Stash Bits: App Store Changes, Updates To Perian & Mobile Safari

While Apple is planning its own updates for the App Store and Safari for the iPhone is receiving a minor facelift, the Perian team has been hard at work bringing the popular Mac codec pack to version 1.1.1. Apple on the other hand is planning some cosmetic updates to the App Store on iTunes and the iPhone as well as streamlining the Mobile Safari interface.

Mobile Safari

Apple has made some changes before to Safari on the iPhone to really get the full browsing experience while maintaining a very minimal profile to make full use of all those pixels. While not an easy task, Apple has rearranged things a bit. The Google (or Yahoo! for you cool cats) search bar has been moved from the tap down menu to appear right next to the URL bar. The refresh button has moved into the URL bar as well. AppleInsider has posted comparison pictures of the two versions from the current 2.1 and the upcoming 2.2 Firmware.

App Store Changes

While Apple may be sprucing up the iPhone version of the App Store, some other changes are making waves on the desktop side. Gone is the ‘Sort By Free Apps’ category. It could be a push by Apple for users to pick and choose paid Apps to generate more revenue (Apple takes a 30 percent cut of sales from developers who chose to charge for their Apps) but conspiracy theories aside, free apps aren’t being killed from the App Store. They’re still present in search results but a bit harder to look for.

The iPhone version of the App Store is only getting some minor tweaks such as a new buttons and better use of summary/image space plus an additional tell a friend button and a report a problem button.

Via: TUAW

Perian 1.1.1

Perian is the go to App for playing anything more than what iTunes allows on a Mac and the current update brings a slew of bug fixes that make this already handy plugin even more reliable. This list of fixes is listed below.

-H.264 in AVI fixed
-Some anamorphic AVI files are now supported
-Performance problems due to PIC fixed with Xcode 3.1
-Incorrect frame skipping on H.264 intra frames fixed
-Better character set detection
-The update checker is now much more polite
-Several parsing and rendering bugs with subtitles fixed
-Player freezing while loading subtitles with embedded fonts fixed
-Audio fixed for some older MKV files with AAC/FLAC
-Strange values in MKV chapters or video sizes are handled better
-Initial support for SAMI subtitles added
-Worked around a QuickTime bug (#5770288) causing frames to be lost during export
-New codecs: DosBox ZMBV, VP6+Alpha, Nellymoser ASAO
-Crashing on PPC G3 fixed
-Fraps decoding artifacts fixed

You can download Perian here of check the updater to grab the latest version.

Via: Arstechnica