A new open source project called PieMessage enables cross-platform iMessage support, allowing Android users to communicate using Apple’s iPhone messaging platform.
In the video below, we get a short look at the PieMessage app in action with a still unreleased prototype version of the app.
Apple seems to be preparing to announce a web version of its MapKit framework, allowing anyone to embed an Apple Map view into a web page. On the WWDC microsite, Apple has embedded its own map object in the page to show attendees how to get between Moscone West and the Bill Civic auditorium, where the Monday keynote will be held. Looking at the code, it appears Apple wants to make this embeddable map a public API in the (near?) future so anyone could add an Apple Map to their website.
The map allows user interaction like you might expect with panning, zooming and such. Behind the scenes, the Apple map uses a HTML5 <canvas> element to render the custom cartography. Right now, MapKit is exclusive to iOS and Mac apps, ostensibly funded by the revenue Apple brings in from the sale of App Store apps.
From a business perspective, it is unclear why Apple would want to open up its API to web developers. Today, most developers use embedded Google Maps to display maps on their websites due to its ubiquity. Although other mapping options exist, a high-profile entrance of Apple into the space would provide strong competition to Google’s offering.
A few weeks ago Google unveiled a new space saver feature for its Photos app on Android, and this week the best feature 16GB iPhones and iPads could wish for is now available on iOS. Google Photos has also added Shared Albums across iOS, Android, and the web, which makes sending pictures and videos you capture to friends and family super easy.
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Google+ Collections, a feature that lets like-minded Google+ users connect in forums organized by topic, today comes to iOS devices after first rolling out for Android and web users a few months back.
Users can create Collections for topics they’re interested in and follow Collections created by other users to keep track of posts related to their interests. Google shared a few examples of popular Collections including Homebrewing, Climbing Junkie Photos, Magical, Mystical Mountains and Marine Life. It also features select Collections on a webpage here for easy searching.
When you post a Collection, Google notes that you’ll be able to customize who sees it thanks to recent improvements to the feature on Android that also come to iOS today. It also recently added the ability to add taglines to Collections and search for them on mobile devices.
The Collections feature is available now in the updated Google+ iOS app with version 4.8.5.
Update: Our winner has been announced! Congrats!
Congratulations to Jaime Marin—the winner of the Bushel Challenge! Jaime manages Apple devices for a mid-sized produce company that specializes in providing quality fruits and vegetables for their customers, 365 days of the year. They’ve been able to utilize features from Bushel such as Wi-Fi configuration, app deployment, password policies, and more to streamline work processes for the team.
Thanks to all who participated in the Bushel Challenge—we hope you had a little fun along the way! While there’s only one lucky winner, everyone who participated can still manage up to three devices for free, for life. If you missed the Challenge, head on over to Bushel to learn more and get started for free today.
If you need to deploy iOS or OS X devices to your employees or organization, having cloud access to setup, deploy, and manage your fleet these days seems like a no-brainer. That’s why our go-to recommendation is Bushel, a super easy-to-use and slick web-based app that offers cloud access to deploying and managing Apple devices. The perfect supplement to Apple in the workspace, Bushel — created by JAMF Software — is a few steps ahead of the game. In this article, we walk you through how to use Bushel (which is free for up to 3 devices) to manage your fleet of Apple devices.
In special collaboration with 9to5Mac, Bushel is also offering a challenge to businesses: Try out Bushel and get entered to win free Bushel for life, as well as a free iOS device for your company.
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Nice Yosemite reference, Instagram
Instagram first started as an iPhone-only photo sharing social network and has since expanded to other smartphone platforms, but the experience for interacting with Instagram on the Mac never been at feature parity. Today Instagram is making small steps to improve the experience with using the service on the web by introducing the ability to search for content using the official Instagram website.
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Skype today released version 7.7 of its Mac app and with it is rolling out a new web link preview feature that will automatically provide snippets of web content in chats when sharing links.
With web link previews, you no longer need to type the: “check out this funny cat video” alongside the actual link to the cat video. When you send the link in chat, a rich visual preview of the web page is automatically displayed, making it much easier to see what’s been shared. Finding a link in your chat history also becomes quicker, saving precious time to let you focus on the conversation.
The previews will only show up if a link is the only thing in the message, so it won’t break up long blocks of text that happen to include a URL (an annoyance with similar web previews in other chat apps). Skype also notes that it puts “extra focus on optimizing for video and image content, so we encourage you to try links to video, image or even gifs first.”
The update also includes a couple bug fixes:
You can access the feature by downloading the latest version of Skype for Mac, version 7.7, here.
Flipboard for the web
The popular news reading service Flipboard is becoming more than an app on your iPhone or iPad today as it launches a web version for the first time. Flipboard first launched on the iPad in 2010 and later released a version specifically for the iPhone, and now Mac users can access Flipboard from any browser with today’s launch of the web version.
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Six months after buying the subscription music service Beats Music, Apple is actively working to launch a completely new paid streaming music service that will compete with Spotify and Rdio. Yet to be named, the new service is entirely Apple-designed, yet leverages Beats’ technologies and music content, a collaboration that has thus far led to personnel challenges and delays. Multiple sources within Apple and the music industry have provided the first in-depth details of Apple’s upcoming streaming service, which we share below.
Facebook introduced a new “Trending” section on the web in January to display trending stories that are frequently shared and discussed on the social network. Today, the company announced that it has improved this feature by organizing trending topics into five categories so that it’s easier for people to explore stories from different sources.
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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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First launched on iPhone earlier this year, Dropbox announced today that it’s launching its Carousel photo and video gallery app for iPad users. The company is also bringing the experience to the web at carousel.dropbox.com.
Part of making the best home for your photos is giving you a fast, simple, beautiful way to engage with your pictures, however and wherever you want. Today, we’re excited to announce big steps towards that goal: Carousel for web, iPad, and Android tablet.
In addition, the iOS apps add the ability to share to Instagram and WhatsApp with today’s update.
The Carousel app offers easy sharing of one or multiple photos to contacts or email addresses and allows users to get around many of the upload limitations usually associated with sharing photos. With everything backed up in full resolution directly to Dropbox, the app is essentially a standalone experience for managing to photos and videos stored in Dropbox.
A look at the Carousel UI for web is below:
The Carousel for iPad app is available on the App Store now for free.
What’s New in Version 1.7
We’ve updated Carousel with one of your most requested features: support for iPad! Now, view your photos and continue conversations on a bigger screen.
Plus, we’ve added support for posting to Instagram and WhatsApp!
A new job listing posted by Apple shows that the company is working to bring its in-house Maps app, currently only available as native apps for iOS and Mac OS X, to the web.
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Update: Apple says all is good.
It was less than an hour ago that we told you about a newly-discovered bug within iOS that could potentially delete your iWork files. But now, according to a variety of internet reports, Apple’s month of misadventure continues as iCloud is currently experiencing an outage of some kind. Most notably, it seems as if many are being prompted over and over to enter their iCloud credentials within iOS. Apple has acknowledged the outage on its system status page:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtQSJx2nI9I]
Bubble, a new app launching this week, is about to make it super easy for anyone to link real world items to websites using Apple’s new iBeacon Bluetooth LE technology. Up until now retailers, event planners, and more have been using iBeacons in order to send relevant notifications to users in proximity, but that required users to actually have that specific retailer’s app installed. Bubble, on the other hand, acts as an iBeacon browser of sorts allowing users to discover web content as they come in contact with real world items.
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Apple quietly updated the retail section of its website today with a new look that more closely resembles iOS 7. Where the previous version of these pages used content boxes, borders, textured backgrounds, and gradients, the new page instead utilizes ample whitespace and thinner typefaces.
The change is probably best illustrated on the section’s home page, where images previously constrained by content boxes now fill the entire page. On the “Learn” page, buttons with heavy gradients have been replaced by thinly-outlined, lighter versions of the previous design. Gradient-filled headers have disappeared from every page, now replaced by unadorned text.
Oddly, the “Make a Reservation” button that allowed users to quickly create a Genius Bar appointment has been removed from the site’s navigation. Appointments can only be made by navigating to the Genius Bar page and clicking a link in the first paragraph of that page’s content. The Concierge page has not been updated to the new design yet.
You’ll find a bunch of before-and-after comparisons and take our poll on the new design below:
Pinterest today announced on its blog that it’s introducing Safari Push Notifications for users running Apple’s new OS X Mavericks update.
This makes it easy to get real-time updates, like when someone comments on your Pin, or sends you a Pin they think you’ll like. Similar to the push notifications you might see on youriPhone or iPad, you can see alerts in the upper right of your desktop screen.
Pinterest is using Apple’s new Apple Push Notifications Service introduced with Mavericks that allows websites to offer users the ability to receive push notifications on their desktop and in the OS X Notification Center. Pinterest push notifications can be activated by visiting Pinterest in Safari on Mavericks.
Update 2: Shipping times in at least Hong Kong started at 1-2 weeks then quickly to changed to “currently unavailable”.
Update: The Australian Apple Online store and others are back up and listing all iPad Air models as shipping in 24 hours.
Lines have started to form at Apple stores around the world. Send pics of your Apple Store line to tips@9to5mac.com. Images below.
With Apple’s iPad Air launch about to kick off on the morning of Nov. 1 local time in over 40 countries, Apple has now started taking online stores down around the world to prepare for the launch. That includes Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Netherlands, Thailand, China, and others, which will be the first regions to get their hands on the device as we roll into tomorrow morning local time in those countries.
Yesterday we reported that iPad Airs had started arriving at Apple Stores and other retailers and that supplies were likely to be plentiful as large stores received as much as 500-1000 units of the device. We also heard that business discounts will be available for the new device on day one, which wasn’t the case in previous years.
Apple will begin selling the iPad Air at 8 a.m. local time Nov. 1 through its Apple retail stores in the following countries:
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After a bit of restructuring and some acquisitions to help accelerate development of its Beats Music streaming service, an executive at the company confirmed to TNW today that the service will officially launch on iOS, as well as on the web and Android, in the next few months.
President and COO Luke Wood also shared some details on how the service will work compared with iTunes Radio and other competitive streaming services. Wood says the service will “focus really heavily on playlists,” but also utilize a “a perfect harmony between the algorithm and human curation”:
Wood emphasized that Beats Music would be different and based around “a very specific idea”. The service is focused on curation, rather than forcing users to search blindly for new tracks or artists that they might like.
“We’re talking about real depth of personalization and knowing who I am, who you are, what we’re listening to, what we like, what we’ve listened to before and then offering up music that is highly relevant to our taste profile,” he added… “You need to start with a great editorial team that has a point of view, but we want to have a situation where we can really scale to the depth of your appetite,” he said. “If you really love music, we want something that can go deep with you for a really long time. And that requires a perfect harmony between the algorithm and human curation. Between the man and the machine.”
The mix of curated playlists and algorithm doesn’t sound unlike Apple’s own iTunes Radio streaming service launched in the US last month alongside iOS 7. Apple announced 11 million unique listeners in just a few days following the service’s launch, and will likely soon expand into other markets.
Beats Music, like iTunes Radio, will first launch in the US.
Amazon is announcing today the roll out of a new service called “Login with Amazon” t0 allow developers to easily offer an Amazon sign-in option in their apps, games, and websites. Amazon says in a trial with Zappos.com customers chose to sign in using the Login with Amazon service about 40 percent of the time, while a trial with Woot found customers using Amazon sign in “had the highest rate of order conversion”:
“Login with Amazon enables app developers and website owners to leverage Amazon’s trusted sign-in solution, allowing them to focus on providing a great experience for their customers,” said Michael Carr, Amazon Vice President, eCommerce Services. “Amazon customers now have a hassle-free way to quickly and securely sign-in to apps, games and websites, without having to remember yet another password.”
Amazon is making the service available free of charge to devs and has SDKs for both Android and iOS available to download through its new login.amazon.com website.
Previously only available to Chromebook users, Google announced today on its Chrome blog that Mac and Windows users will now have the ability to open Microsoft Office files directly within Chrome. The functionality works for users running the latest Chrome Beta and requires installation of the Chrome Office Viewer (Beta) extension.
In addition to saving you time, the Chrome Office Viewer also protects you from malware delivered via Office files. Just like with web pages and PDFs, we’ve added a specialized sandbox to impede attackers who use compromised Office files to try to steal private information or monitor your activities.
According to the latest data from Net Applications for the month of March, Apple is steadily increasing its lead for mobile browser share over Android and many other platforms with Safari capturing 61.79-percent of mobile browser web traffic during the month. That’s a nice jump up from the 55.41-percent it had in February, while the stock Android browser lost market share by dropping from 22.82-percent in February to 21.86-percent in last month.
Opera Mini maintains its third position while dropping from 12.72-percent in February to 8.40-percent in March, with Chrome slowly closing the gap jumping from 1.96-percent in February to 2.43-percent in March.
Google announced today that it updated the mobile web app for Gmail and the Gmail Offline Chrome app with a refreshed UI and new features similar to recent enhancements to its iOS apps. On top of the redesigned visuals, Google also included improvements to search and Google Calendar integration:
Today we’re rolling out a similar refreshed look to the Gmail mobile web app as well as Gmail Offline (http://goo.gl/0f1ae) that includes many of these same changes. Try it out at gmail.com in the browser of your Android, iOS, Blackberry or Kindle Fire device.
Google noted it decided to implement a design for its web apps similar to its iOS offerings after receiving positive feedback since first launching the new iOS design in December.
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Amazon just announced it would expand in-app purchasing to games on Mac, PC, and Web-based platforms, according to a press release, letting folks use their Amazon accounts to buy “virtual goods and currencies”.
Amazon’s customers can use any credit card, Amazon gift card, or Amazon credit when buying in-app items. The online retailer also offers its in-app purchasing API and services to Android and Kindle Fire, so developers from a variety of platforms can offer a “trusted and secure buying experience.”
When Amazon launched in-app purchasing for Android and Kindle fire last year, the company’s appstore director, Aaron Rubenson, explained it would take a 30-percent cut from transactions, similar to how Apple and Facebook does, but Amazon can also set pricing so developers can still receive 30 percent of the list price.
Amazon noted other benefits to today’s expansion include opening its fraud detection technology to developers, providing transaction and customer service support, and offering marketing options like in-app items available on Amazon.com via best seller lists, recommendations, campaigns, etc.
Get more information at Developer.amazon.com/games/in-app-purchasing, or check out the press release below. Amazon’s introduction video from last year on in-app purchasing is also after the break.
