Voice recognition wasn't a new invention when Apple introduced Siri towards the end of last year, but it certainly caused a stir within the mobile industry. Packaged in iOS 5 for those lucky enough to own the Cupertino company's iPhone 4S, much was made about a technology scarcely touched upon in an industry seemingly apt for it.
Apple, perhaps more so than any other tech company, tries its utmost to shave as much unnecessary baggage from its product range through generations, and although we've seen some significant downsizes in recent times - the Retina MacBook Pro, for example - sometimes the reductions can only be achieved a little at a time.
WhatsApp is undoubtedly the most popular cross-platform instant messaging service for smartphones. It works on all major mobile platforms – iOS, Android, Blackberry OS and Symbian - over Wi-Fi / cellular data and allows you send and receive text messages, photos, videos for free. With so many smartphones in the hands of teenagers and young adults, it’s no surprise that many of them prefer using WhatsApp over services like Blackberry Messenger and iMessage.
One of the things about Windows which a great deal of users have come to love is also one of the things which a lot of people have taken the opportunity to have a dig at the Redmond company for. There's no doubt that Windows has been the most popular desktop operating system over the years, with millions of people across the world loving the fact that Microsoft has introduced new versions of the OS while rigidly sticking to a tried, tested and familiar visual user-experience. By that I mean it doesn't matter if you pick up Windows 98, XP, Millennium, Vista or 7, you automatically know from experience where things are and can get up and running right away.
Microsoft have done a great job of promoting and publicizing their soon-to-be officially released Windows 8 operating system. The Redmond based company have adopted a policy of making sure the computer loving public and the users of their Windows products have been kept in the loop at every stage of the development process, which in turn has led to stringent and rigorous testing by the very people who will ultimately be purchasing the product when it eventually hits the shelves.
One of the most popular features of any connected device, regardless of whether it is a desktop machine, mobile smartphone or a games console, is being able to get onto the internet and see what marvels are available. To be able to achieve this the device in question obviously needs to have some kind of web browser application that acts as the medium between the device and the user. With Google only recently releasing their Chrome browser onto the iOS App Store, mobile web browsing has been a recent topic of discussion, especially the performance issues that surround browsing.
Whenever large companies like Google, Apple or Microsoft take the opportunity to make major revisions to their mobile operating systems, they always implement a number of headline grabbing features that show the update is worthy of a new name or version number. In most circumstances, the announced improvements are generally on the feature side, and although they add a whole host of behind-the-scenes additions, this isn't really what the end-user wants to read about. Regardless of new features, mobile device security is something that is extremely important to all users regardless of whether it is their first priority or not.
Every now and then, a package lands on the Cydia store that can't help but appeal and also provides some confusion as to why it wasn't submitted to the official App Store to try and attract the mainstream user-base rather than just the jailbreak community. PreviewMaker is one of those packages, and we’re guessing that it doesn't fully meet the human-interface guidelines as specified by Apple, but whatever the reason is, it is definitely going to appeal to jailbreak fans.
Although we have seen a number of installer packages over the years in the jailbreak world, Cydia is the only one that has really managed to stand the test of time and rise to prominence as the de facto package installation method on jailbroken iOS devices. Although Jay Freeman's package often comes in for some criticism, wrongly so in my opinion, it really is the most powerful alternative to the official App Store that we have seen.
Proceedings from the Apple vs. Samsung have so far revealed a startling amount of previously classified information. We’ve seen – among other things - iPhone and iPad prototypes from 2006 and earlier, plans for upcoming tablets from Samsung, and the design and thought process that went into iOS devices.
