Netflix has launched a nice update for its iOS application that adds some useful new features, and brings a new look to parts of app. While it’s not a complete redesign like we’ve seen from apps such as LinkedIn recently , it definitely makes some useful changes. The first thing you will notice is a slight interface change: The new UI makes it possible to quickly flip through content you’ve already started watching, which will make it easier to go back to the things you enjoy most. This change should make getting through the interface and into the video content a quicker process, which at the end of the day, is what Netflix is really all about. The episode selector has been tweaked, and the iPad version of the app has received a completely new one, so choosing an episode should be even easier, whether you’re using an iPhone or an iPad. The next big change is best noticed while playing a movie or TV show. The audio and subtitle options have received a facelift, so adjusting them during playback should be a little easier. It’s not the biggest change, but it should come in handy. The update also includes some bug fixes and performance enhancements, as usual. The update is available now for free from the App Store, but a subscription to the Netflix service is required to watch the content on the service. Have you used the new version of Netflix on iOS? What did you think? Source: iTunes via Engadget The post Netflix 4.0 Now Available On iOS, Brings Better Controls & Easier Access To Content [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf .
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Netflix 4.0 Now Available On iOS, Brings Better Controls & Easier Access To Content [Updates]
With all of the Samsung vs. Apple conflict in the courts, one could be forgiven for losing track of the fact that Apple has a lingering patent dispute with Google’s Motorola Mobility subsidiary as well. Bloomberg is reporting that the US International Trade Commission (ITC) recently upheld a previous court’s judgement which held that a Motorola patent asserted against Apple was invalid. The patent in question is US Patent No. 6,246,862 and encompasses functionality whereby a mobile device ignores unintended touches when in close proximity to a user’s face. This is the capability that allows touchscreen phones to avoid “cheekdialing” during a call. The pertinent patent claim reads: 1. A portable communication device comprising: a processing section to control operation of the portable communication device in response to an input signal; a user interface comprising a touch sensitive input device coupled to the processing section, the touch sensitive input device actuatable to generate the input signal; and a sensor coupled to the user interface, the sensor to disable communication of the input signal to the processing section when the portable communication device is positioned in close proximity to a user, thereby, preventing inadvertent actuation of the touch sensitive input device. The ITC agreed with Apple’s argument that the patent claim was obvious. Motorola argued, to no avail, that the patented technology was not obvious back when it was filed in 1999 due to the scarcity of touchscreen mobile devices at the time. It’s worth noting that the aforementioned patent is the last one remaining from Motorola’s initial lawsuit against Apple, filed in 2010, where it asserted a grand total of 18 patents against a slew of Apple products. Google, which acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion back in 2011 , told Bloomberg that the company was “evaluating our options.” Apple, as is typically the case, had no comment. The ITC’s ruling can be read in its entirety over here . More analysis of the court’s decision is over at FOSS Patents . ITC invalidates Motorola proximity sensor patent in suit against Apple originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
Nike continues to improve the now 1-year-old Nike+ FuelBand by adding new features to its iOS app . The latest version ups your motivation by letting you compare your level of fitness with your friends. The new Nike+ Friends feature has a custom leader board that pulls in information from your FuelBand-wearing friends. Another new feature in version 1.5 lets you add a photo to your fitness highlights so you can show people where you were and who you were with when you reached those milestones. The Nike FuelBand app for iOS is available for free and requires a Nike+ Fuelband. The FuelBand is available from Nike or the Apple Store for US$149. [Via The Verge ] Nike adds friends, leader boards to FuelBand iOS app originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
Apple’s earnings conference calls are typically brimming with interesting tidbits regarding Apple’s operations, and Tuesday’s was no different. Apple announced that it has, to date, paid out more than $9 billion to developers. To put that figure into context, let’s take a quick look at just how much Apple’s payments to developers have risen since the App Store first opened. Tim Cook noted in February that Apple had paid out $8 billion to developers . In June 2012, Apple announced that they had paid developers $5 billion. Going back further, Apple’s first $1 billion payout to developers was reached in June 2010. Seeing as the the App Store first opened in July 2008, we can do a little bit of basic math to track the growth of developer payouts. It took Apple nearly two years to reach its first $1 billion payout . The next two years saw Apple increase its payout to developers by $4 billion . And now, in the last 9 months, Apple has added another $4 billion in payments to developers. Touting this fact, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer noted during the conference call that Apple is now dishing out more than $1 billion to developers each quarter. Clearly, Apple’s payouts to developers aren’t just increasing, they’re accelerating . Of course, this is to be expected given the proliferation of millions more iOS devices each and every quarter. Still, $9 billion is nothing to scoff at and serves to underscore the attractiveness of Apple’s App Store for developers. With respect to App Store downloads, Apple announced that it has crossed the 45 billion download threshold. The last time Apple released download details was in January when it announced that the App Store had topped more than 40 billion downloads . Apple’s App Store is available in 155 countries and houses 850,000 iOS apps. As of June 2012, there were 650,000 iOS apps available for download. A million apps can’t be that far off. Apple has paid out $9 billion to developers; App Store downloads reach 45 billion originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 24 Apr 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
Richard Williams acclaimed animation guide The Animator’s Survival Kit has come to the iPad in an affordable new iPad app . Drawn from the book and DVD series of the same name, the US$34.99 app features a complete “Expanded Edition” of The Animator’s Survival Kit, over 100 animated examples from the DVD series and new video with the author to put the app in context. The DVD box set itself retails for $959.50 . For neophyte animation enthusiasts, it’s cheaper to buy an iPad and the app than the boxset itself, though to be fair the DVDs have several more hours of content. Williams is best known for his Oscar-winning work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the 1972 adaptation of A Christmas Carol . His “lost” opus The Thief and the Cobbler is famous for its incredible experimental animation and the director’s struggle for control over the film with the studios who produced it. The Animators Survival Kit comes to the iPad with expanded multimedia edition originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
Those of us who are on a first-name basis with our FedEx delivery person have a new reason to be happy with the company’s iOS app today. FedEx has added a new Delivery Manager feature allowing customized delivery options — even letting you sign for packages from within the app. If you have an existing FedEx account or sign up for a new one from within the app, you’re eligible to sign up for FedEx Delivery Manager. This provides a way to schedule deliveries, give your FedEx driver instructions for pending deliveries or sign for packages while you’re away. Some of the delivery options available to users include delivering to another address (like sending a package to a friend’s house while you’re out of town), scheduling a vacation hold or having your package held at a local FedEx location. At this point, Delivery Manager is only available for residential deliveries in the US. You can sign up for the service here , although the system was crashing like a Texas driver on snowy streets this morning. [via 9to5Mac ] FedEx Mobile app adds Delivery Manager feature originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
It’s the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You’ll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what’s happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today’s Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here . No Flash? Click here to listen . Subscribe via RSS Daily Update for April 23, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
It’s the earnings report everybody has been waiting for. Apple just announced earnings for the second quarter of its 2013 fiscal year , and the news is actually quite good. Apple’s own guidance for Q2 2013 expected revenues in the range of $41-43 billion, with gross margins in the range of 37.5 to 38.5 percent. Wall Street analysts were in the same general range, with institutional investors looking at an average earnings number of $41.82 billion and independent analysts a bit more bullish at $43.75 billion. Results for the same quarter last year were $39.19 billion in revenue, earnings per share of $12.30, and a gross margin of 47.4 percent. Actual results for the quarter were as follows: Revenue: $43.6 billion (beat expectations and institutional investors) Earnings Per Share: $10.09 Gross Margin: 37.5% (met expectations, did not meet street expectations) Tim Cook was quoted as saying that “Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.” Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2013 third quarter: revenue between $33.5 billion and $35.5 billion gross margin between 36 percent and 37 percent operating expenses between $3.85 billion and $3.95 billion other income/(expense) of $300 million tax rate of 26% Join us at 4:50 PM ET today for a liveblog of the earnings call. Apple reports Q2 2013 earnings originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
In conjunction with its earnings report for Q2 2013, Apple issued a press release announcing some major plans for its ever-growing stockpile of cash. In March 2012, Apple announced that the company would be instituting a $2.65/share dividend on a quarterly basis with Apple’s first dividend payment to investors going out in August of last year. Now, about one year later, Apple announced its plan to increase its quarterly dividend to $3.05 per share. The next dividend payout to investors is scheduled for May 16, 2013. What’s more, Apple also announced a massive increase to its stock-repurchasing plan. As part of this program, the Board has increased its share repurchase authorization to $60 billion from the $10 billion level announced last year. This is the largest single share repurchase authorization in history and is expected to be executed by the end of calendar 2015. Apple also expects to utilize about $1 billion annually to net-share-settle vesting restricted stock units. When Apple first announced its dividend and stock repurchasing plan last year, it revealed that both initiatives would eat up about $45 billion from Apple’s cash reserves. Under Apple’s more aggressive dividend and stock repurchasing plan, Apple notes that the company will now be using $100 billion of its cash reserves to return money to shareholders and repurchase outstanding shares. The Company expects to utilize a total of $100 billion of cash under the expanded program by the end of calendar 2015. This represents a $55 billion increase to the program announced last year and translates to an average rate of $30 billion per year from the time of the first dividend payment in August 2012 through December 2015. For a company that was long content to sit on its growing cash hoard under the helm of Steve Jobs, today’s announcement represents a monumental shift in Apple’s use of cash. Regarding Apple’s new use of cash, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained in a press release, “We are very fortunate to be in a position to more than double the size of the capital return program we announced last year. We believe so strongly that repurchasing our shares represents an attractive use of our capital that we have dedicated the vast majority of the increase in our capital return program to share repurchases.” Thus far, Wall Street seems to be pleased both with Apple’s earnings report and news of its expanded cash program. In after hours trading, shares of Apple are up nearly 5%, trading up nearly 20 points. Apple increases dividend by 15%, poised to embark on large stock-repurchasing plan originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments 
Longtime TUAW readers may remember that about five years ago, one of the hot app updates we were looking forward to was Delicious Library 2 (US$34.99), the latest incarnation of a media cataloging app from developer Delicious Monster . MacRumors reports today that the next iteration of the app will be arriving in the Mac and iOS App Stores soon . When it first came out, Delicious Library seemed like magic — it used an Apple iSight camera as a barcode reader to let you inventory DVDs, CDs, books and other media. The app won Apple Design Awards in 2005 and 2007, and the bookshelf-like user interface appears to have been the inspiration for Apple’s iBooks iOS app. Delicious Monster CEO Wil Shipley told MacRumors that Delicious Library 3 will move from simply being a cataloging app to providing recommendations based on its knowledge of the products you already own. In addition, the company will offer an iOS app as well to provide a handheld “scanner” for easy walk-around cataloging. Finally, Delicious Library 3 will have a 3D cover-view interface for the eye candy that you expect from Delicious Monster. The new app should be available soon. To see what was exciting, state-of-the-art and cool at Macworld Expo 2008, check out this classic video featuring former TUAWer Scott McNulty and ” Mayor and founder of Appsterdam ” (and former Delicious Monster developer) Mike Lee talking about Delicious Library 2. Delicious Library 3 to add recommendation engine, iOS cataloging app originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments