Some iOS developers are noticing a change for the better in their app store search results, and it may in fact be due to Chomp, the app search company that made headlines this past February when it was announced that Apple had acquired it.
Let’s look at a few facts.
Apple Retail stores were the number one retailer last year, taking in more money per square foot than any other US retailer, including number two Tiffany, which made a bit more than half of that. Sounds good, right? Then take a look at what a retail employee, Jordan Golson, has to say.
“I was earning $11.25 an hour,” he said. “Part of me was thinking, ‘This is great. I’m an Apple fan, the store is doing really well.’ But when you look at the amount of money the company is making and then you look at your paycheck, it’s kind of tough.”
The disconnect between the incredible success of the corporation and the relatively low-end pay scale of its retail employees, as well as the reasons those retail employees continue to work for Apple, is the subject of a report in the New York Times today.
Redditor saintt today posted a photo of one of the lowest-rent iPod mods that we’ve ever seen.
Dubbed by his co-workers as an “iHat,” this traffic cone-shaped monstrosity contained one song, and one song only.
A US judge today set a trial date for the US government’s lawsuit that accuses Apple and book publishers of conspiracy to fix the price of e-books. The case will begin June 3, 2013 and is based in part on antitrust charges, with the US Justice Department claiming that Apple colluded with five book publishers to artificially inflate electronic book prices in early 2010, when Apple was releasing the iPad.
In a post on the official Google Mac blog today, editor Scott Knaster wrote a final piece that closed the Mac-centric web log for good. Citing the current mainstream popularity of Apple, Macintosh computers, and of course the iPad, iPhone and iOS, Knaster says that he realizes that a special Mac blog is no longer needed.
When you think of calculator apps, great innovations don’t usually come to mind. Most calculators function the same way, by punching in numbers on little keys. Rechner Calculator (Rechner meaning calculator in German) hopes to change that. This new application, available for $0.99 on the App Store, is the first of its kind to use gestures for operation.
Despite its continuing downward spiral, many IT professionals continue to acknowledge that RIM’s BlackBerry platform — or more accurately its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) — remains the most secure mobile platform on the market. That’s a fact RIM hypes every chance it gets. Usually RIM points out that BES supports over 500 security and management policies. That’s roughly ten times the number of discrete management options that Apple has built into iOS.
While that number sounds impressive, the real difference between BlackBerry management and iOS management isn’t really about the number of policies. In many ways, it isn’t even about what IT can or can’t manage. The real difference is a cultural divide in the way mobile devices and mobile management is perceived.
Rumors about a possible Retina display iMac have been floating around almost as long as the Retina display itself. From the time the iPhone 4 was introduced, people began speculating that Apple’s Mac line would eventually receive a display upgrade as well. Now that this rumor has come to fruition in the case of the new MacBook Pro, it would only make sense for these new displays to trickle down to all of Apple’s other computers.
Word is now spreading that this might not be the case, though. We may have to wait a little while longer for an iMac with a Retina display.
The Notes app bundled with the iPhone is great for quick little notes, but it hasn’t really changed since the original iPhone, and offers very few options other than a selection of three fonts. For those that want an app more powerful than Notes, but not as advanced as something like Pages for the iPhone, Just Type by Shubham Kedia might just be the perfect notes app.
Many IT departments are under intense pressure to develop and implement a range of mobility initiatives. Those initiatives often span a range of IT disciplines. There’s the effort to develop internal apps, provide access to new and legacy systems from mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad, the need to manage and support users devices as part of BYOD programs, and the need to develop customer-facing solutions like mobile-oriented sites and native apps.
With so many pressures hitting IT organizations at the same, compromises are being made because of tight deadlines and budgets. According to security expert Jeff Williams, that push to get solutions out as quickly as possible may result in solutions that have major security flaws in them.
As has been discussed in the past, the general consensus among those in the tech industry seems to be that the only way to compete with the iPad is to make your product cheaper than it.
This was moderately successful for devices such as the Kindle Fire, which sold in respectable numbers, but fell off after a short amount of time, even though it retailed for only $199. If history is anything to base expectations off of, the Microsoft Surface may be in trouble. The Next Web is reporting today that Microsoft’s entry into the tablet market may cost considerably more than the iPad.
Both Apple and Samsung have been engaged in a courtroom battle for what seems like ages now, bickering back and forth like an old married couple. Like a parent intervening between two fighting kids, Judge Lucky Koh has finally stepped in between Samsung and Apple to lay down some rules.
Enterprise app stores are becoming a common feature in many business that have embraced BYOD and mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. An enterprise app store offers two core advantages: it allows users to easily install apps developed internally and it allows IT managers and others to offer a set of recommended apps from public sources like Apple’s iOS App Store.
Given the thousands of business and productivity apps available for iOS devices (not to mention profession-specific apps in other categories), providing guidance to users can help get them started with the best tools quickly and easily. The tricky part, however, is deciding which public apps to include in an enterprise app store.
It’s no secret, Samsung has been crawling under Apple’s skin for quite some time. Now, with the release of the Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung wants iPhone users to know they can make the switch effortlessly thanks to a free app they’re making available to UK Galaxy devices. The app is called Easy Phone Sync, from developer Media Mushroom, and promises to makes transferring your iOS content over to your new Galaxy device a breeze.
Sometimes, something so traumatic happens to the human body that a person undergoes a complete personality shift. The girl who was, before, a model member of the Christian league gets hit by a car suddenly becomes promiscuous and violent. The good-natured guy who helps everyone has a wrench fall on his skull from fifty feet and becomes a drug-addicted psychopath. And the alpha businessman who is in a car crash goes from trading on Wall Street to rambling incoherently and exposing himself on subway platforms.
It’s sad, but it happens, and Samsung wants people who have been unfortunate enough to undergo such mental trauma ending in a complete personality shift to know that they’ve got a friend in them. That’s the only explanation for the Korean manufacturer’s latest play: an app for the deranged minds who are switching from the iPhone to a Galaxy smartphone.
I used to think that Wash & Go – shampoo and conditioner in one bottle – was the greatest combination of all time. That’s until I found out about the Camera Cooler, a camera bag and beer cooler in one. Clearly, the predictions that the Singularity would occur in 2012 were correct.
Plenty of people have offered their thoughts and opinions about Microsoft’s Surface devices after the company unveiled the two tablets earlier this week. One particular thread of conversation has been what Surface means for the iPad in businesses and enterprises. One piece that stood out to me was Justin Watt’s blog post Goliath Wants David’s Market.
Watt offers an interesting and well written argument that Surface may find success in many companies because they are still using legacy applications and processes – some of which may have originated long before Windows XP and OS X and have been patched countless times to over the years or decades to continue functioning. His core argument is that many iPad users access these tools using virtual desktop solutions like Citrix Receiver. As a result, at least for some tasks, the iPad functions as a Windows tablet. That could give Surface and other Windows tablets an edge over the iPad if they can directly deal with the legacy code involved or deliver the same virtual desktop experience.
The truth, however, is that many companies are chugging along on legacy solutions that were never designed to work with devices like the iPad. In fact, some widely used legacy systems have roots that weren’t even designed to work with Windows! In many companies, IT has been able to keep the age and state of those systems under wraps. But the iPad, and now the iPad versus Surface discussion, is now pushing that dirty little secret into the light of day.
We often hear stories about Apple luring talented individuals away from rival companies over to its Cupertino campus. But sometimes it works the other way around. Facebook has installed a new Product Design Manager, Chris Weeldreyer, who previously worked as an Apple user interface design engineer.
When I first spotted those leaked images of what was claimed to be the next-generation iPhone’s rear panel, I wasn’t keen on the two-tone aluminum look, and I found myself wondering what Jony Ive was up to inside Apple’s design labs. But now that I’ve seen a few mockups of that design, I’ve changed my mind.
In fact, the latest mockups, created by Martin Hajek, look absolutely incredible.
I don’t know about you, but the downloads folder on my Mac is one that I just cannot keep organized. Every so often I’ll trawl through it and delete all the stuff I don’t want, while filing the stuff I do want into other folders. But most of the time it just includes a heap of documents and images that I’ve picked up over a course of many months.
But Downloads for Mac is a simple app that can change this. It displays each and every item in your downloads folder — whether its at top level or buried deep within other folders — and makes it easier to see what you have going on in there. For those of you with downloads folders like mine, this should make the cleanup process much quicker, and much easier.
BYOD may be one of the big technology trends out there for businesses, but not every business wants or needs a BYOD program. BYOD is, of course, not a magic bullet for addressing every company’s mobile needs. It also isn’t guaranteed to deliver cost savings compared to providing employees with corporate owned and managed devices.
Companies not pursuing BYOD can still gain value from investing in some of the technology concepts and solutions that becoming a standard part of BYOD programs. After all, BYOD is one of the biggest trends of consumerized IT, but it is only one trend out of many.
Here are five key BYOD lessons that any business or organization can apply even without implementing a BYOD program.
For all the buzz about the Microsoft Surface, we don’t know really know the most important things about it yet. We don’t know when it’ll be released. We don’t know how much it’ll cost. As nice as the Surface looks, Microsoft didn’t even say if it would come with 3G, let alone with LTE. And according to Bloomberg, the reason they didn’t announce it is because the Surface won’t: it’s WiFi-only.
Instaglasses. What a fantastic idea. Sadly only a concept (and surely destined to remain so), these special specs survey the scene before you and apply your choice of Instagram filter to the real world. You’ve heard the expression “seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses”? Well, these are retro-tinted glasses.
Fed up of trying to find the perfect wallpaper for your Mac? There are plenty out there that feature supercars you’ll never be able to afford, models you’ll never meet, and sandy beaches you’ll never visit. But for something a little more interesting, check out Satellite Eyes, a wonderful little app that displays a satellite view of your current location as your desktop background.
A gang leader who orchestrated the production of counterfeit credit cards and then used them to purchase over $1 million worth of iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks from Apple Stores throughout the United States has been sentenced to up to nine years in prison.