Posts tagged with "iPhone"

Funnel is an Expressive News App Based on Google News

Looking for all the hot topics of today? Patrick Rhone of Minimal Mac points to a very cool looking iPhone app called Funnel, which reminds me of Marcos Weskamp’s Newsmap, which provides a distinct way to view upcoming topics on Google News. While I haven’t visited the “Marumushi Newsmap” (as I called it when I was but a young teen) in a long time, provided you have Flash installed or you use Google Chrome, you can check out how news aggregates in real time. If we return to Funnel, it’s practically the same thing (which is great considering you can have Newsmap on the go). The bigger the news, the more popular that particular news item is. You can download it here (currently I’m having trouble pulling it up in the App Store). Let us know what you think if it’s available in your part of town.

[via Minimal Mac]


Common Lockscreen PINs to Avoid on your iPhone

For those paranoid about both losing their phone and having your information be susceptible to criminal eyes, you probably lock your iPhone with a four digit PIN. While even I could tell you that ‘1234’ isn’t the finest choice in password security, Daniel Amitay took a moment to see what his customers were locking their phones with in his free app, Big Brother Camera Security for the iPhone. The passwords were recorded anonymously, and Daniel takes a look at everything from the most common passwords to suspect birth years in his results. Heck, the guy even built “heat maps” of the most digits pressed.

Naturally, 1234 is the most common passcode: mimicking the most common internet passwords. To put this into perspective, these 10 codes represent 15% of all passcodes in use. Most of the top passcodes follow typical formulas, such as four identical digits, moving in a line up/down the pad, repetition. 5683 is the passcode with the least obvious pattern, but it turns out that it is the number representation of LOVE (5683), once again mimicking a very common internet password: “iloveyou.”

With 15% of all passcodes represented by just 10 of these common passwords (out of a possible 10,000), Daniel concludes that 1 out of every 7 iPhones can be unlocked if a thief simply went through the list. Dear commenters, I now ask you, “Do you use one of these common passwords?” The results are fascinating, and I encourage anyone interested in keeping their iPhones secure to hit the source link for lots of juicy details.

[Daniel Amitay via Lifehacker]



Munster’s WWDC 2011 Survey: Developers Choose iOS and Android Before Mac

Among the 5000 developers crowding Apple’s WWDC 2011 this year, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster was on the scene, surveying a small pool developers on platform related questions. Munster’s sample of 45 participants consisted of only iOS developers, who’d naturally favor Apple’s development platforms over Microsoft or RIM. The results of the survey were published in a note to clients that compared these 45 responses to 20 he gathered in 2008, when the iPad and Android markets were non-existant. Of the developers sampled, Munster found that the pool of iOS developers typically favored smartphone development over desktop development, and that iOS was best for monetization. Philip Elmer-DeWitt highlights some of the findings:

  • Only 7% are also developing apps for the Mac, down from 50% in 2008.
  • Nearly half (47%) write apps for Android, 36% for Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry, 13% for Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Phone 7 and 7% for Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) WebOS.
  • Asked which platform had the highest potential for future growth, none mentioned the BlackBerry, WebOS or Nokia’s (NOK) Symbian.
  • Although 100% preferred iOS for ease of development and monetization, they did have some complaints, chief among them Apple’s “strict limitations” (38%) and the App Store approval process (11%).

Lion, iOS 5, and Apple’s iCloud were hot topics of WWDC 2011 this year, and while Munster only surveyed a handful of developers, there’s a lot to be excited about for both Mac and iPhone development. Scott Forstall announced on stage that iOS development in particular is still a hot market with over 200 million iOS devices sold. iOS’ installed base is leading the market at 44%, compared to 28% for Android and 19% for RIM. Total, Apple has paid developers $2.5 million dollars for apps marketed in the App Store.

Desktop development is still strong, as showcased in Apple’s Design Awards this year, featuring amazing apps like Pixelmator and Capo. Many developers are going to be updating or releasing new versions of theirs apps for Lion through the Mac App Store, and if Reeder is any indication, I have a feeling Mac development is as strong as it’s ever been. Survey results have been posted after the break.

[via Fortune Tech]

image via Aaron Ash

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iOS 5: 10 Videos From Around The Web

We have covered all the iOS 5 announcements in the past few days in our roundups and daily coverage, but there are so many new things about the new OS for iPhone and iPad that it would be impossible to list them all in a single article. So we have collected 10 videos from YouTube that show some of the most interesting aspects of iOS 5, such as Notification Center or the new custom vibration alerts for your Address Book contacts.

Check out the video gallery after the break.

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iPhone Now Available On 200 Carriers Worldwide

As reported by John Paczkowski at All Things Digital, according to Apple executives the number of mobile operators carrying the iPhone worldwide has increased to 200, from 186 at the end of March. The expansion, teased by COO Tim Cook in late February alongside the possibility of “lower priced offerings” and other prepaid market offers, is noteworthy for Apple, but still a relatively low figure when compared to RIM’s 500+ carriers selling BlackBerry devices.

Aggressive expansion, actually. Since the end of the March quarter, Apple has expanded the number of iPhone carriers to 200 from 186, according to company executives.

So 14 new customer bases in which to dip, further juicing sales of the device.

Following speculation of low iPhone sales in Q3 2011 due to the rumored lack of a hardware refresh in June (being the WWDC focused on software-related announcements such as iOS 5 and iCloud) with a new iPhone likely coming out this Fall, analysts and investors seem to believe that Apple’s iPhone sales will manage to meet expectations thanks to the release of the white iPhone 4 and the aforementioned carrier expansion. For instance, the iPhone 4 launched in India two weeks ago after an 11-month wait. Apple is also expected to introduce the iPhone 4 on more international CDMA networks to expand into a new market segment, though as of today the CDMA iPhone 4 is only available on Verizon Wireless’ US network.