Articles about iOS

In today's busy world keeping things running smoothly is part of the key to business success. Downtime can mean lost customers and that’s especially true when it comes to IT services. However, traditional service desks haven’t really kept up with the need to respond fast and keep end users fully updated.

BMC Software believes it has the answer to this in the form of the MyIT app.  MyIT allows users to log problems via a self-service interface, they can then receive updates and check on the progress of the problem without having to call the help desk.

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On June 30, the day after my most recent one-year contract expires with AT&T U-verse, I will cancel the service and cut the cord. Last night, while I watched some last-minute Prime Time before it's gone, Apple commercial "Our Signature" aired. The ad is a concise, tweet-like mission statement that encapsulates all of what the company's product design is about. The spot sums up all anyone need know about the fruit-logo company in 60 seconds.

"This is what matters. The experience of a product. How it makes someone feel. Will it make life better", the commercial begins. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is what I have written about Apple for a decade -- that the company's products and marketing are aspirational. That the design goal simply is to make people feel good, to inspire life will be better for choosing the Apple way.

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On Tuesday, BlackBerry announced the availability of Secure Work Space for Android and iOS in BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. The tool, which was unveiled little over three months ago, is designed to provide a safer and BYOD-friendly environment with features like application-wrapping and containerization.

"It offers BlackBerry Balance-like capabilities to provide peace of mind for IT departments in a BYOD environment, while separating personal content for personal use", according to the Canadian maker. BlackBerry's reasons for beefing up the security of Android and iOS devices revolve around expanding needs and the "ever-growing variety of devices" brought into the work space.

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Instagrammers can now rest easier knowing that, earlier today, the popular social network introduced the ability to share filtered videos. The feature, called Video on Instagram, is available through the new Android and iOS apps.

"Over the past two and a half years, Instagram has become a community where you can capture and share the world's moments simply and beautifully. Some moments, however, need more than a static image to come to life", says Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom. "Today, we're thrilled to introduce Video on Instagram and bring you another way to share your stories".

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Am I naive in thinking that Freemium-based games should blow your socks off with an amazing gameplay experience during your first taste of the free game period?

This certainly doesn’t seem to be the case given nearly all the titles I'm seeing so far. What I’m invariably experiencing is a title that’s unremarkable, often tedious and bland by all measures, with the expectation for you to pay money to make it slightly more bearable.

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As you’ll know by now, Microsoft today announced the launch of Office Mobile for Office 365, an iOS app which allows users to access, view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents -- provided you have an Office 365 subscription.

We took it for a spin and despite the limitations, were actually pleasantly surprised. There’s plenty of functionality in the app to explore. The app can view Office documents stored on SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro, or SharePoint, for instance, as well as documents which arrive as email attachments. It syncs with your other Office 365 devices, too, so documents you’ve read elsewhere will appear on your phone’s Recent Documents panel, and when you open one it’ll resume at whatever point you left off.

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Seven months ago, when rumors burned hot, I explained why "Microsoft Office for Android and iOS is a Trojan Horse" -- that any mobile suite would be all about the cloud service. Sure enough, today Microsoft released the strangely named "Office Mobile for Office 365 Subscribers" to the App Store.

Office 365 is the productivity suite's future. Microsoft now claims to be a "devices and services" company. Smartphones are devices, Office 365 is a service and required for the iOS app. What more reasoning is needed? The Redmond, Wash.-based company provides more functionality than I predicted, but does so strictly in mobile context that doesn't diminish the PC product. That said, what Microsoft gives to iOS should be withheld from Android.

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There’s no question that iOS 7 is a sexy looking mobile operating system. Jony Ive and his team have done a fantastic job of reinventing and modernizing the interface, but the great news for fans of Apple products is iOS 7 isn’t all style and no substance.

Apple ran through a lot of the new or improved features yesterday, including Control Center, AirDrop, Photo app, Siri (with added Bing!), iOS in the Car, FaceTime Audio, and iTunes Radio. But there were features that Craig Federighi, SVP of Software Engineering, didn’t mention but which appeared on a slide in the background.

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We all knew that Apple would be revealing a redesigned version of its mobile operating system today at the 24th Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, and we've just been treated to an in-depth look.

As was widely reported, the Jony Ive designed iOS 7 has a flatter, functional design and the skeumorphism -- faux wooden bookshelves, green felt and the like -- that was a central theme in previous versions of the operating system is no more.

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Apple events are always preceded by rumours and occasional leaks, so we usually have at least a rough idea of what to expect prior to the keynote. There haven’t been any major leaks ahead of this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference which could mean one of two things -- there’s nothing really big coming, or there’s something so big to be announced, security is super tight.

We do know some of what Apple CEO Tim Cook will talk about when he takes to the stage later today, and we have a good idea of what else might be announced, so prepare to get excited for the following…

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The BBC’s weather predictions tend to be reasonably accurate, and now you can check the corporation’s latest forecasts on a new app available for iOS and Android.

When you launch the app it detects your location and tells you what the weather is like where you are, providing details such as high and low temperatures, current conditions, humidity, visibility and wind speed.

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Eye-Fi memory cards can automatically copy photos from your camera to a wireless enabled device, such as your PC, whenever you get in range. The new Mobi card, announced today, is designed to transfer photos from a camera to any iOS or Android handset.

All you have to do is insert the Mobi card into your camera, and use it as you would any ordinary SD card. Install the free app on your phone and pair it to the Mobi by entering a unique 10 digit code. Once paired, photos and videos can be copied over automatically.

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The default Mail app for the iPhone and iPad is capable enough, but sometimes you find yourself craving more. Google Mail users could opt for the official Gmail app, but despite some improvements over Mail, there’s still a bit of clunkiness in there, particularly when it comes to handling larger mailboxes. But there’s another alternative, one that has just been updated to run natively on the iPad as well as the iPhone. That app is also free, and it’s called Mailbox 1.3.

Mailbox takes a different approach to handling your email, providing you with five separate zones in which to work. Mail lands in your inbox and you simply swipe it in the direction of a specific zone to deal with it in a particular way. It allows you to quickly and easily bring order to even the most disorganized mailbox.

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Over the course of the past week, Evernote Corporation has been updating its flagship Evernote client across all supported platforms. As with most Evernote updates, however, the changes implemented have not been equal, with users of Evernote for Mac 5.1.1 and Evernote for iPhone and iPad 5.2.3 getting the best deal.

The big news for Evernote users is the addition of support for reminders -- initially on Mac, iOS and the web-based platform. These can be triggered as email or in-app alarms, and are easily set via the small timer button at the top of a note.

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On Thursday, following user demand, Mailbox released an update for its iOS mail app that introduces support for iPads. The service, which delivers more than 100 million messages each day, was previously available as an iPhone-only affair.

Mailbox boasts a better organized and easier to manage inbox, allowing its users to take advantage of swipe gestures to archive or trash messages. Similar to alarm clocks, the app also offers the option to snooze emails in order to receive them at a later date in the inbox.

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