As part of iOS chief Scott Forstall's deposition in the Apple v. Samsung mega-suit, it was revealed that Steve Jobs explicitly advised Samsung against copying or stealing the rubber band scrolling, a feature Jobs specifically underscored during his January 2007 iPhone keynote.
Another tidbit describes how Jobs felt about Samsung lifting the iPhone's rectangular appearance and its icons...
We've been hearing that Apple was going to be changing the iPhone's dock connector since February of this year. Not only has the change been confirmed by a number of news outlets, but we've seen several leaked next-gen iPhone parts with the smaller charging port.
Along with its new smartphone, Apple is also expected to be using the new port in its iPad mini, which is rumored to debut this fall. But apparently it's not stopping there. iMore has learned that Apple is rolling out the smaller dock connector across its entire iOS line...
U.S. carrier AT&T, the nation's leading telco by subscribers, today shed more light on its upcoming shared data plans available to new and existing subscribers later this month. The new plans are designed to help folks share their cellular data across up to ten smartphones, tablets and other devices while enjoying unlimited voice minutes and text messages domestically. First hinted at in mid-July, the new plans will be officially put into effect on Thursday, August 23...
Recognizing a growing popularity of dedicated services that save articles for later reading, the social networking giant Facebook today quietly updated its backend to enhance its mobile and desktop apps with this functionality.
Aptly named 'save it for later', it does just that: you can now save other people's posts for later reading through the new Saved option under the lefthand pane revealed when you tap the sidebar menu button...
Strategy Analytics is out with a new survey this morning suggesting that device unit sales and market share for Google's Android platform in the United States has declined during the second quarter of this year as devices powered by Apple's iOS software continue to gain ground...
Apple has apparently been in talks with Twitter officials in recent months about making a possible investment in the micro-blogging platform, reports The New York Times. Described as "a strategic investment", it could value Twitter at more than ten billions.
Apple's attempts at social were limited thus far. Its social thing for music, Ping, will likely be discontinued with the next major iTunes update. That promised Facebook integration in Ping had been pulled last minute was blamed on “onerous terms that we could not agree to”, as Jobs put it. Nonetheless, Apple has opted to partner with both Twitter and Facebook to support their services throughout iOS and OS X.
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal says Apple talked to Twitter about this a year ago, claiming no immediate acquisition is in the cards.
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Sparrow was recently snapped up by Google and people continue to have mixed feelings about this sell-out no one saw coming. The Sparrow team made it clear in a blog post they would cease work on new features (apart from minor updates) as Google has tasked its newly acquired team with improving Gmail mobile apps.
Today, the Sparrow team announced plans to open-source parts of the Sparrow apps for personal use only. If you're good at reverse engineering, why not take a closer look at the Sparrow code?
When it comes to security, Apple has gone to great lengths to make its iOS platform much less prone to exploits and has engineered measures such as sandboxed environment, protected app space and even encrypting every single file created on the iPhone with its own encryption key wrapped in the user’s passcode.
But developers have become increasingly reliant on Apple for app security and as a result security has now become an afterthought for many app developers. That's why security experts attending the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas think developers should take matters in their own hands and add more security above Apple's baked-in protections...
Apple has made an interesting acquisition, snapping up smart sensors maker AuthenTec in a transaction valued at $356 million, Reuters reported Friday. AuthenTec makes fingerprint sensor chips used in personal computers.
What's more, its swipe sensors can read the live layer beneath the skin's surface and comply with strict government standards. They also produce chips that utilize near-field communication (NFC) technology which is said to be a part of this fall's iPhone hardware refresh...
Google on June 6 held a hastily organized presser to announce "the next dimension in Maps", in an effort to beat Apple's in-house mapping solution unveiling which came five days later at the company's annual developers conference in Sam Francisco.
While Apple Maps won't launch before fall, when the company is set to release iOS 6 alongside the next iPhone and possibly a smaller iPad, the Internet giant is set to beat Apple by updating its Google Earth app for the iPhone with a new 3D view later today.
UPDATE: the new version just went live on the App Store...
A little less than a month ago, The New York Times reported that Facebook was working on a brand new version of its sluggish iOS client, re-writing it completely with speed in mind from the ground up in Objective-C, the preferred programming language for modern iOS applications.
The current version owes much of its sluggishness to the fact that it provides a web view through an embedded web browser. A new report out today asserted that the social networking giant tapped some former Apple engineering talent not only to help build a smartphone of its own, but also to re-write the official iOS app...
A month ago Apple removed Podcasts section from iOS 6 storefronts and posted a dedicated new app to let folks download, consume and manage audio and video podcasts on the go.
Apart from its skeuomorphic design mimicking a vintage tape recorder, the program was plagued with unreliable performance, unexpected quits and generally a bunch of bugs. These issues are clearly reflected in abysmal iTunes ratings that at the time of this writing barely hovered over two and a half stars out of five.
Our own Jeff Benjamin noticed as much, observing in his video hands-on that the radio-dial interface is interesting at first sight, but not very efficient and syncing often doesn't work as intended. Today, Apple pushed out a minor update that promises to squash these pesky bugs while bringing out a couple of new nice-to-haves...