Spurred on by the holiday season, Apple sold a record 26 million iPads last quarter, which according to IDC’s latest numbers, was enough to boost the company’s tablet market share up to 33.8% to finish off the year, up from 29.7% the previous quarter.
Wall Street was less than impressed with Apple’s sales numbers though, and according to IDC there’s cause to be concerned as signs point to a tablet market that is growing dramatically slower year-over-year.
You never go anywhere without your iPhone. But instead of having it with you (always!) in the car, what if it ran your car?
That future may only be a few months away, when the iOS in the car is expected to go come out of the gate with the release of iOS 7.1. iPhone aficionados have been expecting it since at least last summer, when the first screens were leaked. There are a few ways Apple’s entry into the market will disrupt the industry — leading to a pile-up of failed ventures.
The car industry has increasingly relied on tech to sell vehicles in a saturated market. However, the folks who brought us ABS brakes and the four-wheel drive aren’t always the best people to engineer what drivers want (or need!) when it comes to computers on board. Many of these systems are complicated and distract drivers more than help.
Not one of these systems has become industry standard. Most drivers fiddle a bit with the parking system, then use their phones or maybe a GPS system like Garmin as add-ons. It’s rumored that Apple has made agreements with major car makers to get its system into vehicles — if so a whole segment of the proudly “I’m a PC” market will find itself de facto “Macs.” This will inevitably stall sales of smartphones by Samsung and Google, who will be basically locked out of the place most Americans spend a significant portion of their day.
What about app makers? Here the future is even less clear. There are thousands of apps in iTunes — and thousands of indie developers and startups behind them — targeted to the auto market. Apps to help you find parking, then find your car in parking lots, avoid speed traps and run diagnostics on fuel usage, etc. Apple’s in-car system will make all those apps suddenly last year’s model. For 30 years, Apple’s has focused appeal on early adopters; people with older phones and older cars will feel sorely left behind as app makers scramble to update and integrate with the new system.
The last industry Apple will leave in the dust are GPS products like Garmin and TomTom, though these have already been largely left in the dust by our smartphones. Suburban navigators see no need to spend $200 on map updates when they can easily get from Point A to Point B using smartphones with apps like MapQuest that also update them on traffic conditions and provide peer-to-peer instant updates.
Apple’s entry into the car market will be welcomed by most — drivers, I mean. A clean, simple interface that is easy to use might be one way to curb the deadly distraction that plagues our highways as people try to text, talk or answer emails while stuck in traffic. Reading a manual on the road isn’t conducive to safety, which is what some of the more clunky systems seem to require in their present incarnation.
With Apple at the wheel, we can imagine a time when finding an alternate route in a Friday afternoon snarl is as easy as saying: “Siri, get me outta here!”
Apple has released iOS 7.0.5 as a minor update for all devices capable of running iOS 7.
Bug fixes for network provisioning are included for iPhone 5c and 5s models sold in China. Apple recently struck a deal with China Mobile to sell the iPhone on its network, which has the largest subscriber base in the world.
Lucid Dream Ultimate — Utilities — Free
While you’re getting all that sleep we talked about in the last app, you might as well pay some attention to your dreams.
Lucid Dream Ultimate is a dream journal and reality checker that plays a noise during the day that cues you to remind yourself that you’re awake. It’ll send you the same noise throughout the night; the idea is that when you hear the noise in your dream, you’ll realize you’re dreaming, and then you can start the important business of conjuring up all the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephants you’ve ever wanted.
Plus one of the tones is an Inception-esque “BWAAAAAAAH,” and that’s just straight-up magical.
Night photographs can be downright stunning… but we know, it’s not easy to master the art of night photography and that’s why Cult of Mac Deals is excited to bring you a course that will open up your photography skill set to a whole new world.
Typically, shooting at night means shooting in low light, which can be a real challenge. Endless blurry party photos on Facebook, or faces nuked by flash are proof of that but believe it or not, you can improve your night photos, and you don’t necessarily need a fancy camera to do so. With the Adobe approved Night Photography Video Course, you’ll learn how to make the most of your night photos…and all for just $15.99.
If you’ve ever played an older role-playing game, you know the feeling of reaching a point at which you realize that your characters are too weak to progress, which means that you have to take them back to previous areas and kill boars or something to earn the experience to level up and become strong enough to actually continue playing the game.
Loot Hero is a game that is all about that moment. It’s an action-RPG, kinda, that has you running back and forth like a crazy person, killing monsters to gain experience so that you can continue running back and forth like a slightly stronger crazy person. And once you hit a wall, you have to go back to older levels with easier enemies so you can run back and forth there to gain experience and money to make your character better equipped to run back and forth among stronger enemies.
It sounds like a drag, and it kind of is, but it’s also surprisingly engaging.
Remember Sony’s clip-on smartphone cameras that were announced last year? Well, if you were one of the few who forked out hundreds of dollars to get one, you’ll be pleased to know it’ll soon be compatible with your tablet. Sony is launching a collection of tablet attachments in the coming months in a range of sizes that are expected to cost around $36.
Global smartphone shipments grew 41 percent to reach a record 990 million units in 2013, and Android-powered devices accounted for a whopping 79 percent of them. Despite the lowest growth rate in the platform’s history, Android phones still managed to ship four times the amount of iPhone and Windows Phone devices combined.
AT&T is giving new and existing customers a $100 credit when they activate a new postpaid line for your smartphone, tablet, wireless home phone, or MiFi device. The offer starts today and ends on March 31.
Visuals are extremely helpful, especially when you’re trying to differentiate between a lot of text information.
Consider your contacts list, which could have hundreds, maybe even thousands of people’s information in it. Sure, you can break them up into groups and just search for the contacts you want, but there is a neat way to find what you’re looking for using the Emoji keyboard that’s now included in OS X (and iOS).
Among the 31 published patents newly granted to Apple this week was a camera-related patent designed to provide iOS devices with swappable, add-on camera lenses to provide optical functions including autofocus, lens zoom, and anti-shake.
Text-to-speech is great. But have you ever wished that it could be a little more creepy? As in, child’s-voice-coming-out-of-your-computer creepy? Well, you’re in luck. Thanks to a service designed to help kids to communicate, you too can make your iPad talk in the voice of a little girl or boy. Shiver.
Super-popular iOS strategy game Clash of Clans has received a major update — most notably adding a slew of new Hero abilities.
Version 5.172 also features numerous gameplay enhancements involving flyers, freezers, boosts, clan co-leaders and gem overgrowth. On top of that, there are various interface improvements, balance tweaks, performance improvements, and the usual unspecified bug fixes.
President Barack Obama may not be able to use an iPhone for security reasons, but that doesn’t mean he can’t praise the work Apple is doing.
In his State of the Union address to the American people Tuesday, Obama credited a number of technology companies — Apple included — for helping with his ConnectED program, which aims to improve Internet access at schools across the U.S.
The Evasi0n7 jailbreak opened iOS 7 up for all kinds of tweaks ,ranging from lock screen launchers to mods that let you use Touch ID in place of your Home button.
Eclipse is almost certainly the most instantly noticeable tweak so far, however — taking the bright colors that are standard with the iOS UI and replacing them with a darker palette of colors and shades to give your iPhone a suitably moody “night mode”.
Felix’s FlipStand is like a better version of Apple’s Smart Cover. It covers the screen and leaves the rear case mostly naked, but instead of using a flimsy folding action to give limited viewing angles when used as a stand, the FlipStand is almost infinitely adjustable between zero and ninety degrees, and holds the iPad steady like a kickstand.
Most iPad drawing apps take a rather old-fashioned approach. They try to mimic paper and pencil, or paint and canvas, and of course they never get it quite right, even with pressure-sensitive styluses and fancy paint engines. Archipad takes a different approach: it recognizes that you’re drawing on a computer screen and embraces that fact, letting you draw to scale, in 3-D and with perfect lines, all my using a finger or stylus.
Regardless of whether you think Apple’s falling share prices are justified or the result of bozos who don’t understand how Apple works, one person is seemingly happy with the immediate response to Apple’s recent financial quarter: Carl Icahn.
If you want an SLR-style mirrorless camera, the Olympus OM-D E-M5 is the camera to beat. But if you don’t want to spend $1,000 on the Micro Four Thirds body, then you can now opt for the OM-D E-M10, a $700 body which uses lots of it’s big brother’s parts.
Apple’s new retail chief (and possible future CEO) Angela Ahrendts has been announced as the recipient of a DBE in the coming weeks — making the American businesswoman a Dame of the British Empire.
While the award was confirmed in October, the information was released quietly and not promoted by either Ahrendts or the British Government.
What if you could print your iPhone photos and have them sent to your door, without paying a penny? Sound impossible, right? But that’s exactly what new Kickstarter-hopeful startup Flag is planning to do. The catch? An ad, printed on the back of each picture.
Evernote’s elephant logo is curiously appropriate. Not because it never forgets your notes, but because the service is slow, lumbering and hard to control. Now, thanks to a complete redesign of the backend servers, one aspect has improved. Sync is now, according to Evernote CEO Phil Libin, four times faster.
If you’re anything like this writer, one of the main impediments making you think twice about purchasing a Google Glass headset is the fact that you already wear prescription glasses.
To solve this problem, Google has now unveiled its long-awaited (and rumored) Google Glass units for prescription glasses wearers: the so-called Google Glass Titanium Collection, which replaces the headband currently used for Google Glass with more traditional frames (including the option of some nifty sunglasses).
We’ve seen more than enough iPhone cases with slots for credit cards, ID or cash. But the Push wallet phone case is the first one we’ve seen with a secret compartment that hides those valuables completely out of sight.
We’ve seen more than enough iPhone cases with slots for credit cards, ID or cash. But the Push wallet phone case is the first one we’ve seen with a secret compartment that hides those valuables completely out of sight.