Apple

Amazon buys Evi digital assistant, thwarts Apple partnership with Goodreads deal

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

Online retailer Amazon in an interesting personal assistant move has reportedly acquired Evi (pronounced ee-vee), a Cambridge, England headquartered startup that specialises in knowledge base and semantic search engine software. The company makes an iOS and Android app which uses the True Knowledge Answer engine and Nuance speech recognition platform to deliver answers to complex queries using natural language processing.

Apple's Siri also uses Nuance for voice recognition and the iPhone maker even threatened to kick Evi out of the App Store for being too similar to Siri, but later changed its mind. Amazon previously in January 2013 bought Ivona Software, a Polish-based specialist in voice technologies that competes with Nuance.

Combining Ivona and Evi could yield some interesting results, giving Apple's Siri a run for its money, even more so knowing Amazon makes tablets and is rumored to be building a smartphone...

Google’s new Babel chat platform includes ‘first class iOS experience’

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 9, 2016

More details are trickling in on what to expect of Google's upcoming unified messaging platform called Babel. Google's internal documentation and code snippets discovered Wednesday indicate the Babel thing will support media transfers during chat sessions and group chatting ability. More importantly, the service will be available as a native app on both Apple's iOS and Google's own Android platform.

Of course, Babel is also going to be available on the web, as a Chrome web app and inside Gmail. The upcoming messaging platform should solve Google's instant messaging conundrum that confuses users with nearly a doze different chat service that include Talk, Gmail, Google+ Hangout, Google Voice and Chat for Drive.

Even if way overdue, Babel will unify Google's many messaging platforms into a single service. The Internet giant is likely to formally announce Babel at its upcoming Google I/O conference, which runs May 15-17 in San Francisco...

One in five would buy iWatch, study finds

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Apple's rumored smartwatch, dubbed by the media iWatch, is a gadget nearly one in five people would buy, a study by ChangeWave Research has it.

With five percent respondents 'Very Likely' to buy an iWatch if and when it becomes available and an additional fourteen percent 'Likely' to purchase it, a total of nineteen percent of the 1,713 surveyed North Americans would consider a purchase.

Data bodes well for Apple as Gartner thinks the market for wearable smart electronics could be worth ten billion dollars by 2016. And if you ask analyst Katy Huberty, the iWatch could drive an incremental $10-$15 billion in revenue each year, assuming annual sales of 50 million units and an average selling price between $200 and $300...

Sprint, Verizon and AT&T announce major LTE expansion

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 12, 2017

Sprint and AT&T, respectively the nation's third and second-largest wireless carriers, announced availability of their fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution (LTE) radio technology in new markets. Sprint confirmed its customers in 21 new markets can take advantage of high-speed cellular downloads, including Los Angeles, Contra Costa County, California, Charlotte, North Carolina, Norfolk, Virginia, and Memphis, Tennessee. AT&T on its part announced it has turned on LTE in Florence, Massachusetts, Cushing, Oklahoma and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Verizon flipped the switch on LTE in two new markets...

China app store features pirated iOS apps

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 11, 2018

It wasn't long ago that Apple was being labeled a pirate in China. Now comes word of a pirate version of Apple's App Store, selling iOS apps that let iPhone or iPad owners skirt iTunes and install apps, no jailbreak required. However, there's one major catch: the website is available only within China, likely to dissuade Apple lawyers coming down like a ton of bricks.

Ironically, the service is called KuaiYong, which means "use quickly" in Chinese. We're unsure whether this refers to ease of use or "hurry before we are shut down." ...

Cut the Rope: Time Travel is now available

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

Om Nom, a charming little green monster, is back to collect some more stars in a Cut the Rope sequel, titled Cut the Rope: Time Travel. UK-based developer ZeptoLab, which last week teased the game, didn't embark much from the originally physics-based concept but it did bring something new to the table: time travel.

Cut the Rope: Time Travel has you playing in six different settings, including the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, a Pirate Ship, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and the Stone Age. Read on for more details...

Apple disables Push Notifications for AppGratis

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 18, 2013

The app recommendation engine AppGratis's woes with Apple continue with word that the iPhone maker has now disabled push alerts for the existing users of the software. AppGratis, which employs a staff of 40 at its Paris, France headquarters, saw its iOS app booted eleven days ago from the App Store for violating two clauses of Apple's iOS agreement with third-party developers. This being a major blow to the app curation engine, which claims some twelve million users, the company has emailed its user base to inform them of Apple's move...

Google’s Nexus 10 no threat to iPad sales

Ed Sutherland ∙ April 18, 2013

Here's an interesting tidbit we found this morning: Microsoft's Surface tablets could actually be outselling Google's latest Nexus 10. We understand every scuffle between Google and Apple is actually a proxy for the battle between Android and iOS, so the statement by blogger Benedict Evans caught our eyes. According to Evans, the Samsung-made Nexus 10 likely sold around 1.01 million of the Google tablets by the end of March.

This compares to the 1.5 million Surface tablets Microsoft has reportedly sold - not to mention the ten million iPad mini tablets purchased in just the last two months of the fourth quarter in fiscal 2012. While the latest Nexus tablet is no threat to the iPad, the calculations suggest something more important: strong distribution and a well-defined ecosystem can overcome big-name rivals...

Dubious budget iPhone plastic shell leaks

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 27, 2016

Apple's rumored less-pricey iPhone is thought to minimize manufacturing costs by abandoning the pricey two-tone aluminum body, replacing it with a less expensive polycarbonate shell akin to the white G3 iMac - or similar to the plastic body of the iPhone 3G/3GS, if you will. Now, rumor-mills, but also big media such as WSJ and Bloomberg, have repeated this particular data point numerous times, but we have never seen any physical evidence supporting the plastic body theory.

That changed Wednesday as case manufacturer Tactus, which recently leaked purported iPad 5 shell, posted an image that allegedly represents the back shell of the budget iPhone. We couldn't confirm its authenticity at press time so take this one with a pinch of salt, even more so knowing accessory makers often pull such stunts to get free press...

Twitter #music app launches on iPhone, get downloading

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 19, 2018

The popular micro-blogging turned media platform, Twitter, announced Wednesday that its new Music app is now available for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, free of charge. Twitter's music service on the web, which has been available in limited beta to a few celebrities, will open for everyone later today. Billed as "a new way to discover music and emerging artists", the native iOS app, which is conveniently named Twitter #music, basically wants to become your default social music discovery tool.

Currently, the software pulls songs from iTunes, Spotify and Rdio, but more sources are likely to be added in the future. Anyone can listen to iTunes previews in the app, but Rdio and Spotify subscribers can log in using their credentials to enjoy full tracks that are available in those respective catalogs...

Yahoo to launch new iOS weather app and iPad email client tomorrow

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 5, 2018

According to well-informed sources, Internet giant Yahoo will tomorrow release two new iOS applications, one a standalone weather software and the other an iPad version of its native email client. The news arrives hot on the heels of last week's claim by The Wall Street Journal, which has it on good authority that Apple and Yahoo are "in very early stages" of deepening their partnership in order to grow Yahoo's presence on mobile devices as Apple continues to push itself further away from Google...