Displaying items by tag: iPhone

Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference took place today and with it came a flood of news articles about what Apple said today. Many of these were off the deep end as if what Apple was saying was music of unearthly quality. We did not attend (and were not invited anyway), but have been reading some of what is being pushed out to the Internet. What we have noticed in the video, articles and live feeds is something that we have talked about time and time again. Apple is not the same company as it was with Steve Jobs.

Every now and then in the midst of products that are intended to make your system more powerful or impress your friends we get to play with products that are fun. We found this in a pair of external speakers from a company called Accessory Power. The speakers are designed to look like the heads of animals (in a cute way) and can work with PCs, phones, tablets and pretty much anything with a 1/8-inch speaker jack. In addition to their function as a speaker set they are also intended to bring awareness to endangered species. We were lucky enough to receive two different models for our testing and enjoyment. So let’s take you along as we see if the Accessory Power Gogroove Speaker Pals Panda and Koala sets are worth your time and money.

So the rumors about a “Facebook” phone have begun to pop up again. This time they are claiming that the arrival date of the social device will be sometime next year. These rumors are being fueled by other rumors (which is how you do it) and all seem to back up the possibility that Facebook might indeed be looking to try and enter the smart phone arena. How smart this decision is remains to be seem, but for now let’s just take a look at some of the supporting evidence.

Back when Facebook bought Instagram for a cool $1 billion it was widely thought that Facebook did this to be able to compete in the mobile market against companies like Google, Apple and a few others. In fact Facebook even made the comments that they were not good at mobile and needed to figure it out as it was a week spot. Now only a few weeks after the purchase Facebook has released their own camera app that can add similar filters to your pictures in the same way that Instagram could.

So yesterday (Friday May 18^th) we heard that Apple was censoring the word “jailbreak” in iTunes and the App Store. This was reported by a few sites and seemed to be rather odd after the backlash from the obvious censoring of a single search string when using Apple’s Siri Voice Assistant. When we ran the story on Siri we had a rather large and enthusiastic response to the article. The one thing that many people kept trying to say was that Apple did not alter the results, but more on that after we talk about the jailbreak issue.

Now one thing I do love is irony. Call it a little dark pleasure of mine. I do enjoy it when a larger company (one that might be a tab abusive) finds themselves following when they claim to be leading. I also enjoy it when these same companies (no matter who they are) find themselves caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Unfortunately I am talking about Apple again. This time from a purely speculative point though.

When the smart phone first hit the market it was designed with the business person in mind. It was something like a combination between a PDA and a Phone; in fact the first smartphone that I owned was a PDA complete with the PalmOS. It was a horrible brick of a phone and was quickly replaced with a HTC PPC 2600. Phone manufacturers quickly caught on to the fact that people other than business people wanted to do more with their phones. The idea of the connected phone was born and we started to see even the cheapest handsets with mobile web browsers games and message sharing.

Tim Cook’s recent visit to China has made more than a few headlines especially considering their position they are in right now. Not only do they have the world looking at them over issues at with Foxconn facilities, but they are also in a rather ugly legal battle with ProView over who actually owns the trademark name iPad. On the surface Cook’s visit is to discuss growth and expansion in China (which actually only means more money to Foxconn and the Chinese government). However, Cook is also more than likely there to try and squash the upstart ProView and a level higher than the Chinese court system.

After being impressed with the House of Marley’s Redemption Song On-Ear headphones we have now spent some time with their Zion In-Ear head phones. These follow in the same style as the Redemption Song headphones and are made of recycled or renewable materials. They also follow in the trend of being tuned for high quality sound and are designed for use with Apple’s lineup of products (iPad, iPod, iPhone) but will work with just about any media player or smart phone (with a few exceptions). With a price tag of $99.99 we are hoping that these headphones give us the same level of performance that we saw with the Redemption Song. Follow the bouncing ball and sing along as we tell your just how well they perform.

The Apple folks are all excited about today’s injunction awarded to them over Motorola Mobility over a patent that honestly should never have been awarded in the first place. There is a small catch though, Apple did win the injunction, but they have not been able to block sales of any devices as long as they remove the offending feature (the way the screen bounces at the end of the scroll when viewing pictures).