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- iPhone Increases Marketshare Again
For Q3 2009, Apple’s iPhone accounted for 17.1 percent of worldwide smartphone marketshare, a new high for the company. That’s the good news from Gartner, and there’s more where that came from.
While overall mobile phone sales were flat for the quarter, smartphone sales were up 12.8 percent, some 41 million units. Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, notes that smartphones “represent the fastest-growing segment of the mobile-devices market and we remain confident about the potential for smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2009 and in 2010.” How convenient for Apple.
3.4, 12.9, and 17.1 percent…that’s Apple’s market share for each third quarter from 2007 through 2009, the growth rate easily besting even RIM’s doubling of its own market share over the same period of time. For the current quarter, Apple also outpaced RIM, the two companies growing by 49.2 and 46.9 percent, respectively. While that surge could be attributed to the launch of the iPhone 3GS, it should be noted that the iPhone 3GS was supply constrained during the quarter. Further, Gartner believes the fourth quarter “should be even stronger as Apple starts selling in China, through one additional carrier in the UK, and in an additional 16 countries.”
While Nokia did manage growth, it picked up only 4.4 percent in units sold, putting the company at 39.3 percent market share, down from 42.3 percent for the same period last year. The big losers for the quarter appears to have been manufacturers saddled with Windows Mobile 6.
According to Gartner, Windows Mobile 6.5 came “too late to have an impact on the third quarter, so sales of Windows-based smartphones saw another decline.” Apparently, HTC must be gaining strength based upon Android. Google’s mobile OS “picked up momentum but with only a handful of Android devices available, its share remained modest at 3.5 per cent” of the mobile operating systems.
No doubt phones like Verizon’s Droid will help to increase Android’s share of the market, but arguably not at Apple’s expense. The problem with Android is that each carrier is free to create its own mind-numbing implementation, resulting in a lack of consistency for the users of different phones. A case in point is the Droid, which currently lacks multi-touch, even though Android 2.0 supports it. For the most consistent and elegant mobile experience, the only choice remains the iPhone.
Переслать - iPhone Quick Tip: Extract Photos From Captured Video
I love having the luxury of video capture on my iPhone 3GS, because it’s available to me anytime I need it. The only problem is, it’s either video or photo capture, so I’m potentially out of luck if I captured one and decidedly would have rather had the other. Yeah, I kind of like having my cake and eating it all in a single sitting too.
The good news — in this particular case at least — is that if you capture the event in video, you have a pretty good chance of getting decent still photos out of it when you’re through.
While this tip is aimed at iPhone 3GS users who can shoot their own video, it’s possible to use on any model when viewing video. The beauty of editing 3GS video that you’ve shot, is the frame scrubber that is made available for editing purposes. That feature just makes it a lot easier to pinpoint the image that you want to pull from the video content. (This becomes important when one frame is blurry, and the next is not.)
Once you’ve found the frame that you want to make into a photo in your iPhone album, we just need to capture it. For the best results, make sure the control bezels are hidden from the screen. Usually tapping the screen once will cause them to slide out of view. Then, to perform the screen capture, press and hold the Home button. While holding the Home button, click the Sleep button on top of the phone. You’ve now saved that movie frame to your photo library as a stand-alone picture file.
The quality of your resulting photo depends completely on the video that was captured first. If there are slow movements that limit or eliminate blur, that will give the best outcome to this process. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than no photos from an event at all!
Переслать - Facebook Developer Turns Back on iPhone
Facebook for the iPhone is one of my most used applications, and I’m not alone as it’s amongst the most popular iPhone applications ever. This success is due to the size of Facebook itself, that the application is free, and that it is very well done. That last is due mainly to Joe Hewitt, who has been the main developer for Facebook’s iPhone application. Unfortunately that’s about to change, as Hewitt tweeted that he is moving “…onto a new project.”
At face value this may not be of any importance beyond a certain sadness to see a great developer leave a platform and an application so many love. In a conversation with TechCrunch, however, Hewitt made clear that the principal reason behind his departure from this project is his unhappiness with Apple’s management of the iPhone app store. Hewitt specifically mentions his philosophical opposition to the review process, indicating that it puts an unnecessary middleman between developers and users. He also fears that it sets a dangerous precedent for other platforms. Hewitt will be moving onto a web project at Facebook, which offers the opportunity to work on an open platform.
Hewitt is not the first developer to abandon the iPhone due to Apple’s perceived mismanagement of the app store, but he may be the highest profile. His departure from iPhone development highlights a critical danger that Apple faces with the app store. For a variety of reasons, ranging from an inability to get your application noticed, the danger of having your application rejected for unforeseen reasons and the very low prices charged on the app store, many developers are growing disillusioned with the iPhone as a platform.
If this trend reaches a critical level it could deal a blow to the iPhone, which has touted the wide variety of high quality applications in its marketing. Even more dangerous is the possibility that developers will move in large numbers to other platforms, with Android being the most likely option. Of course Android has its own problems related to app development, and there are still plenty of developers who are focusing on the iPhone as their principal mobile platform.
It may be, however, that Apple is offering its competitors an opening to create a much more developer-friendly environment and steal one of its key advantages: the quality, not the quantity, of applications available. If Android, BlackBerry or Symbian can attract top developers to produce 1,000 high quality applications for its platform, that will probably be enough to erase the huge lead Apple has today. Who cares if you can’t choose between 500 tip calculators, or 30 different versions of the same public domain book as long as you can get high quality versions of the apps you actually want?
It’s clear that Apple realizes there are problems with the way it is currently managing the app store. The question is whether it can make the necessary adjustments to attract and keep the best developers for the iPhone, or if the Joe Hewitt’s of the world decide it’s just not worth their time.
Переслать - "ikee" iPhone Worm Progeny Not So Harmless
Earlier this week, we reported that the first iPhone worm had been created. It was called “ikee,” and all it did was change the default wallpaper on devices to an image of Rick Astley with “ikee is never going to give you up” printed across the top. It was relatively harmless, if annoying, and the hacker responsible claimed that it was more of a warning than anything else.Hopefully many heeded that warning, since now a new virus has surfaced that uses the same M.O. as ikee, but that has a much more malicious intent and effect. Specifically, the new malware mines personal data from your device, using the very same exploit ikee revealed earlier in the week.
The new worm, dubbed “iPhone/Privacy.A” by digital security firm Intego, affects only jailbroken iPhones, and grabs things from your device like address book contacts, text messages, photos, music, video, calendar entries and email messages. Basically, almost anywhere it can look for sensitive data, it will. The virus doesn’t seem to be able to access information stored by other applications on your iPhone, like password managers, but if you’re affected, the only safe course of action is a full wipe and restore.
Theoretically, according to iPhone security researcher Charlie Miller speaking to Computerworld, attacks based on the same exploit could do more than just mine data. Running up your phone bill, sending out bulk text messages and spamming your contacts are all well within the realm of possibility. Miller goes on to describe how easy it would be for a hacker to infect a device:
This could easily be installed on a computer on display in a retail store, which could then scan all iPhones that pass within the reach of its network. Or a hacker could sit in an Internet café and let his computer scan all iPhones that come within the range of the Wi-Fi network in search of data.
In order to secure your device against this kind of attack, there are a few options. First, change the default SSH password if you haven’t already. So far, that appears to be the easiest way to foil attempts to infiltrate your jailbroken device. The best way to prevent this and any kind of future attack along the same lines, however, is to not jailbreak your device in the first place, or to restore it to factory settings if you’ve already jailbroken. Of course, for many who use their devices with carriers who don’t officially offer the iPhone, that isn’t an option.
Miller suggested that Apple may want to consider re-engineering its security measures to account for jailbroken devices, but as that would mean tacitly acknowledging and even accepting a practice it stridently disapproves of, I think the best bet for jailbreakers is just to shut down all SSH access, if possible.
Переслать - New Patent Application Suggests Apple Tablet Could Have Pen Input
Apple apparently isn’t exclusively devoted to the idea of finger-based multi-touch input on all its devices, a recent patent applications shows. The patent application, found by Apple Insider, describes the use of a pen-like stylus to operate an “ink information” input system, and references tablet computing applications for the new tech by name.“Ink information” refers to handwriting technology, specifically. The patent describes that previous attempts in this field, including in Apple’s own Newton device, have been insufficient to the task in the past. It suggests that the addition of an “ink manager,” a kind of go-between interpretive process, might reduce the occurrence of mistaken or misplaced ink detection.
Here’s the exact wording of Apple’s description of both the problem of ink detection and its proposed solution:
Even systems that attempt to improve this situation by using each stroke to determine the input field anew, such as the Apple Newton from Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., can suffer from failure modes that make the situation difficult for both end users and for application developers. For example, a word that accidentally spans two input fields even a tiny amount (due, for instance, to a stray ascender, descender, crossbar, or dot) may be broken up into multiple sessions, causing misrecognition and invalid data entries that must be manually corrected.
The ink manager interfaces between a pen-based input device, one or more applications (pen-aware or not) and one or more handwriting recognition engines executing on the computer system. The ink manager acquires ink information, such as ink strokes, entered at the pen-based input device, and organizes that information into ink phrases.
Along with the patent description, Apple included an image of the proposed system in the application. The graphic is very reminiscent of prototypes and concepts of the as-yet unannounced tablet computer that has the Apple community bubbling over with excitement. Note the bar at the bottom, which resembles the dock on the home screen of the iPhone. I’d also like to point out that the device looks a lot like a reader, given the scroll buttons at the bottom. Maybe Apple is planning to change the game by making sure its reader doubles as a writer, too.
Ideally, the digital ink and stylus input tech described in the patent would operate alongside touch input. This application will no doubt bring a lot of hope for digital artists hoping to work with the device, for whom pen input is infinitely preferable to touch control. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait long to find out if a pen system makes it into a production device, since the tablet is rumored to be unveiled in the first quarter of 2010.
Переслать - Safari 4.0.4 Update Released
Safari version 4.0.4 is now available, the 30MB update promising improvements to “performance, stability, and security.”Regarding security, the update addresses several potential “maliciously crafted” attacks–are there such things as benevolently crafted attacks? One uses a color profile, which is inventive, if evil. Others use XML, shortcut menus, or the user’s desire to visit web pages or FTP sites of questionable virtue.
Sadly, as the Mac gains greater popularity, the mantra of “security through obscurity” becomes less and less reassuring. This is one area where Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer may end up having an actual advantage over OS X and Safari, Windows having been forced to exist in a state of siege for so long.
As for improvements to stability and performance, it’s not just the usual boilerplate text included with the update this time. Besides supposed stability improvements for third-party plug-ins, the search field, and Yahoo! Mail, Safari 4.0.4 has “improved full history search performance for users with a large number of history items.” I’m one of those users, and I would cringe when going to “Show All History” and using the realtime search box. The first few letters would stall Safari every time, not so much now.
Safari 4.0.4 also improves JavaScript performance. Running the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, Safari 4.0.4 is 1.08 times as fast version 4.0.3 overall, with “significant” increases in many tests.
Finally and most importantly, Safari 4.0.4 does not break ClickToFlash. Upgrade (and restart) away.
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