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How Samsung changed the game on Apple by focusing on advertising and distribution

Ed Sutherland ∙ April 11, 2013

Diagnosing Apple's Wall Street woes has become a bit of a cottage industry, prompting some to crown the consumer tech giant a has-been, while other observers point to a resurgent future. Earlier this month, a Forbes business contributor took a shot, claiming South Korea's Samsung has overtaken Apple using the iPhone maker's own weapon: promotion.

After knocking out music giant Sony with the iPod, using the iPhone to drive BlackBerry to the fringes and destroying the PC market with the iPad, Apple is "milking" its hard-won gains. Meanwhile, Samsung has plowed revenue back into promotion, outspending Apple by more than four-to-one. Ad attack coupled with Samsung's much wider footprint helped the Galaxy maker to change the game on Apple...

Documents by Readdle goes universal, now available on iPhone

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 11, 2013

The App Store carries some handy programs for folks who need to edit Microsoft Office documents on their iPhone and iPad. If Google's acquisition of the popular app Quickoffice came as a shock and you were looking to jump ship, Readdle has you covered with today's update to their free Documents software. The application, which is now universal, has at last been updated with support for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Although Documents won't let you edit Microsoft Office documents, you can now view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on any iOS device you happen to own.

Plus, Documents comes with lots more features to help you manage a bunch of file types, it syncs with popular cloud storage services, comes with a beautiful media player and lets you even annotate PDFs...

Hero devices help LG join Apple and Samsung at the top of the smartphone food chain

Ed Sutherland ∙ April 11, 2013

LG is now the No. 3 smartphone maker, for the first time, as sales of its higher-end handsets lift it above HTC and other brands scrambling for the scraps left by Apple and Android. Although Samsung and Apple combined for 71.4 percent of the market, sales by the South Korean LG rose to 3.2 percent as HTC fell to fourth place on word of disappointing profits, according to research firm Strategy Analytics...

Mittens by Disney pounces onto iPhone and iPad [review]

Jim Gresham ∙ Updated February 18, 2018

Disney made quite the name for themselves in the iOS app world with hit titles like Where's My Water?, Where's My Perry?, and more recently Monsters, Inc. Run. Christian previously mentioned Disney's new physics puzzler Mittens would be a good one to keep your eye on. After spending a bit of my weekend with my new favorite feline friend, alley cat Mittens, I am happy to report that Disney has done it again.

The physics based puzzler is everything I have come to expect from my preferred iOS games. I'm not one to sit on the couch and plow through games on my iPad mini, but I do really like the pick up and play nature of this particular genre. It seems Disney may be perfecting this style game as it continues to develop quick, fun, and pleasing games anyone can immediately play with a small learning curve...

T-Mobile preps massive iPhone ad blitz, sales and availability tidbits surface

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

A well-informed publication has published some interesting details regarding T-Mobile's upcoming iPhone launch due on Friday, April 12. The Deutsche Telekom-owned carrier is said to be pulling out all the stops with a massively aggressive advertising blitz as plugged-in sources claim that T-Mobile made a major ad buy between 8:35 and 8:40 local time tomorrow evening.

And internal documents suggest that the carrier is dispersing at least 240,000 iPhone 5 units to company owned-retail stores for Friday morning. The carrier also confirmed the HTC One will be “coming soon” for $99 down payment and confirmed May 1 availability of the Galaxy S4 on May 1, but Apple watchers will no doubt be focused on first-day iPhone sales...

AT&T to light up LTE in 79 new markets by the end of summer

Cody Lee ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

T-Mobile may be two years late to the LTE party, but it has some ambitious rollout plans for its 4G network. In a press release yesterday, the carrier said it hopes to cover 200 million+ subscribers with LTE by the end of 2013.

But not wanting to give up any ground to the Deutsche Telekom-owned company, AT&T announced today some enterprising rollout plans of its own. The carrier says it will add LTE to 79 new markets by the end of the summer...

Cydia introduces new TSS Center, Saurik explains what happened to iOS 6 TSS data

Jeff Benjamin ∙ April 10, 2013

Recently, Saurik, the creator of Cydia, posted a new blog entry explaining the history of Cydia's TSS caching capabilities. As you know, Cydia has been able to automatically save off SHSH blobs for potential downgrade ability with jailbroken devices.

Things have changed rapidly over the years as iOS' security evolved. The earlier versions of iOS included absolutely no downgrade protection. Eventually, with the adaption of TSS, basic verification to make sure that you were installing newer firmware, instead of older firmware arrived. This security was enhanced further with the adoption of a new verification scheme — APTicket — which has proved to be a pain in the rear for would be downgraders. Yes, there have been, and will always be a few exceptions to that rule, but for the most part, Apple has done a good job of cutting off the ability to downgrade firmware.

What does all of this have to do with Cydia's new TSS Center? Well as it turns out, the APTickets saved for iOS 6.0-6.1.2 are all "useless", as they're incomplete tickets unsuitable for booting a device.

In a post on his blog named Where did my iOS 6 TSS data go? Saurik explains in verbose detail the issue at hand...

Tim Cook’s right-hand man reportedly in China dealing with PR crisis

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Apple's Executive Profile page lists Jeff Williams as the Senior Vice President of Operations. But according to people inside the company, he's much more important than that. Some folks even refer to him as "Cook's right-hand man."

So it should come as no surprise that, according to a new report, Williams is in Beijing this week dealing with Apple's major PR fallout in China, after taking severe criticism in recent weeks over its warranty practices in the country...

Apple looking for an engineer to help investigate flexible display tech

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 11, 2018

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

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 11, 2018

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

Ed Sutherland ∙ April 10, 2013

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

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 10, 2013

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...