The future of medicine is now and it’s all about intelligent accessories for iOS devices. Here’s the iCard ECG, an iPhone gizmo that lets you take your own electrocardiograph readouts. You simply clip the credit-sized, millimeter thick accessory with velcro on the back of your iPhone and then press the handset against your chest. The iPhone Download blog explains:
One cool feature of the iPhoneECG is the personal heart rate trending feature. You can listen to relaxing music through your headphones and see how your heart rate is affected. This device and app are still in the process of being reviewed by the FDA in the United States, so you’ll have to register to be part of the launch.
The resulting PDF file with your ECG readouts can be easily beamed wirelessly to the AliveCor server for physicians to review. Oh, and the iCard ECG comes in red and works with iPad too, which is important if you’re Shaquille O’Neal or something.
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iOS Simulator is a handy tool for developers and especially great for testing out your latest iPhone or iPad app on a computer, without having to sync the application package to your device. What makes the iOS Simulator even better? Running it on a huge touch display, of course. Check out the above clip, showing iOS Simulator running on a 21-inch Dell ST2220T multitouch display that talks to OS X via the Touch-Base driver.
Pictured above: The free TiVo for iPad app, released in January 2011
It’s been known for a while that TiVo is working on new companion apps for iOS devices and they already have a free iPad app which acts as a simple remote control for the Premiere box. The June issue of CEPro magazine sheds more light on the upcoming software, quoting Bard Williams, director of retail and channel marketing for TiVo:
It offers a beautiful, easy-to-use interface; complete control over management and program selection, a multi-touch remote that features gestures-based navigation, and the ability to manage and navigate Season Pass recording, your queue and info about cast, crew, similar shows – without interrupting your TV experience. When you’re not at home, the app still lets you interact with your Premiere for basic management and recording tasks.
Adobe this morning announced a slew of software updates to Flash Builder and the Flex framework that will enable developers to create projects for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook, in addition to Android support which was added in April. Flash Builder and Flex, both now at version 4.5, are included in Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium and Master Collection, but can be bought separately as well ($249 for Flash Builder Standard, Premium version is $669). Adobe’s Puneet Goel boasted about the release in a blog post:
As a result, developers can quickly build and distribute apps through the Android Market, BlackBerry App World and Apple App Store using one tool chain, programming language and code base—a first for developers!
Adobe shows off how easy it is to create Flex and ActionScript applications and deploy them on a variety of mobile platforms via Adobe AIR in a video here. They are obviously doing a great work enabling developers to write code once and compile and run it on major mobile platforms with minimal changes. If they only matched that with smooth run-time performance…
In addition to Project Spartan, a rumored HTML5 store for web apps from Facebook, the social networking giant could be readying a music service of its own, reportsGigaOM. Author Om Malik claims that Facebook is shopping the upcoming music service to record companies, aiming for an August launch. Rather than do a music store, Facebook apparently wants to create music services and applications integrated with the Facebook platform and accessed via the new Music tab in your profile. They are talking to Spotify and other music services, Malik reports:
Spotify already allows you to share the information about the song that you are listening to on Spotify with your Facebook friends, but the next level of integration is going to be much deeper. And it won’t be just Spotify – my sources tell me that Facebook has been reaching out to other online music services and much of the attention at f8 should be focused on music. Facebook Connect and Facebook Likes are key components of this effort.
So, you’ll be able to listen to music sourced from participating partners. A new playback/pause button next to the chat icon will let you control music playback and see what’s playing. Plus, the new button will appear in your news feed. There will also be something called Music Dashboard.
Nortel decided to extend the deadline for the start of the auction for its patents until June 27 citing “significant interest” from third parties. Today we learn that two Silicon Valley giants are significantly interested in Nortel’s war chest of more than five thousand wireless patents said to be worth well over a billion dollars. They are Apple and Intel, reportsThe Wall Street Journal.
Other bidders include Ericsson AB and a company called RPX Corp which “defensively buys up patents on behalf of other companies to stop them from being used against them by investors”. Expand Expanding Close
“They are resting on their laurels. Steve Jobs is a much better marketer than RIM”. When your sixth-largest investor gives you such an embarrassing thumbs down, it is the worst vote of confidence you could have asked for. But that’s exactly what Stephen Jarislowsky, chairman of Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., an investor in Research In Motion, toldBloomberg explaining why he was dumping his shares. Some investors are obviously spooked by RIM’s disappointing first-quarter results and the layoffs the company announced as it puts a plan in place to re-align operations. Second-quarter and full-year outlook is also below expectations. “We are on the way out. The stake has been reduced by more than 50% or even more”, Fraser tells the publication.
This whole week has been a downhill ride for shares of the Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry maker. Just today, RIM tanked 19 percent in after-hours trading, loosing one fifth of their market valuation as a result. And in what could be read as an attempt to boost its stock price, RIM announced a stock repurchase program.
Apple is all over its copycat accusations filed in a formal complaint against its key supplier Samsung. Just days after it wrote in court documents that Samsung was “harassing us”, Apple yesterday amended the filing with more intellectual property rights against more products – even re-phrasing accusations more strongly. The legal maneuver comes on the eve of today’s court hearing where the judge will decide about granting each party access to the other’s unreleased products. FOSS Patentsspotted the updated complaint:
The original complaint specifically accused the following products of infringement: “the Samsung Captivate, Continuum, Vibrant, Galaxy S 4G, Epic 4G, Indulge, Mesmerize, Showcase, Fascinate, Nexus S, Gem, Transform, Intercept, and Acclaim smart phones and the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet.”
The amended complaint accuses all of the above plus the Droid Charge, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Prevail, Galaxy S (i9000), Gravity, Infuse 4G, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, Sidekick, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Galaxy S II (aka Galaxy S 2). It also specifies the accusation against “Showcase” products, naming the Showcase i500 and Showcase Galaxy S.
The amended compliant includes rephrased wording explaining that Samsung “has been even bolder” than other copycats with “products that blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success”. The company claims that the F700 released in 2007 was the first Samsung phone to “copy the clean flat clear surface of the Apple iPhone Trade Dress and the Apple iPhone/iPhone 3G/iPhone 4 Trade Dress”. Apple also points out that its products and brand have been featured in credible newspapers and magazines and even points out the #1 position it took in the BrandZ index. In Apple’s words, this is why iPhone is an iconic product:
Third-parties are prepping new Thunderbolt products ahead of the upcoming Final Cut Pro X release. Japanese site Macotakara.jp got a chance to play with Blackmagic Design’s UltraStudio 3D, a Thunderbolt-enabled 3D capture and playback for SD, HDMI and analog. Although BlackMagic’s site lists the device as having one Thunderbolt port, the unit on display has two ports. Engineers apparently haven’t yet made the final decision on that. The above clip shows a cool portable editing solution consisting of an early-2011 17-inch MacBook Pro, an UltraStudio 3D box, a Promise R6 Pegasus RAID and a Video-422 deck controller.
The rig works in perfect harmony, allowing for video recording to the Pegasus RAID with real-time previews on an external display and real-time video effects in 2K and 3D. The same site noted Tuesday that Final Cut Pro X would be available next week. Apple announced the video editing suite revision back in April at the NAB show, confirming that the software would be available in July via the Mac App Store at a reduced price of just $299.
Steve Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi to work as Apple’s CEO in the 1980s with the now famous line: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Sculley took the job immediately. “It was like someone just knocked wind out of my stomach”, he would say decades later. However, he would later earn notoriety for helping fire Jobs after an attempted boardroom coup in 1985. Today, Sculley is lavishing praise on Apple’s boss.
Though the board had later kicked Sculley out of the picture over market share loss due to cheap Windows PCs taking over, plummeting sales and a series of missed deadlines, he partially takes credit today for Apple’s experience focused success. In an exclusive interview with Electricpig, Sculley says:
Steve and I hit it off because he believed computers would eventually need to be sold like packaged goods. I said, Steve, let’s sell the experience of a lifestyle. It was always about selling the experience and that was what interested Steve. If you look at Apple today everything is sold on experience.
He also talked about the differences between Apple and Microsoft and credited Steve for single-handedly launching the mobile revolution:
Raise hands who buy or rent Hollywood movies and television shows on iTunes… As ubiquitous a destination for digital music purchases, iTunes has not been able to hit the ground running in online video. A survey of web users by Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney re-iterates that Netflix and Hulu remain the leaders of premium video entertainment, even though YouTube is everyone’s favorite source of free web clips (69.2 percent). Surprisingly, Facebook came in second (27.1 percent) and ahead of Netflix (24.5 percent) and Hulu (22 percent). While Facebook does host user-uploaded videos, it mostly aggregates YouTube clips users publish on their wall.
Netflix, of course, is a subscription play and Hulu is an ad-supported model backed by major players. Polled users were asked to pick up to five websites they preferred for watching video online. Only 9.8 percent chose iTunes and even lesser portion watch on-demand movies on Amazon, just 7.3 percent. With such a lion’s share of the online video market, YouTube is poised to become the #1 destination for on-demand Hollywood movies, provided they boost their catalog and cut exclusive deals with big studios. This is just one analysts’ survey so a healthy dose of skepticism is recommended, but it’s still a pretty accurate indication of where we get our free and paid video online. Plus, this…
Here’s a nice little shortcut in OS X Lion. Whenever you wanna define an unknown word on a web page, check out the exact definition of that adjective you’ve used in your resume or simply define any selectable word in third-party programs, just double tap with three fingers on a word. Up pops a handy Dictionary window that looks like this. Thanks, @AppleFortyTwo!
By the way, Dictionary is getting a prominent role system-wide, and not only in OS X Lion. We’ve seen Dictionary pop ups in iOS 5 apps such as iBooks and the official SDK allows developers to embed Dictionary pop ups with ease.
Bloomberg has a story about New York-based books publisher John T. Colby suing Apple in federal court today over an alleged infringement of their ‘iBooks’ trademark:
Colby bought in 2006 and 2007 the assets of various entities owned by New York publisher Byron Preiss, who had published more than 1,000 hardcover and paperback books under the “ibooks” name starting in September 1999, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan today.
Patently Applepointed in April of 2010 to Apple’s ‘iBooks’ and ‘iBookStore’ trademark applications with the United States Patent & Trademark Office. Back then, Apple asserted a claim of priority for iBooks based on Trinidad and Tobago application number 41872, filed earlier that year, probably in an effort to have their ‘iBooks’ trademark claim granted ahead of any possible lawsuit.
An Apple patent application which surfaced this morning in the United States Patent & Trademark Office’s database envisions advanced proactive measures that are likely to end up utilized in the free Find My iPhone service (which can locate stolen Macs, too). Entitled “Proactive Security for Mobile Devices” and credit to Apple engineer Hooman Borghei, the patent application sets the stage with the following description:
Mobile devices, such as phones and media devices, have a high risk of being lost or stolen. If a mobile device is stolen, the information contained on the device can be accessed. Various security methods have been developed to prevent unauthorized access of information stored on mobile devices. Some methods will encrypt the data to prevent access. Simple encryption ciphers can be broken and more secure encryption techniques are also more complex and thus require more resources that may not be available on some devices. Other security methods allow a remote wipe command to be sent to the mobile device over a network. The remote wipe command, however, wipes out all the data on the mobile device accept a boot file. This forces the user to have to restore the wiped data, which can be inconvenient and time consuming for the user.
So, what are the aggressive countermeasures Apple’s been exploring? For starters, they propose selective protection of your content stored on the device. This would kick in when someone enters an incorrect passcode. We are more excited, however, about cool remote surveillance capabilities, such as transmission of the images and sounds that your device secretly captures. This could go a long way towards helping one figure out the thief’s surrounding without them suspecting anything. Yeah, kinda like this guy. Warning: This article will self-destruct in T-minus thirty seconds…
Apple’s App Store is a nice venue to discover iOS software, but it’s far from perfect – especially when browsing its virtual shelves on your device. The iTunes Preview site – as well as other web and smartphone tools like AppShopper – all help find that needle in a haystack, but they also impose annoying limitations.
Not surprisingly, Google and Microsoft wouldn’t drill through their index in order to create a dedicated search page for mobile warez so Yahoo! took it upon themselves to fill the void (after all, they don’t have a mobile platform of their own to protect). Today, Yahoo! unveiled new search tools that help seek apps for your iOS device easier than ever before. The initiative consists of a dedicated search engine called Yahoo! App Search and an iOS app dubbed Yahoo! AppSpot.
Apple is removing the spectacular glass cube entrance to its Fifth Avenue store in New York. Photo credit: Phil
IfoAppleStore, a fan site dedicated to tracking Apple’s retail strides, is out with the news that Apple has begun an expensive rejuvenation project at its flagship Fifth Avenue store, one of New York’s top photo attractions with its iconic glass cube entrance and glass staircase that lead down to a huge underground retailing area.
Permits issued by the city’s Department of Buildings confirm the company will spend $6,661,050 to completely remove the glass and its sophisticated connection hardware, make upgrades to the surrounding plaza structure, and then “reinstall” the cube. There is no indication of why the cube is being replaced, either because of safety concerns or simply to upgrade it to current technology. It’s also not clear if the glass panels or the TriPyramid Structures Inc. hardware will be be replaced with new, upgraded versions.
Workers have already fenced off the area in front of the GM Building with a plywood wall. This major rejuvenation will take place throughout the summer and into fall, wrapping up by early November…
With flat music sales and booming app ecosystem, iOS app revenue should zoom past song sales by 2015 the latest.
By one estimate, iOS developers and record labels together have pulled some $16.6 billion in cumulative revenues on Apple’s iTunes content store since its inception, according to an interesting analysis by Asymco’s Horace Dediu. Even if it involves a lot of guesswork and peering inside the crystal ball, the author’s thinking is determined by known iTunes milestones and revenue data from Apple’s quarterly findings. For example, Steve Jobs told us at WWDC 2011 that Apple so far paid out $2.5 billion to app developers.
The combined “sales rate” is a remarkable $665 million per month. By the slope of the trend lines, it would appear that app income will exceed music income within three years. Another perspective is the number of downloads per device per month. This shows that the rate of consumption of apps is increasing and is now about six apps per device per month.
“Each iTunes account has ‘consumed’ about 67 songs but also 62 apps. Remarkable parity in such a short time. And the trend speaks for itself”, Dediu concludes. Plus…
MacRumorspoints to an interesting new patent application from Apple describing a new kind of social experience on your iPhone which includes location-based interest matching. “When two strangers meet, it may take a long and awkward conversation to discover their common interests or experiences,” Apple writes. Indeed. So what is the company proposing then?
Common interests and experiences of two or more users located close to each other can be identified from content, including automatically created usage data of the mobile devices. Usage data of a mobile device can be created based on activities performed on the mobile device (e.g., songs downloaded), a trajectory of the mobile device (e.g., places traveled), or other public data available from the mobile device (e.g., pictures shared).
In other words, your iPhone could help your find a matching friend, business partner or your next wife or husband. This could be a fit for Apple’s social network for music dubbed Ping, especially when combined with your real identity Apple has on file in iTunes. The document credits Apple engineer Shuvo Chatterjee with the invention. You can browse the patent application by typing in its ID (20110142016) into the United States Patent & Trademark office search engine.
As 9to5Mac reported Wednesday, Apple today has finally kicked off the much talked-about 2011 Back to School promotion which runs through September 20, 2011. The promotion comes with a notable change of freebie: Instead of a free iPod touch with every Mac purchase, the company this year decided to, as 9to5Mac exclusively reported Monday, give away a $100 iTunes gift card in the US and Canada (£65 iTunes gift cards in the UK, €75 in Europe) with a qualifying Mac purchase, meaning any MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac or Mac Pro model. Per Apple’s terms:
When you buy a new qualifying Mac with Apple education pricing from June 16, 2011, through September 20, 2011, you’ll get a $100 Back to School Card to use on the Mac App Store, the App Store, the iTunes Store, and the iBookstore.
iTunes gift cards can be redeemed in iTunes and used against any content purchase ranging from e-books, music, movies and television shows to apps for iOS devices and Macs. The promotion applies to college students, students accepted to college, parents buying for college students or students accepted to college and faculty or staff members at any grade level.
Not sure how this one went unnoticed, it’s a lovely tweak to Google’s mobile search page on iOS and Android devices. It is also noteworthy as Google rarely alters the look of its mobile landing page. Now, when you visit google.com from your mobile browser, you’ll notice four big icons sitting right below the search field: Restaurants, Coffee, Bars and More (which includes shops, ATMs, fast food and attractions).
Each icon takes you to a location-based listing with corresponding places, taking the pain out of finding the nearest place to eat or have a quick drink, wherever you happen to be. You can browse places in either list or map view, as well as check photos, reviews, business phone numbers and star ratings from credible sources such as Trip Advisor.
Apple retail stores undergo several updates each year to refine the shopping experience for its customers. These changes vary as Apple tries to continually innovate their stores, but one trend has been consistent; Apple is decreasing the presence of Mac software.
When Apple opened the doors of its first retail store in 2001 it had a substantial amount of Mac accessories and software. The software section was comprised of aisles going down the center of store as recent as 3 years ago. The Mac App store wasn’t released until January of 2011 but Apple began to shape the layout of their stores around its arrival beginning in 2008. Personal setup tables and open floor space to accommodate more visitors have replaced rows of software titles:
It seems the amount of available Mac titles decreases with each visual “overnight” Apple retail conducts. This trend was punctuated last night when Apple stores underwent an update and were left with one small section of Mac software. Apple is slowly shaping the public’s ways of installing software via a disc and promoting the use of their download-only Mac App Store. This trend will reach its summit this July when Apple’s next generation Mac operating system, OS X Lion, will exclusively be available through the App store.
The notion of delivering all Mac software via download makes sense for Apple for several reasons. First, their customers have grown accustomed to utilizing the App and iTunes stores for their media and iDevice applications. The Mac App Store will help recent PC switchers feel comfortable installing software. This helps decrease new user frustration. Second, it provides Apple more shelf and inventory space to sell Apple accessories, which bring in higher profit margins.
Finally, Apple will save a tremendous amount of money on software packages, shipping, bags, and paper receipts (which have been optional the last few years). These savings can be passed to the consumer. A great example of this is that OS X Lion will be available at launch for only $29. No one should be surprised if this time next year Apple does not have a dedicated area to Mac software. Indeed, it appears Apple’s plan to reduce our dependence on optical drives began years ago, which is evident in the evolution of their retail stores’ layouts, Apple’s download only software releases, and MacBook Air.
If you need one more reason against the iPhone nano – a miniaturized iPhone version which has been the rumor mill’s favorite pastime – Asymco’s Horace Dediu has a few in a piece entitled “iPhone Liquidity: Why an Unlocked Phone in the US Matters”. In a nutshell, the good ol’ iPhone we know today still has plenty of room for growth left before Apple eventually diversifies the lineup in order to cover a wider gamut of price points and market segments. Dediu’s piece tells us that Apple’s handset is still “a very restricted product” considering global mobile landscape:
If you contrast this with every other phone platform out there, Blackberry, Android or Symbian, the iPhone is extremely restricted and the number of people that are permitted to buy it much more limited.
For example, iPhone is still nowhere to be found in ten European countries with a combined population of hundred million people. Granted, we’re talking low-revenue markets such as Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Armenia, but still – a market’s a market. Asia, however is a different story. In Asia, Dediu writes, “the number of countries without iPhone distribution outnumber those with distribution”. Jump past the fold for more takeaways.
US Senators Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) took it upon themselves to prevent future Locationgates. Today, Franken and Blumenthal proposed new data privacy laws focused on smartphones and tablets, aiming to prevent Apples and Googles of this world from collecting location data before obtaining explicit consent from users, reportsCNN Money.
The bill introduced Wednesday would require device makers and app developers “to receive express consent” from mobile users “before collecting or sharing information about those users’ location with third parties.”
Yup, you read that right. They want new laws in place ensuring we accept privacy statements nobody ever reads anyway. They even coined a splashy name for it: The “Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011”. From where we’re standing, it’s pretty much in line with Verizon’s way of tackling location woes. Senator Franken’s statement right below.
Interesting screenshots from SpeechTrans Ultimate Powered By Nuance just hit our inbox. Some of the screenshots seem to depict an iPhone with a 4-inch screen.
Nuance is widely believed to be working deeply with Apple on their speech recognition technology but this is a third party app so the chances are slim that SpeechTrans knows something. Maybe they just pasted screenshots that were too big on their App..Another beauty below: Expand Expanding Close
