https://touchreviews.net iPhone, iPad Games, Apps, Reviews, News Thu, 16 Jul 2015 12:57:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3 Mac OS X 10.7 to Get iOS Like Scrollbars? [Back to the Mac] https://touchreviews.net/mac-os-107-ios-scrollbars-mac/ https://touchreviews.net/mac-os-107-ios-scrollbars-mac/#comments Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:26:10 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=11330 Read More]]> Apple’s ‘Back to the Mac’ event is scheduled to go live today at 10:00 AM PDT and we are already hearing rumors about the possible features and enhancements in the next version of Mac OS X. MacStories recently reported that according to their sources Mac OS X 10.7 (rumored to be called Lion) will feature iOS like scrollbars.

The first big news is iOS scroll bars and scrolling behavior are coming to OS X. That means you’ll have to say goodbye to the current Aqua scroll bars and get ready for a more minimal look. Also, the “rubber band” elastic scrolling iOS is famous for is making its first appearance on the desktop, and we’re told it “works really well and feels natural”. Basically, it works like the current inertial scrolling, but when you hit the top or bottom of a scroll view it “rubber bands” down like iOS devices do.

If we consider Apple’s minimalist approach in designing its software then it is certainly possible that we’ll be seeing much cleaner design for Mac OS X version 10.7 and better integration with iOS devices.

]]> https://touchreviews.net/mac-os-107-ios-scrollbars-mac/feed/ 0 iPhone 4 Press Conference: Live Coverage https://touchreviews.net/iphone-4-press-conference-live-coverage/ https://touchreviews.net/iphone-4-press-conference-live-coverage/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:33:38 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=7869 Read More]]> Apple will be holding a special press conference today where the topic will be iPhone 4. The concerns regarding iPhone 4 reception have been growing at an increasing rate and an open letter by Apple to all it’s customers has not proved to be satisfactory.

It is widely believed that Apple will be talking about iPhone 4 reception issues and the antenna design. There have been various rumors and PR experts suggesting that the best strategy for Apple at this stage would be to do a recall and it will be interesting to see how Apple tackles this situation.

We will bring you the all-in-one live feed from all popular news sources and update you with the latest information. We will be updating you with the latest images, details from the iPhone 4 press conference and all other announcements. Live audio/video feed is unlikely to be available however, we will update this page if we find one.

We will also allow live comments and our team will be live a bit early to discuss the event.

Don’t miss this press conference, bookmark and share this page today!

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You don’t need to refresh this page! Live updates will appear below:

]]> https://touchreviews.net/iphone-4-press-conference-live-coverage/feed/ 0 WWDC 2010 New iPhone Keynote Event: Sure Things and Long Shots https://touchreviews.net/wwdc-2010-iphone-keynote-event-long-shots/ https://touchreviews.net/wwdc-2010-iphone-keynote-event-long-shots/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:42:12 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=7147 Read More]]> WWDC Keynote 2010

The day has finally arrived. At 10AM PST Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) chief Steve Jobs will go on stage in San Francisco to officially introduce us all to the new iPhone 4G / HD. Months of endless speculation, rumors, gadget blog wars, and police raids have led to this moment. While much of what we expect out of Moscone Center today is a known factor, some of it is not. Let’s quickly examine then what are sure things and what are long shots out of the accumulated rumors:

iPhone 4G / HD – If Las Vegas was laying odds on the WWDC announcement (and they probably are somewhere on the Strip), this would be the safest bet in the house. We will see a new iPhone 4G / HD today, it will have a front facing camera, and it will look like the much leaked form factor we’ve seen since April. It would take an epic amount of chutzpah for the outcome to be any different. But then again, if Steve Jobs is known for anything, it’s epic amounts of chutzpah.

Verizon iPhone 4G – This isn’t the biggest long shot of the day but I think it may be a close second. There’s an outside chance Verizon might get an iPad data plan to call their own but the iPhone stays firmly in AT&T’s grasp. For now at least. I think when the day comes for AT&T and Apple to part, Apple will chose the nuclear option and start selling an unlocked iPhone direct to market. Bold words I know but bookmark this article and come back in two years when the exclusivity contract comes up. Apple is in the hardware business, not the carrier business. They signed with AT&T just to get the product in the market. Now that the iPhone is the preeminent smartphone, Apple would like nothing better than to see it proliferate everywhere.

iTunes.com/iTunes in the Cloud – This probably has the best chance of happening today outside of the iPhone announcement. With pressure to innovate from Google and LaLa’s technology in their back pocket, Apple is ready to make the leap to cloud-based content. There are probably a lot of unhappy content companies out there this morning but I think Steve has probably convinced them it’s better to get 10 cents for a thousand plays than a dollar for a hundred. Streaming has a whole other set of issues around piracy and content but it makes the ones the movie and music industry are currently worried about go away. The consumer gets lower prices, the ability to buy a personal copy at a slightly higher price, and Apple and the content companies retain control. If they don’t do it today, it’s coming. Soon.

Steaming Apple TV – Don’t take that bet, it’s a long shot. Apple will want to get the bugs worked out of the streaming service first before they start offering dedicated hardware. Look for this around Christmas or in January when the next iteration of the iPad gets announced. Yes I said that. Apple seems to be slipping into a two announcement per year cycle; new hardware and gadgets in January, iPhones in June. Look for streaming Apple TV and new iPads then, not today.

Upgraded Mac Minis – In case you missed the memo, this WWDC is about mobile. Mac Minis with HDMI ports may be a stealth upgrade between now and Christmas; probably right after I buy mine next month with my luck.

Free MobileMe – This is a small but interesting possibility. I could see Apple offering a new MobileMe in a freemium model as a supporting add-on to the new iPhone. Most iPhone users who aren’t currently using MobileMe are avoiding it based on price. Google offers almost everything MobileMe does for free. I think this is an easy thing for Apple to do to win back some eyes for their platform and convince those who might otherwise not even look at it to pay for full service.

Like all Apple predictions, some of these are bound to fail. I fully expect that. But the great thing about reading the Apple tea leaves is that even when you miss a prediction, you still win when they bring out some other great product instead.

Follow our WWDC 2010 keynote all-in-one live feed coverage here.

Poll Question

What’s on your keynote wishlist? Let us know in the comments section.

[Image: AppleInsider]
]]> https://touchreviews.net/wwdc-2010-iphone-keynote-event-long-shots/feed/ 1 Apple CEO at D8 All Things Digital Conference. Round Up https://touchreviews.net/apple-ceo-d8-digital-conference/ https://touchreviews.net/apple-ceo-d8-digital-conference/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:05:58 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=7042 Read More]]> Steve Jobs allthings d

One of the things that is fun about an interview with Steve Jobs is how it seems to blow away a lot of the sinister mystique that surrounds the guy. We spend so much of our time reading, and (in our case) writing about what he thinks that we tend to get a distorted view of the man.

Every now and then he emerges into something resembling reality and gets to answer questions in an environment where we assume he doesn’t have complete control. Of course, he is by his very nature a tightly wound PR engine, and I am sure has prearranged subjects he may not wish to touch on with his interviewers. So our perception of him even in these interviews may be skewed to some degrees also.

Having said that his reaction to initial questions about Apple succeeding Microsoft as the World’s largest tech company were refreshingly genuine and modest. And his willingness to answer questions from the audience was admirable, even if the answers were a little curt or obtuse, when he wanted to curtail the line of questioning. All systems normal then!

In any case my overall impression of the “D8″ interview today was that it was a fairly frank set of answers from Steve, albeit to a set of fairly predictable questions from Walt Mossberg.

The questions on Flash unsurprisingly, and rather tediously “All Things Digital” decided to post online.

Frankly, the more interesting stuff was elsewhere in the interview.

The origins of the iPhone:

On the inception of the iPhone Steve outlined how the first prototypes were actually for a tablet, and that once he saw the interface he put that on hold because he realised Apple could make a phone.

This explains an awful lot about how and why the iPhone and both the iPad are such “whole” devices in so many ways.

App Store Rejections:

On this Steve was both open, whilst expressing frustration at the same time. On the one hand he made the very valid point that Apple is still feeling its way with regards to rejection policies, and sometimes makes rules which look great in black and white, but don’t always translate well into real life application. He cited the rejection of Mark Fiore’s app as an example. Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist, who does political satire.

Apple had a rule which was aimed at stopping political / public figures from being defamed. And, as Steve explained, it never occurred to them that something like Mark’s special brand of humour would fall foul of something like this. Because they simply had not thought of that edge case when constructing their own internal guidelines.

Jobs did go on to say that they had changed the rule, and expected Mark to resubmit, but he didn’t. Instead choosing to criticise Apple. It is obvious that Apple, or rather Jobs, was irritated by this and other people who get rejected on edge cases, and then choose to have “their 15 minutes of fame” over the whole thing.

Steve finished with the barb, ‘We don’t run to the press and say “this guy is a son of a bitch liar!” — we don’t do that.’

Roughly translated I think he is quite reasonably saying that we all make mistakes, and he specifically did say that Apple is still learning how to run this very new business.

On Gizmodo and the “stolen” iPhone 4G / HD:

I think the best way to cover this is just to quote Steve. Though it is worth noting that the whole incident caused much hilarity in the audience and on stage!

“You know, when this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got advice from people who said ‘you gotta just let it slide, you shouldn’t go after a journalist just because they bought stolen property and tried to extort you.’ And I thought deeply about this, and I concluded the worst thing that could happen is if we change our core values and let it slide. I can’t do that. I’d rather quit.”

I get the impression that Steve felt his age a little during that incident, and perhaps did genuinely consider letting the whole thing slide. Then he probably saw one of the inane e-mails or articles penned by one of Gizmodo’s staff members and came to his senses!

On Apple generally, there is no sign of Steve getting bored of running the company any time soon. Ahd he still clearly loves creating more than anything else, in my opinion.

“Nothing makes my day more than getting a random email from someone talking about how cool the iPad is. That’s what keeps me going. That’s what kept me going back then, and now, and will keep me going in the future.”

“One of the keys to Apple is that Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero. We’re organised like a startup. We’re the biggest start up on the planet. We meet for 3 hours every morning and talk about all the business, about what’s going on everywhere. We’re great at figuring out how to divide things up into great teams, and we talk to each other. So what I do all day is meet with teams of people.

I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to come in and work with some of the most brilliant people in the world. We play in the best sandbox…”

On iAd and Admob, Steve simply sees their solution as being neater than anything Google, or anyone else, could come up with.

Quite plainly he states that : “Well we think their ad delivery system sucks!”
This was after a few back and froths about Android, and the whole Google phone being a bit of surprise to Apple. At that point he made it clear that prior to them they had not “got into advertising.”

Well, now Apple is into advertising, and Steve thinks they can do it better than Google. Touche!

Jobs also made a strong case for why integrating operating systems like iPhone OS or Android with TVs is still going to take some work. And offered some prophetic advice for Google.

“The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go to market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidised model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us… ask Google in a few months.”

It seems that with music, books and TV the old guard need to get into line with what consumers want, and some of the vision that companies like Google and Apple have. Until that happens we will still have all the issues we have today with Music, Movies, Telcos, Book Publishers and pretty much any of the old entrenched large corporations which have had control over our entertainment and communications.

That is certainly the message I took when reading between the lines in most of what Steve had to say today when asked about problems with content, pricing and availability on any Apple device. Poignantly, an audience question asked why Disney’s “UP” could not be played via a VGA cable, from an iPad, on a TV, when it was a legitimate digital download as part of a paid-for DVD package.

Steve explained that although they provide the cables, they often have to play by the content providers rules. He explained quite clearly, and obviously with some personal frustration that if they want to get the content at all they have to play by content providers rules – be they wrong or right. And he too shares our pain.

Finally Steve would neither confirm or deny the iPhone 4G / HD being on any other carrier than AT&T, but did acknowledge that it would be a good thing if it had more service providers. At the same time he promised service improvements from AT&T and again praised their efforts at dealing with an explosive new device category, and massive increases in user bandwidth requirements. So our insight is as clear as mud on that question then!

If there was an overall message that I took away from the interview it was this :

Did you catch any of the live blogs, or videos of the Jobs D8 interview? Let us know your view of Steve’s interview in the comments

Steve Jobs on lost iPhone 4G

Steve Jobs On Flash

[allthingsd.com] ]]> https://touchreviews.net/apple-ceo-d8-digital-conference/feed/ 1 Apple CEO to appear at the 8th ‘D: All Things Digital’ https://touchreviews.net/apple-ceo-d8-d-all-things-digital/ https://touchreviews.net/apple-ceo-d8-d-all-things-digital/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:22:10 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=6994 Read More]]> Steve Jobs will today participate in the eight D: All Things Digital (D8), a prominent high-tech and media conference. Apple (AAPL) CEO will be interviewed by Kara Swisher who in a blog post said:

There is much to talk to Jobs about, obviously, including the new iPad, the mobile market and the iPhone, its tense relationship with Google (GOOG) and the next innovations from the Silicon Valley computer icon.

The conference will also feature other speakers including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Jobs-Gates video from 2007

[kara.allthingsd.com] ]]> https://touchreviews.net/apple-ceo-d8-d-all-things-digital/feed/ 0 Apple iPhone OS 4.0 Keynote Event Roundup https://touchreviews.net/apple-iphone-os-40-keynote-event-roundup/ https://touchreviews.net/apple-iphone-os-40-keynote-event-roundup/#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:20:34 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=5998 Read More]]> iPhone OS 4 Live keynote event

Apple has certainly been on a streak lately. The public release of the iPad has been a complete success and now the details of the much anticipated iPhone OS 4.0. The new operating system has been the main object of speculation and rumor since the unveiling of the Apple tablet in January. Today’s announcement finally threw back the curtain and gave us all a vision of the future of the iPhone and iPad platforms. While the tech media machine discerned and speculated most of the features beforehand, there were still a few surprises no one saw coming.

Let’s review the seven main features of the announcement:

This was the big feature everyone has been waiting for. While it remains to be seen whether this is true multitasking in the sense that the application runs in the background or is preserved in some kind of frozen state, this feature should enhance the iPhone experience greatly. What we do know is multitasking will support audio, VoIP, location and navigation applications running in the background. In addition to this multitasking will include enhanced push notifications, local notifications, task completion, and fast app switching.

One of the main complaints about the iPhone user interface is the endless succession of home screens full of icons. The Folders feature allows a user to create a pile of icons that appear as a folder on their home screen. Tapping the folder provides access to all of the apps in the folder.

iPhone OS 4.0 will enhance the native Mail app in several significant ways. The most significant is a unified inbox. All of a user’s e-mail can now be delivered to one location. On the e-mail side, messages can now be organized by thread and attachments opened with an external app identified for that purpose or file extension.

Apple will bring the iBooks application to the iPhone.

iPhone OS 4.0 will bring a number of enhancements relevant to Enterprise users. They include increased data protection, mobile device management, wireless app distribution, multiple Exchange accounts, Exchange Server 2010 support and SSL VPN support.

This was an enhancement no one saw coming. GameCenter provides an Xbox Live type interface for iPhone gaming. It integrates social gaming, friend invites, matchmaking, leaderboards and achievements. It will be interesting to see how developers use this enhancement and how much it cuts into the business of applications like OpenFeint.

iAd is Apple’s entry into mobile advertising. While this may seem like a rather mundane enhancement, iAd will feature rich, in-app interactive and video advertisements. The advertisements demoed at the presentation seemed more like applications than static ads. Apple will sell and host the ads and split revenue 60/40 in favor of developers.

Multitasking was easily the most exciting and interesting announcement. The single criticism most used against the operating system is now gone and if Apple is prepared to release it, you know it has been tested and works extremely well. It may not be the full, preemptive multitasking users are familiar with from a desktop computer paradigm but I think it will be enough to make users happy without running into the problems encountered on mobile platforms like Android.

The move to version 4.0 seems like more of a major upgrade than the move to version 3.0 a year ago. I think this has a lot to do with the fact the iPhone OS now supports a major device in the iPad. I think it’s also indicative of Apple’s vision for the future, a vision where the iPhone OS and its ancestors are the future of Apple computing. Sure, Mac OS will always exist as a full operating system, but as Apple shifts focus from computers to consumer electronics the iPhone OS represents the lightweight operating system required to make such a change. Version 4.0 will be available in the summer for the iPhone and iPod Touch and in the fall for the iPad. The iPad, iPhone 3GS, and 3rd generation Touch will be able to run all of the new features. The iPhone 3G and 2nd generation Touch will run most features but notably multitasking will not be available. No word on pricing as of yet.

What are your thoughts on today’s announcements? Did Apple fill some of the major gaps in the iPhone OS? Would you be compelled to buy a product that runs the new operating system? Are you encouraged by Apple’s vision of the future based on the new OS? Leave us a comment and let us know.

You can read our complete  live coverage here.

]]> https://touchreviews.net/apple-iphone-os-40-keynote-event-roundup/feed/ 3 Live Coverage. Apple iPhone OS 4.0 Sneak Peek Keynote Event https://touchreviews.net/live-coverage-apple-iphone-os-4-keynote-event/ https://touchreviews.net/live-coverage-apple-iphone-os-4-keynote-event/#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:40:44 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=5983 Read More]]> apple iphone event OS 4 live coverage

With less than a week after a major product launch Apple’s announcement of iPhone OS 4.0 event was quite unexpected. Apple will give us a sneak peek into the future of iPhone OS later today. The event will be live at Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino.

There have been many rumors suggesting different features which could possibly be announced today. The iPhone has been often criticized for not supporting multitasking for third party apps and iPhone OS 4.0 might add this highly anticipated feature. The next generation of iPhone OS could also support Apple’s new mobile Ad network (iAds?)

Apple ‘future of iPhone OS’ Event will begin on Thursday, April 8th at 10AM PT. We will start broadcasting the Live feed by 9:00AM.

Bookmark and share this page as we bring you the all-in-one live feed from all popular news sources. We will be updating you with the latest images and features of iPhone OS 4.0 and all other announcements.

No need to refresh the page!

Don’t miss this event, check your time zone:

07:00AM – Hawaii
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11:00AM – Mountain
12:00PM – Central
01:00PM – Eastern
06:00PM – London
07:00PM – Paris

News source: Engadget and Gizmodo
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