Image Editing App Pixelmator Half Off Ahead of 3.2 Update [Mac Blog]

Popular Photoshop alternative Pixelmator today announced that it is planning to introduce a new Repair Tool in an upcoming 3.2 “Sandstone” update, allowing users to remove dust, blemishes, and entire objects from images with “an unsurpassed level of precision and quality.”

To promote the future update, which will be available for free to existing Pixelmator users, the app is on sale for half off for the next week, dropping the price from $29.99 to $14.99.

Pixelmator regularly updates its image editing software, with the future 3.2 update following its January 3.1 update, which added full support for the Mac Pro, with 16-bit per channel images, full GPU support, and optimizations for the multi-core processors in the computer.

Back in October, the app was also updated with Mavericks support and a new image editing engine, greatly enhancing its performance.

Pixelmator can be downloaded from the App Store for $14.99. [Direct Link]

Angela Ahrendts May Delay Apple Start Until Mid-Year

Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts resigned last October from the British luxury fashion house to join Apple as the head of its retail division. According to The Guardian, Ahrendts is free to leave Burberry this month, having fulfilled her six-month notice period, but her actual exit date is not yet known.

Ahrendts may be staying longer at Burberry to help smooth the transition over to her successor Christopher Bailey, who is currently serving as the company’s chief creative officer. Money also may be a factor in Ahrendts leaving as she is slated to receive a two million pound bonus in June for her recent performance as Burberry CEO.

“It’s a big sum of money. In some ways it would be good to see the business moving on after six months of handover time. You want to see clarity,” said Rahul Sharma, an analyst at Neev Capital.

But he said investors were also likely to feel reassured by Ahrendt’s presence ahead of some big moves for Burberry and continuing concerns about Bailey’s ability to combine his creative role with that of a chief executive.

“That is a big concern in the back of investors’ minds and Ahrendt’s presence delays that point of judgment,” he said.

Another factor may be Ahrendts’ critical role in Burberry’s revamped Japanese business strategy, which involves severing long-term apparel licensing agreements in 2015 and creating its own distribution system in the important Asian market. Burberry is expected to confirm this plan as part of the company’s annual report next month.

Ahrendts will join Apple as the Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores, a position that has seen significant turnover in the past several years. In 2011, Ron Johnson left Apple for J.C. Penney, after building up Apple’s retail presence during his 11-year tenure. Johnson was replaced by Dixons CEO John Browett, who served less than a year at Apple.

How Apple Could Make the Move to 4.7″ iPhone Displays

Amidst the flurry of iPhone 6 rumors coming from KGI Securities’ report last week, Ming-Chi Kuo presented the first possible screen resolution for Apple’s 4.7″ iPhone 6. Kuo lists it as a 1334×750 Retina display with a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch.

Historically, Apple has been very cautious with resolution changes in their iOS devices. The original iPhone was launched with a 320×480 resolution. Eventually, Apple moved to 640×960 Retina display, doubling the linear resolution in each dimension. That allowed existing apps to simply be pixel-doubled to fill the entire screen. Developers could then take their time to update their apps to fully support the higher resolution display. When Apple moved from 3.5″ to 4″ screens in the iPhone 5, they simply added vertical resolution. This allowed existing apps to run in a letterboxed format with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

Relative iPhone display sizes by Redtech
Right before the 4″ iPhone releases, Apple began encouraging developers to use AutoLayout in designing their apps:

Auto Layout is a system that lets you lay out your app’s user interface by creating a mathematical description of the relationships between the elements. You define these relationships in terms of constraints either on individual elements, or between sets of elements. Using Auto Layout, you can create a dynamic and versatile interface that responds appropriately to changes in screen size, device orientation, and localization.

AutoLayout paves the way for apps to more easily adapt to changes in display sizes and resolution in the future.

If Apple were to adopt a 1134×750 4.7″ display as predicted by Kuo, it would preserve the same pixel density (326 ppi) as the iPhone 5s. That means that all existing user interface elements, such as icons, would be the same size but would allow for more screen space.

Our designer found that using the exact same icons and spacing them out to fill the screen, 1134×750 pixels allows Apple to fit exactly one extra row of icons onto the iPhone home screen. This mockup shows the relative size of the 4.7″ iPhone screen and how much extra room there would be using the exact same icons as on the current iPhone:

4″ home screen (left) vs 4.7″ home screen (right)

Meanwhile, existing unoptimized apps could function in a “letterbox” style with black borders for unused screen space. TheVerge forum user Pi is exactly 3 created a mockup showing this exact scenario. This image shows how an “unoptimized” app would appear (left) compared to one that has been optimized for the 4.7″ display (right):

Mockup by Pi is exactly 3
Given Apple’s past reluctance to blur or break existing apps, it seems that this resolution choice could provide Apple and developers a reasonable upgrade path for a larger factor iPhone. Apple has acknowledged that customers want larger iPhones and all iPhone 6 rumors are pointing to a larger iPhone device this year.

Apple to Honor Earth Day 2014 at Retail Stores, Main Campus

Apple will be celebrating Earth Day 2014 next Tuesday, April 22 throughout its various retail locations and at its main campus, reports 9to5Mac.

The company will color its logos in green for the occasion, as employees will wear special shirts with an event planned at Apple’s headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California. Apple last celebrated Earth Day in 2006 by holding a free computer takeback program in honor of the event.

Apple has remained active in its environment efforts throughout the past few years, which include powering its data centers with 100% renewable energy, expanding its recycling program, and reporting on its carbon footprint. Last May, Apple also hired former Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson to lead the company’s environmental responsibility efforts.

Environmental activist group Greenpeace also featured Apple as a “green energy innovator” in its latest report earlier this month, praising the company for its commitment to renewable energy after taking issues with previous efforts.

iPhone 6 Renders Reimagined as iPhone 6c [iOS Blog]

Last week we posted renderings of what the iPhone 6 might look like based on leaked design drawings of the unreleased device. Since that time, we’ve seen early cases and possible design molds for the device.

Ferry Passchier, the designer we commissioned for the original designs, has rethought the design as if it was modeled after the iPhone 5C with colorful plastic backings. Passchier produced these renderings with that in mind:

The original renderings assumed it followed Apple’s aluminum design of the iPhone 5S, though an all-aluminum design would introduce issues with Apple’s antenna design.

Apple is expected to release the iPhone 6 this fall, and we expect to see more design and part leaks as production starts ramping up.

Apple Working With Shazam on Song Identification Capabilities for iOS 8

Apple is working on a song identification feature as a new addition to iOS 8, reports Bloomberg. The company has plans to partner with music discovery service Shazam to offer users a way to discover a song that is playing on the radio or from another source, such as a TV, using a small music clip.

The company is planning to unveil a song-discovery feature in an update of its iOS mobile software that will let users identify a song and its artist using an iPhone or iPad, said two people with knowledge of the product, who asked not to be identified because the feature isn’t public. Apple is partnering with Shazam Entertainment Ltd., whose technology can quickly spot what’s playing by collecting sound from a phone’s microphone and matching it against a song database.

Along with Shazam, several other apps, including SoundHound, offer music and media identification capabilities. The apps use the iPhone’s microphone to listen to short sound clips, matching songs against a database and providing additional information like lyrics and purchase links.

Shazam is also capable of recognizing television shows and other media, so it is possible Apple’s iOS identification feature could offer similar capabilities. According to Bloomberg, the feature will be directly integrated into iOS and will not need to be downloaded as a standalone app. It will function with Siri, allowing users to ask what song is playing.

The song-identification feature will be integrated into the mobile software in the same way that Twitter Inc.’s service is currently incorporated, meaning consumers don’t need to separately download it. Among the ways it can be used will be through Apple’s voice-activated search feature, Siri. An iPhone user will be able to say something like “what song is playing,” to find out the tune’s details, one person said.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Apple has plans to revamp its iTunes music store in order to boost flagging digital music sales. The company is said to be considering iTunes for Android and an on-demand streaming music service similar to Spotify. A song identification feature could be released as part of the same iTunes overhaul, and it’s also possible that high resolution song downloads are in the works.

Yahoo Wants to Be Apple’s Default iOS Search Engine

Yahoo is working on two internal projects to optimize its mobile search and monetization in order to convince Apple to make Yahoo the default search engine on iOS reports Re/code.

The WSJ reported last year that Apple and Yahoo had been in discussions of how to integrate Yahoo’s services more prominently in iOS, beyond powering the Weather and Stocks apps.

The report says Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is preparing detailed presentations to present to Apple executives showing what its new mobile search product could look like. There are a pair of internal projects, code-named “Fast Break” and “Curveball”, that are part of Yahoo’s redesign of its mobile search engine.

That has not happened as yet officially — it’s just the big honking goal of the Yahoo effort, said sources. Still, several said Mayer has already buttonholed a few Apple executives on the topic, including its powerful SVP of design Jony Ive, who knows the former Google exec well.

“This is the aim of the whole effort here, to grab the pole position in iOS search,” said one person working on the effort. “It will take more than pretty pictures though to convince Apple to give up Google, given its focus on consumer experience being top-notch. But Marissa wants it very badly.”

Currently, Yahoo and Microsoft are in the midst of a 10-year search and advertising partnership, something Mayer is trying to get out of. At the same time, Microsoft’s Bing provides the backend for Apple’s Siri web search feature. Google is the default search engine in the Safari iOS browser, with Yahoo and Bing available as user-selectable options. Apple already replaced Google’s Maps app with its own mapping application as default.

According to the Re/code report, a new and expanded agreement between Apple and Yahoo is not imminent — Apple has yet to be pitched on the new products. Instead, it’s part of a longer term play to bring the two companies closer together.

Google’s ‘Project Tango’ Smartphone Uses Apple’s PrimeSense Technology

Earlier this year, Google unveiled “Project Tango,” an experimental smartphone that incorporates 3D sensors to allow users to map indoor and outdoor environments.

Reports suggested that the smartphone’s 3D capabilities were powered by the Movidius Myriad 1 3D-sensing chip, but as it turns out, Project Tango is also powered by Apple technology. Alongside two Myriad 1 vision co-processors, Project Tango utilizes a PrimeSense Capri PS1200 3D imaging system-on-a-chip [PDF], technology that Apple acquired when it purchased PrimeSense late last year.

The unexpected PrimeSense chip was discovered in a teardown of the Project Tango smartphone by iFixit that was posted this morning.

This appears to be PrimeSense’s new Capri PS1200 SoC 3D imaging chip, unexpected for a couple of reasons:

Just last year, Apple bought PrimeSense, manufacturer of the Kinect’s 3D vision hardware. Speculators assumed we would be seeing this hot new hardware in an upcoming iOS device, with intent of mapping 3D spaces. Looks like Tango beat Apple to the punch with their own tech?

Google’s Project Tango smartphone is one of the first mobile devices to use the diminutive Capri 3D sensor and it offers a glimpse at what Apple could possibly do with the technology in the future.

Project Tango is essentially a mapping tool, capturing the world around each user to provide directions, dimensions, and environmental maps. Google also has plans to use the technology to create immersive augmented reality games and apps that merge the digital world with the real world.

According to iFixit, Project Tango works very similarly to the original Microsoft Kinect, which also used technology developed by PrimeSense. Tango displays a bright grid of dots that are captured by IR sensors to build a depth map.

Along with the Capri 3D chip and the Myriad vision co-processors, Project Tango incorporates four separate cameras to capture its environment. Amazon is said to be working on a similar device that incorporates multiple cameras for 3D mapping and with Google and Amazon both working on 3D projects, it is reasonable to assume that Apple is also experimenting with the technology.

There have been no hints that Apple intends to incorporate PrimeSense technology in the upcoming iPhone 6, but motion control capabilities similar to the Kinect have been rumored for the next-generation Apple TV set-top box, so the first Apple device to use PrimeSense technology may very well be the Apple TV. Project Tango proves that PrimeSense’s 3D chips are ready for mobile devices and it is likely that the company is continuing development on its Capri chips, improving the technology for possible inclusion in future iPads and iPhones.

‘Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’ for iPad Now Available Worldwide [iOS Blog]

Blizzard Entertainment’s digital card trading game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft for iPad is now available for download worldwide after soft-launching in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand in early April. The game initially launched for the Mac in March.

The free-to-play collectible card game is set in the Warcraft universe, allowing players to compete with Magic the Gathering-style decks in one-on-one fights via Battle.net or against the computer. The iPad version of the game is able to connect to a Battle.net account, syncing with the PC/Mac version.

 

JUMP RIGHT IN: Fun introductory missions bring you into the world of Hearthstone’s intuitive gameplay.

BUILD YOUR DECK: With hundreds of additional cards to win and craft – your collection grows with you.

HONE YOUR SKILLS: Play in practice matches against computer-controlled heroes of the Warcraft universe. Thrall, Uther, Gul’dan – they’re all here!

COLLECTION TRAVELS WITH YOU: Your card collection is linked to your Battle.net account – enabling you to switch your play between tablet and desktop with ease.

AND FIGHT FOR GLORY: When you’re ready, step into the Arena and duel other players for the chance to win awesome prizes!

Our sister site Touch Arcade has given Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft a five star review, calling the game “a ton of fun” and “super easy to pick up.”

Hearthstone is not only an example of a free-to-play model done right, but it’s a must-play for card game enthusiasts everywhere. It’s incredibly easy to get into, the picturesque art is easy on the eyes, and best of all — it plays perfectly on an iPad.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is also available for the Mac after launching in March and Blizzard has plans to bring it to the iPhone as well, later in the year.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft for the iPad can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]