iPhone

Limiting your kids’ iOS use

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Chris Breen offers some ideas for how to limit kids’ iOS device use when they should be doing other things.

Skeuomorphic interface design

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The trend away from skeuomorphic special effects in UI design is the beginning retina-resolution design era.

Very smart article from John Gruber.

The secret to Apple’s designs

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Tony Fadell:

“When you’re in a culture that has a point of view, and drives to launch everything it does, you know you’re on the hook and you better bring your best game every time.”

FaceTime and AT&T

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As a result of ongoing testing, we’re announcing AT&T will enable FaceTime over Cellular at no extra charge for customers with any tiered data plan using a compatible iOS device.

App Store screenshots made easy

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Daniel Jalkut:

His approach uses a novel technique in which the target app itself is built with customized screen-capturing code compiled right in. Then the app can be driven through the iOS Simulator with WaxSim, a command-line tool for launching the simulator with various options.

I never really considered how Apple’s recent change would affect developers who had an app available in many languages. This would certainly cut down on the amount of work that needed to be done to get the app ready for the App Store.

Apple stock manipulation

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Perhaps the weirdness of the math is why the current version of the WSJ article no longer cites the 65 million unit figure. Sometime between Sunday at 8:00 p.m. EST and Monday at 7:00 a.m., the Journal decided to drop the number from its article. But if the 65 million number is not right, is the estimate for halving March orders correct, either?

This is a great article and asks some good questions. The one that stuck out for me is the specific question asked of the Wall Street Journal. Why did they cite and then remove the 65 million figure? I think WSJ has some answering to do.

John Gruber:

Apple’s stock took a beating today on these reports. If you don’t smell stock manipulation here, I have a bridge to sell you.

Yes.

If Apple was more like Samsung

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While Apple released one new iPhone last year, Samsung let loose a whopping 37 different phone variations. (For those keeping score, HTC released 18, Nokia introduced nine, and LG launched 24.) Certainly good hardware design played a role in Samsung’s healthy sales. But it also didn’t hurt that the company flooded the market.

Apple puts all of its efforts into making one great product for users. Clearly everyone else is just throwing as much at the market as they can.

Apple moves to stop App Store scammers

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This small but important update shuts down a widely used scam tactic, where developers would upload game screenshots to get an app approved by Apple and then switch them out with screenshots from another popular app.

Great move by Apple.

Delivering innovation vs delivering products

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A company’s ability to manufacture products and sell them worldwide is not the same as having the power to deliver innovation to a market. Apple has proven over the last few decades that it innovates, while many of its competitors are satisfied with building products based on that innovation. […]

App Store tops 40 billion downloads

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Apple on Monday said that customers have downloaded more than 40 billion apps from the App Store. The company also said that nearly 20 billion of those downloads came in 2012. […]

Smartphone market

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Horace Dediu looks at the time it took for smartphones to reach 50 percent of the market and estimates when he believes it will reach 80 percent.

Best Buy complains about Wal-Mart iPhone 5 ads

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Best Buy said some of Wal-Mart’s promotions, including a deal on the iPhone 5, had a measurable effect on its profits due to a price-match guarantee that requires the retailer to match the price of competitor’s ads. Best Buy said it lost about $65,000 in profit the day Wal-Mart’s promotion first ran on Facebook, because it was compelled to match Wal-Mart’s advertised $150 price, even though it concluded that Wal-Mart didn’t actually have a sufficient number of iPhones available.

Here is a cached version of the article.

“Do Not Disturb” will fix itself

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Do Not Disturb scheduling feature will resume normal functionality after January 7, 2013. Before this date, you should manually turn the Do Not Disturb feature on or off.