iOS 6 Beta 1 and OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4 Seeded to Developers:
Tuesday, 12 June 2012
Monday, 11 June 2012
WWDC 2012 Keynote: New Products and Updates Galore!
Apple made a lot of waves today as they kicked off the 2012 World-Wide Developers Conference with a spectacular keynote, at which the company introduces a number of new products and innovations. They also launched a number of new products and updates outside the keynote.
Here’s a summary of our full coverage of WWDC 2012 day 1. Apple’s had a busy day!
Today’s WWDC Keynote:
- Apple Updates MacBook Air Lineup With Ivy Bridge, USB 3, and More!
- MacBook Pro Lineup Updated With Ivy Bridge, USB 3, Faster RAM & Graphics, and More!
- Apple Releases New MacBook Pro With Retina Display, Starting at $2199!
- OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Shipping in July for Just $19.99!
- All The Stats From WWDC 2012
- iOS 6 Beta 1 and OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4 Seeded to Developers
- Apple Unveils OS 6: What You Need to Know
In Other News:
Sunday, 10 June 2012
Facebook Launches App Center for iOS, Android, and Web::
Facebook’s App Center is a new app recommendation engine (complete with social rating system) built directly into Facebook’s website and mobile apps. The service helps you find apps that your friends are using, and recommends apps based upon your interests and other factors.
To make it easier to find social apps for mobile, the App Center is available in the Facebook iOS and Android apps, as well as Facebook.com.You can send apps you find on your computer to your mobile device using the new “Send to Mobile” feature. If a mobile app requires a download, you’ll be sent to install it from the Apple App Store or Google Play.
App Center currently only features 600 apps, although it is expected to expand significantly as time goes on. One of the most unique features of the service is a new “send to mobile” feature, which lets you send apps that you discover on Facebook’s website directly to your mobile device, where they’ll automatically be downloaded and installed from the App Store or Google Play.
For more information, check out the official press release, or head on over to https://www.facebook.com/appcenter to get started!
What Can We Expect From iOS 6?
Monday is the day! The day when we find out all about the upcoming latest and greatest version of iOS. What can we expect from the new version of our favorite mobile operating system? What improvements are coming our way? Everything right now is conjecture, and rumor. I’m going to say which features I think are possible, probably, or iffy. (And yes, that is a technical term.) Then Monday afternoon, or Tuesday morning, you can all have the pleasure of tearing me a new one.
Facebook Integration: This will be similar to how the Twitter integration currently works in iOS. Put your login info in once, and it can be used across any Facebook integrated app. No more exiting the game or social app to login to Facebook, then hopefully return to the app you were trying to use. Ah streamlining, you are my goddess. (Multiple reports on this one, let’s call it “probable”.)
Apple’s own Map App: According to reports, Apple is also, (and quite unsurprisingly), planning to push the new Maps platform on developers, strongly encouraging devs to embed Apple’s own mapping system into their apps. (This is everywhere you look, so again, this is a “probable”.)
Do Not Disturb Mode, Safari tab syncing, and VIP Mail Recipients: Users will be able to set notifications to “Do Not Disturb“. No more notifications popping up when you’re trying to work. The Safari tab syncing will be through iCloud, so your Safari tabs will sync across all devices and computers. VIP mail recipients will put a star next to email received from certain groups of people. (We’ve only seen this a few places, but… “possible”.)
Full Siri Functionality to the iPad: The iPad version of Siri will not be full-screen like the iPhone, however. Instead, it will slide in from the top, much like Notification Center currently works in iPad. Also, despite the fact that the iPad isn’t designed to be held near your face, like the iPhone, the accuracy of Siri on the iPad is reportedly just as high as on the iPhone. (Yeah, I like this as a “probable”. I’ve seen this reported quite a few places, and I just really want it.)
Airdrop-like File Sharing Between Macs and Devices: This is just a rumor, but man, I am SO keeping my fingers crossed for this one! According to the report, the next iPhone will feature the Broadcom BCM4334 radio chipset, which includes support for WiFi Direct and Bluetooth 4.0. This could see the device include a form of AirDrop – a wireless file sharing feature introduced in OS X Lion. (Sounds like if this one is for real, it’ll be an iPhone 5 only deal. Hmmm… “possible”.)
Completely Revamped iOS “Stock” Apps: Another rumor to be sure, but why not revamp the apps if the next iPhone will have a taller screen as rumors have said. While you’re at it, add some new functionality. Stop swimming, and you die.(50/50 on this one, I think it mostly depends on whether there is a taller screen on the iPhone 5, so let’s call it. “possible”.)
iOS 6, Now With Even More iCloud! - Yeah, this is one I think Apple has to go for. iCloud has been like you’re average beauty contestant, flashy, pretty, but with no there, there. Let’s hope we see more functionality for Apple apps, and third-party apps. Let’s go beyond having iCloud as a place to put our browser favorites and some files. How about an iCloud browser? (Let’s go “probable” on some type of iCloud improvements. “Iffy” on whether it will actually be a giant leap forward.)
Widgets! Widgets! Widgets! - I like this as a “probable”. This is something everyone wants for iOS 6, and I’m thinking we’ll see some sort of Widgets for at least the lock screen. Maybe we could include the easily accessible switches for toggling, wifi, bluetooth, and adjusting screen brightness?
Well, that’s what we see, what do you see? What’s coming on Monday? Tell us in the comments section below.
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Flurry: 69% of New Mobile Apps are Made for iOS:
The firm measures the ‘new project starts’ by recording how many developers are downloading and implementing its analytics SDK in order to fire up a new project. Because developers normally integrate analytics some time before launching apps, these numbers are actually good projections of where new products are going to be launched.
There are several factors that Flurry says contribute to new projects being begun on iOS, rather than Android. Among those is that Android developers actually make 4x as much revenue on iOS than it does on Android. Flurry says that for every $1.00 a developer earns on iOS, he can expect to earn about $0.24 on Android.The second major reason that could contribute to the disparity is Android hardware and software fragmentation. In hardware, only one device (the Samsung Galaxy S II) accounts for more than 10% of the top 20 devices, with 17 of those holding a share of 6% or less as of May 2012. This makes it more difficult to support a wide array of devices for some developers of apps like games, which have specific hardware requirements.
The fact that some 70% of devices on Flurry’s network are still on Gingerbread, an OS over a year and a half old, is also a problem. Flurry points out that Froyo, which shipped before both ICS and Honeycomb, Google’s ‘tablet optimized’ version of Android, has more penetration than both of the new ones combined. Users on versions of the OS that shipped over a year ago make up the majority of the platform’s users, that’s terrible.
This means that developers looking to support new user conventions and features that were shipped in later versions of the OS are limited in what they can do, preventing them from offering the best experiences in their apps. Compare this to iOS where some 75% of users are already on iOS 5+, introduced just this year.
Flurry’s tracking uses data from 70K companies across 185K mobile apps and 1.2B end-user sessions across 100M devices. That’s 36B sessions across half a billion devices a month.
Google Unveils New 3D Maps and Offline Access, Coming Soon to iOS and Android::
Less than 1 week away from WWDC, Google has just unveiled the “next dimension” of Maps, bringing offline access and a new 3D mapping system. According to Google, their new 3D map experience will be coming soon to both iOS and Android, raising questions about the future of Google Maps on iOS.
Recent rumor have suggested that Apple will be replacing Google Maps with their own “mind-blowing” internal mapping system, including 3D capabilities, in iOS 6. If Apple does launch their own Maps app, it’s unclear whether Google Maps wil become available as a separate iOS app, or whether they will try to incorporate features from Maps into Google Earth.
It will be interesting to see what Apple unveils at next Monday’s keynote, and even more interesting to see if they make any attempts to prevent Google from continuing to offer their own mapping system on iOS. Although, considering that GPS apps like TomTom are allowed on the App Store, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll spit in Google’s face.
For more information, check out the official Google blog, the coverage over at9to5Google, or the live blog updates over at Cnet and Engadget. Google has also made a full recording of the event available on YouTube.
Saturday, 2 June 2012
Facebook and Apple Finally Get it Together in iOS 6::
TechCrunch:
…Facebook integration will be very important for iOS — tons of apps use Facebook for sign-ups and authentication (many use Facebook as the only way to do this, to the dismay of some). Apple was undoubtedly watching this activity and realized that it was time to formally bring Facebook on board.
Twitter will still be a big part of the new iOS version. (It’s assumed that it will be named “iOS 6″, it’s currently codenamed “Sundance”.) Twitter will be holding sessions at the WWDC to share more about their continued partnership with Apple, including integration into the upcoming OS X Mountain Lion.
This is a big win for Facebook, integration will allow them to get rid of the clunky sign on technique in iOS where you click a connect button in an app, then switch to the Facebook app to authorize permissions, then switch back to the original app. Facebook being built right into iOS will provide a much more seamless login process.
Siegler says, “It’s important to note that Apple being Apple, something could change in the next week and a half (see again: Facebook/Ping). But as of right now, Facebook is a go in iOS “Sundance”. One thing still being hammered out according to our sources is exactly how sharing will work. Sharing is the other big part of the iOS/Twitter integration, and will be important for iOS/Facebook integration as well. But Facebook is significantly more complicated than Twitter in that there are all kinds of permissions for what you can post where and who can see what. And Open Graph adds another layer of complexity to all of this.”
Siegler’s guess is that Apple will go for simplicity, at least in the initial Facebook/iOS integration, “Beyond authentication, there will probably be a Facebook button in the existing share screen which will allow you to share something to your Facebook Wall.”
Siegler also says that OS X Mountain Lion won’t be including Facebook integration any time soon. Apple will take Facebook’s integration one step at a time, so just iOS for now.
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