iPhone 5 will have a larger screen after all

Posted on August 8, 2012 by IdeaMonster

Apple quietly confirms a taller iPhone screen

Recent pictures from the iOS simulator show, that there are now 5 rows of icons on the iPhone home screen. Sure – there are a bit smaller icon margins on that shot, but it most definitely confirms a larger iPhone screen for the next device. The horizontal resolution is said to stay the same, so most apps would easily scale up (especially the ones that scroll) and the vertical res is said to be somewhere around 1100 pixels. We’ll see how Apple will handle games – hopefully not via a letterbox, but there seems to be no other way :(

Amazon sells more ebooks than real books in the UK

Posted on August 6, 2012 by IdeaMonster

Reading is changed forever

Apparently after the US market (which is not that surprising), now the UK customers of Amazon bought more ebooks, than their paper counterparts. It’s good for the environment – maybe some trees can be spared (printing things like the Twilight saga is a waste of paper for sure ;)) and also it means people are building up their ebook libraries, that will be moveable much easier, than real books. Imagine moving to a different apartment and taking just the kindle from your bookshelf. Sure, purists still believe paper is the only right thing to read, but apparently there aren’t many purists in the UK anymore ;).

And with low power consumption and long life of the Kindle, it can easily be charged by solar. Amazon should make the back into a solar panel and we’d have a book that’s “always on”.

iOS 6 won’t have the built in YouTube App

Posted on August 6, 2012 by IdeaMonster

Seems like Apple is moving away from Google for good

The new maps – ditching the ones provided by the search giant, were no surprise, but this certainly is. According to Apple, the YouTube app removal is due to the end of the licensing agreement. Of course Google will put out their own, free YouTube app for iOS devices, and YouTube still works in Safari, but omitting it from the OS will certainly confuse some less technical users. Apparently war with Google is well underway.

Loads of crapware for EURO2012

Posted on June 10, 2012 by IdeaMonster

Each big event inspires people to think about how it can be app-ified. And that in turn results of even more App Store junk

At some point the idea of half-a-million apps must be turned around a bit towards “less but better”. EURO 2012 soccer tournament is a prime idea of the fact. There are over 50 apps devoted to this event, and most of them – even the official ones – are pretty worthless. I suspect that this little fact will soon transform the users view on apps towards something mostly useless, ugly and ubiquitous.

Apple acquired CHOMP a while ago to refine it’s app store search, while Google relies more on users comments and ratings to filter out garbage. But let’s face it – most people don’t really rate their apps, so we can say that most of the high ratings come from the friends of the developer. And nearly everyone has some friends, so even crappy apps can jump higher.

Crapware is currently about 80% of all mobile apps. That might damage the users perception of an app as a cool and needed thing. Most games are crapware, and some are direct rip-offs or even stolen (like the infamous Canabalt HD which is in fact direct theft from the real Canabalt game). Finding relevant apps and games is now super hard, and review sites don’t really help with that much – mostly because a lot of them promote the games and apps that pay them, and any app can pay money – even a crappy one.

I see two ways the app world might go – either the app store curators (both from Apple and Google) will shrink their app stores to good, beautiful and relevant apps and games, or people will soon get bored with surfing through hundreds of crapware to find one decent app. Or they might even shift back to web-based offerings that Facebook is trying to prepare for them. We’ll see. But if you ask me which EURO 2012 app is the best I can honestly say – switch to your favorite website for the info and news. It seems all of the apps are quickly made, underdeveloped attempts to gain users through a big event. Even the official app kinda sucks and that tells us a lot…

iPhone 5 with a 4-inch screen? So what’s the resolution? 640×1096!

Posted on May 17, 2012 by IdeaMonster

Considering Apple won't make a super-retina display, a 4 inch iPhone would have a 640x1096 resolution

The time draws close for the next iPhone (iPhone 5 or the New iPhone?) to show it’s face, and each day more sources are suggesting that it will sport a 4-inch display instead of the current 3.5 inch. Considering it’s current width to be almost ideal, it might turn up to be a phone that’s simply a little bit higher, with all the other dimensions kept the same (well, maybe thinner too!).

So I did some lame-math and it turns out that if we add some pixels to the current 640×960 resolution, we’ll end up with roughly 1096×640. That’s still lower than the first two iPads, but it will add that dreadful fragmentation to the Apple line, and the apps will grow in size to accommodate three phone and two tablet resolutions.

Windows Phone 7 will eat up Android’s market share, and fast!

Posted on May 16, 2012 by IdeaMonster

Windows Phone 7 might have had a rough start, but it's gaining momentum to become something more than a novelty

Today the Smartphone OS market is divided between iOS and Android, with the rest of the platforms being pretty much non-relevant. Yeah, I know, they’re bold and pro and all that. Too bad it doesn’t matter. A smart and well done ad campaign won’t change much now, without features. So yeah, there are two main OS’es, but Windows Phone 7 is going to be the third one whether you like it or not.

Let’s think about it for a second. There’s a finite number of smartphone makers. With WP7 gaining in popularity, who will suffer the biggest blow here? Apple? Nope! They make their own hardware and software, so that won’t change much, except maybe a few % of users switching.

Yeah, you’ve guessed it! Android is installed on phones by the likes of LG, HTC and Samsung. And we already see some HTC phones having WP7 instead of Android. With Microsoft’s pile’o money it’s only a matter of time before it spreads to other manufacturers. And the battle will begin! Google might actually loose the suppliers of hardware, which in turn will result in less Android’s sold, and less ad revenue for the company. This time Microsoft’s offer for the phones is actually VERY good. And they already have Nokia on their side.

And we were all wondering why did Google buy Motorola Mobile a while ago. Now it’s pretty obvious!

Photoshop Touch is finally here

Posted on February 27, 2012 by IdeaMonster

iPad2 only, but still it's a nice way to sketch some projects on the go, and finish them on the real PS at home

Adobe has just released Photoshop Touch for the second generation iPad. The software was present on the Android platform since november, but apparently it wasn’t so easy to port. The good thing is that they didn’t use that “toilet paper roll logo” this time, going for something a little bit more classy. The software itself will probably be expanded with new features as soon as the third iPad gets here and Android tablets will get a power boost. But for now it’s probably the most powerful image editor out there, just a little bit ahead of PhotoForge 2 (which is also great but lacks some features).

In this video they emphasize the ease of use and sharing, which might suggest it’s pointed mostly to casual users editing their facebook pictures, but time will tell if it’ll be adopted by professionals as well.

You can download the software here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-photoshop-touch/id495716481?mt=8

WebOS will go open source. Will it influence phone makers to switch from lawsuit troubled Android?

Posted on December 10, 2011 by IdeaMonster

HP has just announced, that their palm inheritance - the Web OS, which ran on the discontinued HP TouchPad disaster (and post-Palm phones), will go Open Source!

This means that it’ll eventually be available to phone makers the same way Android is today. And with all those legal battles, Carrier IQ’s, viruses, malware, piracy and whatnot it might not be a bad choice for the likes of HTC (or even Samsung) to quit the Android platform once and for all.
Web OS is actually a well designed, intuitive and original piece of software, unlike Android, so it’ll push the market forward instead of just being a poor (but popular) copy of iOS. The repeating story of windows poorly copying Mac OS comes to mind here, doesn’t it?

If it all goes through, making mobile apps and games will be harder than ever, with way too many platforms for indie developers to successfully develop for. But in any case this is good news, because I much prefer Web OS over Android, and would like to see the platform grow. Exciting times with Windows Phone 7 gaining market share we might have a re-shuffle of the mobile system ranks soon.