After a relatively quiet morning on the Apple front, Tuesday wound up being quite busy with related news, including the announcement of Tim Cook’s appearance at this year’s All Things Digital conference and the availability of updates for the company’s pro video apps. Ready to read more? Then click on through to the other side and enjoy the day’s news for Tuesday, April 10, 2012.
The late Steve Jobs was a frequent visitor to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher’s ritzy All Things Digital conferences over the years, and that mantle seems to be passing down to his successor as well. AllThingsD announced today that current Apple CEO Tim Cook will be the opening night speaker at this year’s D10 Conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California from May 29 to 31. “It will be Cook’s first appearance at D, as well as his first time being onstage at an event not run by Apple or for investors since he was named CEO last August,” the report notes. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs put in “a half-dozen always memorable visits” to the All Things Digital conference over the years, with the last at D8 in 2010.
iOS and Android users have long been frustrated with the way Marvel separates its web-based digital comics storefront from the mobile version, but that is changing at last. Marvel announced on their website today that for the first time, digital comics can be purchased on Marvel.com and read while on the go from iOS, Android or even Google Chrome OS. “The new digital comics store on Marvel.com provides a more comprehensive and unique experience to both longtime Marvel fans as well as casual consumers who have never purchased a digital comic,” the website explains. That includes “thousands of single issue titles” from both classic and modern titles alike, day and date new releases, Monday and Friday 99-cent sales and an upgraded shopping cart that allows for multiple titles to be purchased at once. The timing couldn’t be better, with the studio’s massive Avengers movie hitting theatres on May 4.
MacRumors is reporting that Apple Inc. has hit yet another milestone today, inching up another one percent “to briefly hit a market capitalization of 0 billion.” For those of you playing the home game, this event comes less than six weeks after the company passed the 0 billion threshold, with Apple’s stock up “nearly 60 percent since the beginning of the year.” Of course, analysts have even bigger plans for Apple, eyeing a trillion dollar market capitalization “over the next year or so.” Perhaps even more significant, Apple “is now within just a few billion dollars of taking Microsoft’s title of most valuable publicly traded company ever,” which Redmond hit with a 4 billion market cap in December, 1999. (Adjusted for inflation, Apple would actually have to cross the 0 billion mark, however.)
Video editors got some Apple love today as the Mac App Store pushed out updates to the company’s Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4 apps. Judging from release notes published on AppleInsider, it seems to be mostly modest performance and feature improvements, but it shows that Apple continues to take their tools seriously as they approach their first anniversary in June. Final Cut Pro X has been updated to version 10.0.4, while Motion and Compressor are now 5.0.3 and 4.0.3, respectively. All three apps are now exclusive to the Mac App Store, and updates also have to be applied there, so… you know what to do.
There’s little doubt that manufacturers are pushing for bigger smartphones, a trend that started on Google’s Android with the likes of the HTC EVO 4G, Samsung Galaxy Nexus and that Samsung Galaxy Note “phablet” and has now spilled over to Windows Phone with the HTC Titan and Nokia Lumia 900. So when will the iPhone see a bump from its 3.5-inch screen after five generations? According to The Verge, it may be coming sooner than you think, without requiring much work on Apple’s part. By increasing the vertical size on a theoretical iPhone 5 from 2.91 inches tall to 3.49 inches tall, Cupertino could add an additional 192 pixels — enough for another row of icons on the home screen, for example, while still keeping within their own Retina Display specifications. This 9:5 aspect ratio is also considerably more compatible with traditional 16:9 widescreen video which is standard for HD formats, eliminating the black matte seen at the top and bottom while viewing video on current models. Could Apple have such a prototype in the works? Only those at One Infinite Loop know for sure…
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(Image courtesy of The Verge)
This past weekend, roughly everyone (everywhere) downloaded Angry Birds Space. Well, at least 10 million people did, but that’s still quite the figure. While a huge shadow was cast by the massiveness of Rovio’s franchise — or is that the space station it built with all that money — there were still plenty of noteworthy headlines in the iOS gaming world.
The Phantasy Star Online series has long been a hit with gamers since its initial release on the Sega Dreamcast, though its also spent much of its life on the PC. Now it’ll share the role-playing action with mobile devices, including the iOS platform, with Phantasy Star Online 2 (via Andriasang). The mobile versions of the game will enjoy a slightly stripped-down experience and will only loosely connect to the PC version. But for the price of free, its hard to complain. Sega aims to make its money back via micro-transactions for items, and you can look for the the massively multiplayer app this winter.
The popular port that revitalized a genre just keeps getting better. Triple Town, the media darling matching game from Spry Fox, is getting an update that includes two new maps. The first of the new lands is called City on a Lake, placing water in the way of your movement, while the second bears the title, Peaceful Village — but bears no bears, giving you the opportunity to focus on solid matching. The only catch to the update is that you must have bought the in-app purchase for unlimited turns. If you haven’t yet, grab it now — it’s on sale for .99.
Fans of the old Mad Magazine should start getting giddy. The classic Spy vs Spy series appears to be heading to an iOS device near you. A teaser for the title was released recently, and while it doesn’t state any information explicitly, it does attach longtime iOS-centric studio Robots & Pencils as the developer. One would imagine a studio best known for its work on iOS wouldn’t move away from the platform for a major property launch. This won’t be the first time Spy vs Spy has been in game form, but the series hasn’t been on an Apple device since the Apple II. Lets hope they improved on the graphics!
Have you ever downloaded a free game on your iPhone and wondered how in the world the developer could possibly be making money with it? As it turns out, the so-called “freemium” business model is actually far more lucrative than charging money, at least for mobile.
The New York Times has an interesting article that throws back the curtain on so-called “freemium” games — the ones you can download free of charge but can ultimately cost users far more in the long run than if they had just paid up front. While free games might come with the stigma “of being low quality or full of annoying ads,” it turns out they’re a great way to hook new users — and keep them coming back.
“When you tell a friend about it and they go to the App Store and it’s free, they download it without thinking about it,” explains Natalia Luckyanova, half of the husband and wife team that created the iOS game Temple Run. “Then there’s stickiness and the addictiveness and people talking about it.”
Luckyanova and husband Keith Shepherd released Temple Run in the App Store last August as a 99-cent game where “players must stay a step ahead of angry apes while avoiding booby traps and collecting coins.” While the first month of sales were decent, it was nothing compared to what happened in September, when Temple Run was offered as a freebie through the Free App a Day website.
Since going free, the app has topped 40 million downloads, and Luckyanova says upwards of 13 million people play Tempe Run at least once every day. Currently perched at Number 14 on Apple’s top-grossing charts, these “freemium” games bait users who might otherwise not spend even 99 cents on a given title — and once they’re hooked, they’ll spend money in “a virtual store to buy new characters, different backdrops and power-ups, or special boosters.”
The concept has proven wildly successful for Zynga, the creators of FarmVille who has expanded beyond their former comfort zone with Facebook and into a billion initial public offering — proving that the drug dealer’s mantra of “the first one’s free” can apply to other types of business as well.
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(Image courtesy of The New York Times)
The Game Developers Conference 2012 in San Francisco is winding down today, and we’ve been on site all week checking out the latest and greatest in games for iOS and Mac. One of the defining themes of this year’s conference has been the powerful response to indie games, often created by very small teams with tiny budgets, and how they’re often dominating the conversation amidst much larger blockbuster console and PC releases. The Independent Games Festival has long been a part of GDC, and all five of the finalists — plus four of the five honorable mentions — for the Best Mobile Game are available on or soon coming to iOS.
Looking for the best recent and upcoming indie games for your iPhone or iPad? Here’s a look at the nine iOS games honored by the Independent Game Festival in the Best Mobile Game category, starting with the winner — a title we conveniently (and glowingly) just reviewed today.
Just as Lightroom 4 leaves beta and is unleashed to users, Adobe Labs has something new up their sleeves, this time aimed at web developers and designers. Adobe Shadow is an impressive new offering being introduced at SXSW Interactive this week that promises to optimize web experiences across all mobile browsers.
Adobe Labs has just released its latest free public download of Adobe Shadow Labs Release 1, which is making its debut this week at SXSW Interactive. Currently available in English only (but available worldwide), Adobe Shadow is comprised of Mac and Windows desktop software as well as a Google Chrome extension and mobile apps for iOS and Android.
“Mobile compatibility is a top demand of Web designers today, but we were hearing from our community that building sites for mobile devices was a huge pain point in their workflow,” Adobe explains. “The common process we heard was to manually key in the Web addresses on each device (usually 4+ devices) to check the layout and performance of each page of a site design — nothing short of tedious.
“Adobe Shadow aims to alleviate the time and stress of working on websites across mobile browsers,” Adobe’s blog post continues. “Web pros can wirelessly pair multiple smartphones and tablets with their computer and simultaneously view real-time previews of Web content across multiple iOS and Android devices, quickly seeing refreshed website designs with live updates. Adobe Shadow’s synchronized browsing nearly eliminates the need to touch the device, but still provides a true, on-device experience. We heard from the community that emulators and simulators just won’t cut it and it’s absolutely critical that website compatibility is checked on the actual devices.”
MacLife.com was fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at Adobe Shadow last week, which promises to revolutionize web development and design by allowing users to work faster and more efficiently than ever, streamlining the preview process while allowing full customization of websites for mobile devices today, tomorrow and beyond. Above, you can see Adobe Shadow running in Google Chrome with remote inspection at the same time on a Samsung Galaxy Tab, iPad and Motorola Atrix.
Just how many mobile devices can Adobe Shadow take advantage of? Judging from our demonstration, it’s virtually unlimited — Adobe engineers showed off an image (shown above) of 23 different smartphones and tablets all displaying the same website design at once, courtesy of the Shadow tool. While most web designers may only develop for a handful of devices, Adobe Shadow offers a considerable amount of flexibility, while integrating with any workflow, providing remote inspection and debugging.
Ready to unleash the power of Adobe Shadow on your own web workflow? Adobe Labs is now offering Adobe Shadow Labs Release 1 as a free download, along with the accompanying Google Chrome extension. Free iOS and Android clients are also available for download from their respective storefronts. Be sure to check out Adobe Shadow in action in the embedded video below!
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
