Like so many other companies, Apple relies on the festive season to be one of their most lucrative financial periods during the year, and the chances are high that people all over the world will be waking up to an iPad, iPhone, Apple TV or some other fantastic Apple gift. If the magic of the present isn't enough, iSimon - the digital sleight-of-hand magician - is back to bring some festive trickery into our lives.
Being able to use a keyboard of your choice, and not just by aesthetics, but a completely unique package with a distinct feature set of its own, is one of the biggest freedoms of owning and using an Android device. I have used both the iPhone and iPad as my daily drivers, and while iOS boasts one of the best touch-based character entry mechanisms in the market, there’s still a lot to wish for in the stock iOS keyboard. Even with a jailbroken device, you don’t get a really staggering number of choices, and definitely nothing close to what Google’s droid has to offer. Android simply leaves iOS biting the dust on this front.
Ever since the introduction of iPad to the market, tablets have become something really mainstream. It’s not like the world was devoid of this genre of gadget earlier, but the Cupertino giant’s rendition of the device made it a worldwide phenomenon, making it lucrative to even those people who’d have otherwise not found any use for a tablet PC. Jumping onto the bandwagon, Android entered the arena too, and today, there are more Android tablets available on the market than you’d care to count. BlackBerry also tried its hand at this category in the form of PlayBook, but that failed rather miserably. The last to enter the tablet PC market was Microsoft with its Surface tablet, a device truly remarkable in its elegance, beauty and hardware. Now, Nokia is aiming to dethrone Surface as the top Windows RT tablet, coming up with its own Windows-based tablet that comes with a battery powered keyboard cover.
For years, many have been trying to figure out how to add physical gaming controls to the iPhone: a few solutions have surfaced so far, such as the BladePad and the iControlPad, but many of them are either too bulky or just downright unpractical. Luckily, there’s a new case in town: albeit in prototype stage, it has the potential to make your gaming experience much easier and keep the nacho smudges off your iPhone touchscreen.
Windows Media Center has been one of the best media management suites available for Microsoft Windows since the days of Windows XP, although the program got mass attention with Windows Vista. Despite the fact that the operating system in question was a big failure in itself, no one ever complained that Media Center lacked in what it had to offer, and hence, it made sense that the media suite would continue to remain bundled with Windows operating system in Windows 7. With the latest Windows 8, however, the Redmond company seems to have taken a rather surprising decision, in that Media Center is no longer a part of the OS – even the Pro version – and instead, available as a separate download for Windows 8 Pro users only.
Facebook's Poke app has taken the App Store by storm, and in less than a day, already sits aloft the iTunes Free app chart. The app, which, in essence, is a chat app with a few twists, only just released for iPhone, but already, has become the most popular free on the App Store.
The open source nature of Android gives it one particular edge over other smartphone and tablet platforms, in being available for a lot more development – both on the app side and modifications – and thus, having loads more to offer than other tablet OS. However, that doesn’t mean it will remain exclusive in all areas where open source matters. Windows is the most favored operating system for desktops, and with the introduction of Windows RT and the Surface tablet, Microsoft, it seems, is looking to gear things up a bit. The recently released SNES emulator for Microsoft Surface, Snes8x, which works with Windows RT, does well to prove that point, and does it really well.
The Facebook messaging platform has been on aspect of the social network that has changed dramatically over the years. When Facebook first launched the service, it was driven by the upload of photographs and proved to be an extremely media heavy social gathering place and while that is still true, the built-in messenger functionality has been significantly beefed up recently. Facebook have also recently announced that they are making additional changes to the conversation streams within messages as well as putting a pay-to-message test in place with a subset of United States based users.
Microsoft has released a brand-new title to iOS, and although it is by no means the Redmond company's first game for the Apple platform, it is the first time an iOS title has packed Xbox LIVE Achievements. So not only can you have fun with yet another brain-teasing puzzler, but you can also top up your Gamerscore in the process. It's called Wordament, and is absolutely free to download over at the App Store. Details, as well as that all-important download link, are coming up after the break.
Some developers in the Android community had been inspecting the internal CSC file of their Galaxy Note 2 smartphone in order to find out what possible features and handy little shortcuts Samsung had decided to prevent users from gaining access to in different localities on the phone. In an extension of that work it seems that the same developers have dedicated a little bit more time to the cause and have provided a list of modifications that can be made to the system CSC file in order to enable a few hidden and secret features that lie dormant on the international Galaxy Note 2.
