Apple, sliced up: iOS 5 irregularities in iPad and iPhone

Now you see them, now you don’t. InfoWorld’s guide tells you which iOS 5 features work where

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A friend told me about the iOS 5 Reminders app’s ability to set alerts based on your location, such as reminding you to pick up the kid when you leave the office, and I was puzzled. I hadn’t seen that on my iPad, but sure enough it’s mentioned on Apple’s website. Not so clearly mentioned is that this feature runs only on the iPhone, even though both the iPhone and 3G-enabled iPad have location detection. This is not the only example of iOS capabilities that you get on some devices, but not all. A few make sense, but most of these limited-availability functions don’t need to be so restricted.

If you use multiple iOS devices, here are the capabilities that work differently across your devices. Don’t worry — it’s not your mind playing tricks when that feature you thought you saw doesn’t appear on the device you currently have in hand.

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Location-based alerts in Reminders. This feature works on the iPhone but not the iPod Touch or iPad. That’s annoying on two fronts. The iPad supports location detection, especially the 3G model. So why can’t its task alerts be location-savvy as well? Then there’s the issue of syncing: One of the advantages of iOS is that settings, apps, and more sync across all the ones you own via iCloud.

It makes perfect sense to want to set a location-aware reminder on an iPad or iPod Touch, as you know it’ll get to your iPhone in due course and function there. But Apple lets you set location alerts only from the iPhone. Plus, you can’t view or modify a location alert set on your iPhone on your iPad or iPod Touch — the synced copy doesn’t contain that information.

Image editing in Photos. This feature works only on the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPad 2. With it, you can crop, straighten, remove red eye, and apply image enhancement to photos and images stored in the Photos app. It doesn’t work on the original iPad or iPod Touch, presumably because these devices don’t have cameras. But with the ease of syncing via iTunes or iCloud, these devices could easily have photos on them that you’d want to retouch. The original iPad and 2010- and 2011-era iPod Touches have as much processing ability as the iPhone 4, so they could in fact apply these effects.

Multitasking gestures. iOS 5 introduced four-finger app-switching gestures to make it easier to navigate what’s running on your device, a feature also available in Mac OS X Lion via a recent MacBook’s touchpad or through the wireless Magic Trackpad for pretty much any Mac. But you can’t get these gestures on an original iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. I can see the argument that the small screen of an iPhone or iPod Touch would be a poor fit for four-finger gestures. But why not on the original iPad? In fact, the beta version of iOS 5 provided this capability to that device.

Custom vibrations. The custom vibrations capability, available for iPhones only in the Accessibility settings of the Settings app’s General pane, is a nifty innovation that lets you create your own vibration patterns — you tap them out on the screen, then save them — that you can then associate to specific people in the Contacts app. Based on the vibration in your pocket, you’ll know who’s calling, but you can’t create, edit, or assign these custom vibrations on other iOS devices.

I get why you can’t use them — they don’t vibrate — but because these settings are attached to your contacts, which are synced across your devices, you’d think that the ability to set and assign custom vibrations would also be universal, akin to assigning text tones. I also wish I could assign ringtones to my synced contacts on the iPod Touch for the same reason, but iOS doesn’t let me because the iPod Touch isn’t a technically phone. Never mind it can run Skype and other such apps.

Downloading podcasts from the Music app. This difference among devices makes no sense. On the iPhone and iPod Touch, you can tap the Get More Episodes action when viewing your podcast library to download additional episodes — very handy when you haven’t synced to iTunes for a while and want to get the latest episodes. But you can’t do this on the iPad. Instead, in its spare new Music app, you can only listen to the podcasts you already have. You have to go to the iTunes Store and search for the podcasts you want, then download them — a multistep process that shouldn’t be needed.

Article source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/apple-sliced-ios-5-irregularities-in-ipad-and-iphone-177639

5 Reasons Google Is Sweating Apple

Steve Jobs, we now know, wanted to go “thermonuclear” on Google for perceived design thefts. Google, in the post-Jobs era, is doing nothing to cool the heated rivalry between the two firms. By drawing together a few recent insights about Google’s moves and Apple’s innovations, one might wonder if Google is afraid of falling behind its rival–for good.

Let us count the ways this could happen:

1. Siri

The Google-Apple rivalry was highlighted when Google’s Eric Schmidt testified to the Senate antitrust committee on Friday. Attempting to allay suspicions that Google’s control over the search market is monopolistic, monolithic, and quashing competition, Schmidt’s written statement said “Apple has launched an entirely new approach to search technology with Siri, its voice-activated search and task-completion service built into the iPhone 4S.”

That’s something we’ve noticed before: Siri is powerful for Apple in the search market in three ways–it acts as a first-sift on top of search activity that its iOS users are up to, meaning Apple gets access to a rich database (and it has a huge data center to process it) on what people are searching for. It also acts as a gateway between search terms and alternative sources of information, which is notably Wolfram Alpha in the first implementation of Siri…meaning a tranche of search traffic is diverted away from Google. 

Eric Schmidt was smart to bring up Apple in this context, and it’s quite definitely a political move: Google really is dominant over the search market, and though the playing field is dynamic and Google’s competitors make ground and then lose it, Google’s lead seems all but unassailable–and bringing up the name of one of the biggest companies in the world, a competitor that’s a media and society darling, is clever.

But there could be a grain of truth in this. Apple sells tens of millions of iPhones per quarter, meaning that by mid 2012 a hundred million people could be using Siri–assuming Apple only implements Siri on the iPhone 4S. There’s already some evidence Apple may be porting it back onto the iPhone 4 (with countless millions of that handset already in use, and many more to come because it’s still on sale). There’s also no reason Apple couldn’t put it on the iPad 2, and the Mac, and we’re definitely expecting it on the iPad 3. Soon enough, if you play the numbers, this means half a billion people could be acclimatized to a whole new way of doing Net searches…one that Google has no immediate control over.

And there’s the esthetic angle too–Google has voice control in Android, and a pretty sophisticated implementation of Voice Search, but the technology doesn’t come close to the wow factor of Siri.

2. Maps and Navigation

Google is already the supplier of Apple’s built-in mapping solution, and its innovations in online and on-phone mapping have been partly responsible for huge bites being taken out of the standalone GPS market–where names like TomTom and Garmin used to dominate navigation. But Apple detractors love to point out that there are no native turn-by-turn navigation options for iOS devices, whereas Android has a solution like this built in (the argument misses out on the idea that paid apps like Navigon’s may actually be more sophisticated for navigation than Google’s own effort, but it’s still a valid comparison).

We know Apple’s aggressively patented smartphone navigation technology, some of which has a social element like Find My Friends, but much of which has yet to surface. We also think Apple’s bought an innovative 3-D ground imaging company that could recreate accurate representations of streets and terrain that makes Google’s Earth, Streetview, and Maps look old-fashioned. 

Now it’s emerged that C3, the rumored Apple purchase, was also involved in applying its high-resolution mapping tech at street level, and also could deploy special units to recreate the inside of buildings. That’s potentially very important. For example, we’ve heard, only very recently, that Google has been looking to expand its Street View images inside buildings…and from first impressions, it looks like both the resolution and the image quality is already better with C3′s tech than Google’s.

Apple is sitting on over $80 billion in cash, and from recent revelations (which have confirmed earlier hunches) we know it’s clever in aggressively spending this money to secure long-term leads in its product lineups. With that much capital, it’s plausible that Apple could very quickly deploy imaging systems to scan the world at a level of detail that surpasses Google’s. With public goodwill seemingly much better toward Apple than Google, it’s even possible Apple’s system could be invited into more locations than its rival. And then that would give Apple a very powerful mapping and imaging system all of its own–ready to be tied into its mobile devices, its location-based services, and advertising offerings.  

This is a hypothetical point, but we suspect that Apple’s planning something like this because it accidentally alluded to collecting real-time car traffic data when defending the “locationgate” affair, and it’s serious because it means less money would siphon Google’s way.

3. Television

Google’s making news at the moment with its Google TV devices, upgrading the operating system and implying that it’ll be throwing more effort behind the scheme to rival traditional cable. It’s controversial, because some thinkers suggest Google TV is already dead in the water. 

But Apple’s been making a bigger splash in the news with strong rumors about a full-functioning Apple television set, powered with a unique interface that Steve Jobs (master of the “it just works” interfaces on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad) himself was personally proud of.

The TV market is a minefield, particularly in the U.S., of competing interests and middlemen–which is a web of politics that Google’s failed to break through, and which is exactly the kind of tangled market Apple likes to challenge head-on with a paradigm-shattering model.

4. Shopping

Google’s Wallet is one of the first very large-scale efforts at bringing NFC “wave and pay” systems to the general population. It’s a bold move, right at the cutting edge of innovating how the world thinks about paying for goods–and because Google’s effort is built right into Android, unlike some competing systems it can offer the more sophisticated benefits of NFC (like loyalty rewards integration, smart on-the-spot advertising, and so on).

But Apple’s just begun a new experiment in payments in its own stores that already, in some ways, makes Wallet look like old technology: Via its special Store app, you can order and pay for goods in an Apple store–including walking out of the store with your new purchases without having to do anything other than tap at your iPhone screen. In some ways, this could be Apple testing a broader implementation of a future “iPay” scheme which could be licensed to other retailers. And while Google is just beginning to collate millions of users’ credit card details, Apple’s iTunes system (married to its earlier MobileMe and now iCloud) means it has one of the largest existing databases of user credit cards in the world…primed for exploitation in a new shopping technology.

5. Research, Spending, and Nervousness

Consider other bits of Google news here: It recently slashed many of its experimental Google Labs products, dramatically changing its shotgun-style research and development habits to create a more refined, targeted solution. The move means the character of Google has changed a little, perhaps because it had to because Labs products weren’t doing the core business any financial favors. And it’s made Google a tad more Apple-esque.

The purchase of Motorola Mobility is also a stand-out event, because it will allow Google to integrate hardware and software in some future Android phones (and tablets) more closely than has been possible. It’s a double-edged sword, because it exposes Google to more allegations of platform fragmentation as well as potentially ostracizing big-name Android partners, but it will allow Google to make more polished smartphones. In a way that is, unmistakably, Apple-inspired.

All of which leaves us with a strange tingling on the backs of our necks: Google probably doesn’t see a big “threat” to its core business from Apple on any one of these individual fronts…it dominates search, its Android handset is riding high as sales leader in the new smartphone world, and its ancillary products like Voice and Apps are gaining much support in the consumer and enterprise markets. But if you add all the little niggles into one idea, then Google may actually be sensing a clear and present danger from Apple. Those angry barks from Jobs about the “theft” of ideas in Android may, in fact, also come with a bite.

[Image: Flickr user calamity_photography]

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

Article source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1793401/google-is-really-scared-of-apple?partner=gnews

iPhone 5 release date in 2012 takes 4G LTE from mistake to mainstream

November 8, 2011   by Bill Palmer  

by Bill Palmer

The iPhone 5 won’t see release date until 2012 because allowing the next iPhone to surface this year with embedded 4G LTE networking would have been a mistake. It’s the same mistake which some competing smartphones have made in 2011, and their users have paid the price accordingly. Current generation 4G LTE antennas are physically large and use a severe amount of power, meaning that the phone’s battery gets eaten alive and there’s no internal room for a battery large enough to compensate. As such, LTE phones on the market now are oversized, short on battery life, and short on whichever other hardware features had to be sacrificed in order to make room for the networking. And all of that sacrifice would be made for a network technology which has only been built out to the point that less than half of Verizon customers can get a 4G LTE signal, less than ten percent of ATT customers can do the same, and no one on Sprint or T-Mobile can, as they’re both still flirting with a slower competing 4G (although Sprint says it’s moving to LTE next year). If none of this sounds like fun, then it explains why the iPhone 4S with the same-old 3G networking surfaced this year and the iPhone 5 with 4G LTE was put on ice until sometime next year. But when the iPhone 5 does see release date, it’ll be a part of a networking sea change…

Smaller, lower-power next generation 4G LTE chips will allow the iPhone 5 and other smartphones to offer LTE networking speeds while still remaining svelte and offering legitimate battery life. Which vendor gets those chips first is another matter. Apple has a history of locking up long term supplies of products like solid state storage which can at times be difficult for vendors to get their hands on in quantity. Apple also has a more recent penchant for designing and building its own chips (witness the A5 in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, for instance) and could be on its way to crafting its own next-gen 4G LTE components. This could allow Apple to launch the LTE iPhone 5 somewhere near the middle of 2012 whether its competitors have their hands on externally available next-gen LTE antennas or not. That means the iPhone 5 will lead the charge, either alongside competing smartphones or by itself, when it comes to delivering the first legitimate LTE-enabled smartphones to market…

It won’t hurt that the iPhone 5 will be seeing its release date around the time the carriers will have made a real dent in building out LTE networks. By the middle of 2012, Verizon’s LTE should be mostly nationwide. ATT… well, the carrier has made a point of confirming to Beatweek that it’s fully committed to LTE despite having only built LTE towers in five cities thus far. Sprint didn’t hesitate to build its existing quasi-4G network nationwide, so it’s expectable that they’ll do the same once they get going with LTE. That means that by the time the iPhone 5 lands with 4G LTE built into a manageable and practical hardware package, it should be able to get a 4G LTE signal in most of the places you want to use it. As much as those looking forward to the iPhone 5 aren’t thrilled about having to wait another half-year-plus for its release date, at least they’re being made to wait for good reason. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

Article source: http://www.beatweek.com/news/12239-iphone-5-release-date-in-2012-takes-4g-lte-from-mistake-to-mainstream/