Today Apple released the third beta of iOS 4.3, called 8F5166b, to developers for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. This is the third beta release from Apple in three weeks. Details were not immediately available as to what is included in the release.
The first release on January 12th featured the new Personal Hotspot feature which allows an iPhone to share its 3G Internet connection with up to 5 devices over WiFi, and allowed third party applications to use AirPlay for streaming video. It also included a software option to change the iPad hardware switch between mute and orientation lock.
The second beta issued on Jan. 19 was a preview of the new iPad multi-touch gestures, which included four-finger gestures to switch between multitasking operations or return to the home screen. This feature will not be enabled in the final release, but is planned for the future.
No word on what’s inside it just yet, but Apple has just released iOS 4.3 beta 3 (build 8F5166b) to developers, so we’re sure we’ll be getting plenty more details soon enough. If recent beta versions of the OS are any indication, there’s likely to be at least a few surprises in there.
Update: It turns out it’s not specific to beta 3, but App Advice has discovered that iOS 4.3 includes another new feature that hasn’t been documented so far: the ability to cancel App Store downloads.
No word on what’s inside it just yet, but Apple has just released iOS 4.3 beta 3 (build 8F5166b) to developers, so we’re sure we’ll be getting plenty more details soon enough. If recent beta versions of the OS are any indication, there’s likely to be at least a few surprises in there.
Update: It turns out it’s not specific to beta 3, but App Advice has discovered that iOS 4.3 includes another new feature that hasn’t been documented so far: the ability to cancel App Store downloads.
We’d been disappointed to find that iOS 4.2 only brought AirPlay video support to built-in Apple apps on the iPhone and iPad, but it looks like that’s changing soon — Apple just posted up the first iOS 4.3 beta, which allows devs to send video from apps or websites to an Apple TV. There’s also a new beta of the Apple TV software for testing it out — it doesn’t have any version notes, so we don’t know if it offers any additional features as well.
There are quite a few new features included in 4.3: personal hotspot is indeed included on the iPhone, although it needs to be enabled on the carrier side to work, and the iPad’s side switch can now be set back to being an orientation lock, which should make a lot of people very happy. The iPad also gains some multitouch multitasking gestures, which are pretty interesting, actually: you can use four or five fingers to pinch to the home screen, swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar, and swipe left or right between apps. We’re also seeing a new FaceTime icon on the iPod touch, which is nice, and 9to5 Mac noticed that the iPad now supports fullscreen iAd banners, which is less nice. Check after the break for a quick video of the iPad gestures.
Update: The Photos app has also gained new AirPlay functionality for photos and videos, and there’s a slightly tweaked camera shutter sound, as well as bigger app icons in the App Store’s Update menu.
Earlier this morning, there was a confirmation that the mobile hotspot feature, which the Verizon iPhone 4 has already installed, would be made available to all iPhone 4s in the wild, once iOS 4.3 landed in the future. Apple has made iOS 4.3 one step closer to reality, by releasing the first official build for developers, courtesy of their developer portal on Apple’s website.
Details regarding the first beta for iOS 4.3 are still lacking, but we imagine that as more developers get their hands on the build, we’ll find out more. If you’re not signed up for the development program, you can still sign up and get your hands on the latest build of iOS through this link. If you’re a developer and you’re testing out iOS 4.3 right now, let us know what changes you’re seeing in the comments below.
Here is the list of supported devices:
Supported Devices
Second generation Apple TV
iPad
iPhone 4
iPhone 3GS
iPod Touch 2nd, 3rd, 4th Generation
Google’s famous penchant for keeping things in beta doesn’t seem to have changed lately, as the company’s App Inventor for Android is still keeping its Greek lettering, but at least access has now been opened up for everyone to enjoy. The switch from private to public beta isn’t the most significant thing in the world — up until now you just had to ask for an invite to get one — but we’re sure amateur Android coders and experimenters will appreciate not having to go through that extra step. The App Inventor’s sitting in Google Labs right this minute, waiting for you to magic up (no coding skills required!) a finely crafted solution to modern living of your own. Hit the source link to get your mouse pointer dirty.
Even the most loyal Android user is bound to kvetch about the stock keyboard at some point or another, and while Swype has definitely grabbed the hearts of a good many Froyo users, Swiftkey remains our third-party keyboard of choice. After escaping beta just a few months ago, TouchType has just outed an ‘HD’ build that’s designed to cope with many of the higher-resolution displays being used on today’s gargantuan Android phones. Moreover, we’re guessing that this was done to look a bit better on devices like the Galaxy Tab, and there’s no denying that the new design elements are a real step forward. Aside from the makeover, the app is also gaining five new languages (Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Norwegian and Polish), improved language prediction quality and a new US layout that nixes accented characters. For those who’ve yet to try it, the latest version can be tested for a full 31 days, after which you’ll be coerced into ponying up $3.99 for the real-deal. Hit the source links below (or the QR code shown here) to give it a go.
If you’re in the market for a good — or at the very least, free — RSS reader for your BlackBerry, a new app from RIM itself might be a good place to start your search. The aptly-named BlackBerry News Feeds looks to be a serviceable app from the screen shots that RIM has sent us, offering the ability to share the gold you dig up in your feeds through countless conduits — email, text, BBM, Facebook, and so on. It’s launching both through BlackBerry Beta Zone and App World’s Test Center today, so if you’re feeling adventurous — and you like yourself some newses — you might want to have a look.
New update! Plugins for those who love plugin updates so much they sit at the edge of their seat craving the update more than the movies and such they watch with the player! Today they (and you) get a 10.2 Beta release update for Flash Player just so long as they’re on a Mac, Windows, or Linux machine. The biggest upgrade in this build is preliminary support of none other than Stage Video.
Stage Video is an infrastructure for playback of videos that should further reduce the impact playing a video with Flash Player has – on your computer, not impact on how visually spectacular it is. Previous versions of Flash Player 10 (the one you’re upgrading here) leveraged GPU acceleration for decoding video while 10.2 (this update) offloads basically all video pipeline tasks to the GPU to help with the CPU load. Less heavy lifting!
In addition to that, 10.2 improves text rendering, full-screen playback for two-monitor setups (allowing playing on one screen while the other stays open for you to continue working.) Check out the full press release below and [download the plugin here] and check out [Stage Video demo clips here.]
We’re happy to announce a beta release of Flash Player 10.2 for Windows, Mac, and Linux is now available for download on Adobe Labs. Flash Player 10.2 beta introduces a number of enhancements we’re excited to share, including Stage Video, a new API that delivers best-in-class, high performance video playback across platforms. The new beta also includes Internet Explorer 9 hardware acceleration support previewed earlier (in Flash Player “Square”), enhanced text rendering, and two popular requests from the community: a native custom mouse cursors API and support for full screen playback with multiple monitors.
Setting the Stage for Beautiful Video
A lot of folks want to deliver the best possible video experience to the widest number of people. Stage Video in Flash Player 10.2 beta advances that goal. This new capability will help web sites deliver smooth, beautiful video across devices and browsers by enabling access to hardware acceleration of the entire video pipeline. As we showed in a sneak peak just last month at Adobe MAX, Flash Player 10.2 beta with Stage Video can deliver brilliant HD video with dramatically little processing power. Working together with hardware vendors has helped us take advantage of the GPU to offload not only H.264 hardware decoding (introduced in Flash Player 10.1) but the rest of the video rendering pipeline, including color conversion, scaling, and blitting. How efficient is hardware acceleration in Flash Player 10.2 beta? Using Stage Video, we’ve seen laptops play smooth 1080p HD video with just over 0% CPU usage.
Quality and performance are important, and so are richness and reach. Accordingly, Stage Video supports fully interactive, rich content combined with video. 1 billion people have Flash Player today. Because Stage Video works across browsers, when the final shipping version of Flash Player 10.2 is released, users will benefit from Stage Video accelerated content with a simple Flash Player update. We’re also introducing Stage Video across devices. In fact, today Google TV already takes advantage of Stage Video in Flash Player to deliver gorgeous 1080p HD video playback on TVs.
For content providers, Stage Video will work with all of the existing video viewed in Flash Player once they utilize the new API in their video player SWFs. This means their websites will continue to benefit from Flash Player’s advanced streaming for smooth, higher quality playback, DVR-like playback control, content protection, and consistency, with no changes to their encoded videos or infrastructure. Developers can learn more about how to enable their sites to take advantage of Stage Video today, and sites like YouTube have already started adding early support for Stage Video.
Other Enhancements
In addition to enhanced video playback, Flash Player 10.2 beta includes Internet Explorer 9 GPU support. In some of our tests this has yielded up to 35% improvement in rendering performance with Microsoft’s latest browser. Some other features are less about big numbers but little details that make experiences better. Flash Player has long allowed viewers to enjoy true full screen playback with one click. With Flash Player 10.2 beta, users with multiple monitors will be able to watch videos in true full screen on one display while multi-tasking on another (we heard you!). And we’re including another popular request from designers and developers: support for native custom mouse cursors. The new API allows developers to create their own cursors, static or animated, and ask the native OS to render them rather than use resources to manually draw custom cursors. This opens up new creative possibilities and can improve responsiveness in games, applications, and other content. Finally, the Flash Player 10.2 beta release also includes new sub-pixel text rendering enhancements that leverage Adobe typography research to further enhance readability of text in Flash Player, especially for complex character-based languages.
We encourage developers to install Flash Player 10.2 beta to check out these upcoming features. Developers with the beta can check out the Stage Video demos on Adobe Labs, including a demonstration of Stage Video from our friends at YouTube. If you’re an end-user, you probably don’t need to download the beta – you’ll benefit from Stage Video with the final release of Flash Player 10.2 next year as websites take advantage of it. We’ve found the beta to be pretty stable and ready for broad testing, but keep in mind this is a pre-release version of Flash Player, so not everything will be fully baked. If you encounter any issues, please file a bug in our public database so we can investigate. We appreciate your help and feedback.
We’re excited about what’s coming, and we hope you like it!
Tom Nguyen?Product Manager, Flash Platform Runtimes
As all you Evernote lovers on Macs might already have expected (and requested), the new version of Evernote will be including two of your most requested additions: Notebook Sharing and Stacks! You can get this Beta release today by clicking “update to beta versions” in your software update tab of you Evernote for Mac preferences and checking for updates. Before you do so, take a look below at what you’ll be getting and be forewarned that because this is a Beta, there may be bugs that still have to be worked out.
Notebook Sharing
With this new version of Evernote, you no longer have to leave the application in order to share your notebooks with your friends and affiliates. You can access this by looking to your left, where you’ll see that your panels have been split into two, one for Account, where you’ll see your own notes, and one for Shared, where you’ll be able to access all of your Evernote sharing functions. At the top of this tab, there’ll be a Manage Sharing button which will display a list of your notebooks. Click the Start Sharing button near any notebook to begin sharing it. You may share with either a select group of people or to the public. NOTE: you may allow others to edit the contents of your shared notebooks if you have a Premium account. Cool beans!
Another Premium feature is the ability to see different versions of notes, histories of edited notes which will become useful if you’ve got your Premium editing function turned on and several people are accessing your notes. Linking notebooks is another feature, accessible at the top of the page and titled “Link to my Account” – this feature appears when you receive a sharing invitation from someone via email or visit a public shared notebook.
Once you click it, hit Sync and it will show up in your Shared Notebook panel. The first time you do this and view a notebook, you’ll be asked to configure how often you want Evernote to check for updates – this can also be adjusted manually.
Notebooks Stacks
Hooray organization! Evernote now has a simpler way for you to keep your stuff nice and tidy. This is Notebooks Stacks, a visual grouping for notebooks which act basically like folders on a desktop. To create a new stack, simply drag and drop one notebook onto another to create a new stack, or command-click a notebook and choose Add to Stack. This feature is currently synced to your account, so any changes you make now will automatically stay when this Beta release turns into a full release.
Left Panel Redesign
Finally, the left panel has a bit of a redesign. This update is, like the other features, meant to improve the way the system works as far as organization goes, helping users keep track of notebooks, tags, and saved searches. You can resize and minimize sections inside the left panel by dragging the headers up and down, and scroll within each section. The gear icon at the bottom of the left panel adds or removes elements as you wish.
Mini Review
Evernote is one of those applications you use and get heavily addicted to supposing you have a need for it – if your friends and family members use it, you’ll feel obligated and find yourself in love with the many features. On the other hand if you’re in the blogging business and want a way to share your life, times, and links with the world in a way that will make your blog reach the top 100, you might want to check out something like WordPress instead, especially if you plan on using only the non-Premium version of the software. On the other hand again, if you do take a peek at Evernote and find yourself in love with the look, feel, and functionality like so many have, you’re going to find these updates to be welcome and so effective you were surprised you ever lived without them.
You’ll find the system a bit buggy, as can happen with any Beta release, like for example the Notebooks menu under your Account tab can sometimes get stuck in closed mode, which can be a bummer when you’re trying to get a decent screenshot of the new stacks feature. New notebooks on your shared list also don’t always show up right away (and sometimes not at all) on your list – as shown below in this preview shot from Evernote:
So there’s some work to be done. But the updates are exciting! Take a look at the Beta yourself and try it out, and feel free to share your notebooks with us, or just me, here: chris@androidcommunity.com – do it! Also, everyone who isn’t on a Mac – you’ll have to wait for this update. They’re coming, coming soon. They’re working on it.
