So, T-Mobile has the iPhone, finally. (And, by the way, a new pricing model that doesn’t rely on contracts.) And wow, Gizmodo has a great GIF.
That awkward moment where your company’s new VP literally steamrolled your company’s most popular product because of a business decision your company made that affected his old company. Such is the tale of former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, who just joined Apple after spending much of the past few years publicly bashing Apple’s stance on Flash.
Twitter discontinuing iPhone, Android, and desktop versions of TweetDeck
That sound you heard was the social media journalist in the other room smashing his head into his desk in the wake of this news. To be clear, “desktop” means Adobe AIR. The native clients still work.
BlackBerry’s new global creative director, Alicia Keys, tweeting from her device of choice three days ago. Two weeks ago Last year, she said she was an “iPhone junky.” (ht @samradford)
Over the past six months, Google has begun to systematically replace core, Apple-made iOS apps with Google-made iOS apps. In July, Google launched Chrome for iPhone – a Safari replacement. Then, in October came Google Search – which included a voice search feature to compete with Siri. In December, Google launched Google Maps to replace Apple Maps, and a much-improved Gmail to replace Apple’s core Mail app. It also put out a new YouTube app, to replace the one that Apple removed during its last iOS upgrade.
In a way, Apple shot itself in the foot because, by dropping Google’s apps, they effectively allowed Google to prove is better at iOS app development than they are. (Barring the Gmail app, but that’s a different story.)
Expect iOS7 to have an updated design philosophy, because it’s beginning to feel dated now that developers are increasingly outpacing Apple itself at app design.
The FBI has not requested this information from Apple, nor have we provided it to the FBI or any organization. Additionally, with iOS 6 we introduced a new set of APIs meant to replace the use of the UDID and will soon be banning the use of UDID.Apple spokesperson Natale Kerris • Denying that they were working with the FBI by sharing UDID numbers with them — but further, emphasizing that the UDID system will soon be a thing of the past. The statement backs up the FBI’s statement saying there was no evidence they had such data, or that they had been hacked at all. One million device UDIDs were leaked on Tuesday by hacker syndicate AntiSec.
Guess what’s happening next week? Why yes, that is a shadow in the shape of the number 5, Apple fans.
» Wait a sec … the FBI had them? Well, funny story about that. Back in March, the group says they gained access to a computer owned by an FBI official. Just by chance, they found a file on the agent’s desktop titled “NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv” — a long list of 12 million UDID identifiers for iOS devices, along with a number of other pieces of personal info. AntiSec released just 1 million of the UDID numbers (which you can analyze here to see if you were nailed), but it’s worth keeping in mind that the odds may not be super-high of getting hit. There are 410 million iOS devices on the market, as of July. The problem for many is that the FBI reportedly had this info in the first place. What did they need it for, and why was it sitting on some dude’s desktop?
UPDATE: The FBI says that there is “no evidence” they had a file like the one described above.
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» Why the jury favored Apple: Jury foreman Velvin Hogan, in an interview with the BBC, says that the evidence strongly showed that Samsung was infringing on Apple’s patents. “When we went into deliberation in the jury room we not only had all the physical evidence of everything that was presented,” he said, “but we also had sealed source code in its entirety from both sides, we actually had the memos that were talked about in the trial … and there was a piece of evidence after a piece of evidence that just clearly stacked up.”
Speaking of Flickr, time for an update on the the Popular Cameraphones chart:
1) iPhone 4S
2) iPhone 4
3) iPhone 3GS
4) iPhone 3G
5) Samsung Galaxy S II
The good news: Android is finally on the verge of overtaking an iOS device on the chart.
The bad news: this iOS device is four years old. It’s so old, in fact, that the iPhone 3G was taken off the market by Apple a year ago. Yet there still isn’t a single Android device that can pass it on this chart. Pretty pathetic.
The other bad news: the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 are so far ahead of the rest of the cameraphone pack that it seems highly unlikely that any Android device will come close anytime soon. In fact, they’re the number one and number two cameras used to take Flickr photos, period. Not smartphone cameras — cameras, cameras.
The really bad news: the new iPhone is a month away.
But on the other hand, we’re talking about the Android community, where there are so many varieties of phones out there that it’s possible that if you combined them all together, it might be a different picture. The reason why the iPhone and iPhone 4S models rank so high on this chart is because of lack of splintering … right?