When Apple announced iOS 6 - the next installment to its famous mobile operating system - at WWDC earlier this month, the centerpiece feature turned out to be the hotly-rumored Maps app, which, in displacing Google's omni-present Maps offering, will include 3D aesthetics and turn-by-turn navigation.
When Tim Cook and his executive team took center stage at the Moscone Center earlier on this month, it didn't come as any great surprise when they mentioned that the new Maps app is Apple’s in-house solution and they are ditching Google Maps altogether. The fact that Apple has been building their own maps system had been widely reported on during the build up to WWDC 2012, with Cook and his cohorts only serving to officially confirm that it was happening.
Research In Motion's once-mighty BlackBerry brand is fast losing all relevance in the market. Stifled out by the likes of iOS and Android, it seems to have plummeted down to a level from which even BlackBerry Messenger cannot dredge it from. But just when you might have thought that was it, one particular developer has created a mod which allows iOS apps to run on the almost-forgotten PlayBook tablet.
We all had a day or so to absorb all of the information which Apple felt they needed to give to us during the opening keynote presentation at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The announcement surrounding the new line of notebooks as well as the included features of OS X Mountain Lion was great, but the real excitement came from getting that early insight into what they have in store for us with iOS 6, the next major release of their mobile operating system.
I'm not sure which is more annoying; the fact Apple has decided to allow the native iOS YouTube app to fester with little-to-no improvement since the initial iPhone launched all the way back in 2007, or that whenever a YouTube link is selected, one is forced - by default - to view the video in aforementioned app.
Google has recently announced big changes to its mobile mapping services, with upcoming features including an interesting-looking offline mode, and with Apple set to ditch Google for its own, in-house iOS maps offering, Google quite clearly needs to remain on its toes in the mobile game.
Google has just announced some significant changes to its mobile Maps apps, with both offline mode and 3D maps heading to Android and iOS in the not-too-distant future. Given the Big G's purchase of Quickoffice - just after it was revealed Microsoft would finally bring its Office suite to mobile - we are under no illusions that Google will fight its competitors tooth and nail in every market going. Talk has been rife for several months of Apple's plans to ditch the stock Google Maps app within iOS in favor of its own, in-house solution, and with 3D mapping - courtesy of C3 Technologies - being one of the main features, Google is looking to up its game in order to retain dominance in the mapping market.
Apple's famous hobby, the Apple TV, has today received a stealth software update, though Apple is so far keeping quiet about what it has added to its little black box this time around.
Remember when Apple first introduced the FaceTime video calling service in 2010, causing quite a big stir? Video calling on a mobile device wasn't anything new or revolutionary, after all, one of the core services when networks started pushing out UMTS connectivity was the ability to make device-to-device video calls. As usual, Apple somehow managed to make this feature seem exclusive to iOS devices and was made even more palatable to users due to the fact that it was free over a wireless connection.
Ever since the release of iOS 5 alongside the iPhone 4S, Apple has been struggling to bring the battery life up to par. At first the belief was that perhaps the issue was hardware related, rather than the software that it shipped with. Soon though, it was clear that owners of the iPhone 4 and other hardware were also suffering from less than stellar battery life. Problems indeed.
