Apple released the latest version of its mobile operating system two weeks ago, boasting 25 million installs within the first week.
In addition to over 200 new features, iOS 5 came with the promise of enhanced speed. Just how much faster is it? When it comes to mobile Web browsing, iOS 5 loads pages slightly more than twice as fast as its predecessor, iOS 4.
"I finally cracked it," Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson just months before his death. He was referring to the design and functionality of television, something Jobs had long wanted his company to reimagine.
In the official biography of the late Apple founder that came out today, one of the last topics discussed before Isaacson touches on Jobs' summer 2011 resignation is how he had hoped to revolutionize the television set.
As with the release of any new version of a major operating system, the security holes will be picked out as users get their hands on it and starting putting it through the paces. Apple's newest iOS 5 is no different.
Chester Wisniewski of Sophos points out that iOS 5 has the same flaw in encryption that iOS 4 did. In addition, reports have surfaced that there is a flaw in iOS 5 that lets users access a password-locked iPad with one of Apple's smart covers. Users should take note and use caution with leaving their iPads in places where a nefarious character might have physical access to it.
Hulu Plus, the paid subscription offering from the premium video streaming site Hulu, will be available on the Nintendo Wii console and 3DS handheld system by the end of the year, the company announced. Hulu Plus joins Netflix as the second video streaming service available on Nintendo gaming consoles. Both are already available on competing gaming systems like Microsoft's XBox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3.
But the real threat, as Nintendo of America's own president has admitted, is not the traditional gaming console manufacturers. It's Apple.
Apple announced a "world tour" of developer training for iOS 5 today, offering to bring a day's worth of free sessions to nine cities across the globe. The iOS 5 Tech Talk World Tour 2011 kicks off in Europe at the beginning of November and continues into the United States until the end of January.
The free, one-day conferences are open to any registered iOS developer who has already had an app accepted into the App Store. However, U.S. developers who haven't registered are already out of luck. Within a few hours of the announcement, the January dates in New York, Seattle and Austin, Texas were all filled up.
Between the more than 200 features that went live with iOS 5 last week, not to mention the sales record-breaking iPhone 4S, Apple customers could be forgiven for not noticing that one last feature Steve Jobs promised in June hasn't arrived yet.
iTunes Match, Apple's cloud-based music backup and syncing service, was held back during the launch of iOS 5 and iCloud, which was probably a smart move considering the strain iOS 5 itself put on Apple's servers. Well, iTunes Match should be dropping any day now.
Android made a jump today that signals the future of the platform. Anybody familiar with Android will take a look at its new Ice Cream Sandwich platform and know that Google has truly morphed its tablet version of the platform, Honeycomb, and the previous smartphone versions into an entirely new user interface. Whether or not users will respond favorably to it remains to be seen, but Android 4.0 is a dynamic update to the leading smartphone operating system.
What is new with Ice Cream Sandwich? Well, Google is playing to Android's strengths with ICS by creating new multi-tasking capabilities, resizable widgets, improved voice controls and quicker communication controls. Android has also tied its browser to the cloud, which will drastically improve how it renders and saves pages. Check out what is new with Android 4.0 below and how Android now stacks up against its competition.
For Twitter, it appears that the microblogging service's new relationship with Apple is paying off.
The company saw a huge boost in user sign-ups on the first day of iOS 5 being live, thanks to an especially tight integration between the service and Apple's ever-popular mobile operating system. Last Wednesday, when iOS 5 was officially released, Twitter had three times the new user sign-ups it normally sees in a typical day, CEO Dick Costolo told the crowd at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday.
The danger with carrying a smartphone in your pocket is that it is essentially a piece of glass held together with metal and plastic with sophisticated electrical innards. Warranties from original equipment manufacturers tend to not cover a phone if it is broken or has water damage. What if you drop your brand new iPhone 4S into a puddle? The glass is going to break and it is going to get water inside. When that happens, you are in trouble like a half-plucked turkey the day before Thanksgiving.
The folks at SquareTrade like to break things. SquareTrade is a third-party device warranty company that basically offers insurance for what Apple or the other OEMs will not cover in warranties. The company posted a video positing a Samsung Galaxy S II against an iPhone 4S. The results are not for the fanboy faint of heart.
Apple proudly touted its latest iPhone 4S sales numbers this morning, having succeeded in selling more than 4 million of the devices over the weekend. Alongisde that announcement comes the news that more than 25 million iOS device owners are now using iOS 5.
The latest version of Apple's mobile operating system went live last week, five months after being unveiled by Steve Jobs at the World Wide Developer's Conference. The new operating system seems to be having a strong first week, despite issues experienced by many users when the software was first made available last Wednesday.
