One of Steve Jobs’s favorite quotes was by Wayne Gretzky, a famous hockey player: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” From the beginning, Apple has been all about looking ahead to the next greatest thing, not concerning itself with aligning with other companies.
It might be Google’s turn to take a lesson from Apple and do the same, or they may miss out on an opportunity of monumental proportion. What is the opportunity you ask? AirPlay.
Google’s VP of Product Management, Bradley Horowitz, announced that Google has partnered with Flipboard to integrate Google+ streams into the popular magazine-styled reader. Google+ will join Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and a host of other social services available on Flipboard thanks to new extended APIs. This new integration is a great step forward for users, especially those who enjoy accessing all of their social content from a single app such as Flipboard.
It’s safe to say the majority of us already know the story behind Peter Parker and how he came to be Spider-Man. In case you aren’t familiar with this iconic story, Gameloft has released a prologue video to not only familiarize you with the history, but to show off some more in-game footage.
If you’re a dad like me, the only tie you want for Father’s day is this one. What we do want, are some kick ass games for guys. EA has answered our plea, and graciously discounted a slew of manly titles across multiple platforms.
This NFL season is about to get squawky thanks to Andy Reid and his decision to sign five new free agents to the Philadelphia Eagles. At a brief press conference, Andy Reid announced the five newest players, and boy were they an Angry bunch. Newly signed Red Bird, Bomb Bird, Yellow Bird, Terrence, and The Mighty Philadelphia Eagle, are ready to crush all the swine populating the NFC East.
There’s no denying Temple Run has had quite the success across both Android and iOS. Apparently, Disney has taken notice of this success and reached out to Imangi Studios (the couple behind Temple Run) to create an official Temple Run version for Disney/Pixar’s upcoming computer-animated fantasy adventure film Brave.
Rovio’s Angry Birds updates are becoming more and more creative. The next batch of summer fun transports our favorite angry aviators to the land of aquatics. Down in the depths of the ocean lives a mythical green beast whose appetite for destruction can only be satisfied by the souls of the avian unborn.
Gameloft continues to make friends with all the right people as Hollywood seems to be trusting them to create the official mobile games to accompany their summer blockbusters. First they teamed up with Marvel and Sony Pictures to bring the official Amazing Spiderman and now they’ve teamed up with Warner Brothers Games and DC Comics to bring the official Dark Knight Rises to Android and iOS this summer.
If you’ve been an iPhone user for a number of years, you may remember that Siri was a third-party app long before it was purchased by Apple and integrated into the iOS operating system. Back then, although it couldn’t remind you to take out the trash or compose text messages, it offered a lot of the same search functionality it does today.
In fact, according to Steve Wozniak, Siri was actually better back then.
Skype has just pushed out its latest update for Mac OS X, which includes a number of enhancements to existing features, as well as support for OS X Mountain Lion. The company promises that contacts lists, video calls to mobile devices, and screen sharing are all much-improved in version 5.8.
We’re super excited for iOS 6. Although it isn’t the complete iOS overhaul many users were hoping for, it does deliver a whole host of new features — like a new Maps app, user interface enhancements, improvements to stock apps, and Siri support on iPad — that we’re certainly looking forward to.
However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that iOS 6 still has some things missing. Things we’ve been waiting for for some time. Here are seven of them.
It’s a pretty good bet that iPhones and iPads will be responsible for 3G/4G traffic spikes around the Moscone Center in San Francisco this week as Apple developers lucky enough to score a ticket attend WWDC. Beyond this week, however, it seems that iPhone users have a tendency to gobble up a large amount of data – more so than other platforms including Android.
On average, iPhone owners represent about 20% of smartphone customers for mobile carriers worldwide. You might expect that those customers would amount to around 20% of data usage. That isn’t the case as iPhone users account for an average 45% of carrier data traffic and data use by iPhone users is more consistent than data consumed by Android customers.
U.S. Facebook users should start seeing Facebook’s new App Center when they log into Facebook via the web, Android app, or iOS apps. Facebook’s new App Center is less of an “App Store” and more of a central location for Facebook users to discover new apps. In reality, it’s just a way for Facebook to keep users in Facebook or using Facebook integrated apps.
Verizon continues to put other carriers to shame with their 4G LTE network. In one day, Verizon manages to blanket more markets than most carriers do in months. At the current rate of expansion, I’d say most other carriers are year’s behind, and according to Verizon’s current forecast, it’s going to get worse.
Google shook up the mobile business landscape by announcing its acquisition of mobile office powerhouse Quickoffice. That move might not seem terribly large, but it creates a very different and unexpected dynamic in the business mobility world. It also sets up a showdown over business capabilities that could have lasting ramifications.
Why is this move significant? It means that every company that produces a major mobile platform now also owns a serious office and productivity solution. Microsoft has Office, Apple has iWork, RIM has Documents To Go (which it acquired nearly two years ago), and Google now has Quickoffice as well as Google Docs. Each company can now ensure that its mobile business customers will have at least one solid option for working with Office files on their smartphones or tablets.
This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo has been chock full of mobile news and is a testament to the future of mobile gaming. Major gaming companies such as EA took stage to not only show off their console offerings, but their future mobile versions as well. This year, EA showed off a number of titles, two of which will be hitting Android and iOS later this fall.
At this point, the consensus of everyone from the smallest Apple blogs to the venerable Wall Street Journal is that Apple will dump Google as its Maps provider in iOS 6 in favor of its own, in-house technology that will bring, among other enhancements, 3D mapping to the mix.
Apple’s move has caught Google not just off-guard, it’s put the search giant into a total panic. Need proof? Look no further than Google’s debacle of an emergency announcement today, in which they unveiled “the next dimension of Google Maps.”
During this announcement, Google coincidentally announced their own 3D Maps solution… coincidentally enough, just five days before Apple’s expected to unveil theirs. Oh, and they showed it working on an iPad instead of an Android tablet… and their app was so hacked together it crashed numerous times during the presentation.
Can anyone say “rushed?”
If you’re considering developing an ad-support mobile app or if you’re an advertiser looking to get the most bang from your mobile advertising buck, you’re likely to find that iOS devices deliver a significantly bigger ad return than most Android phones or tablets regardless of the screen size of the device(s) in question.
That news comes Jumptap, a company that specializes in targeted mobile advertising which uncovered some interesting and information for mobile app developers and companies looking to develop a mobile ad campaign.
At today’s Google Maps event, Google revealed a few planned features for not only Google Maps for Android (no mention of iOS), but also Google Earth for Android and iOS. The Google Maps announcement was simply offline support, and something that users have been after for years. In Google Earth news, Google announced stunning new 3D images and a new UI would be coming soon to both Android and iOS platforms.
We’ve seen a handful of tablet cases — especially for the iPad — that aim to turn your slate into a MacBook Air lookalike. But the ClamBook from ClamCase is the first solution we’ve seen that’s designed for the iPhone and Android smartphones, and it promises to “change the way you view smartphones.”
Built from sleek aluminum, the ClamBook is incredibly thin and light. It comes to life when you hook it up to your smartphone to see its content on the widescreen display, which is accompanied by a full-size QWERTY keyboard and a multitouch trackpad.
Apple typically score high in brand loyalty and product satisfaction. As a result, it doesn’t come as a huge surprise to hear that the new iPad and iPad 2 are leading tablet satisfaction surveys. Nor is it surprising that the iPads aren’t just scoring better than other tablets, they’re kicking some Android butt.
According to the latest numbers from Changewave, 81% of new iPad owners are very satisfied with their devices and while an additional 15% are somewhat satisfied. That means 96% of users can be called happy with the new iPad.
Google has announced its acquisition of leading mobile office solution Quickoffice. Quickoffice has proved to be one of the most powerful mobile office suites available and has shared success across multiple mobile platforms including Android and iOS. It’s tough to tell what Google has planned for the office suite but we’re sure it involves Google Docs, Google Drive, and a host of other productivity apps.
There’s no telling what the future will hold for the Quickoffice suite currently on iOS, as well as platforms other than Android — but one has to wonder: will Google simply kill them off or keep them after they integrate its features into their own apps? Details are bit scarce at this point but we’ll keep you updated.
Looks like Google is on another acquisition kick, as they’ve been scooping up companies left and right over the past month. We certainly welcome this latest addition and look forward to the Quickoffice integration.
Source: Google Blog
Gameloft is at it again, teaming up with Marvel to produce yet another hit mobile game. After the success of Spider-Man: Total Mayhem, Marvel knew just who to go to for the creation of an Amazing Spider-Man mobile game that they planned on launching in conjunction with the new film. Gameloft has been working closely with Marvel and Sony Pictures to ensure the game stays as true to the film story as possible.
The iPad continued to dominate the tablet space through the first quarter of 2012. That’s the news from ABI Research, which publishes a quarterly report known as the Media Tablet Market Share Tracker. Although most companies with products in the tablet space did see year-on-year growth, none was able to come close to wresting the number one spot away from Apple. Apple’s commanding lead translated to 10 times the number of shipments by Samsung, which returned to being the second biggest player in the tablet space.
We first looked at Mobilisafe a couple of months ago when the company’s signature mobile management suite was still in private beta. The company, which was started by former T-Mobile Android engineers, seeks to offer broad mobile device and data security without requiring the types on-device agents or profiles used by most mobile device and application management suites.
Mobilisafe executives describe their product as a mobile risk management solution rather than as a device or application management tool. The distinction being that Mobilisafe helps IT departments identify specific threats that can then be mitigated rather than simply locking specific apps and restricting access to on-device features like blocking an iPhone user’s ability to snap photos and upload them to iCloud.