your downloads!

The $29.99 download is 3.5GB so your download times may vary.  After Lion downloads we are expecting an update to iWork shortly as well.  On the hardware side we are expecting some new Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs, new Mac Minis and a new Thunderbolt Display as well.

How fast is your download?  Are you getting the good speed?  Full specs and details below:

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As we first reported back in February, OS X Lion brings many new innovations but loses others like Front Row. Front Row, for those unfamiliar, is a full screen media interface for the Mac. Front Row made its debut a couple of major OS X releases back and essentially mirrors the initial Apple TV interface – in its Snow Leopard implementation. Since the news broke that the software is missing from Lion, reader Ralph Perdomo put together a little application to bring back the functionality.

Ralph figured out that he could take the Snow Leopard Front Row files and then compile it into a runnable application for OS X Lion. For those interested he took these files:

We have tried out the application and the tweak works. You do have to restart, though. Keep in mind this is very at your own risk. Since this is so easy, maybe Apple will slap Front Row into the Mac App Store and charge $4.99? Probably.

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As we get close to the Lion launch, several tipsters have provided more information regarding the Apple retail overnight and  days after.  Tonight, Apple retail will hold an overnight from approximately 11pm – 7 am to give the retail staff enough time to update the stores visual elements with new marketing materials and re-image all display Macs with Lion.

As previously reported, our tipsters say most stores have recently received an external LaCie hard drive containing Lion installs, but we have received new information that the drives contain 3 different install images for Lion; Normal, Pro, and Joint Venture. 

JointVenture is an enterprise membership program to support businesses running Macs and iDevices.  It is believed that each of these installs will include unique software titles, and some of which could be new.

Furthermore we’ve heard rumblings that some stores will be receiving maxed out Mac Pro towers to be used as Lion distribution caching centers (speculation here).  Some believe that these stations would allow customers to purchase Lion (3.5GB) from the Mac App store and download it directly from the store server in minutes rather than hours it takes over a normal broadband connection.

MacOS X Server and internal builds of Time Capsule allow for Software Update Caching, so this is certainly something within Apple’s capabilities.  Also, Apple told Computerworld that users could come into the store to download Lion last month.

This would also be a huge help to customers who do not have access to a broadband Internet connection or users who want to walk through the install process with an Apple employee during a personal training session.  It would obviously also save Apple some internet bandwidth which at 3.5GB per user adds up.

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We’re big fans of BBEdit over here (and its free counterpart TextWrangler) so today’s update is exciting news. I built 9to5mac a few years ago using BBEdit (on Drupal!) and the software has just gotten better and better (though 9to5mac has since been ported to WordPress.com).

How much is updated today?  Just have a look at the release notes if you’ve got some time to kill.

It isn’t upgraded in the App Store just yet but Bare Bones says that any BBEdit purchase since the App Store opened will get a free upgrade.  Get it here until October 20, 2011 for $40.  Full info below:

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Great news for students from Amazon today. You can now save up to 80 percent off the list price of the print textbook by renting Kindle Textbooks on the Kindle or Kindle-compliant devices such as Windows and OS X PCs, iPads, iPhones and BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone 7 devices. “Tens of thousands of textbooks” are available for rent across those platforms, reads an Amazon page promoting the deal. You can choose a rental length between 30 and 360 days and extend your rental for as little as one day. What’s best, regardless of your chosen rental period, Amazon will charge you only for the exact time you need a book. From Amazon:

Kindle Textbook Rental is a flexible and affordable way to read textbooks. You can rent for the minimum length, typically 30 days, and save up to 80% off the print list price. If you find you need your textbook longer, you can extend your rental by as little as 1 day as many times as you want and just pay for the added days.

You can tell whether  a Kindle edition is available for rent in the Textbooks Store section of the Kindle app or from the search bar. The ability to rent textbooks in fair terms is good for students, but it ain’t like they were going to keep them anyway.

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You must be quite puzzled with the no-show for native Skype and Facebook apps, in addition to Google+ for iPhone. Indeed, Google as long as three weeks ago said a native Google+ app had been sent to Apple for review. Skype created a confusion by posting a teaser video some 25 days ago, soon removed by the company and re-uploaded by RazorianFly. The clip demonstrates what appears to be Skype video calling running natively on an iPad. As of today, neither program is to be found on the App Store, creating valid suspicious that Apple has been intentionally delaying those particular submissions for competitive reasons – and we know from Steve Jobs public remarks that Apple approves 95 percent of the apps within seven days. Skype is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft and they recently announced video calling integration with Facebook.

9to5Mac reached out to Google seeking clarification about Google+ for iPhone. A spokesperson responded that the search giant has “nothing further to add on our end about the Google+ iPhone app”. The spokesperson added the software is “still coming soon”. Asked if Skype for iPad was still in the process of being reviewed by Apple and whether the company anticipated a launch soon, a Skype representative would only say that “the current version of Skype for iPhone works on the iPad”. They also removed the broken link, telling 9to5Mac it led to the existing Skype for iPhone app even though the URL had the “ipad-for-skype” part in it. Also, as you can see in the above screenshot, the Skype homepage lists “iPad” as one of the platform choices under the Get Skype link. Apple did not respond to our email inquiries about the state of Skype for iPad and Google+ for iPhone apps.

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WordCrasher on the Mac App Store

Ahead of Mac OS X’s Lion’s official launch, Apple has begun approving apps that take advantage of the next-generation operating system into their Mac App Store. The move, first noted by OS X Daily, comes just days after Apple opened the door to developers to submit their Lion apps for inclusion on the App Store. Apple, of course, recommends that these apps are first tested against the Golden Master version of the operating system. In WordCrasher’s case, the app takes advantage of Lion’s full screen apps feature and resume.

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In anticipation of a launch of the Photovine service which was announced Tuesday, Google has just released a free invite-only Photovine for iOS app on the App Store and posted the cutesy teaser (see below) on the official Photovine page. Beginning today, people can request an invite on the site, which is needed to take advantage of an iOS app. You’re advised to hurry up because invitations for Google’s recently launched products have been  in high demand (Google+, anyone?). By the way, don’t you find it weird they would feature an iPhone 4 app on both the website and in the video clip rather than a Nexus S?

For those uninitiated, Photovine is Google’s attempt at social photo sharing that takes clues from Flickr, Facebook photos, Picasa and other services. “Photovine is a fun way to learn more about your friends, meet new people and share your world like never before”, says the official blurb. You begin creating a vine by taking a photo and creating a new caption.  Other people will see your vine and join in by adding their own photo, showing their own take on the caption. Google explains:

A vine is like a constantly growing family of photos connected through a common caption created by you, your friends, and people all over the world. Some examples of vines could be: “What Weekends Are Made Of”, “Secret Stuffed Animal”, “Party People”, or, “Love of My Life”. As people add photos to vines, they tell their own stories about the moments, images, and ideas that define our lives in a way that’s social, creative, and fun.

Release notes from iTunes after the break

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MPIZKPhfDY]

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvYX_P_c__8]
While we’re still waiting on our invitation, the Spotify app is now live in the App Store.

Update: We’re in!

Go check it out.  Full press release below:
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Last month, we documented code within iOS 5 which contained references to some new panoramic camera functionality for iOS devices.

The latest build of iOS shows that Apple continues to do work on this functionality.  They’ve added a few more strings which weren’t in the earlier Beta:

Here’s what happens when you jailbreak and enable panoramic

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqAJa2GzYvg&start=32]

More than a few third party apps already do panoramic camera capturing on Apple’s iOS. One example is below:

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O84rNwH_50]

Nuance has announced a new iPhone application called Dragon Go, which is basically search software that works hand-in-hand with the company’s phenomenal voice recognition technology. The concept is quite similar to Siri, which Apple owns, and all voice-searches connect to services like OpenTable and Fandango. The concept is pretty neat, and hopefully this is a taste of what we’ll be seeing in the eventual fruition of Apple’s rumored partnership with Nuance and purchase of Siri. According to All Things D the application is free and is now available.

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