iPhone

Playa case holds your iPhone and condoms

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The Playa is a new iPhone case that includes a spot to hold two condoms. From the folks who brought you the iPhone case with bottle opener attachment.

Android depends on iOS apps and developers

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I don’t know what happened here. But I can state the facts. As much as it hurts for Android loyals, they depend on iOS first apps. And that’s a shame.

Apple has been leading the way in hardware and software innovation for the past five years. It’s not too much of a surprise that developers try their apps on iOS first.

AirPrint

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Shawn Blanc:

If you don’t own an AirPrint-enabled printer, yet you want to print from your iPhone or iPad, you will need to install a 3rd-party app. But, which one? I found that with certain 3rd-party apps you get additional functionality and benefits beyond just being able to print from your iPhone.

RIM launches software to accommodate Apple users

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Research In Motion on Tuesday launched software that enables its large “enterprise” customers to manage Apple and other rival devices through the same servers as they use for the BlackBerry smartphone and Playbook tablet.

Translation: You win.

iPhone tops sales charts at each of its U.S. carriers

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AllThingsD:

Led by the 4S, Apple’s iPhone line continues to rack up strong sales at AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. So strong that some believe it’s likely the top-selling phone at all three of those carriers.“Our March checks indicated the iPhone continues to extend its market share gains,” Canaccord Genuity analyst Mike Walkley writes in a note to clients today. “In fact, we believe iPhones are outselling all other smartphones combined at Sprint and AT&T and selling at roughly equal volume to all Android smartphones at Verizon.”That’s pretty astonishing, all things considered.

But Android is still “winning”.

Oh balls

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Matt Burns and his article “It’s Time To Believe In RIM And The BlackBerry Again”:

RIM is beaten and laying on the floor. Together, Apple and Google knocked out the champ. Since then, they’ve started fighting each other, seemingly ignoring RIM as regains his strength. He might take another blow from time to time, but with a renewed focus he should stay on his feet from here on out. After years of savage beatings, he’s like the honey badger now and just doesn’t care.

At best, this article is misguided.

RIM’s future

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Jean-Louis Gassée:

The trouble for RIM is simply stated: Too little too late, while the money runs out. If only the cure were as easily put.

Could have said it better myself.

Apple turns technology into art

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Ben Bajarin:

They create objects of desire and out of that focus comes a visually and easy to use user experience paradigm that drives emotional responses in consumers of their products.

Great way to put it. Apple products, like few others, elicit a response from its users. It’s not just the design or the interface, it’s the whole package.

Creepy

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Nick Bilton for The New York Times:

Girls Around Me uses Foursquare, the location-based mobile service, to determine your location. It then scans for women in the area who have recently checked-in on the service. Once you identify a woman you’d like to talk to, one that inevitably has no idea you’re snooping on her, you can connect to her through Facebook, see her full name, profile photos and send her a message.

C.R.E.E.P.Y.

RIM is now not exiting the consumer market

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Patrick Spence, its managing director of global sales and regional marketing, told British news site Pocket-Lint that “The claim that RIM has said it will withdraw from the consumer market is wholly inaccurate.” He says that the company will still go after “targeted consumer segments” but may seek partners for stuff such as media-consumption apps.

Come on RIM, seriously?

Android has generated just $550 million since 2008

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Charles Arthur:

Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011, if figures provided by the search giant as part of a settlement offer with Oracle ahead of an expected patent and copyright infringement trial are an accurate guide.

Almost 50% of U.S. mobile subscribers have smartphones

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Overall, Android continues to lead the smartphone market in the U.S., with 48 percent of smartphone owners saying they owned an Android OS device. Nearly a third (32.1%) of smartphone users have an Apple iPhone, and Blackberry owners represented another 11.6 percent of the smartphone market. Among recent acquirers who got their smartphone within the last three months, 48 percent of those surveyed in February said they chose an Android and 43 percent bought an iPhone.

Samsung ships 5 million Galaxy Notes, but who cares about ‘shipped’ numbers

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Macworld:

Samsung Electronics has shipped 5 million units of its “smart notepad”, the Galaxy Note, surpassing most expectations, according to analysts.

How can shipping 5 million units possible surpass anyone’s expectations? That is not the number of Galaxy Notes sold, that’s just the number that Samsung managed to get out of its factory.

Samsung could ship 100 million Galaxy Notes and have them sit in a warehouse somewhere — that doesn’t mean they sold 100 million. I’m never impressed with shipped numbers because they don’t mean anything.

Loren Brichter talks about pull-to-refresh

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It was recorded before this became news (about a week ago actually), so it’s kinda weird it came up in this chat! Loren talks about how he came up with it and about the patent itself, but also talks about much more interesting things regarding being an indie dev, supporting your apps, paid upgrades and dispenses some sage wisdom on those topics.

Loren is the guy that came up with the concept. Worth a listen.

DSLR cameras as iPhone docks

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Ilya Birman:

The solution: remove everything from the back side of the camera and make it an iPhone dock.

I’ll be speaking at the Úll iOS/OS X conference in Ireland this April

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I’m excited to tell you that I have accepted an invitation to speak at the Úll Conference in Dublin, Ireland next month.

Úll is a conference for iOS / OSX / mobile web developers and designers. The three day event will include workshops, keynotes, talks and in-depth presentations on all the aspects of building, designing and marketing your apps.

I’ll be joining a nice line-up of speakers including Michael Lopp, Horace Dediu and Matt Gemmell, among others.

Úll iOS/OS X conference in Dublin, Ireland

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Úll is a conference for iOS / OSX / mobile web developers and designers. The three day event will include workshops, keynotes, talks and in-depth presentations on all the aspects of building, designing and marketing your apps.

The conference takes place April 27–29, 2012 and there are still tickets available — I’m looking at making the trip myself. They also have a great list of speakers that includes Michael Lopp, Horace Dediu, Matt Gemmell, and others.

The pull-to-refresh patent

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Twitter now owns this patent. I use pull-to-refresh all the time — I even try to use it on apps that don’t have it, which annoys me.

RIM delays analysts’ meeting

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“We decided to make BlackBerry World more focused on customers, developers and partners,” RIM spokeswoman Tenille Kennedy said on Tuesday. “We will hold a separate session targeted at the interests of the investment community later this year, once BlackBerry 10 is launched.”

Translation: We’re so screwed right now and we want to have something — anything — to show analysts.

iOS 5.1 upgrade stats

Written by

David Smith:

The current adoption rate hits a significant milestone. It took iOS just 15 days to get the same percentage of users on the latest OS version as are currently on any single version of Android.

And this is what happens when you don’t screw your users with fragmentation.

Developers losing interest in Android

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Jason Ankeny:

Any discussion what’s hot is inevitably followed by a conversation around what’s not, and that’s Android. Appcelerator reports that 78.6 percent of developers expressed interest in building apps for Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) smartphones during the first quarter, down from 83.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 and down from around 87 percent a year ago. Given that Android’s market share has continued to explode over the last 12 months, you can’t blame consumer disinterest for developer apathy in the platform; the culprit is–you guessed it–fragmentation.

Can’t blame them.

Ampkit 1.3

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AmpKit is the ultimate guitar amps, effects and recording app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, now with iPad Retina display graphics and an even greater selection of gear in the Gear Store, including the first full-featured, modern bass amp … Continued