The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) announced today a draft of the new video compression standard called H.265 and also known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and MPEG-H Part 2. As the name suggests, it delivers the same video quality in half the bandwidth of the current (nearly a decade old) H.264 standard, which is adopted across Apple's iOS and OS X platforms...
A developer took it upon himself to create a handy chart with all of Apple's iOS devices, their key hardware characteristics and iOS software builds running. Even a brief glance reveals very little fragmentation as approximately 70 percent of all iOS devices in the wild are shown running iOS 5, the latest public version of Apple's mobile operating system.
The upcoming iOS 6 is already on five percent of devices in the wild and iOS 4 is still found on approximately ten percent of devices. On the hardware front, both the third-generation iPod touch/iPhone and newer plus all iPad models run on the ARMv7 application processor.
This makes software optimization much easier than on the Android platform, where a variety of form factors, hardware configurations and device models contribute to high fragmentation....
As you know, Apple is planning to deploy a much smaller dock connector with MagSafe-like functionality across all future iOS devices this fall. And contrary to Reuters calling for a 19-pin design, purported photos from two days ago show fewer pins and noticeably smaller design compared to your regular USB connector.
And now, a new report sheds more light on the features the new I/O will provide, including faster data transfer and orientation independence...
Chip giant Intel is working on a new technology for its 2013 Ultrabook portable platform that is said to incorporate wireless charging between notebooks and mobile devices, per a new report out of Asia based on sources from the upstream supply chain.
As MacBooks use Intel's chips, Apple could adopt this upcoming technology from Intel to enable wireless charging between future MacBooks and your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch...
The Apple v. Samsung case is a peep show of sorts, a pornographic public showing of the two technology giant's closely kept secrets to the extent that we have for the first time been allowed to examine a bunch of early device prototypes, read internal communication about Apple's engineering process, including tidbits like Apple's 'kitchen' brainstorming, and laugh over such mundane things as stickers on court exhibits.
And now, a very important and confidential piece of information has also been publicized, Apple's and Samsung's sales numbers...
When Apple added the App Store to iOS, the iPhone and iPod touch became about as disruptive to the handheld video game market as the iPhone was to the smartphone industry. All of a sudden, users had easy access to thousands of low-cost video games.
But not only has Apple since sold more iOS devices than handheld systems from Nintendo and Sony put together, it's actually sold more than all major console systems. This, among other factors, makes iOS one of the most popular gaming platforms of all time...
iOS 6 brings a new app called Passbook that Apple argues isn't a direct payment product (yet). Instead, the program lets you collect and organize discount coupons, gift cards and some such. Patents, however, reveal that Apple is actively thinking about leveraging NFC technology to turn Passbook into a comprehensive mobile shopping solution, referred to as the iWallet.
You could create fake coupons to play around with in the Passbook app, but I'd bet my shirt that you'd still be scratching your head as to how exactly Passbook is supposed to work in real-life. A nice two-minute clip embedded below will help clear up the confusion by showing some interesting possibilities for Passbook through real-life examples...
Google is holding a search-related press event in San Francisco and the company just mentioned that it will be updating its Search app for the iPhone and iPad with Siri-like Google Now functionality, which we first caught a glimpse of at Google's Nexus 7 tablet announcement back in June.
The prettified interface features smooth animation and capabilities mimic those found in its Jelly Bean counterpart, including contextual awareness of where you are, what you may be interested in and what you are searching for...
Both big media and bloggers agree that with the next iPhone release come this September, Apple is going to debut a brand new dock connector to replace the aging 30-pin thing present on existing devices. The company will allegedly deploy the new dock connector across all future iOS devices.
Built with space in mind, the new connector was originally said to have 19 pins or fewer. A new report surfaced today sporting a crisp shot of the new dock connector with a metal ring inside the casing cutout, suggesting an exciting possibility: that the cable could attach magnetically, just like the MagSafe connector for Apple's notebooks...
Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey last evening announced an interesting partnership with Starbucks, an international coffeehouse chain, that will allow coffee lovers to pay for their lattes via Square's iOS and Android app, as well as its merchant software and the iPhone credit card reader dongle.
Micro-payments will be initially accepted at nearly 7,000 Starbucks locations in the United States. Furthermore, Starbucks will invest millions in Square as part of the company’s Series D financing round. Not bad for a little more than two-year-old mobile payment startup...
Yesterday's release of iOS 6 Beta 4 has brought another proof of the de-Googlification of iOS, with Apple unexpectedyl removing the native YouTube app because "our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended". Google, of course, was quick to point out that it will be releasing its own YouTube client on the App Store shortly.
It's much ado about nothing, really: the vast majority of videos embedded in web pages play in-line in the mobile Safari browser and users can always browse a much larger selection of clips via the mobile YouTube site.
That didn't stop Twitter and Techmeme from lighting up yesterday with hysteric reports over Apple's move. Heck, it apparently rattled one guy so much that he announced switching to Android...
It was recently suggested that Apple wanted Samsung to pay as much as $2.5 billion in damages for allegedly copying its iOS devices: $500 million in lost profits, $25 million in royalty damages and a whopping $2 billion for the profits Samsung “unjustly received” using Apple’s intellectual property.
A new report breaks down the figure on a per-device basis, as outlined in an exhibit prepared by accounting consulting firm Invotex Group, which specializes in calculating royalty rates for litigation...