Why The iPad App will be my first Choice For FaceBook

Facebook finally released its official iPad app yesterday, in the form of a universal add-on to its existing iPhone application. It wasn’t exactly a secret that it was coming, nor was what it would bring in terms of interface and features. But the way those features behave in practice, along with when it arrived (alongside major changes to the Facebook website), make the iPad app a much more attractive option for accessing Facebook than any other available. There are three big reasons why I think the Facebook iPad app trumps either the web-based site (or mobile site), or the native iPhone app: navigation, visual clutter, and photo browsing.

Navigation

Facebook borrowed a neat trick from the Twitter iPad app, using simple swipe navigation to go back a level when you navigate to links both within and outside of Facebook. The swiping action also opens up the Facebook main menu on the left side of the app, which by default is hidden out of view. This tiny addition, which eliminates the need of having to hunt down and tap a small arrow button every time you want to revisit your news feed, turns navigation from a chore to simplicity itself. And the button’s still there, too, if people prefer having somewhere to focus their attention when finding their way around.

Pull-t0-refresh in the news feed is another nice navigation feature that lets you control the pace with which you receive information from Facebook, and the way Profiles are presented are currently more organized and clean than profiles on the regular website, and will become an even better option for quickly finding specific contact info when Facebook institutes Timeline for all users. Other nice touches include event sidebars that let me see at a glance exactly the info I’m usually looking for without taking me to a new page. Facebook for iPad is more about efficiency than any of its other incarnations, which leads me to my next point.

De-cluttering Facebook

Facebook on the web has become a visual nightmare. What was once a clean and simple site is now a bizarre mash-up of information, with ads, links and data sources all crammed together in a confusing, multi-column layout that provides no escape for an eye looking for a place to rest. The recent addition of the Ticker is the cherry on top of this attention-straining design.
Facebook for iPad is a like a distillation of this swirling information vortex into perfect, bite-sized chunks. I want my news feed? There it is in profile view. Need to see the chat list? Just turn the iPad to landscape orientation. Everything else is available with the swipe of a finger or tap of a button via the Facebook parent menu, and best of all, you’ve got no adds or Ticker to deal with.
Also, the way apps are handled via external, third-party, native iOS apps means you won’t have those to distract you, either. All of this adds up to a Facebook that’s much better at doing what I want it to do: help me stay in touch with friends and family.

Photo browsing

I’ve never used Facebook that much for sharing photos, but the iPad app could change that. The photo browsing element of the new app is terrific, and makes looking through friends’ galleries a pleasure. That’s because the interface emphasizes the photos themselves, and makes the conversation secondary. I’d much rather see a photo first, and then check out what people have to say about it if I find myself really curious.
My one complaint in this area is that the thumbnails along the bottom when you’re viewing a series of photos aren’t really big enough to reveal anything about the pictures themselves. Making all the thumbs as large as the one currently in focus, and then adding a colored borders or slightly larger size to indicate where you are would’ve worked better. Still, it helps you know where you are in a series, and you could argue that it’s better not knowing exactly what the next photo will bring.
The Facebook app may not be perfect, but it is the best way to interact with Facebook in my opinion. Your mileage may vary if you use Facebook for different purposes; professional networkers may have problems with limitations like an inability to email out links, or the lack of support for the recently introduced Lists feature. For me, the advantages listed above more than make up for those few drawbacks, however. How do you feel about the new app?

Apple confirms Carrier IQ in older iOS, plans to remove it in future update

Apple has confirmed in a statement (via All Things D) that they stopped supporting Carrier IQ in iOS 5 and plan to “remove it completely in a future software update”. Earlier we reported that carrier IQ was indeed running on the iPhone. Full statement below:

We stopped supporting CarrierIQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.

From : http://9to5mac.com

MTA says “bring it on” to state investigation over Apple Grand Central lease

Following our reports about a possible state investigation of Apple’s Grand Central lease, the MTA have contacted us to clarify the deal and say “bring it on” to the investigation:

“I’m following up on your reporting about the lease agreement between Apple and the MTA. Reports in the New York Post have been inaccurate, and we want to set the record straight with the information below. With regard to any calls for an investigation into the lease, our comment is this: “Bring it on. This is the best possible deal for the MTA, quadrupling the rent we receive and bringing foot traffic to Grand Central Terminal that will increase revenue from all of our retailers. We look forward to explaining the details of this competitively bid transaction to anyone who is interested.”

The Facts: MTA’s Lease with Apple at Grand Central Terminal 

• The space that will soon house a new Apple retail store is a great location but has major limitations for retail, including very strict historic preservation regulations.

• Until the MTA took action earlier this year, the restaurant Metrazur had a lease through 2019 in this space that paid only $263,000 annually to the MTA. This lease dates back to the restoration of Grand Central Terminal in 1999 and never generated enough revenue to contribute any percentage rent.

• Believing that more revenue could be generated, the MTA put the space out for bid knowing that it would take a unique respondent to pay significant upfront costs: $5 million to buy out the existing lease and more than $2.5 million for infrastructure improvements.

• The deal with Apple is a win-win for the MTA and our customers:

• Quadruples the rent coming to the MTA (from $263,000 to $1.1 million)
• Provides a terrific new amenity at Grand Central Terminal.
• Will drive traffic to all of the retailers at Grand Central, where every 1% in additional sales is worth $500,000 to the MTA.
• Includes permanent infrastructure improvements to Grand Central, including HVAC systems and new egress.

• This is the best possible deal for the MTA. When all of the costs are included, Apple is paying more than $180 per square foot over the ten-year lease. As the competitive bidding process revealed, there are no other uses for this space that would generate the same revenue for the MTA given the up-front costs and limitations.

From : http://9to5mac.com/

New York state investigating Apple's low-cost Grand Central lease

After a story revealed that Apple is paying a lower-than-average rate for its new Grand Central Terminal megastore, a New York state official is now investigating the lease.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli told the New York Post that he has launched an investigation into the agreement struck between Apple and New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The store, set to open next Friday, Dec. 9, will cost Apple about $800,000 for the first year, a rate that is said to be well below what other tenants of the station are paying.

"The article in the New York Post about the MTA's contract with Apple in Grand Central Terminal is a cause for concern," DiNapoli said in a statement. "This is a prime property, and I intend to make sure that the MTA hasn't given away the store."

The investigation was spurred by a story published on Wednesday, which characterized the deal between Apple and the MTA as "unique." Apple is said to be paying $60 per square foot for the property, while other tenants such as a Shake Shack restaurant pay more than $200 per square foot.

Apple's apparent "hard bargain" driven with the MTA also means the company will not share any of its sales revenue with the MTA, unlike some other storefronts in the station. The authority said allowing Apple to keep all of its sales is fair, because the new store will "generate significant new traffic" for the 100 other retail tenants of Grand Central Terminal.

The MTA has said that the authority will receive more than quadruple what it was paid previously, when Charlie Palmer's Metrazur restaurant occupied that space. In addition, the MTA also revealed that no companies other than Apple responded to the authority's public request for proposal.

Apple is also bankrolling infrastructure upgrades, including new elevators. And the company also reportedly paid $5 million to the Metrazur so it could take over the space.

But because that $5 million from Apple went to the restaurant, and not to the MTA, the actual rent being paid to the authority is much lower than competing occupants of the terminal.

The MTA has been under scrutiny from DiNapoli's office before, as last year it found a number of irregularities in the authority's real-estate portfolio. DiNapoli will look into the latest deal the MTA struck with Apple in an attempt to find if the iPhone maker was given any special treatment.

When the retail store officially opens next Friday, it will be one of Apple's largest retail locations in the world. The 23,000-square-foot store will open in time for Christmas, and will sit in a prime location in the terminal, through which an estimated 700,000 people pass every day.
From : www.appleinsider.com

Apple exploring graphics-driven iPhone menu interfaces for contacts, music

Selecting contacts or music on an iPhone in the future could rely less on scrolling through plain black-and-white text and instead could feature more visually appealing graphical elements and support for multi-touch gestures.

Apple's interest in spicing up the iOS mobile operating system that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch was revealed this week in a patent application made public by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The filing, entitled "Segmented Graphical Representations for Recommending Elements" and discovered by AppleInsider, describes a more engaging way of browsing content and scrolling through a list on a mobile device.

The application notes that today's portable devices, like the iPhone, have large storage capacities to hold huge amounts of music and other data. In addition, many users have hundreds of contacts stored on their handset.

"Current portable electronic devices, however, are limited in their ability to present information to users," the application reads. "For example, portable electronic devices commonly have limited interfaces for presenting users' music collections or for recommending songs for purchase. These electronic devices may display music collections or recommendations using textual lists of songs."

Apple's solution relies on "segmented graphical representations of elements," or content on an iPhone. It notes that a new graphical interface could be used to present users with songs or address book contacts.

In one example, contacts could be presented with provided pictures of people, represented with a number of tiles on the screen. Contacts or music could also be shown with a dynamically generated mosaic, collecting a number of associated pictures.

Graphics could be created on an iOS device using a "seed element," such as a song currently playing or the individual that the user is currently on a telephone call with.

With respect to contacts, Apple states that the proposed invention could make it easier for users to sort through people in their address book. For example, contacts who work for the same company could automatically be grouped together and represented by the same image -- perhaps the company's logo.

"Unlike an alphabetically organized address book, this interface may allow [the] electronic device... to provide an address book that is intuitive to the user, and may enable a user to quickly call a number of users from the same contact group in succession," the application reads.

The filing also notes that this new graphical interface could be enhanced through the use of multi-touch gestures on the iPhone. For example, a user could "pinch in" with two fingers on a piece of onscreen album artwork to select it, while the reverse "pinch out" gesture would navigate backward to the previous menu.

The proposed invention, made public this week by the USPTO, was first filed in September of 2009. It is credited to Taido Nakajima and Pareet Rahul.

From : www.appleinsider.com

Apple exploring photo-generated digital avatars for iOS Game Center

Apple has shown continued interest in creating digital avatars for its Game Center networking service for iOS, with a pair of new patents related to automatically generating an avatar and also updating their online status.

One of the new patent applications published this week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, dubbed "Automatic Avatar Creation," describes a 3D character that can be automatically generated from a picture or video frame. The application, discovered by AppleInsider, describes a system that would create a digital, cartoony version of a person based on their picture.

Once an avatar has been automatically generated, the users can further customize their digital character in an editing environment. Once completed, this character could be used for gaming, social networking and video conferencing.

The most prominent example provided by Apple in the application is using the avatar to represent a person in an online gaming environment. Apple's Game Center social network, which allows users to friend one another, track achievements in games and challenge each other to online match-ups, would be the most obvious implementation.

Digital avatars have become a common aspect of gaming platforms in recent years, popularized by the Nintendo Wii and its customizable "Mii" characters. Nintendo was soon followed by Microsoft, which added cartoon-style avatars to its Xbox 360 interface, and Sony, which took a more realistic approach for characters in its PlayStation Home service.

Apple's application describes a system that would analyze a photograph and assign a value to different aspects of a person's face. The categories, which are ranked in "fitness values," include eyebrows, eyes and glasses, nose, mouth, hair, beard and chin.

"Once the fitness values for the facial elements are computed, an overall fitness of the genome can be computed as a function of the individual facial element fitness values," the application reads.

Among those credited for the proposed invention is Bertrand Serlet, the former senior vice president of software engineering at Apple. Others credited are Ale Tremain Nelson, Cedric Bray, Thomas Goossens, Merwe Rudolph Van Der, and Richard E. Crandall. The application was first filed in June of 2010.

A second application was also published this week by the USPTO related to digital avatars for Game Center. Entitled "Avatars Reflecting User States," it describes different ways that an avatar can be modified to represent a user's current mood or status.

An avatar could be customized by its owner with a "trigger event," which could include user-entered textual data or emoticons. It could even change a user's status based on data on the phone; for example, when it is someone's birthday, their avatar might be shown with a background showing balloons and fireworks.

Users could customize their avatar's mood settings to quickly change them. A few examples include dressing a character in red clothes when their mood is set to "angry," while dressing in white when the mood is described as "calm."

The user state could affect more than the character's appearance and clothes, and could also include "presentation themes." For example, if a user indicates they are "happy," cheerful music could be played, while a "sad" avatar would be accompanied by melancholic music, and "bored" could be accompanied by a snoring sound.

The proposed invention is credited to Goossens, who appeared on the previous filing, as well as Laurent Baumann and Geoff Stahl. It was also filed in June of 2010.

Apple's latest pair of applications are not the first time the company has shown interest in avatars for Game Center. Back in October, AppleInsider revealed the company's interest in creating cartoon characters for game players on iOS devices, much like Nintendo's Miis.

The applications published in October described an interface in which users could create custom, cartoon-style avatar characters in Game Center. In those examples, users would start with a blank canvas and choose basic features like hair, a nose eyes and a mouth to create their character. Accessories like hats or glasses could also be added.

But this week's latest applications are all about simplifying that process, and automating the creation of a character as well as updating its status.

From : www.appleinsider.com

Apple wins one-week extension on Australian Samsung tablet ban

The recently overturned ban of Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 tablet sales in Australia has been extended one week, new court date set to deliberate whether Apple will be allowed to appeal.

Australian High Court Justice Dyson Heydon on Thursday announced the nationwide ban of Samsung's tablet will remain in effect until Dec. 9, when the court will decide whether Apple can appeal a recent lower court decision to lift the embargo, according to Blomberg.

The preliminary injunction that barred Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been in effect since Oct. 12, though the South Korean company won a reversal on Tuesday that overturned the initial ruling. Apple immediately said it would appeal the latest ruling with the High Court, and was subsequently granted a request to keep the injunction intact until the appeal was filed.

The Australian case is part of an ongoing worldwide patent dispute between the two tech giants, originally started in April when Apple sued Samsung, claiming the company copied the iPad and iPhone's look and feel.

Since the initial suit, Samsung has fired back with its own counter claims pertaining to Apple's use of so-called FRAND patents, however the pursuit has been unsuccessful thus far.

Most recently, the South Korean company's litigation strategy was reportedly under investigation by the European Commission to determine whether it violates anti-competition laws.

iPhone 4S is Apple's most popular phone yet with 96% satisfaction rate

The iPhone 4S carries the highest customer satisfaction ratings of any Apple smartphone yet, with a new survey finding that 96 percent of users consider themselves satisfied with their purchase.

The latest data from ChangeWave Research, released on Thursday, shows that 77 percent of respondents indicated they are "very satisfied" with their iPhone 4S. Another 19 percent said they are "somewhat satisfied," while just 2 percent fell into the "unsatisfied" category.

That compares to a survey conducted just after the launch of the iPhone 4, when 72 percent of Apple customers indicated they were "very satisfied" with their purchase, and 21 percent chose "somewhat satisfied." By besting the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S has become Apple's most popular phone yet, garnering the highest approval ratings.

Customers were also asked what their favorite specific features of the iPhone 4S are, and Siri came in first with 49 percent. Second place was ease of use with 39 percent, and the new 8-megapixel camera took third with 33 percent.

Faster Web browsing, powered by the A5 chip in the iPhone 4S, was the fourth most popular feature at 24 percent, the high-resolution Retina Display took fifth with 23 percent, and the newly launched iCloud service was in sixth with 19 percent.

As for what users don't like about the iPhone 4S, 38 percent said their most disliked feature is that the battery life is too short. Apple has already issued one update in an attempt to address battery life bugs, and the company is already at work on another update in the form of iOS 5.1.

ChangeWave took a closer look at the dropped call issue and found that only 8 percent of iPhone 4S owners said it was a "very big problem." Another 20 percent indicated battery life on the iPhone 4S was "somewhat of a problem.

The second most disliked aspect of the iPhone 4S is its lack of high-speed 4G data connectivity, 30 percent of respondents said. Coming in third was the screen size at 11 percent, network coverage took fourth with 9 percent, and excessive dropped calls was at 8 percent.

With regard to dropped calls, the survey also found that the dropped call rate on the iPhone 4S is about half that of the iPhone 4. That number was aided by the inclusion of Verizon as a carrier at launch, as ChangeWave found that Verizon iPhone 4S users experienced significantly fewer dropped calls than those on AT&T.

The survey was conducted Nov. 2 through Nov. 9 and a total of 215 iPhone 4S owners were polled.

By : www.appleinsider.com