News

Wikipedia coming as a default option for search in iPhone OS?

2010-03-07T02:04:18Z

In the latest version of the iPhone 3.2 SDK, references to Wikipedia have been found that point in a possible default search option in Safari for all iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPads in the future.

The Wikipedia references is found alongside the two previous options for searching, which are currently Google and Yahoo. Google is set as the default, however, users can easily change that default to Yahoo if they so desire.

However, Google and Yahoo both give users links to various sites to get their answers, while Wikipedia simply contains publicly-editable articles, some of which may not even be credible. This would be a rather weird move for Apple, when there are other actual search engines available such as Bing.com. Maybe this is just the beginning of more search options being implemented into the iPhone OS Safari.

This can also be a result of the ever-growing tense relationship between Apple and Google as of late.

via iPodnn

iPad launching on April 3

2010-03-06T09:23:49Z

It's official. If you go to http://www.apple.com/ipad right now, you'll see the image above on the page.

Preorders start March 12 for both models, less than a week from now. And the actual launch date of the Wifi models is April 3, with the 3G models expected around the end of April. These are the U.S launch dates. All models of the iPad will be released in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK sometime late April.

So if you're planning on buying one, now would be a good time. Especially considering that there may only be a limited number produced every month.

Mac Dev Program reduced to $99

2010-03-05T00:46:00Z

Developers may have noticed that the Apple Developer Site has been down for the last couple of hours but has just been brought back up. There have been some changes as well.

On the iPhone side, there is nothing groundbreaking, besides just forcing users to update their profiles and taking a survey.

But on the Mac OS X side of things, there is a brand new, major change. Apple has now replaced the Select and Premiere memberships with a single-tiered, low-priced Mac Developer Program. On the site, they say:

We recently introduced a new Mac Developer Program that replaces ADC Premier, Select, and Student Memberships. If you are a current ADC member, you can continue to access your resources and benefits through the end of your membership year.

So in other words, they have updated the Mac developer program to match the iPhone dev program as far as pricing and features go. There seems to still be the Mac hardware purchase program hanging around, but as of right now, the fate of this benefit has yet to be made clear.

via TUAW

UPDATE: Some devs appear to have lost their dev abilities with the update.

Apple cracking down on 'minimal functionality' apps

2010-03-05T00:14:26Z

In an effort to clean up the App Store that has been growing ever more polluted each day, Apple now is getting rid of those apps that have ‘minimal functionality’ for the user.

Wi-Fi scanner apps have now been removed by Apple for providing ‘minimal functionality’. The development studio, Three Jacks Software, had an app called “WiFi-Where” that has now been removed from the App Store. Along with this app are several other Wi-Fi scanners, including WifiTrak, WiFiFoFum, yFy Network Finder, WiFi Get, eWifi, and WiFi Analyzer.

The developer is not pleased with this absurd decision by Apple. He finds it ironic that Apple would remove these useful apps while there are so many other gimmick apps that have been and continue to pollute the Store.

Three Jacks Software will be rereleasing their app for jailbroken iPhone users on the Cydia store. Earlier this week, Apple removed an app that simply made the iPhone quack like a duck. The reason for removal was ‘minimal functionality’.

It seems that Apple is continuing the purge the App Store, which began with removing more than 5,000 apps that contained “overtly sexual content’. An innocent app where it allowed users to purchase swimwear was a casualty in this purge, but was later corrected by Apple.

It’s about time that Apple is cracking down on the crap in the App Store, but perhaps they’re cracking down too much?

New MacHeist NanoBundle 2 Unveiled!

2010-03-03T09:19:14Z

If you are not aware of the excitement, the good folks over at MacHeist have unveiled the new nanoBundle 2 this afternoon. This bundle features 5 apps with 2 to be unlocked. The included apps are:

MacJournal
RipIt
Flow
CoverScout
Clips

With the unlocks being:

Tales of Monkey Island
RapidWeaver

So what are you waiting for? Mosey on over to http://macheist.com and order your bundle! You can choose what charity your money goes towards or you can decide to split it with them all.

Check it out!

iPhone OTA app download limit raised to 20MB

2010-02-18T22:08:16Z

It seems that internationally, the OTA download of apps on 3G has been doubled from 10MB to 20MB. This update seems to have been updated earlier in the week. The iTunes OTA limit of 12MB has also been updated to 20MB.

iPad Special Event at Macworld 2010

2010-02-14T09:34:41Z

I attended Macworld 2010 this year and got a chance to get into the iPad special event that took place in Room 134 at Moscone North in San Francisco on Saturday Feb. 14.

I managed to live tweet the event, and here's a link to those tweets that I have saved in my Favorites for easy access.

http://twitter.com/christyxcore/favorites

Apple rolls out web-based preview for apps

2010-02-05T00:58:24Z

Ever since the acquisition of LaLa, Apple has been rolling out web-based previews for their iTunes products. Until today, there was only the web-based preview for music, leaving everyone that has an iPhone or iPod Touch behind without any web-based preview for iPhone apps.

Today they rolled it out for iPhone apps. Copying a link from the iTunes store and pasting it into a web browser will get you a page that looks like the screenshot above.

You can view the icon, description of the app (clicking More... will expand the description), price, ratings, developer info, customer reviews, screenshots, and what other customers also bought at the bottom. However, clicking 'View more by this developer' will take you to iTunes.

Pretty functional web-based preview for iPhone apps, and this has been much needed, since people may be shopping for iPhone apps on a computer that does not have iTunes installed.

iPhone OS 3.1.3 update

2010-02-03T17:52:33Z

Just in case you didn't know :)

Steve Jobs and post-iPad town hall meeting notes

2010-01-31T18:01:20Z

Following the great (or not so great) iPad announcement, Steve Jobs held a town hall meeting with Apple employees late last week. The two main topics of discussion were Google and Adobe.

Regarding Google, Jobs confirms of the heated competition between the companies.

"We did not enter the search business," Jobs said. "They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them."

As far as the lack of Flash support, Jobs claims that the Flash implementation in Macs is buggy and won't support it in the iPhone or iPad.

"Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash," Jobs said. "The world is moving to HTML5."

Some other key points of interest regarding the town hall meeting:

- Apple will deliver aggressive updates to iPhone that Android/Google won't be able to keep up with
- iPad is up there with the iPhone and Mac as the most important products Jobs has been a part of
- Regarding the Lala acquisition, Apple was interested in bringing those people into the iTunes team
- Next iPhone coming is an A+ update
- New Macs for 2010 are going to take Apple to the next level
- Blu-Ray software is a mess, and Apple will wait until sales really start to take off before implementing it.

via Wired and MacRumors