iPhone

∞ Making the impossible possible

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Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows for Businessweek: About five years ago, Apple (AAPL) design guru Jony Ive decided he wanted a new feature for the next MacBook: a small dot of green light above the screen, shining through the computer’s … Continued

∞ U.S. Cellular turned down iPhone

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U.S. Cellular’s CEO says the company is interested in the iPhone, but passed on carrying it this time since it didn’t make economic sense.

∞ RIM is a 'wounded puppy'

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Hugo Miller and Matt Walcoff:

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM)’s decline below book value for the first time in nine years leaves the BlackBerry maker worth less than the net value of its property, patents and other assets in a sign of investors’ lowered faith.“This is a wounded puppy,” Timothy Ghriskey, who oversees $2 billion as chief investment officer of Solaris Group LLC in Bedford Hills, New York.

Investors had the chance to kick the co-CEOs to the curb at the last annual meeting and they didn’t. Instead they asked the pair softball questions and accepted their lame explanations. The downfall of the stock is much the fault of the investors as it is the CEOs at this point.

∞ Google's missed opportunity

Written by

Matt Alexander:

I have nothing against Android, but I find it brutally frustrating to watch Google flounder in the face of the professionalism offered by iOS, and even Windows Phone.

∞ Android phones are cheap

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Reuters: Costly hardware failures are more common on Android devices than on Apple Inc iPhones and Research In Motion Inc BlackBerry phones, which have strict control over the components used in their devices, WDS data showed. You get what you … Continued

∞ RIM shares fall to seven year low

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Reuters:

Research In Motion shares fell to a seven-year low in Toronto on Wednesday as the market digested further evidence of the smartphone maker’s declining share of the lucrative U.S. market.

How much more evidence do you need?

∞ Czech carrier gives up on iPhone

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Bloomberg: Telefonica Czech Republic AS won’t sell Apple’s new iPhone 4S and will end sales of all Apple’s models because of Apple’s business terms, Hospodarske Noviny reported, citing Telefonica’s local spokesman Hany Farghali. That might be a good business decision … Continued

∞ Macworld's free iPhone 4S Starter Guide

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Whether you stood in early-morning lines, pre-ordered far in advance, or are still waiting for that package to arrive at your doorstep, let the editors at Macworld help you get to know Apple’s new smartphone with our free iPhone 4S … Continued

∞ Elements 2.1 text editor for iOS

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Elements 2.1 allows the user to sync their settings, appearance preferences and scratchpad contents between multiple devices using Apple’s new iCloud platform. Now if you set a specific theme, font style or default file extension on your iPhone, iCloud will remember that preference and copy it to your other devices as well.

∞ Siri and 911

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John S. Wilson, a health policy analyst, talking about how Siri could revolutionize our 911 system.

Once the word “emergency” is spoken to Siri, a range of beneficial activity could commence. First, the phone could video call 911 utilizing Skype or a similar VoIP video service. This would allow first responders to have a much better context of the emergency at hand. Armed with a live video and audio feed of the event, visual cues could assist the first responders as they deconstruct the problem. Second, Siri could send the GPS location of the caller.

I’m not sure how far off in the future something like this would be or how practical it would be. What if you spoke “emergency” by mistake? Interesting thoughts though.

∞ Talking to Siri ebook released

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Talking to Siri introduces you to Siri. This short, focused book teaches you how to use Siri from the ground up. You’ll learn how to achieve the the highest recognition rate as you talk. You’ll discover which categories Siri responds … Continued

∞ More stupid advice for Apple

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Apple has been incredibly successful over the last decade, but yet there are people out there that always think they know better.

Jason Perlow for ZDNet talking about what Apple must do:

If we have learned anything at all from the company’s most recent 3rd quarter sales figures, we must ultimately recognize that Apple’s revenue is highly based on an annuity or semi-annuity model of repeat customers. Repeat customers are bread and butter, but it does not create growth.

Clearly Apple has not grown at all over the last 10 years. They don’t rule the smartphone market, iTunes doesn’t sell any songs or movies, and the App Store is sure to fail any day now.

∞ Trick or Treat at the iTunes store

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It’s Halloween weekend and the fun is about to begin. You don’t need to go out to enjoy yourself, you can visit Apple’s iTunes store and pick up movies, apps, music and other media to help you celebrate. 99 cent … Continued

∞ The bullshit Samsung smartphone numbers

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The Internet is buzzing this morning with news that Samsung has overtaken Apple as the worlds leading smartphone vendor. The problem is, there are no numbers to actually back up the claim.

Here’s an example of how it’s being reported. From GigaOM:

Samsung had a very strong quarter, according to numbers it revealed on Friday to investors. Its shipments (which it doesn’t provide specific numbers for) jumped more than 40 percent during the third quarter. Strategy Analytics estimates that amounts to total sales of nearly 28 million devices, while Apple moved 17 million during the same period.

Wait a minute. Samsung doesn’t provide specific numbers, so we are going to take their word that shipments jumped 40 percent? To make matters worse, Strategy Analytics “estimates” sales of 28 million devices.

∞ An informal e-book study

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Marco Arment:

In the past, I’ve always recommended the Kindle over other e-ink readers, and buying Kindle books instead of iBooks on iOS, because Amazon had the biggest library of relevant titles and strongest content ecosystem.But Amazon’s advantage is no longer as clear in my casual searching.

I just buy from iTunes. Apps, music, books, movies, videos, TV shows. Everything. Convenience rules.

∞ Purdue University gives BlackBerry the boot

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Purdue University has continued to see a decline in BlackBerry devices using its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) since Jan. 1, 2011, and, after Dec. 31, 2012, will no longer support Exchange synchronization with BlackBerry devices.The combination of a 33-percent decrease in BES use, a subsequent increase in per-unit cost and a proliferation of the use of non-BlackBerry devices influenced the decision.

∞ Siri's dictation key surprise

Written by

Gary Ng:

After you’ve added the Emoji keyboard, or any other keyboard, you’ll notice Siri’s dictate key beside the spacebar changes from dark to light grey. What’s up with this change in colour?

I would never have found this.

∞ It's brutal being an Android user

Written by

Michael DeGusta:

I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United States1 up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down every update that was released for each device – be it a major OS upgrade or a minor support patch – as well as prices and release & discontinuation dates. I compared these dates & versions to the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The resulting picture isn’t pretty – well, not for Android users:

Wow. That’s all I got for that one.

∞ Record high BlackBerry trade-ins after outage and iPhone 4S launch

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Josh Lowensohn for CNET:

The metric follows an extended outage of Research In Motion’s e-mail and BlackBerry messaging services, which left users unable to communicate with one another or send and receive e-mails globally. To placate angry users, RIM offered users $100 in free “premium” applications. The spike also coincided with the release of Apple’s new iPhone 4S.

And the bad news just keeps coming for RIM.