New iOS 7 Concept Brings Johnny Ive’s “Flatter” Idea To Life

We’re one month away from Apple’s WWDC where iOS 7 is expected to be unveiled, but the concepts definitely haven’t slowed down. Many designers have taken it upon themselves to create new and refreshing concepts of what the next generation iOS software should look like. Some are better than others, and this one will surely interest some of you.

Designed by digital agency Simply Zesty, this iOS concept is based on the recent rumors of Johnny Ive giving the platform a “flatter” look. Although the concept doesn’t really include many new features, the overall UI gets a big refresh, and we love it…

Personally, I’ve gotten a little bored with the stock iOS look, especially considering the lack of customization available without jailbreaking. So, this is definitely something I wouldn’t mind giving a try. Here are some more pictures of the concept's design:

Message Send Percent is a status indicator for your outgoing messages

Message Send Percent, by developer greensnow, is a simple little UI tweak that adds a percentage indicator to your Messages app. This allows you to know the exact send status of all of your outgoing text messages…

And when I say little, I mean little. There’s no Home screen icon for Message Send Percent, and there’s no settings. Once installed, the only time you’ll notice it is when you send an outgoing text from the Messages app.

In my brief testing, I found the tweak to be accurate and stable. And it blended in nicely with the stock UI. I guess I could see how some folks might like this for the aesthetics, because otherwise its purpose is pretty wispy.

At any rate, if you’d like to try out Message Send Percent, you can find it in Cydia, in the ModMyi repo, for free.

Contractor modifies thousands of iPads for government use

CACI, or Consolidated Analysis Center Incorporated, is a federal contractor that delivers various information technology services to government agencies. Its primary focus is security, and it goes through great lengths to provide protected business solutions for its clients.

A good example of this is the work it’s doing with Apple’s mobile products. In a recent interview, CACI’s CEO Dan Allen said that his company has altered ‘thousands’ of iPads so that they can be used securely by high-ranking government officials—including the President…

Bloomberg reports:

“We’re looking at how do you go chase that market and how do you put partnerships in place,” Allen said. “The things that we’re doing with Apple around mobility — it’s a broad market play.”

CACI, based in Arlington, Virginia, secures iPads for the government by altering the hardware rather than by providing software, Allen said. While the iPad’s wireless connectivity and camera are among the features he said are risky in a top-secret environment, he declined to provide details on how CACI secures the devices.”

A number of US officials are known to use Apple products, most notably President Barack Obama. In an interview with ABC News in late 2011, The President said that he had received a pre-release version of the iPad 2 directly from the then-Apple CEO himself, Steve Jobs.

So did Obama’s iPad 2 get the CACI treatement? It’s very possible. Allen told Bloomberg that all of the iPads seen being used by top government officials are more than likely a product that either came from his company [CACI], or came from someone they work with.

Apple has really come a long way in the enterprise space over the past few years. These days it seems like its gaining high-profie corporate and government accounts almost as fast as BlackBerry is losing them. And it’s obvious that companies like CACI are part of the reason for that.

It’d be interesting to see exactly what CACI does to the iPads to get them ready to handle classified documents and what not.

Samsung to preempt the iPhone 5S with the Galaxy S IV rocking a full HD display

South Korea-based Samsung through its subsidiary Samsung Electronics is expected to update the flagship Galaxy S III smartphone in the first quarter of this year. The Galaxy S IV successor is expected to make much noise ahead of Apple’s next iPhone release, especially with its full HD 1080p five-inch display and powerful innards thought to run Samsung’s new quad-core system-on-a-chip.

And if you consult Samsung’s latest AMOLED release schedule, the first device incorporating the firm’s full HD mobile display is coming in the first quarter of 2013…

AnandTech last week published an example roadmap of Samsung AMOLED displays from CES.

As you can see, the company’s first full HD mobile display is slated for a Q1 2013 launch.

I didn’t get close enough to be able to see what the subpixel geometry or stripe was, but 440PPI underneath and the fact that it’s the successor to the 5.55″ display (from the Note 2) makes me think this is likely RGB.

Samsung is also claiming a 25 percent power saving using a new material on new AMOLED revisions, and also has a low power mode that I don’t know much about with 47 percent power savings. Again, I strongly suspect this display will find its way into whatever Galaxy S 4 ends up being.

The South Korean conglomerate at CES said it will be discussing a variety of new consumer electronics products at a media event on February 21, a week before Mobile World Congress is scheduled to take place in Barcelona, Spain.

Samsung Monday announced cumulative sales of a hundred million Galaxy S-branded smartphones, of which 30 million were the flagship Galaxy S III model. Putting all of their smartphones together, Samsung leads by ten percentage points in US mobile marketshare over everyone else, per comScore.

Reuters speculated the Galaxy S IV may come with “a breakthrough unbreakable screen”which can be folded while BGR heard from its sources the phone has a five-inch screen, along with a 2GHz quad-core Exynos processor with 2GB of RAM and a 13-megapixel rear camera.

The screen is likely full HD (1,920-by-1,080) and at 440 pixels per inch would be a big improvement in pixel density over both the Galaxy S III’s 306 ppi and the iPhone 5′s 326 ppi screen.

If there’s any truth to the rumors, we’ll see Apple’s response shortly after.

The Japanese blog Macotakara back in March heard Apple was working on a brand new five-inch iOS device that could have a resolution of either 1,600-by-960 or 1,280-by-960 pixels. The blog heard from Apple will release this new gizmo later this year.

Some think the new device represents Apple’s answer to the growing popularity of so-called phablets, epitomized by Samsung’s Galaxy Note series.

Phablets represent a middle category that’s a mix of smartphone and tablet features. Nearly half the respondents in iDB’s poll yesterday said Apple should release a phablet of its own.

Survey: the iPad mini becomes ‘kid’s tablet’ for holiday gifts

We’re still gaining insights from holiday sales of Apple products. The latest finding: the iPad mini is now dubbed the “kid’s tablet” after one survey found post-Christmas usage of Apple’s smaller tablet rose 270 percent among families with young children. The new data comes from the makers of Kindertown.

Kindertown makes an app which helps parents find child-suitable apps. Among other findings culled from the software’s more than 200,000 users: while the iPad 4 was popular as a family gift, children also adopted the original iPad as a technological hand-me-down. Elsewhere, iPhone’s were not a big gift item for this demographic, after-Christmas usage of Apple’s handset not rising following the holidays…

According to charts from TechCrunch, the iPad mini, the fourth and fifth generation iPod touch, as well as the original iPad all gained usage after Christmas, suggesting they were popular holiday gifts.

Usage of iPhones and the iPad 2 and 3 declined following the holidays, indicating these Apple devices did not make it under the tree in Kindertown’s audience.

The data from the KinderTown app, which acts as a family-friendly version of the App Store, also shows that while the iPad mini and the iPad 4 were popular gifts, the preference among parents seemed weighted toward the smaller tablet.

There was a 272 percent difference in iPad mini usage after Christmas, compared to before December 25. By comparison, there was just a 190 percent increase in usage of Apple’s latest full-size tablet, the iPad 4.

Finally, the post-holiday gift report for children seems to largely echo the products kids most wanted.

In November we reported that tablets topped the list. While the Nielsen survey found the Apple logo among four of the top five most-wanted gifts, the iPad 4 was requested more than the iPad mini.

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  Samsung to preempt the iPhone 5S with the Galaxy S IV rocking...

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  Budget iPhone to feature hybrid plastic/metal design, due later this year

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  Write your own jailbreak tweaks on the fly with upcoming ‘Flex’ utility

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  “Tap to unlock” from the lock screen instead of sliding with ‘tapUnlock’

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Instagram reminds us that new terms of service go into effect on Saturday

By Christian Zibreg, Jan 15, 2013

• 1 Comment

Photo sharing service Instagram in an email notice issued to its users today warned that the new terms of service pertaining to images are about to go into effect later this week. The official email communication acknowledges that the updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, that now “take into account the feedback we received from the Instagram Community”, will be in effect this coming Saturday, January 19, 2013.

When it first announced new terms of service that mentioned “advertising” and “your photos”, many users feared the service would be able to sell their Instagrams to advertisers and use them elsewhere. After the fallout ensued, Instagram returned to the original terms of service and clarified in a blog post that “Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos”…

And just to re-iterate its stance, Instagram is now telling its users that “these updates don’t change the fact that you own your photos that you post on Instagram, and our privacy controls work just as they did before”.

Instagram’s email communication reads:

Hello,

Our community has grown by many millions of people since we wrote our originalTerms of Service and Privacy Policy. As we announced in December, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. These policies also now take into account the feedback we received from the Instagram Community. We’re emailing you to remind you that, as we announced last month, these updated policies will be in effect as of January 19th, 2013.

You can read our blog post that highlights some of the key updates. And remember, these updates don’t change the fact that you own your photos that you post on Instagram, and our privacy controls work just as they did before.

Thank you,
The Instagram Team

Should you distrust them, you can move all your photos over to Flickr in one fell swoop.

Instagram also plans to share data with Facebook to “fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used”, as well as  merge your two separate profiles.

Tim Bradshaw@tim

More TOS fallout? EyeEm, an Instagram alternative, is now ranking higher than Instagram in the US App Store pic.twitter.com/GvOxgBfE

15 Jan 13

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Instagram’s parent company Facebook is scheduled to announce some major news today at 10am Pacific Time. The event remains a genuine mystery as many watchers wonder what Facebook’s mobile future means for its stock.

Among the developments expected to be discussed at the news conference: a possible brand new mobile OS from Facebook and a new iPad build of Facebook’s Messenger program with VoIP and quite possibly Skype video chatting.

My colleague Jeff yesterday told you of a neat trick to make the Messenger app working on a jailbroken iPad.

Sources allegedly told BusinessInsider that today’s presser includes “a huge new mobile ad product”. Apparently the social networking giant is planning to let advertisers buy mobile ad inventory through FBX, its real-time bidding ad exchange.

The new conference is an hour away and iDB will be watching it closely and reporting back with key announcements as they happen.

Apple said to begin ‘iPhone 5S’ production in March ahead of summer launch

With so much talk about the current-gen iPhone seeing weaker-than-expected demand swirling about, analysts and industry watchers have already begun to look forward to Apple’s next-generation handset, believed to be the ‘iPhone 5S.’

The company is widely expected to break its handset’s traditional, annual release cycle this year, releasing the new iPhone well before fall. And a new report today supports that theory, saying Apple’s next smartphone will land in June…

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek (via AppleInsider) said in a note to investors this morning that two next-gen iPhone prototypes are currently in testing. One is said to be the so-called ‘iPhone 5S,’ while the other could be the rumored budget model.

The analyst’s report actually matches up with scoops from both DigiTimes and The Wall Street Journal, who have both said that prototypes for Apple’s next-gen handset are floating around its supply chain. The release dates, however, don’t.

Misek says that Apple will begin preliminary builds of the ‘iPhone 5S’ in March, setting up for a debut in June or July. That contradicts a previous report though, which said the handset went into production in December for a Q1 2013 launch.

Additionally, he says that the rumored budget iPhone has already been green-lit. ”Similar to the iPad mini, we expect a concentrated low-cost iPhone rather than a ‘cheap’ one.” He says it has a polycarbonate case, a 4-inch display and no LTE.

Even if you consider the fact that analysts aren’t always the most accurate when it comes to Apple rumors, you have to admit, there’s a lot of different analysts saying the same thing right now: the next iPhone will land sooner than expected, and Apple has a low-cost iPhone in the works. And that in and of itself is cause for excitement.