iTunes Store TOS spills the beans on Apple TV 3.0
Buried within a recent update to the “iTunes Store Terms and Conditions” is a tip that the AppleTV software will soon get an update to version 3.0. That update will enable the device to display and interact with iTunes LP and iTunes Extras content, and may enable additional WebKit-based features.
iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras were added to the iTunes Store recently, along with the upgrade to iTunes 9. The new formats enable additional multimedia content to be sold alongside the standard audio tracks and movie files. iTunes LP is designed to be a digital extension of the sort of content that would be included with vinyl albums—adding animation, video, and additional audio to things like images and song lyrics. iTunes Extras are more or less the kind of things you would find in the “special features” section of most DVD releases.
iTunes Store TOS spills the beans on Apple TV 3.0
Buried within a recent update to the “iTunes Store Terms and Conditions” is a tip that the AppleTV software will soon get an update to version 3.0. That update will enable the device to display and interact with iTunes LP and iTunes Extras content, and may enable additional WebKit-based features.
iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras were added to the iTunes Store recently, along with the upgrade to iTunes 9. The new formats enable additional multimedia content to be sold alongside the standard audio tracks and movie files. iTunes LP is designed to be a digital extension of the sort of content that would be included with vinyl albums—adding animation, video, and additional audio to things like images and song lyrics. iTunes Extras are more or less the kind of things you would find in the “special features” section of most DVD releases.
Apple WebKit engineer named co-chair of HTML Working Group
Apple has been involved in steering new Web standards for some time now—many Web developers take the <canvas> tag for granted now, but it was an Apple-only technology back when Dashboard was the latest thing. Apple will now be even more vested in Web standards now that Tim Berners-Lee has named Maciej Stachowiak, manager of the WebKit WebApps Team at Apple, as one of the new co-chairs of the HTML Working Group at the W3C.
Stachowiak has been involved in open source development for some time, and was involved in the GNOME and Nautlilus projects for Linux before joining Apple to work on WebKit. Stachowiak is also a member of the WHATWG steering committee, which, for all intents and purposes, is leading the development of HTML5, and has worked on standards for the Web Apps Working Group at the W3C. He is joined by Microsoft’s Paul Cotton in replacing Microsoft’s Chris Wilson, who co-chaired the working group with IBM’s Sam Ruby—Ruby remains a co-chair along with Stachowiak and Cotton.
Apple WebKit engineer named co-chair of HTML Working Group
Apple has been involved in steering new Web standards for some time now—many Web developers take the <canvas> tag for granted now, but it was an Apple-only technology back when Dashboard was the latest thing. Apple will now be even more vested in Web standards now that Tim Berners-Lee has named Maciej Stachowiak, manager of the WebKit WebApps Team at Apple, as one of the new co-chairs of the HTML Working Group at the W3C.
Stachowiak has been involved in open source development for some time, and was involved in the GNOME and Nautlilus projects for Linux before joining Apple to work on WebKit. Stachowiak is also a member of the WHATWG steering committee, which, for all intents and purposes, is leading the development of HTML5, and has worked on standards for the Web Apps Working Group at the W3C. He is joined by Microsoft’s Paul Cotton in replacing Microsoft’s Chris Wilson, who co-chaired the working group with IBM’s Sam Ruby—Ruby remains a co-chair along with Stachowiak and Cotton.
Week in Apple: NC data center, Snow Leopard coming soon, iTunes flying high
As September draws near, buzz about a yet-to-be-announced Apple event is ramping up while others speculate about Snow Leopard arriving early. In the meantime, Apple has been busy releasing fixes for the MacBook Pro, and iTunes is on a roll selling the most online music. Need to catch up? Here are the top stories from this week:
Tired of waiting for AT&T to enable MMS on iPhone? Sue! Two lawsuits are claiming that Apple and AT&T misled customers about MMS support in their recently purchased iPhones. Though the iPhone OS 3.0 update promised the feature, AT&T told Ars in June that support wouldn’t be ready until “late summer.”
iTunes sells 25% of all music in the US, 69% of digital: Online music sales have grown to more than a third of all music sold in the US, with iTunes making up a full quarter. CD sales remain dominant, but given the trajectory of online sales, that may not last for long.
Week in Apple: NC data center, Snow Leopard coming soon, iTunes flying high
As September draws near, buzz about a yet-to-be-announced Apple event is ramping up while others speculate about Snow Leopard arriving early. In the meantime, Apple has been busy releasing fixes for the MacBook Pro, and iTunes is on a roll selling the most online music. Need to catch up? Here are the top stories from this week:
Tired of waiting for AT&T to enable MMS on iPhone? Sue! Two lawsuits are claiming that Apple and AT&T misled customers about MMS support in their recently purchased iPhones. Though the iPhone OS 3.0 update promised the feature, AT&T told Ars in June that support wouldn’t be ready until “late summer.”
iTunes sells 25% of all music in the US, 69% of digital: Online music sales have grown to more than a third of all music sold in the US, with iTunes making up a full quarter. CD sales remain dominant, but given the trajectory of online sales, that may not last for long.
WebKit nightly builds top Chromium in OS X JavaScript tests
Competition in the browser space breeds better performance. And with Google getting into the browser game with Chrome, all of the developers have stepped up their game. With that in mind, we decided to survey the current browser landscape on Mac OS X to see which offers the best JavaScript performance. Given that Chrome for Mac OS X has yet to hit 1.0, we decided to go with the latest nightly builds for both it and Safari (WebKit), as well as the latest Mozilla alpha (3.6a1), Camino beta, and Opera beta.
Late last week, CNET declared the latest developer preview release of Chrome 4.0 for Mac OS X was the “fastest OS X browser,” citing SunSpider benchmark performance that was 34 percent better than Safari 4.0.3. The “fastest browser” competition is always evolving: last summer there was a heated race for the title of Mac OS X browser speed champ. Our own testing reveals that the current alpha builds of Chrome edge Safari 4.0.3 slightly, but WebKit nightly builds are still out ahead of the pack.
WebKit nightly builds top Chromium in OS X JavaScript tests
Competition in the browser space breeds better performance. And with Google getting into the browser game with Chrome, all of the developers have stepped up their game. With that in mind, we decided to survey the current browser landscape on Mac OS X to see which offers the best JavaScript performance. Given that Chrome for Mac OS X has yet to hit 1.0, we decided to go with the latest nightly builds for both it and Safari (WebKit), as well as the latest Mozilla alpha (3.6a1), Camino beta, and Opera beta.
Late last week, CNET declared the latest developer preview release of Chrome 4.0 for Mac OS X was the “fastest OS X browser,” citing SunSpider benchmark performance that was 34 percent better than Safari 4.0.3. The “fastest browser” competition is always evolving: last summer there was a heated race for the title of Mac OS X browser speed champ. Our own testing reveals that the current alpha builds of Chrome edge Safari 4.0.3 slightly, but WebKit nightly builds are still out ahead of the pack.
3D CSS transforms available in Leopard via WebKit nightlies
A couple weeks ago, we noted that Apple’s 3D CSS Transforms were slowly coming to the desktop via Safari 4, at least on Snow Leopard. Over this past weekend, though, WebKit developers put in a small patch that enables 3D CSS transforms in the latest nightly build of WebKit for Leopard, too.
The WebKit team developed a series of two-dimensional transforms that can be applied with CSS properties, then added the ability to animate them over time. Those transforms were used for the Safari 4 “welcome page” that is loaded whenever Safari 4 is first launched. Mozilla recently implemented support for two-dimensional transforms in the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering engine, which is used in Firefox 3.5.
Click here to read the rest of this article
3D CSS transforms available in Leopard via WebKit nightlies
A couple weeks ago, we noted that Apple’s 3D CSS Transforms were slowly coming to the desktop via Safari 4, at least on Snow Leopard. Over this past weekend, though, WebKit developers put in a small patch that enables 3D CSS transforms in the latest nightly build of WebKit for Leopard, too.
The WebKit team developed a series of two-dimensional transforms that can be applied with CSS properties, then added the ability to animate them over time. Those transforms were used for the Safari 4 “welcome page” that is loaded whenever Safari 4 is first launched. Mozilla recently implemented support for two-dimensional transforms in the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering engine, which is used in Firefox 3.5.
Click here to read the rest of this article
