Articles about iOS

Amazon is not one to miss out on any revenue market and today proves this by making its free Kindle apps more appealing to customers who are either blind or visually impaired. The upgrades are not available on all platforms yet, but are certainly a move in the right direction.

New features will allow customers to access the read aloud feature for the more than 1.8 million titles available in the Kindle Store and seamlessly navigate within their library or within a book, including consistent title, menu and button names.

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Today's set-top boxes do not all come from the cable or satellite provider and they frequently contain much more functionality than those that do come from the big providers. One is Roku, a company that has been innovating and upgrading at a rather quick pace recently, having only just released the Roku 3 with added functionality.

Now the company rolls out version 2.2 of its mobile apps for both the Android and iOS platforms. Roku promises that this latest update addresses feedback received from users.

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"Windows strength appears to be the ability to attract first time smartphone buyers, upgrading from a feature phone", Mary-Ann Parlato, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech analyst, says about the U.S. handset market for the three months ended in February. "Of those who changed their phone over the last year to a Windows smartphone, 52 percent had previously owned a feature phone".

End of story, or could be, if not for something else. Fifty-five percent of iOS buyers, and 51 percent for Android, are repeat smartphone purchasers. The two more popular platforms, while growing because of their larger bases, sell more to existing customers, which make up a more finite market. "With over half of the U.S. market still owning a feature phone, it’s likely that many will upgrade over the coming year, which will ultimately contribute to more growth for the Windows brand", Parlato emphasizes.

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During the 1980s and 90s, Microsoft embarked on what the U.S. Justice Department refers to as an "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy. Google revises the approach for the new century, but out of necessity. Many of its products or services entered categories where others dominated, such as email, operating systems, productivity suites and web browsers. The company's business is long about co-opting other platforms, everything from desktop search app for Windows to Google Frame for Internet Explorer, and more.

But there's nothing quite like Google's recent invasion of iOS, where many of the apps are even better than Apple's. Today, a new search app brings one of Android's best features, Google Now, to iPad and iPhone. There's irony here, too. On Android, the feature is only available on Jelly Bean, which makes up about 25 percent of the install base. The majority of Apple mobile device users are on iOS 6, and the app supports version 5, too. In short order then, depending on installations, a greater percentage of iPads and iPhones than Androids may have Google Now.

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Back in December, I explained: "Surface RT sales are quite good, you just don't know about it". The Internet Idiocracy called the tablet a failure, while based on sales per store I saw success. Surface Pro shipped the following month. Now there are real numbers, and they're quite good -- for all Windows tablets -- validating touch-focused Modern UI.

During first quarter, Windows captured 7.5 percent global branded tablet market share, according to Strategy Analytics. That's up from zero a year earlier. Unit shipments: 3 million. Right now, Microsoft is the major seller of branded Windows tablets. Granted there are others, like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Samsung.

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Gmail shows little sign of becoming any less popular, but any iOS user will find that dealing with a Gmail account on an Apple device is not the most pleasant experience. Mailbox was released to help address this fact and proved so popular that newcomers were greeted by a lengthy waiting list before they could get started. The app has now been updated in a number of key areas and, perhaps most importantly, anyone is free to jump right in and get started without the need to wait on a reservation list.

This is obviously great news for people who have been waiting to try out the app, but there is also plenty for existing users to take advantage of. One of the major standout features of the app from its inception was the way in which emails could be dealt with using little more than a swipe; swipe one way to delete or mark as read, and the other way to snooze.

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Marissa Meyer is bringing big changes to Yahoo and one of them is apparently getting the old search site back into the public focus with new mobile apps. That process begins today in the world of both Apple and meteorology -- fitting since tornado and thunderstorm season is getting underway and hurricanes are on the horizon.

Today the company announces a sleek new weather app that is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch -- uninspiringly named "Yahoo! Weather App". Marco Wirasinghe claims the new app will "bring together beautiful images from our Flickr community to show you current local conditions, with all the details you want to know about the forecast".

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If you don’t look after your computer, it will start to slow down and misbehave. Smartphones too can get clogged up and begin to lag as the amount of storage space and available memory starts to diminish with use.

There are lots of good, free apps available that you can use to make sure your Android (or iOS) device is running at peak performance. Here are some of the more recent.

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Popular business-oriented social network LinkedIn has unveiled new mobile apps for Android and iOS, touting a "brand new mobile phone experience, completely revamped with the general professional and everyday use case in mind". This comes a day after LinkedIn updated its Windows Phone 8 app, with major new features.

However, unlike the Windows Phone 8 app which offers a similar user experience as before, LinkedIn for Android and iOS sports an overhauled UI (User Interface) that is both more modern as well as better looking. Gone are the darker colors of before as lighter ones take their place instead.

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Facebook has released Facebook for iOS 6.0, a major update for its iPhone and iPad app. The major new feature in version 6 is the introduction of "chat heads", which allow users to chat from anywhere in the app -- this feature isn’t yet universally available, but should be rolled out to all users "soon", according to Facebook.

Chat heads are small circular icons representing both individual chatters and Facebook Messages. The chat head appears automatically when receiving a message, or can be manually set up by tapping the contact’s name in the contacts list.

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My favorite exercise companion, Zombies, Run!, has just received its promised free upgrade and is available now on both iOS and Android (I’m such a fan I’ve downloaded both).

The immersive app, which basically turns a real-world run into a fear-filled journey through the zombie apocalypse, is ideal for anyone who struggles with motivation and is a bit like a radio play that takes place through your headphones as you run, with the gripping story -- and the occasional zombie chase -- unfolding in between tracks from your playlist.

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SugarSync, Inc has released SugarSync for iOS 4.0, a major new release for iPad and iPhone owners wishing access to their SugarSync cloud storage on the move. Version 4.0 features a major redesign designed to simplify syncing and sharing, plus integrates with other apps through the "Open in" feature.

The update also adds support for Device Filtering, a feature recently introduced in the SugarSync 2.0.9 desktop app for Windows and Mac, along with Cloud Search, and promises future support for folder labels.

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When you pick up your iPad, it’s usually with a purpose in mind. You might want to see how many new emails you have, you need to check RSS feeds, or you want to have a scan through Twitter. Each of these activities requires an individual app, and that means that you need to hunt down the relevant shortcut on the home screen. But Status Board could change all that, by displaying the data you need to see in a handy dashboard that gives you a great overview of your data.

This is a handsome app that almost feels as though it would be more at home on an Android tablet -- it could be adapted into a perfect alternative launcher -- but at the moment is only available for iPad users. There is a slightly retro feel to the app, which enables you to configure a series of customizable panels to display a selection of data.

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Second in a series. Out of fairness, I follow up my long analysis "The enterprise will never embrace Apple" with some advice for the company. There's room in the enterprise if only Apple made more effect. None of these suggestions is outside the reach of CEO Tim Cook and the core leadership.

Perhaps Apple stays out of the enterprise game because the top brass knows that they have little expertise in the general directions that big business is heading. Their lack of desire (or capability) for true Active Directory integration, for example, is already public knowledge. When it comes to virtualization and the move to virtual desktops, Apple has no public strategy for allowing (or supporting) such an infrastructure on OS X devices, at least first party. To put it plainly, Apple's overall game plan for cozying up to the wants of enterprise is nearly nonexistent.

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First in a series. If there is one company that clearly doesn't care about the corporate world, it is Apple. As iOS continues to forge flagship status as Apple's core offering, OS X gets second-class-citizen treatment in every possible way from the Cupertino, Calif.-based company. While the enterprise reluctantly builds out BYOD (bring your own device) initiatives to support usage of Apple devices at the workplace, this is a far stretch from openly embracing iOS or OS X as viable corporate platforms. Apple's presence in the boardroom is due to bottom-up organic acceptance as opposed to top-down purposeful planning.

By even conservative estimates, the enterprise IT market is massive, and growing steadily as the recession continues to recede. IDC recently pinned US corporate IT spending for 2013 at $474 billion, a 6 percent increase over the previous year. And globally, Gartner says that this figure is closer to $2.679 trillion, which represents a 2.5 percent year over year bump. Yet while Apple's sales in phones and tablets continues to stay consistently solid, the  company's attitude towards enterprise hasn't changed one bit. For lack of a better description, top Apple executives just "don't care".

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