Amazon's Android app store: Steve Jobs doesn't get it
Roll out the welcome wagon, Android fans: It looks like you'll soon have a new place to shop.
Roll out the welcome wagon, Android fans: It looks like you'll soon have a new place to shop.
Apple's iPad has been available for a short time, and you can already find apps to watch streaming movies, manage your Web passwords, use Twitter, do word processing and more.
Let's say that you're a software developer who has created a hot new application for smartphones that you're certain is about to take the world by storm. Your work isn't quite done and here's the problem: not only will your brilliant and innovative application have to compete with several other applications that have similar ambitions, but it will have to compete with them over multiple platforms.
From the Google voice fiasco to this week's Pepsi pick-up line app, Apple's vaunted app store is showing its weaknesses. CIO.com's Tom Kaneshige suggests five steps Apple should take to make the store better for users and developers.
Much is being made of supposed improvements to Apple's App Store, but the approval of a music service called Spotify only raises more questions. And the recent approval of Loopt was a major step backward even Phil Schiller may be unable to fix.
Who knew there were so many iPhone annoyances? Last week we listed ten common failings of the iPhone and discussed how to correct them. Maybe it was naïve to restrict the list to ten entries. Reader feedback suggests that iPhone users have no shortage of annoyances they'd like to see solved.
Well, Apple's done it again. The company has censored yet another app from its precious App Store, this time because it contained "objectionable" words. The app in question: a dictionary.
"We uploaded topless pics today. This is the first app to have nudity," said Allen Leung in an interview with Macenstein. He's the developer behind the "Hottest Girls" application, currently bringing scantily-clad women--and now those of the bare-chested variety--to your iPhone or iPod Touch device for a mere $2 installation fee.
The year 2009 is shaping up as the year of the app store, a Sun executive conjectured Wednesday during a panel session at the JavaOne conference.
You've spent your hard-earned cash on a brand new smartphone. Now it's time to put that money to work and turn your new acquisition into an entertainment powerhouse. The number of mobile entertainment apps out there is incomprehensibly large, and relatively few of them truly shine. Never fear: We've scoured the Web and found the best music, video, and gaming apps for your iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or Symbian smartphone. Most are free, but for some--as you'd expect with top-notch entertainment--a price tag is attached.
Google Ventures Rich Miner recently predicted at a conference in Cambridge, Mass., that a significant number of people will disconnect from the wired Internet in 2 to 3 years, abandoning their computers for mobile devices.
There's no doubt that Apple's iPhone has changed the landscape of the smart-phone industry, and indeed the mobile phone business as a whole. But one of the most revolutionary advances that Apple offered up isn't in the iPhone itself: It's the mechanism the company developed to distribute non-Apple applications to iPhone and iPod Touch users.