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Wordpress for iOS gets a new user interface
The Wordpress app for iOS has been updated again, and it features a brand-new interface for browsing, writing and editing posts on the popular blogging platform. As you can see above, the new interface apes Facebook's "side menu" (as have a few other big apps lately), and the update also fixes some other bugs, and adds some performance improvements in regards to emoticons and notifications in general. Wordpress for iOS is an open-source project, and thus you can download it straight from the App Store any time for free.
A possible explanation for the iOS New Year's Do Not Disturb bug
If you've been living under a blissfully silent rock for the last couple of days, it may have escaped your notice that an annoying bug in iOS means scheduled Do Not Disturb periods don't automatically end. Apple's response was a rather weak KB article that amounts to a shrug and a claim that the problem will "resume normal functionality after January 7, 2013." [UPDATE: as pointed out by Liam Gladdy in a comment written an embarrassingly short period of time after this story going live, there's something wrong with the reasoning below. The period of January 1st-6th is actually the first ISO week of 2013, not the last week of 2012, so (at least as written here) the explanation cannot be correct. The bug could be related to the ISO week calculation, or it might not; however the working out in this article is definitely flawed in several ways. The blogger responsible has been taken out the back and shot.] Digging into the problem I did some manual testing by winding my iPhone's clock forward several years and setting different times to turn DND on and off again. You can replicate this easily by scheduling one minute of DND, changing your iPhone's date and time, and watching to see if DND correctly switches on and then off again. If you try this too, note that you'll get some scary-looking warnings about mail server SSL certificates, not having backed your iPhone up for several years, and some nagging about app updates. It should be safe to click through those. To me, it seemed that in the years I tested (2013, 2014 and 2015), as long as the "Enable from..." time set in the Do Not Disturb schedule settings fell after midnight on the first Monday of each year, then it would work correctly. Conversely, I would see wonky behaviour (a technical term, there) until that first Monday. A similar pattern was recorded by MacRumors forum poster "stevem1981," who tested all the way up to 2024. Note that he talks about the "fix date" being Sunday, rather than Monday, because he's scheduling the DND after midnight, as he says in the last sentence. But stevem1981 recorded some weirdness, too; like in 2016, when the bug doesn't occur even though the week starts on a Friday. Or 2017, when the bug happens through as far as January 8 even though the year starts on a Sunday. So it's not as simple as "it doesn't work until the first Monday of the year." More on that in a moment. This is enough information that we can theorise how DND works, and what is going wrong. A possible explanation Firstly, note that the bug is related to DND switching off, not on. The device always moves into DND mode successfully, but never comes back out of it. Secondly, note that the bug occurs when the "Enable from..." time is before the first Monday in the year. That suggests that the way DND works, under the hood, is that when it switches on through a schedule, a timer is kicked off (in some background daemon) in iOS; that timer is responsible for turning DND back off again at the appropriate time. The timer has problems during something a bit like, but not exactly, the first calendar week of the year. Now, to programmers who've done a lot of work with date and time handling (like me; I write airline flight systems for a living, which require a lot of heavy timezone math) "it's broken during something like the first week of the year" immediately suggests a moderately obscure problem related to the ISO week date. This is a slightly weird definition of the year that you get from many date manipulation libraries by specifying that you want the year as "YYYY", as opposed to the more common "yyyy". It's derived from an ISO standard that defines the first week of the year as starting on "the Monday that contains the first Thursday in January". Under this definition, the first few days of the year that we write as "2013" are actually counted as being part of 2012 instead; 2013 doesn't begin until Monday, January 7. It's the sort of thing accountants like to use to keep things neat and tidy. Interestingly, January 7 is exactly when Apple says the problem will go away. Ah hah! So, for 2013, the 1st-6th of January will show as being part of 2012 if the developer specifies "YYYY" in his or her date string, rather than being part of 2013. This means that when DND automatically switches on, it will have a calculated switch off date of sometime in 2012, which is now in the past so it will never turn off. I once made this mistake in my own code, as it's very easy to type "YYYY" instead of "yyyy"; it seems some nameless Apple engineer has done the same in iOS's Do Not Disturb function, but only in the automatic switch off time, not the switch on time part. In my case, the problem was caught in automated testing and never went live. The Apple engineer has been less fortunate. I'm not the only one who is thinking along these lines. iOS dev Patrick McCarron mooted it on Twitter, and MacRumors forum poster "akac" had the same theory. Charles Arthur wrote the story up for the Guardian and linked to a code sample by Chris Cieslak that clearly reproduces the issue using Apple's NSCalendar and NSDateFormatter libraries. Apple's response On the one hand, I feel sorry for Apple. Presumably this issue had gone completely unnoticed until January 1, and even if the fix is merely changing "YYYY" to "yyyy" there's no way it can get a patch written for iOS, run through internal testing to ensure nothing else was accidentally broken, then released to the world before January 7. So all Apple can really do here is say "sorry, but the problem will go away by itself"... whilst also putting a permanent fix into some future iOS release, of course. On the other hand, Apple's response is rubbish. Coming on the heels of high-profile problems with Daylight Savings in 2010, 2011 and 2012 (plus some oddity with Siri), and most recently Calendar.app crashes if you have an all-day appointment on April 1 2013 (link via Charles Arthur), it wouldn't be unfair to describe Apple's reputation for date and time handling as "rather poor." Seeing as how Apple has basically all the money in the world, and seeing as how bugs like this are quite easily caught with thorough unit testing, you'd hope that this isn't the sort of thing that Apple would put in a shipping release of iOS. Having allowed this rather silly bug to slip through anyway, I think the least Apple could offer us was some crumb of embarrassment or apology. I'm not expecting or demanding it prostrate itself with wailing and gnashing of teeth; just suggesting a little bit of humility might not have gone amiss here. Instead we get a Gallic shrug of a KB article that blandly says, in essence, "scheduled DND is broken. Stop scheduling it that way." I think that's a poor show, and an example of how Apple's minimal attitude to corporation communication will end up making this a bigger story than it should have been because it simply irritates people.
Google adds spreadsheet creation and editing to mobile versions
Google has added the capability to both create and edit spreadsheets to its Google Drive apps, so you can now calculate and tally up whatever you like in a spreadsheet while out on the go. Users could previously browse shared spreadsheets on the app, but the latest update, for version 1.2.0, brings full spreadsheet editing capability in for all users. The update also adds a new screen to view recent Drive uploads, and you can also now upload to Google Drive directly from a mobile device. Just use the "Open in..." feature in whatever app your document is currently sitting in, and Google Drive should appear as an option. Open it up there, and the doc will automatically be uploaded to Google's cloud service. Pretty snazzy. Of course, Google Drive remains a free service (at least to start) and the app is still a free download.
Firefox 17 drops OS X 10.5 Leopard support, adds integrated Facebook Messenger
Firefox 17 is out of beta, but the biggest story for us Mac users is what it doesn't do, namely support OS X 10.5 Leopard. That's right, Mozilla's browser has moved on, so if you're still running 10.5, this latest version is not for you. But it does add a new "Social API," which Facebook has already used to bring an in-browser Messenger interface, and there are a number of new performance improvements and an "updated Awesome Bar experience" to check out as well. Odds are that the 10.5 cutoff won't catch too many people any more, considering we've had three big OS updates since then (heck, Safari 6 doesn't run past 10.7.5). But if you are one of those with a Mac that still needs 10.5, you can of course keep running Firefox 16 for as long as you want. You just won't be able to update it any more going forward. [via Engadget]
YouMail updates, now allows 'numberless messaging'
We covered YouMail back in February of last year -- it's a voicemail replacement app for iOS, which allows you to access and send voicemails completely outside of the standard voicemail interface. If you use voicemail a lot, YouMail features a lot of extra options and ways to handle all of those voicemail messages coming in. The app's recently been updated, and among the new features included is the ability to now send voicemail messages completely within the YouMail app itself, instead of depending on a cell phone network to do so. Again, depending on your plan and your usage patterns, this could be extremely useful. For business users especially, who need to send and receive perhaps dozens of voicemails a day, an app like YouMail can be very helpful, and could even save on cellphone minutes and other charges. YouMail is free to download, and you can sign up for an account within the app. For many users, Apple's built-in visual voicemail is more than enough to handle any messages that appear on iOS, but for voicemail power users, YouMail's latest update makes it an even more helpful service than before.
Duo Games reveals Gameloft-branded iOS controller, coming very soon
iOS publisher Gameloft has teamed up with Duo Games to make a Bluetooth-powered controller for iOS games, called the Duo Gamer controller. As you can see above, the controller comes with a tablet stand for your iPad. It features a d-pad and four buttons (as is pretty standard for these sorts of things), plus two analog sticks for FPS look/shoot movement or anything else developers want to use them for. The big feature of this controller is in the software. It's co-branded with Gameloft, which means that all of Gameloft's popular iOS games will work with it out of the box. That includes big series like NOVA, Modern Combat, and the upcoming Wild Blood, all big-budget mobile titles that borrow heavy influence from console games, where these analog sticks are used as well. In other words, Gameloft is trying to bring the full console experience to Apple's tablet, courtesy of this gamepad. Presumably the API for this controller will be open (ideally, it would also work with the iCade standard, but IGN doesn't mention whether that's the case in its writeup or not), so any developer will be able to program their games to work with it. Even if not, however, the Gameloft library has a large audience as is, and just knowing any future titles will be compatible will go a long way toward pleasing fans of the company's games. The Duo Gamer controller is set to show up in stores right around now, for an MSRP of US$79.99.
Digital Battle Chest now includes Wrath of the Lich King
As time marches forward, so too does the digital edition of the WoW Battle Chest. Not only are new purchasers able to get all the content from World of Warcraft and its first two expansions in one easy purchase, but in addition, all current World of Warcraft subscribers, even those that have never bought either Wrath of the Lich King or The Burning Crusade, will have access to all the content available in both expansions. This is an extremely positive change for a variety of reasons, including (but not limited to) those of you who want to use Refer a Friend on a second account for the Obsidian Nightwing, or giving the game as a gift to a friend or loved one to check it out. With so many expansions under the bridge (we're up to four as of next week) it's good to give players a leg up on the content. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Instacast pricing raises hackles: are apps bought or rented? [Updated]
Update: I made a mistake about Instacast's support for notifications in the original draft of this article. Please read my corrections at the end. My apologies, readers. --Rich The release of Instacast v2.0 ruffled some feathers recently. Vemedio, publishers of the popular podcasting app, have taken the unusual step of switching business models with the new release. The old version of the app cost US$2.99; now it's $0.99 for the basic version, with an in-app purchase (IAP) to upgrade to Instacast Pro for a further $1.99. However, several features that used to be in the v1.0 app, like push notifications (update: see note at end of post) and the ability to re-order podcasts in the list, have moved to the Pro version. This means existing customers who upgrade to the new releases have to pay again to access them. (I'm going to dub this tactic the Instacast Maneuver.) Unsurprisingly, this hasn't gone down too well with some longtime customers, who feel they are being unreasonably double-dipped. Angry one-star reviews for the latest version are accumulating in iTunes -- although, to be fair, they are far outnumbered by positive reviews by people who like the new interface. I think this is an interesting story, and it ties into something I've been meaning to write for a long time about the non-intuitive meanings of "ownership" in our increasingly on-demand all-digital world. "It's only two bucks!" One of the most common reactions to the criticism is that it really isn't much money and, basically, people should stop whining. As accurately stated by Harry Marks, we spend more money than this on bad coffee without blinking. Software upgrades of OS X cost $29, and Windows or Photoshop (amongst many others) can cost hundreds of dollars -- does two bucks matter? Certainly, I think it's absolutely fair to say that it's not a lot of money to anyone who can afford an iPhone or even an iPod touch in the first place. We're talking about devices that cost hundreds of dollars -- thousands when often-mandatory cellular contracts are added on. But... Between my iPhone and iPad, I have at least 250 third-party apps. Many of those were free, but if just a fifth of my apps dinged me $2 via the Instacast Manoeuvre, I'd be looking at $100. That's not chickenfeed to me and it probably isn't to you either. So it's my contention that even if you think $2 for Instacast 2.0 is fantastic value, there's still a debate to be had here about value to the end user. If, like Seth Clifford, you don't love Instacast but merely think it "sucked the least of all the [podcasting] apps"; well, then that conversation takes on a different tone. "Support the devs" A similar argument commonly advanced to silence critics is that Instacast is a written by a small dev who needs the money; if you like the app, is it going to kill you to pay a little more for a new version? This is the angle the Vemedio company blog takes and it's certainly one I have some time for. Instacast isn't a top-tier app; many iOS users don't care about podcasts and most of the those who do are satisfied by Apple's built-in support. By definition of what the app does, Instacast is chasing a quite small niche of users and it shares those users with a number of high quality competing apps. So Vemedio needs to establish a regular income stream, hopefully enough to support the firm and permit future development of the app. Presumably, the users want that, so surely it's churlish of them to complain about being asked to chip in a few bucks? The problem is that many of them feel ripped off. Firstly, Vemedio took the unusual step of moving existing features into the extra-cost Pro version of the app. That's a questionable decision. Secondly, because of the App Store rules, there's no way for Vemedio to charge upgraders a reduced fee; it's all or nothing. Which brings us to... "It's all Apple's fault!" The App Stores both Mac and iOS restricts developers to well-defined ways to make money from their software: charge upfront, charge via In-App Purchase for add-ons, and/or charge subscriptions for ongoing services. Notably missing, as veteran Mac developer Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster has written extensively, is any sort of paid upgrade option. Imagine you're GadgetSoft and you've just released WidgetThing v1.0 to great acclaim. All ten of its main features are popular. You have some great ideas for how to expand and improve it, but it's going to take a good chunk of time and effort to do so. At the end of that effort, you'll be able to release WidgetThing v2.0 with five new features in only one of two ways: as an in-place upgrade, meaning all your existing customers get it for free. Or as an entirely new app, in which case your existing customers have to pay all over again. Economics theory tells us that WidgetThing v2.0 should be priced for new customers according to its 15 features, but priced for existing customers according to the extra five features it has over v1.0. It has different values to those two groups of customers, so should have different prices too. Apple, for whatever inscrutable reason, doesn't let app makers do this. Charging longstanding customers full whack for upgrades is likely to be perceived as gouging; giving them upgrades in perpetuity for free is no way to run a business. Inevitably, some app makers simply won't bother. Chances are there are some fantastic v2.0 or v3.0 apps that have never left the drawing board because the developers simply couldn't justify it economically. But why is it so bad to just give updates away for free? Isn't that a bit greedy? The answer is... The race to the bottom We only have ourselves to blame. Picture the dawn of the App Store back in 2008 as a group of users in the middle of a big circle of developers. No-one knew how much to charge for anything; these were untested waters, an entirely new business model for consumers and creators. Nervous developers stepped up and pitched price points and users started buying apps. The savviest developers watched each other like hawks, nudging prices up and down in response to each other -- but mostly down, and down, and down. About nineteen metaphorical seconds later, the nervous circle had turned into the bellowing hustle of the NYSE's trading floor, with everyone hollering lower and lower prices until many apps hit rock bottom: $0.99. The average price of an app today is $2.00, and the modal price is surely the dollar-store low water mark. Look at the initial iTunes reviews of any app costing more than three bucks and someone will inevitably call it expensive. We know that many apps lose money; I have my doubts about the survey those results were drawn from but I think the general conclusion that only a lucky few devs make serious money from the App Store is a pretty common sense one. The race for the bottom -- the race we all subconsciously encourage whenever we held out to buy a $1.99 app in case it goes down to $0.99 in a sale -- means devs of even moderately successful apps are often left struggling for revenue. Is it any wonder developers need to resort to every method they can think of to make ends meet? The workaround Surely this is all a storm in a teacup. Why can't existing users of Instacast v1 simply not upgrade to the new version? Well, Apple doesn't make that very easy. There's no way to mark a specific version as "unwanted" in the App Store upgrade screen. If you accidentally hit Upgrade on that app just once, there's no way back -- unless you have manually extracted a backup of the older version of the app from iTunes, which is less likely than ever in this era of iCloud-powered backups. Worst of all, you have to resign yourself to never again using the Update All button. If you don't have many apps, it might not be that much of a bother to manually upgrade, one by one, every one except Instacast. Other people, however, have hundreds of apps (I'm one) and receive dozens of updates a week (yo). Particularly given the App Store app's baffling habit of kicking you out to the home screen after each press of the upgrade, it quickly moves through tedious and into downright irritating. The bigger picture So far I've mostly been talking about Instacast, but the issues I'm describing affect more than just that one app. Consider Tweetie, Loren Brichter's beloved Twitter app. I paid for Tweetie twice -- once for version one and again for version two, at a cost of $2.99 each time. I was delighted with each purchase, as Tweetie was easily the best-of-breed Twitter client at the time. Until, that is, Twitter bought it, relaunched it as "Twitter for iPhone", and eventually "blessed" it with dubious UI decisions and ads (later withdrawn) and more ads. From the second I upgraded from Tweetie to Twitter, the app I'd cherished and paid for (twice!) was gone, with no easy way to get it back. For another example, consider the recent rumors that Rock Band for iOS would be shut down. EA claim this was "an error", although how that's possible is yet to be explained (particularly given this entry in the company FAQ which has since been removed). Looking beyond iOS, EA is also famous for disabling online support in its console games, sometimes for games as little as seventeen months old. Once the servers are turned off, the entire online portion of the game stops working. The game you paid for is gone for good. These tricky issues of ownership aren't even just about software. Sony removed the OtherOS feature from PlayStation 3 consoles after it emerged that people were using it as a jailbreak vector. A firmware update appeared, and boom -- just like that, my PS3 could no longer run Linux (and unlike many people, I'd actually installed Linux on my PS3). I could refuse the update, as long as I never wanted to play another game online. Not a great choice. There are almost endless examples of these, and things are only getting more complicated as companies think of new ways to use and abuse the power that over-the-air updates and digital downloads give them over consumer purchases. Sooner or later, someone is going to push the envelope too far, and we're going to have some juicy class-action lawsuits over it. Until then, caveat emptor. But let's return to the matter at hand -- the Instacast Maneuver. I think it arose from the limitations Apple has imposed on the App Store combined with the sometimes precarious finacial situation that some app devs can find themselves in. Vemedio are far from the only developers in this situation, so I am sure other app devs are watching how this goes closely as they ponder if they will follow along this path. Overall, though, I have to come down against Vemedio on this one (update: please see the update below.) Not for the use of In-App Purchase itself; I think that was a fairly reasonable way around the lack of paid upgrades on the App Store. What I can't get away from the moving of features, including big ones like push notifications, away from the normal version and into the Pro. I've already bought a version of Instacast that does push. I don't think it's right to charge me, or anyone else, twice for that feature. Update: I have accidentally propogated a common misunderstanding about Instacast, for which I must beg your forgiveness, reader. V1 of the app didn't have true Push notifications; it used local notifications only for some basic alerting. As several of my commenters below and Raphael Fetzer on Twitter have pointed out, the more dynamic Push notificaitons in Instacast Pro are genuinely new. I am grateful for the correction. Vemedio has also announced since this post was drafted (but before it went live) that the forthcoming Instacast v2.0.1 will make Smart Playlists available for free, i.e. in the base-level, non-Pro version of the app. Finally, the In-App Purchase upgrade to Instacast Pro is currently on sale for $0.99. In light of these changes, I humbly withdraw -- and apologise for -- my criticism of Vemedio above.
iTunes updated to 10.6.1, with bug fixes aplenty -- iTunes Producer bumped to version 2.6
iTunes 10.6.1 is now available in Software Update -- it fixes a few glitches in Apple's ubiquitous music and library app, including several crashing issues, some VoiceOver problems, and an issue where iTunes would freeze up while syncing with the smaller iPod shuffle or nano. There's also a bugfix for an issue when browsing TV episodes on the Apple TV. Previously, there was a chance they would show up unordered, but this update should make sure that they're much more easy to browse. The update is rather sizable, 130.7 MB, and can be found in Software Update right now. If you're a developer who uses iTunes Producer to send your content to the iTunes Stores, that app has also been updated. iTunes Producer 2.6 adds some new features. Metadata can be searched and viewed for multiple vendor IDs simultaneously, Send to Apple now lets issues with delivery be annotated with notes and more. For music, alert tones, customizable territory groupings, and improved user interface for adding and editing translations have been included. For books, publishers can now add the target audience, pre-order start date, and a series display number from "New from file," and more languages are supported.
Elgato's Thunderbolt SSD delivers fast portable storage at premium prices
Update: Added BareFeats performance testing information. If there's one word I'd pick to describe Elgato's newest Mac peripheral, the Thunderbolt SSD external drive, it would have to be "minimalist." With this product, the company has delivered storage so simple that it's almost featureless. The Germany-based accessory maker (best known for the EyeTV line of tuners and video capture gear) jumps into the slowly-growing Thunderbolt market with these two drive models, identical save for capacity: the 120GB unit retails for $429.95 and the 240GB unit for $699.95. Unboxed, the drive is a compact gray metal oblong -- no lights, not much adornment, and just the single Thunderbolt port dead center on the back. It feels quite solid and is about as heavy as a LaCie rugged compact FireWire drive. Plug it in, and it mounts on any Thunderbolt-equipped Mac; it's thoughtfully preformatted as HFS+, since precious few Windows users would have any use for it. Note that the drive also requires, but does not ship with, a Thunderbolt peripheral cable -- so add that $40 to your net pricing. In use, it's fanlessly silent, although it does grow warm over time. You gain all the benefits of SSD storage, including no-moving-parts reliability and full resistance to magnetic field interference. Given the premium price (not as steep as LaCie's TB external SSD, but that includes a passthrough Thunderbolt port that the Elgato drive lacks), what are you getting for the money? Standalone storage for your Mac that beats USB drives on speed; it also blazes past external FireWire 800 drives, for machines that have that interface option. Update: BareFeats also performed tests on the Elgato drive with several different performance tools (AJA System Test, QuickBench & others) and saw dramatically better sequential write performance than I did; however, when they tested with the BlackMagic utility, they saw the same performance I reported. It is possible that the BlackMagic utility is doing something with write testing that is not optimized. BareFeats also noted that the Elgato unit is using a 3G SSD internally; when they replaced it with a 6G SSD storage module they saw a corresponding bump in speed. Elgato cites an optimal data transfer rate of 270 MB/second for data reads in its testing. When I fired up Blackmagic's speed test utility, I didn't get quite that fast a show, but it was definitely respectable: 222 MB/s on reads, 112.7 MB/s on writes. Compare that to an external FW 800 1TB drive, which leveled off at about 80MB/s on both writes and reads. My MacBook Pro's internal SSD (an OWC Mercury Pro 6G), connected directly to the SATA bus, topped out at 281/163 read/write. Of course, none of these speeds measure up to the fastest rated SSDs out there. One can't expect to do too much data sharing with the Thunderbolt drive, at least not until most of your fellow travelers also have TB-enabled machines. If you're looking for additional storage for your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, it's fast and sleek; you're paying for speed and simplicity, but slower USB or FireWire storage can be had in much higher capacities for a fraction of the cost, which would be more appropriate for Time Machine backups or archival storage. For now, the Elgato drive is a premium option that's great if you have the cash -- but it might be overkill for most casual users.
Daily iPhone App: Breakout Boost
Atari's been on a remixing jag lately, and I was really impressed by the recent iOS take on Asteroids. Now with Breakout Boost, Atari aims to update another old gem. Unfortunately, this one isn't quite as successful. It certainly is Breakout, as you control a little paddle across the screen, bouncing balls up to hit bricks, earn powerups, and score points. The controls are well designed for touch, too. There's a virtual handle underneath the paddle, and there's an added element of a slider that will make ball go faster (and earn more points) or go slower (and earn fewer). That's a fun mechanic, but otherwise, there's no real innovation. In fact, I've seen better Breakout clones on other platforms (including iOS). That said, Atari sidesteps most of those issues by offering up the app for free, so if you like the Breakout style of gameplay at all, you might as well download it and test it out. I'm not so sure you'll be convinced to buy any of the level packs as in-app purchases, but that's up to you -- if it floats your boat, they're there. But I'm sorry to say Asteroids Gunner did a better job of updating the Atari classic, and hopefully Atari will take those notes to heart when it decides to update any other titles (Missile Command, I hope).
New category home pages arriving in the App Store
Apple's been quietly tweaking the design of the App Store, and The Next Web notes Apple has been posting new updates to App Store category pages and their designs. Games and Education are the first two to get a new, cleaner look. If it looks familiar, that's because the main music homepage uses the same design, with one big bar and a scrolling list of other featured titles on the side. I don't know that this will necessarily affect app sales much. The New and Noteworthy sections are still prominent, and just anecdotally, I'm not sure how many people actually browse the App Store for apps. I'm sure they do that on the day they come home with an iPhone or iPad, but after that I presume most app sales are by word of mouth ("Go check out this app!") or by specifically searching on the store for something. Getting spotlighted by Apple never hurts, though, and a cleaner category page means it's easier for anyone to shop there. You can see the new pages in action in iTunes right now.
Kard Combat bringing out big update, talks IAP conversion and community
Kard Combat is a recent iOS release from Hothead Games that's been doing very well on the App Store, and the title is set to see its first big update today. Four new mages are being added for players to play through, including card decks based on Demon, Chaos, Deception, and Arcane magic, and two new game modes. Challenge mode adds additional challenges and goals to the standard gameplay, and timed multiplayer requires that multiplayer turns be taken within three minutes, making for relatively quick games. The update also includes a number of new options and features -- most of the standard features will obviously be free for anyone who's already downloaded the app, though of course the new campaigns will be available via in-app purchase. Anyone who's purchased the full game already for US$9.99 will of course get all of the new content for free. As I said, Kard Combat has been doing very well -- Hothead producer Hamish Millar tells TUAW that while they can't reveal actual numbers behind in-app purchases, "we have a very active multiplayer community of which most have made a purchase." The most popular option so far has been the $2.99 purchase for the first four decks. Millar also says that Hothead's very happy with how the game has been received and reviewed, picking up a very committed player community and lots of feedback to go with it. This game's a little more hardcore than something like Angry Birds, so I wouldn't expect it to be quite that big. Still, Hothead seems to have a nice hit on their hands, and the card game model is something already proven to use DLC as a successful way of extending a game's life over a long period of time. Kard Combat looks like it's well on the way to being a very popular and profitable iOS IP.
Apple may freeze new Mac releases until Lion ships
Apple is rumored to be halting any new Mac releases until Lion ships in July, according to a report heard by AppleInsider. Sources for that site say that Apple management is so excited about the improvements and user experience Lion offers, they don't want to ship any new Macs until Lion is finalized, so that "buyers are afforded the latest and greatest Apple experience." Apple apparently has new MacBook Airs ready to ship, but is waiting until it can load a gold-master version of Lion on them to do so. Also, while there are no hard rumors surrounding the next Mac mini and LED Cinema Display, apparently those rollouts are also waiting for the final release of Lion, which is supposed to come out sometime next month. And the Mac isn't the only platform waiting for new software -- apparently new iOS devices are also waiting to ship until iOS 5 is finalized. Apple wants to make sure all iCloud services are up and running so that new iPhone owners can take advantage of the full services iOS 5 and iCloud will offer.
Ten WYSIWYG HTML editors for Mac OS X (Updated)
OK, I'm sorry if I have been stuck on the theme of website creation lately, but the TUAW inboxes have been inundated with emails from readers who are concerned about the probable demise of iWeb. One of our readers, Mickey, wrote to say that "I'm a former Mac user who was forced to switch to PC and has since come back to the Mac. In the interim, however, I have created a personal webpage (mostly for family). I've got hosting and a domain and all that, and I have coded it in Microsoft FrontPage. The way I see it, I have two options 1) use Boot Camp or VMWare Fusion to continue writing the webpage in FrontPage or 2) find a Mac program that might be at least relatively amenable to importing the HTML code from FrontPage." Mickey wanted to redesign his website in iWeb, but had concerns about the future viability of the app. For that reason, and the fact that being able to edit his existing website on the Mac would keep him from having to do a complete reboot of the site, I figured he needed a Mac replacement for FrontPage -- a Windows application that has been abandoned by Microsoft. I've compiled a list of ten possible candidates to replace FrontPage with lovely Mac goodness. FrontPage was one of the first WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) website tools that allowed you to design a page by moving elements around while it handled writing the HTML code behind the scenes. If you're looking into a way to move to Mac but still need to keep up a website that you originally created in the dreaded Land of Windows, then you'll find this list of Mac HTML editors to be very useful. 1) Panic Coda (http://www.panic.com). Coda probably has a lot more sophistication than most casual website designers need, but it will read existing HTML files and let you also add CSS style sheets. There's a free trial download available on the Panic website. Update: Several astute commenters pointed out that Coda is not a WYSIWYG editor. Instead, it's a full-powered text and code editor with the ability to display a preview of your edited work. 2) Kompozer (http://www.kompozer.net). This is a branch of the abandoned Nvu Open Source HTML editor that has been updated fairly regularly and is free. Never used it, so I can't vouch for it. The screenshot below is for the Windows version, but the user interface for the Mac edition is similar. 3) Flux (http://theescapers.com). Flux (£69.95) is a fairly powerful CSS / Javascript / HTML editor, with a free trial download. Once again, I've never used it -- but if you want to update your site into HTML5 goodness for the future, it's probably a good way to go. Potential Flux users shouldn't be worried if they don't know much about CSS, as the application is a wonderful way to get your feet wet in terms of style sheets. There's a very thorough Quick Start Guide available for download as well. 4) W3C Amaya (http://www.w3.org/Amaya/User/BinDist.html) If you want a tool that will let you both browse and author web pages, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has a freebie editor available for download. For former FrontPage users, this app seems appropriately low-key and quite simple to use. 5) Mozilla SeaMonkey (http://www.seamonkey-project.org/) Made by the folks who created Firefox, SeaMonkey is not only an HTML editor, but has a lot of built-in Internet tools including a web feed reader, IRC chat client, etc. Update: The most recent version of SeaMonkey was delivered only five days ago. 6) Adobe Contribute (http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute.html) Back in the early 2000s, I had several sites that had been developed in FrontPage and needed to be maintained. Macromedia Contribute was a powerful tool, although sometimes frustrating. It's $199, and might be a bit of overkill for many casual users in terms of price and capability. 7) Freeway Express (http://www.softpress.com/products/freewayexpress/) Freeway Express is a wonderful Mac HTML editor with a surprisingly complete feature set. It's $69 for this low-end version, or you can upgrade to the even more powerful Freeway Pro ($229) if you need more capabilty. Trial versions of each are available for download. 8) Adobe Dreamweaver (http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html) This is the design tool for professionals. It has a steep learning curve and an equally steep price tag ($399), but for a top-of-the-line web design package, Dreamweaver is the choice. 9) Quanta Gold (http://www.thekompany.com/products/quanta/) Considering that the web page for this app shows that it is now "Mac OS X ready", it looks like it hasn't been updated for a long, long time. There is a free demo version available for download, and the price if you decide to buy it is $39.95. 10) BlueGriffon (http://www.bluegriffon.org/) A free WYSIWYG content editor based on Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine. Free is always good! Update: Before anyone asks where RapidWeaver and Sandvox are, note that although they do have the capability to edit RAW HTML, they're both predominantly used to design new websites from scratch using built-in templates and then maintain those sites. Those two solutions were covered in my previous post, "Ten ways to replace iWeb and MobileMe hosting." Also, you may wish to look at several other editors, some of which aren't really WYSIWYG, but are favorites of some of the bloggers here at TUAW: Hype sells for $29.99 in the Mac App Store and is an amazing HTML5 WYSIWYG editor. Created by two ex-Apple engineers, it's gaining rave reviews and can be used to create animated websites. HyperEdit ($9.99) is another package from the Hype developers. It's a code and text editor in the same vein as Coda. Very similar to HyperEdit is Taco HTML Edit ($24.99), which has a component library that can add amazing features to an HTML document. MacRabbit's Espresso was a huge miss on my part. It's also a code editor more than a true WYSIWYG tool, and it's available from the MacRabbit website for $79.99. As usual, if you have a favorite Mac WYSIWYG HTML editor and wish to let other readers in on your personal choice, leave a comment below. Good luck, Mickey!
Engadget app for iPhone and iPod touch updated to 2.2.0, get it now!
Hey there fellow iOS users, just thought we'd let you know that the Engadget app for iPhone and iPod touch has now been updated to version 2.2. What's new, you ask? Well, on top of a stash of performance tweaks, there's now a handy landscape viewing mode along with much improved sharing features; or if you prefer saving the goodies for yourself, then you'll also like our new "save for later" options for Evernote, Instapaper, and Read It Later. Head over to the App Store to nab the fresh update now. Oh, don't worry, we haven't forgotten our buddies on the Windows Phone boat. We can assure you that our devs are hard at work at cooking up an Engadget app for Windows Phone 7 just as we speak, so stay tuned for an announcement soon.
Xbox 360 mandatory update restores boot to disc, detains Call of Duty pirates for a tad
The story of the Trojan Horse must be a favorite among video game console manufacturers, because software updates these days often come with more than bargained for -- today, Microsoft issued a mandatory Xbox 360 update, reportedly for a single bugfix, but which seems to have coincidentally halted scores of pirates and hackers from playing Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 on the console. Members of the Xbox-Scene forums noted the update was taking suspiciously long to download, discovered that backup copies of these games ceased to work, and presently believe that Microsoft included a patch for these two games to enable an anti-piracy feature that specifically targets burned copies. What does the mandatory update do for you if you're not part of the hacking scene? It merely enables the console to automatically boot a pre-inserted game when you power it on, a feature that was accidentally disabled in November. [Thanks, Brian]
Kindle for Android updated with periodicals and integrated web store, can be installed on SD card
Version 2.0 of Amazon's Kindle for Android software has snuck out tonight, bringing with it access to the company's library of newspapers and magazines, the ability to purchase content in-app, and the freedom to choose where you want to store the app itself, which is now happy to reside on your microSD card. Other additions include social networking updates of your reading progress, the appearance of chapter titles in the reader status bar, zoom for images and graphics, and the volume keys doubling up as your page turners should you wish them to do so. The updated app's available in the Market now -- you know what to do with that QR code, right?
Yahoo! Mesenger app updated, offers free voice and video calling
The Yahoo! Messenger app has received a pretty significant upgrade today -- the app now lets you make video and voice calls to Yahoo! Messenger friends. That has a few interesting outcomes, the first of which is that you can now make video calls from any iPhone running iOS 4.1 to anywhere with a Yahoo! Messenger account, including back to PCs running the client there. We haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but the app is a free download, so you can see for yourself if you want. You can also make free voice calls between friends, or for an extra fee, call out to phones around the world. One caveat: the calls don't seem to work on the iPod touch 4G, according to reviewers on the App Store. We're not sure why that would be, but the app description clearly states that service is only for iPhone 3GS/4. Otherwise, here's one more solution to voice and even video chatting over 3G on your iPhone.
Google Images get spruced up, don't need no stinkin' text
Those alchemists over in Mountain View have been fiddling with their search engine again and the product has been one of the biggest redesigns ye olde Google has received to date. Gone are the little captions and size measurements under each image -- well, not gone, just hidden away until you hover over a pic -- to be replaced by a densely packed compendium of your results, which just keeps going and going. Seriously, the new Images search can fit up to 1,000 pictures on one page, with thumbnails loading in a logical top-to-bottom order. A new landing page has also been implemented, showing you the image you selected superimposed on top of the website it belongs to, making for a more streamlined search experience overall. We like it, it's fast and it's pretty cool, but is anyone working on result relevance at all? Try looking for an iPhone 4 snapshot and you'll have to scroll past 43 mockups before finding the real thing.
