Sometimes an accessory pops up that has us all scratching our heads. We've no arguments that accessories have their place, taking existing hardware and either enhancing existing features or creating new ones. Accessories are just fine, but sometimes they fall wide off the mark. Sometimes we just can't quite get our heads around who thought they were a good idea, let alone who actually signed off on making them into a real, shipping product.
JoinedJanuary 21, 2011
Articles20,137
Oliver Haslam has written about technology for over a decade. His work has been published in print at Macworld and online pretty much everywhere else. If it plugs in or has a battery, it's fair game.
Just yesterday it was leaked that both the NSA and GCHQ were able to scrape information from smartphone apps, with demographics and more able to be pulled from the most mundane of apps thanks to their reliance on third-party advertising agencies. Rovio's hugely popular Angry Birds games were mentioned in particular by the report, which was based heavily on leaked information coming out of the now infamous Edward Snowden.
Ever since security contractor Edward Snowden started leaking classified NSA documents last year the subject of what security agencies can and cannot find out about us has been on the forefront of many an agenda. Just recently, the U.S. President was forced to make a statement on the subject, clarifying what information its agencies were collecting about its own citizens, and now a new report claims that both the NSA and the UK's Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, can scrape data from the very apps we use on our smartphones.
When Google refreshed Android to bring in version 4.4, KitKat, it added some new features to the mix while also redesigning some of the platform’s existing ones. Music playback was one example of something that got a lick of paint in KitKat, with a new lock screen widget being at the center of it all.
We told you not that long ago that SwiftKey is potentially on its way to iOS via the SwiftKey Notes app, but if you're looking for a more system-wide approach to things then your only option is to spring for something that requires jailbreaking - at least until Apple sees the light and opens the door to truly customizable keyboards throughout iOS. With that unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, you might want to check out PredictiveKeyboard.
There's a moment when every good product makes the jump from the geek world to the mainstream world. A time in history where it goes from being something that only those who live and breath technology know about to truly living in the consciousness of the average man walking down the street. Today, Google Glass makes that jump after being parodied on America's longest-running animated show, The Simpsons.
In a world where we can manage our iPhones and iPads from the cloud and need never plug them into a computer thanks to iCloud, it's easy to forget that actually iTunes exists for the very same purpose. We know that we don't all use it here at Redmond Pie, and at least one writer doesn't even have an iTunes library to call his own. Music streaming services like Spotify and Rdio make iTunes even more redundant, so when Apple released iTunes 11.1.4 today it took some work to get excited about it.
Supposedly private photo sharing service Snapchat has proven hugely popular, especially amongst teenagers and anyone wanting to share images that they want to be automatically deleted once viewed. The technology lends itself to sending and receiving photos that contain sensitive information - self destructing messages if you like - but is largely used to send much less important things.
It may have been somewhat forgotten in the big iOS 7 furore, but that doesn't mean that 'iOS in the car' isn't a real thing. In fact, Apple has had given the thing a place on its own website so it was always going to put in an appearance at some point. Some motoring companies like Acura, Honda and BMW have even said that they will be taking advantage of the feature, but things have been rather quiet of late, with little coming out of either Apple or its partners.
By now I'm sure you all know the drill; Apple releases a new beta version of its iPhone and iPad operating system and I download it, use it for a few hours and then report back with what's changed, both good and bad. I've been doing this for a while now, and through the process of writing about changes in betas both big and small I've come across some great improvements as well as some alterations that, looking back, probably weren't the best idea Apple's iOS team ever had.
