Euro iPhone News

Microsoft Finally Launches Office For iPhone

After many years of rumors, speculation and waiting, Microsoft has finally released a version of Office for the iPhone.  But not a full version and not a version for everyday users.

Office for iPhone, not iPad only works for Office 365 subscribers. Or in other words for those users who are already using Office in the cloud.

Office for iPhone lets you access, view and edit your Word and Excel documents stored in your Office Sky Drive account. The version for the small screen has been drastically changed to fit with a mobile device. In the transformation from native Windows on a PC to native iOS6 on the iPhone Microsoft has produced a version of Office that is far removed from what any sensible Office user would expect.

Microsoft has in some way forced iPhone and iPad users to investigate alternatives to Office for their mobile needs. Witness the growth in Dropbox, Google Office and other free office versions.

And let’s be honest who really wants to edit or create a word file on a phone? Having access to files so that you can forward then via email is neat, hence the success of Dropbox. Creating and editing on the iPad would be a huge benefit. Apple has addressed this need with iOS versions of Pages and Numbers.

By holding out and trying to force Office diehards to demand a Windows phone or tablet has done more harm than good as it has predominately alienated Windows users or at least introduces them to alternatives.

As is often the case with Microsoft cloud apps setup is major pain. After half a dozen attempts we eventually established a connection with Sky Cloud and could see our documents.

Once connected the iPhone app is pretty straightforward, letting you view and edit documents stored in your SkyDrive account on your iPhone. All your changes and new documents will automatically sync with your Office 365 account, meaning you can access it all from your PC or Windows tablet too. The feature set is tiny. You can type, open and save. The default text size is large, that’s good on the small iPhone screen.

Word

Word is probably the app users will open the most. The iPhone Office version is stripped down from the multitude of functions present in the desktop version, giving you only a very few options to format any text you select and that’s it. No change of font, no styles. Just bold, italic and underline and basic colors.

Like Google Drive, Word gives you is the ability to comment within documents. You do so by pressing and holding on text (what you’d normally do to copy and paste), then writing the comment, which you can edit later. Comments show up normally in the doc when viewed in any other Word client.

Still, I’m a little miffed that Word for iPhone doesn’t match the abilities of other apps in terms of formatting options — it doesn’t even let you change the font. Clearly, Microsoft thinks Word on a phone is going to be used for the most basic of editing, not document creation. It keeps things focused, I suppose, but from the leader in desktop “productivity” it feels terribly basic.

Excel

While Excel for iPhone is still bare compared to the desktop app, it feels more whole since the app lets you edit freely, using the formula field to write out many of the same commands (e.g. SUM) you’d create in any spreadsheet. You can “freeze” cells (locking their position), change the width of entire columns, and even change formatting of an individual cell.

Excel also lets you do something you can’t do in Word: Undo. Again, it mystifies me why this was left out of Word, but it’s much appreciated in Excel, where an accidental tap of “Clear” can have disastrous results.

With good selection tools, the ability to create charts, and even use filters when viewing data, Excel is the highlight of Office for iPhone. Too bad it probably won’t get as much use as its Wordy brother.

Summary

At start by Microsoft that is going to let most users down.

Apple iOS7 will be launched later this year. A beta copy is now available for developers.

Here are a number of screen shots to show the new design and give an indication to the Look and Feel of iOS7.

This represents a major design project for the mobile team.

All iPhone icons are redesigned

Completely new Safari app and icon with enhanced tabs

New security setting with no way to remove the Apple ID. This should cut down on theft as the phone will be hard to sell on

Great looking new camera app

Gorgeous looking Sign On screen

Lightweight Video player lets you focus on the film

Beautiful weather icons. Look at the detail

Active weather screens for making the point

The introduction of nested icons in multiple folders – great for all those games. Keeps the front screen clean and simple

Updated Alarm Clock and reminders

Totally new calendar

Attention to detail in the fonts and layout

New Photo options, including square

 New icon for iOs7

New Mail icon

Brand new Notification screen

Enhanced messenger screen

New and updated Stocks, News and iTunes screens

The introduction and launch of iRadio

At last a single page for all system options and settings

Stunning watery look with transparency

And all within a 3D look. We can’t wait until the launch

Will Apple launch a new iPhone at the same time? If it does can we expect an iPhine 5S or an Iphone 6 or something else?

Once again tickets for Apple’s Developers Show sold out within seconds of going on sale. So where are people lining up to see.

The big push is the welcome keynote speech from Tim Cook who is the CEO assigned by Steve Jobs to run Apple.

Far too many people expect WWDC to be a show aimed at pushing new hardware. There were far too many expectations for new iPhones or new iPads. This was never going to happen. This is a developer event. People want to talk about API and memory utilization, Of course they are happy to look and get excited about new phones but they want the bits and bytes.

Mr. Cook showed, with the help of some senior Apple staff the software road map for the Mac and the mobile devices. The new IOS, called iOS7 was the significant part of the show and is described in details below.

The MAC OS has run out of big cat names and will be based from now on around towns in the Great State of California. The first chosen one is the surfer town of Mavericks. We can expect OS X Marvericks later this year. Most of the changes to this platform are technical with a big push on performance and simplicity. See full Mavericks review below:

The Mac Pro, the oldest service Mac computer has been totally redone with a stunning new cylindrical design that is tiny compared to the old beast of a computer. See MAC Pro review.

And just to keep the hardware crew happy we have revamped Mac Book Airs with longer battery life based on the latest Intel core processors and graphics chip sets and enhanced Wi-Fi with 802.11 ac.

Apple also doubled the amount of Flash Disk and cut the price. If you purchased an Air last week you must feel a little sorry. This is now a fantastic computer. The Air was always great but now it’s even better.

Apart from the widely leaked iRadio service, coming to the US in the Fall and other countries at some point in the future that was about all that was covered in the nearly two hours. The crowd of Apple developers’ loved it. And they should Apple has paid developers over $10 Billion, representing 30% of total 3^rd party app sales. Talking of apps the show was launched with a demo from a new robotic software hardware, gaming company with a super clever concept of robotic games in real life.

OS X: Mavericks:

The cats are renamed with towns. Mavricks brings performance and security with a neat Password generator and keeper integrated with Safari and Keychain. This will help security of website management, a very welcome enhancement. We also get a clean look to Maps, Calendar and Notifications and the integration of iBooks onto the desktop. Safari is revamped to be faster and cleaner.

Anyone who used multiple displays or projectors will appreciate the enhancements to the multi-screen support and control. This was always a weak point in Apple compared to the simplicity of Windows. This goes even further than Windows as each screen now has its own menu making usage much better with reduced mouse work.

Under the hood we have the addition of Tags for documents and an enhanced Finder Window with tabs, again another welcome enhancement.

iOS7:

This turned out to be a big change. The design influence of British start Johny Ive is behind this release. Everything has been changed. There is a new fancy 3D look with beautifully designed icons and graphics. More importantly behind the graphics is a host of new features that will continue to drive the iPhone as the device to have. The major user changes are a new Control Centre to manage all the aspects of the phone. Enhanced Multitasking with full windows preview and smarter integration and the addition of Air Drop as a way to share photos and other content with others. Intelligent updating lets the phone connect to the network is a smarter way to reduce the amount to power used to pull and push data from multiple sources from the radio network.

The list goes on with: Enhanced camera application. Better photo library and sharing. Better Web browsing with enhanced Safari. The addition of iTunes Radio and Siri in multilanguage and a better understanding of controlling the iPhone.

Looking at the design side, Apple showed a video interview with Johny Ive talking about the new changes and enhancements. It’s a total overhaul of the look and feel with new gestures. Every app icon is new and many look different. Long gone are the real word references to wood, leather and paper. In comes simple, clean design.

Nothing we’ve ever created has been designed just to look beautiful. That’s approaching the opportunity from the wrong end. Instead, as we reconsidered iOS, our purpose was to create an experience that was simpler, more useful, and more enjoyable — while building on the things people love about iOS. Ultimately, redesigning the way it works led us to redesign the way it looks. Because good design is design that’s in service of the experience. Simplicity is often equated with minimalism. Yet true simplicity is so much more than just the absence of clutter or the removal of decoration. It’s about offering up the right things, in the right place, right when you need them. It’s about bringing order to complexity. And it’s about making something that always seems to “just work.” When you pick something up for the first time and already know how to do the things you want to do, that’s simplicity.

iOS 7 looks very clean, fresh and modern and gives the iPhone a new look. See images of the clock, and locations. They look stunning.

Maps are enhanced. Everything is new. We will be able to see a Beta today and the full release will ship later the year and work with Apple iPhone 4 and 5 and iPad 2 and above.

It looks great.

Watch out for a full review.

Mac Pro:

This is the computer that you find in every design agency, every photography studio and every video production company. This is the choice of professionals. But it’s old and not at all sexy. The new machine is everything the old one isn’t. It’s tiny, the size of our Porsche designed cylindrical kettle just 9 inches high. Stunning looks, compared to a large cheese grater. Superfast specs with the latest processors, graphics cards, oodles of fast RAM and of course Solid State drives.

What it does not have is expandability. The box looks close to full, there are no slots. Then again being round, slots would be hard to engineer. So all expansion is via the IO ports and Mac Pro gives you Thunderbolt 2, USB 3 and HDMI. This gives you the ability to add extra disk for certain but now you will need more clutter on your desk next to the Mac Pro. Expect a plethora of external drives in the same shape format.

The video of the WWDC Keynote is available from the Apple website.

WWDC may see the launch of the ultimate recycle scheme.

Apple will roll out a new trade-in program for the iPhone this month, Peter Burrows at Bloomberg reports.

This will be the first time Apple does an in-house trade-in program. Burrows reports Apple hopes to increase sales of the iPhone 5, while at the same time using sales of older models to expand overseas.

Right now, carriers, and third-party companies like Gazelle do trade-in programs. Ganot pointed out that trade-in programs are good for consumers and for Apple because a trade-in subsidizes the price of a phone.

For example, if you bought a 16 GB iPhone 4S and kept it in good shape, you could sell it to Gazelle for $205 right now. You could then buy an iPhone 5, which would not be subsidized by your carrier for $649. With the $205 discount, your phone costs $445. That’s not as cheap as $200, but you can get it sooner.

This helps Apple because, duh, it’s selling a new phone. The other benefit is that it takes the used phone and sells it elsewhere in the world.

Ganot explained how it works, saying Gazelle sells the used iPhones to distributors who then sell the iPhones for ~$350 in markets like China. Normally, an iPhone goes for ~$1,000 there.

From Apple’s perspective, it was fine that Gazelle did this, but it’s a company that likes to have control. It wants to be in charge of the process, so it makes sense it’s doing just that.

According to Burrows, Apple is partnering with with Brightstar Corp. on this project.

According to reports in the FT and other sources Apple is poised to introduce a music streaming service at its Developer bunfight or WWDC in San Francisco next week.

The FT claims (registration required) that Warner, the third largest global music company, has become the first music publisher to agree a deal for iRadio, people close to the negotiations said, after Apple agreed to pay its songwriters 10 per cent of advertising revenue, more than double the 4 per cent rate it currently earns from Pandora, the US-based internet radio service with more than 70m “active listeners”.

After this news was ‘leaked’ on Tuesday Pandora’s stock fell by 10% or so. So some people think that its true. We will of course know more at WWDC on June 10th.  One big question is content licensing. Pandora while huge in the US is not available in the UK.

Pandora  posted a solid first-quarter report, with revenues up 55% to $125.5 million and quarterly listening hours increasing by 35% to 4.18 billion. And it’s promising that about 80% of the growth was from mobile devices.

But Pandora has not been able to achieve profitability . . . despite the fact that it’s has been around for 13 years! Onerous licensing agreements with the recording industry — the same ones Apple struggled with — have been holding it back. In Q1, the fees accounted for a staggering 66% of sales making profitability hard to achieve.

To deal with this, Pandora has limited the listening time to 40 hours per month, which has indeed helped to move users over to paid subscriptions. But if Apple provides a free version, it seems plausible that users might just move over to iRadio — especially since, when it comes to radio, customers tend to be comfortable with occasional ads

Apple and Warner declined to comment.

Sony ATV, the publishing market leader that negotiated a 5 per cent rate from Pandora, also hinted that it was close to a deal. It is understood to have indicated that it would also accept a 10 per cent rate for the length of its first contract with iRadio, but that it wants a higher rate in future to come closer to parity with recorded music companies.

A Sony ATV spokesman said the company was “optimistic [Apple] will accept our introductory rate”, but declined to comment further.

Sony Music has yet to sign a deal for iRadio, however, giving Apple a little over a week before its event to win over the world’s second largest recorded music group, whose artists include Daft Punk and Justin Timberlake.

Sony declined to comment.

Google launched its rival All Access streaming service last month, and any further delay to iRadio would be seen as an embarrassment for Eddy Cue, who oversees Apple’s iTunes store, App store and iBookstore and has negotiated many of its deals with music companies.

Universal Music was the first recorded music group to sign up to iRadio in May, after securing terms understood to include a one-off payment as well as a royalty of about 12.5 cents per 100 tracks streamed, a share of advertising revenue and a guaranteed minimum sum over the two- to three-year deal. Universal, which also declined to comment, is also thought to be close to agreeing an iRadio deal for its publishing division.

Warner’s agreement, struck after a co-ordinated negotiation with both its record labels and Warner-Chappell publishing division, suggests that Apple has been willing to improve the terms on offer in recent weeks.

Apple is said to have broader ambitions for iRadio than existing streaming radio services, including the ability to purchase a song from the iTunes download store after listening to it and software that predicts what tracks listeners will enjoy based on their existing iTunes collections.

The music industry is keen to preserve iTunes’ download business, which earned them an estimated $3.4bn last year. Folks that’s a big sum.

August introduce Smart Lock – another iPhone managed door lock

Welcome to August Smart Lock.

The August Smart Lock is the secure, simple, and social way to manage your home’s lock. Now you can control who can enter and who can’t—without the need for keys or codes. And you can do it all from your smartphone or computer.

This a keyless device using encrypted locking technology. It look beautiful from a design and user perspective.

On sale in the US soon. We have our order placed. Learn more at August website.

Features:

Design

Enjoy beautiful, discreet design with an intuitive interface. Durable anodized aluminum, a clever use of LEDs and your choice of color and finish make August both elegant and discreet.

Bluetooth

August works independent of your wireless or phone networks. Reliable Bluetooth technology syncs your phone directly with your August lock.

No wiring

There’s no need to wire or connect August – it uses standard batteries. That means your lock stays on even if electricity goes down. Sensors will let you know, with indicators, and via email, when the batteries need replacing.

Universal

Package includes deadbolt adapters and faceplates to accommodate 90% of locks on the market.

A new level of safe.

Keyless

August’s encrypted locking technology is safer than keys that can get lost and codes that can be copied.

Total Control

You control when people have access to your home. For example you can issue a key that works 24/7 for a family member, or one that works a couple of hours a week only for your cleaning person.

Log Records

You can see a Log of who’s entered and exited—and exactly when they did—remotely from your phone or computer.

Always On

It doesn’t matter if your power, cable or Wi-Fi goes down. August has standard batteries that keep it running in any circumstance. When the batteries get low we’ll even send you reminders.

Apple Inc. has launched a new iPod Touch at a lower price.

The new iPod touch is much like the previous iPod Touch but has three different features discussed below.

It does show that Apple is very capable of cost reducing a product to match a price point. In this case bringing an iPod Touch on to the market for £199. Could it be that this is the first stage of the lower priced iPhone? This iPod has reduced memory and no rear camera. If these were copied over to a low cost iPhone, say the iPhone5 LC, this would help Apple fight the Android onslaught.

iPod Touch: Old vs. New

The first specification is that the new iPod touch will not have a high resolution rear facing iSight camera. This is a drawback actually as the users will not be able to use a good camera anymore. The iPod touch will, however, have the front facing FaceTime camera.

The latest iPod will only have a 16 GB of storage, which in comparison to the old iPod is only half the capacity. The users will be able to use only the limited space for storage compared to the previous one.

The price is the final point on which the iPod differs from their older versions. The price of the latest iPod is kept at £199, which is less by £50 compared to the older iPod of £249. When the iPod was launched in the previous year it was priced at $£249 for 32GB model and the 64GB version was available for £329.

There are other differences in the device as well, like there is no lanyard in the new design, and the latest iPod will be available in only grey and black colours as against the different colours in which the existing iPod was available.

The information about the new iPod is only available on Apple Online Store as of now. The other features of the iPod are 4-inch retina display, dual core A5 chip, and Apple Inc. Ear Pods.

It’s ultra-slim and ultra-light. And it rocks the Apple EarPods, which provide incredible fit and amazing audio quality.

4-inch Retina display

More screen means more music, messages, websites and games. And it all looks stunning on the Retina display.

Dual-core A5 chip

The A5 chip is powerful — and power efficient. Games are incredibly responsive and realistic. And you get up to 40 hours of music playback or 8 hours of video.

What’s in the box

• iPod touch
• Apple EarPods
• Lightning to USB Cable

In its on-going litigation battle against Samsung, Apple has added five new patents to its claims, targeting both the company’s new flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone, as well as the Google Now service for Android.

Two of the patents specifically relate to Apple’s voice-driven Siri personal assistant, as noted on Wednesday by Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents. They are U.S. Patent No. 8,086,604, and U.S. Patent No. 6,846,959, both of which are entitled “Universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system.”

Beyond Siri, the filing also alleges the infringement of three other Apple-owned patents:

• U.S. Patent No. 5,666,502: “Graphical      user interface using historical lists with field classes”
• U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647: “System and      method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated      data”
• U.S. Patent No. 7,761,414:      “Asynchronous data synchronization amongst devices”

Apple filed the motion to amend its infringement complaint in a California court on Tuesday. It simply seeks to add Samsung’s recently released Galaxy S4 to the existing complaint, which already targets numerous other Samsung products.

“The Galaxy S4 product practices many of the same claims already asserted by Apple… in the same way as the already-accused Samsung devices,” the filing states.

As for the inclusion of Google Now, the ’604 and ’959 patents related to Siri are also included in the filing because Google Now has replaced the Android Quick Search Box in some instances. That search box was previously targeted by Apple in its complaint.

A hearing to discuss Apple’s motion has been scheduled for June 25 in a San Jose court in front of Judge Paul S. Grewal.

Apple first signalled to the court last week that it intended to add the Galaxy S4 to its existing patent infringement suit. This week’s formal filing has revealed exactly what five patents the iPhone maker has accused Samsung’s latest smartphone of violating.

The long rumoured Apple iWatch could already be in testing. Apple is allegedly running trials with a 1.5-inch OLED panel according to a report by a Taiwanese newspaper.

Apple has apparently shipped 1000 trial units to Foxconn in order to test manufacturing. This could mean then that we do finally get the iWatch in time for the end of the year.

2012 saw Chinese website TGBus stating that the device was in a near finished stage and that it would be going on sale in the first half of 2013. Intel is also reportedly working with Apple on the Bluetooth element of the watch so it can hook up easily with an iPhone or iPad.

Samsung is the only real threat to Apple’s iWatch plans, explaining in March that it had been “preparing the watch product for so long”.

“We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them.” saidLee Young Hee, executive vice-president of Samsung’s mobile business.

Traditionally Apple uses IPS LCD displays for its devices, with Samsung preferring the brighter more vibrant OLED screens. They don’t require backlights, which is why Apple is likely looking at them for a smart watch

Lucy winner

A couple of weeks ago Apple announced the 50B download competition. It is now too late to enter as someone, currently unknown is the lucky winner of the $10K iTunes card.

Let’s stop and look at the iTunes business and relate this back to an earlier post about the value of the eco system. The 50 billion number includes all apps globally some of course free and some paid for. That’s just the app store and does not include all the content: Books, Songs, Movies and in store purchases.

So just how big is the Apple content store?

Apple have expanded the iTunes store and now offer:

• Music is now available in 119 countries.
• The Music catalogue now consists of 35 million songs.
• Movies are available in 109 countries. 60,000 titles are offered.
• iBookstores are present in 155 countries offering 1.75 million iBooks.
• There are iTunes App Stores in 155 countries whose residents make up about 90% of the world’s population.
• Apple iOS developers have created more than 850,000 iOS apps, including 350,000 made specifically for the iPad.

In the latest quarter the iTunes top line grew by 32% to just over $4 billion (a new high) and the company suggests that this rate is maintainable by stating it has a “$16 billion annual run rate”. The pattern of revenues is shown below with graphs care of Asymco.

• The content portion of iTunes revenues was $2.4 billion, up from $2.1 billion sequentially. Growth into Q1 is not unusual as many holiday iTunes gift cards are redeemed during January.
• Revenue growth has been surprisingly steady, averaging 29%/quarter for more than six years.

• The company reports that over 800 apps are downloaded per second. Including all media, the download rate is now above 1000 items per second. Estimated download rates by media types are shown below (note: first graph is plotted on a log scale):

• App developers have been paid over $9 billion for their sales through the App Store including $4.5 billion in the most recent four quarters. I estimate the split between media types as follows:

• Canalys estimates that sales from iTunes App Store accounted for 74% of all app sales worldwide in the March quarter.

• iOS app revenues more than doubled year-over-year.