Hey you know we’ve noted that AirPlay’s gonna be a pretty big business, particularly when those AirPlay-enabled televisions no one has announced yet actually arrive (and everyone pays for the license to AAPL)? Well, here come the iOS 4.3 video-savvy Apps, waving out the door even as the iDevices head for their own upgrade.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple is already placing orders for components and final manufacturing for its forthcoming NFC-savvy iPad 2.0 and iPhone 5 devices, bringing new manufacturers into the supply line and plotting for March and June ship dates (respectively) for the two devices, the latest reports suggest.

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Adobe has updated their Photoshop Express application for iOS to include support for the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4 Retina Display in addition to support for iOS 4 quick-app-switching (multitasking). The new multitasking feature will work hand-in-hand with the new background uploading feature. This will let you upload your photos via the sharing option without actually having to stay in the application.

The update also promises a quicker experience with “faster photo captures” and “editing workflows.” The new Retina Display support will come in handy for iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4 users looking to have a crisper window for their photo-based creations. Also, the new update requires iOS 4.2 and is a universal binary for all iOS mobile devices.

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Apple setup Twitter accounts for iTunes some time ago, and today Apple finally got around to launching an official Twitter for the App Store. Apple promises to promote new apps, and exclusive App offers. We wonder what these exclusive app offers mean. Could Apple begin working with developers to promote discounts? Maybe Apple will start distributing promo codes via giveaways on their Twitter account?

Apple has already brought the App Store into the modern social networking world with their App Store Facebook fan page. Hopefully Apple takes full advantage of their new account and uses it to promote great apps that don’t normally get much attention. Maybe they will even tweet out some of the new apps that get approved.

Apple has been moving to new social networking mediums as of late with their aforementioned iTunes Twitter accounts and their already-popular YouTube channel, which showcases their software guided tours, recorded Apple events, and product videos by the Apple executive team.

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Apple has just announced that the 10 billionth App Store download was for Paper Glider. The app was downloaded by Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK. Gail will receive the $10,000 iTunes gift card. Paper Glider is a free game that lets you throw virtual paper planes.

“With more than 10 billion apps downloaded in just two and a half years—a staggering seven billion apps in the last year alone—the App Store has surpassed our wildest dreams,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The App Store has revolutionized how software is created, distributed, discovered and sold. While others try to copy the App Store, it continues to offer developers and customers the most innovative experience on the planet.”

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Who got the 10Gs?

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As the video below shows (at the end), Rovio is working on a special Valentine’s Day edition of the most popular iOS game in the universe. Convenient(!!) because you can play the game at dinner with your Valentine. via Electric Pig.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY5itbK9Ai0&w=640&h=385]

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In future an iPad may be a requirement for children going to school, and in Tennessee for some students it already is.

Webb School, a private school in Knoxville, TN is requiring all fourth through 12th grade students to have an iPad for classes next year.

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Following news of Apple’s dictat to publishers that they cannot offer content for free to existing subscribers via iPhone apps, the UK’s Guardian newspaper has moved to a subscription basis for its app.

“Since launching in December 2009, the app has seen over 200,000 downloads, received one of the highest App Store ratings for any news app and dominated the news category, both in the UK and in many countries beyond,” the newspaper writes, describing positive reactions and strong reader retention for the app, which had cost £2.39 at the beginning.
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UK rail passengers can now use their iPhones as train tickets thanks to a new app from Heathrow Express, which has launched the first app to enable people to receive train tickets directly to their iPhone in the UK, the first such app to be launched here.
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Using its Skydrive Cloud servers, Microsoft is now allowing iPhone users to access, edit, and share their desktop OneNote application data on iPhone.  Microsoft has long been talking about bringing their Office applications and functionality to the iPhone and this is the first indication of doing that (OneNote is part of the Office suite).

While the OneNote Mobile app naturally doesn’t have all of the functionality of the full OneNote 2010 desktop application for your computer, it’s optimized for your iPhone’s display and lets you handle the basics with ease. Use OneNote Mobile to create shopping lists and to-do lists, prepare for a trip or project, and take class or meeting notes without lugging around your laptop. OneNote Mobile is also great for collecting ideas and tracking project notes, capturing ad hoc information about stuff you need to deal with at home or at work, as well as tracking activities, wish lists, gift lists — anything you can think of.

The app can be found here, more screenshots below.
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ReadWriteWeb reports that according to two high profile app developers, around 90% of iOS device users are running iOS 4.0 or above. The first developer, Bump, says 89.73% of its users are on iOS 4.x, 10.25% are on iOS 3.x, and 0.02% of users are running iOS 2.x- the first iOS to support the App Store and third-party applications. Bump’s user-base is a very good indication of the iOS version breakdown, in general, with 25 million downloads across and iOS and Android.

The report also spoke to an engineer at Loopt (location-based social networking app) who says their figures are similar to Bump’s “but with even a little more of its users on iOS 4.” These new statistics represent how incredibly fragmented Android is as only 0.4% of Android users are running the latest release of the operating system. If any developers reading this want to share their iOS version breakdown, feel free to comment or contact us.

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AdAge reports that although News Corp. and Apple are working together on The Daily iPad newspaper, the service will not utilize Apple’s iAds but instead use the New York-based Medialets as the provider. The report also claims The Daily will run on an App Store-based subscription model, and News Corp. will be charging $0.99 per day to view The Daily’s content (not $0.99 per week?). A two week free trial will be available for those who want to give the paper a run before subscribing and this may represent Apple adding some free-trial features to their App Store. This is something they have been reluctant to do for some time.

Some new details about the actual newspaper have also emerged with a top Virgin America marketing executive stating:

We saw it in the development stage and thought it was highly innovative in terms of their use of imagery.

The Daily is said to utilize a traditional “multi-story front page” with magazine style interfaces for the viewing of news reports. This sounds just like the leak from the other day. The Daily will also welcome Multi-Touch and you’ll be able to swipe, pinch, and rotate through different parts of the articles, including many videos from across the News Corp. empire. The Daily was said to be launching this week but has since been delayed into next month.

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According to HardMac‘s “reliable sources” Apple will follow their discontinuation of the Xserve, by dropping support for both Final Cut Server and Xsan. The move would represent Apple leaving the server/enterprise business and instead focusing more on the consumer and professional side of software. Even more surprising, the report also claims that the upcoming Mac OS X Lion Server will be the final iteration of Apple’s server-based operating system. HardMac‘s report is completely unconfirmed so take it with a pinch of salt. HardMac correctly predicted the iPhone 3GS would keep the same exterior design as the iPhone 3G in addition to the 5th-generation iPod nano gaining a camera.

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I’ve been wondering what you’d find out if you took the number of iOS devices sold and then divided the number of App sales so far by that figure — and guess what — the answer’s sixty.
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Just the other day Angry Birds was sitting as the king of the App Store’s free section but today, 14 year old Robert Nay is number one. His app Bubble Ball is a physics puzzle game and it has been downloaded more than 2 million times. Check out the video at Yahoo and let us know what you think below. Oh the things kids can do…

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We’re approaching ten billion App Store downloads and this is remarkable. The App Store only opened for business on July 10, 2008. And it was only on October 20, 2010, that Apple confirmed over 7 billion downloads via the store during its OS X Lion special event.

This means that in approximately three months Apple has seen near three billion Apps downloaded from the store. Apple confirmed 6.5 billion App Store downloads in September, and 3 billion such downloads were achieved in January.
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We’ve been telling you all about this camera that’s coming in the iPad 2 and thought you might like to see some screenshots.  Our tipster Sonny D. sent us these screenshots that he assembled from files within the SDK of the iPad camera.app.

These screenshots are 1024 x 768 which indicate the same screen resolution as the current iPad.  That might upset those hoping for more a retina-ish display in iPad 2. This may only be because the current simulator only simulates 1024 x 768 so those hoping for more pixels shouldn’t lose hope.

Three more screenshots are after the break.

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News Corp. and Apple’s ‘The Daily’ iPad newspaper has been delayed, according to Media Memo, from next week’s rumored launch date. The delay is said to relate to Apple’s upcoming subscription service needing some final tweaks. The delay was repordely confirmed by a News Corp. PR representative but not by Apple.

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Yesterday BGR reported that Apple would be bringing their popular Photo Booth Mac app to iOS devices, and today we have discovered confirmation of this claim. The discovery comes in two new iOS 4.3 frameworks: “PhotoBooth” and “PhotoBoothEffects.” There aren’t actually any images of the Photo Booth user interface but some hints at the functionality are present.

Photo Booth for iOS looks like it will be a simple application. You will get to pick from a list of effects and switch between the front and back cameras. Unfortunately, the supported devices aren’t listed but we imagine it will work on the iPhone 4, 4th generation iPod touch, and the next iPad with two cameras. The proof from the SDK is after the break.

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News Corp.’s The Daily iPad newspaper is rumored to be dropping on January 19th and today Poynter has discovered what the newspaper application will actually look like on an iPad. The image above was found in some of the website’s source files along with some code hinting at multi-media and social networking options.

In the “Footer” section, along with Twitter and Facebook, are links to icons for both Vimeo and YouTube.

A Javascript file included in the homepage indicates the presence of an embedded video player. But it is not clear how, or if, the publication is planning to distribute its content on video sharing sites. The app has been rumored to include significant photo and multimedia content, so it is possible some of that material could be shared more widely on the open Web.

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