Apple released several beta versions of iOS 6.1 to developers and is now set to release it to the public. The company was reportedly testing a new beta of 6.1, the Golden Master version, which usually remains unchanged with the public release. According to German site, iFun, Apple is going to release the GM version to developers very soon.

The site cited a ‘reliable source’ and also mentioned that the update had gone through “extensive internal testing”. It is no surprise that Apple is now being extremely thorough with its iOS updates, after the ousting of iOS chief Scott Forstall who led failed projects such as Siri and Maps.

The final version of iOS 6.1 is slated for release next Friday or the following Monday, although there will not be many end user features included in the update. iOS 6.1 will include features for developers to include new features into their applications to integrate iOS Maps, as well as fixes for boarding passes in Passbook and changes in Safari. Users will see some changes in Siri, most notably the ability to purchase Fandango tickets via voice command and a feature that asks security questions when setting up a new device.

Apple normally releases two to three betas prior to releasing iOS updates to the public, and considering that three betas have already come to fruition, this may be the last and final release. The iOS 6.1 update, upon public release will be compatible with the iPhone 5/4S/4/3GS as well as the second, third and fourth generation iPad, iPad mini, and the fourth and fifth generation iPod touch.

{Via AppleInsider}

On Thursday, Google added Street View to its new web version of Google Maps. The update allows smartphone users on multiple platforms to get walking and transit directions, and now street view. The update allows iPhone 5 and iOS 6 users to once again use Google Maps on their iPhone, with Apple CEO Tim Cook suggesting that users can open Google Maps in Safari and then save it as a web clip.

The update was likely released early in the morning, as it took a while for it to show up for all users. The new feature began to show up in the United States and parts of Canada at first, followed by countries all around the world. Users can now pan around in 360 street view after Apple replaced it with their own iOS Maps application, complete with their own cartography.

Currently, it appears that Google is adding major cities to the “web app” and is stil working on it. According to AppleInsider, the web version is not fully stable and closing the app resets the page fairly quickly.

Google’s move to implement a web based maps is a very bold one and shows the leverage that they have in cloud based operations. Many of these features will also likely be optimized for an iPhone app in the near future and is being tested on the web version.

Apple recently released iOS 6 Beta 4 to developers, adding several new features in settings and to existing apps. Following the release, the developer community began to notice a major change in the update, noting that the dedicated YouTube app on iOS was no longer included.

The YouTube app has been a part of iOS since 2007 and was introduced alongside the iPod touch. The latest beta arrived as an OTA update at first, followed by release online in the Developer Center. As with all betas in the past, the latest version, with Build 10A5376e arrives just three weeks after the last Build 10A5355d.

Developers have noticed several changes in the update, including a new “Wi-Fi Plus Cellular” feature in Settings which allows the iPhone to fall back on cellular data when WiFi does not work properly. Other features include an update to the Passbook app, giving it a dedicated section in the App Store and displaying apps compatible with Passbook. A new “Bluetooth Sharing” feature also allows users to determine which devices can share data via Bluetooth.

With all of these updated features, as well as the removal of YouTube, Apple appears to be cleansing iOS of technology from other companies. Apple commented on the removal of the YouTube app to The Verge, saying the following:

Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store.

YouTube also commented on the removal:

We are working with Apple to make sure we have the best possible YouTube experience for iOS users.

Google’s presence in iOS is now very limited and will be transferred to individual apps on the App Store as opposed to being integrated into the OS itself. This first began when Apple replaced Google with Baidu as the default search engine, followed by the removal of Google Maps in iOS, and now the removal of YouTube. iOS 6 is expected to be released later this Fall in the September / October timeframe alongside the next generation iPhone 5.

{via MacRumors}

Early Saturday, NYTimes reported that Apple Inc. (AAPL) was looking to invest “hundreds of millions” in microblogging company, Twitter. The report assumes that either Apple is investing or purcahsing a large stake in the company and that the two companies have been in talks in recent months over such a matter.

Apple has considered an investment in the hundreds of millions of dollars, one that could value Twitter at more than $10 billion, up from an $8.4 billion valuation last year, these people said. They declined to be named because the discussions were private.

There is no guarantee that the two companies, which are not in negotiations at the moment, will come to an agreement. But the earlier talks are a sign that they may form a stronger partnership amid intensifying competition from the likes of Google and Facebook.

However, The Wall Street Journal also came out and negated the claims made in the NYTime report, leading speculators to remain skeptical about such a deal between the two companies. Apple has been dabbling with social media in recent years, pushing for its own Ping network in iTunes, which failed to attract users. Since then, the Cupertino company has heavily incorporated Twitter into both iOS and OS X.

Apple has mixed in Twitter under the share sheets in multiple applications, including Safari on all of its devices and even Notification Center in iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion. Although Facebook will also be a part of the operating systems soon, Twitter remains tightly integrated.

It is unclear whether Apple still in talks with Twitter or if the two companies even had contact with each other. However, such a deal involving “hundreds of millions” might not justify the profitability Cupertino based company could possibly extract.

{via MacRumors}

Apple announced iOS 6 during the company’s annual WWDC conference, and showcased some of the main features of the new update including a revamped Maps application and Siri improvements. The Cupertino company released an initial beta to developers directly after the conference, allowing developers to test the new features on the their devices and then released iOS 6 beta 2 in late June.

On Monday, Apple released iOS 6 beta 3 to developers, fixing bugs and adding a number of new features. This latest beta comes comes as Build 10A5355d, about three weeks after the last with Build 10A5338d. Some of the features of iOS 6 beta 3 include:

• Roadwork and traffic accidents showing up in Maps app
• Answer and Decline buttons for FaceTime calls have returned
• iMessage on iPad now accepting phone number as valid contact info
• Greater 3D Flyover coverage in Maps
• Glyphs for bookmarks, Reading List, and history in Safari
• Auto-brightness changes gradually

One of the other main features noticed was a change under the Navigation settings, giving users the option to measure distance in kilometers or meters, adjust the volume of the navigation voice, and providing map labels in either normal or large that can display in a local language or strictly English.

Apple’s iOS 6 betas continue to improve with each release and give developers the chance to test each feature and use it with their own apps. Apple is expected to release several more betas before the final public release, which is expected during the September / October timeframe. It is also likely that the public version of iOS 6 will release alongside the next generation iPhone 5 which is also expected during the same timeframe.

{via MacRumors — Image Credit: 9to5Mac}

Microsoft has just released ‘Bing for iPad’ which brings their “decision engine” to Apple’s tablet. The app is available for free under reference category and has already received great App Store reviews with 5 star ratings.

Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs has appreciated Microsoft’s efforts in the past in making Bing for mobile devices fully HTML 5 compatible and the search engine has managed to offer some unique features which provides added value. iOS already supports Bing as a search option in mobile Safari. You can change the default search engine in the settings menu where you can choose between Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Bing for iPad aims to bring “you closer to what you’re looking for by delivering a visually rich, touch-enabled way to search and browse news, movies, Bing homepage images, local businesses, popular searches and much more.”

Some of the features include:

• Swipe through our touch enabled movie listings, news articles, trending topics, local businesses and other rich, immersive search results.
• Stay current with the latest news, traffic, weather, stock quotes, movies and popular searches from the main screen.
• Bing Local and Map integration to help you find the places you are looking for from directions with real-time tracking to immersive road, traffic, aerial and “bird’s eye” views.
• Follow the latest news and trending topics with beautifully iPad optimized results with rich images and magazine inspired layouts.
• Tell Bing what you are searching for with voice activated search.
• Wonderful touch friendly, grid view of image searches, with source site details and full page preview.
• Easily navigate between Bing results and websites as Bing frames the site to make it easy to return the search or to launch a new one.

Bing for iPad looks great and with all the features listed above it is certainly worth checking out. Which search engine do you use on your iPad? Let us know what you think about this app in the comments.

{via 9to5 Mac}

After teasing us with its new features at the iPad 2 event early this month, Apple has finally made iOS 4.3 available for public release, introducing some new features to the operating system that are well worth the update. Along with enabling the Personal Hotspot feature for AT&T customers – and those signed up to other carriers worldwide – iOS 4.3 also allows AirPlay within third-party applications, makes the Safari browser faster, brings new multitouch gestures to the iPad, and introduces a new iTunes Home Sharing feature. Here’s a brief rundown of everything that’s new:

Personal Hotspot debuted on the Verizon iPhone 4, but now it’s available to anyone who is signed up to a carrier that supports data tethering. It’s a feature that enables you to turn your iPhone into a personal Wi-Fi hotspot and share its data connection with your other devices. Perfect if you have a Wi-Fi model iPad and you’d like to share your mobile data on the move, or you want to browse the web on your notebook when there’s no Wi-Fi around. If you have iOS 4.3 installed, you can enable this feature within the general settings, however, be sure your carrier supports it, and that you have a tethering plan before you use it. There are stories of many carriers allowing you to use the feature without a tethering plan, but charging you excessive fees when you get your bill at the end of the month.

Apple has made some changes to the Safari browser in iOS and introduced a “Nitro Javascript engine” which makes web browsing faster. Safari seems to be a much more pleasant experience after installing the 4.3 firmware – not that it was an unpleasant one before.

AirPlay is now system-wide, allowing you to stream content to your AppleTV from the Photos app, iTunes previews, websites, and third-party applications that support the feature. It was previously only available to a select few Apple applications, but now you can enjoy the feature a great deal more. Further more, you can also stream slideshows – complete with transitions – to your AppleTV from the Photos application on your iOS device.

After many, many requests for this feature from unhappy iPad users, Steve Jobs finally gave in and allowed us to customize how we’d like the switch on our iPads to function. Instead of just muting our device, we can now change it back to a rotation lock. Hooray!

iOS 4.3 also brings some new multitouch gestures to the iPad, which was a surprise to many in this release. These gestures were available in early 4.3 betas, but Apple told developers they were simply for testing, and that they wouldn’t actually feature in the final 4.3 release. But they’re here, and they’re great. Swiping up on your iPad with 4 fingers will reveal your multitasking tray, and pinching with all 5 fingers will close the application you’re in and take you to the home screen.

A few more minor changes were also made in iOS 4.3: you can now output HD video using the Apple Digital AV Adapter introduced at the iPad 2 event; there are some new features for Ping which enable you to receive push notifications for comments and follow requests; new message settings let you change how many times to repeat a new message alert; and there are also a couple of bug fixes.

All in all iOS 4.3 is certainly worth the update, unless, of course, you like to jailbreak your device. In which case, you’ll need to wait until an official jailbreak for this firmware is released, or you’ll be subject to Apple’s restrictions once more.

Firstly, Apple has made some improvements to Safari, which it claims will significantly increase performance using the ‘Nitro Javascript engine.’ With this new engine, iOS runs Javascript more than twice as fast as before, and is a lot nippier.

iTunes home sharing was next on Steve’s list; a new feature that allows you to wirelessly stream iTunes content– such as music, movies, and TV shows – over your home network to your iOS device. Why this wasn’t integrated into AirPlay somehow, I don’t know, but AirPlay was up next:

AirPlay will be even better in iOS 4.3, improving slideshows with cool built-in transitions, and enabling you to stream content to your AppleTV from apps and websites. This means if you’re watching a video in YouTube or Safari, you can now enjoy it on your TV – a feature I’ve been looking forward to for a while.

After saying it would never happen and causing some chaos amongst iPad users, Steve finally gave in and and provided us with the option to customize our iPad’s switch in iOS 4.3. You can now change it back to a rotation lock if you’re not keen on using it as a silent switch.

iOS 4.3 also introduces the new ‘Personal Hotspot’ feature we’ve seen already in the Verizon iPhone 4, however, this will only be available to iPhone 4 users. Personal Hotspot allows you to share you iPhone’s data connection with other devices by turning it into a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Look out for our next post on PhotoBooth, iMovie, and Garageband for iPad!

The guys over at Net Applications recently released some interesting information about various operating systems, both mobile and desktop, and how they compare to each other with regards to web share. Apple’s iOS platform, with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices combined, rose to 1.18% of all web usage. When you consider mobile browsing in total reached an all-time high of 2.8% that’s impressive stuff.

Why did Apple’s iOS see its highest score to date? The smart money is on the release of the iPad and iPhone 4’s continued high demand drawing in new users to mobile web browsing.

As for the competition, Android handsets accounted for just 0.24% of web use – turns out having more handsets than apps doesn’t automatically get you great results! is it possible Android users use their phones differently?  Maybe they are just too busy scanning QR codes!

The report also measures desktop usage and it’s not great reading for Microsoft. Internet Explorer, the Redmond company’s own internet browser, saw its share fall to 59.65% – still nothing to sniff at. Windows in general also suffered a loss, with a result of 91%. Still remarkably high.

According to the article in AppleInsider, OS 4.0 will use an Expose-like interface for multitasking capabilities. If you’re not familiar with Mac OS X, Expose is a feature that displays all of the applications a user has running in thumbnails on the screen. The user can select the application they want to use and are immediately taken to it. Windows 7 has similar functionality. In the forthcoming iPhone OS version, the user will double-click the home key to bring up a list of icons or thumbnails of the currently running applications and touch one to open it.

The one thing I think few people realize about the iPhone OS is its current capability for multitasking. It was originally written, envisioned, and exists today as a multitasking operating system. This fact is displayed every time you listen to music while surfing the web on Safari. When people say they want multitasking what they are really saying is they want Apple to remove the artificial block they’ve placed in the software. This block keeps third party applications from making use of the operating system’s multitasking capabilities.

And isn’t it about time they did? One of the main things all the Android fanboys wave around as proof of their technical superiority is multitasking. I understand Apple’s reasoning behind putting a block on multitasking but now that the operating system has matured, and is most likely the future of Apple computing, it makes perfect sense to enable it for all. Especially now with the iPad relying on it as well. It will be interesting to see both how they implement it and the user interface on it.

One of the problems with multitasking on a mobile device versus a full computer is resourcing. While mobile devices are becoming more powerful everyday, they still do not rival a full blown computer. I would bet Apple limits the running applications to 4 or 5 to keep a reasonable battery life and keep some person from running 20 apps at a time and then complaining about performance.

So on this day the first of April the official iPad reviews came out (and you can read my favorites here from Andy Ihnatko), let’s look ahead to what Apple has in store for us next. We may be a restive bunch of users but Apple never fails to impress us. I think iPhone OS 4.0 won’t be any different.

What do you think of the introduction of full multitasking to the iPhone and iPad? Is it the last great missing piece of the puzzle or too little too late? Will multitasking finally convince you to take up an Apple device? Let us know in the comments.

The iPad guided tour focuses on how one can take advantage of its unique features and large display. We found a few details in the guided tour which we thought were interesting to note.

Safari

Safari on iPad will allow you to access your favourite sites by tapping the address bar to reveal new bookmarks bar.

Another interesting feature to note was that the browser will allow you to play videos without leaving the page.

Mail

The iPad mail app will display an image of the sender on the right side.

Photos

Apple’s native photos app for the iPad will enable you to to skim the pictures with the bar at the bottom in addition to viewing them by flicking your finger on the screen.

If you own an iMac and use iPhoto to sync your your albums then you will be able to view your photos in Events, Faces and Places.

When you tap the options menu in the Photos app you will be able to share photos by sending it to your MobileMe gallery.

Apple has enhanced the Photos apps to a great extent and expects you to use your iPad as a digital photo frame. You will be able to play your own Music from the iTunes library and select transitions from the available options (Cube, Dissolve, Ripple, Wipe, Origami)

YouTube

When you tap on a video to watch it you can see the details below the video. While the video is playing you will be able to add it your favourites, Share, Rate or Flag it.

When you are done watching the video, you can access the sidebar on the right to see related videos, more videos by the same user or add a comment.

iTunes

Apple has integrated Genius in the new iPad iTunes app, this will allow you to discover new music based on your existing music library and purchases.

iBooks

The iPad features a built-in dictionary which will enable you to look up a particular word while reading an ebook using the iBooks app.

The screen orientation lock will allow you to read eBooks in your preferred angle without changing the device orientation.

Keynote

Keynote for iPad is a powerful app to create stunning presentations and it features some advanced features which can be implemented with simple multitouch gestures. You can style the pictures in the presentations with picture frames, shadows, reflections, control the border, angle of the shadow and even adjust the opacity. You can add advance transitions  to your presentation by selecting Magic Move and let keynote build sophisticated transitions for you.

You can share your presentations via email, upload to iWork.com or export it as a keynote or pdf file.

Pages

If you’re working on a large document with many pages then you can use the page navigator by sliding your finger on the side to preview the pages and jump to the exact page you were working on.