keynote

On the ‘Built-in Apps’ page in the iPhone 5s and 5c section of Apple’s website, although the actual app screenshots look the same, Apple is using new (flatter) iOS icons for the iLife and iWork suites designed to match the style of iOS 7. The iPhoto and GarageBand icons are identical to the ones that were leaked last week in the iCloud Storage preferences.

However, this is the first time the new iOS 7 style iMovie, Pages, Numbers and Keynote icons have been seen. Although iMovie looks relatively similar to its skeuomorphic counterpart, the other icons look drastically different featuring bright gradients and white icon glyphs.

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During Apple’s September event, the Tim Cook announced that all new iOS devices purchased after September 1st would be given the option to get iWork and most iLife apps for free. Some users who had purchased iOS devices after the first of the month, however, had already paid for those apps prior to the announcement, or paid for them after the announcement due to confusion about how to claim the free versions.

Today Apple began sending out emails to eligible users who paid for the apps informing them that their iTunes accounts would be credited for the software they should have gotten for free. The amount listed in the tips we’ve received varies from customer to customer, so it appears the credits are only for the apps that were paid for, not the total price of all five apps.

The refund can be claimed via an iTunes Store redeem code included in the email. You can read the full message from Apple below.

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Adobe is currently testing a new presentation app for the iPad similar in purpose to PowerPoint and Keynote, via CNET. The project is currently called Ginger. Although details are sparse, it seems to be focused on the creation of sales pitches and what Adobe calls “explainer videos”. Adobe has said that the app is in the beta stage of development, but is yet to confirm whether the app will ever be publicly released.

On Ginger’s minisite, there are a few demos of what the app could create. One example presentation is embedded below …

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Apple’s head of iTunes Eddy Cue is live on stage during Apple’s WWDC 2013 keynote presentation today and just unveiled a brand new, revamped version of Siri that includes a lot of new features on top of a redesign that fits in with the rest of the new look for iOS 7. It also announced a new service dubbed “iOS in the car” that will bring more functionality to the consoles of some vehicles through a partnership with several car manufacturers. The integration will allow you to place calls, have more control of Siri, and view maps, much of which we already revealed leading up to today’s event.

As for Siri, the app now has an all new voice and users will also have the ability to change the voice between male and female. New highly quality voices in both male and female will initially be available only in English, French, and German, but Apple plans to add more over time. That’s not all, however, Siri is also getting a bunch of new features and integration with other web services such as Wikipedia.

Eddy Cue noted during his demo of the redesigned Siri that you’ll now be able to control a lot more functions on your iPhone with Siri, such adjusting the brightness of your display, enabling Bluetooth, or playing a voice mail. The just unveiled iTunes Radio will also have Siri integration.

"Surprise: Apple’s Siri adopts Microsoft @Bing for web search" http://t.co/fHXrpjZOoD via @GeekWire

— Microsoft Stories and News (@MSFTnews) June 10, 2013

Microsoft is happy about Apple’s decision to include Bing web results (and not Google) in Siri for iOS 7. 

Siri will also be able to answer a lot more questions in iOS 7, which is in part thanks to the integration of new web services including Wikipedia, Twitter (to view Twitter account updates through Siri), and web search results from Bing.

The new in-car features through ‘iOS in the car’ will be arriving in vehicles from several car manufacturers in 2014. 
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Confirming our earlier suspicions, Apple today showed off some new features for its iWork suite of apps, which includes both Mac and iOS versions of the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps. While Apple confirmed that new versions of the apps for Mac and iOS would be coming later in the year, it spent its presentation today showing off brand new web versions of the apps designed to run right in the browser through iCloud.com. The new web apps, available initially only to developers starting today, will be dubbed ‘iWork for iCloud’ and bring web apps to iCloud that will compete directly with Google Docs and Google’s other suite of web apps.

Apple execs spent much of the time on stage showing off the new Pages for iCloud app, demoing how users can drag and drop Microsoft Word files and other documents directly into the iCloud.com UI in their browser to begin editing a document. Apple also briefly demoed presentations and spreadsheets running in web versions of the Numbers and Keynote apps.

During the demo of the new iWork for iCloud apps, Apple also made a point of noting that the new apps run in any browser by showing off the apps running on Windows 8.

The new apps are available as developer beta starting today. A public beta of the new iWork for iCloud apps will be arriving later this year. Apple didn’t mention any details regarding pricing, or whether or not the web apps will be a separate purchase from the apps currently available on Mac and iOS.

As we expected based on our intel leading up to the event, Apple just introduced refreshed MacBook Airs live on stage at it’s WWDC 2013 keynote address today. Apple announced that the new MacBook Airs will be arriving with the new Intel Haswell chips, as expected, and spent most of the time talking about increased battery life for the devices which now includes up to 12hrs battery. The 13-inch model now boasts battery life up to 12 hours (up from 7 on the previous generation), while the 11-inch model is expected to get 9-hour battery life (up from 5 on the previous generation).

Apple also announced that the new MacBook Airs would include the faster 802.11ac with “a maximum data rate of 1.3Gbps, almost three times faster than 802.11n.” Other specs that Apple mentioned: dual microphones, a FaceTime® HD camera, a high-speed Thunderbolt port and two USB 3.0 ports.

All models will be available with a 1.3 GHz processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 2.6 GHz and 4GB of RAM, but Apple will also make a BTO option available with a 1.7 GHz Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.

Apple said the new MacBook Airs include up to 40% faster graphics, 2x GPU execution units, and more energy efficient CPUs, while the machine itself now meets ENERGY STAR 5.2 and EPEAT gold environmental standards.

Apple will be shipping the new MacBook Airs starting today starting at $999 for a 128GB 11-inch model and $1099 for the 128GB 13-inch model. An extra $200 will bump you up to the 256GB models, but Apple didn’t provide any other details on any other upgraded internals.

Earlier this month we received SKUs indicating that Apple had some MacBook refreshes in the works for today’s event that would include an upgrade to Intel’s new Haswell chips and upgraded internals. At the time, the SKUs pointed to availability of the refreshed MacBooks this week, but it was unclear when the models would ship and if some would arrive before others.

Apple’s full press release below:
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Live on stage at Apple’s WWDC keynote presentation this morning, CEO Tim Cook has opened things up with the usual updates on some of the company’s core businesses and accomplishments over the past year. Sharing numbers on how its products have been selling and outpacing the competition has become somewhat of a tradition for Apple keynote addresses. Below you’ll find a roundup of the stats that Cook shared today including info on retail stores, iPhones and more:

-6 Million registered developers, 1.5M in last year

-WWDC sold out in 71 seconds

-1m daily visitors at Apple retail

-Millions of customers come for personal training

-407 stores in 14 countries

-50 billion apps

-900,000 apps (93% downloaded each month)

-375k iPad apps

-575,000,000 store accounts (more accounts with credit cards than any store online)

-paid developers 10 billion (3 times more than all other mobile platforms combined)
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Apple has confirmed to AllThingsD that this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will kickoff with a keynote address on Monday, June 10th. Apple typically kicks off its WWDCs with keynotes.

Apple previously said that it would debut new versions of iOS and OS X at WWDC. The conference runs from June 10th until June 15th. We’re expecting Apple to debut a redesigned iOS 7 with improved in-car integration, more social network connectivity and OS X 10.9 with an improved Finder and power-user features.

We will have live coverage from Moscone in San Francisco during the keynote.

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Google just announced a new unified messaging service today that will be available across multiple platforms and now the iOS app is officially available to download on the App Store.

The free Hangouts app is available as a universal download for both iPhone and iPad and offers group conversations with photos or 850 emojis, Video calls for hanging out with up to 10 friends, alerts that are synced across devices and more.

More Hangouts awesomeness:
— View and continue your Hangouts across devices.
— Get notifications just once.  After you see an alert, it’ll be removed on other devices.
— Snooze your notifications if you’d prefer to respond later.
— See what you talked about in the past, including shared photos and your video call history.
— Keep a record of any Hangout for just a short period of time by turning history off.
— View collections of photos shared from each of your Hangouts.
— Choose from over 850 emoji to express what’s on your mind.

The Hangouts feature will also be coming to Gmail users today:
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From 9to5Google:

Google just announced its much rumored new music service called Google Play Music “All Access” live on stage at its Google I/O event keynote presentation.

Google execs focused on showing off curated playlists but also made a note of pointing out a “radio” feature that will automatically create an endless radio station based on the song you’re currently listening to. The service will also allow users to search for a particular song or view the “playlist” of a radio station to remove unwanted songs.

Also included is a feature called “Listen Now” that will provide quick access to recently listened to songs, customized radio stations based on your preferences, and recommendations for new releases from artists you like.

The service will be available on the web, tablets, and phones through Google Play and cost users $9.99 per month with a 30 day free trial in the US. Those that sign up before the end of June will be able to get the subscription for just $7.99/month and Google said the service will land in other countries soon.

Apple just updated its website following the iPad mini media event with some new videos for the device as well as specs and updated product pages for the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and other products. You can also now view a video of the keynote speech via a link from the Apple.com homepage.

Apple also put its store back online with many of the new products it just unveiled, and it appears to have tweaked its online store with a slightly new design.
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As part the International keynote presentations at IFA this year, AMD exec and president of the HSA foundation, Phil Rogers, took the stage to give an update on the current state of the not-for-profit alliance. For those of you unfamiliar with the foundation, HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture), is described as “a heterogeneous compute ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, for combining scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance at low power consumption.”

While the addition of Samsung, among other partners Texas Instruments, ARM, AMD, and Imagination Technologies, was the big news of the day for most, a short demo by partner Apical was what really caught our attention.

Apical’s “Assertive Display” technology is already present in a few devices, such as Sharp’s AQUOS PHONE SH-01D, but during its demo for the HSA keynote, Apical showed off the tech working on an iPad…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUTHGE3qs0]
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As pointed out by MacStories, Apple recently removed trials for the iWork suite and Aperture 3 from Apple.com. The webpage formerly home to the iWork trial now includes a message informing users that iWork apps, such as Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, are available through the Mac App Store. Apple removed the trial for a short while last year before returning it; however, the company also informed users last month that the iWork.com Beta service would shut down July 31. Apple does not currently offer trial versions of the $20 Mac Store apps.

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According to a poorly translated report from Macotakara, China Unicom’s Deputy Director of Research has confirmed an iPhone 5 with HSPA+ capabilities (21Mbps) during a keynote at Macworld Asia 2011. The image above is from the presentation via PC Watch.

Japanese IT News Site ” PC Watch “Tells That, Research vice president of China Unicom , Huan Wenliang, told iPhone five Will Support W-CDMA based high-speed Data Transfer standard HSPA Evolution “HSPA +” (21Mbps) at Keynote speech in Macworld Asia 2011.

We’ve heard rumors that Apple is in early testing of LTE-capable test devices, and we know AT&T has already started rolling out their HSPA+ tech and even marketing HSPA devices as “4G”.

Curiously, the Qualcomm Gobi MDM6600 chips found in the Verizon iPhone support HSPA+ data rates of up to 14.4 Mbps. Analysts are expecting a 4G LTE iPhone in 2012. (via MacRumors and MacPost)

As noted earlier, Apple has updated its iWork Apps for iPad today and they are now live in the store:

Pages – What’s New in Version 1.3

– Wireless printing with AirPrint using iOS 4.2, including page range selection, number of copies, and duplex printing.
– Support for iOS 4.2 multitasking.
– Localized in Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, and Traditional Chinese.
– Automatic pagination of tables that cross a page break.
– Improved reliability when importing Pages ’09 and Microsoft Word documents.
– Improved usability including font size selection, and bold, italic, and underline indicators in ruler.
– Fixed issues when using a WebDAV server, including signing out when a server is no longer accessible, saving port numbers in server addresses, and saving files with invalid characters in their names.
– Improved PDF export using iOS 4.2, which resolves an issue with missing fonts on Windows.

Keynote – What’s New in Version 1.3

– Enhanced presenter display shows the current slide, the next slide, or your notes when connected to an external display.
– Ability to import existing and add new presenter notes to slides.
– Wireless printing with AirPrint using iOS 4.2, including slide range selection, number of copies, and duplex printing.
– Support for iOS 4.2 multitasking.
– Localized in Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, and Traditional Chinese.
– Improved reliability when importing Keynote ’09 and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
– Improved usability.
– Fixed issues when using a WebDAV server, including signing out when a server is no longer accessible, saving port numbers in server addresses, and saving files with invalid characters in their names.
– Improved PDF export using iOS 4.2, which resolves an issue with missing fonts on Windows.

Numbers –What’s New in Version 1.3

– Wireless printing with AirPrint using iOS 4.2, including page range selection, number of copies, and duplex printing.
– Print preview to adjust how a sheet prints across multiple pages, including Auto Fit.
– PDF export takes advantage of pagination settings from print preview.
– Formula entry using a keyboard, including predictive function selector.
– Support for iOS 4.2 multitasking.
– Localized in Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, and Traditional Chinese.
– Improved reliability when importing Numbers ’09 and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
– Improved usability.
– Fixed issues when using a WebDAV server, including signing out when a server is no longer accessible, saving port numbers in server addresses, and saving files with invalid characters in their names.
– Improved PDF export using iOS 4.2, which resolves an issue with missing fonts on Windows.

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