Here's the latest feed from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - All Stories.
Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.
JJ Abrams' Action Movie FX App Blows Up Just About Everything [iOS Blog]
Dec 23, 7:03PM
JJ Abrams has been involved in the creation of some of the most successful movies and TV shows of recent years, including directing the reboot of Star Trek, co-creating the television show Lost, and producing the just-released Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. His company, Bad Robot Productions, typically focuses on his motion picture properties -- however, the company has now branched out into iOS apps with Action Movie FX.
The free app allows users to insert incredibly realistic special effects into videos shot within the app. Action Movie FX includes two free effects, Missile Attack! and Car Smash. Four more effects -- Chopper Down and Tornado, Air Strike and Firefight -- are available in two-packs via in-app purchase. Each set is $0.99, with more effects promised.
Business Insider's Ellis Hamburger filmed this clip inside BI's New York City headquarters, noting that the creation of the movie took "two minutes, tops."
Action Movie FX is available for free on the App Store, with two effects packs available via in-app purchase for $0.99 each. [Direct Link]
Apple Pushing to Introduce iPad 3 on Steve Jobs' February 24th Birthday?
Dec 23, 5:17PM
FocusTaiwan reports (via 9to5Mac) that Apple pushing its manufacturing partners to meet deadlines that would allow the company to launch the iPad on Steve Jobs' birthday, February 24th.
A local Chinese-language newspaper reported Friday that iPad3 might be launched on Feb. 24 to mark the anniversary of the birth of Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs.According to the report, workers at several iPad component suppliers as well as manufacturing partner Foxconn will have limited time off during the usual Lunar New Year holiday. The Lunar New Year holiday itself falls on January 23rd next year, with workers generally receiving a number of other days off from work around that date.
Citing sources close to Taiwanese makers in the iPad3 supply chain, the Economic Daily News said the gadget could be launched in mid-first quarter of next year or by the end of next March.
Sources have been reporting a variety of rumored dates for an iPad 3 introduction, with some claiming a debut in the March-April timeframe while others have pointed to a February launch being in the works.
Apple last year launched new MacBook Pro models on Jobs' birthday, although that unusual Thursday introduction was likely a convenient coincidence driven by the debut taking place during the Presidents Day holiday week.
Newsstand in iOS 5 Fueling Growth of New Magazine Subscriptions
Dec 23, 4:44PM
AllThingsD takes a look at how the launch of Apple's Newsstand feature as part of iOS 5 has affected subscription sales for Popular Science magazine, revealing that the prominent placement of the Newsstand app and easy access to updated content has driven a substantial increase in new subscriptions.
The chart comes to us courtesy of Mag+, Bonnier's tablet-publishing software business. And as Mag+ CEO Staffan Ekholm points out, the really promising indicator for Pop Sci isn't the one-week sales leap of 13 percent — it's that the the magazine's growth picked up after that week, with more velocity.Based on the graph, Popular Science appears to have been adding new subscribers at a fairly constant rate of about 700 per week during the several months leading up to the debut of iOS 5. But more than a month after the significant bump immediately following iOS 5's release, the magazine is still seeing subscription growth at nearly double the rate seen before the arrival of Newsstand.
Apple developed Newsstand as a way to allow users to keep track of what could be a large number of magazine and newspaper subscriptions, housing them all in a dedicated folder where they can be updated in the background and display the latest covers to help users identify new content.
Apple is not alone, however, in trying to provide centralized access to subscription newspaper and magazine content. Just this week, Amazon updated its Kindle iOS app to add support for its newsstand of over 400 newspapers and magazines on the iPad.
This is What a 7.85-Inch iPad Looks and Feels Like
Dec 23, 2:34PM
There's been increasing chatter in the rumor mill about the possibility of a smaller 7.85" iPad that could be introduced sometime in 2012.
7.85" iPad on left, 9.7" (current) iPad on right
The rationale behind the smaller form factor is for Apple to better compete against the new 7" Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon. Amazon's new Kindle line seems to be an early success with over 3 million sold over the first three weeks. Amazon doesn't break down the numbers for individual models but calls out the Fire as "the most successful product we've ever launched".
Apple's never been one to try to compete spec for spec against their competitors. The iPhone, for example, has kept the same basic form factor across 5 different generations, despite a proliferation of different sizes amongst its competitors. While we're not sure what makes a smaller iPad different, we've heard it frequently enough that we believe Apple is in late prototyping phases for such a device.
The supply chain has actually been very specific about the screen size of this rumored iPad. According to Chinese manufacturers, Apple is buying up 7.85" screens for this upcoming mini iPad. So, we asked our friends at CiccareseDesign to put together these mockups of what a 7.85" iPad would look like in comparison to the existing 9.7" iPad.
They also created this "actual size" PDF that can be printed out so you can play with one yourself in real life.
Download Printable PDF: Home Screen (6MB), Keyboard (18MB) View on an iPad: Actual Size
Simply print the PDF at 100% size on your printer, and you too can see what a 7.85" iPad feels like in hand. If you don't have a printer handy, you can view it in actual size in an iPad web browser. If you save it as a web icon on your home screen, it will then launch without a menu bar so you can fully appreciate the size.
The 7.85" iPad actually feels a lot smaller than the existing iPad. The user interface elements, however, don't feel that far out of place. Icons are smaller than the 9.7" iPad, of course, but still bigger than the icons found on the iPhone. The on screen keyboard also seems quite usable at this size. Other elements, such as Safari's location bar, do scale down but, again, are no smaller than what we've seen on the iPhone.
We should point out that Steve Jobs had been adamant that a 10-inch screen is the minimum necessary for a tablet, and in a conference call said that he didn't believe a 7-inch tablet was a good user experience:
We're not not making a 7-inch tablet because we don't want to hit a lower price point. We just believe it's too small to hit the user experience people want. When we make decisions, it's not about cost, it's about value when you factor in the software. We're all about the best products at aggressive prices.So, based on that stance, it might seem unlikely that Apple would produce such a device, but they've been known to change their mind before.
Missing Manual Ebooks Available for 50% off Through January 3rd [Mac Blog]
Dec 22, 8:23PM
As David Pogue points out, O'Reilly Press is offering a number of its Missing Manual books for 50% off through January 3rd, with no DRM and lifetime access downloads and updates. Those looking for last minute Christmas gifts for slightly less tech-savvy relatives may want to check it out. Among the titles on sale:
- iPhone: The Missing Manual by David Pogue for $9.99
- iPod: The Missing Manual by J.D. Biersdorfer for $8.99
- iPad 2: The Missing Manual by J.D. Biersdorfer for $9.99
- Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual by David Pogue for $13.99
Lion-Compatible Quicken 2007 for Mac Promised in 'Early Spring'
Dec 22, 7:30PM
Intuit today sent out an email to its Quicken for Mac customers providing an update on the company's efforts to develop a version of Quicken 2007 compatible with OS X Lion. We noted earlier this year that Intuit was looking for a way to make Quicken 2007 compatible with Lion following Apple's discontinuation of Rosetta support for PowerPC-based applications like Quicken. According to today's email and a newly-posted FAQ, Intuit is now promising that a Lion-compatible version of Quicken 2007 will be available by "early spring".
As you may know, Quicken for Mac 2007 does not currently work on Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). I understand the frustration this may have caused you and have put a team in place to address this issue. I am happy to announce that we will have a solution that makes Quicken 2007 for Mac "Lion-compatible" by early spring. There are still details to be worked out, so I ask your continued patience as we work through these.Intuit is also reassuring customers that it has increased the size of its Mac development team as part of a renewed effort to support the platform.
Quicken 2007 was a popular personal financial management application for Mac, but instead of building upon the popular application Intuit elected to rebuild the application as a stripped-down Quicken Essentials for Mac. The new version was widely panned by reviewers for its considerable loss of functionality compared to Quicken 2007.
Consequently, many Quicken owners continued use the 2007 version, but with Lion's dropping of support for the Rosetta framework needed to run Quicken 2007, users have had to decide between upgrading to Lion or abandoning Quicken 2007.
With that dilemma in mind, many customers have already dropped their usage of Quicken and migrated to competing products such as iBank or Mint.com (now owned by Intuit), although each solution offers a slightly different set of tools that may or may not be suitable for a given user's needs.
Quicken is clearly hoping to win back some of those lost customers and keep others from defecting to competing products with a reinvestment in the Quicken for Mac platform, beginning with getting Quicken 2007 up and running on Lion machines. It remains to be seen, however, whether Intuit has moved quickly enough for many users.
AMD Announces New Mac Pro-Suitable Radeon HD 7970 Graphics Card
Dec 22, 7:05PM
Earlier this month, we noted that developer builds of OS X 10.7.3 were showing evidence of AMD's forthcoming "Tahiti" graphics card family, the first to be built using 28-nanometer technology. The evidence suggested that Apple was at least preparing for the possibility of the cards being used in a Mac Pro update next year, an update that is reportedly still in question given uncertainty about the future of the line.
In the wake of those findings, AMD today officially announced the high-end Radeon HD 7970 from the Tahiti line, billing it as the world's fastest single-chip graphics card.
With the arrival of the AMD Radeon HD 7970, AMD has unleashed its revolutionary new Graphics Core Next Architecture that enables new levels of gaming and compute capabilities – realizing an improvement of over 150% in performance/sq mm over the prior generation. Engineered with support for PCI Express 3.0 and AMD CrossFire technology, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card arrives prepared for the next level of gaming.Engadget has a nice roundup of reviews of the new card, with testers generally reporting significantly improved performance over the current generation of equivalent AMD cards and other high-end competitors such as NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580. On the negative side, reviews cited the card's $549 price tag and significant noise under high load.
The Radeon HD 7970 will launch on January 9th, and AMD is also reported to be preparing to launch a slightly scaled-down model in the form of a Radeon HD 7950 card.
With new Xeon processors from Intel launching in the first quarter of 2012 and AMD's new graphics card offerings lining up for a January launch, parts do appear to be coming together for a significant upgrade for the Mac Pro, which has not been updated since July 2010. What remains to be seen is whether Apple will continue to invest in its professional-level workstation line.
Evernote Releases Skitch for iPad [iOS Blog]
Dec 22, 6:52PM
When image editing and sharing app Skitch was acquired by Evernote earlier this year, we were told iPhone and iPad versions were on the way -- and now Skitch for iPad has arrived. Skitch is the amazingly fun and surprisingly powerful way to move your ideas and projects forward using fewer words. With Skitch, annotate and draw on just about anything that you see, whether it's a new or existing photo, a webpage, screenshot, map, or a blank canvas. Then, share your work with friends, colleagues or save it all to Evernote. It couldn't be simpler.
There are a number of ways to get content into Skitch including:
- Photos and Camera: Choose to work on an existing image from your camera roll or take a new photo with your iPad. Use the camera to take photos of things that inspire you or to draw a mustache on a friend. If you have an iPad 1 with no camera, then the camera option won't appear.
- Screenshot: Skitch for iPad has built in smarts that help it identify recently-made screenshots. Taking a screenshot on your iPad is easy, simply press both the power and home buttons at the same time. The screen will flash and the screenshot will be saved to your camera roll. Open Skitch, tap the Screenshot button, annotate the image, then share it with your team. This is great for everything from mobile app design to showing off your latest Angry Birds score.
- Web: Skitch for iPad has its own web browser designed to help you mark up any webpages you encounter. After tapping the Web icon, you can either go directly to a URL or type in a search. When you find the page you want, tap on the Snap icon. Now you have an image of the webpage to annotate. Use this to provide feedback on a web project or to point out something you want to buy.
- Map: Have you ever struggled to explain exactly where to meet someone or which building on campus is yours or how to find the best hiking spot? Then the Skitch Map option is for you. Pinch and zoom into the map, then use the Skitch drawing tools to point out a landmark or draw a path. You would be surprised how often the exact place you need isn't easy to locate without some additional help. With Skitch, you can put an end to driving in circles or walking for hours.
- Blank: Sometimes you just need to start fresh. Open the blank canvas and sketch to your heart's content. Use the shapes, arrows, drawing tools, and colors to compose a work of art or to play a killer game of Pictionary.
Skitch for iPad is free on the App Store. [Direct Link]
Rockstar Offers Holiday Sale on All iOS Apps, Including GTA III [iOS Blog]
Dec 22, 6:23PM
Rockstar is offering their three iOS apps for up to 40 percent off as a holiday sale, including the just-released Grand Theft Auto III.
Today, we are pleased to announce a special holiday sale for Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary Edition, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Beaterator at the iTunes store. The sale starts today, December 22, and will end on December 29.
- GTA III: 10 Year Anniversary Edition – 40% off - $2.99 [Direct Link]
- GTA: Chinatown Wars – 40% off - $5.99 [Direct Link]
- Beaterator – 33% off - $1.99 [Direct Link]
iPhone Sales Strong in U.S., U.K. and Australia, Weaker in Much of Europe
Dec 22, 4:16PM
Reuters reports on new data from research firm Kantar Worldpanel showing strong sales for the iPhone over the last three months in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, driven by the debut iPhone 4S. The company has, however, seen weaker sales in much of continental Europe in the face of economic difficulties and strong competition.
"In Great Britain, the U.S. and Australia, Apple's new iPhone continues to fly off the shelf in the run-up to Christmas. However, this trend is far from universal," said Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director.The iPhone 4S debuted midway through the reporting period in most of the countries mentioned, although it did launch two weeks later in Italy and Spain. Consumer demand for the iPhone eased in the months leading up to the debut of the iPhone 4S amid high anticipation, but sales obviously surged with the release of the new hardware.
Apple's market share in the 12 weeks to end-November rose to 36 percent in the United States from 25 percent a year earlier and in Britain to 31 percent from 21 percent, Kantar said.
However, in France its share slipped to 20 percent from 29 percent and in Germany to 22 percent from 27 percent. Similar drops were seen in Italy and Spain.
Kantar Worldpanel also reports its data as market share, and with the global smartphone market growing extremely quickly, iPhone sales are likely still rising in countries where Apple's market share has dropped due to the influx of Android-based devices from a variety of manufacturers.
For the holiday quarter, Apple is projecting blockbuster revenue and earnings, with analysts pushing their iPhone estimates for the quarter into the range of 30 million units. That performance would shatter Apple's current record for iPhone sales of just over 20 million units sold during the second calendar quarter of this year.
'Real Racing 2' Hits Mac App Store with iPhone Controls [Mac Blog]
Dec 22, 3:43PM
Australian developer Firemint, acquired by Electronic Arts earlier this year, has moved its highly-acclaimed iOS game Real Racing 2 to the Mac, launching the title in the Mac App Store.
Among the notable features of the Mac version is the ability for owners of iOS versions of the game to control the Mac version using the touch and tilt capabilities of their mobile devices.
- Test your racing prowess on a 16 car grid against highly skilled AI drivers.While the iPhone control is not a unique feature given that other titles like Chopper 2 have had such functionality for some time, Real Racing 2 is a popular iOS game and will no doubt attract fans on the Mac platform as well.
- Select from 30 officially licensed cars including the 2010 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500, 2010 Nissan GT-R (R35), 2012 McLaren MP4-12C, and more!
- Work your way from rookie to pro in a robust Career Mode, offering 10 hours of racing enjoyment. Jump into a Quick Race for instant fun – or battle against the clock in Time Trial Mode.
- Race in 15 beautiful locations, with 40 miles of highly detailed race tracks, speedways and city circuits – including twilight and night races.
- Touch or tilt to steer with your iPhone, iPad – or Mac controls. This innovative control system lets you customize options to fit your personal driving style.
- Experience the intensity of head-to-head racing with 5 unique camera angles and breath-taking graphics powered by Firemint's exclusive high performance Mint3D™ engine.
- Purchase Real Racing 2 currency to progress even faster!
Real Racing 2 for Mac is priced at $12.99.
German Court Unlikely to Award Apple Injunction Against Galaxy Tab 10.1N
Dec 22, 3:00PM
Last month, Samsung released a revised Galaxy Tab 10.1N design in Germany in hopes of avoiding an injunction barring the sale of the device under its original design over claims of infringement from Apple.
Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N
Arguing that the design changes did not go far enough, Apple quickly filed suit in an attempt to bar the new design as well. But according to Bloomberg, the judge in the new case does not seem inclined to support such an injunction, giving customers credit for being able to distinguish between the devices.
The Dusseldorf court that banned sales of the Galaxy 10.1 on Sept. 9 is unlikely to grant Apple an injunction against the Galaxy 10.1N, Presiding Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann said at a hearing today. Samsung has changed the device's design sufficiently to distance it from the iPad, she said, adding that the view is preliminary. [...]A final decision on Apple's request is scheduled to be released on February 9.
"Consumers are well aware that there is an original and that competitors try to use similar designs, so buyers are vigilant when looking at products," Brueckner-Hofmann said. "We don't think that someone buys a Samsung to make his table neighbor at the coffee house believe he owns an iPad."
After several early wins in its efforts to bar sales of Samsung's tablet devices, the tide has begun to turn against Apple in a number of locations. In Australia, where an injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been lifted, Samsung is now using the legal fight to promote its device, calling the Galaxy Tab "the tablet Apple tried to stop".
Steve Jobs Honored with Special Trustees Grammy Award
Dec 22, 3:32AM
The Recording Academy today announced the winners of its annual Special Merit Grammy Awards, with Steve Jobs being named a recipient of a Trustees Award for 2012. The Trustees Award category is designed to recognize those who have made significant contributions to music in areas other than performance.
As former CEO and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs helped create products and technology that transformed the way we consume music, TV, movies, and books. A creative visionary, Jobs' innovations such as the iPod and its counterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionized the industry and how music was distributed and purchased. In 2002 Apple Computer Inc. was a recipient of a Technical GRAMMY Award for contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. The company continues to lead the way with new technology and in-demand products such as the iPhone and iPad.A ceremony honoring the winners of Trustees Awards, Lifetime Achievement Awards, and Technical Grammy Awards will be held on Saturday, February 11th, with special recognition also being made during the main Grammy Awards ceremony the following day.
Jobs is one of several recipients, including Brazilian composer and arranger Antonio Carlos Jobim, spoken word soul performer Gil Scott-Heron, and audio engineer Roger Nichols, who will be honored posthumously.
iMAME Arcade Emulator Hits the App Store (For Now) [Update: Pulled]
Dec 21, 10:48PM
TouchArcade has spotted the appearance of a free MAME game emulator on the App Store called iMAME. MAME is a popular arcade machine emulator that will run thousands of arcade games if you have the original ROMs.
iMAME running Simpsons with iCade support.
iMAME ships with nine "less than stellar" ROMs to play, but apparently can load arbitrary ROMs using a 3rd party utility such as iExplorer without jailbreaking:
It seems that the same method used to get games into iDOS also works in iMAME. Twitter user @mattlukens mentions, "Yep, add a .zip rom to the Docs folder through PhoneView and it works perfect! Just tried Crime Fighters!" He also provided a screenshot. The clock is really ticking now on Apple pulling this downApple has had a bit of a spotty history with emulators on the App Store. While a number of individual emulators do exist on the App Store, Apple has been more restrictive about these open emulators, presumably due to potential legal issues. For example, a full DOS/Windows 3.0 emulator appeared in the App Store at one point but was quickly pulled by Apple.
iMAME is currently available as a free Universal application on the App Store. [Link]
Update: It took Apple two days to get around to it with the holidays, but iMAME has been removed from the App Store.
Vocal Offers Mac Voice Control via iPhone 4S [iOS Blog]
Dec 21, 9:51PM
When the original iPhone was released, it had no third-party apps, no voice control, no games, and no to-do list -- among many other things. But it was still revolutionary, completely different than what came before, and over time many of its shortcomings were addressed by hardware and software updates. The same is true of Siri now. It has very little in the way of third-party integration, and there are many things that it cannot do -- but there is much promise. One piece of evidence to this future potential is Vocal, a new app that allows voice control of a Mac from a Siri-equipped iPhone 4S.
Vocal works by pairing a free application that installs on the Mac with a $1.99 app that is downloaded from the App Store. It allows the user to send commands and dictate text straight to the Mac, using the voice recognition feature on the iPhone 4S.
Lex Friedman at Macworld used his copy of Vocal to "control iTunes; send emails and tweets; look up definitions; select, copy, and paste text; search Amazon and Google; print; and create new documents." He reports that some commands are more successful than others, but on the whole:
Vocal is definitely cool. You'll be hard-pressed to find a cheaper way to get your Mac to take dictation. Its support for other actions is a mixed bag; some work well, some don't. If nothing else, Vocal proves that Siri—natively—on the Mac could be nothing short of remarkable.
The app updates its library of commands over the air, making updates and new feature additions easy for Vocal's creator, Matthew Roberts. He explained the thinking behind the software to The Next Web:
Vocal came essentially from playing with Siri on my new 4S as a sort of "novelty" as I just acquired the device, and since I use my Mac so much I wanted to see if I could write a Siri-like app for it. After looking around the only main competitor was the software from Nuance, but it was over 1GB to download and cost upwards of $50. Considering the 4S can already dictate text, I thought I could make a super simple app "for the masses", I guess you could say.Vocal is available for the iPhone 4S on the App Store for $1.99 [Direct Link] and the free companion app for the Mac is available directly from Vocal's website.
Apple's 'Complete My Album' Feature Drops 180-Day Deadline for Upgrading
Dec 21, 9:34PM
Yesterday, we noted that Apple had launched a new "Complete My Season Pass" feature for TV shows purchased through the iTunes Store, offering users who purchased individual episodes of a TV show season the ability to upgrade to a Season Pass at a discounted rate based on the amount of their individual purchases. Apple today posted a new support document outlining an FAQ for the new service and explaining what content is and isn't eligible for the program. But in addition to the the Complete My Season Pass document, Apple also posted an updated version of its "Complete My Album" support document that offers a beneficial change for consumers.
Until now, users have generally had a window of 180 days from the date of their first individual track purchase from a given album within which they could upgrade at the discounted rate using the Complete My Album program. The current iTunes Store terms and conditions still make reference to that limit:
COMPLETE MY ALBUM ("CMA")But the updated support document posted by Apple today reveals a different answer, and it now appears that the 180-day deadline has been removed entirely.
In some circumstances, you will have no more than 180 days from the time you acquire your first CMA-eligible song or video from a particular CMA-eligible album to accept that CMA offer, and upgrading previous purchases to iTunes Plus does not affect any such time limits.
How long do I have to take advantage of Complete My Album?Many users taking advantage of the Complete My Album program obviously already do so within the previously-imposed 180-day window as they decide that they like certain songs enough to purchase the entire album. The lifting of the restriction will, however, still be of use for those who decide much later that they want to upgrade.
When you buy individual songs from any qualifying album, you can complete the album at any time, as long as the album is available for sale on the iTunes Store.
Google Voice App Updated With Group Texting and Full Sprint Integration [iOS Blog]
Dec 21, 8:31PM
Google has updated its iOS Google Voice app with a number of new features, including full support for Sprint integration. Google has a partnership with Sprint that allows customers to use Google Voice natively on their Sprint phone and have access to the full set of Voice features. What's New in Version 1.4.0.2372The Google Voice for iPhone app was originally released in November of 2010 after more than a year in limbo. Google and Apple squared off over the Google Voice application, with Google claiming that Apple had rejected the application, citing duplication of the core functionality of the iPhone, while Apple claimed that it had merely not made a decision on the application.
- Multi-recipient texting, with contact autocomplete.
- Sprint integration support: sends all calls to the native dialer when the phone is integrated with Sprint
- Multi-line text entry field with character count.
- 1-touch Copy/Paste in dial pad
Graphisoft Unveils Bronze Steve Jobs Statue at Budapest HQ [Mac Blog]
Dec 21, 7:34PM
Graphisoft claims it has the world's first Steve Jobs statue in front of its Budapest headquarters, crafted in bronze by Hungarian sculptor Erno Toth.
>From Graphisoft's press release introducing the statue:
The relationship between GRAPHISOFT and Apple can be traced to the 1980's, when Jobs came across the first version of GRAPHISOFT's ArchiCAD software at the 1984 CeBIT in Germany. His first impressions of the software led him to throw Apple's support behind the development and distribution of ArchiCAD. "Apple's support included cash and computers at a time when GRAPHISOFT was a small company with limited resources, working within the economic and political confines of what was, at the time, communist Hungary," Gabor Bojar said. Apple also introduced GRAPHISOFT to its worldwide distribution network, which remains a cornerstone of the business today. "With its attention to excellence in every detail, Graphisoft Park's environment embodies the spirit of Steve Jobs," Viktor Varkonyi, CEO of GRAPHISOFT said. "I can't think of a better place to commemorate the man and his legacy," he continued.Graphisoft makes ArchiCAD, a design program for architects.
Amazon's Kindle for iOS Adds Magazines and Print Replica Textbooks for iPad [iOS Blog]
Dec 21, 6:38PM
Amazon today updated its Kindle app for iOS, taking on Apple's Newsstand feature by adding compatibility with hundreds of magazines on the iPad. In addition, Kindle for iPad can now handle "print replica" textbooks, preserving the original formatting and layout from print editions for improved usability.
- New Design for Magazines: Kindle for iPad customers now have access to the huge selection of over 400 magazines and newspapers that are available on Kindle Fire. Magazines such as Martha Stewart Living, Food Network Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, Popular Science and many more are displayed in rich full-color pages. Customers can buy a single issue or subscribe to popular magazines and leading newspapers and have them wirelessly delivered to the Kindle for iPad app.In addition, Amazon has added support for Send-to-Kindle on all iOS devices, allowing users to send documents to their Kindle devices and apps for reading while also storing them in the cloud. Finally, Kindle for iOS now sports a new library view and support for PDF import and viewing.
- Read print replica textbooks including rich formatting and layout of the print editions and support for notes and highlights, zoom and pan, and linked table of contents.
Microsoft to End Participation in CES Keynotes After 2012
Dec 21, 5:33PM
Following Apple's lead in pulling out of Macworld Expo several years ago, Microsoft today announced that next month's keynote presentation at CES in Las Vegas will be the company's last at the major consumer electronics show. In its announcement, Microsoft cites many of the same factors addressed by Apple as reasons for its ending of trade show participation. Most notably, trade shows have become less relevant for new product announcements given the increasing connectedness and interactivity offered by the Internet and social media, and in many cases the scheduled nature of trade shows imposes undesired rigidity on timeframes for new product announcements.
Our industry moves fast and changes faster. And so the way we communicate with our customers must change in equally speedy ways. To ensure it does, we constantly challenge our assumptions. For example:Microsoft points to its own media and developer events, social media tools, and even its retail stores as venues for connecting with customers that provide better opportunities than trade show keynotes.
- What's the right time and place to make announcements?
- Are we adjusting to the changing dynamics of our customers?
- Are we doing something because it's the right thing to do, or because "it's the way we've always done it"?
Microsoft will maintain a presence at CES going forward with its employees attending the event, but the company will no longer participate in the opening keynote as it has routinely done, and will not sponsor a booth on the exhibition floor after 2012.
If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_macrumors_com_macrumors_all+unsubscribe-minime2005=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks
No comments:
Post a Comment