Articles about iOS

Late February means another Mobile World Congress, and the rush to make big, splashy product announcements before the show starts. Samsung jumped in early today, by announcing an 8-inch tablet with stylus -- Galaxy Note 8.0. The slate is about the same size as Apple's iPad, with comparable screen resolution, but features the S Pen and supporting software. Why just touch and type when you can draw, too?

Samsung's slate joins the Galaxy Note II smartphone and 10-inch tablet, with stylus being the compelling feature that market leader Apple doesn't offer on any iOS device. Like the recent update for its siblings, Galaxy Note 8.0 comes with a split-screen, multi-window function. The tablet runs Android 4.1.2 customized with TouchWiz UI.

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The BBC’s iPlayer app is available for both iOS and Android, but owners of Apple devices definitely get the better deal with additional features, such as the ability to download shows to their iPhones or iPads for offline viewing.

The latest update from the BBC widens the gap between the app siblings further by introducing improved AirPlay support. Owners of iOS devices who also have Apple TV will now be able to beam a show from the app to the big screen, and then background iPlayer, and use their phone or tablet for something else while the show continues to play.

In addition, the new version of the app fixes various minor problems and glitches, improves playback quality, and ensures downloads are more reliable.

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Yesterday Apple rolled out iOS 6.1.2 for compatible iPads, iPhones and iPod touch devices, touting the fix of an Exchange calendar bug that might boost network activity and decrease battery life. And, as customary with a new iteration of iOS 6, there's also a new version of the popular evasi0n jailbreak tool. Evad3rs, the team responsible for the first iOS 6 jailbreak tool, released evasi0n 1.4 shortly after iOS 6.1.2 rolled out.

The latest version, according to the "evasi0n 6.0-6.1 Unthether" package in Cydia, touts the same bug fixes as two weeks ago when I reported on the first evasi0n update. It appears that the fruit company did not put the lid on modding attempts just yet. First-time jailbreakers running iOS 6.1.2 simply have to connect their iPads, iPhones or iPod touch devices to a compatible PC running Windows, MacOS X or Linux and run evasi0n to unleash the modding gates on their smartphone or tablet.

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When Windows 8 launched on October 26 2012, the Windows Store had an estimated 9,000 apps available to purchase or download. Today, according to the excellent MetroStore Scanner, that figure has risen to 43,083 worldwide, of which 28,904 are available in the US store, and 26,385 in the UK one.

The biggest problem with the Windows Store is not the overall number of apps -- in four months it’s seen reasonable growth although the number of new weekly additions has slowed -- the issue is more with quality. While there’s no shortage of third-party apps, many of which are very good, you can’t help but notice how many big names are absent.

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The vast majority of us use multiple cloud services for email, social media, and file storage, which means having to regularly switch between different websites or apps to access our data. KiteDesk aims to solve that problem by aggregating information from all of the popular cloud services into a single application.

Aimed at busy consumers and professionals, the service presents email messages, social media posts, contacts, calendar events, and files from the likes of Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Dropbox, in a single stream and lets you search for, share, and comment on content.

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British broadcaster ITV has agreed to a deal with Shazam -- the popular music identification service -- allowing viewers of this year’s The Brits music awards to access exclusive content during the live broadcast -- a UK first.

By using Shazam to tag the show between 8pm and 10:15pm on February 20, viewers will get access to exclusive behind-the-scenes content from performers and guest presenters.

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"We're No. 3!" will be BlackBerry's and Microsoft's rallying cry this year. Android and iOS so dominate the smartphone market, the best -- and quite honestly dismal -- hope is third; distant at that. Combined, based on actual phone sales, Android and iOS had 90.1 percent share during fourth quarter, up from 74.9 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner. BlackBerry and Windows Phone are neck-and-neck, with lowly 3.5 percent and 3 percent standings, respectively.

Upstarts want third place, too. Anshul Gupta, Gartner principal research analyst, explains: "2013 will be the year of the rise of the third ecosystem as the battle between the new BlackBerry10 and Widows Phone intensifies. As carriers and vendors feel the pressure of the strong Android’s growth, alternative operating systems such as Tizen, Firefox, Ubuntu and Jolla will try and carve out an opportunity by positioning themselves as profitable alternatives".

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The Chinese smartphone market is dominated by five top manufacturers, none of them Apple, Canalys reveals. As I've warned a couple times recently, despite CEO Tim Cook's prognostications about China's importance or his company boasting 2 million first-weekend iPhone 5 sales, competitors rapidly close out the market for costly fruit-logos.

China is the biggest market for mobiles, largely dominated by smartphones -- 73 percent of the total in fourth quarter, up from 40 percent a year earlier. Shipments soared 113 percent to 64.7 million units, or 30 percent of all smartphones globally. Samsung captured the top spot, followed by Lenovo, Yulong, Huawei and ZTE.

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Three days ago evad3rs released the first public iOS 6 jailbreak tool, opening up iPads, iPhones and iPod touch devices to the world of underground modding. But as is the case with the majority of infant jailbreak-related releases it also brought along a series of bugs, which the team behind the project now claims to have fixed in the latest update.

On Twitter, planetbeing, one of the three members behind evad3rs, announced the release of evasi0n 1.1. The second iteration of the popular jailbreaking tool brings along "the latest fixes", which are supposed to sort the Weather app and "long boot" time issues. The latter problem is also referred to by the team as the "reboots getting stuck" bug.

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You’ve read all the press about the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, and you’re intrigued enough to want to know more. Well, a clever new marketing campaign lets you transform your existing iOS or Android device into a BlackBerry Z10 using augmented reality. Well sort of.

Unlike the Playboy interactive cover which uses Layar, you’ll need to have the free Blippar app installed on your phone. Once done, scan the special BB Take Over Me webpage (or just scan the image here, if you prefer) and your phone will be instantly transformed into an interactive Z10. Or at least that’s the theory.

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That sound you hear: Emerging markets sucking the margins out of iPhone. Gartner predicts that Chinese brand and white-box handset manufacturers will dramatically change the smartphone market's course this year. Android is likely to be the big beneficiary, while iPhone has the most to lose. Economies of scale will bite Apple, which benefits from one of the tightest supply chains anywhere. Chipset integration, for example, will allow handset makers to ship cheaper devices that are good enough, even if less than market leaders.

"The combination of competitive pricing pressure, open-channel market growth and feature elimination/integration will very soon result in the $50 smartphone", Mark Hung, Gartner research director, says. "Semiconductor vendors that serve the mobile handset market must have a product strategy to address the low-cost smartphone platform, with $50 as a target in 2013". That's right, 50 bucks, not the $650 Apple charges carriers.

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The lack of an untethered jailbreak for iOS 6.x has been frustrating for many iPhone/iPod touch/and iPad users desperate to liberate their devices, install all their beloved jailbreak apps, and apply their favorite tweaks. A friend of mine is keen to buy an iPhone 5, but hasn’t purely because he’s been waiting to make sure of an iOS 6 jailbreak.

Well the good news for him, and other users keen to remove the limitations on their Apple devices, is the evad3rs team has rolled out its highly anticipated evasi0n hack for all Apple hardware running iOS6-iOS6.1.

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During the mainframe era, you could hear phrase: "No one is fired for buying IBM". In the 1990s and 2000s, the same could be said about Microsoft. As the so-called Post-PC era pushes forward, soon same can be said about Apple, if some IT organizations don't already. Gartner predicts that by 2014, enterprises will accept the fruit-logo as much as Windows, which is something scary for the company owning that market segment.

Consumerization of IT -- or bring your own device to work -- forced Apple on unwilling IT organizations. Now, after tasting the fruit, they like it. More of them than ever are willing to deploy Macs, which encroach on territory Microsoft seeks to claim for Windows 8.

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Some days the sorry state of news reporting really baffles me. Today I read numerous headlines claiming that Android tablet share surged past 50 percent in Q4, usurping iPad -- all using numbers I wrote about a day earlier. The one on CNN -- "IDC says Android is the new king of tablet market share" -- got to me. Immediate reaction: "What did I miss?" But in looking over the numbers, nothing really jumped out that IDC said any such thing. Sure iPad shipment share fell to 43.6 percent from 51.7 percent annually and from 46.4 percent sequentially. I chose to ask the analysts rather than follow the feeding frenzy.

"Android actually passed the 50 percent mark in 3Q 12", Tom Mainelli, IDC research director for tablets, says. Whoa, there's no new king at all. Android took the crown last summer. Still, that's a phenomenal achievement, setting me to write a story I couldn't imagine a year ago.

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On Wednesday, popular cloud-based voicemail provider YouMail unveiled a new premium service aimed at businesses and professionals. Dubbed Business Edition, it comes with a host of exclusive features ranging from more customizable greetings to the removal of in-app ads.

YouMail Business Edition runs for $6.99 per user, per month, and builds atop of the currently available functionality. Subscribers can choose to implement "smart business greetings" which can accommodate the user's full name and company, as well as other information.

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