Apple CEO Tim Cook and company have yet to step onstage to announce this year's iPhone and already, some entrepreneurial companies in the Far East are taking the hard-earned yuan of their fellow Chinese and sticking it away in their own pockets, promising to one day hook them up with an iPhone 5. If that isn't sad enough, we've got some rumblings of a couple of App Store favorites that may be on life support and more for this Thursday, July 12, 2012.
Remember The Daily? First announced as an original news magazine exclusively for the iPad, the News Corp. publication eventually spread its wings to a few Android tablets and even the iPhone, but never quite took off the way Rupert Murdoch might have hoped. Now, The New York Observer has let slip that The Daily may be "on watch," after losing $30 million each year for its parent company. The report, which details the shuttering of fellow News Corp. property Newscore, claims The Daily will have one last chance to prove itself with the November 6 election, according to one source. If that doesn't work out, it may be lights out for Rupert's tablet ambitions.
The free web-based Mint.com service is a great way to keep track of your finances, but having to check it from a browser all the time can be a drag. That's why Intuit has released the free Mint QuickView app on the Mac App Store. This companion app gives Mint.com users an up-to-date snapshot of their finances, right on the Mac desktop. The app lives in the menu bar, offering badge notifications of new transactions or account alerts, allowing users to monitor their cash flow without having to constantly log in to the website. The 3.7MB app is Retina Display ready and automatically syncs between the website and Mint's mobile apps. And hey, it's free, so what do you have to lose…?
Reuters is reporting that Chinese e-commerce website Taobao has completely jumped the gun and began taking preorders for the iPhone 5 -- which not only doesn't exist yet, but Apple isn't likely to begin selling them until October here in the U.S. Anxious Chinese are being asked to fork over 1,000 yuan ($160 USD) as a deposit, although some buyers are required to pay the entire cost up front: 6,999 yuan ($1,100 USD). One seller on the website claims "demand is high," with two phones sold on Wednesday and about two dozen orders to date. We're sure Apple is thrilled...
The Next Web is reporting that the servers running onetime App Store darling Boxcar appear to be playing dead, with a connection error greeting users who attempt to access their push notifications on the app itself. Worse yet, the company's website is also down for the count, with a considerable number of users jumping on Twitter to complain about the situation (big shocker there). Speaking of Twitter, the report notes that Boxcar's feed "has been quiet since June, indicating that the firm hasn't publicly acknowledged any issues with its service as of late." Quite a shame considering the similarly-endowed PushMail app officially closed up development in recent months, which is leaving a lot of push lovers nervous about the fate of their future.
Noise Industries has announced the availability of Video Scrapbook for Final Cut Pro, Motion and Adobe After Effects. This package of plugins from developer Nattress enables users to quickly create dynamic video scrapbooks from still images with six fun transitions. There's no need to keyframe images, and the plugins even create stylized backgrounds for portrait photos that don't quite fill the frame. The $49 Video Scrapbook plugins are available from within Noise Industries' free FxFactory and support Final Cut Pro 6 or later (including Final Cut Pro X), Motion 3 and up or Adobe After Effects CS3 or higher, including the latest CS6 edition.
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