When most of us here words like forensics, we picture an episode of CSI or NCIS. We think of ballistics results form a murder scene or fingerprints on a gun. An iPhone or iPad isn’t the first automatic visual that comes to mind. Yet more and more iPhones and iPads are becoming the subjects of forensic investigations according to warrants issued via the U.S. federal court system.
Today we have the perfect video to satisfy a very particular demographic. If you love the whole 8-Bit aesthetic, and yet remain confused by the interactions of the three basics of photographic exposure — aperture, shutter speed and ISO — then sit back, relax and hit the play button on the Vimeo video above.
In a mobile industry that’s simply booming, there’s only two phone vendors reaping the majority of the benefits: Samsung and Apple. In Q1 of 2012, Apple and Samsung combined for 99% of mobile phone vendor profits — the remaining 1% belonged to HTC. Independently, Apple holds the lion’s share of profits with an incredible 73% of operating profits thanks to carrier premiums for the iPhone 4S. Samsung, while leading in mobile phone shipments, only grabbed 26% operating profits — which isn’t really that bad considering every other carrier (other than HTC) managed to face significant losses.
Yesterday, Samsung announced their new Galaxy S III smartphone, a 4.8-inch monstrosity that doesn’t look a thing like an iPhone, but of course rips off Apple in many other particulars.
But let’s not pay attention to that. Instead, let’s ask ourselves what we can glean from the first Samsung Galaxy S III ad, especially when comparing it to a thirty-second iPhone 4S commercial.
Barnes & Noble’s announcement that it was spinning off its Nook business and that Microsoft would be a significant stakeholder in the new company raised a lot of eyebrows. The partnership seemed unnecessary in order to meet the goals of settling a patent dispute and ensuring a Nook app for Windows 8 tablets.
It turns out that Barnes & Nobel will be shifting its textbook business to the new company along with the Nook and that Microsoft’s $300 million investment will likely be centered around creating an e-textbook initiative that will likely compete head-on with Apple’s fledging iPad-based e-textbook business.
When Apple first released iPhoto for iOS, it quickly became clear that the new app was Apple’s first app to distance itself from Google’s Maps API in favor of OpenStreetMap (OSM), a collaborative online project aimed at making a free and complete map of the world. When you checked in iPhoto where a photo had been taken, you were seeing maps built upon the foundation of OSM. The only problem? Apple wasn’t bothering to credit them.
Now with the latest update to iPhoto, Cupertino’s decided to do the right thing. OpenStreetMap is credited in the app’s acknowledgement section.
What you’re seeing above are Steve Jobs’s speech notes that he brought with him on January 9, 2007 when he announced the original iPhone, and they are in many ways a telling encapsulation of the man himself. Jobs was a natural showman who needed only the barest outline to announce the changing of the world, and his notes here are so simple that they could have been scrawled on the back of a napkin, but Jobs was also a perfectionist: he had them expertly type set, printed out and bound.
Amazing. Also, if you’re wondering what those three devices are below the notes on Steve’s podium, they’re actually iPhones with special attachments so they can do video on the big screen behind him. Steve would only use one; the others were probably backups.
My kids fell in love with Toothless, the lovable fire-breathing dragon, after watching DreamWorks’s hit 2010 animation How To Train Your Dragon. Today he makes his debut on iOS in DreamWorks Dragons: TapDragonTap, a colorful physics-based puzzle game from development studio PikPok.
An iTunes customer who was billed twice for the same song has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple after the Cupertino company refused to refund his money. Robert Herskowitz $2.58 for Adam Lambert’s pain-inducing pop song “Whataya Want From Me,” but he should have paid just $1.29.
He’s now taking Apple to court in an effort to make refunds easier for iTunes customers.
When Apple introduced the new iPad earlier this year, it didn’t just discontinue the iPad 2; it dropped its price and sent it out to do battle with cheaper, Android-powered tablets from the likes of Amazon. But that’s not the only change the Cupertino company made to the device.
Although there’s no mention of it, if you buy a brand new iPad today, it will pack a new A5 processor under the hood that’s a little different to earlier A5 chips, and delivers much better battery life.
Update: In an official statement today to Cult of Mac, Walmart U.S. confirmed that these new price listings were a mistake that have been corrected at certain stores throughout the country. “Yesterday, we experienced a pricing error in limited stores,” said Walmart. “This has been addressed and the normal prices are in effect (iPhone 4S – $188, iPhone 4 – $88, iPhone 3GS – $0.97).”
We’ve gotten word that Walmart has dropped its prices on the AT&T iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S in its retail stores. Without any notice, the price of the 8GB iPhone 4 on AT&T has dropped from $88 to $34. Also, the white and black 16GB flavor of the iPhone 4S on AT&T is now being offered for $114, down from the original $188 listing.
Good news for hopeful iOS 5.1 jailbreakers, infamous iOS hacker and Chronic Dev Team member ‘pod2g’ just tweeted that he has his iPhone 4 running an untethered jailbreak on iOS 5.1. For those who don’t know, the difference between a tethered and untethered jailbreak is huge; the former means you have to re-jailbreak every time the device reboots while the latter means you’re jailbroken until you update to a new version of iOS.
There’s still a lot of work to be done on the untethered iOS 5.1 jailbreak for iPhone 4S owners, but an untether for iPhone 4 and iPad 2 users looks to be on the distant horizon. The iPhone 4S runs on a faster A5 processor, making it a totally different nut to crack for jailbreak hackers.
First Temple Run, then Instagram, and now Flipboard.
Continuing the trend of high-profile iPhone apps making their way to the Android platform, popular reading app Flipboard has unveiled its exclusive partnership window with Samsung for the just-announced Galaxy S III. This is the first time Flipboard has ventured away from iOS, and its Android app will be available exclusively for the Galaxy S III for an undisclosed amount of time. The app will then be available for all Android handsets in Google’s Play store.
One of the problems with modern glass displays on smartphones, tablets, and computers is screen glare. If you’ve ever tried to use your iPad out in the sun or check your iPhone on the beach during a bright, sunny day, you know what it’s like — any kind of light creates a glare that can be almost unbearable. Amazon has touted the Kindle’s E-ink display for its anti-glare technology, while all of Apple’s products with glass screens, including the non-matte MacBooks, are notorious for their tendency to collect smudges and reflect ambient light.
MIT researches have developed a water-repellent, self-cleaning glass that “virtually eliminates” reflections of any kind. The new glass will hopefully start making its way into the technologies we use on a daily basis, especially our beloved Apple devices.
Text editing on iOS isn’t bad, but it’s definitely fiddly. Make an error or want to delete some words and unless you’re using a Bluetooth keyboard, you have to take your hands off the keyboard, tap the words you want to select or where you want to insert your cursor, adjust the boxes manually and more. A pain.
YouTube user Daniel Chase Hooper had a better ideas, as illustrated in this video concept below. What if to edit text, your hands never had to leave the keyboard area on the iPad? To move the cursor, you swipe in the keyboard area left, right, up or down. To select a bunch of text at once, you swipe in the keyboard area while holding down shift.
This morning Samsung announced their newest high-end Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S III. With a release date of May 29th, the new phone comes with a lot of crazy new features, like Smart Stay, that uses facial recognition to determine if you’re looking at it, and if not, it’ll turn the screen off. But topping the list of awesome new features is the “innovative” voice recognition feature. It’s innovative because you can say things like, “Hi Mr. Galaxy phone, what’s the weather gonna be like today?” and S Voice will pop-up a screen that looks exactly like Apple’s Siri feature does on the iPhone 4S.
Keep it up Samsung.
Source: Sebastiaan de With
Via: Rene Ritchie
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac,
Boxtone offers a range of mobile management capabilities for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry. The company has strategic partnerships with multiple carriers as a device and expense management solution. Boxtone also has partnerships with companies like Good and Accellion for secure on-device data storage as well as a range of other enterprise technology vendors. These relationships can help integrate services that Boxtone doesn’t provide one its own. The company also offers a support and operation management capabilities that go beyond traditional mobile management.
While Apple saw strong sales for all its iOS devices during its post-holiday quarter, Android tablet sales slumped, giving up any gains that Android had seen as a tablet platform during the holiday shopping season.
According to IDC, overall tablet shipments were down more than the analyst firm had expected. The decline to 17.4 million units represented a 38.4% drop off from the holiday quarter shipments of 28.2 million units – a notably steeper decline than IDC’s predicted 34% decline.
While overall tablet shipments were down, Android tablets slumped significantly more than Apple’s iPad, which gained an additional 13.3% of the tablet market.
Incase’s Box Case for the iPhone is just that: a boxy, sharp-cornered rubber case with a brutalist minimalism that wouldn’t look out of place on London’s South Bank. And not only does the thing look awesome, it also offers quite a bit of protection thanks to all the extra rubber at the corners. It’s probably not a good idea to start tossing your iPhone on the floor, but if it does accidentally drop, then it might at least bounce to a safe end.
In addition to promoting its unfinished BlackBerry 10 mobile OS at BlackBerry World in Florida, RIM also made an effort to hype the success of its current BlackBerry 7 OS in developing markets, including Nigeria and Indonesia.
It isn’t surprising to see RIM trying to prove that it’s still a competitor in the global marketplace by highlighting the platforms use in developing countries. During RIM’s latest financials call, the first one for its new CEO Thorsten Heins, the company acknowledged that markets in the developing world accounted for much of the company’s revenue.
Practically every mobile phone carrier in the U.S. has relied on the iPhone to boost their sales numbers and increase customer satisfaction in recent years (sorry, T-Mobile). It turns out that betting on the iPhone isn’t just great because it gives customers the pretty device they want, but converting users into iPhone owners might mean that they will be more likely to stay with your carrier in the long run even when your service sucks. On the other hand, BlackBerry and Android owners are quicker to jump ship when the service has problems.
As a bunch of professional underpants bloggers, the editorial bullpen at Cult of Mac drinks a lot of beer. Seriously. When you’re taking your first sip of coffee in the morning and pouring your cornflakes, we’re already a six pack up on you, and by the time at the end of the day when the last words come trembling off our fingers, that’s about the same time the DTs are setting in. In fact, Cult of Mac’s San Francisco headquarters isn’t even a proper office, but rather a skunky, wobbling skyscraper made up entirely of our empties. You might have seen it towering on the horizon off of the local garbage dump.
The point is, basically, we’re all just sheets to the wind all the time, and can open a beer with anything. Pen. Knife. Our teeth. Another bottle. The curb. Anything. So why the heck didn’t we ever figure out you can use an iPhone, iPad or MacBook power brick to bust a beer open? How did OS X Daily of all people outscoop us?
Source: OS X Daily
Whether or not Foxconn’s running sweatshops is some matter of debate. The China Labor Watch says Foxconn’s iPhone assembly lines are sweatshops, while the Fair Labor Association says that factory worker conditions are much, much better than at actual sweatshops.
Now Foxconn CEO Terry Gou is trying to settle the debate. Yes, Gou says, Foxconn may well be running a sweatshop… but what’s wrong with sweatshops anyway?
At last, here’s the Apple TV everyone is waiting for. Well, kinda. Bang & Olufsen’s new V1 is a 32 or 40-inch 1080p TV with a hole in the back where you can hide your little puck-sized Apple TV. This, combined with a remote that can be used to control Apple’s set-top box, means that the V1 is the closest you’ll get to an actual HDTV from Apple.
Can the iPad help finance, wealth management, and corporate banking companies rebuild a sense of trust with their customers after the global financial crisis? According to the analysts at Ovum, the answer is yes.
Analysts at the research firm released a note this week noting that the iPad (and tablets in general) is a perfect tool for the industries, which are often dominated by in-person “face-time” meetings.