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Facebook to take on Google with new search tool

Cody Lee ∙ January 15, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSji6Y66aKo

Facebook has just kicked off its highly anticipated "come and see what we’re building" event, and it's first big announcement of the day is its new search tool. It's not necessarily a web search per se, but a graph search, capable of crawling all of Facebook's data.

It will help you answer questions like: what are some things my friends like, what kind of music are they listening to, what about places my friends have been to or liked and much more more. We have more details on Facebook's new search tool after the fold...

Judge green-lights Kodak patent sale to Apple-Google consortium

Cody Lee ∙ January 11, 2013

Last year, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and came up with a plan to sell off its collection of imaging patents to pay off its debts. It wanted more than $2 billion for the IP, but ended up settling on a $525 million offer from a consortium of companies led by Apple and Google. And today, Bankruptcy Court Judge Allan Gropper has green-lighted the deal...

Google releases a brand new iPhone application, Coordinate

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

Google has just release a brand new application for the iPhone on the App Store. Dubbed Coordinate, it's a workforce management tool aimed at business users that the company says will improve the efficiency of your mobile teams. The Mountain View, California-headquartered search Goliath explains that by getting real-time visibility into where teams are and what jobs they are doing, "work can be allocated in a smarter, more efficient way" using the mobile Coordinate app. The software is targeted at businesses so it doesn't work with consumer Google accounts...

iPad Inc: Apple tablet earns more than McDonalds on Fortune 500

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

Has all the gloom-and-doom talk about the iPhone and iPad gotten you down? Are you worried Apple's three-year-old tablet is a bit long in the tooth - especially against Samsung and other Android devices? Well, turn that frown upside down. The iPad isn't going away. Indeed, one analyst says iPad sales are bigger than McDonald's, Nike and many other Fortune 500 companies. In 2012, iPad sales reaped $32 billion, amounting to 60 percent of tablets sold. If the iPad was a company, it would be eleventh largest tech firm in the United States, says Bernstein's Toni Sacconaghi.

We won't see a repeat of that in 2013, however. No, the iPad is expected to rake in an astounding $46 billion and grow 75 percent...

Tablets to crush notebooks in 2013 as PCs become trucks

Ed Sutherland ∙ January 9, 2013

The argument over whether tablets should be classified as PCs could soon be moot. Shipments of devices such as Apple's iPad are expected to overtake notebook PCs in 2013. The cause: tablet (iPad) shipments are growing by double-digit percentages while PC demand is falling off a cliff - even in emerging markets...

AT&T confirms ‘best-ever’ sales of iPhone and Android smartphones

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 8, 2013

Ahead of its earnings call pertaining to calendar 2012 fourth-quarter results scheduled for January 24, carrier AT&T just announced, reporting 'best-ever' sales of Apple and Android smartphones. The Dallas, Texas wireless company sold a record ten million smartphones powered by Apple's and Google's platform during the holiday quarter of 2012 as Android and iPhone sales hit all-time highs. The figure beats the year-ago quarter when AT&T moved 9.4 million smartphones, 7.6 million of them being iPhones.

The “best-ever quarterly sales of Android and Apple smartphones”, according to AT&T Mobility President and Chief Executive Officer Ralph de la Vega, came down to an average of 110,000 smartphone sales each day. “These are the industry’s most valuable postpaid subscribers with average revenues twice that of non-smartphone subscribers", he noted...

Consumer Reports places iPhone 5 among the worst of top smartphones

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Consumer reports is an American Magazine (and web resource) that has been bringing its readers reviews and comparisons of consumer products and services for nearly 80 years now. So needless to say, their opinions are highly regarded but many.

But I know a few iPhone 5 owners that aren't going to agree with its latest report regarding flagship smartphones. In its February 2013 issue, the magazine ranks Apple's handset as one of the worst high-end devices available on the larger US carriers...

Weird bug adds ‘praises the iPad’ at the end of Google queries

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 24, 2016

The rivalry between Apple and Google is arguably one of the biggest in the tech world, maybe even the world in general. The two companies are constantly fighting each other for smartphone and tablet marketshare, and they both have legions of loyal fans.

That's what makes this next story so amusing. A new bug has been discovered in the Google Now and Translate apps that show Apple a bit more love than you'd expect from a rival. Enter the right queries, and both apps will, oddly enough, "praise the iPad."

Apple passes LG for second U.S. spot as iOS-Android duopoly tops 90%

Ed Sutherland ∙ January 3, 2013

Lots of interesting data points to chew on in the latest comScore survey pertaining to cell phone sales in the United States during a three-month period ending November 2012. According to data, having knocked LG out of the position it held, Apple rose to become the second cell phone maker in the United States, despite only making smartphones.

Furthermore, nearly one out of each five mobile phone owners in the country is now using an iPhone. Looking just at smartphones, more than one in three U.S. subscribers now own a 'boring' iPhone. And as Apple and Samsung remain the only two smartphone vendors seeing growth in the U.S., no wonder iOS and Android now hold 90 percent of the country's market for smartphones. Talk about duopoly!

Apple moves to patent iOS Notification Center it cribbed from Android

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 12, 2018

We're not sure this was the right move on Apple's part, but the company has in fact filed for the iOS Notification Center patent with both the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization. While the document tries to outline the feature in excruciating detail, even the most ardent Apple fans would have to admit that the feature is way too similar to Google's Notification Bar in Android.

To make matters worse, Google got there first as its Android software had the Notification Bar in place before Apple introduced Notification Center in iOS 5, which was released in June 2011.

Maybe Apple hastily moved to file for this patent because Samsung last month filed a lawsuit in its home country against Apple regarding the iOS Notification Center, arguing the feature infringes on one of its active patents?

It was a very appy holiday season for iOS, Android

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 23, 2018

Good news for developers: iOS and Android together accounted for a massive 1.76 billion app downloads around the world between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, per research by ad firm Flurry. That's more than a marked improvement compared to the 1.2 billion apps that were downloaded last year across both Android and iOS. Think about it, 1.76 billion downloads in just seven days.

In fact, a number of weeks since late November delivered more than a billion downloads. It wasn't that long ago that a billion downloads was considered a remarkable achievement throughout the span of the entire year, let alone weeks or months.

And if that data point didn't give you a pause, consider this: based on historical data, Flurry expects app downloads to regularly hit the one billion milestone each week going forward. Doing a quick math in your head, at that rate both iOS and Android should account for at least 52 billion downloads in 2013...

Japan is happy to finally get iBookstore in 2013

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Apple will open an iBookstore in Japan during 2013 with a handful of local publishers supplying their electronic books. Unlike Apple, rival tech giants began selling e-books in the Asian nation last year. However, multiple reports disagree on the timing. One local report suggests as early as January, while another tech news site calls that "far too optimistic". Although the iBookstore has been in Japan since 2010, it has offered only public-domain titles due to reluctance by Japanese publishers, who feared e-books would cut into sales of traditionally printed books...