BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — This year I decided to cover the Mobile World Congress without a computer. Or at least, without my MacBook. I live in Barcelona, so I knocked out a couple of posts on my iMac when I was at home, but on the show floor and in the press lounge I relied solely on my iPad. And amazingly, it was up to the task. There are some annoyances, but with a combination of perseverance (or just stubbornness) and the right apps, I got a pretty easy system going.
Camera Awesome is a new all-singing, all-dancing photo app on the iOS Store this week. But just how awesome is it?
Brought to you by photo sharing site SmugMug, the first noticeable thing about this app is the price: it’s free. There are no adverts inside it, you’ll be pleased to hear. But there are quite a lot of extras that can only be unlocked with in-app purchases.
When Apple sent out its press invitations for the iPad 3 announcement next week, many sites (us included) proposed that the upcoming device wouldn’t have a Home button. Such a conclusion was drawn from the fact that the invitation image didn’t show a Home button on the photographed iPad.
A new set of leaked parts reveal that Apple’s upcoming tablet does indeed possess a Home button. You all can rest easy now.
Remember the “I’m a Mac” campaign where Justin Long served as a super cool, hip looking youngster representing the Mac brand, while John Hodgman was a frumpy looking PC? A lot of PC users complained that they were being misrepresented and stereotyped based on their operating system of choice, but a new study reveals that Apple users really are more fashion-forward and style-conscious than PC users.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — When we shuffle from meeting to product demo to boozy party it’s easy to forget what a weird place the yearly Mobile World Congress is. Tens of thousands of attendees flood Barcelona’s hotels and commandeer its taxis, while companies from tiny to huge spend a fortune to sell and promote their wares.
As Ferris Bueller might say, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it. Here’s a quick look at the best, worst and weirdest of this year’s show.
Apple’s stock price has soared to astronomical heights over the last 18 months. Yesterday Apple stock closed at another record high and the company become more valuable than the GDP of Poland. But how high can Apple’s stock keep climbing? Well according to Apple’s co-Founder, Steve Wozniak, Apple stock will continue to soar for quite sometime.
The Grix is a cool new $5 pixel editor for iOS, with wide appeal for serious pixel artists and anyone looking for a creative way of killing a dull moment.
Popular web reading platform Readability has launched its official iOS in the App Store. iPhone and iPad uses can download the free app to access their Readability accounts and read optimized web pages on the go.
Originally previewed several days ago, the native iOS app gives you a beautifully formatted view of the articles you save on the web to read later.
The most secure way of password protecting your online life is to create a random strong password, one now one can ever guess. The problem, of course, is that you won’t be able to guess it, either. Or remember it. Luckily, we’ve found a nice solution to this problem: Password Gorilla, freeware that will help us all keep track of our passwords.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — During his keynote speech on Tuesday, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said, seemingly with all seriousness, that someday, “there will be Android in every pocket.”
For someone who has been prowling around Mobile World Congress for the past four days, it’s a statement that’s hard to react to without spraying crumbs. Schmidt couldn’t sound any more delusional if he were sealed up in a hermetic chamber with a scale-model of the Spruce Goose. The iPhone dominates Mobile World Congress. Google can’t even get an Android in every pocket at its own tradeshow.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 –When Asus first announced the PadFone at Computex 2011, they did so with a level of gleefully cheesy showmanship that set Apple fans sarcastically hailing chairman Jonney Shih as South Korea’s next Steve Jobs. To many Apple fans, the PadFone — a laptop with a tablet inside with a phone inside the tablet — represented the worst of the rest of the industry’s “kitchen sink” approach to beating Cupertino. If we can’t build a phone to beat the iPhone, a tablet to beat the iPad, or an ultraportable to beat the MacBook Air, why not beat one device to beat all three at the same time?
But it’s wrong to dismiss the PadFone just because of cheesy showmanship, or because it’s not likely to topple Apple’s three pillars in one go. We had a hands-on with one, and it’s far from a cheesy device. In fact, it’s actually a little marvel.
According to a new report from Taiwanese publication Digitimes, Apple is gearing up to produce a 7.85-inch iPad. The rumored device is reportedly set to enter mass production by the third quarter of this year.
Rumors have been swirling about what Apple has in store for the iPad 3 next week, but little attention has been paid to the state of the iPad 2. Will Apple discontinue its current tablet after dropping the price for a limited time? Speculation abounds.
A new report tonight claims that Apple is set to announce a 8GB iPad 2 alongside the iPad 3 at its media event on Wednesday, March 7th.
A new Mac app called Reflection allows you to wirelessly mirror your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 screen on your Mac. Using the magic of AirPlay and OS X Lion, Reflection will allow you to view your iOS device’s screen in real time on your Mac display, no setup required. Screen activity can be recorded and saved to your desktop. You can even kick back and play your favorite iOS game on your giant iMac! Now that’s awesome.
One of the big trends at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has been announcements regarding NFC. While NFC has been supported in a handful of Android phones and BlackBerry models, till now there haven’t been many real-world applications for it. With several announcements around NFC, the technology’s time may be finally be coming.
Despite rumors, Apple has never shown an interest in adopting NFC in the iPhone or iPad. Could Apple’s lack of NFC support could stick out like a sore thumb despite the fact that it managed to upstage every company at MWC with yesterday’s iPad 3 event announcement.
With baseball season nearly upon us, now is the time to download MLB’s brand new iOS app. MLB.com At Bat went live in the App Store for free this morning with some great features and better pricing options.
Instead of having to pay $30 for the separate iPhone and iPad apps like last year, MLB is offering a free, universal download with a season-long in-app subscription for $14.99, and there’s more options available.
The GSMA has announced the winners of the 17th Annual Global Mobile Awards which took place yesterday at Mobile World Congress. The top mobile products and services were showcased and there was even some entertainment with comedian/songwriter Tim Minchine as the host. Categories ranged from Best Consumer Mobile Service to Best Mobile Innovation for Publishing and while we love hearing about innovative products, it’s really the hardware categories that had us talking.
Following earlier reports that Apple is constraining retail supplies of the current Apple TV ahead of an imminent refresh, more evidence has surfaced that Apple is ramping up to launch a new set-top box.
Prominent retailers have seen inventory for the current Apple TV dwindle over the last few weeks.
Monster collaborated with rapper/actor Nick Cannon to make the N-ERGY “high performance in-ear headphones.” I put the last part in quotes because the N-ERGY headphones ($70) are neither “high performance” nor “in-ear.”
I’m not an audiophile, but I appreciate and know good sound when I hear it. It took a total of 15 minutes for me to realize that the “NCredible” (yes, that phrase is used to market the product) N-ERGY headphones are awful. They look great, but they’re about as painful to listen to as Nick Cannon’s comedy.
These days, the App Store is where it’s at. And if you don’t act fast, you may miss your opportunity to learn how to build an iOS app from scratch! This deal ends tonight at Midnight PST, so make sure to check it out.
If you have a great idea for an iPhone or iPad app, the only thing that’s stopping you from getting it out there is the actual coding of the app itself. But what if you’re the “idea person” and not a coder – and you have no desire to be one? It’s a pretty extensive process, and as you’re learning how to code you could be letting valuable time slip away – not to mention the fact that someone who CAN code might beat you to the punch. And while outsourcing the coding is an option, that’s often a costly approach – and a lot of back and forth between yourself and the coder that slows the process down even more so. So…what to do?
Well, this latest offer by Cult of Mac Deals is just what you need to get your app idea from vaporware to “actualware” with absolutely no programming. Period. And for a limited time you can save 80% off the regular price to boot – as it’s only $99!
Sprint has released an app in the App Store that let’s its subscribers watch on-demand TV from the iPhone. Sprint TV lets users access the most popular cable TV networks live over 3G and WiFi. The service includes many popular channels for free, and there’s a total of 40 paid packages available.
Some people will use any excuse to go green, just like some nerds will use any excuse to wear a Darth Vader mask. So umm, why not just satisfy both parties at the same time and make a breath-powered iPhone charger that looks like it should be worn by Lord Vader or Bane? The AIRE mask is a silly looking contraption designed by Joao Paulo Lammoglia to recharge iPhones using the power of your lungs. Utilizing tiny wind turbines the AIRE mask converts your deep sighs and frenetic breaths into usable electricity to power your iDevice.
There is certainly no shortage of Photography apps in the iOS store that promise to do magical things to your snapshots. Users can turn their photos into vintage looking pictures via Instagram, transform faces into comic book art with Halftone, or do weird things with Percolator, but this latest app is a bit different from all the rest. Pxl is a new app available for iPhone and iPad that transforms pictures into cool pieces of abstract art.
Ever find yourself alone in your positive review of an app? Maybe you think the price of a mobile game is too high while others think it’s a steal. User satisfaction in the mobile ecosystem is quite a roller coaster of information and emotion. That’s why uTest, a software testing company, decided to crawl hundreds of thousands of apps and user reviews to see just how happy or unhappy users of the top two mobile operating systems were with their app experience. uTest has laid out this information in a nifty little infograph showing user satisfaction across Android and iOS with side-by-comparisons of the two. Check it out and tell us what you think.
There have been some crazy rumors flying around lately regarding the iPad 3, but now we have a new one that is all about the MacBook Air. According Digitimes (which has a fairly poor track record with Apple rumors), Apple is considering launching a 14-inch MacBook Air specifically for Asian markets, that may enter production fairly soon. Apparently, 14-inch screens are more popular in Asia than they are in other parts of the globe, which is how the publication is justifying the rumor.
