Yet again, third-party accessory makers have revealed an upcoming iPad design. Alibaba.com is awash in cases for a redesigned iPad. Nearly every case is for a device that has a thinner bezel and slimmer profile. In short, the next iPad will look like the iPad mini — except, you know, just not mini.

This is the standard story line for Apple devices. Months before a major product is released, accessory makers start pumping and dumping cases. Most of the time these cases are rebadged and sold under a brand name. This process takes time, which is why the cases are available prior to the device launching.

This has happened for nearly every iDevice launch since the iPhone 4. Every iPad — full size or mini — was revealed prior to Apple’s announcement through case makers. And a good chunk of case makers display their wares on Alibaba.com.

Apple is part of this cycle, too. A vast accessory ecosystem is part of the iOS magic. A buyer knows that they can purchase the latest iPhone or iPad and customize it to their fitting without any fuss. Even dime stores sell iPhone cases. It’s oft been circulated that Apple releases the dimensions of upcoming devices to accessory makers months before the announcement so the device launches to a full assortment of items.

These factories have likely not seen the next iPad yet. Most of the images are physical mockups or renderings. But they know the device’s dimensions.

So again, act surprised when Apple reveals the next iPad in the coming months. Pretend like you hadn’t seen it before.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Apple has made a tweak to the way it shows that free apps that have in-app purchases, the Guardian noted today. The new notice appears under the price bar and the app icon in app listings on iTunes on the desktop, though it doesn’t yet appear in the mobile App Store or on the web-based iTunes application pages. The change comes after a number of high-profile complaints re: accidental spending on the App Store.

$2,500 in in-app purchases in 15 minutes: that’s how much a single five-year old boy managed to spend via in-app purchases in a recent incident in the U.K. Sarah argued in a post following that incident that Apple needed to implement a “Kid Mode” to prevent this kind of thing from happening. The new label is hardly that, but it is a tool that should increase awareness about exactly what parents are getting when they download what looks like an otherwise free, kid-focused application for iPhone or iPad.

The fact is that a huge chunk of App Store revenue is now being driven by in-app purchases; you have to scroll past a lot of apps to find one that charges for the actual app itself in the Top Grossing section of the App Store, and out of the top 100, less than 20 percent are paid apps. Freemium is big business on the App Store, with in-app purchases accounting for around 39 percent of app spending as of last January according to IHS. A lot of these titles are particularly oriented towards a younger demographic, too, which makes them susceptible to the kind of incident described above.

For developers, increased restrictions and additional friction between customers and in-app purchases is obviously not a desirable outcome, and that means Apple likewise probably isn’t crazy about the idea. Adding a more obvious notice about the presence of in-app purchases in titles is a good middle ground between enforcing some kind of restrictions that potentially inhibit revenue-generating capabilities, and raising awareness about when there’s potential for accidental spending. It’s a small thing, but a helpful one, and hopefully the feature will make its way out to mobile and web app listings, too. I contacted Apple to find out if that’s in the cards and will update with their response.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Philips Hue lighting system is pretty neat on its own – it lets you control lighting in your house from your iPhone or iPad, adjusting bulb color and brightness remotely via your Wi-Fi network. Ambify is a new app from Stuttgart, Germany-based developer Kai Aras that makes the connected lighting system even cooler, by plugging it into a media player app on the iPhone to automatically generate real-life light shows from your own iTunes library.

Ambify connects to a Hue bridge, and applies algorithms to the audio played back from your library via your own iTunes playlists in order to create real-time visualizations using Hue bulbs, altering color, brightness and the rate of change in time with the beat to create a club-like display without any complicated programming or control systems involved.

The system works with both Philips Hue lightbulbs, and with Living Colors and Living White lamps, when those are connected to the Philips bridge. As you can see in the demo video, depending on how extensive your setup is, the effect can be pretty stunning.

The app is $2.99, which is way cheaper than any other kind of complicated professional sound and light management apps you might get to pull off this kind of display. The Philips Hue isn’t cheap in terms of the cost of getting the base system ($200), but Ambify goes to show that you can do much more with the connected lighting kit than initially meets the eye. A Mac version of Ambify is also planned for release soon.

Just yesterday, Romain covered a Minecraft hack that uses the Hue to mimic the in-game cycle of day and night, in order to provide a more immersive experience. Developers have clearly only begun to scratch the surface of what you can do with Hue, and there’s likely lots more exciting stuff on the horizon.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

How are those New Year’s resolutions to work out more holding up? Not so well? Not at all? Yeah, us too.

So we figured that it’s a good time to check back in with GAIN Fitness, the startup that aims to bring workouts from personal trainers right to your iPhone or iPad. GAIN Fitness just issued some nice updates and launched a new “trainer marketplace” that will bring a new trainer to GAIN each month.

GAIN has a really cool business model of being a platform, not just an app. GAIN shares its revenues with the personal trainers who create workouts — just like iTunes shares album proceeds with artists. It’s a win/win/win proposition in many ways: Trainers can distribute their work well beyond where they’re locally based, tailored workout experiences much more accessible to the general public, and, of course, GAIN makes money itself.

We stopped by GAIN’s San Francisco headquarters recently to talk with CEO Nick Gammell and get a hands-on look at the new trainer marketplace. You can watch it all in the video embedded above.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

eBay released significant updates to its iPhone and iPad apps yesterday which the company says will “play an important role in eBay Mobile’s year to come.” The e-commerce platform also said that 1.8 million new customers joined eBay through a mobile device in the first three quarters of 2012, and eBay Mobile currently adds an average of 2.4 million listings per week.

The iOS app updates are geared toward taking eBay’s mobile business even higher by making it easier for customers to buy and sell merchandise using their iPhone or iPad. The updates integrate mobile cameras and editing, and streamlines the listing process by making uploading photos and item descriptions more simple. For sellers, the updated app includes new step-by-step category, pricing and shipping guidance for items listings, and the ability to save draft versions of multiple listings so sellers can start their listing on a mobile device and then finish them off on PC (helpful for vendors who want to write longer item descriptions), or vice versa.

Other new features include more advanced search capabilities with auto-complete and quicker checkout. The quicker checkout allow buyers to review and confirm payments on a single screen, and gives first-time shoppers the option to pay via credit card instead of PayPal.

eBay’s VP of mobile Steve Yankovich told TechCrunch last month that mobile has dramatically changed the way eBay members conduct transactions, with one out of three shoppers using their phones or tablets to browse listings even if they complete the sale on a PC. Dec. 9 was eBay’s single-biggest mobile shopping day ever, with U.S. transacted mobile volume up 133 percent from last year’s biggest mobile shopping day, Dec. 4, 2011.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Join.me, the online meeting service from LogMeIn, has today launched a notable update to its iOS application which adds the long-awaited functionality to actually host meetings from your iPad. The company had previously released an iOS application in early 2011, but it only allowed users to attend join.me meetings via their iPhone or iPad – not create them.

Despite LogMeIn’s delay to fully embrace the iPad-hosted video conferencing space, join.me has so far proved to be a popular service because of its simple, no registration sign-up process that allows meeting hosts to share their screen almost instantly. Coming from a world of heavy duty, enterprise-level virtual meeting client applications, join.me has been a breath of fresh air for me personally both as a presenter and, more often, as a meeting attendee. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the app’s setup process can be measured in the seconds, not minutes. Oh, and  the price doesn’t hurt either – join.me’s basic version is free (which startups seem to love).

The company says that join.me is now LogMeIn’s fastest growing product to date, and it recently passed the 50 million participants mark. And it’s growing still – every month, one million attend or host their first join.me meeting.

With today’s update, join.me users on iOS can now host meetings and share files from their iPad. These files can be saved in the join.me app for later use, or opened and shared on the fly from other apps or from your email. But to be clear, you can’t start sharing your iPad screen itself, so it doesn’t really work as a way to demo an app, for example.

Join.me competes with teleconferencing old-timers like GoToMeeting and Cisco’s WebEx, for example, as well as newer startups like Fuze Box and even consumer-focused services like Skype or Google+ (Hangouts).

The ability to host meetings is only available to join.me’s Pro users ($99/year or $19/month), but anyone can watch meetings on desktop or mobile for free.  The updated app is available as a free download here in iTunes.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

iZettle, the Square-like app and mini chip-card reader, has partnered with DZ BANK and Deutsche Telekom to launch its payments service in Germany. Jacob de Geer, iZettle CEO and co-founder says their ambition is to “become the undisputed market leader in Germany and given the partnerships with DZ BANK and Deutsche Telekom we believe we are very well positioned.” That may also be code for ‘well positioned’ for a buy-out by US-based Square which has yet to launch in Europe, but has already signalled its intention to do so and may also have the cash if its turnover is to be believed. iZettle goes up against the Samwer-backed swipe-card clone Payleven.de.

To kick start its German operation, iZettle is making 25,000 chip-card readers for iPhone or iPad available free of charge during launch, according to Andreas Barthelmess, Managing Director iZettle Germany. Deutsche Telekom will distribute the iZettle chip-card reader in Telekom shops across the country.

Equens, a joint venture of DZ BANK with other major European banks, will process iZettle payments in Germany. Starting in November, the iZettle solution will be available at selected Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken.

iZettle now operates in five countries across Europe but unlike European clones or Square in the U.S. iZettle’s solution takes chip-based card payments which are more secure than magnetic card readers.

However, after that point the resemblance to Square is obvious. There will of course be consolidation in this market at some point, but the race is on to build market share.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A patent newly published by the USPTO and filed by Apple in June reveals plans for a system through which devices could be charged by the movement of a person’s body, thanks to electromagnetic induction using printed coils. Such a system could potentially allow an iPhone, iPad or any portable device to build up a charge as a user moves around, giving up a continual source of extra juice that should at the very least ensure that you never run completely dry while on the go.

Generally speaking, this kind of technology is so large that it would be hard to imagine it fitting into a sleek shell, like the thin and light design of the new iPhone 5. That’s where this unique design comes in, since it offers a method for printing coils in the same way that circuit boards are printed, in dense layers that, when paired with a signal moveable magnet array, could theoretically generate the same kind of electromagnetic charge as, for example, the machine in the YouTube video below.

There are plenty of devices that use similar methods for power creation, including flashlights and some quartz wristwatches. But Apple’s method is clearly aimed at making it possible for this tech to work with smartphones and other mobile gadgets, and could theoretically work either as contained system or as a two-part arrangement in which the magnet portion could live in a holster, case or other device to reduce the necessary bulk. It also doesn’t necessarily have to make iPhone self-powered – a small array that provides enough juice to slowly feed back some charge and thus extend battery life considerably throughout the day would provide considerable benefit, even if it can’t fully charge the device in any reasonable amount of time.

While motion-powered charging for devices as power-hungry as the iPhone still might seem a long way off, there are reasons to believe that Apple might be thinking about this problem as a more immediate concern. First, it seems obvious that the company is looking for ways to maximize its device battery life, as evidenced by it taking the reins on the A6 chip design. Second, a WSJ report from last year that detailed a lot of accurate information about the iPhone 4S also said that Apple was “experimenting” with new features including new methods for charging, for inclusion in future phone models.

Of course, Apple also patents a lot of things, not all of which make it to shipping products. But an iPhone or iPad that powers itself would definitely be a feature addition that would stand out from the increasingly crowded smartphone and tablet race.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Earlier this week, a few reports emerged about Apple’s upcoming plans to disrupt the TV market. The first mentioned that Apple was trying to work with cable providers on finding new ways to distribute TV through its hardware, rather than trying to license content itself. The second report gave a few more details about what that hardware would be capable of. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few days, and this is what I think we can expect from any Apple TV efforts being announced over the next few months, possibly even next month at its rumored September 12 event.

New box, same as the old box

The new set-top box hardware that Apple is talking to cable operators about using is none other than an updated version of its Apple TV product. Which is to say: Apple probably isn’t creating new hardware to suit the needs of cable operators, or to try to replicate their existing set-top boxes. Instead, Apple is trying to convince them to build new apps for its existing device.

No doubt, the new Apple TV will have some interesting new features under the hood — likely a faster processor, better graphics capabilities, and the like, but the form factor and underlying hardware will probably remain the same. Also, Apple will likely keep the same $99 price point and just make the product more useful. The WSJ’s report pegged the hardware at sub-$200, but anything over $100 is a tough sell, as Boxee, Logitech, and anyone building streaming boxes (other than Apple and Roku) can attest.

New software, new UI, new apps

Along with maybe a better processor and support for improved video playback, I expect the Apple TV to get a UI refresh, one which will allow users to customize the apps on their home screen, in the same way that they would an iPhone or iPad. It’s also aiming to help content owners appify the way that users discover content, according to the WSJ report: “Another significant feature of the Apple set-top device is likely to be its user interface, which could resemble the navigation icons on Apple’s iPad.”

That will be a welcome improvement over existing electronic program guides, which provide little more than a grid view of whatever is on and upcoming, and are generally a pain in the ass to navigate and impossible to find anything on. But that doesn’t mean that just anyone will be able to create apps for the device.

A curated list of partners

To date, the number of apps available through Apple TV have been fairly limited, and I think they’ll probably remain that way. While it clearly needs to find a better way to search and navigate through them, it’s doubtful that the company will open up its Apple TV SDK to all comers in the same way that it did for the iPhone or iPad. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one seems to be that there are few really good TV apps out there right now.

Just ask Samsung, which spent the last several years trying to build up a robust app ecosystem from third-party developers, only to find that there’s only five or six apps that users genuinely care about. Sources have told me that internally, the consumer electronics manufacturer has been trying to scale back its openness, with reagards to third-party apps. While having a long tail of apps can be a benefit in the mobile world, app discovery and quality control can be a real problem. Apple will likely keep its walled garden closed, in the same way that Microsoft has, when it begins accepting more third-party apps.

Control and navigation on the 2nd screen

Let’s face it: the up-down-left-right-click control of the current generation Apple TV sucks. While there’s the Apple Remote app, which makes the experience slightly better, especially from a search perspective, anyone building an app for the next-gen Apple TV will want a lot more control. In the next version, I expect Apple will tie in more robust second-screen capabilities, rather than introducing a new touch control just for the Apple TV.

And what happens if you’re not one of Apple’s chosen partners, asked to participate in building apps for the Apple TV? Well then, you can just go around that restriction and build apps that use the iPad or iPhone for search and navigation but leverage Apple’s AirPlay technology for video display on the TV. We’re already starting to see some of these dual-screen apps emerge, like the recently released ShowYou iPad app.

Regardless of whether or not they actually build Apple TV apps, I’d love to see more apps like HBO GO or Comcast’s Xfinity app take advantage of this magical technology to fling videos they’re watching to the Apple TV, and use the iPad for interactive features or navigation.

Don’t expect too much disruption

The general response to this latest round of news around its TV efforts is that Apple has adopted a sort of, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” philosophy toward the industry. And that’s mostly true. But it’s also reportedly pushing technology which could still be considered a little too disruptive. Take, for instance, its network DVR idea, which would let users start a show from the beginning, even if they turned up late. It’s a great idea, but frankly, it’s also one that is tied up in all sorts of rights issues and unlikely to be adopted right away by distributors.

As for the display aspect — the whole channels- or shows-as-apps idea that it appears to be pursuing — there are plenty of companies that are already doing this on their own. Comcast’s new X1 set-top box and cloud-based user interface emphasize individual programs and recommendations over the legacy grid interface, at least at the home screen. And others are learning that, in a world of Netflix and Hulu, which emphasize content over programming time, that’s the way consumers are learning to discover content.

One other thought about this whole “too much disruption” thing. I don’t think anyone — not Apple, not the cable companies, not the content owners — see this new hardware as a set-top box replacement. You’ll still have at least one big, ugly, shitty box sitting in your living room. But the Apple TV will work great as a complement to that, or as a way to extend content into rooms where leasing an HD DVR set-top box made no sense. Like in a child’s bedroom, for instance. Even so, that could help cablecos and consumers alike reduce their reliance on crappy set-top boxes throughout the home.

Still no actual “Apple TV”

And finally, the big underlying theme here is that the actual TV that Apple has been rumored to be building for damn near forever, will remain unbuilt, at least for now. And why not? Apple is selling more Apple TV units than ever, and pretty soon it could be partnering with cable TV operators to get their content on the device. But it’s far from fully baked. Before Apple gets serious about building a high-profile device like a TV set, it’s probably going to want to get the kinks out first.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

If you’ve been in the baby monitor racket as long as I have, you’ve seen it all: the good, the bad, and the unusable. Well here’s a monitor that just might win my heart. It’s called the BabyPing (there’s an N in there) and it allows you to view your child’s every squiggle and giggle on your iPhone or iPad. The app and monitor costs about $230 and is currently available in Europe only, although it’s expected to hit our shores shortly.

Arguably video monitors are mostly for first-time parents who are total freakouts about watching the baby at all times. The system notifies you if the baby is stirring and an infrared system ensures you can peep in on him or her at night.

As I noted before, video systems like this one usually used special hardware and/or wonky software so it’s nice to see something that just works.

Product Page

Article courtesy of TechCrunch