Facebook today released a much-anticipated update for iPhone that makes loading News Feed, photos, messages and notifications significantly faster. Previously, Facebook built its mobile apps with HTML5, which allowed it to release daily updates without requiring users to download a … Continue reading →
If rumors hold true, Apple should be gearing up to unveil its latest iGadgets in just a few weeks, and it’s no surprise that all sorts of questionable leaks are now worming their way into daylight.
The latest of those purported leaks comes in the form of images obtained by the French site Nowherelse.fr that reportedly depict Apple’s tiny new dock connector next to a USB plug. Got your grains of salt ready?
Good, let’s go.
It’s interesting to watch the impact that the mobile device explosion has on various industry verticals, and especially so in e-commerce – a market that has yet to take full advantage of the platform by offering mobile-friendly websites and apps. But that’s not stopping people from shopping on mobile by any means. According to new data from e-commerce technology company Monetate, top e-commerce websites receive 3.31% of their total visits from Android smartphones, which is up from 1.76% last year. iPhones, on the other hand, account for 5.41% of those sites’ total traffic, up from 2.45% a year earlier.
But even though the iPhone base delivers more visitors, it’s Android users who convert better. 1.26% of Android users convert as compared with 1.00% of those on iPhone.
In the blogosphere’s continuing quest to assemble a virtual iPhone 5 before Apple unveils a real one in September, 9to5Mac has published images of what appears to be the next iPhone’s battery. Juicy stuff!
As expected, the battery is a bit larger than the last iPhone, but not by much. It jumps from 1430mAh in the iPhone 4S (up from 1420mAh in the iPhone 4) to a 1440 mAh battery. With the expected inclusion of LTE, plus Apple’s turn-by-turn mapping (which is a huge battery drain, at least in iOS 6 beta), we must simply hope that Apple’s dual-core SoC will use this relatively limited power source efficiently.
Apparently $10,000 is the going rate for a mint condition first-gen iPhone. At least, that’s according to two sellers on eBay, who have recently listed the historic device on the bidding site.
I would usually say that most electronics shouldn’t be seen as collectors items, as they only lose value over time and aren’t pivotal enough during their lifespan to warrant a resurgence in value. Yet, the original iPhone is a different story.
This is a device that changed the course of the future. The App Store itself, though not present on the original iPhone, has changed the entire tech industry. Plus, the first iPhone was the very first time we had a usable version of the internet in our pockets. So yeah, the original iPhone is a big deal.
Popular wisdom has it that tablets are great for consuming content but aren’t that useful for creating it. Don’t tell that to Josh Leong, though. His Y Combinator-backed startup, Grid, is based around the idea that a tablet should be a great place for spreadsheets. Indeed, as Leong told me earlier this week, his idea is to reinvent the spreadsheet around touch, all the tools available in mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad, and the ways normal people (as opposed to Excel power users) actually use them.
Grid is launching in beta for iPhone and iPad today and you can sign up for an invite here. There are still some features missing in this beta, but you can already use Grid’s collaboration tools and get a feel for its ingenious “Maestro” user interface.
There’s an old saw in consumer electronics that goes something like this: if Palm/Google/Samsung/LG/Huawei/RIM wants to compete with Apple, why don’t they hire a bunch of great people, lock them in a room, give them millions of dollars, and make them build a great phone. They can’t come out until they’re done.
Don’t believe this is true? Check out the 132 page document released during the Apple v. Samsung trial that’s making the rounds right now. It proves two things: that the iPhone was top of mind for Samsung designers and engineers and, more important, there was a group of people dedicated to figuring out what it took to make a best-selling phone. Whether they succeeded or not is a matter of debate – the Galaxy line is doing quite well – but the document shows us exactly how Samsung reacted to the iPhone.
When the iPhone launched in 2007, there were three key components of the device that relied on Google:
1) Maps
2) YouTube
3) Web search
Let’s look at that list today, following the news that YouTube has been given the boot in the latest beta build of iOS 6:
We’re just commencing Week Two of the Samsung v. Apple trial in San Jose, and Judge Lucy Koh opened the day with a joke, saying that there had been a false hope in her heart this weekend that the two would settle. But these two electronics giants are still ready to battle it out, and have brought Justin Denison, Samsung’s Chief Strategy officer, back to the stand.
After some questions about whether or not STA sells directly to consumers, and whether or not Galaxy phones are different from one model to the next, Samsung’s lawyer Mr. Quinn was about to actually make a point.
He mentioned that throughout the trial, there have been comments such as “Samsung is in a crisis of design” and “the difference between the iPhone and the Galaxy phones are like heaven and earth.”
MakeGamesWithUs is a new iOS game publishing company with a twist: its focus is on helping high school and college students to build games. MakeGamesWithUs us will take the kids’ creations, provide professional graphics and art and publish them in the App Store. The kids will own the code, and the company will own the graphics and take a cut of the sales. The company already has a few games built by students available, including Elemental Fury.
