It really isn’t a big secret that the smartphone and tablet industry is an extremely competitive marketplace to be in. The iOS and Android operating systems are undoubtedly the two major players in this space, with Apple having sold more than 250 million iPhones in the last five years following the original launch and Google currently activating 1 million Android devices every day. The competition between the two platforms has always been a fierce one, but with Apple announcing their own mapping system in iOS 6 to rival the tried and tested Google Maps, the competition has ramped up another notch.
It has taken a day or two, but now videos are beginning to crop up comparing Apple's Siri on the iPhone 4S to Google's new voice options in the just announced Android 4.1, Jelly Bean.
Google recently announced the next version of Android, 4.1 Jelly Bean, at their I/O 2012 conference in San Francisco. It will initially only be available for the Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus and Xoom devices. Updates for devices from other manufacturers will come much later on, if they do come at all.
Back before the first iPad was announced and when the rumor-mill was in full force, everyone pretty much knew that a tablet was on the way, but nobody really knew what form that tablet would take. Whilst many thought that the tablet would indeed turn out as it did, some were more hopeful that Apple would simply offer an OS X-like machine that resembled a MacBook Pro, but in tablet form. Sort of like one of those Tablet PCs that nobody bought back in the 1990s. Thankfully, Apple knew better.
Google is on a roll at I/O, with the second day of proceedings again bringing in a number of notable announcements and releases that will certainly please iOS users. Day two of the event is well underway with delegates and attending developers being informed that Google's Chrome browser has been released for iPhone and iPad and is now available for download immediately.
It doesn't matter which company we are talking about, or what software or hardware they are intending to release, there is always going to be something which users will never like. In this instance, Microsoft is a company involved, and the product is the rather beautiful looking Windows 8. A few feathers were ruffled and noses disjointed when the Redmond company took the decision to remove the Start button from the Consumer Preview of Windows 8.
It doesn't matter how old we get or what we currently have going on in our professional and private lives, I am pretty sure that every single one of us would love to slip into a superhero costume and take to the streets looking for social wrongs to put right. Regardless of whether you want to be Superman, Batman, The Green Lantern or one of the other spandex clad heroes, the time has come for you to lock yourself indoors and prepare for some serious web slinging action as Gameloft has officially released The Amazing Spider-Man game for iOS and Android.
Whenever something new is announced by Apple or Google, we always secretly hope that the launch switch will be flipped immediately at the end of their keynote presentations, allowing us to get our hands on the new hardware or software soon after. The opening keynote of the Google I/O presentation really got tongues talking yesterday as they went through a number of announcements relating to new devices and the first official unveiling of Jelly Bean, the latest version of Android.
The mobile app development business is a funny old game. Designing and developing quality apps takes an extremely unique skill set, something that often gets overlooked by a lot of people due to the fact that anyone with a computer can throw some code together and bundle it onto the relevant app stores for people to download without having a second thought about the experience. True developers on the other hand live and breathe through their creations with good code flowing like poetry, and when mixed together with flawless design, makes up for an amazing app.
If the revelation by Google is anything to go by, then the official Jelly Bean update would be hitting our Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S devices in July. But luckily, and at this very moment, you can download a image of the Android 4.1 update for your Galaxy Nexus, and guess what? You can flash it right now!
