173 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (71.8 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in July, up 3 percent since April. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 42.4 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 1 percentage point from April). Samsung ranked second with 28.4 percent market share (up 0.7 percentage points), followed by LG with 6.4 percent, Motorola with 5.7 percent and HTC with 4.7 percent.
That’s a pretty significant lead for Apple and they are outpacing Samsung in terms of growth.
Lastly, we as the end users are always the weak point in security. That’s not to absolve tech companies of blame: in fact, it’s a key challenge they should all be working to overcome, while managing the balance between removing the barriers to good security and maintaining strong protections for users.
I think this sums up the whole iCloud situation for me.
Executives at Europe’s big consumer electronics trade fair this week in Berlin readily admit to hoping that Apple can crack the missing code for everyone. Where the U.S. innovator leads, its rivals plan to follow by bringing their own improvements or by seeking out profitable niche markets that Apple ignores.
“This is what we wanted,” Sunny Lee, CEO of Samsung Electronics’ European business told Reuters when asked about Apple’s likely debut.
I bet that’s exactly what Samsung wanted. Not that they’ll copy everything that Apple does, no, not Samsung.
Earlier this year, Motorola ended its short stay with Google when it was sold to Lenovo.
TechCrunch has confirmed reports that Lenovo is buying Motorola Mobility from Google. This is the division within Google that the company purchased in 2011 for $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility will go to Lenovo for $2.91 billion.
Lenovo-owned Motorola quietly released a smart-watch yesterday, the Moto 360. Everyone’s tastes differ of course, but for me, this is the watch that sets the bar for Android and for smart-watches. This is the watch that you should keep in mind when and if Apple announces an iWatch next Tuesday.
There are competing watches from Samsung, LG, and Pebble, and they all share a common Android heritage and a common design aesthetic. In my opinion, they are clunky and wrongly sized for most wrists.
The Moto 360 is the least objectionable of all the designs, and that’s the point. At a minimum, watches are supposed to tell the time and look good. All of the current smart watches tell the time quite well. None of them meet that second criteria.
When Apple first announced the iPhone, there were plenty of competing smart phones. All of them let you make phone calls and do things like send and receive email. That was the bar that Apple had to clear and they did it easily, leaving an entire industry in the dust.
Given how mature and well funded the industry has become, it is unlikely the iWatch can turn the smart-watch industry on its ear. But there is much room for improvement, both aesthetically and functionally. To me, the Moto 360 is the bar to clear. And it has obvious functional flaws (for example, the chopped area at the bottom of the watch face seems to be dead screen space) and suffers from the single wrist size problem (it’s way too big for anyone with small wrists). And the design is nice, but no competition to any of the higher end watches.
Still, the bar has been set. Watch the video embedded below to get a sense of the Moto 360. Looking forward to Tuesday.
Apple said it plans additional steps to keep hackers out of user accounts, but denied that a lax attitude toward security had allowed intruders to post nude photos of celebrities on the Internet.
To make such leaks less likely, Mr. Cook said Apple will alert users via email and push notifications when someone tries to change an account password, restore iCloud data to a new device, or when a device logs into an account for the first time.
This is just one of many steps Apple will take to protect themselves and users.
The “Bing Image Widget,” released on Aug. 22, gives publishers the ability to create a panel on their websites that displays digital images supplied by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, according to the lawsuit.
Rather than draw from a pool of licensed images, the lawsuit claimed, the product grants access to the billions of images that can be found online, without regard to whether the photos are copyrighted.
According to some recent comments from chief financial officer Anthony Noto, however, the company is doing a lot more than not ruling it out — it sounds like a done deal.
Basically, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was too good to mock. And as it turns out, there’s a reason for that. The film’s directors are fans of Honest Trailers, and they purposefully engineered the film so it would be harder to parody.
In a recent interview with Collider, Winter Soldier directors Joe and Anthony Russo were asked how they felt about achieving a positive Honest Trailers review.
I’m a huge fan of Honest Trailers and love the fact they had a positive influence on a summer blockbuster.
But in a statement, a spokesman for Twitter appeared to dispute Everett’s version of events, saying the company has no problem with Twitpic’s name.
“We’re sad to see Twitpic is shutting down,” the spokesman said. “We encourage developers to build on top of the Twitter service, as Twitpic has done for years, and we made it clear that they could operate using the Twitpic name. Of course, we also have to protect our brand, and that includes trademarks tied to the brand.”
So, Twitter would let them keep the name, but not the trademark? That’s how it seems to me.
In a note to investors on Thursday, White, of Cantor Fitzgerald, used the words “underwhelming,” “rushed,” and “half-baked” to describe Samsung’s announcements, which also included the Gear VR partnership with Oculus, a Gear S smartwatch, and the new Note Edge handset with a side-facing display. White said he believes Samsung’s announcements were a subpar attempt at garnering buzz for its products before Apple holds its own presentation next Tuesday, Sept. 9.
Analyst Brian White isn’t the only one saying this about Samsung’s announcements. As I said yesterday, things could get rough for Samsung in the coming months.
With Sonic Port™ VX, it’s finally possible to record complete songs anywhere inspiration strikes. The guitar/bass input features 120dB of dynamic range for incomparable tone and best-in-class dynamics. A stereo line input lets you record keys, drum machines, DJ mixers and other sources. Zero-latency monitoring means you can record without distraction. And with professional-level 1/4” stereo outputs, you can easily connect studio monitors and perfect your mixes. With Sonic Port VX, the world is your studio.
Sonic Port VX brings three built-in professional condenser microphones to the party. Matched stereo mics let you record live performances with remarkable clarity.
This is an impressive looking device. I haven’t heard it yet, but I have one of the original Sonic Ports and love it.
If you’re worried at all about the security of your Apple ID, you should have two-step verification enabled. Allyson Kazmucha does a great job of explaining what it is and how to enable it.
We can’t share the full list of developers yet (we just cracked 100!). But we can show you nearly 20 apps that are already working on integrating 1Password’s iOS 8 App Extension for fast, one-tap logging in and even updating your passwords!
The 1Password extension is going to be one of the most important extensions on iOS 8. Security and having safe passwords are always a pain in the ass, but having easy access to 1Password through this extension will make things much easier. I’m looking forward to it.
With Dan still out, Shawn King and Jim talk about Apple’s upcoming September 9th event, the large scale celebrity iCloud hack, how to keep your passwords safe with 1Password, Marshall amps, and more!
Sponsored by Iconic by Ridgewood Publishing (visit iconicbook.com/5by5 for 20% off select editions of this beautiful coffee table book all about Apple).
Looks like there are a lot of great changes to WordPress 4.0. I’ll test it out before installing it on The Loop, but the video shows some nice new features.
A few weeks ago Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API. This came as a shock to us since Twitpic has been around since early 2008, and our trademark application has been in the USPTO since 2009.
This is a great list of things to do on World Beard Day like bar-b-q, change a tire, build an all-bearded human pyramid and other fun activities us bearded men do.
There is much more to mastering than just the sonic aspects and it varies between different release formats. It’s also gotten more complex as digital distribution evolves, CDs become the minority, and vinyl makes a comeback.
What a great resource Justin put together. A few tips you may not have known about mastering songs for all the different audio formats available.
Whoever is the first to develop reusable rockets will have a huge advantage in the business of putting things into space: It could chop tens of millions of dollars off the cost of a launch, instantly putting the company with the technology miles ahead of its competitors.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the leader when it comes to actually building these devices: It’s tested a vertical take-off and landing of a small-scale rocket numerous times, and has begun including a vertical landing gear on its satellite launches. While the company hasn’t landed a full-size rocket yet, each experimental attempt teaches the company more about the challenges of landing a rocket.
But someone else has the patent on this kind of technology: Blue Origin, the space exploration company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. While the company hasn’t developed its technology as far as SpaceX, which already is launching satellites for commercial and government clients, it has been proceeding with a contract from NASA to develop a rocket-and-spacecraft combination. But before it launched a single rocket, it obtained a business method patent for a reusable launch vehicle, which is what’s pictured above.
Now they’re going to duke it out in court. SpaceX is challenging the Blue Origin reusable rocket patent. Big stakes here.
Amazing. It’ll be interesting to see how big this line gets. If anyone is in NYC and happens by the 5th avenue Apple Store, please tweet me (@davemark) with the current line count. I’ll retweet.
According to a designer who works at Apple, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, in bragging about how cool he thought the iWatch was shaping up to be, gleefully said Switzerland is in trouble — though he chose a much bolder term for “trouble” to express how he thought the watchmaking nation might be in a tough predicament when Apple’s watch comes out.
If anyone can change the perception of wearables and ugliness, it’s definitely Apple. The company’s iPod turned the once-geeky MP3 player into a fashion accessory, the iPhone made smartphones into a status symbol, and the iPad took tablet computers, once the nerdiest gadget of all, and made them coveted and sexy accessories.
And this one:
Last year Credit Suisse issued a report that estimated the wearable industry could become a $30 billion to $50 billion industry over the next three to five years. But yet another report, by Beecham Research, warned that in order for wearable tech to become sought-after by consumers, tech firms need to figure out the fashion side of the equation.
“Unless there is a holistic morphing of technology and aesthetics, we will not harness the full potential of wearable tech innovation,” Claire Duke-Woolley, Beecham’s fashion technology analyst, said in the report.
This is one of Apple’s hallmarks. Enter a business still trying to invent itself (MP3 players, digital music sales, smart phones) and bring aesthetics and simple focused functionality to the mix.
If that designer’s leak is to be believed, Jonathan Ive might be right on the money here. Fine watches are a passion for many people. It’ll take something really special to get those people to turn away from Tag Heuer and the like. If Apple does indeed deliver the goods here, the traditional watchmakers may well be in trouble.
This is more than a passing collaboration; it’s a long term project with long term goals. Marshall and Softube already have several new products under development.
Okay, this is exciting news for fans of Marshall amps. Softube is great at making software plugins, so I expect them to do a really good job at producing some Marshall sounds.
Mobile phone analysts said that, while packed full of hundreds of features and many of the latest hardware specs, there is little in the Note 4 to excite new users.
Jokes aside, this is a serious issue for Samsung, and one that couldn’t come at a better time for Apple. With disappointing sales of the Galaxy S5, the last thing Samsung needed was another failure, especially with Apple announcing new products next week. It certainly doesn’t sound like the Note 4 will be a blockbuster success.
Netflix speeds became so slow in December 2013 and January 2014 that customers grew irate, Netflix said in its petition. Calls made to Netflix’s customer support center about slow-loading videos more than quadrupled during those months.
It’s sad when people are forced to cancel their subscription to Netflix because the Comcast speeds were so slow. No wonder Netflix decided to pay Comcast; they really had no other choice.
