Articles about iOS

I've wanted to ask this question all day. But we needed an Apple Maps review first -- Wayne Williams delivered a good one -- and it needed a few hours live on the site. But I can refrain no longer. Will Apple Maps keep you from upgrading to iOS 6?

Considering the bad reaction to Apple's homegrown replacement for Google Maps, it's no idle question. About three quarters of US smartphone owners use location-based services, with mapping programs ranking among the highest, according to Pew Research. If you're among them, and actually would like to reach a destination using an Apple device, iOS 6 may not be for you. That is if the default mapping program is your primary one.

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I upgraded one of my Apple devices to iOS6 last night and the first thing I did, once finished setting it up, was to launch the new Maps component. This, as you’ll no doubt be aware, replaces the aging Google Maps app. I knew from other articles I’d read previously that Apple’s own mapping service wasn’t going to be as good as the old Google one. After all, Apple is new to this mapping lark, and the search giant has years of experience in the field. But I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, and forgive any minor problems. After all, how bad could it be?

I started, as I am sure most people do, by typing in my address. Well, actually as I live in the United Kingdom I typed in my post code. Apple found my road, Prince’s Drive, but decided it was called Princess Drive. Not the most auspicious of starts.

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Today, two days before iPhone 5 launches, Apple releases iOS 6. We'd like to know what you think of the software, particularly compared to the previous version. Several features are sure to cause reaction, with Facebook integration and Apple's new maps app, which replaces the one from Google, being high among them.

To be honest, given my Apple boycott and iPhone-toting daughter going off to college, I have no iOS device for testing. I can't review, and my best Apple-using writers are in Europe and likely won't blast out anything until tomorrow. But we need reaction today, particularly if iOS 6 turns out to be the update some of you won't want to apply. Judging from some of the reaction on Twitter, many of you should wait -- lest Apple Maps directs you to the river bank instead of your local financial institution.

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In October 2009, I explained why "Apple cannot win the smartphone wars". That was just a year after Google launched the first Android handset, the G1, on T-Mobile and days after Verizon debuted the hugely-successful Motorola Droid. By end of that year, Android had paltry 3.9 percent smartphone sales share, according to Gartner. My prediction drew loads of criticism from the Apple Fan Club of bloggers, journalists and other writers.

Fast-forward to second quarter 2012 and Android's global sales share is 64.1 percent for all phones, not just smart ones. iOS: 18.8 percent. My how times change. Increasingly, Android and iOS look exactly like Windows and Mac OS in the 1980s and 1990s, as I predicted would be the case.

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A new iPhone is Apple's chance to drive competitors nuts, to take technological innovation to new heights and to leave the stage with a justified smug look, but as the dust settles from yesterday's launch event the new handset feels dated already. The Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation should smash the competition to bits but that hasn't happened, has it?

iPhone 5 is not the revolutionary product that could set the world on fire and just like my colleage Wayne Williams I wonder "Hey, Apple, where’s the innovation?" There is a saying that's perfect for landmark product releases: "Go big or go home" and Apple should have followed the former not the latter for what will most likely be flagship device over the next year. It's not enough to sway the current cutting-edge Android smartphones to the curb, so how can it when there will be fierce competition from Windows Phone 8 devices like the Nokia Lumia 920 or Samsung ATIV S?

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So the iPhone 5 has been unveiled and, well, it’s just a bigger version of the iPhone 4S. No great surprise there, as all the rumors and leaks predicted that would be the case. There are some other changes to the device of course; it’s faster, lighter, prettier and has a better camera and a new dock connector, but really it’s just Apple’s phone with a bigger screen, improved OS, and less Google.

If the reports are to be believed, and they are, in October Apple will introduce another new product -- a smaller iPad.

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If you've got iPhone 4 or 4S, recent iPod touch or one of the two recent iPads, Apple will give you iOS 6, and you won't wait long. The Cupertino, Calif,-based company formally announced the release date, September 19, during a media event today.

New iOS 6 features include FaceTime video over cellular, Facebook integration, Passbook for buying movie tickets and other passes, shared photo streams and new maps app, among others. Apple released a developer preview in June. Perhaps most notable among the new features is Apple's homegrown maps app, replacing the one long provided by Google.

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In what can only be described as a turning point for post-PC operating systems, cumulative Android device sales now exceed iOS, and in a shorter time period. Today, during a special media event, Apple reduced the cumulative number of iOS sales to 400 million -- that would be since iPhone's debut in June 2007. But yesterday, Google put Android sales at 500 million, from the G1's launch four years ago this month. The days of iOS' perennial lead are over.

Android has been on the catch-up track for better part of the year. At the end of June cumulative iOS shipments were 410 million, according to Apple. Why CEO Tim Cook put the number at 10 million less today is anyone's guess. Days before the quarter ended, Google put cumulative Android shipments at 400 million. A few months earlier: 365 million and 300 million, respectively. Daily Android activations now total 1.3 million, up from 900,000 in June, according to Google.

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Today, gadget tastemaker Apple is expected to unveil a host of new products, including a new iPhone, new iPods, and perhaps even an update to the bête noire that is iTunes. In all likelihood, the "iPhone 5" will be the scene-stealer of this event, which will add some small, incremental changes to the obnoxiously popular device. The changes documented herein are sure to be labeled as life-changing and essential by the bike-riding gentrification brigade, and be labeled as Android copies by the cloak-wearing dungeon masters. Since we've sat through six different iPhone unveilings, we've decided to call this one as we see it...

Today's event begins at 10:00 am PDT (1:00 pm Eastern), and all updates appear in reverse chronological order (i.e. newest posts first), and yes, you do actually have to refresh the page.

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Ahead of the Apple event rumored to be the unveiling of a new, smaller iPad, Google on Tuesday released an updated native YouTube application for Apple's smaller-screen iOS devices.

The new application for iPhone and iPod touch speeds up video discovery with an improved channel guide and search functionality, improved sharing capabilities, and a larger roster of compatible videos.

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Apple on Tuesday officially distributed its invitations to the media for an event on September 12 in the company's usual spot for press conferences, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California.

The big number twelve on the invitation is casting a shadow that is shaped like the number five, which has naturally lead many to believe this is the event for the "iPhone 5," or fifth generation of Apple's iPhone. The iPhone 5 moniker has been in use since before the iPhone 4S was released, but as Dave Caolo of the Unofficial Apple Weblog jokingly pointed out on Twitter, it could just as easily mean a 5" iPad.

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#Antisec, The loosely-organized black hat security collective formerly known as Lulzsec has released a file containing a million and one (1,000,001) Apple Unique Device Identifications (UDIDs), and their related APNs (Apple Push Notification Service) tokens, as well as a certain amount of personal user information. The group claims the information was not taken from Apple directly, but rather though a vulnerability exploit on FBI Agent Christopher K. Stangl last March.

The group claims there were actually more than twelve million UDIDs on Stangl's Dell Vostro notebook, as well as an incomplete list of zip codes, mobile phone numbers, home addresses, and whatever personal detail fields could be obtained. Antisec said there were no other files in the same folder that mention the list or its purpose.

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Samsung's recently-announced Windows Phone 8 smartphone, the ATIV is oozing with power and modernity, and that is what the Windows Phone software needs to finally become a dominant platform.

A platform needs flagship devices --smartphones and tablets-- to showcase what it can do in front of (possibly) billions of people, and hardware-wise it doesn't get any better than Android and iOS devices displaying their inner strength, their performance. Android takes first place and iOS second in the smartphone charts, and they have halo devices to represent them. Windows Phone, meanwhile, has been a mere shadow behind the two flexing their muscles. The Samsung Galaxy S III best represents Android as much as the iPhone 4S best represents iOS, but what does Windows Phone 7.5 have to show? A single-core CPU with 512MB of RAM and a GPU that was news a few years ago? That doesn't cut it...

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I can't win. Just when I think I've finally cooked-up the perfect post-PC computing recipe, along comes some killjoy to spoil all the fun. This time around it's Apple. The Cupertino goon squad is on a mission to stomp out all unauthorized uses of lowercase letter "i" (among other things), and my latest pet project -- moving my entire computing life to a non-PC device -- is about to fall victim to their litigious ways.

You see, I made the unforgivable decision to deviate from Apple's proscribed post-PC formula (i.e. iPhone/iPad) and instead embrace the ways of the rebel Android Army. After several weeks of tweaking and tuning, I've finally achieved a level of PC-independence I never thought possible. But given last week's Apple-Samsung jury decision, I fear it may have all been for naught. That's because the reverberations from such a landmark case will no doubt spread far beyond its principle defendant (you didn't really think this was about hardware, did you?) to strike at the very heart of Google's OS strategy.

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Just like Firefox, Chrome rockets through version numbers as though it is going out of fashion. Although Google’s foray into the world of web browsers for iPhone and iPad is fairly recent, Chrome for iOS already is version 21. The latest release is a relatively minor one, but there is still one feature that brings the browser in line with other more socially aware apps.

The big news in this release: addition of new sharing options. Found a website that you think your friends will love? There is no need to copy and paste the URL into an email as there are now new sharing options built directly into the app. A new popup menu lets you share pages through Google+, Facebook, Twitter or via email.

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