There's been a lot of talk lately regarding Apple and its efforts to broaden the use of iOS in government agencies. The latest report says the US Department of Defense is close to granting both the iPhone and iPad approval for secure use.
Today comes word that the DoD might have just received the green-light it needed to move forward. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST) just announced that iOS 6 has achieved FIPS 140-2 certification (Level 1)...
After months of silence, reports regarding the next major version of iOS have really picked up in recent weeks. Most chatter points to the same thing: iOS 7 will sport an all-new, flatter interface, and the redesign has Apple running behind.
And this afternoon, those two points are reiterated in a new report by AllThingsD. The tech blog says that, according to its sources, iOS 7 is such a big design overhaul, Apple has had to pull engineers from other projects to help it along...
It's been six months since Tim Cook reshuffled Apple's leadership team, firing iOS architect Scott Forstall over his abrasive management style and unwillingness to collaborate with other members of the executive team, namely Apple's industrial design guru, the 46-year-old Jonathan Ive.
As a result of the shake-up, Ive has assumed much broader responsibilities that now encompass all of Apple's design, both the look and feel of its hardware and software.
Apple's press release stated that America's most influential Briton "will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company" and today Bloomberg sheds more light on the difficulties Ive faces in the massively challenging overhaul of iOS 7, Apple's mobile operating system powering iPhones, iPads and iPods...
Some intriguing numbers were released Monday on how one research firm views the smartphone race between iOS and Android. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Google's Android averages a 64 percent unit share of the smartphone market across ten countries.
Apple leads in Japan while Android's doing its best in Spain, where the mobile software owns an astounding 93 percent of the smartphone market.
In the U.S., the race is much tighter, with Android holding 49.3 percent and Apple owning 43.7 percent of the domestic market. But the rivals might be even closer as observers question how accurate Kantar is, given recent iPhone sales reports by U.S. carriers...
Hot on the heels of a pair of yesterday's reports which asserted that Apple's upcoming iOS 7 will have a "very flat" user interface akin to Windows Phone's 'Metro' visual style - along with Mac OS X 10.9 borrowing core multitasking features from iOS 7 - 9to5Mac writer Mark Gurman is back at it again with another exclusive. Today's story details an alleged integration of Apple's Siri digital personal assistant and in-house built Maps service in iOS 7 with your car's dashboard...
OS X 10.9, the next major revision to Apple's operating system for Macs internally codenamed 'Cabernet', is up for introduction later this year, according to a well-informed writer. Specifically, Apple is apparently bringing more of core iOS features to its desktop operating system.
This entails stuff like iOS style multitasking that should prove functional by allowing background tasks to pause like on the iPhone and iPad. Finder, the Mac's long-standing default file manager, is understood to gain power features such as tabbed browsing modes and tags.
An enhanced Safari browser is thought to include a redesigned backend for improved page loading, speed and efficiency, which reminds us a lot of Turbo browsing mode from the Opera mini browser...
On April 5, Apple acknowledged via a support document that it “will be changing the behavior of VPN On Demand for iOS devices using iOS 6.1 and later” due to a lawsuit by patent holding firm VirnetX file against Apple in November 2011. VPN technology, which stands for Virtual Private Networking, extends corporate networks securely across public networks like the Internet, allowing users to access a private network as if they were directly connected to it.
Apple originally planned to remove the 'Always' configuration option for VPN On Demand with the 'Establish if needed' option. The revised document specifically mentions Apple will not be changing the VPN behavior on "devices that have already been shipped"...
You would think, given Android's raw numerical advantage, that app developers would first build for the larger market. However, Apple's iOS appears to offer companies other, more valuable qualities. Indeed, one need only look to last Friday, when Twitter unveiled its #music service - available initially only to iOS users. Another iOS exclusive, Twitter's Vine, has yet to hit the Android platform.
Key to why companies are still developing apps first for iOS are findings that Apple's mobile software is both used more often and the users are more loyal to the apps they download. What is Android's response: change how such things are measured....
Having posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings yesterday, Apple this morning officially announced that its annual developers conference will take place at Moscone West in San Francisco from Monday, June 10 until Friday, June 14. I know what you must be wondering: will the five-day conference serve as a launchpad for a next major revision to Apple's iOS and OS X operating systems, right?
According to Apple's marketing honcho Phil Schiller, that's in fact in the cards. “Our developers have had the most prolific and profitable year ever, and we’re excited to show them the latest advances in software technologies and developer tools to help them create innovative new apps," he was quoted as saying in a press release...
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...
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." ...
A pair of reports issued yesterday really put the growth of mobile in perspective. Currently, the mobile landscape is dominated by two players - Apple's iOS and Google's Android.
While Apple is increasingly favored by companies big and small, Android has become the go-to vector for mobile malware, it seems.
Attacks involving mobile devices has risen dramatically in the space of just one year, skyrocketing to more than 36,000 instances in 2012, up from only 792 cases, according to a security research firm.
Meanwhile, large companies are adopting Apple devices at a faster clip than Android, according to another report...