iOS Devices

Ahead of Apple’s launch of iOS in the Car later this year, developer Steven Troughton-Smith has seemingly activated the feature inside what we presume is the iOS Simulator. iOS in the Car allows an iOS 7 user to connect their iOS device to their car’s built-in center console display. On the console, they can use Apple Maps, read Messages, make phone calls, and control music…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Like he has done before, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller has taken to his Twitter account to share a new report highlighting a much higher amount of security threats on Android compared to iOS. Schiller linked to Cisco’s 2014 annual security report covering mobile malware trends over the last year, which happens to highlight a rise in malware on Android as one of its key takeaways:

Ninety-nine percent of all mobile malware in 2013 targeted Android devices. Not all mobile malware is designed to target specific devices, however… Many encounters involve phishing, likejacking, or other social engineering ruses, or forcible redirects to websites other than expected. An analysis of user agents by Cisco TRAC/SIO reveals that Android users, at 71 percent, have the highest encounter rates with all forms of web-delivered malware

That 71% encounter rate for web-delivered malware on Android mentioned above compares to just 14 percent for iPhone users, according to the report. The report’s finding that 99 percent of all mobile malware last year targeted Android marks an increase for Android when comparing to the last report Schiller shared. In March of last year, Schiller shared a report from security firm F-Secure that estimated Android had around 79% of all mobile malware for 2012 compared to just 0.7 percent for iOS.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Update: Apple says iBooks Textbooks are available in all countries with a paid iBooks store and that a full updated list of countries with access to iTunes U Course Manager can be found on its enrollment website.

Apple just put out a press release announcing that it’s expanding availability of its educational content– iBooks Textbooks and the iTunes U Course Manager– into new international markets. Starting today, both of the services are rolling out to new countries in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, bringing the total number of countries with textbooks up to 51 and the total number with access to the iTunes U Course Manager to 70. Apple also shared some stats on the growth of iBooks Textbooks, which now cover 100 percent of the US high school core curriculum:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Beats Music is now available for iPhone on the App Store, after being originally announced back in October. The app is a very stylised adaption of a typical music streaming service app, with Beats heavily pushing the idea of customisation and curation to distance it from its many competitors.

Expand
Expanding
Close

With Apple due to report its earnings a week from today, Fortune has run its usual roundup on the numbers analysts are predicting.

The consensus among the 44 analysts we’ve heard from so far — 27 professionals and 17 amateurs — is unit sales of 55.3 million iPhones, up 16% from the same quarter last year.

It’s a near-certainty the numbers will be high … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Adobe will soon make the iPad an even more viable solution for mobile content creation: the company will soon unleash a version of its popular Lightroom photo editing suite that is optimized for tablets. References to Lightroom for Mobile appeared on Adobe’s official website earlier this week, but they were immediately removed when we contacted Adobe for comment on the yet-to-be-announced product.

Adobe’s tagline for the product is “Take Lightroom anywhere,” but we were unable to locate screenshots of the application on Adobe’s website. The website also does not specifically note iPad support, but a chat representative from Adobe was able to pull up details about Lightroom for Mobile from Adobe’s systems and said that it is built for iPad.

The representative further indicated that the mobile version would largely lineup with the desktop version in terms of features…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Concept image: Nikola Cirkovic

I wrote in an earlier opinion piece that 2014 is the year when I expect Apple to finally give in and opt for a larger iPhone display. Assuming I’m right, the question then becomes: what approach will Apple take?

There are two ways of increasing the size of a display. First, you can keep the resolution the same and simply use larger pixels. That’s what happens when a manufacturer makes a 1080P HD TV in both 40- and 50-inch sizes, for example. Both have 1920×1080 pixel displays, it’s just that the 50-inch display has larger pixels.

That would be by far the simplest approach for Apple to take. Provided it keeps the aspect ratio the same as the iPhone 5/c/s, then it can continue to use an 1136×640 display. All existing apps continue to work as-is, developers don’t have to do any work to support the larger display and everyone is happy . Or are they… 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Image: thenextweb.com

Analysts say that the official launch of the iPhone on China Mobile could lead to subsidy wars as Chinese carriers compete to attract buyers. The predictions, quoted by Business Insider, follow price cuts by rival carriers China Unicom and China Telecom as China Mobile reports 1.2 million pre-orders.

China Mobile is currently offering the iPhone 5s free with a 24-month contract costing the equivalent of $98 a month. A 30-month contract on China Unicom costs $63 a month.

I do think you’re going to see a subsidy war coming,” said Michael Clendenin, managing director of Shanghai-based RedTech Advisors. “China Mobile, if they’re not making their targets on sales for these phones, they’re going to increase the subsidies […] It’s like airlines: the other guys will fall like dominoes, so China Unicom will do it and China Telecom will do it” … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

As planned, iPhone sales have started via China Mobile, the largest carrier in China, today. The official iPhone China Mobile deal, which covers both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, was announced in December. Earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook promoted the event with multiple interviews, calling the partnership a “beginning.” Subsequent reports indicated that millions of iPhones have already been ordered through China Mobile…

Expand
Expanding
Close

The Wall St. Journal today covers two different physical keyboard attachments for iPhone, the $100 (aptly-named?) ‘Typo’ and the Solomatrix Spike. The TL;DR is that both of these keyboards are OK (Joanna Stern seems to prefer the Typo) but have fatal flaws that push them towards edge cases – people who’ve recently just shifted away from a Blackberry, have sausage fingers, or suffer from some other problem with getting data into their phone via a screen.

Their real problem is that iOS on the iPhone isn’t designed for a physical keyboard. It is designed to flip back and forth, from landscape to portrait depending on the use and the app. It was designed from the very beginning to be agile and portable and with that portability, the ultimate sacrifice was made to the smartphone physical keyboard.

To this day, I don’t think I am faster at typing and multitasking  on an iPhone as I was on the physical keyboard of the 2007 Danger Sidekick that it replaced. But the wealth of other keyboard options and the ability to be both portrait and landscape more than make up for the speed.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The total number of Apple devices sold will equal the number of Windows PCs by some point this year, predicts Asymco’s Horace Dediu in an interesting piece of analysis.

The dark shaded area compares all Apple hardware – Mac plus iPad plus iPhone – with Windows PCs, and shows that by last year there were only 1.18 more Windows PCs than Apple devices. It’s of course a somewhat artificial comparison, as Dediu is including iPhones while excluding Windows Phones and tablets, but given the very limited success of Windows mobile devices to date, correcting that wouldn’t change the patterns too much.

What’s particularly interesting here, as John Gruber notes, is that the dramatic reversal kicked in well before the launch of the iPhone. Dediu and Gruber between them put forward a number of theories for this, and of these I think three are likely key …

Expand
Expanding
Close

We’ve seen Apple’s new iBeacon technology in use at several retail stores and events here in North America— Apple Stores, Macy’s, CES, MLB— but adoption of the new Bluetooth low power technology has been slower overseas. Beaconic aims to change that with a new iBeacon Retail Kit that will make it easier for businesses in Europe to deploy the technology. The concept of iBeacons is simple: As you walk around retail stores or other locations, your iOS device will communicate with iBeacons in proximity and display notifications, promotions, payment options, or other info setup by whoever deployed the nearby beacons. Beaconic’s new Retail Kit will make it easier for small businesses to get setup and track usage, and its software is available in several languages:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Thefts of Apple products made up 18 percent of all grand larcenies in New York City last year, reports the WSJ, citing NYPD figures. Of the 47,000 grand larcenies occuring in the city last year, 8,465 involved Apple products.

Many of the thefts happen on public transportation, where most people are buried in their devices and aren’t paying attention to their surroundings, said Joseph Giacalone, a retired New York Police Department detective. “It’s easy pickings,” he said … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Concept image: Stephen Olmstead

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone seven years ago last week, he described it as “three revolutionary devices” in one: touchscreen iPod, mobile phone and Internet communicator.

The iPhone wasn’t the first touchscreen smartphone. It wasn’t even close: Handspring launched the Treo 180 a full five years earlier (I know this because I owned one). Same with the iPod before it, launched three years after the MPMan (yep, I owned one of those too).

Apple has never been interested in being first to market, so no-one should be remotely surprised that others launched the smartwatch first. The company’s USP is its ability to take a relatively crude piece of technology being used exclusively by geeks and turn it into something so slick, beautiful and cool that mass-market consumers will find irresistible … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

This week at CES 2014, Allure Energy, makers of a $400 smart thermostat Nest competitor called EverSense, showed off an upcoming add-on to its system that uses Apple’s new Bluetooth LE iBeacon technology. Dubbed “Aura,” the small iBeacons will become an extension to the smart EverSense thermostat by allowing iBeacons to detect iOS devices in proximity and adjust the temperature of a room accordingly. After an initial setup, you’ll be able to adjust the temperature from any room with an Aura iBeacon just by entering the room:
Expand
Expanding
Close

While it’s been years since Apple made an appearance at CES in any official capacity, accessories that pair with its iOS devices have for several years dominated the show floor. This year was no different with most of the big trends–  fitness and health tracking wearables, Bluetooth controllers, and home automation products–  all designed and developed with the iPhone, iPad, and Mac in mind.  Below we’ve put together a roundup of the most interesting wearables, cases, controllers and more that we found for iOS devices. 
Expand
Expanding
Close