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Posts tagged with "iPhone"

Facebook for iPhone 3.5 Released With New Sharing Options, Wall Design

A major update to the official Facebook app for iPhone was released earlier today, adding new sharing options from the compose screen and privacy controls that match the options set on Facebook’s website. First off, Facebook 3.5 brings a new design for Profile and Group walls; the app appears to be more streamlined and in line with Facebook’s recent changes to its web UI.

Perhaps more importantly, Facebook for iPhone now lets you tag friends and places in posts, and share links from a web view opened through Facebook. The updated compose screen has got buttons to add friends from a list (and even search), tag a place, or add a new photo or video. As for sharing links, Facebook now lets you open a webpage in-app, and instantly reshare it (with an optional comment) with your friends. When sharing a webpage from a web view, tapping on its link in the compose screen will enable you to remove the link entirely, or just its thumbnail.

Facebook 3.5 also comes with bug fixes, as mentioned in the changelog:

  • Improved Notifications speed
  • Fixed a number of Chat bugs
  • Made it easier to select filters in News Feed
  • Fixed a bug with the Notifications bar disappearing
  • Fixed a number of Photos bugs
  • Improved performance and stability overall

An official iPad app from Facebook is expected to be officially unveiled soon, likely at the upcoming f8 conference on September 22. The iPad client was discovered inside the iPhone application back in July, although it appears the latest version removes iPad elements, thus making it impossible for Cydia tweaks like FaceForward to force-enable the yet unofficial iPad app.

Facebook for iPhone is a free download on the App Store.

Sprint Hints at iPhone In Lawsuit Against AT&T / T-Mobile

Earlier today, U.S. carrier Sprint filed a lawsuit again the AT&T / T-Mobile merger, citing “competitive advantages” and an entrenched duopoly that would make it difficult for Sprint to compete against giants such as Verizon and AT&T. In the document filing – which claims the acquisition would violate Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act – This is my next has dug out an interesting tidbit in which Sprint seems to be hinting at Apple’s iPhone.

According to Sprint, “Apple gave Verizon a time-to-market advantage for the iPhone” in early 2011, whereas “Sprint has had to compete without access to the iPhone for nearly five years” (emphasis added). The curious wording is no confirmation of Sprint getting the iPhone after it first launched in 2007, although from a speculative standpoint it might suggest the company will soon be able to get access to the iPhone after nearly five years. Verizon actually got the iPhone four years after AT&T (the original exclusive partner in the United States), and as Nilay Patel notes, a time-to-market advantage “would only be an actual advantage if other carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile were set to get the device later on”.

Obviously, this piece of information is only worth reporting as a follow-up to The Wall Street Journal’s recent report of Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint getting the next-generation iPhone in mid-October. For a timeline of iPhone 5 news and speculation, check out our rumor roundup and retrospective.

Acquire Connects Your iOS Camera Directly to Photoshop

Acquire, by FlyingCarLTD, is an iOS app that lets you shoot images from your iOS camera directly into Photoshop CS5.

Acquire is simple and instantly sends images from your iOS device’s camera into Adobe Photoshop CS5 over a WiFi network. With Adobe’s Remote Connect feature, an image taken with an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch is instantly and wirelessly transmitted into Photoshop so you can work with it automatically, no importing needed.

There are many iOS photo apps that let you edit or add effects to an image in the phone but many times edits are permanent and the original image is lost. If you like a more professional and do-it-yourself approach with your iOS camera images, all the tools and effects you’ll ever need are right there with your mouse or trackpad.

“Whether you are a photographer who wants to immediately evaluate the quality of an iPhone photo, an artist who needs a quick image for reference, a manager who needs to add a digital signature to a receipt for email, or a developer who needs to instantly ingest screen shots from your iOS device, Acquire is the perfect tool for you.”

Acquire is only $1.99 in the iTunes store and is available now. An app that works with an Adobe product and it’s only $2? Color me sold. [via John Nack]

Did An Apple Investigator Pose as a Police Officer to Search for Missing iPhone Prototype?

On Wednesday, we reported a repeat of last year’s iPhone disaster - an iPhone prototype lost in a bar. According to the website, Apple never filed a police report based on such loss, likely from an employee field-testing the unit, although it “sparked a scramble by Apple security” in an effort to recover it quickly. The story just got one hundred times more interesting: the SF Weekly has followed up with a new report claiming that Apple security personnel may have posed as the police during the search of Sergio Calderón’s home. Impersonating a police officer is a criminal offense, even if you are a security guard. On the flip side, the police could’ve improperly assisted in the investigation without documenting their work corectly.

[Sergio] Calderón said that at about 6 p.m. six people – four men and two women – wearing badges of some kind showed up at his door. “They said, ‘Hey, Sergio, we’re from the San Francisco Police Department.’” He said they asked him whether he had been at Cava 22 over the weekend (he had) and told him that they had traced a lost iPhone to his home using GPS.

At no point, he said, did any of the visitors say they were working on behalf of Apple or say they were looking for an iPhone 5 prototype.

Calderón is claming that he allowed the team of investigators to search his home and automobile and even check his computer to see if a missing iPhone prototype had been synced with it. The investigators walked away empty handed but told Calderón they would give him $300 to return the phone or could offer information on the device’s whereabouts.

As the visitors left, one of them – a man named “Tony” – gave Calderón his phone number and asked him to call if he had further information about the lost phone. Calderón shared the man’s phone number with SF Weekly.

The phone was answered by Anthony Colon, who confirmed to us he is an employee of Apple but declined to comment further. According to a public profile on the website LinkedIn, Colon, a former San Jose Police sergeant, is employed as a “senior investigator” at Apple.

A spokesman for the SFPD is concerned about the supposed series of events and they will be investigating the incident. This story keeps getting more crazy by the day! What’s next, a movie deal? But in all seriousness, Apple is taking this very seriously.

UPDATE: Anthony Colon’s LinkedIn profile has been deleted but MacRumors saved a screenshot of it and we also have a link to the cached version of his LinkedIn profile page.

[via MacRumors]

Image via Taste Tequila

 

Parallels Desktop 7 For Mac Available This Week, Updated Parallels App For iOS

Earlier today Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac was unveiled, bringing more features and substantial speed improvements to the popular desktop virtualisation software. Headline features of the new version include greater Lion support such as Full Screen Mode and Mission Control, iSight/FaceTime Camera support and those speed improvements which include up to 60% faster resuming and 45% faster 3D graphics.

Mac Developers will now be able to emulate a copy of Lion in Parallels whilst on a Lion installation as per the new Lion license agreement. Installing Windows has also been simplified with a “Windows on Demand” service offering users the ability to instantly purchase and download Windows - particularly helpful for those with new Macs that no longer include DVD drives. Walt Mossberg reviewed the new Parallels on his Late-2010 MacBook Air and said it “ran Windows quickly and smoothly, and integrated well with some of Lion’s new features”.

Windows, and Windows programs, can be displayed in Lion’s new Launchpad feature, which mimics the main screen of an iPad. They also show up and behave like Mac programs in Lion’s new Mission Control feature, which shows all the programs running on the Mac in miniature. Windows programs can also run in Lion’s new full-screen mode.

Also revealed today was that the Parallels Mobile App is receiving a substantial update so that it can completely control a users Mac rather than just the virtualised environment as had been the case prior to this update. The app, available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, is on sale at a special introductory offer of $4.99 but the update is free to existing users.

Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac is available from today for those upgrading from Parallels 5 or 6 at a cost of $49.99 whilst it will be available generally on September 6th for $79.99. There is also a Student edition available for $39.99, a ‘Switch to Mac’ edition available for $99.99 (which comes with a number of Mac video tutorials) and there are also Enterprise volume licences available.

Jump the break for some promo videos of the new Parallels products.

[Via AllThingsD]

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Another iPhone Prototype Lost In A Bar

As reported  by CNET, in a bizarre turn of events it appears Apple may have lost another unreleased iPhone model in a bar, this time at the Cava22 in San Francisco. According to the website, Apple never filed a police report based on such loss, likely from an employee field-testing the unit, although it “sparked a scramble by Apple security” in an effort to recover it quickly. The device, CNET says, was lost in July. Rumors surrounding the next-generation iPhone date back to late 2010, although they have intensified lately as the company approaches the rumored October release date for the “iPhone 5”.

You may recall last year’s loss of an iPhone 4 prototype, which was lost by an Apple employee and sold to Gawker Media’s Gizmodo. Steve Jobs eventually joked on the incident, but Apple did intervene in a legal action against Gizmodo and the “seller” of the device, saying that unreleased prototypes are “priceless” in regards of the kind of information that gets out to competitors ahead of time.

This year’s lost iPhone. however, hasn’t showed up on the Internet yet, and it may have been sold on Craigslist for around $200.

Apple electronically traced the phone to a two-floor, single-family home in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, according to the source.

When San Francisco police and Apple’s investigators visited the house, they spoke with a man in his twenties who acknowledged being at Cava 22 on the night the device went missing. But he denied knowing anything about the phone. The man gave police permission to search the house, and they found nothing, the source said.

Apple usually goes to great lengths in order to protect its iPhone prototypes, using special cases to make these devices look like older models, as with last year’s lost iPhone 4 that was actually found inside a 3GS-like case. It’s not clear whether this year’s (allegedly) lost iPhone is the same version that will end up in consumers’ hands later this year, or if it’s an iPhone 4 prototype running a faster chip that was apparently sent to developers for testing months ago. CNET’s report doesn’t specify whether Apple ever got the phone back, and Craigslist didn’t respond to a request for comments, either.