As we told you yesterday, a growing number of users report problems with the Google Now feature depleting their iPhone's battery fast due to its reliance on iOS location capabilities. On Monday, the Internet giant finally brought Google Now capabilities to iDevices via an update to its native Search iOS app.
Responding to the battery life concerns, Google on Thursday issued a statement denying any problems with the app draining your iPhone's battery...
Apple on Thursday started a countdown to fifty billion app downloads. The promotions is available via a dedicated iTunes page. Like the previous countdowns, Apple will award the lucky person who downloads the fifty billionth app with a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. iTunes Gift Cards can be used against any content purchase, including mobile and desktop applications, music, television shows, movies, etc.
In an interesting tweak to this year's countdown, the company will also give away a $500 App Store gift card to each of the next 50 people who download an app...
If you're a fan of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, you must be aware of an amusing party game Impending created specifically for the show. Hellen can be seen using the app to challenge her guests to name celebrities, sing, decipher silly accents, guess words written on the card on the guest's head and much more.
Guess what? Now everyone can become Ellen by downloading the Heads Up! to their iPhone.
Just invite your smartypants friends and let the party begin. The game is getting some surprisingly good reviews, it's backed by the Ellen brand and created by the same guys who brought you popular to-do list app Clear. What more could you want?
Good news, iPhone photography lovers! Facebook-owned Instagram has issued an update to its iOS and Android client today, introducing a new Photos of You feature - another way to share and discover stories on Instagram, basically a dedicated profile section which collects photos you’ve been tagged in.
As part of the roll-out, Instagram said users can now tag people as easily as you add hashtags. What's more, you can even tag any account on Instagram, "whether it’s your best friend, favorite coffee shop or even that adorable dog you follow". They also created a nice promo video to promote the feature, jump past the fold to watch it...
In the latest lesson on how to be a smart tech news consumer, we focus on why research pointing to Apple gains somehow is trumpeted as losses for the iPad maker.
Wednesday, research firm IDC announced Apple's tablet saw a 65 percent year-over-year gain in first-quarter shipments.
Yet several news outlets blared headlines of the iPad's market share falling below 40 percent. How was Apple's strong growth spun into an Android win?
The days of boxy computers are history, so why are the batteries which power them still the same shape? That's the question a pair of new Apple patent applications seek to answer. The patents filed in 2011 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office describe "non-rectangular batteries for portable devices."
The iPhone and iPad maker outlines a way to customize the shape of batteries to fit the flexibility of today's consumer electronics, including the growing array of wearable devices, such as the highly-discussed iWatch or Google's Glass eyewear...
Despite Apple's iPad growing 65.3 percent year over year, the company's share of the total tablet market dropped from the 58.1 percent a year ago to an IDC-estimated 39.6 percent during the first quarter of this year, largely thanks to Apple not participating in the sub-$300 segment.
The rise of these cheap tablets improved Google platform's web usage share, with Android smartphones and tablets now owning 26 percent of all web traffic, a 35 percent annual gain as measured by research firm NetApplications.
In other words, one out of each four mobile devices used on the web are Android-branded, though Apple's iPhone and iPad still account for a commanding 59.4 percent of the Internet's traffic generated by mobile devices...
Photoshop maker Adobe has a few more or less useful apps on the App Store, most of them tied to its Creative Cloud offering and the Creative Suite family of desktop products for pros.
Although the company caters to photography buffs with iPhone and iPad versions of Photoshop Express, Photoshop Touch, Ideas and other apps, they're pared down versions conceived as companion apps to their desktop counterparts.
But pro photographers have reasons to rejoice as Adobe's group product manager for Lightroom Tom Hogarty today on Photoshop guru Scott Kelby’s show The Grid showed off a yet unnamed prototype iPad app that will bring pro-level photo editing and image manipulation capabilities to the owners of the Apple tablet.
Among the features being promised: RAW image support, seamless sync that leverages Adobe's cloud technologies and advanced Lightroom parameters, such as exposure, clarity, shadows, highlights and white balance...
Australia's airline Qantas said back in November it would enable Passbook integration for boarding passes for domestic flights. In the meantime, Qantas partner American Airlines rolled out support for Passbook boarding passes, as did a bunch of major airlines around the world. Making good on its promise, Qantas yesterday finally released its own iOS app with Passbook integration for digital boarding passes, mobile check-ins, real-time flight changes and frequent flyers...
Former Apple SVP of Retail, Ron Johnson, lasted barely a year on the job. After the struggling department store chain reported a $13 billion annual decline in revenue, the board ingloriously booted Johnson whose greatest sin was trying to change way too many things at the same time, namely insisting on his shop-in-shop concept.
The irony of it: the boutique store approach could have easily breathed a new life into JCPenney's garage sale concept and stood a good chance of reinvigorating the firm's fugly brick-and-mortar locations.
Figuring the best thing to do at this point is wash its hands of this whole Ron Johnson adventure, JCPenney yesterday begun airing a new television commercial. Titled 'It's No Secret' it's a pathetic attempt at apologizing for chickening out of Johnson's vision for the company. The video is right past the fold...
A new report is out this afternoon, claiming the US Department of Defense is going to grant security approvals for Samsung's Galaxy smartphones, as well as Apple's iPhones and iPads running iOS 6 in the coming weeks.
The move is separate from the mobile device implementation plan that the Pentagon announced back in February, and could pave the way for Apple to gain more notable influence in the hard-to-reach government sector...
Well, this is certainly noteworthy. According to the third annual report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) titled "Who Has Your Back?", gadget giant Apple along with carriers AT&T and Verizon, Google's rival Yahoo and the forgotten social network MySpace all are very likely to give in to Uncle Sam's data demands.
Specifically, Apple and Yahoo scored one out of six possible stars, with Verizon and Yahoo rather ingloriously earning zero stars each. These companies' weak safeguard implementation does little to circumvent data demands and protect your private information from the government's prying eyes.
Whereas Apple and Yahoo only fight for users' privacy rights in Congress, companies like Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Dropbox go to great lengths to ensure privacy of your data, earning four out of six stars each...