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When electronic readers and tablets began to become popular, I sighed a wistful sigh. I thought about how useful a thin, light device that could store thousands of books would have been back in my college years. Back in my day, we had to carry massive libraries of books, sometimes relying on wheelbarrows or wagons to get from one building to another. Why, The Complete Works of Shakespeare alone was enough to help a puny Liberal Arts major put on some serious muscle mass. By the time I got to class, I was exhausted. If only I could have stored all those textbooks on a single device!
I think it’s safe to say that the iPhone 4S feature that has received the most attention is the virtual personal assistant Siri. Just in case you haven’t heard, Siri uses voice-recognition technology to interpret requests and retrieve the best response. In some cases, the response may be an answer to a question such as “how much is five pounds in kilograms” (answer: about 2.27 kilograms). In others, Siri might launch an appropriate app or initiate a Web search to get the answer you need. And a lot of time has been spent asking Siri silly questions to see what sort of answers might pop up.
The news about Steve Jobs passing away is taking the Web by storm. That’s only fitting considering Jobs’s impact on technology. Chris and I have recorded two TechStuff episodes about Steve Jobs. We could probably record two dozen and only scratch the surface of what Jobs accomplished.
I admit, my headline is an example of baiting an audience. But if you’ve ever wondered why people who love certain brands react in a seemingly irrational way whenever that brand receives criticism, read on. According to research performed by Shirley Cheng, Tiffany White and Lan Chaplin, the reason discussions about brands often turn into enormous flame wars is because we incorporate the brands we love into our own self-image. When someone else criticizes or attacks a brand we love, we feel as if we ourselves are under attack. That’s why so many people respond passionately to attacks on brands — it’s a matter of self-defense.
By now, I assume you’ve heard the news. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, has stepped down from his role as CEO. Apple COO Tim Cook will assume the role of CEO and Jobs will become Chairman. Jobs wrote a brief but heartfelt resignation letter addressed to Apple employees explaining that he feels he is no longer capable of fulfilling the duties of CEO. His departure from Apple marks the end of a truly remarkable career.
Today was the first day of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC. The event is a little different than other Apple conferences; with the focus on developers, the tone is more likely to be about software than the latest gadget or an updated computer line. There was a lot of news, but few surprises at today’s event.
There were few surprises at today’s event. CEO Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave, made an appearance to lead the keynote, which finally revealed the cloud service that many had been expecting for some time.
Today’s uproar is not occurring in a concerted cry of outrage like it normally does, but instead it is occurring in the volume of material being published on so many different fronts. Two weeks ago we covered the fact that smartphones track our locations: Today’s uproar – Apple’s iPhone and 3G iPad track your location [...]
It’s a little 4-minute TED talk that demonstrates where the book is headed. It’s an electronic book with illustrations, maps, animations, videos, interactive graphics, etc. and built in: A next-generation digital book Software developer Mike Matas demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad — with clever, swipeable video and graphics and some very [...]
The news broke earlier this week: Researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden discovered that the iPhone 4 and iPad 3G devices — essentially cellular devices running iOS 4 — have a secret file hidden away that tracks the devices location regularly. It appears that these devices determine location through pinging cell phone towers and triangulating the resulting position. Then the device records the estimated latitude and longitude with a timestamp in a file called consolidated.db. Allan and Warden hasten to add that, as far as they can tell, this information remains stored locally on your phone (though it will transfer to any computer you synchronize your device to).
The internet is alight with the news:Apple’s iPhone and 3G iPad track your location and store the data in a hidden file. Wired had one of the first reports: iPhone Tracks Your Every Move, and There’s a Map for That Your iPhone or 3G-equipped iPad has been secretly recording your location for the past 10 [...]
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