Google’s Chrome browser for iPhones and iPads is getting a whole lot faster and more stable today with its latest update. That’s because Chrome is now using Apple’s WKWebView rendering engine on iOS. Google says this update will reduce Chrome’s crash rate by 70% so the browsing experience will see fewer interruptions for various reasons.
Today online publishing platform WordPress, which powers approximately 25% of websites on the Internet (this site included), is getting a major redesign with a completely rebuilt wordpress.com and the introduction of a new Mac app. We’ve been getting a taste of the improvements incrementally over the last year, but today is the company’s official launch.
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A noticeably large number of users are reporting issues logging into iTunes Connect, Apple’s developer portal for managing and distributing apps and other content to the App Store and iTunes. The outage appears to only be affecting a subset of users (we’ve had success logging in, for instance), but a growing number of developers have publicly voiced complaints online. Some users report not being able to access the service for going on four days:
[tweet https://twitter.com/powerje/status/623119396412751873]
Apple currently has yet to report any issues for iTunes Connect on its System Status page that tracks and reports downtime for its developer services.
Some users have reported success logging in after tweaking VPN settings, while another user posted the following workaround fix that others have used to patch what appears to be a Javascript issue at least temporarily until Apple officially addresses it:
[tweet https://twitter.com/psyclr/status/623099998687789057]
We’ve reached out to Apple about the downtime, and we’ll update here if we hear back.
[tweet https://twitter.com/rantydave/status/623064147211632641]
[tweet https://twitter.com/umugenzi/status/623020410251034624]
[tweet https://twitter.com/telemedicalapp/status/622972407884709888]
For over four years, Mozilla has expressed that it has no interest in porting its Firefox web browser to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Under the leadership of new chief executive Chris Beard, however, that mindset appears to have changed, as TechCrunch reports that Mozilla has recognized a need to release Firefox for iOS in the future.
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Pebble has updated its smartwatch software and iOS app to bring various improvements, including improved Bluetooth LE connectivity and quick notification management. The notification improvements are shown in the brief video clip above. Here are the release notes:
Pebble Firmware 2.3 (Release Notes)
iOS Pebble App 2.2.2 (Release Notes)
The updated Pebble software is available via the Pebble app’s software update function and you can grab the latest Pebble for iOS via the App Store for free.
When iOS 7 launched, developers discovered that their apps with built-in web browsers were unable to achieve the same level of JavaScript performance as the stock Safari app. This was because Apple restricted use of its improved Nitro JavaScript engine to its own app, leaving third-parties with a slower version.
[tweet https://twitter.com/vickimurley/status/473955064629829632 align=’center’]
As of iOS 8, however, it seems that decision has been reversed. All apps will now be able to use the same improved JavaScript engine that powers Safari. That means Google’s Chrome browser on iOS will now be just as quick as Safari, as will the pop-up browsers embedded in apps like Twitter and Facebook.
After letting us know last month that it was getting ready to release a toolkit to let developers easily bring their Chrome web apps to iOS and Android, today Google released a developer preview of the tool. In its blog post, Google explains the tool is based on open-source framework Apache Cordova, which allows devs to build native apps for iOS and Android using CSS, HTML, and Javascript. It’s also making a lot of its own core Chrome APIs available to developers through the preview. It essentially means devs will be able to bring their Chrome web apps to the App Store and Google Play, but it will also let them build new cross platform apps in CSS, HTML, and Javascript. Google explained how it works:
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If you use Chrome on your iPhone or iPad, and you’re not running the latest version, you may want to update it. Google has started inviting selected users to enable the data-compression feature it first launched on Android back in March.
For an average web page, over 60% of the transferred bytes are images. The proxy optimizes and transcodes all images to the WebP format, which requires fewer bytes than other popular formats, such as JPEG and PNG. The proxy also performs intelligent compression and minification of HTML, JavaScript and CSS resources, which removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and other metadata which are not essential to render the page. These optimizations, combined with mandatory gzip compression for all resources, can result in substantial bandwidth savings.
Or, in less technical terms, Chrome strips out everything not needed to display webpages properly, so you get the same experience but with up to 50% less data usage. For those who do a lot of browsing on 3G/4G, that can make a big difference to your monthly data bill.
So far, only a relatively small number of users appear to have been invited to participate, but that number is likely to grow over the next few weeks.
Via TechCrunch
Product comparison site Recombu has created an interactive iPhone 5S with iOS7 simulator, in large part based on our exclusive preview of what to expect.
9to5Mac has heard new details about the iOS 7 redesign from sources. According to the site, iOS 7 has been described internally as “black, white, and flat all over.” Skeumorphic elements have been dropped in favour of flatter and cleaner designs, with Ive apparently saying that physical metaphors “don’t stand the test of time.”
The simulation, based on a roundup in which most of the content will be familiar to 9to5Mac readers, allows you to switch on the phone, swipe to unlock and click on a number of the app icons to see non-functional mockups of what the new apps may look like …
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Mozilla released a new beta for Firefox this afternoon, featuring Retina display support that is sure to appease the Firefox devotees out in the crowd. Release notes below:
This update includes JavaScript improvements that make Web apps and games perform better and support for W3C Touch Events. Firefox Beta also supports Retina Display for Mac users.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TQlu39SIH6M]
When Apple launched the new iPad on Friday, it did so with a new dual-core A5x processor and quad-core graphics inside. During the product’s unveiling, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller talked about the new chip noting that it provides four times the performance of Tegra 3. Nvidia was quick to question the slide displayed by Apple onstage (pictured right), which did not provide any specific benchmark data. We now finally have some solid benchmark tests courtesy of Laptop Mag that provide us new insight.
For the benchmark tests, Laptop Mag used an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime, which is powered by Tegra 3, and put it up against the new iPad in GLBenchmark 2.1, Geekbench, and browsers’ benchmarks with Sunspider and Peacekeeper. In its last test (video above), the publication did a side-by-side subjective gaming performance test to try to spot any noticeable differences between the same title running on both devices. Here is what the publication found:
The first Ice Cream Sandwich handset, the Galaxy Nexus, hit the UK this week (US launch coming soon) and AnandTech has benchmarked the ICS/Galaxy Nexus combo vs. the iPhone 4S/iOS 5 combo. The Galaxy Nexus processor/GPU isn’t groundbreaking by any means, but the new software inside is certainly packing a punch beating iOS in a few key areas. As seen in the graph to the right, the Galaxy Nexus has a slightly faster tested browser than the iPhone 4S — a crucial day-to-day necessity for users.
The Galaxy Nexus also comes up with the win in JavaScript loading, bringing faster load times than the Droid RAZR and iPhone 4S. Don’t think the Galaxy Nexus is going to come away with everything, however. Both Apple’s iPhone 4S and iPad 2 outperform the Galaxy Nexus in GPU loading — which is limited by its slower SGX 540 underneath. That’s an important consideration for gaming.
The Galaxy Nexus’s hardware has been dubbed very smooth compared to older versions of Android. Google is activating 550,000 Android devices a day and is still behind iOS in total Activations at 200 million total. Head after the break for more graphs.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_Iir2SklI]
Security firm SuperEVR posts a video of their exploit which always makes it more real/scary.
I found that Skype also improperly defines the URI scheme used by the built-in webkit browser for Skype. Usually you will see the scheme set to something like, “about:blank” or “skype-randomtoken”, but in this case it is actually set to “file://”. This gives an attacker access to the users file system, and an attacker can access any file that the application itself would be able to access.
File system access is partially mitigated by the iOS Application sandbox that Apple has implemented, preventing an attacker from accessing certain sensitive files. However, every iOS application has access to the users AddressBook, and Skype is no exception.
I imagine the iPad app is also susceptible .
TechCrunch notes:
Skype says it is aware of the security issue, and had issued the following statement:
“We are working hard to fix this reported issue in our next planned release which we hope to roll out imminently. In the meantime we always recommend people exercise caution in only accepting friend requests from people they know and practice common sense internet security as always.”
The non-patronizing first sentence would have been sufficient, Skype.
Skype is on a #Winning streak since it got bought by Microsoft earlier this year.
Apple’s new iCloud Web apps are built using the same SproutCore Javascript engine that was used throughout MobileMe. If the favicon above doesn’t prove it, looking at the underlying code below seems to offer undeniable evidence.
SproutCore describes itself as an open-source framework for building blazingly fast, innovative user experiences on the web.
Here’s a nice interview with Charles Jolley, one of the founders of SproutCore and previous MobileMe Javascript Frameworks Manager. He left Apple about a year ago to start Strobe – a device agnostic Web publishing engine based on…you guessed it, SproutCore.
Interestingly, SproutCore lists Strobe Inc. as its parent company.
Adobe today released its “Flash for HTML5” web design tool Edge into Beta.
Adobe® Edge is a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.
This version of Edge focuses primarily on adding rich motion design to new or existing HTML projects, that runs beautifully on devices and desktops.
- Create new compositions with Edge’s drawing and text tools.
- Import popular web graphics such as SVG, PNG, JPG or GIF files.
- Easily choreograph animation with the timeline editor. Animate position, size, color, shape, rotation and more at the property level.
- Energize existing HTML files with motion, while preserving the integrity of CSS-based HTML layouts.
- Copy and paste transitions, invert them, and choose from over 25 built-in easing effects for added creativity.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FnNtX73v8k]
Two example videos and feature breakdown below (Via The Loop):
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According to a Blaze study stemming from 45,000 Android and iOS tests, the Android browser on average loads web pages 52 percent faster than mobile Safari. The results are inconclusive, however, because it’s unclear whether Blaze’s measurements take into account the new Nitro JavaScript engine that comes with iOS 4.3. The report was completed before this complaint was made public and Blaze is arguing that the lack of Nitro boost can “slightly” skew the results given that “JavaScript only accounts for a small percentage of the total load time.”
