Morning Report: iOS 8 Adoption Already Near 50 Percent, Adobe Acquires Aviary

Judging from Apple's own App Store data, an awful lot of folks have upgraded to iOS 8 in the first five days! We've got all the details on that number, along with a look at the latest pair of Fallon/Timerlake iPhone 6 commercials, and news of an Adobe-Aviary mashup that looks promising for mobile shutterbugs. Don't delay, click to read more!

Apple Developer Website Touts 46% Adoption Rate for iOS 8

Wednesday will mark one week since the arrival of iOS 8, and judging from a pie chart casually posted to Apple's online Developer portal, nearly half of all iPhones, iPod touches and iPads are already running the latest and greatest mobile operating system out of Cupertino.

According to Apple, the exact figure is 46 percent — quite an impressive number, considering iOS 8 was only released to the public on September 17, and the App Store data is already two days old, measured on September 21. iOS 7 still takes the lead with 49 percent, while a mere five percent of devices are still running an unspecified "earlier" version of the OS — presumably models that have been jailbroken or are unable to install the later versions.

Apple Posts Two New iPhone 6 Commercials

On the heels of yesterday's announcement of 10 million iPhone 6 units sold during the first weekend, Apple is turning up the marketing heat with a pair of new television commercials (embedded below) — not that they need any help getting consumers to line up around the block to buy the devices right now.

The new 30-second spots are done in the same style as "Duo" and "Health," the pair of commercials Apple premiered during the keynote two weeks ago. Featuring the voices of Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and performer Justin Timberlake, "Huge" finds the duo bantering back and forth about whether the new features or the size of the hardware are more important, while "Cameras" puts the emphasis on the new time-lapse mode and image stabilization features.

Adobe Acquires Mobile Photo Editing Service Aviary

Although the built-in iOS Photos app now includes powerful tools for editing images, for years such tasks have fallen to popular third-party solutions like Aviary, which offers a rich API capable of empowering other apps, such as the cloud-based Picturelife. But that may only scratch the surface of what is possible now that Adobe announced the acquisition of Aviary on Monday, and appears to have some ambitious plans to help power a new mobile-centric Creative SDK.

According to Adobe, the purchase of Aviary will help accelerate third-party APIs, allowing developers to browse files stored in Creative Cloud, extract elements from PSD files, access cloud-based image editing services, and much more. A separate blog post offering insight on the deal promises "a whole set of updates and new apps" that will be launched at the company's annual Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles on October 6, with even more great things to come in the months ahead.

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