The Google Mobile application for the iPhone now offers push notifications for Gmail and the Google Calendar. The app is free in the App Store and is said to offer "real" notifications that give you message type previews.
Previously iPhone users were required to use a 3rd party service to bring these types of notifications to their iPhones. Also included in the app is "search as you type" results.
Let us know if you're able to download the update and tell us how its working in our comment box.
Our favorite Apple walrus, Steve Wozniak, gave a mini sized press conference in Valencia, Spain last week. It's hard to imagine the big, cheerful fuzz king doing anything in small proportions, however the entire YouTube clip lasts just over 3 minutes. Of the topics "The Woz" was asked about and answered were, Apple & Google, the iPhone 4 antenna, Steve Jobs, and a feel-good recollection of his success as a young-spirited Apple enthusiast.
While there is nothing earth shattering revealed, (except maybe that beard ), it's nice seeing the big guy continuing to take his jolly approach to whatever comes his way. My favorite part of the clip comes at 2:10 when Wozniak states "While I do receive a small salary from Apple, I do virtually no real work". Well damn, that must be hard to get out of bed for each day. /sarcasm. No wonder he is always smiling.
My fiancee Tina just got her first iPhone today and one of the first few things we wanted to do was to sync our shared Google calendars to each other's iPhone. I thought that since we already share our Google calendars "online", it would automatically sync both our calendars on our iPhone by setting up Google Sync. It didn't. Turns out it was just a tiny bit more complicated than this.
Here are instructions to sync shared Google calendars between iPhones:You probably already know you can sync your Google emails, calendars and contacts with your iPhone using Google Sync. But do you know you can also sync your iPhone notes with your Gmail account?
The only requirement for being able to sync your notes with Gmail is that your iPhone be updated to iOS 4. When you set up your Gmail account on your iPhone, you will now have the option to sync your notes.
If you have several Gmail account set up on your iPhone, you will be able to sync your notes to specific accounts. In the top left corner of the Notes.app, a new button will appear letting you choose what account you want to sync with.
One downside to this is that it's a one-way sync, which means that you can only sync your notes from your iPhone to your Gmail account. You can't sync from Gmail notes to your iPhone.
This is some seriously big news. TechCrunch reported yesterday that according to their sources, Bing might replace Google as the default search engine in the upcoming iPhone OS 4.
To most people, this news won't mean much and some of you might even think it's not a big deal. But it is. It is a huge deal because it's just one more fight between Apple and Google in the great battle to take over the mobile market.
Back in December I wrote an article (one of the first on the topic, mind you) titled "Apple Vs Google: the war is on" in which I was kinda predicting that things were going to turn bad between the 2 giants. Then a bit later, rumors started going around that Apple and Microsoft might actually join forces to fight the oh-so-evil Google.
Today it seems that these rumors are resurfacing, and as anti-Google advocate, I'm hoping these rumors come true.
Google is rumored to be paying $100M/year to Apple for being the default search engine. My guess is that Microsoft offered at least the same amount. At any rates, I don't think Apple is in it for the money here ; after all, $100M is peanuts for Apple.
They're just realizing that the iPhone is powered by too many Google services (maps, YouTube, search), and if they want to fight Google on the mobile market, they have to fight them everywhere, which means getting rid of as many Google services.
While a Microsoft/Apple partnership would have sounded completely crazy a few years ago, it seems to make more and more sense today. Microsoft is not going to win the mobile battle (heck, they're already losing it) and they know it. They also know they have to partner with someone strong in the mobile market if they want to be relevant in search. Good move from Microsoft if indeed this rumor is true.
In the meanwhile, Apple surpasses Microsoft as the largest tech company in the world. It's crazy to see how quickly things can move.
What do you think?
A few months ago I wrote about the best RSS readers for iPhone. At the time, Byline was my favorite, even though it was missing a couple important features such as being able to share articles on Twitter.
The Byline app description in the App Store has been saying for months they are working on version 3 which will add tons of new features. Turns out they "worked on it" for so long that someone else outdid them.
My new favorite iPhone RSS reader is Reeder 2. I'm not going to get too much into details but I'd rather give a short and sweet review of it.
Pros:
Easy to use and well thought UI It is incredibly fast. Items sync in just seconds Ability to share on Twitter Ability to save to Delicious Quickly "star" an item Easily browse starred, new or all itemsCons:
I don't really like the light-colored UI I wish it gave a larger preview of itemsSee, many pros and very few cons. Reeder definitely took over the Byline spot in my iPhone dock. If you're in the market for an RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader, then give Reeder a try. At $2.99, it is the best RSS reader for iPhone you can get.
By the looks of all of Apple's announcements last week, it seems they will literally control all forms of technology in 10-15 years. iAd replaces Google Adsense and HTML5 replaces and ruins Adobe.
It’s a pretty bold statement but let’s take a deeper look. You might compare Apple’s actions to the likes of Google. Google’s motto over the past few years has been "if you can’t beat'em, buy'em". Google is perhaps best known for its business acquiring capabilities. Quite often there are jokes about Google taking over the world.
Google’s actions, however, are usually widely accepted by the public and encouraged. Admit it, you kind of like it when Google acquires a new company, probably because Google has a good track record of bettering acquired services and offering them free for public consumption.
When Google acquires a service, it usually means new and innovative things are coming soon. Apple, on the other hand, is not so friendly.
Apple knows that no matter what kind of business practices they use, consumers will still buy their products since they create desirable products. So Apple decides to not incorporate Adobe Flash into the iPhone OS. Let’s consider a few reasons as to why Apple might not want to allow Flash to run on their devices.
Virtually all forms of multimedia online today can be delivered through the Flash platform. From Hulu to illegal streams of newly released movies, Adobe Flash powers all forms of media on the internet. Using Flash, you can illegally listen to new music that is being streamed through a peer to peer website. You can also find tons of sites that offer streaming of new release movies via Flash. You can play thousands of graphically advanced games via Flash as well. So why does Apple not want to allow Flash on their device?
If the previous few sentences have not made it apparent yet, here’s why: Apple makes a killing selling movies, music, and games. Billions of songs have already been downloaded from the iTunes store, and billions of games have been downloaded from the AppStore. You read that right - that’s BILLIONS (1,000,000,000++). I would say that’s a pretty profitable source of income.
If Flash were to be allowed on the iPad and the iPhone, then there would essentially be no use for Apple’s iTunes Store. Why pay $9.99 for an album and over $15 for a movie or TV show when I can stream it online for free? If Flash were to be allowed on the iPad, then they would not be profiting from their App Store or iTunes Store, at all.
So they decide to make the iPad HTML5 friendly, which is essentially a new Adobe Flash, but newer technology and less memory intensive. All of today’s dynamic online advertisements are delivered with Flash. So Apple is trying to become the father of HTML5, meaning in the future they'll essentially control the content of every website, because website creators will want to conform to Apple's rules so that their own content will be allowed to be viewed on the iPad.
Several sites have already posted an HTML5 version of their website such as TED.com, WSJ, NYTimes, MSNBC, ABC, and CNN. They all already have HTML5 friendly videos, instead of Flash, and all this only for the iPad (and it’s only been what? A few days since the release of the iPad?).
Imagine 5 years from now the control that Apple will have. Adobe itself admits today that Apple is ruining their business. Today Apple says they don't want Flash on their device. So everyone conforms. Tomorrow they'll say they don't want Google to work on their device, so everyone conforms.
A few months ago I wrote an article titled Apple Vs google: the war is on. As often, I saw things coming fast and the feud between Google and Apple is now a big deal. For those of us who have bad memory, here are a few events that heated up the rivalry between the two giants.
First, Google entered the mobile market with Android, competing with iPhone OS Then Google entered the browser market with Chrome, competing with Safari Now Google wants to enter the OS market with Google OS, competing with Mac OS Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board Apple tried to buy mobile ad platform AdMob, to compete with Google Google outbid Apple and snatched AdMob Apple bought out PlaceBase, a company that does what Google Maps does Apple bought Lala in a hurry, lest Google buys it out first Apple bought digital ad agency Quattro Google enters the hardware business by making its own phone, directly competing with the iPhoneBoth companies have lots of businesses overlapping each other and that's good for us. Google and Apple are now competing on the following grounds: hardware, software, advertising, location services, and probably more that I forgot.
I don't know if you realize this yet but this is the beginning of an amazing war between Google and Apple. Apple is not just a computer company anymore. In the same way, Google is not just a search engine anymore.
Why is the rivalry between Google and Apple good for consumers?
This war between Google and Apple is good for 2 main reasons. First, let's talk about innovation. When 2 (or more companies) fight for a market, one of the several ways they can outdo each other is by innovating. With Apple in the same room as Google, they won't have any choice but to provide users what they really want, and not slow down feature releases like Apple has been doing for a while.
Remember how we were waiting for copy/paste on the iPhone? Remember how we're still waiting for multitasking? Remember this shitty camera on the iPhone? Well this is a thing of the past. With new phones like the Nexus One delivering the quality that you might expect from such a device, Apple will have to come up with at least as good as Google.
The second reason this war between Google and Apple is good for consumers is that prices might go down just a bit. Apple is not the kind of company that sells cheap products. That's part of their marketing. They know people will pay more for quality product with a little apple on it.
However I believe that in the long run (I'm talking a few years from now), Apple will have no choice but reducing its prices to align its strategy on Google's.
I really don't think the price war is coming anytime soon. As I said above it will take a few years. But one thing I am sure of, it's that Apple will now move its butt and come up with an amazing iPhone 4.0 in a few months. They won't do that to please you. They will do that because Google leaves them no choice.
Go Apple, go Google. Beat each other up. We users are waiting to see what good is going to come out of your feud.
[Image: Business Week]
If you have a Microsoft Exchange account set up on your iPhone, you know how useful it is. MS Exchange has become more popular on the iPhone lately since Google implemented Google Sync for iPhone, which allows you to sync your email, contacts and calendars over the air. Exchange is also very popular among enterprise users.
One downside of Microsoft Exchange for iPhone is that you cannot have multiple Exchange accounts on one iPhone. This just changed thanks to some smart users of the ModMyi forum and an iPhone dev.
I was in the process of writing a long tutorial on how to set up multiple Exchange accounts on your iPhone when I found out thanks to JAiB that there is now an application in Cydia that does the hard work for you. If you want to add an exchange account the hard way, then read these instructions on LifeHacker. If you want to go the easy way, read on...
There is now a simple way to add a second Exchange account to your iPhone. It's an app available in Cydia called AddExchange. Launch Cydia, look for AddExchange and install it.
After installing AddExchange, you launch the app from its springboard icon. From there, you simply tap a “+” button, and that’s it! AddExchange creates a new Exchange account behind the scenes, and names it SRV2. All you have to do at this point is open up its settings and change the defaults to whatever your second Exchange server uses. For me, I just changed it to use Google’s sync settings.
Looks simple enough. The downside? You have to be jailbroken but I guess if you're reading this blog, that shouldn't be much of an issue for you...
If you've tried AddExchange, I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Does it perform as well as it is supposed to? Have you found any caveat yet?
Last week I wrote about the new war that is sparkling between Apple and Google and in an interesting article, PC World even suggests that Apple may go as far as partnering with Microsoft in order to fight the almighty Google.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Apple could build its entire iPhone strategy on this one Arabian proverb. The combination of the rising smartphone stake held by the iPhone, and Microsoft's dominant position among enterprise communications and productivity applications could create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Alex Williams over at RWW is more specific about the possible synergies of an Apple/Microsoft alliance:
As PCWorld points out, Microsoft may be smart to team up with Apple. The iPhone is a solid, smart phone. Microsoft could do well by developing applications for the iPhone that serve its customers. Its Exchange Server and Office products still dominate the enterprise. As it is platform agnostic, Microsoft can develop applications for the iPhone that support its customers and protects its market base.
Apple needs a good partner like Microsoft to make any significant dent in the enterprise. It does not have the enterprise infrastructure like Research in Motion does with the Blackberry Server. Without an enterprise management service, Apple will find it tough for the iPhone to make any deep play into the corporate world.
Interesting, isn't it? I'm sure some fanboys out there would cut their own throats opened if Apple and Microsoft joined forces but all in all, I think that it might be a great move from the two giants to put a stop to Google's uber dominance of the interweb.
What do you think?
Last week, Apple purchased online music site Lala for $85 million. Rumors are already flying that Apple acquired the start up for the quality of its engineers, and most importantly because it wants to move iTunes to the cloud as music streaming is getting more and more mainstream so to speak.
There is another reason why Apple bought Lala: it didn't want Google to buy it first! It sounds a little childish but billions are at stake and it is safe to say that the war between Apple and Google is just starting.
According to the WSJ:
The twin pursuit of the start-ups reveal that the two tech titans have further plans to move deeper into each other's business: Apple wanted to get into advertising, while Google sought a music service.
The relationship between the two companies has been heating up for quite a bit. First the resignation of Schmidt from Apple's board, then the rejection of Google Voice from the App Store. More recently, Google snatched AdMob, the mobile advertising platform, from Apple. Now, Google is even entering the mobile market with its own device: the Google Phone.
Things are about to get ugly as the two companies will start bumping into each other more and more. I think competition is great for innovation and for bringing prices down and I can't wait to see what's to come in the close future.
Me and my other half will be traveling for about a year starting November 3rd. That kind of long trip requires a minimum of preparation, and figuring out how to keep my iPhone up-to-date is pretty high on the list of things to do.
My biggest issue is for syncing contacts and calendars while we're away. I will have a netbook but this netbook doesn't have Outlook, which prevents me from syncing and backing up contacts and calendars with my PC.
After a little bit of digging around, it appears that Google Sync is my best chance to keep my iPhone contacts and calendars safe. As reluctant as I am to completely rely on Google (I'm a Google hater), I didn't have many options. Of course I could choose to pay $99/year for MobileMe but I think this service is a terrible joke aiming at making money off Fan Boys. I'd rather go with the free Google Sync alternative...
Setting up Google Sync took me about 10 minutes from start to finish, including test time. It is very easy and straightforward. This step by step guide will show you how to set up Google Sync on your iPhone and sync your iPhone contacts and calendars with Google over the air and get push Gmail as well.