Articles about iOS

A survey by Constant Contact shows that mobile devices are more important than ever, particularly to those under the age of 30. The study reveals that 80 percent of smartphone owners say it is "extremely important to be able to read emails" on their mobile devices. But marketers take note -- if an email doesn’t display correctly, it's highly likely it will just get deleted.

High mobile email usage is hardly a revelation in itself, but the way the figures break down is interesting. Predictably it is the 18-30 age bracket that has the highest mobile usage, with 88 percent of users turning to their mobile for emails.

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The Apple and Samsung battle continues to rumble, and less than a week after a proposed ban on the sale of iPhones and iPads was overturned, another ruling has -- at least for the time being -- gone Apple's way. The US ITC has upheld a previous ruling dating back to 2011 that found Samsung has infringed various Apple patents, potentially leading to a US ban on various devices from the South Korean company.

The ruling found that Samsung had violated two patents relating to Apple's iPhone. The first patent (often referred to as the "Steve Jobs patent") relates to the use of a touchscreen interface as means of interacting with a device using one or more fingers. The second patent relates to the design of an audio socket that can determine the type of microphone or headset that has been plugged into it.

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Ads are prevalent and all but unavoidable online these days, and in a bid to keep software free and fund development, in-app advertisements are increasingly common.

The latest kid to the party is Google Maps for iOS and Android. Perform a search for a restaurant, coffee shop, or other establishment, and you may well find that the bottom of your mobile is adorned with an ad for a related business.

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YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have launched MixBit for iPhone 1.0.3 through their company AVOS Systems. The app -- also coming to Android next month -- is aimed firmly at the social networking market, providing users with a convenient tool for constructing hour-long videos from 16-second clips that can subsequently be published on the parent Mixbit.com site or shared via popular social networks.

Mixbit.com is described as "a community of creators", according to its website, highlighting the public nature of videos uploaded to it. All shared videos become public domain, allowing other users to easily embed all or parts of those videos into their own work.

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Instagram just introduced a major change to the video-posting feature in its Android and iOS mobile apps, with the popular social network now allowing users to upload pre-recorded clips from the smartphone's gallery.

The revamped video-posting feature is part of the new Instagram apps for Android and iOS, version 4.1. "Starting today you can upload videos from your phone's media library and share those moments to Instagram regardless of when they were captured", says Instagram. "Once you select the video clip you'd like to import, you can trim it down to the exact part you like best. We've also made it so that you can choose how you square-crop your clip so you can keep the action front and center".

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"I have a good weather app. It's called...looking out the window". That is what my colleague Brian Fagioli told me when I said I was testing Minutely, a new mobile weather service. Still, despite that rather true comment, we all still want to look up those possibly inaccurate forecasts, and this latest offering provides a better way to do it -- or at least a better looking way.

The name is derived from the app's promise to provide real time details right down to the minute - the rain slider feature allows you to travel in time and watch the rain move across your location. Minutely will let you know if it will be raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting in any location you choose down to the minute for the next 2 hours.

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In a letter to the International Trade Commission chairman, the Honorable Irving A Williamson, the Obama administration vetoes an earlier ITC ruling that was due to block the sale of a number of Apple products. The original ruling came in June and was to prevent the sale of various products including certain models of the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2.

The letter from Ambassador Michael Froman explains that having reviewed the information surrounding the patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, he had decided to "disapprove the USITC's determination to issue an exclusion order and cease and desist order". Under section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 the President is obliged to evaluate decisions made by the Commission during a 60-day review period, and in this instance the authority was passed to the USTR.

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Windows 8 is an operating system designed for touch PCs, but it's struggling to find a sizeable audience on them. PCs as we know them are on their way out, and tablets are the future, as we've been told time and again by analysts. Figures from the likes of Gartner and IDC clearly back up this sea change.

So if people aren't buying into Microsoft's new OS on regular PCs (with or without touch) then they must be scrambling to buy tablets running Windows 8 and RT surely? Well things don't look too rosy for Microsoft there either.

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Rest in peace, iPad mini. Google killed you. The question then: Is it murder or manslaughter -- or justified homicide, putting the Apple tablet out of our misery?

Three days using the new Nexus 7, I can't imagine why Apple let Google, and partner ASUS, seize back-to-school buying with the tablet. I don't refer just to the instrument of destruction but the means. The 2013 edition is widely available through major US retailers, including Amazon and Best Buy. By all indications there is inventory to meet demand, not the typical supply shortages, although the 32GB WiFi model is unavailable this weekend from many retailers -- but Google Play is stocked.

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The Apple Developer site remains inaccessible after a security breach on Thursday. The company is quick to point out that personal information accessed in a database was encrypted, but goes on to say the possibility that personal data had been accessed could not be ruled out. Apple is taking the intrusion very seriously it seems.

The fact that the site is inaccessible is down to Apple rather than being the direct result of an attack. Apple states that as soon as it was aware of the breach, the site was purposely taken down. This initially saw the site replaced with a message informing visitors that the site was down for maintenance, but was later replaced with a message from Apple that goes into more detail.

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Hot on the heels of its Google Maps for iOS update, Google has unveiled Google Chrome for iOS 28, its alternative web browser for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users. The new build contains a number of notable new features, plus rolls out full-screen support for iPad users, something that has been available to iPhone users for quite some time.

The first major new feature is better interoperability with other Google apps. By tapping Settings > Google Apps in Chrome itself, users can instruct the browser to pipe relevant links through to other installed Google apps such as YouTube, Google Drive and Google Maps rather than using the browser itself.

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Google showed off a new version of Google Maps for the web at its I/O conference back in May, but made the updated preview invite only. Yesterday, the search giant finally opened up the new Maps to all -- no sign up required. Just go to Google's Explore Maps page, click the Try Now button, and you’re ready to start using it.

In addition to that, a week after Google rolled out a "new mapping experience" for Android smartphones and tablets, the firm has updated its app for iOS devices, introducing the same enhanced search and navigation features, as well as an optimized iPad design.

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In the real world, when you have a birthday people give you gifts. But when these celebrations happen for software and services, the roles are frequently reversed. That is the case today as Apple celebrates the fifth birthday of its iTunes App Store by giving gifts to its customers.

Apple launched its iOS store on July 10, 2008 and the number of apps has grown exponentially since then -- from 500 apps at launch to 900,000-plus available today.

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Google has started rolling out a new version of Google Maps for Android devices, with plans to update the iOS edition "soon".

According to Daniel Graf, Director, Google Maps, the updated app builds on the version Google released for the iPhone last December, but improves on it by adding additional search and navigation features, as well as a dedicated design for iPads and Android tablets.

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Twitter has updated both its iOS and Mac apps with the release of Twitter 5.8 for iPhone and iPad, and Twitter 2.3 for Mac. Both apps now correctly synchronize the read status of Direct Messages, which means when a DM is read on one platform, it will automatically be marked as read on others too, including TweetDeck 3.0.5 for Windows and Twitter 4.0.2 for Android.

Both updates also come with the promise of minor improvements and tweaks too, such as making it easier to join conversations via the iPhone app and richer search results that alert the user to new tweets matching their search terms.

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