Apple is attempting to add Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone to its list of infringing products in its ongoing California patent lawsuit. The hope is to strike down its rival's latest smartphone before it can penetrate the market. Apple's claims against Samsung are nothing new. However, since the patent process can be slow -- especially compared to an industry that is advancing so fast -- many infringement claims are on outdated devices with few sales.[More...]
With iGoogle scheduled to be axed in November, orphans of that offering will be looking at alternatives like uStart, Protopage, Netvibes and Myfav.es. While those alternatives will meet the needs of many iGoogle users set adrift by the search company, some souls may want to create their own homepage substitutes for the versatile portal.[More...]
Wow. I don't think I've ever started any review with a "wow," much less an italicized wow, but here it is: That one word sums up my first impression of Silk -- Interactive Generative Art, an app for the iPad and iPhone. The app lets you create flowing, mirrored strands of silk-like lines of colored light. You do that simply by swiping and dragging your finger.[More...]
Don't blame Jason Cheng for the latest news that iPad mini sales may be declining in the second quarter. Cheng is CEO of Pegatron, an Apple supplier based in Taiwan, who this week reportedly blamed declining iPad mini sales for contributing to the company's flagging revenues. Cheng denies he made any comments about the iPad mini or any other specific product.[More...]
Google's Android offers up more cool homescreens and customizations than Apple's iOS. In iOS, you get to jiggle your stack of icons around on the iPhone or iPad homescreen and swap out the background photo. Woohoo. I can hardly contain my excitement. There are no live tiles, like Windows Phone. There are no fancy weather images, no retro themes.[More...]
Apple's fall from grace on the stock market over the past six months has been well documented, but investor confidence seems to have taken a turn for the better over the past week. The company worked its way onto two high-profile lists. It was the top company on Barron's 500 list, up from its second-place finish in 2012 and fourth in 2011.[More...]
Scapple isn't a spelling mistake for that Pennsylvania Dutch concoction made with pork scraps, corn meal, flour and spices. In fact, scapple is actually a word meaning to work roughly, or shape without finishing. It's also the name of a dynamite new mind mapping program from Literature and Latte, the folks who brought the Mac world Scrivner.[More...]
The new Twitter #music app for iOS is the coolest app I want to love forever. However, it still gives me the nagging feeling that its slick graphics and fast play might leave our relationship just an empty shell of glitz and hope. Like those hot-and-heavy relationships that defy explanation, #music is a hard app to truly love -- or let go.[More...]
Compared to recent Apple announcements, the secrecy surrounding the next release of the company's mobile operating system, iOS 7, has almost been hermetic. There have been reports of improvements in email and calendar apps, as well as a possible expansion of the operating systems' gesture library so it will match Apple's OS X products.[More...]
When I saw the widely reported quote from BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins that there won't be a reason to have a tablet in five years, my first reaction was one of keen interest. After all, what's the opposite of dead tablets? Something else that's supercool. I expected that Heins would say something revolutionary -- that he would express, at the very least, a better vision of a tablet-free world.[More...]