O'Grady's PowerPage

Tag: discontinue

  • Apple confirms that Aperture will be discontinued after launch of Photos for OS X

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    It’s time to move on from Aperture.

    Shortly after last week’s deployment of OS X 10.10.3 to developers, Apple updated its official Aperture page on its website, adding a notice stating that Aperture will be removed from the Mac App Store when the Photos for OS X app launches.

    The same notice can also be found in the app’s Mac App Store description. Once removed from the Mac App Store, it will no longer be possible for new users to obtain the Aperture software, but those who have previously purchased Aperture will continue to be able to download it from the “Purchases” tab.

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  • Rumor: Apple to discontinue iPhone 5c production in early 2015

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    Apple may be shedding the iPhone 5c in 2015.

    Per MacRumors and Taiwan’s Industrial and Commercial Times, Apple is slated to discontinue the iPhone 5c in 2015. Production of the handset is said to be stopping in the middle of the year, as Apple suppliers Wistron and Foxconn will look to wind down production of the device. The news follows a report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier this week which noted that production of the iPhone 5c and the iPhone 4S would end later in 2015 after promotional plans.

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  • Rumor: Apple to discontinue iPad mini in favor of larger 12-inch “iPad Pro” model

    It’s just a rumor, but it’s got some decent sources behind it.

    Per AppleInsider and Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, a rumor out of East Asia on Monday claims Apple is looking to wind down iPad mini production in favor of a 12-inch tablet, a response to flagging sales and growing consumer interest in larger-screened devices.

    Citing sources in Apple’s supply chain, the Economic Daily News reports the company is looking to discontinue iPad mini sales when the tablet lineup is refreshed next year and will instead concentrate on production of a new 12-inch format being called “iPad Pro.”

    The shift in tablet strategy is said to be in reply to a shifting smartphone market, which has seen consumers gravitate toward devices with screens larger than 5 inches when measured diagonally. Apple itself has seen unexpectedly high demand for the new 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, the company’s first “phablet” handset.

    Also cited as a catalyst for change is increasingly aggressive competition in the tablet sector, with competitors like Samsung slowly nibbling away at Apple’s dominant marketshare. For the most recent fourth fiscal quarter of 2014, Apple moved 12.3 million iPads, down 17 percent from 14.1 million year-over-year.

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  • AOL to discontinue iCloud account support for its Alto webmail service come December 2nd

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    If you weren’t enchanted with AOL before, then this won’t help win you over.

    According to 9to5Mac, AOL has informed applicable users that it will be dropping support for accessing email from Apple’s iCloud service from its recently launched Alto webmail client. Alto is a web-based mail client that intelligently sorts and integrates email from services such as iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL. AOL has informed iCloud users who have logged into Alto that support for iCloud will be dropped on December 2nd via the following e-mail:

    “Thanks for using Alto to read and send mail from your @iCloud, @me or @mac account. We’ve been honored to host those accounts and get great, positive feedback on the experience from users like you. But we’re sad to say that Alto will no longer support iCloud accounts as of December 2, 2013. We sincerely regret the frustration this will cause.”

    iCloud accounts will automatically be disabled in Alto on that date, but users can begin the process early by removing iCloud accounts from Alto manually. All iCloud accounts, no matter if the domain is @icloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com will no longer be supported. AOL has not shared why it is dropping support for Apple’s email service, and AOL does not appear to be dropping support for any other provider.

    Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

  • Adobe to discontinue new Flash Player installs on August 15th

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    Sometimes a Web technology just has to ride off into the sunset.

    According to The Verge, Adobe’s mobile Flash days are now numbered, as the company has announced that it will no longer accept new Flash Player installations through the Google Play application store after August 15 and will not support the upcoming 4.1 Jelly Bean version of Android.

    Following up on the announcement last November that it was discontinuing development of Flash for mobile browsers, Adobe published a blog post on Thursday detailing deprecated support for the player on Android.

    “Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed,” the post read.

    Adobe also said that there will not be any Flash-certified Android 4.1 devices. Though in the past unsupported devices were sometimes able to get Flash Player working, the company said that this is “no longer going to be the case” because it has not developed or tested the player for the upcoming version of Android and its browsers.

    Android users who want to keep running Flash as legacy software will need to download and install Flash before the August 15th deadline. Adobe also recommends that they stay on Android 4.0, as Flash Player on 4.1 Jelly Bean could exhibit “unpredictable behavior.”

    “We recommend uninstalling Flash Player on devices which have been upgraded to Android 4.1,” the company wrote.

    Last year, an Adobe manager put part of the blame on Apple for the demise of mobile Flash. Mike Chambers acknowledged that the software would never reach “anywhere near the ubiquity” of its install base on desktops because Apple would not allow Flash Player in the iOS browser.

    “No matter what we did, the Flash Player was not going to be available on Apple’s iOS anytime in the foreseeable future,” he said.

    Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs set off an intense debate about the merits of Flash in 2010 with his open letter criticizing the format as outdated and needlessly proprietary.

    Android makers decided early on to advertise Flash as a differentiating feature of their devices as compared to Apple’s own. The move ultimately backfired on companies like Motorola, as Flash support ended up being postponed due to technical issues.

    Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.