Hasta La Gadget!

If you like your players orange and portable but don’t have a tablet, you may be in luck. The VLC Media Player app, which recently made the iPad a little more codec-friendly, is now available in the App Store for the iPhone (4 and 3GS) and iPod touch. This new version is also said to support even more file types, offer better performance, and allows for the deletion of files right through its own interface. It’s available now, so get downloading — your classic cartoons await.

VLC downsized to fit on the iPhone and iPod touch, now playing in the App Store originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 08:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No surprise that Apple’s new Mac App Store has a similar set of rules and regulations as the iPhone App Store, and we just got the full list. There’s nothing here that’s too different from the iPhone review guidelines, but it all seems terribly odd when applied to a regular computer, and some of the more restrictive policies have already drawn ire from developers like Mozilla’s Director of Firefox Mike Beltzner, who says the restriction against beta code won’t work well with the Mozilla “open beta” development process. That’s definitely a valid criticism, especially if the Mac App Store becomes the dominant way for Mac users to get apps, but there’s a crucial difference here: unlike the iPhone, Macs can run software from any source, not just the App Store. That means apps that don’t meet Apple’s Store guidelines can still be freely used by any Mac user without going through jailbreak hoops, and we think that’s an ideal compromise: it allows Apple to control much of the Mac experience, since developers will have a huge incentive to comply with the review guidelines and get into the store, but still allows other types of apps and utilities to flourish — including, say Firefox betas. (We might have written an editorial arguing for exactly this approach on the iPhone in the past, come to think about it.)

So with that said, let’s examine Apple’s Mac App Store Review Guidelines, which were just posted yesterday — you can grab the PDF here and read the whole thing, but we’re just going to break out the parts that seem more interesting or different than what we’ve seen in the past. Our biggest takeaway? Interpreted on their face, some of these rules would mean major Mac apps like Adobe Creative Suite 5 and Microsoft Office won’t be in the Mac App Store, and that’s obviously a problem. Read on to see what we mean.

Continue reading Apple’s Mac App Store Review Guidelines posted — will Photoshop make it in?

Apple’s Mac App Store Review Guidelines posted — will Photoshop make it in? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Given its success with the iPhone / iPod touch’s App Store, we can’t say an OS X version is entirely crazy — and neither can Apple, who just announced such an App Store for its 10.7 release, Lion. Here’s what we know so far: multi-touch gestures, app home screens, full screen apps. “Every app on the iPad is a full screen app,” says Steve. Auto save, apps resume when launched. Don’t expect on-screen multitouch, as Jobs is very much against vertical touching. “Touch surfaces want to be horizontal” — you can all but kiss those touchscreen iMac rumors goodbye. Just like iPad, there’s automatic installation, auto-updates, a 70 / 30 revenue split for developers, one-click downloads, and the license works for all personal Macs.

The App Store itself is a standalone app that looks a lot like iTunes. Apps are automatically dropped into the dock after download. Expect it to hit OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard users “within 90 days” from today. And developers? Apple’s accepting app submissions starting in November.

Update: Apple’s main site and developer site have been updated with App Store information pages, although there isn’t much new to see beyond what was announced at the event.

Update 2: From the looks of that image above, individual iLife and iWork apps will be unbundled in the future for separate purchase. We’re also wondering if this is the end of Apple Family Packs — volume licensing that lets you install one copy of Apple software on up to five Apple-labeled computers — after hearing Steve say that Mac App Store apps are “licensed for use on all your personal Macs?”

Check out our liveblog of Apple’s Back to the Mac event right here.

Mac App Store for OS X 10.6 and 10.7 unveiled, coming ‘within 90 days’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s now little doubt that Amazon — for reasons that may or may not be borne of sound mind — is hard at work setting up its own app store ecosystem for Android devices. We’ve got a tiny bit more evidence of that today in the form of the complete welcome kit being sent out to prospective developers; there’s not anything too mind-boggling in here, but let’s break down some of the key points:

• From the wording, there’s no question that the system is exclusive to Android — at least initially.
• Amazon is already accepting submissions, but only of promotional materials and other non-app assets; presumably, they’re trying to make sure they’ve got critical mass before deploying.
• Oh, and here’s another reason they’re only taking non-app assets right now: the “App Packaging Tool” that binaries will need to be run through prior to submission isn’t yet ready. The nuts and bolts of the tool aren’t yet clear, but Amazon says that it will “ensure that the apps will install properly on customers’ devices and… enable the digital rights management (DRM) policies outlined in the developer agreement.”
• Speaking of DRM, turns out it’s not required. It’s up to the developer whether to enable it.
• Developer-submitted videos will be supported in the app product pages, which is kind of nice — neither the Android Market nor the iOS App Store support that.
• Naturally, it’s at Amazon’s sole discretion what will be allowed and disallowed in the store; “offensive content” won’t be permitted, and the company says that “what [it deems] offensive is probably about what you would expect.” Neither pornography nor “hard-core material” are cool.

So there you have it — Amazon is expecting to ingest actual app binaries “in a few weeks,” so it looks like this will be ready in time for the holidays. App store fragmentation seems like the last thing any mobile platform needs right now, but we’re sure that these guys — with the huge opportunity for showcasing apps on a site network that gets tens of millions of views per day — would just love a slice of that multi-billion dollar pie.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Amazon sends ‘welcome packet’ to prospective app store devs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 02:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The My Book Live definitely doesn’t mark Western Digital’s first foray into the world of connected storage, but the devil’s in the details on this one. The company’s newly released network drive falls into the budget-friendly My Book line, but promises access to files at up 100Mbps, or triple the speed of standard USB 2.0 units. Additionally, Apple Time Machine support comes baked in from the factory, and there’s also an integrated DLNA-compatible media server that can stream photos, videos and audio through any number of devices (WD TV Live Plus HD, Xbox 360, your Blu-ray player, a PlayStation 3, etc.). It’ll also double (triple?) as an iTunes music server, and when paired with the company’s refreshed WD Photos app — which is now optimized for iPad and iPhone 4 — users can flip through their photo albums remotely. The My Book Live is now available for $169.99 (1TB) / $229.99 (2TB), and the aforementioned app can be sucked down as we speak from the action-packed App Store.

Western Digital debuts My Book Live NAS / media streamer, revamped My Photos app originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 09:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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