Month: April 2013

Apple looking for an engineer to help investigate flexible display tech

According to a job listing posted on its website April 1, Apple is looking for a Senior Optical Engineer to lead the investigation on emerging display technologies, including high efficiency LCD panels and flexible displays.

The latter seems to confirm speculation that Apple is interested in incorporating flexible display tech into future iOS devices—something that's been hinted at in patent filings, and brought up in recent iWatch rumors...

Apple licenses $10 million worth of patents filed by Palm and others

This is kind of interesting. Access, a Japan-based software company, published a release on its website this morning noting that it had entered a licensing agreement with Apple for a number of its patents. The firm's portfolio is quite large, featuring IP from Bell, Palm and others.

The particular patents that Apple is said to have acquired the rights to came from PalmSource, the company behind Palm's original mobile operating system. In 2003, it spun off of Palm as an independent company, and in 2005, Access acquired it and its intelectual property...

Nearly half of U.S. teens own an iPhone, 62% are planning to buy one

Although it sometimes seems like every teen has an iPhone, we are not quite there, according to new research. Some 48 percent of teens say they own the Apple smartphone with 62 percent expecting to buy an iPhone as their next handset.

The 48 percent of teen-owned iPhones is up from 40 percent registered during fall 2012, according to Piper Jaffray's 25th bi-annual teen survey. Meanwhile, just over 20 percent of teens surveyed said they either own or plan to purchase a smartphone powered by Google's Android mobile operating software...

Mr. Runner 2: The Masks confirmed for April 24

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnfyM6xs7sg

Mr. Runner, in case you aren't aware of it, is Zing Games' endless runner with an interesting side-scrolling twist and nice retro-like graphics. People downloaded it over five million times so it has some respectable following out there. Two and a half years later, Zing is set to release a sequel, titled Mr. Runner 2: The Masks.

Exploiting the side-scrolling mechanics further, Mr. Runner 2 adds a bunch of colorful backgrounds that should shine on Retina screens (art direction indeed looks stunning), 32 level across four dream-like worlds worlds with different themes and challenges, plus the new cartoony characters.

I'll be on the lookout for this one when it hits the App Store on April 24, that's for sure. By the way, there's more to this trailer than meets the eye. Read on for the full disclosure...

New report claims Microsoft Office landing on iOS next fall

Over the last several months, there's been a lot of talk regarding the potential for an iOS version of MS Office. Folks particularly want to see it land on the iPad, as research shows the move could be worth some $2.5 billion to Microsoft.

But despite all of the chatter, we have yet to see any indication that Office is on its way to Apple's mobile platform. And it doesn't look like we're going to anytime soon. A new report suggests the app suite won't land on iOS until next fall...

LookAway Player brings Galaxy S4-like Smart Pause eye-tracking to iPhone

Samsung has been promoting its eye-tracking technology, which debuted on the Galaxy S3, for some time now. As an S3 owner, I must say I wasn't impressed with the handset's ability to automatically shut down the display when looking away: it's taxing on the battery and not very reliable. With the Galaxy S4, which is scheduled to go on sale by end of April, Samsung is doubling down on eye-tracking with a few related new features like Smart Scroll and Smart Pause.

And now, a new iPhone app has been released which brings the Smart Pause-like functionality to the iPhone...

Major Foursquare update focuses on search and Explore recommendations

Celebrating its fourth anniversary, the location-based social networking service Foursquare today pushed a major new version of its mobile app, bringing out new features that tap over 3.5 billion check-ins users have made on the service thus far. "With the new Foursquare 6.0, we’re crunching all our data to show the best of what’s nearby, anywhere in the world, the second you open up the app," the team wrote in a blog post Wednesday. Here's what's new...

AppGratis rejection may point to wider App Store enforcement

Apple may be preparing to scrub its App Store of companies offering to promote other apps through paid partnerships with their developers.

The removal of the AppGratis curation software from the App Store earlier this week "was the first step" by Apple to enforce the recently-announced portions of the App Store Review Guidelines, according to one tech news outlet.

And while the AppGratis teams argues this is “far from finished,” looks like the legitimacy of the App Store's ranking feature is at stake. On the surface, it seems Apple believes it is being threatened by third-party software for iDevices designed to recommend other apps, including promoting apps via social media.

Although developers debate the meaning of two clauses in Apple's guidelines, the iPhone and iPad maker wants to head off any confusion by consumers, the Wednesday report suggests...

Pro-Samsung paper: Apple excluded Samsung from A7 chip production

We've been hearing lots of rumors claiming that Apple is taking its lucrative chip biz contract away from Samsung in the final sign that the partnership between the two firms on parts has all but fallen apart. What's really interesting this time around is that a Korean publication that typically favors Samsung now claims that Apple has excluded Samsung entirely from its next-generation chip development project.

That's a major development knowing Apple's been paying billions of dollars to the Galaxy maker's semiconductor arm to manufacture iDevice processor, using Apple-designed silicon blueprints...

Foxconn expectedly experiences sales lull amid seasonal iPhone decline

Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn, assembles many Apple products, including iPhones and iPads.

And with an estimated 60 to 70 percent of its revenues owed to the Apple orders account, Foxconn's earnings are scrutinized for any possible hint which could point to increasing or decreasing demand for Apple products.

Today, the contract manufacturer has posted a nineteen percent decline in sales in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. As you'd expect, Reuters immediately speculated the numbers are down because the company is "hurt by disappointing demand for the iPhone"...

Alleged iPad 5 front part with narrower bezels leaks

Multiple reports have pointed to Apple's fifth-generation iPad adopting design cues of its little brother, the iPad mini. Wednesday, another evidence surfaced suggesting that the iPad 5 indeed has the skinnier side bezels much akin to the iPad mini. Additionally, the gizmo is said to also borrow the iPad mini's thin appearance, be lighter and resemble its aluminum design. Here's a pair of photographs said to depict the device's front panel which has reportedly leaked somewhere out of China...

Stone Age: The Board Game builds empires on your iOS device

I consider myself an avid board gamer. I’ve always loved them. Family night at my house meant hours and hours of monopoly. Even road trips required some travel version of Hasbro’s greatest hits. As I got older, I discovered some of the more complex board games and began what can now only be considered an unhealthy fascination with the genre.

I think of it as unhealthy because I will regularly fork over between $50 and $80 for a game that will inevitably end up on a shelf, having been opened once. You see. My friends don’t play board game. They either prefer role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, or just don’t waste time with games at all.

That’s why I love board game apps so much. Most of them let you play a full game against one or more computer-generated opponents. Some of them even allow you to compete against others through Game Center. Stone Age: The Board Game by Campfire Creations is one of those board game apps that let’s you play alone, with friends, or against perfect strangers online.

The goal of this empire-building game is to earn more victory points than your opponent. To do so, collect buildings, workers, tools, and specialists through collecting resources and trading with other tribes. The more bountiful your land, the more points you earn. The player with the most victory points at the end of the game wins...