Yesterday Apple released iOS 4.1 beta 3 for developers. Build number is 8B5097d for the firmware and 10M2308 for the SDK. Here is what’s new in beta 3:

• A revised API that allows applications to have an access to contact thumbnail pics;
• Media playback enhancements, which include new classes in AV Foundation, related to batched playback, writing/reading and file compression;
• New features of Game Center: now players can track their in-game achievements and game scores on leaderboards and find teams for group play. But it was also found that Game Center is no longer supported for iPod touch 2G and iPhone 3G, though it is unknown whether it is a permanent change or not.

Final release of iOS 4.1 is expected to be shipped in September or October.

Apple released beta 2 of upcoming iOS 4.1. Developers can download ше and new SDK here.

Following the release of the 4.0.1 firmware for iPhone and 3.2.1 for iPad Apple has released the SDK to go with it. Although the update seems like nothing, and is really is nothing, developers need to update in order to run their apps on new iOS 4.0.1 iPhone or 3.2.1 iPad.

Apple released iOS 4.1 beta and SDK for developers. Here is a quick look at the changes:

1. Larger signal bars.



2. New look of Game Center.



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Today, Apple has released iOS 4.1 beta for developers. The SDK and a beta OS install for iOS devices is now available via Apple developers site. We will update with new features as we find them, including antenna fixes.

According to TechCrunch, Wireless Quattro had recently contacted iPhone app developers to introduce their new “Verification of iTunes Purchase” program. The company is an Apple subsidiary,and it currently develops forthcoming iAd program.

ViP helps developers to promote their apps in App Store via ads which appearing in iPhone apps. With this feature they can track download conversion rates in real-time. Such information is proprietary to Apple, so Quattro promotes the product and its “exclusive integration with the App Store”, because such a feature is unavailable to other ad networks, and such information mentioned in the e-mail:

“Verification of iTunes Purchase uses no SDK or server-side integration — this cannot be duplicated by any of our competitors”.

Other advertisement companies such as Google’s AdMob can only estimate conversion rates, but such data cannot be as precise and detailed as Quattro’s one. For enabling conversion tracking every developer that uses AdMob must integrate the company’s advertising API into his code.

New provisions of iPhone SDK also reveal that now iPhone app developer is prohibited from sending users’ private data (and even location) to third parties. That means that mobile ad networks will have no ability to target users with its location-based or customized in any other way ads.

So this Quattro’s ViP program in addition to Apple’s deep integration between iPhone OS, App Store and its ad network reveals that company is aimed to have the maximum control over access of competitors, who desire to benefit from Apple’s business.

Today Apple released new SDK and iPhone OS 4 beta 2 (8A248C). This is only for developers, who can download it here.

We will keep you updated on new iPad/iPhone/iPod features that will be found in this new firmware 4 beta 2.

Now developers can download the beta version of iPhone OS 4.0 from the Apple Developer Connection. Both the SDK and firmware for every version of iPod Touch and iPhone are available.

Note: it is rumored that the iPhone OS 4.0 cannot be installed on iPod Touch 3G 32 GB version. Developers that tried to load the OS after its installing complain they got an error message:

“The iPod could not be restored. This device isn’t eligible for the requested build”.

Apple has released the final version of iPhone SDK 3.2 for developers. It can be downloaded here. However this is for iPad only. iPhone OS 3.2 will not work with iPhone or iPod Touch right now. Here is an official note from Apple:

Hopefully Apple will release the new SDK and firmware for iPhone and iPod Touch soon.

For some time people interested in the iPad’s tech specs were wondering where the Dvorak keyboard support is. With iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 5 released on Tuesday developers finally found it. But on the evidence above it is clear that there is a hardware support, but not software (so you can connect external keyboard, but there is still no way to change iPad layout to Dvorak’s).

It is interesting that though the hardware support is developed, there are no Bluetooth Dvorak keyboards produced at the moment to connect to the iPad (on the other hand you can always take usual keyboard and apply stickers to its keys).

To know more about Dvorak keyboard layour read here.

Since the iPad SDK became publicly available January 27 there were more than 2,000 apps released in App Store. The mobile metrix firm Flurry analyzed some facts and made a conclusion: in comparison to December the number of new iPhone OS apps released in February is more than 185% higher. Most of them are customized versions of the apps released for iPhone/iPod Touch earlier.

Flurry said that iPad allowed AppStore to gain more apps and increase the distance between it and its biggest rival Android’s Market Place.

9to5mac reports that the latest iPhone 3.2 Beta 4 SDK has the new gestures folder. And there are two new types of commands (3Tap.plist and LongPress.plist), that are certainly not implemented in the iPhone SDK 3.1.

Apple will probably allow developers to use these new capabilities in the next version of the iPhone OS. We might even see these next month in the shipping version of the iPad.

Developers have found references to multitasking in iPhone OS SDK files. The below mention of a “multitasking dialog box” is just one example:

Actually many different Apple’s built-in applications already multitask. For example, phone.app, iPod.app, Safari.app, Mail.app, etc. so theoretically, the dialog box in this case could refer to current functionality.

Apple today released the iPad/iPhone OS 3.2 Beta 4 SDK.  The build 10M2144 is 2.5GB and can be downloaded from developer.apple.com/iphone.

(different search engine strings on SDK on the left, Firefox 3.6 for Mac on the right)

Here’s some more interesting information from the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK. Users will be able to set search to something besides Google in the search bar of the iPad’s Safari in upcoming iPhoneOS releases.

Right now, the two options besides the current default Google are Wikipedia and Yahoo, but plugins could be developed to do things like Amazon and Bing searches directly from the search bar in the Safari browser.

There is even a suggestion manager for both Google and Yahoo depending on which search engine you choose. Unfortunately, no Bing… yet.

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