For example, we don’t know if app developers will be able to make apps that put widgets in the notification bar so that you can pull down and see the information you need most. Right now, the only widgets are for stocks and weather, but we hope that Apple allows third-party developers to place widgets in the notification area without forcing users to jailbreak their devices.

Here’s a look at some cool features we might see in iOS 5, or more likely in iOS 6, when Apple gives developers the access to these areas.

I’m not a fan of all of these ideas, but I love the home screen widgets, live icons, call widget in the notification drop down and the ability to collapse notifications.

Other features shown off in the video include;

• Call notifications as pop over
• Persistent notifications
• Additional gestures
• Widgets in Spotlight
• Changing app icons

What do you think about this vision for iOS 5? It isn’t anything official from Apple, but as an Android user who has thought about switching on more than one occasion, this version of iOS 5 would make it a much harder decision when I went to purchase my next phone.

[Thanks: http://www.gottabemobile.com]

Apple is preparing to release a cheaper 8-gigabyte iPhone 4 for launch within the next few weeks, to complement the iPhone 5.

Asian suppliers say it will be cheaper than the 16- and 32-gigabyte models and use flash memory. The device is expected to sell alongside the iPhone 5 as a replacement for the iPhone 3GS.

The point, the strategy behind this, is that the iPhone is simply too expensive for large parts of the market. Those parts being many of the people in developing markets. But of course, Apple doesn’t want to reduce the prices that we rich world people are willing to pay for a phone: that would be silly, leaving money that Apple could have had on the table.

So it makes perfect sense to introduce a “lower grade” of iPhone at a lower price point. Thus they can still charge us what we’re willing to pay for the top end models and also start making inroads into those developing markets.

Which is rather what I said a week ago:

A sufficiently large number of these phones have been sold that we’re seeing local apps for local needs being developed: the start of a self-reinforcing process. This is great news for Kenyans and East Africans, of course. The people it might cause a problem for are Apple. If Apple decides that the iPhone is always going to be a high end product then those vast and currently underserved markets in the developing world are going to remain closed to them.

I would, of course, dearly love to be able to say that it was my warning of that week ago which has led to Apple’s upcoming release. You know, fear and tremble at the power of the Worstall in the tech marketplace?

Unfortunately, given the length of time it takes to design, source the components for, manufacture and get ready to distribute, a new phone, I have to reveal that this would not be a true claim. Rather, that Apple managed to grasp this point, oooh, 6 months before I did?

[Thanks: http://www.forbes.com]

One of the first applications with iOS 5 compatibility to be approved was “Camera+” from developer tap tap tap. As noted by Cult of Mac, the release notes for version 2.2.3 of Camera+ noted that the software features “compatibility with that upcoming OS That Must Not Be Named.”

Less coy about iOS 5 support was “Mashable,” which updated its own iPhone application this week to version 1.5.4 and advertised that the software now has “iOS 5 compatibility.”

The software updates have led to wishful speculation that the release of iOS 5 could come sooner than expected, perhaps earlier than the fall debut Apple previously announced.

However, while some software may now be “compatible” with iOS 5, the latest builds released on the App Store are likely still based on the iOS 4.3 application programming interface provided by Apple. Developers are able to test application compatibility with iOS 5 by using the latest beta of the forthcoming software update.

There is no indication that Apple has begun approving applications based on the iOS 5 API. For example, last year Apple began accepting applications based on the iOS 4.0 API only 10 days before the update became publicly available, allowing software to take advantage of new features such as multitasking.

That means any iOS 5 software currently available on the App Store likely does not yet take advantage of new features in the forthcoming update. With iOS 5, developers will be able to take advantage of new functionality such as Notification Center for prompting users; Newsstand for purchasing, organizing and updating newspapers and magazines; and system-wide Twitter integration.

[Thanks: http://www.appleinsider.com]

Facebook still holds the title for the most downloaded app for the App Store to date, due to its 750-million user base. It still remains to be seen if Google+ can compete with or surpass Facebook as a social media platform.

According to estimates, Google+’s user base has tripled from last week’s mere five million to 18 million by Tuesday. And considering Google+ is currently in invite-only mode, it’s an impressive feat that the iPhone app has jumped to the top so quickly.

When Google+ announced the launch of the G+ iPhone app, there was an unprecedented excitement hitting the social media waves via Twitter.

However, despite launching the Android app the same day that Google+ launched, Android users don’t seem to be taking to G+ as quickly as iPhone users. Facebook for Android is currently the second most-downloaded free app on the Android Market, following Google Maps at the number one spot. Google+ comes in at eighth place following Angry Bird, Pandora, YouTube and others.

What slightly differentiates G+ from Facebook mobile is that rather than grouping your friends together using “Friend” group names the way Facebook does, G+ uses “Circles.” These Circles allow users to have a more exclusive sharing platform — sharing just the right information with the right people.

G+ also has “Stream,” which act like a Facebook Status. But, what G+ has that Facebook apps don’t currently have is the “Huddle” feature, which allows fast group messaging for those in your circles.

However, despite Wednesday’s excitement over the G+ iPhone app, there has been disappointment too. Many users were complaining about the app being too slow, and are frustrated that IOS5 is unsupported, for now.

Punit Soni, who helped develop the iPhone app responded on Tuesday via Google+. Some of the issues he addressed go as follows:

1. It doesn’t keep me logged in. Even though I had told it to. Oh, wait, now it is.
Soni: We have not seen this issue so far. But we are going to do another round of testing on Authentication and iterate.

2. I don’t see a way to upload a photo, like the Android app has. Never mind, I found that, you have to click on the photos app where the camera icon is very small.
Soni: Thanks for the feedback. We will take another look at our UI flows.

3. It frequently freezes on me.
Soni: We discovered an issue where the App freezes when there are posts with tons of comments on it. We have a fix for it and it’s coming soon.

4. It has crashed twice so far. UPDATE: Six times.
Soni: This may be related to the lack of IOS5 support. We are digging deep into other crash reports as we speak.

5. No way to share.
Soni: That is a feature we are working on for both Android and iPhone. Coming soon.

And the complaints don’t stop with iPhone users. One blogger posted in a forum a concern over the Android G+ Photos Feature stating, “Every day I post a pic to G+ it creates a completely new sub-album under the Photos From Posts album. To make matters worse, if I post photos to more than one circle/privacy-condition, I will have multiple albums for the same day.

“As a result, I now have to scroll through a crap-ton of albums in the Gallery app. And if I decide to share/upload a pic straight to Picasa, I have to scroll through an obscene amount of folders in the Picasa uploaded just to tell it which folder to upload to.

“It hasn’t even been 2 weeks yet and it’s getting to be a problem, and I can imagine how much worse it will get only a month from now.”

There has also been some criticism over the amount of users Google+ was able to achieve in its first three weeks, compared to its main rival, Facebook. One thing to consider is that Google+ reached a certain, chosen capacity and is currently allowing new users to sign up by invitation only.

Paul Allen, who gave himself the title “Google+ unofficial statistician,” who also founded Ancestry.com, posted on Google+ that the total user base jumped to 18 million after more than 750,000 peopled joined on Monday alone.

[Thanks: http://www.ibtimes.com]

“Discoverability is a big problem in the App Store,” said Ashish Rangnekar of Benchprep, a Chicago startup whose app helps students study for admissions exams like the SAT and GRE.

“There are a million apps now. What is becoming a problem is not
building the greatest app ever but making sure the customer finds the
app you’ve built.” 

Rangnekar was one of about 25 mobile technology developers who gathered in a Chicago skyscraper at a meeting sponsored by eFactor,
a social network for entrepreneurs. Because of the number of apps now
available in the App Store, Rangnekar said, an app’s name, icon, and
screenshots may be more immediately important to sales than its content
or performance.

My colleague Brian Caulfield reported
earlier this month on Apple’s announcement that it had sold 15 billion
copies of the 425,000 apps developed for iPhone and iPad (and more
recently for Macs):

Which is why the app store is packed with more software
than you can possibly use — and it’s only going to get more packed in
the years ahead. It’s Apple’s response to competitors who are flooding
the marketplace with scores of variations on the touch-screen,
media-friendly phone it first introduced four years ago.

Apple can’t fight them all with hardware, but it can do a little spamming of its own with software.

via With 15 Billion Apps Served, Apple Is Just Getting Started – Brian Caulfield – Shiny Objects – Forbes.

It’s a lesson Apple learned from Microsoft, no doubt, in the 1990s,
but Apple isn’t responsible for developing every app in this avalanche,
individual developers are, and the “spam” of apps, as Brian calls it, is
becoming a headache for many of them.

Rangnekar advised app developers to “be smart about picking icons and names” and urged them to:

• Focus on optimizing results when potential customers search the App
  Store, using search engine optimization techniques and careful messaging
  in the brief text allotted to each app
• Within the app, develop features, hooks, and tools that create buzz in the media
• Elsewhere, try to generate news, particularly from popular bloggers and industry newsletters on topics relevant to your app.

Benchprep tried many other common ways of popularizing its app, such
as advertising on Google and cultivating user reviews, but found it’s
most important to get noticed in the App Store.

iPad Goads Apple Further Beyond Android in App Development, Developers Say

Most of the developers who gathered in Chicago Thursday offer
cross-platform apps, but they agreed Apple has vastly increased its
dominance of the mobile technology software market.

The iPhone is the most important device to app developers right now, said Carson Conant of Mediafly.

‘I think the iPad was the killer,” said Kilton Hopkins of the App House, which helps people develop ideas into Apps.

Others said the expect Android to catch up and that Apple and Android will dominate the mobile market for years to come.

[Thanks: http://blogs.forbes.com]

TheNextWeb reports that JailbreakMe.com, a site which automatically guides users through the jailbreaking procedure, has finally been updated to support iOS version 4.3.3. This means that you’ll just have to grab your iOS device, visit the site from your mobile browser, and follow a few simple instructions — no computer or hacking skills required. Your device’s operating system will be at your mercy in mere moments.

The benefits of jailbreaking — which while frowned upon by Apple, is not illegal — are that it allows iOS users to use their devices on carriers other than AT&T or Verizon, customize the gadgets’ interfaces or run any number of apps which didn’t manage to get approved for Apple’s App Store.

It’s worth noting that there may be good reasons that Apple turns its nose at certain apps or iOS modifications, so watch out for anything that seems shady —and use your common sense to avoid obvious security risks.

[Thanks: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com]

“As soon as RIM brought in a touchscreen and mixed it with a thumbwheel, a keyboard and shortcut keys, it made it really difficult and expensive to develop across devices,” commented Brian Hurley, Purple Forge, one of the companies that’s backing away from RIM. “What Apple scored big on is having a touch screen and a button and that’s it.”

Developers are leaving BlackBerry for iPhone

Developers aren’t impressed with RIM’s shrinking market and relatively small app market compared to Apple’s App Store.

Seesmic is leaving RIM behind to focus on its iOS and Android apps, too.

“You have to put your resources where the growth is,” said Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur. “It’s coming down to the explosive growth of the iPhone and the Android operating systems.”

The difference in the number of downloads developers see for each platform is striking, too. When launching the same app on the iPhone and BlackBerry, Purple Forge saw a 20 to 1 difference in downloads in favor of the iPhone.

Mobile Roadie offers tools that let users build their own apps for various mobile platforms — but doesn’t plan to continue supporting RIM because of the number of BlackBerry devices that couldn’t properly display app graphics.

“At the end of the day, I even felt like developing for BlackBerry could be hurting our reputation,” commented company CEO Michael Schneider.

[Thanks: http://www.macobserver.com]

One document, titled “iphone apps- used against officers.doc”, is classified “Law Enforcement Sensitive” and lists several apps of which officers should be aware. These include an app called “Cop Recorder,” which according to the police document “can be activated while in a pocket and record everything the officer is saying,” as well as a speed trap avoidance app and a police tracking app, and an app for jailbroken iPhones that turns the device into a scale in grams or ounces.

“Take the time to look at an arrestee’s cell phone to see what applications they have,” the document advises officers.

Another iPhone-related document is an “Awareness Brief” from the Department of Justice dated June 2009. It outlines the then-new “Find my Phone” and “Remote Wipe” features unveiled with iOS 3.

It warns officers that iPhones seized as evidence should be immediately shielded from wireless signals in a faraday bag or similar container to eliminate the possibility of remote wiping.

The document also advises: “It may be possible to locate the user of an iPhone using this ‘find my iPhone’ feature. (with appropriate legal authority)”.

Arizona police have confirmed that the documents are authentic, issuing a statement saying:

“The Arizona Highway Patrol Association (AHPA) was made aware that hackers, that identify themselves as LulzSec, released confidential information from the Department of Public Safety’s (DPS).  AHPA is concerned that the files released could jeopardize the safety of many DPS officers and employees.”

“Law enforcement officials go to many lengths to protect their identities,” said Jimmy Chavez, President of the AHPA.  “These individuals maliciously released confidential information knowing the safety of DPS employees, and their families, would be compromised.  A threat to release more DPS files demonstrates how heinous the hackers are willing to act. The AHPA would like to see the people brought to justice and prosecuted to the highest degree of the law.”

[Thanks: http://techland.time.com]

Dubbed Project Spartan, the project is a framework for apps that would use social hooks and work inside of Facebook’s ecosystem.

As we understand it, Project Spartan is the codename for a new platform Facebook is on verge of launching. It’s entirely HTML5-based and the aim is to reach some 100 million users in a key place: mobile. More specifically, the initial target is both surprising and awesome: mobile Safari.

Yes, Facebook is about to launch a mobile platform aimed squarely at working on the iPhone (and iPad). But it won’t be distributed through the App Store as a native application, it will be entirely HTML5-based and work in Safari. Why? Because it’s the one area of the device that Facebook will be able to control (or mostly control).

Project Spartan will also be available on Android but according to TechCrunch, Facebook has Apple in its sights first.

As of right now, there are believed to be 80 or so outside developers working with Facebook on Project Spartan. These teams are working on apps for the platform that range from games to news-reading apps. Some of the names should be familiar: Zynga and Huffington Post (owned by our parent AOL), for example. The goal is to have these apps ready to roll in the next few weeks for a formal unveiling shortly thereafter.

‘Project Trojan’ sounds like a better name.

[Thanks: http://www.9to5mac.com]

Bottom line: Apple’s developers are very happy with the platform. The tools for making apps are better from Apple than anyone else, they say. And monetizing their apps is easier on iOS than it is on Android.

This is important because Android has been eating up marketshare. As it becomes the dominant mobile platform, it’s easy to see developers flocking to Android at the sake of iOS to serve the larger customer base.

For now, it seems like iOS developers are happiest with Apple, so that’s not happening.

Also of note in this survey: Developers think the iOS platform has more potential for growth than Android.

(Of course, this survey is biased since it comes from an all Apple conference, but the general point stands.)

Here are the results of Munster’s survey of developers: