Note: Title has been changed to reflect “in-app” revenue
You may have seen this report around the web about the Amazon Appstore generating more in-app revenue than the Google Play Store. While that in itself it impressive, everyone seems to be missing the most important detail of the report: Android is generating more in-app revenue than iOS. At least that’s what this report is claiming.
The recently-updated version of GarageBand — Apple’s popular music-making app for the iPad — finally turns it into a serious tool for bands rather than something limited to solo artists and their session collaborators. With a shared connection, up to four band members can play or jam to a piece of music, be it a pop song or a classical overture. For the first time, it brings live performance to the iPad app.
BYOD may be the poster child for the consumerization of IT (CoIT) movement, but employee-owned mobile devices are just one of the consumer technologies that are steadily making their way into the workplace. Consumer cloud services are another big headache for IT.
Consumer clouds represent a way for data to easily leave office and the office network. Files can be placed in a consumer cloud very easily and often without IT even knowing about it. Despite that big security concern, cloud services like Box and Dropbox are popular with workers because they’re an easy way to ensure access to files and documents while out of the office and/or while working on a mobile device.
While blocking specific cloud services is a possibility, it’s little more than a stop-gap measure. Truly solving the problem means addressing the underlying need – users needing mobile access to data – in a secure way, which enterprise file management company Accellion aims to solve with a new Secure Mobile File Sharing service and sync capabilty dubbed kitedrive.
The immensely popular MMO Pocket Legends is turning two and Spacetime Studios is throwing a celebration to honor all of its milestones and devoted fan base. The now cross-platform global hit, Pocket Legends, was originally launched on iOS April 3rd, 2010. Since then, Pocket Legends has been played in every country on the planet (with the exceptions of Cuba and North Korea) by over five million people. That’s an impressive feat for a mobile MMO! Spacetime Studios thinks so too, that’s why players will now have access to all Pocket Legends premium content areas for free!
Earlier this Box launched its new OneCloud feature, the goal of which is to integrate a range of iOS business and productivity apps around Box’s cloud storage. The biggest advantage to OneCloud is that it neatly sidesteps the lack of file management in iOS, essentially functioning almost like cloud-centric iOS version of the Finder.
Box isn’t the only company looking to get around the iOS file limitations while also connecting users to the cloud. Quickoffice this week announced its new Connect solution, a dedicated app and cloud service combination that aims to make it easy for users to access, edit, share, and sync files and documents across all their devices as well as across a range of third-party cloud services.
Just six months after announcing that developers must stop accessing a device’s unique device identifier (UDID) within their iOS apps, Apple put its rule into practice last week amid increasing privacy concerns surrounding mobile apps. Any app submitted for App Store approval will soon be rejected if its attempts to access a UDID, and developers need an alternative.
That alternative could come from AppRedeem, a mobile advertising platform for app discovery, branding and monetization, which has developed a system called Organizational Specific Device Identifier, or “ODID,” already being used by Groupon.
Just hours after its release on March 16, Apple’s new iPad was jailbroken by the iPhone Dev-Team. Their announcement gave us hope that an exploit for A5 and A5X devices running iOS 5.1 would be available within weeks, but it now seems like we’ll be waiting a whole lot longer than that.
After months of denying and downplaying its problems, RIM seems to finally be waking up from its delusional fantasy world and accepting that it’s in extremely dire straights. That was the big take away from the company’s quarterly financial call Thursday evening.
The call was the first headed by the company’s new CEO Thorsten Heins, who took over earlier this year after the resignation of co-CEOS Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. Heins made it clear that he understands the challenges facing RIM (as well as the delusional thinking that created many of them) and that he cannot guarantee the company’s success as it struggles realign itself to the current mobile market.
IBM, once known as on of the most straight-laced companies in the world, has jumped on the BYOD bandwagon with a level of enthusiasm rarely seen in such large and established enterprises. The company has big plans for BYOD – rolling out a program out that covers all 440,000 employees worldwide.
That’s a big challenge and one that Big Blue has yet achieve. However, the company currently has mobility solutions deployed to about a quarter of its workforce (120,000 users) two thirds of whom (80,000) are supplying their own devices and service plans. The company, which had been a predominantly BlackBerry shop, began to shift gears as iPhones and other devices began showing up in its offices.
While not a model for every company, IBM’s BYOD policies can serve as a great starting point.
Earlier today, we reported on the variability in how companies can define BYOD programs. For some companies BYOD can mean access to just email while in others it can include a range of customer internal apps along with company-purchased selections for the App Store. The exact mix of allowed or supported functionality reflects the IT and management culture of an organization but it can be guided by what users feel they need most.
Email may be the lowest common denominator when it comes to BYOD because it is the most common use of mobile devices in the workplace. That statistic stands out in a new report on how businesses and employees are using mobile technology and how businesses are addressing BYOD as a trend.
2012 Mobile Game of the Year, The Dark Meadow, received a pretty major update on iOS today. Aside from all of the new features, the game has also gone freemium. The freemium version, entitled Dark Meadow: The Pact is a separate download on the App Store and as far as I can tell is exactly the same as the original paid version. The decision to go freemium may benefit the developers over the long term and is the reasoning for the jump. Although it is only available on iOS at the moment, it is scheduled to hit Android next month.
Most presentations are boring.
Whether it’s because the slides themselves are not exactly inspiring or the person delivering them isn’t exactly…well…inspiring, you’re bound to run into more mediocre ones than excellent ones. Now what if you have to give one? Are you prepared? Do you have the tools on hand to make the process as painless and powerful as possible? Well, with Slidevana you will — and you’ll save time in the process.
But this Cult of Mac Deals offer is almost done. And when it does go, so do the 50% savings!
New on the App Store is Paper for iPad, made by the team at 53. It’s a gorgeous, simple digital notebook that deliberately ditches features in a bid to keep things simple.
The result is something that’s unusually elegant, and a delight to use.
Back when I first moved back from Germany to the United States, one of the things I initially missed most about my previously Euro-centric digital lifestyle was, of course, Spotify. Depressed that the streaming music service hadn’t launched yet in the United States, I tried Rdio, a U.S. only analog.
Over the last year and a half, I’ve completely come around to Rdio as the superior service. It’s got a better interface — one that doesn’t look like it was designed as a Winamp skin circa 1997 — and really makes sharing and music discovery easy. It also, unlike Spotify, has a native iPad app.
The only problem with Rdio was that it was a fantastic music streaming service that I couldn’t recommend to my European friends. But now that’s all changed, or at least in the process of changing, because Rdio is coming to Europe.
The concept of employees bringing their own devices to the office has seen a meteoric rise in popularity over the past couple of years. When the term BYOD first entered the IT lexicon, most CIOs and systems administrators tended to shrug off the suggestion that their company might consider such a non-traditional approach. Today, surveys show more than fifty percent of organizations are considering or have already adopted BYOD policies.
While the concept of BYOD is pretty easy to grasp (companies actively support user-owned devices and may even encourage employees to bring their iPhones, iPads, and other devices into the office), exactly what BYOD translates to in the real world can vary widely.
Ubisoft has confirmed that its future iOS games will store your save data in the cloud, allowing you to sync your progress across multiple devices. That means you can beat missions and levels on your iPhone in your lunch break, then continue your game right where you left off on your iPad when you get home.
It’s a feature that almost every game — especially those build for both the iPhone and the iPad — should not be without.
Apple has just released iTunes 10.6.1 with a number of small bug fixes. iTunes 10.6 was released on March 7th, which brought support for iOS 5.1 and a few other enhancements. Today’s iTunes update fixes a few bugs, like unexpected crashes and more.
News media conglomerate Gannett is making a big push for mobile reporting and they’ve decided that the iPhone 4S is the perfect tool to start with for journalists across the country. To that end, the company has equipped 1,000 print and broadcast reporters with new iPhones to use for on the spot reporting, editing, and broadcasting.
The initiative was announced in December and will eventually include iPads as well as iPhones, but it is just now rolling out after the company put journalists getting the handsets through intensive training in the use of the iPhone and of the handful of apps that Gannett has chosen for reporters to use.
Ion Racer is a new high speed futuristic racing game for iOS from SGN. Sadly, if this is what racing’s going to be like in the future, I think I’ll take up fishing, because it will be more exciting.
Since the day the original iPad was announced more than two years ago, there’s been a constant discussion about its use in healthcare. At face value, the iPad offers a lot of tools to doctors and other healthcare professionals like access to electronic medical records (EMRs), access to electronic prescribing systems, and access to a wealth of reference materials like medication guides. To some extent the same benefits are available from the iPhone and other smartphones.
Those seem like great additions to a doctor’s daily workflows – both in the office and while on rounds at hospitals. Those great healthcare features don’t live in a vacuum, however. They live on mobile devices that also allow their owners to check-in on social networks, send and receive texts and emails, play games, and do all manner of personal tasks. That has some doctors and hospitals concerned that iPad, iPhones, and other mobile devices could actually be putting patients in harm’s way.
The chart really says it all. According to a new CNBC survey, 51% of all American homes now own at least one Apple product, with the national average being 1.6 Apple devices per household. And if you own an Apple product, you’re probably educated, young and doing well for yourself. Score all around!
[via ModMyI]
Cloud storage provider Box today announced its new Box OneCloud initiative. With OneCloud the company is looking to create a one-stop work environment on the iPhone and iPad that’s centered around Box’s cloud storage and collaboration features. The aim is to make the Box app the hub of a range of additional iOS apps in the business and productivity space. While many apps in that space allow you to access Box storage (along with several other cloud providers like Dropbox, Google Docs, and Sugar Sync), they often have limited file management capabilities and can only access specific types of files.
Box aims to fix that by partnering with developers that offer access to Box storage and giving users that ability to launch those apps from with the Box app, which will serve as a central file management solution. The approach is a creative way to make up for the lack of a user-accessible file system in iOS. In some ways, you can consider OneCloud to be a business or enterprise version of iCloud.
Loren Brichter, the developer behind Tweetie and its hugely popular pull-to-refresh gesture, which has now made its way into countless iOS apps, has spoken out about Twitter’s recent move to patent the feature. Speaking on the One More Thing podcast, Brichter said that there’s really no need for people to worry about it.
The Chinese will celebrate Tomb Sweeping Day on April 4, a ceremony which encourages them to remember their ancestors by laying out food at their grave sites, and burning paper replicas of daily necessities, such as clothes, money, cars, and houses. This year a few new items have been added to that list of necessities: the iPad and the iPhone.
LogMeIn has rolled out a new feature to its Pro subscribers today, now allowing them to stream high-definition video from their Mac to other devices capable of accessing LogMeIn, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch via the free iOS app. The feature is sure to be a welcome addition to those who have just adopted the new iPad with its Retina display and super speedy 4G connectivity.