9to5 Staff

A new survey by IHS iSuppli has confirmed that Apple was the best-performing smartphone vendor in the first quarter of this year, while Nokia and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion posted double-digit decline each. The entire smartphone market contracted 1.5 percent in terms of units shipped, the first sequential decrease since the beginning of 2009. It wasn’t unexpected due to the supply woes and the preceding holiday quarter being traditionally the most lucrative period for consumer tech.

Apple shipped 18.6 million iPhones, a 14.9 percent increase over the 16.2 million units from the holiday quarter. None of the remaining top five handset vendors matched Apple’s growth. Second-ranked HTC, for example, grew shipments by a modest 6.2 percent. Canada-based RIM rose 4.2 percent and is now trailing Apple by four percentage points. The iPhone hurt Motorola and Nokia the most in the first quarter of 2011.

The research firm contributed Apple’s growth to the Verizon iPhone that expanded Apple’s addressable market in the US. At the same time, the move “placed additional pressure” on Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC – all major Verizon Wireless customer – iSuppli’s senior analyst Tina Teng pointed out.

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It’s been four years since the original iPhone came out, but the rumored Facebook integration with iOS remains non-existent. iPhone users, however, needn’t eye their webOS- or BlackBerry-toting friends with envy – there’s an app for jailbroken devices that addresses this issue.

Native FB Upload, a two-buck download from the Cydia Store, enables you to share images by choosing a photo in the Photos app and tapping the new Facebook option in Export menu. Once you authorize via Facebook Connect, you can compose an optional message or share the image as is. Multiple photo uploads and other tweaks are being planned for future versions, Modmyi noted (via Cult of Mac).

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As Apple is about to finally flip the switch on a massive 500,000 square feet datacenter in North Carolina, said to be one of the biggest in the world, TechCrunch heard the company’s rumored iOS 5 voice recognition technology is driven by Nuance Communications’ technology that runs in the Apple cloud. A formal announcement is expected next month at WWDC, the publication claims.

More specifically, we’re hearing that Apple is running Nuance software — and possibly some of their hardware — in this new data center. Why? A few reasons. First, Apple will be able to process this voice information for iOS users faster. Second, it will prevent this data from going through third-party servers. And third, by running it on their own stack, Apple can build on top of the technology, and improve upon it as they see fit.

Nuance is behind Dragon Dictation, a free iOS app enabling advanced voice recognition on iOS devices. The app is powered by the company’s NaturallySpeaking technology which turns spoken word into text via the cloud. It supports numerous global languages and is advertised as being five times faster than typing on a virtual keyboard.

Apple’s 500,000 square feet datacenter in North Carolina

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Mobile devices, especially iOS gadgets, command the largest share of digital game downloads so it doesn’t really come as a surprise that big games publishers are scrambling to port famous franchises over to the iPhone. According to TouchArcade, Duke Nukem Forever is almost certainly in the works for iOS devices. The publication spotted a mention of the App Store in the game’s manual on Steam, leading them to speculate that Gearbox is planning an iOS release of Duke Nukem Forever as well.

What reason could there possibly be to include App Store licensing terms in a document for a PC game?

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Adobe, which last week updated Photoshop to work with its freshly announced iPad apps, has finally released said programs for iOS devices. Adobe Eazel, Adobe Nav and Adobe Color Lava, iPad companion apps for Photoshop, are now available for download on the App Store. Adobe Eazel is a finger-paint program that sells for five bucks. The app lets you send your artwork directly to Photoshop CS5 from any location, provided you have a network connection between your iPad and a computer. The remaining two apps sport even tighter integration with the popular image editing software. More information and videos after the break…

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Microsoft has released a new toolkit to help iOS developers write applications for Apple’s mobile platform that also play nice with cloud Windows, also known as Windows Azure. The Windows maker says the toolkit is available for its own Windows Phone platform as well, adding that a version for Android is due next month. The iOS tookit facilitates the creation of both iPhone and iPad apps developed using Objective-C and XCode. Why bother? Microsoft explains they want to “make it easier to target Windows Azure by offering native libraries for non-Microsoft platforms”.

Using the toolkits, developers can use the cloud to accelerate the creation of applications on the major mobile platforms.

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So you’ve recently purchased one of the brand spanking new iMacs that come with the latest hardware. The machine would be perfect if it weren’t for its standard 4GB RAM that begs to be upgraded? While you can build-to-order your machine at the online Apple store with up to 16GB RAM, it probably isn’t your most prudent choice given the company’s steep pricing for memory upgrades.

For example, Apple still thinks four 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM modules (for a total of 16GB RAM) are worth six hundred dollars. Why not instead take your money to Other World Computing or Trans Intl? Both firms offer comparable RAM for mid-2011 iMac models at a fraction of Apple’s price. For example, Other World Computing has a 16GB kit with your name on it for just $207.99. The same-capacity module will set you back $188 at Trans Intl.

Or better yet, drop $3,000 on a 32GB RAM update.

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Jobs, however, lost to a guy behind the bagless vacuum cleaner and another famous engineer credited with the construction of the first major British railway. Less than two weeks following Barron’s’ naming of Steve Jobs the world’s best CEO, Apple’s chief has been ranked third in a list of Engineering Heroes.

General Electric asked some nine hundred engineering undergraduates in the UK to cherry-pick their engineering heroes, reports MacWorld UK. Isambard Kingdom Brunel and James Dyson have both beaten Steve Jobs to the engineering punch. Jobs in turn was ranked higher than famous inventor, electrical engineer and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who came in fifth position.

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Steve Wozniak photo: Bob Pearce

Relax, he was referring to synthetic organisms with human-like looks and demeanor rather than Google’s software for handsets. Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder and the creator of the original Apple I and II computers from the mid-1970s, yesterday held an engaging commencement speech in front of the audience of Michigan State University graduates, as previously promised.

The beloved geek, the Woz gave the address alongside TIAA-CREF president and CEO Roger Ferguson Jr. Both men have received an honorary degree from the university. It was a typical commencement speech until the end, when the Apple employee #1 warned the machines are taking over. “We’ve created a new species, no question”, he said of computers and then quipped:

Every time we invent a computer to do something else, it’s doing our work for us, making ourselves less relevant. The cyborgs are winning! The androids are winning!

Check out a video clip of Woz’s speech after the break.

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DoubleTwist software advertised as “the iTunes for Android” in most recent update added support for Apple’s open AirPlay media streaming technology. This allows Android owners who use the free DoubleTwist smartphone app to wirelessly beam music, movies and photos to the Apple TV, in addition to compatible Sonos hardware. The life without wires, according to the developer, is a breeze with this app:

Wirelessly sync your iTunes playlists, photos and videos with your Android phone using your home WiFi network.

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Apple is the world’s most valuable brand in the post-recession world, says the latest 2011 Top 100 ranking of global brands by BrandZ, a Millward Brown subsidiary of advertising company WPP. The iPhone maker, which last year ranked third, knocked Google, the world’s most valuable brand in 2010. Apple emerged ahead other top brands from a variety of industries such as computers, automotive, telcos, banks and clothing, to name just a few.

The organization estimated Apple’s brand value at north of $153 billion, which shouldn’t be confused with Apple’s market capitalization that currently stands at a cool $324 billion. Google’s brand value dropped two percent to an estimated $111.5 billion, enough to rank second.

Apple earned an 84 percent increase in brand value with successful iterations of existing products like the iPhone, creation of the tablet category with iPad, and anticipation of a broadened strategy making the brand a trifecta of cloud computing, software, and innovative, well-designed devices.

The BrandZ rankings were first published five years. Apple’s brand value in the BrandZ rankings increased 859 percent from just $16 billion in 2006, thanks to the successful business with iOS devices that helped Apple become the world’s most profitable handset maker and the biggest mobile devices company by revenue.

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If photography on the go is your thing, you can be picky with a myriad of photography-focused software vying for your attention on the App Store. FX Photo Studio from MacPhun, the creators of Silent Movie Director, a video editing app I recently reviewed, has caught my attention recently. Now, I mostly use awesome Camera+, Photo fx and Instagram to capture and edit images so I approached FX Photo Studio with a skeptical eye. I mean, who needs yet another photography app, right?

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The Loop reports that US Senator Al Franken, who took Locationgate public, posted a list of witnesses for the next week’s Congressional hearing on privacy issues and location data gathering practices by Google and Apple. On the list is Bud Tribble, Apple’s vice president of software technology. Jobs and Tribble go way back. He’s been with Jobs since they built the original Macintosh and could be considered his right-hand man.

Tribble, an expert in software design and object-oriented programming, is credited with helping design the Mac operating system and user interface, serving as the manager of the original Macintosh software development team. He then followed Jobs to NeXT, Inc., where he was one of the founders acting as vice president of software development.

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Two interesting iOS tidbits this morning related to iOS. A rumor has it that Apple is in talks with YouKu, Chinese version of YouTube, over replacing the native YouTube app on iPhones in China because YouTube is still blocked in the country, writes TechNode. A trusted source told the publication that YouKu founder Victor Koo discussed the possibility with Apple’s chief Steve Jobs. The report is questionable knowing Apple has never replaced a standard iOS app with a third-party alternative. The other tidbit is official: Microsoft has released the Bing Maps SDK that allows programmers to embed Bing Maps inside their apps…

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If you recently upgraded to iOS 4.3.3 that fixed Locationgate woes, you’ll be delighted to know that untethered jailbreak and unlock for iOS 4.3.3 is now available. The iPhone Dev-team have updated their PwnageTool and redsn0w programs so it’s now possible to jailbreak iOS 4.3.3 using Mac and Windows in a way that doesn’t require connecting the device to a computer each time it’s rebooted.

The iOS 4.3.3 untethered jailbreak is based on the exploit created by @i0nic for iOS 4.3.1. The updated redsn0w tool also allows you to turn on multitasking gestures, the team noted in a blog post. If you wish to unlock your device for use with any carrier, there’s an app for that.

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The latest iMac family is full of surprises and one overlooked enhancement is the inclusion of souped up WiFi capable of hitting 450 Mbps speeds over wireless networks. Hardmac spotted a reference to this capability in the iMac’s system information. Apple first brought rhe 450Mbps WiFi features in the 2011 MacBook Pro family, but they haven’t been actively advertising it.

Apple changed their Airport card and also installed 3 antennas (instead of 2 before), something indispensable to be able simultaneously to use 3 channels of 150 Mbits/s.

In order to take advantage of the 450Mbps data transfer you need a compatible base station (either the current-generation Airport Extreme or Time Capsule). Make sure to connect to the base station using the 802.11n mode on the five gigahertz band GHz, with the simultaneous dual-band mode turned on.

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Oh, another pretty news reader, that’s what you must be thinking, right? Pay attention for Hitpad is your personalized window to relevant content that helps put those trending topics on Twitter and Google Trends into perspective by combining tweets, videos, images, news articles and web links into a uniquely designed news flow.

“Five minutes with Hitpad is like spending an hour browsing around”, developers Jay Meydad and Nir Holtzman Ninio wrote in the app’s iTunes description. So how does Hitpad differ compared to dozens of regular feeds readers or visual news readers such as Flipboard?

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Apple’s been on a roll lately. They sold a record 18.65 million iPhones in the first quarter and for the first time zoomed past Microsoft in terms of profitability. The 49,400 Apple employees helped the company earn $14 billion annually and pull 30 percent growth in earnings per share. Recognizing those strides and Apple’s rising fortunes, the company is now ranked 35th on the Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations. Just a year ago, Apple was 56th on the list. Fortune explains:

The company not only continues to expand its reach in existing markets, it also keeps creating new ones. Take the iPad, which showed the world the power of tablet computing when it was introduced last year. iPad 2 followed, and was one of the most highly anticipated electronic products this year.

And according to the latest smartphone survey by IDC, Apple has beaten Research In Motion and became the world’s second-best smartphone maker, right behind Nokia…

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And it costs a whopping $1,580 – enough to buy you a brand new 13-inch Air with 256GB flash storage. Courtesy of Other World Computing (OWC), the Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD upgrade is being advertised as the first and only third-party solid state storage upgrade for Apple’s ultrathin notebook.

We’re not sure about that, but it’s certainly the most capacious SSD for the Air at this point. Available sizes include 180/240/360/480GB variants priced at $480/$580/$1,180/$1,580. The 480GB module is nearly twice the capacity of the flagship 13-inch MacBook Air model. OWC provides the tools necessary for installation of your SSD.

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As of today, MobileMe stopped using Sync Services, Apple’s own platform for data synchronization between your programs and supported devices. As we pointed out, this has affected recently released Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 which relied on the platform to sync Outlook calendar with your iPhone. As a result, Mac people must physically connect their device and sync via iTunes, which kills the purpose of push calendar in the first place.

Alternatively, you can change your email client and go through the email server supported by the Mail app. Sounds like too much hassle just to keep your Outlook calendar and iOS gadget in perfect sync.There’s a workaround that lets you wirelessly sync Outlook calendar with your iOS device via Windows – on  your Mac.

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Various market surveys pegged Apple’s share of the holiday tablet market anywhere from 75 percent to more than the 95 percent Steve Jobs claimed at the iPad 2 introduction last February. Research firm Nielsen is out today with a new survey that in fact shows Apple growing its US tablet share rather than decline amid more than two hundred tablets swarming the market. The survey, which was fielded in Spring 2011, shows Apple controlling a whopping 82 percent of the US tablet market.

With new entrants like the Samsung Galaxy and the Motorola Xoom, the market for tablet computers is heating up in the United States, even though iPad continues to dominate the conversation – and market.

Interestingly, Samsung (four percent), Dell (three percent) and Motorola Mobility (two percent) devices collectively have nine percent market share, the same as the Other category. Other interesting observations reveal that tablets continue chipping away at other computing devices, namely our desktop and notebook computers…

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