the iPhone a more important invention than the humble water closet? As one who has lived for extended periods of time in houses and cottages without indoor plumbing, I would say not, but according to your typical British consumer, it is.

Apple Support Sydney that, in addition to beating out Thomas Crapper’s 1880 siphon flush device and space travel, the iPhone was voted a more important invention than washing machines or internal combustion engines. In the Tesco Mobile survey of 4,000 Britons aged between 18 and 65, the iPhone ranked eighth — ahead of the toilet, which finished ninth (toilet paper was 22nd), and also higher than the automobile, camera — even shoes. What Tesco has provided here is a somewhat alarming snapshot of where popular priorities and preoccupations lie.

At least the wheel was acknowledged the most important invention in history, with the airplane in second place and the lightbulb third, but amazingly the Internet finished fourth and computers fifth. By contrast, roofs ranked a distant 44th.

Really,folks? Would you truly prefer to go back to using chamber pots and outhouses than give up web surfing in the rain barefoot?

Of course, inconsistencies abound in popular perception here. Internal combustion engines were an indispensable enabler of airplanes and made the wheel exponentially more useful, and without cameras we’d be staring at lines of text on our computer screens at best.

The iPhone also beat central heating (13), painkillers (15), the steam engine (16) and eyeglasses (205). Astonishingly, the printing press, which this writer would contend was a vastly more significant invention than either the web or computers or most of the rest of the survey picks, didn’t even make the top 100. Bizarre.

Notable finishers were refrigerators (14), freezers (17), the vacuum cleaner (23), microwaves (26), hot water (29). shoes (30) hair-straighteners (34??!), paper (38), the (presumably electric) kettle (40), remote controls (43), cats-eye spectacles (48) power steering (50) tea bags (54), spell-checkers (86), makeup (66), push-up bras (77) and mascara (80).

This survey indicates that Britons think the iPhone is quite literally the greatest thing since sliced bread (70).

Go figure.

We’ve just added a new Pro Apps category to TechUniversity and with that addition come two new screencasts, Logic Pro 101 and Final Cut Pro 101 (subscription required).

In Logic Pro 101 we cover all the major bits and pieces of the interface as well as sharing the content you’ve created.

In Final Cut Pro 101 we walk you through everything you need to know to edit a video including: the interface, working with audio/video clips, rendering, keyframes, speed, titles, transitions and exporting.

Below are samples from each. Check out the new Pro Apps category on TechUniversity for more details and to subscribe.

www.macit.com.au

Apple’s iTunes now accounts for 28 percent of all music sales within the U.S., according to recently released NPD group data.

This four percent gain since Q1 2009 detail that Apple’s digital store still holds the top spot as the number one music retailer within the U.S. Apple has been in this pole-position for some time now, first passing retail giant Walmart in 2008

The NPD findings added that digital music sales now account for a 40 percent share of all U.S. industry sales, a trend which has benefited online retailer Amazon. Amazon, who benefits from sales of both digital and physical music, has risen to second place in the NPD rankings. The firm now ties with Walmart with each holding 12 percent of sales.

Amazon’s MP3 business has attributed largely to its rise to second place, in addition to scaling down of physical CD sales at stores like Walmart. Analyst Russ Crupnick commented on the sales shift:

Online shopping offers consumers who still want CDs more variety than they would get in a brick-and-mortar store; plus, recommendations, and other interactive features that raise the overall value proposition for music buyers.

The battle for digital music sales is no-doubt bound to heat up over the next few years, as sales tactics get more fierce and the popularity of portable devices, including the likes of the iPad, Kindle, Dell’s upcoming Streak and many more, rise.

Back in August 2009, Shufflegazine featured an article talking about what makes a good iPhone app. The article has a good discussion about what apps are popular and why, and ultimately concludes that a good app has to be simple, intuitive, responsive, and give users a compelling reason to use it.

Unfortunately, there’s no recipe for how to write a simple, intuitive and compelling app. Our best bet for getting our hands on that recipe is probably this guy, but until he makes that announcement, handling these points is left as an exercise for the reader.

Writing a responsive app, however, is much easier.

A good working definition for a “responsive” app is one that responds to user input quickly and doesn’t hang without telling the user what’s going on. The rule of thumb here is that GUIs should respond to input in no more than 1 second, so the bar is set pretty high, especially for web-enabled apps. This article describes the most common reason GUIs get unresponsive and what to do about it.

How Do These Newfangled GUIs Work, Again?

Cocoa Touch’s GUI (like most GUIs) is built on an “event + event loop” architecture. User interactions like taps and keypresses are translated to events, and these events are then processed one-by-one in the imaginatively named event loop:

As long as each event gets processed quickly, the GUI stays nice and zippy. But because events are processed serially, one event can back up the whole gravy train. If one event takes five second to process, then the GUI will be completely unresponsive for those five seconds until the event loop can start processing new events again.

But what if you have some GUI resources that take five seconds to load? We can’t load them all at app initialization time because we don’t always know what resources we’ll need when the app is starting up, especially for things like profile pictures. Also, the iPhone is an embedded platform, so memory for preloading is in short supply, anyway. How, then, can we appease the event loop tiki gods? The answer, young grasshopper, is to load such resources asynchronously, and then update the GUI when they’re done loading.

Apple’s iPad is now available internationally, a full 53 days after its original U.S. debut.

This Friday morning early adopters around the world queued up in a bid to get their hands on the long-awaited tablet device. Many of Apple’s retail stores decided to open an hour earlier than usual. The doors opened as planned, ready to serve the scores of awaiting anticipated Apple shoppers that had formed queues from the very early hours of the morning.

Shoppers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK can now get their hands on the device. In the UK a basic 16GB Wi-Fi model can be picked up for £429.99, the same model is priced at $549 for Canadian customers, whereas German consumers can grab a new iPad from €499. More international pricing details for the iPad can be found on your country’s Apple store website.

For those not in the countries outlined above, Apple has detailed that more countries will receive the 9.7-inch device at some unknown point in July. Today’s more widespread global availability comes after Apple had to delay the international launch due to the overwhelming debut the tablet enjoyed in the U.S..

Reports regarding the tablet’s global launch have started to roll-in, detailing the reception Apple’s device has garnered. Several hundred people were queuing outside Apple’s flagship UK store according to UK tech publication The Register. Similar scenes were reported at Spain’s Munich store, where 9to5Mac described the launch event as manic. Apple fans in Japan apparently started queuing days in advance according to a TUAW report.

Following today’s global launch Steve Jobs will no doubt detail how the international launch fared at the upcoming WWDC next month with some early sales figures.

The iPhone may have given up its edge in the U.S. market over Android recently, in terms of smartphone OS share, but globally it still leads Google’s mobile OS. That’s according to market research firm Gartner (via PC World), who recently conducted a survey of the global smartphone terrain covering the first quarter of 2010.

That lead is thanks to two key international markets in which the iPhone still boasts a significant lead over its Google competitor. In Europe and Asia, Apple maintains a lead that amounts to around a 3 million unit advantage over Android. It’s still a significant lead, but the fact is that Android is still in a very strong position in all world markets.

It’s especially strong because it’s the fastest growing of all the smartphone operating systems represented in the survey, and it’s experiencing that growth during a heady time for smartphone sales in general, with global sales overall seeing record increases. Put simply, Android is grabbing the most significant portion of an expanding pie.

Android’s share grew from 1.6 to 9.6 percent in Q1 2010, while Apple’s share went from 10.5 to 15.4 percent. Both are still behind Symbian and RIM, but the shares of both those companies shrank during the period measured. Symbian, the worldwide leader, dropped to 44.3 from 48.8 percent. RIM slid from 20.6 to 19.4. Windows Mobile is the big loser overall, dropping from 10.2 to 6.8 percent, which puts it behind Android in the global rankings.

It’s a mixed bag for Apple. On the one hand, it’s still performing well in the global market, and two of the three major smartphone markets still have them positioned ahead of Android. On the other hand, Android’s growth is meteoric, and the numbers would seem to indicate that customers new to the smartphone market are leaning in Android’s direction overall.

What’s crucial to keep in mind is that Android’s share grew from next to nothing to a significant percentage. It’s highly likely that it’ll continue to have similarly strong performance globally, since it can really only go from nothing to something once. Now that it’s entrenched itself in the market at large, its growth rate will likely slip to something much more reasonable, like Apple’s five percent gain.

Will Android continue to threaten Apple’s piece of the smartphone market pie? No doubt. Will it blow past iPhone OS and emerge as the dominant force in the market? That’s much less likely. Android and Apple will contend with each other on the world stage, but it’ll be a real fight, not a one-sided affair.

articel from www.endgadget.com

If you thought that Apple’s foray into the world of home entertainment died with the last iteration of the Apple TV, you’re quite wrong. A tip we’ve received — which has been confirmed by a source very close to Apple — details the outlook for the next version of the Apple TV, and it’s a doozy. According to our sources, this project has been in the works long before Google announced its TV solution, and it ties much more closely into Apple’s mobile offerings. The new architecture of the device will be based directly on the iPhone 4, meaning it will get the same internals, down to that A4 CPU and a limited amount of flash storage — 16GB to be exact — though it will be capable of full 1080p HD (!). The device is said to be quite small with a scarce amount of ports (only the power socket and video out), and has been described to some as “an iPhone without a screen.” Are you ready for the real shocker? According to our sources, the price-point for the device will be $99. One more time — a hundred bucks.

Not only will this be priced to sell (like hotcakes), it seems that Apple is moving away from the model of local storage, and will be focusing the new ATV on cloud-based storage (not unlike Amazon’s streaming scheme, though we’re talking instant-on 1080p, a la Microsoft). For those still interested in keeping their content close, there will be an option to utilize a Time Capsule as an external storage component, but the main course will be all about streaming. The new ATV will do away with its current OS X-lite variation as a operating system, and will instead adopt the iPhone OS for the underlying experience. There’s no word at this point on whether apps and the App Store will be coming along for the ride, but it makes sense given the shared platform. Of course, scaling iPhone apps to that 52-inch plasma in your living room isn’t exactly a no-brainer. Perhaps not surprisingly, Apple won’t deliver the ATV news at the upcoming WWDC — that event will be focused on the capabilities of the new iPhone — but development on the product is most definitely full steam ahead. Is your TV screen the next battleground in the platform wars? Survey says: hell yes.

Apple, for a long time, was the David to Microsoft’s Goliath. It was a dynamic that suited Apple, as the company used its underdog status to attract customers who saw themselves as different and apart from the mainstream. It was the iPod that first signaled a change in this arrangement.

The iPod dominated. It became synonymous with “MP3 player” in the mind of the buying public. And that would start in motion the rise of Apple into the tech giant it is today. A tech giant, might I add, that as of yesterday is worth more in terms of market value than Microsoft.

At the close of Wednesday’s trading, Apple was valued at $222 billion, while Microsoft was worth $219 billion. Apple’s shares ended the day at $244.11, while Microsoft’s finished at a seven-month low of $25.01. And it isn’t only Cupertino’s successes, but also Redmond’s failures that are responsible for the new power dynamic between the two companies. Overall, Microsoft stock is down 20 percent compared to 10 years ago, while the value of Apple’s has grown tenfold over the same period.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appears to have his head in the sand regarding the significance of this moment in terms of the two companies. When asked for comment, he told Reuters news service:

It’s a long game, we have good competitors…we too are a very good competitor. We are executing very well and that is going to lead to great products and great success. I’m optimistic.It sounds like Ballmer, once an outspoken and not very cautious CEO, has checked out, or is downright unwilling to look at the consequences of Apple’s success with the iPhone and now the iPad. Microsoft will continue to drift toward irrelevance as long as the attitude of business-as-usual prevails there. To quote Ballmer once again, “I won’t predict some massive change,” he said. “I don’t sort of foreshadow any change in direction. We just have to accelerate plans.”

I’m less concerned with what happens to Microsoft now, though, then I am with what happens to Apple. Unlike Microsoft, I think Apple has at its core a commitment to ongoing innovation, woven into the very fabric of the company by the strong oversight of Steve Jobs. And that will persist after he’s gone. But ongoing battles with Google and Adobe tell a tale of a company whose industry agenda may still be geared towards being a niche player.

Apple is about control, even though Steve Jobs says quite the opposite in his open letter to Flash. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no big fan of Flash myself, but I do think that Apple’s intentions have more to do with controlling the nature and delivery vehicle of content than with encouraging openness. Otherwise it’d have backed Google’s VP8 open web video standard from the start. The kind of control Apple exerts works well for it as a niche player, but now that it’s arguably the most important tech company in the world, the same rules don’t apply.

Big stays big by being inclusive and cooperative, to a degree. Take Google, which works with so many partners it’s hard to keep track of, with the end goal of satisfied customers in mind. Microsoft, too, works with others more than it shuts them down, as long as the terms are favorable. Apple seems content to remain largely sheltered, even when it would be easier and more expedient to work with a partner. In fact, since the company started making its own chips with the iPad, it looks to be shutting down even further still.

Such an approach may provide some short-term gains, but rising competitors like Google will take advantage of the general bad feeling it will generate among other tech firms to form the kind of partnerships that helped elevate Microsoft to its loftiest heights 10 years ago. And Apple will still be at base camp, stubbornly refusing the aid of other climbers.

So much for it being a niche product! Apple says it has sold two million iPads in 60 days since the launch of the tablet device. It sold the first million iPads in 28 days. It is hard to find some of the 3G enabled iPads in their retail stores. The pace of iPad sales is way ahead of the early results for iPhone, which took 74 days to sell the first million. According to some estimates, iPad is outselling the Mac itself.
According to GigaOM Pro, our research service, “the web tablet app market will be a significant one in just a few short years, going from $183 million in revenue in 2010 to $8.2 billion by 2015″ and the “overall momentum for this market will be driven early on by the iPad and Apple’s app store.”

Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year. There are about 5,000 special apps for iPad.

www.appleblog.com