Skeuomorphism within the design of iOS is something Apple's designers have squabbled over for a good while. The fake glass dock, plastic background of the calculator, beech wood effect of the Newsstand - these are all examples of ornamental elements throughout Apple's mobile OS, and although former SVP of iOS Software, Scott Forstall, was quite a big fan of the look, he has now surrendered his post. Jony Ive will be one of the Apple execs said to be overseeing tasks formerly manned by Forstall, and is reportedly planning to rid both iOS and OS X of the tacky designs.
We’ve heard it multiple times over the past few months and we’re hearing it again today: Microsoft is working on their own smartphone.
It was only yesterday when a United Kingdom based court of appeals took the decision to reprimand Apple for their failure to act in proper accordance with an original judgment in October that stated they must issue an apology to Samsung Electronics through their customer facing UK website. Although the company has removed the initial linked statement from their website and are yet to publish the new homepage based announcement, they have started publishing the notice in UK print publications.
The launch of the original Samsung Galaxy Note was met by mocking calls from smartphone and technology fans who thought that the Korean electronics company were onto a loser with the release of the plus-sized device. Hindsight would seem to suggest that someone at Samsung knew exactly what they were doing. The first-generation Note managed to shift over ten million units during its first year of existence, and we now have the news that the Galaxy Note II is showing signs of being even more popular, with three million handsets selling in the first thirty-seven days of availability.
With PlayStation 3 sales slowly decreasing year over year, Sony appears to be preparing key developers for their next generation PlayStation console.
We're all fans of statistics here at Redmond Pie. We suspect most of you are, too, which is why iStat 2 for iOS is something you'll be wanting to try out sooner rather than later.
The packaging of any new tech product is not nearly as important as its contents, but in the spirit of the launch, there's usually a fleeting interest in the design of the box. With Office 2013 not too far away, leaks earlier this week purported to depict the box art for those purchasing a physical copy from stores, and now, said designs have been confirmed.
Social networks are nothing new on the web and mobile devices, but although there are plenty of them around, only a few manage to capture the user’s imaginations for any length of time. Facebook and Twitter are two of the most successful and widely used social experiences in the connected world, with the fantastic personal Path experience also significantly rising in prominence in the last twelve months. Path has been one of the most widely downloaded apps on the iPhone and iPod touch in recent times, with that number now set to rise with the launch of an official and natively designed iPad app.
The coming weeks may be all about Apple pushing out new hardware in the form of the iPad mini, the fourth-generation iPad and new Macs but it seems that today is firmly dedicated to getting improved versions of iOS out to as many users as possible. In addition to the public release of iOS 6.0.1 earlier today Apple have seeded the initial beta of iOS 6.1 to registered developers via the official developers center.
Whenever a new version of iOS is released to the public (or indeed, simply to developers), the attentions of many quickly turn to the possibility of a jailbreak. Offering a freedom impossible at stock level on an iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, jailbroken devices offer the iOS experience without limitation, and it's thanks to utilities like the iPhone Dev-Team's Redsn0w that jailbreaks can be achieved.
