Despite the cornucopia of different smartphones available to consumers, the battle for global smartphone domination comes down to just two companies: Samsung and Apple.
Samsung posted record results in Q2 and even though a new iPhone hasn’t been announced, Apple still managed to beat Wall Street’s iPhone sales estimates last quarter, leaving Nokia, HTC, LG, and all the other major OEMs with nothing but table scraps to feast on.
Source: Benedict Evans
Via: BGR
With competition around the iPhone at an all-time high, Apple could use a huge boost in sales numbers, so Tim Cook made another visit to Beijing this week to recruit the world’s biggest mobile carrier, China Mobile, to bring the iPhone to its network.
China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua was on hand Tuesday to meet with Cook, and according to the Chinese firm, the two discussed ‘matters of cooperation’ between the two companies, which means they were probably talking about how much money they’d both make if China Mobile sold the iPhone 5C.
The Adobe Ideas app for iOS has today been updated to add support for stroke smoothing, and the pressure sensitive Pogo Connect stylus. The release also adds new sharing options, including the ability to send your artwork to other iOS apps, such as Photoshop Touch.
FileMaker has announced it will discontinue Bento, its database client for Mac and iOS, on September 30. The company will increase focus on the FileMaker product line going forward, with the aim of creating “an even better experience for these customers.”
Do you get frustrating iMessage spam from people you’ve never met, or companies you’ve never heard of? You’re not the only one. Until now, you could either make friends with them and save yourself from loneliness on those cold winter nights, or you could ignore them and hope that they don’t text again.
But now you can report them to Apple, too.
Do you like to Bang With Friends? The Facebook app, I mean, which lets you arrange hookups with your Facebook friends if both of you are anonymously up for banging. One rarely bangs with enemies, and even then, only under a “keep your enemies closer” mantra.
Well, if you do, bad news, chum. Zynga — the avatar of all that is unholy about mobile gaming — is suing Bang With Friends. Why? Because the “With Friends” part is similar to many of their game app titles, like Chess With Friends and Words With Friends.
Apple has reduced the price of the refurbished Apple TV to $75. That’s $10 cheaper than its original price tag, and $24 cheaper than a brand new model. It’s believed the drop may have been made in response to the Google Chromecast, which has been selling fast since it went on sale last week for just $35.
Developer tap tap tap just announced the details on its latest Camera+ update for iPhone and iPad. The folks behind one of the best camera app replacements out there add the ability to layer effects in editing, letting you quickly and easily add and remove a multitude of effects per photo, stacking and re-arranging the order of the effects to attain your own unique look and style.
If you’re not into doing all the micromanagement, Camera+ is also releasing two new filter packs.
Kanex’s MeDrive looks like an essential bit of kit for anyone with an iDevice and a whole mess of media files. It’s a personal file server, only unlike most solutions we’ve seen, it lets you hook up any USB drive to share and access its contents.
There’s something that happens to a certain kind of person when it comes to hobbies: The acquisition of gear becomes more important than the hobby itself. Take photography, for instance.
One short trip to the Internet will fill your browser with awful, pointless photos taken by men with cameras that cost them a fortune. You’ll see truly lame family snapshots taken on an $8,000 Leica Monochrom, posted with notes about the tonality and the bokeh, as if the gear makes these snapshooters into great photographers.
And you’ll see accessories. All kinds of crazy accessories that do little but fuel the need to upgrade to ever more specialized and expensive models.
Back when I worked a Saturday job in a camera store, we’d joke about the men who’d spend so much on a camera that they could only afford the cheap off-brand film. For these folks, there’s the Artisan Obscura shutter release, a tiny, $30 circle of wood that screws into a camera’s shutter release.
Cobook has updated its contacts/address book app, adding some long-overdue features, some neat new tricks, and – finally – a store, so you can give the company some money at last.
I got talking to an old man with a long beard yesterday. It was almost down to his jewel-studded belt. And he told me that “back in the day,” “where he comes from,” gentlemen would try to fill their living rooms with ugly black and silver boxes covered with flashing and pulsing lamps. They’d lay rope-like cables around the rooms of their homes, and the “coffee table” – as he called it – would be covered with smaller, button-covered boxes.
These gentlemen would argue with their ladies, who “just wanted to relax and watch a bit of TV for God’s sake WHATS WRONG WITH YOU.”
“Back in the day” was of course “the 1980s and 1990s,” and these boxes were stereo and home theater gear. Now we live in an enlightened age where these things are as beautifully integrated into our homes as, well, as baskets of potpourri, I guess.
Just like the Sound Spot.
You might – as I did – laugh at the idea of a solar-powered keyboard for the iPad. And then you will remember that independence from power supplies is one of the iPad’s main features. And then you will take a closer look at this aluminum and plastic slab and see that it looks a lot like my favorite iPad keyboard from Zagg.
All Panasonic’s hopes of a surprise launch of its GX7 camera have been dashed. The Micro Four Thirds body has now been fully leaked, with what look to be official pictures and specs. And what a camera. If you have had your eye on one of Fujifilm’s retro-styled but ultra-modern x-series cameras, but already own a clutch of Micro Four Thirds lenses, then this camera may well be for you.
Autodesk has a rich history of offering stunning, free iOS apps that do some pretty spectacular things. Their latest app, Homestyler, lets you virtually redecorate your house with remarkable detail.
It was a bit of an odd moment when Incase — which up to that point almost exclusively focused on bags and cases — announced a couple of years ago that they’d started making headphones. Even more surprising was that the headphones really, really rocked.
Of the four models, the best deal was probably the second-most expensive of the bunch, the on-the-ear Reflex: velvety looks, a rugged build and sound quality that many gadget sites, including us, thought beat out headphones twice as expensive.
Still, the Reflex didn’t generate as much buzz as perhaps they should have, and at $90 they were one of the most underrated headphones on the market; then Incase cut the price to $60.
And now they’re on sale at $30, which makes them, well, completely irresistible.
You know how camping is all about roughing it and rusticity? Forget it. Goal Zero teamed up with Eddie Bauer to design a solar-powered tent.
Elevens is a solitaire card game in which players lay down cards, face-up and in a grid of 3X3. They then remove the cards in groups when they add up to eleven, and go until they can go no more.
Cassandra’s 11 is based on this game, in that you must tap cards from a grid when they add up to eleven. Tap a Nine and Two card, for example, or a Five, a Four, and a Two. What takes this universal app from developer Plexonic to the next level is the puzzle aspect.
Today the GoPro iOS app hit version 2.0, and the update includes several additions that make it easier to interface with the GoPro camera from an iPhone or iPad. The app is way more than a remote control now.
The biggest feature is the ability to wirelessly transfer photo and video from the camera to a dedicated album in an iOS device’s camera roll. Once the you download version 2.0 of the iOS app and the most recent software update for the camera itself, you can browse, view, and delete media right from the camera’s memory card. Photos and videos that have been wirelessly synced over to your iOS device from the camera can be shared through email, text, or other apps like Instagram and Facebook.
GoPro users are going to love today’s update, so grab it now.
Source: App Store
Afterlight is one of the most popular photography apps in the App Store, but until now it’s only been optimized for the iPhone. Today’s update brings full support for the iPad, meaning you can edit in a native interface for the iPad’s larger display.
If you’ve seen pics in your Instagram feed that are framed creatively or look like they aren’t filtered in Instagram itself, chances are they were probably edited in Afterlight. It’s nice that the app officially supports the iPad now, but the interface is basically just a blown up version of the iPhone app. Some iPad-only UI tweaks or features would be nice for future updates.
Afterlight costs $1 as a universal download in the App Store.
Source: App Store
Apple and Motorola are set to do battle in a Miami courtroom in August 2014, but before the fight can begin, the two companies have decided to drop 14 patents from litigation.
At the behest of Federal Judge Robert N. Scola, the two companies are starting narrow down the list of patents they want to sue each other over. The trial originally started with 24 patents under review, but Apple dropped six patents yesterday and Motorola dropped eight.
Amazon updated Kindle for iOS today with a new feature that will make purchasing Amazon e-books through your iPhone a bit feature.
The new ‘Free Sample’ feature in Kindle for iOS 3.9 lets users search through Amazon’s catalog of Kindle books, download free samples, and if you like it you can email yourself a link to purchase it from Amazon’s website later.
There’s also a new Bring Your Own Dictionary feature so you add medical, legal, or other translation references to define words while you’re reading. Here are the full notes:
Providing access to old episodes just isn’t enough for cable channels to be competitive on iOS anymore. The latest trend is to allow users to tune into live TV if they have a cable subscription. ABC, Time Warner, and ESPN are all doing it, and now Showtime is jumping in too.
Showtime Anytime 2.0 hit the App Store this morning with a new feature that lets you tune into Showtime’s live programming. Now you can ride around town and not miss a second of Homeland season 3.
Here are the release notes:
Planning to get the new “iPhone 5C” when it goes on sale this fall? Well, you’ll want a good case to protect its smooth, plastic back from getting all scratched up, and Amazon already has you covered. Elago Design has begun taking pre-orders for its $24.99 slim fit case, which will ship on August 23.
Apple seeded a new Apple TV beta to registered developers on Monday, and there were a couple of new features that the Cupertino company did not mention in its release notes. One of those features is a new, one-tap setup option for those with iOS devices, and the other is the ability to purchase music from the iTunes Store.