Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
Facebook Connect is missing from Apple’s new social network, iTunes Ping, after it was apparently working on Wednesday night. There seem to be mixed messages coming from Apple, according to interviews that All Things D’s Kara Swisher conducted with Apple honcho Steve Jobs and VP Phil Schiller.
Jobs said Facebook Connect wasn’t in Ping, and gave a dismissive “I guess we could do that.” Meanwhile, Schiller said you can absolutely find your friends on Ping using Facebook Connect. Both are wrong, though: Apple apparently DID do that, and now the feature is gone.
However, there are clues that Facebook Connect was meant to be in iTunes. If you’re following no one, you’ll see a message on your People page that says, “You are not following anyone. Connect with Facebook, search for people, invite friends, or follow recommended people to get started.” Facebook Connect is even mentioned in the Welcome to Ping email you get when you first sign up.
At this point, it’s a mystery whether Facebook Connect will be back, but I hope it will. Although Jobs says Facebook demanded “onerous terms” from Apple, using Facebook Connect is way faster than manually adding all your friends to Ping. Hey Steve, can we get a Twitter or Gmail connect, at least?
Tags:Apple, apple honcho, Connect, email, Filed, itunes, Kara Swisher, mixed messages, nbsp, Network, onerous terms, phil schiller, Ping, Read, Social, social software, software, Steve, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs - Facebook, Twitter, VP Phil Schiller
Posted in Internet Technology | No Comments »
Sunday, August 15th, 2010
Apple’s iOS 4.0.1 has arrived — along with 3.2.1 for iPads — and the big buzz is about a change in the way “bars” of signal strength are displayed. iOS 4.0.1 “Improves the formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display,” but the 378MB update doesn’t have any other specific info in the release notes.Apart from changing how many bars to show, Apple has also messed with the size of the bars. Engadget did a comparison of the old and new versions, but one of the screenshots was from the Home Screen, and one was from an app, so it was a little tricky to see the difference. Here’s what each meter looks like at full bars on my iPhone 3GS:
There’s not much to say about iOS 4.0.1, feature-wise, but it’s very interesting in terms of Apple’s marketing and PR. Apple has called a press conference for tomorrow, presumably to do some damage control on this very signal issue, so the timing of the 4.0.1 update seems well-planned. Also, we’ve heard rumors of a silent recall from friends whose pending iPhone orders have been canceled, but we can’t confirm it.
Tags:3gs, Apple, apple iphone, damage control, download, iOS, ipads, iPhone, nbsp, os updates, signal, signal strength, Squad, strength
Posted in Internet Technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
According to leaked documents making the rounds of the Internet, Microsoft’s Windows 8 will come with an app store, allowing users to download Microsoft-endorsed apps and sync settings across all their Windows 8 devices. The service will be hosted entirely in the cloud, with a focus on helping developers reach an audience with a simple sales and licensing process. Is this Microsoft’s attempt to energize third-party Windows devs the same way Apple’s iTunes app store attracted Mac developers?
From the documents we’ve seen, It looks like the store will also include social features and app recommendations to help users with discovery and help app developers with sales. Neowin speculates that the whole thing will be powered by Microsoft Azure, the MS cloud OS, to help attract Azure developers.
Windows users: what features would you like to see in a Windows App Store?
Tags:app, Apple, cloud, download, internet microsoft, Mac, mac developers, Microsoft, microsoft windows, nbsp, os updates, Read, social features, Store, updates windows, Windows, windows microsoft, windows users
Posted in Internet Technology | No Comments »
Monday, June 7th, 2010
When Steve Jobs announced his trademark “one more thing” during his iPhone 4 unveiling at today’s WWDC keynote, it was a real doozy. FaceTime is Apple’s new video calling app, that works from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 with no setup whatsoever. Just when we were getting excited that the iPhone 4’s front camera would let us video call with Skype, Apple delivered something even bigger.
FaceTime is not without its issues, though. First off, it’s going to be WiFi-only for at least the rest of 2010, while mobile carriers get their networks ready to handle it. AT&T, we’re looking at you! Get it together, guys! Also, taking mobile video calls mainstream presents some interesting issues of etiquette and decorum. With Skype, you know you can video call someone because they’re signed in. With FaceTime, you might get an incoming video call when you’re in public, or when you just got out of the shower. Plus, it makes drive-by flashing pretty damn easy … I wouldn’t hurry to answer any FaceTime calls from strangers, that’s for sure.
Despite the issues, though, I think FaceTime just raised the bar for what we expect from our communication devices. Plug-and-play video calling used to be Jetsons-type-future-stuff, and now it’s just the latest thing made mainstream by Apple. Love them or hate them, they’re pushing the envelope again.
For a recap of the keynote, check out the liveblog from our sister site, Engadget and further WWDC 2010 coverage on TUAW.
Tags:Apple, apple iphone, call, Engadget, FaceTime, iPhone, iphone 4, mobile carriers, nbsp, Read, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs - WWDC, thing, video, video call
Posted in Internet Technology | No Comments »
Friday, June 4th, 2010
Whether you’re on Team Apple or Team Adobe in the whole Flash vs. HTML5 brouhaha, you really can’t dispute just how nice some of the new HTML5 and CSS3 features are, and while Microsoft was quick to throw a demo page up to tout IE9’s capabilities, Apple for some reason waited until yesterday to post one for Safari.
…And they locked it down with user-agent detection to allow only people using Safari to view the demos. Anybody using something other than Safari to check the page out will be greeted with a box telling them to download Safari the moment they try to view one.
The ironic part is that Apple felt that people using, say, Chrome shouldn’t be able to use any of the demos shown on the new HTML5 and Web Standards demo page, while any HTML5-capable browser can play with the demos on Apple’s Safari Technology Demo, where all the same demos can be found, along with several others. Using both Chrome 5 and 6, I was able to use every demo except Video, VR, and Movie Trailers (which worked but couldn’t load the actual trailer video). All three of those demos needed Safari to load the H.264 successfully.
I’ll be the first to admit that Safari’s been way ahead of the curve HTML5-wise (it’s been able to do just about everything in these demos since last year, including video), but I think it’s a bit on the daft side for their marketing team to block Chrome users from trying the demos on the page that’s labeled HTML5 and Web Standards. A simple disclaimer saying that Safari may do a bit better would have probably sufficed, and now everyone is going to call them out on it — like this.
Tags:adobe apple, Apple, apple safari, Chrome, css3, demo, demo page, google web, HTML, marketing team, movie trailers, nbsp, page, Read, Safari, technology demo, video, web
Posted in Internet Technology | No Comments »