Apple has just debuted a revamped version of its website with a focus on all-new product pages. As part of the redesign, the Apple Online Store has been removed from the site’s main navigation bar, with the option to buy each product now available exclusively on the product’s page.
Apple today has published a redesigned version of its Human Interface Guidelines website for Apple Watch WatchKit application development. The new website is far cleaner than the previous website, and introduces lengthier and more interactive descriptions of the different Apple Watch interface paradigms…
After expanding several Siri features to 9 new countries earlier today, Apple this evening has unveiled a redesigned Siri website. The site gives a specific breakdown of what Apple’s voice assistant is capable of, as well as specific examples of questions it can answer.
Apple has added a page to its website for deregistering and turning off iMessage for users that have switched from an iPhone to an Android device or other non-Apple smartphone. The new web-based tool arrives after Apple faced a lawsuit over Android users having undelivered text messages from other iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users still using iMessage.
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Google has added yet another official application to its iOS App Store portfolio: Google Analytics. Analytics is Google’s popular service that allows website owners to manage and view data such as page views, demographics, and the technologies users utilize to access the website. The iPhone app also has the neat Real Time reports feature that allows website owners to view how many people are on the website at the current time. Google launched an optimized version of the Analytics app last year on Android and debuted a related AdWords app on iOS just last week. Like all Google apps, the Analytics program is on the the App Store for free.
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 On the “Learn” page, buttons with heavy gradients have been replaced by thinly-outlined, lighter versions of the previous design.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:
I love it when an app developer takes one of my minor grumbles and comes up with a simple solution. PopCalc is one of those.
There are times when I have a few sums to do, and the standard calculator app is a bit too dumb, while creating a spreadsheet in Numbers feels like overkill. What I really want is a cross between the two: the simplicity of a calculator, but some of the functionality of a spreadsheet. And that’s exactly what PopCalc aims to deliver …
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UPDATE: Apple’s site has reverted to the current icons present in iOS 7 beta.
Apple has quietly changed some of the icons on its official iOS 7 website, making notable changes to the Weather, Passbook, and Reminders apps. iOS 7’s icons, which have been subject to much scrutiny and disapproval from various designers, have been one of the largest complaints about iOS 7 so far.
The icons, which can currently only be viewed on Apple’s site using a mobile device, most notably show a completely redesigned weather app icon, ditching the clouds and sun found in the current iOS 7 beta, in favor of the live temperature, something users have been waiting for for years.
Phil Schiller previously noted on Twitter that showing live weather on the iOS home screen would “waste battery,” but this is an improvement Apple has been working on for some time.
From Apple’s Privacy Policy
Bloomberg reports that the Berlin Regional Court in Germany has told Apple to change its policies for managing customer’s data on its website after ruling that Apple’s terms for data use go against German laws. According to a statement posted by a German consumer group Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (VSBV), the courts have ruled that Apple cannot request “global consent” for use of a customer’s data” without informing the user of where and how the data will be used. It will also no longer be able to use German users’ data to “promote location-based services and products” or deliver the data to third-parties for advertising purposes:
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Apple, ranked last year as the world’s 11th most popular website, has now climbed to the No. 8 slot after web analytics company ComScore rather belatedly started measuring mobile as well as desktop access.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D41vbZ1RFMs&feature=plcp]
Just launched this week, Kickfolio is a new HTML5-based platform that allows developers to test and share builds of their iOS apps in the browser. Developers simply upload a zipped version of their app (no SDKs or changing code), and the service spits out a link to a private test page displaying an interactive HTML5 and CSS version of the app controllable by mouse and keyboard in portrait or landscape. Testers will also be able to leave feedback and interact with testers in a comment section on the page. Kickfolio has an example of the Angry Bots iOS app from Unity Technologies on its website here.
A pro version of the service also includes a feature to embed apps that allows users to insert the interactive apps in press releases, websites, and elsewhere. The company has a 15-day free trial available, but is also offering pricing ranging from $50 a month for one to two apps to $300 a month for unlimited apps. You can learn more and create an account on the company’s website here.
A demo from Kickfolio of an iPhone app running inside a browser on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus is below:
A report from MacStories yesterday claimed that many third-party websites selling developer access to Apple’s iOS betas are no longer live.
The blog apparently contacted the websites’ owners. It soon confirmed with at least one that Apple recently submitted a copyright infringement claim, so the website’s hosting service immediately took the page offline. A Wired report from last month by Andy Baio first spotlighted the trend of websites that sell developer access to iOS betas by doling UDID activations to any paying user. Apple restricts UDID activation to registered developers.
The Wired report allegedly sparked a flurry of website takedown requests. The CEO of Fused, a hosting service, even admitted to the MacStories, “Apple has been fairly heavy-handed with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests to the ones we host”:
- After noticing several of the sites mentioned in Baio’s article had become unavailable in recent weeks (activatemyios.com, iosudidregistrations.com, activatemyudid.com, udidregistration.com, instantudidactivation.com), we reached out to some of them asking whether Apple was behind the takedown of their “services”, which infringed on Apple’s developer agreement. While most of our emails bounced, we heard back from one of the site owners (who asked to remain anonymous), who confirmed his hosting provider took down the site after a complaint for copyright infringement by Apple. Similarly, the CEO of Fused tweeted in a reply to Andy Baio that Apple had been “fairly heavy-handed” with DMCA requests to UDID-selling sites hosted on their network.
- In the email, the site owner said that their website made $75,000 since last June, when Apple released the first beta of iOS 6 to developers. “We do not believe our service was infringing and our services did not violate their guidelines for iOS 6″, the site owner commented, adding that they will soon launch another similar site, “with better and more secure data lines to handle Apple”.
- The owner of another site replied to our emails with a “no comment”. According to him, “the Wired article has caused all these sites to go down”.
- Indeed, it appears Apple has started taking action against these sites recently, and more precisely after Wired ran the story on UDID activation.
To install an iOS beta, developers must register their account with Apple and receive UDID activation for $99 a year. Third-party websites, on the other hand, sell UDID activation for a cheaper price—usually around $10.
After Apple released a patch to a Java vulnerability that lead to the infection of roughly 600,000 Macs with the Flashback Trojan earlier this year, there were claims weeks later from security researchers that hundreds of thousands of Macs were still infected. Kaspersky’s CEO claimed Apple is “now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years.” Now, as noted by PCWorld, Apple appears to be publicly changing its longstanding stance that “it doesn’t get PC viruses.” The statement on Apple’s “Why you’ll love a Mac” website now reads: “It’s built to be safe” (as you can see in the comparison screenshots above).
Another statement on the website switched from “Safeguard your data. By doing nothing” to “It’s built to be safe.” Following the Flashback incident, Kaspersky claimed in April that Apple is “ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,” and he “expects to see more and more” malware on Macs.
Cyber criminals have now recognised that Mac is an interesting area. Now we have more, it’s not just Flashback or Flashfake. Welcome to Microsoft’s world, Mac. It’s full of malware….Apple is now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years: updates, security patches and so on,” he added. “We now expect to see more and more because cyber criminals learn from success and this was the first successful one…. They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago”
One of the biggest problems that we, as technology writers, face is choosing exactly what to write about on the site. What specifically is worth covering, and what should we leave for other pubs/Twitter/Facebook/Google Plus, etc.? We often pass on the smaller stories or the ones that do not directly relate to our core mission, even though we find them valuable or interesting. We do not want to stray too far from our core idea.
Nevertheless, we have long been after a way to cover the smaller stories, but more importantly give a forum to discuss these general topics, especially if they are interesting. Now that we have 9to5Forums, we have come up with something we call “Asides.” The idea is to bring together a “linked list” type of format coupled with gratuitous linking and the PandoTicker or AllthingsD Voices method of spreading the best of the Web.
Here are the types of topics we will cover on Asides:
We think we have found a new way to present these minor stories in a manner that has not been done before. Asides will appear chronologically on the website interspersed between regular posts (and in feeds and social media).
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However, you will only see the title on the web site, and it will be smaller than a full-sized story. We are working with WordPress on a way so these can open inline, but —for now— clicking on an Aside link will open a new page.
Our expectation is to post 20 or more of these per day. We hope you like Asides and find them useful.
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