Microsoft is slowly but surely starting to cater for people who use Apple’s devices – and the latest app from their stable is the My Xbox Live app. If you are a big online game player, and you hate tearing yourself away from your Xbox, the Xbox Live app will keep you posted on all the activity in your Xbox community. The app is beautifully made, and gives you a very special preview to how apps look on Windows Phone – it feels a little strange having a Metro interface on your iDevice.

Here is the feature rundown: (more…)

In the past, enterprise was the natural habitat for BlackBerry – but with the recent shift in popularity to other smartphones it means that businesses are stuck with BlackBerry because of previous capital outlay for Blackberry Enterprise Servers. RIM is now approaching the Mobile Device Management market, and has smartly built in control of Android and iOS as well in its upcoming solution.

Research In Motion today introduced BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – the Company’s next-generation enterprise mobility solution and RIM’s entry into the multi-platform Mobile Device Management (MDM) marketplace. Building on years of leading enterprise mobility management solutions from RIM, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will simplify the management of smartphones and tablets running BlackBerry, Google Android and Apple iOS operating systems.

“We are pleased to introduce BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – RIM’s next generation enterprise mobility solution – to make it easier for our business and government customers to manage the diversity of devices in their operations today,” said Alan Panezic, Vice President, Enterprise Product Management and Marketing at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry Mobile Fusion brings together our industry-leading BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology for BlackBerry devices with mobile device management capabilities for iOS and Android devices, all managed from one web-based console. It provides the necessary management capabilities to allow IT departments to confidently oversee the use of both company-owned and employee-owned mobile devices within their organizations.”

RIM is the leading provider of enterprise mobility solutions with over 90 percent of the Fortune 500 provisioning BlackBerry devices today. The enterprise market for smartphones and tablets continues to grow in both the company-provisioned and employee-owned (Bring Your Own Device or BYOD) categories. BYOD in particular has led to an increase in the diversity of mobile devices in use in the enterprise and new challenges for CIOs and IT departments as they struggle to manage and control wireless access to confidential company information on the corporate network. This has resulted in increased demand for mobile device management solutions. (more…)

BlackBerry might be attempting a very risky move soon with BBM. Many BlackBerry users stick to the platform primarily because of BBM – it is free and (arguably) a lot more stable and reliable than other mobile services like Whatsapp. It does however have a few criticisms – biggest of which is the BlackBerry only nature of communication. You might have BBM, but if your buddy does not have a BlackBerry, well, you will need to use other channels.

Recently leaked images (by TechnoBuffalo) of BBM running on an Android device seem to suggest that RIM is looking at broadening the install base of BBM to other platforms. Current supports seem to suggest that BBM might be coming to Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone platforms. The leaked images on the Android device seem to share the same basic minimalistic interface design as the BlackBerry version, and the app logo also uses the BlackBerry Messaging logo.

(more…)

Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt has stated that its purchase of mobile company Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. in August was for more than just its patents.

Rather, the aim of  the search engine giant, that bought the company for $12.5 billion, was to acquire Motorola’s product line. “Motorola has some amazing products,” Schmidt told Salesforce.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff.

The acquisition might have come as a surprise but it makes total sense. Gone are the days of Android being called fragmented because of hardware manufacturers tweaking Android to suit their requirements before shipping their handsets. Google can now control their entire mobile experience from hardware to software (Sound familiar? Think iOS).

The acquisition of 17, 000 patents will also help them defend Android against patent claims by their number one competitor – Apple.

Get out your tinfoil hats, for a speculative ride into the future of Apple!

No, that is not a rollercoaster.

As you might already know, Mac OS X Lion launched recently with a lot of the new features taken straight from Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS. The Launchpad looks like the iPad, application state-saving, inverted (natural?) scrolling, full-screen apps and an app store amongst other features. There are subtle interface changes that give hints to what Apple are planning.

Scrolling

When you turn on Lion for the first time, you will be faced with inverted scrolling. Scroll up on the trackpad and the scrollbar goes down. Why Apple why? Why break something that is not broken? Let me tell you why. Imagine you have a long piece of paper in front of  you. As you start reading, at some point you need to move the paper to read the bottom part. How do you do it? You do it, by moving the paper… up: think Star Wars intro text. Apple is telling you: forget about the screen, just look at the data: that is what is important. As Rian vd Merwe puts it: “Apple wants us to remove the current abstraction from our data (the file system and the ‘window’), and instead focus on and interact with the data itself”. With iOS, this came naturally, as there was only a touch interface. You directly interacted with your data. On tablets and smartphones, this is how you scroll: you move the data around, not the viewport/window.

Colour

Pic from Macstories.net

Snow Leopard vs Lion

An interesting design choice was removing colour on interface elements and going for a monochrome feel. While Lion’s monochrome feel (gone is the aqua bars as well) seems dull, there seems to be a good reason for it. Apple claimed that its goal is to de-emphasize irrelevant (surrounding user interface) parts and through that, emphasise your content which is more important. This makes sense in addition to the change in scrolling: your data is what is important. They are going even a step further and introduced full-screen applications. Gone is the dock and top bar: it doesn’t matter.

What is with the skeuomorphs?

Skeumorphs are designs that aim to look their previous counterparts in order to create a familiar environment for new users. On the iPad, Apple introduced a calendar that looks like it’s real life counterpart.

iPad iCal

Lion iCal

As you can see, Lion’s iCal took tips from iPad‘s iCal. It also has a skeuomorphic design. Why include a skeuomorphic design only now? Everyone who has used iCal on previous OS X versions are familiar with iCal’s design. Why change what does not need to be changed? Is it to further emphasise the idea of working with your ‘content’ instead of a screen and your application? Maybe, but I think there might be another reason, answered by asking:

So, why all the iOS?

Apple is betting on changing the way we look at our computers. With the success of iOS, Apple wants us to think anew; changing the user interface that hasn’t changed for more than a decade. Are they trying to be that bold, or is there another part to the story? There might be some clues in the numbers.

Apple’s best-selling products for 2010 was the iPhone and iPad. This wonderful visualisation gives you the best clue. Almost 50% of Apple’s revenue for 2010 came from the iPhone. This is all very well, except the massive Android gorilla looming above the iPhone. Android is now serving almost 50% of the smartphone market and shows no sign of stopping. Now you know why Apple are suing HTC, they are protecting their most valuable asset.

This seems like an unsustainable strategy (even more so with Google’s recent buyout of Motorola Mobility), which leads to the most speculative conclusion: Apple wants to move iPhone (iOS) users to their other products. An iOS user will be familiar with an app store, resuming of apps, the scrolling, the launchpad look and the skeuomorphic designs of the native apps. This idea is further cemented with the addition of iCloud. This way, when you buy Apple, you buy into the ecosystem. Now that Apple has sold so many iPhones, they want them onto the other platforms before Android does too much damage.

What do you think? Do you think Lion‘s interface changes are justified? Do you think iOS’ movement to OS X (and desktop/laptop operating systems) is revolutionary: a breath of fresh air to the decade old interface?

When iOS 4.3 was still in Beta, a few videos started showing up online that show off the new multitasking gestures – some of which actually do look like a great idea. Unfortunately it never showed up in the final version. Immediately rumours started popping up about Apple possibly doing away with the physical home button on the iPad, something anybody who has spent time with a Galaxy Tab would know is a bad idea. The new gestures are as follows:

• Switch between open apps: Sweep four fingers left or right
• Reveal Taskbar: Sweep four fingers upward
• Home Screen: Pinch four or fingers or across the screen

While these “features” do not seem major, it does seem to feel natural with the large iPad screen. I switched it on, and it does feel like it should actually ship with the iPad.

So how do you do it? Well first off, you need a Mac to activate it, and $5 to spend on Xcode. Yeah, that sucks, but at least you do not need to jailbreak your iPad. So fire up Appstore on your Mac, search for XCode and then install it. Then run Xcode, connect your iPad (be it iPad 1 or iPad 2), then enable development mode. You will get warnings about not being registered as a developer, which you can ignore.

If you did all this you will find the new “Multitasking Gestures” switch under Settings. Switch in on, and then start swiping with all your fingers!

It should be mentioned that you can enable this for free by jailbreaking the device, but I am not giving advice in that regard. Also, Apple will probably enable this in a future version of iOS, so you can also just wait…

Now that iPhone is available on MTN, it means that we are starting to see more iPhones on our shores, and it is no longer only available on a very expensive contract. The last few updates to these devices have been pretty great, and iPad users got a huge update in the form of iOS 4.2.

Apple has just released the beta version of its next update, iOS 4.3. Even with 4.2, there are certain things that Android seems to do better these days – and one of them has been “hotspot” functionality. This allows your phone to create a Wifi network to which other devices can connect to. Up to now iPhone allowed “tethering” only, but soon you will be able to share your wifi connection to those devices that only have a wifi connection available. Good examples of this is the Wifi-only iPad models, or if you got one of the new Wifi-only Kindles. To be honest, I will have decide whether I should keep on paying for 3G on my iPad…

Here are some other great features to expect:

• New Multitouch gestures: You can swipe four fingers left and right in order to switch between running applications. Almost like a “Alt+Tab” for iPad. You can also pinch with five fingers to bring up the home screen.
• Lots of evidence of Facetime arriving on the next iPad. Its littered all over the code. Looks like the iPad screen resolution would stay the same in iPad 2G, so forget about a “retina” displays on the iPad.
• iPad users can now choose whether the switch on the side of the device is for orientation-lock or muting the device.
• Airplay is being shifted to other applications as well, provided they play videos in very specific H.264 and AAC standards.

Other things include small interface and usability changes, and bug fixes. However, being in Beta, there are probably a few new bugs. One thing which is not so great is that this beta release has not been made available for iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2g, which might indicate that these devices might not get any more updates. Which is not totally unexpected – the iPhone 3G is not a happy camper with iOS4, but 4.2 seems te run a bit better.

And if you are someone who wants to get an iPad because of all these updates coming soon, I would say hang on a while. While the iPad is not a waste of money, the 2nd generation iPad should be out within the next 3 months.

The iOS Appstore has been one of the greatest success stories in software distribution, and it revolutionized the way we used our mobile phones. It was universally “borrowed” for other platforms as well, some with greater success than others. The advantages to using an Appstore are plenty – users can instantly see the most popular applications available for a platform, and a central location to download apps from is great. Instant installs and easy payment methods just improve it even further.

Apple will now be bringing this functionality to Macs as well, and first to those running OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard). The idea is simple – instead of going to the edge of the internet to find apps, you will find a curated store which can easily be searched to find the software you want. Software will be licensed per user, and if you have multiple Macs, the software can be put on all your machines with a single purchase, as long as the machines are linked to a user account (I suspect there will be a limit to this though).

Your account will be connected to your Apple ID, which is in turn connected to your credit card. So you do not have to go type in your payment details into some site you do not trust. One aspect of the Appstore I find exciting as well – centralized updates. Just like on iPhone, you can click one button to instantly update all the apps at once. No more checking for updates within every app or using obscure utilities to the job.

Apple is currently opening the Mac Appstore to developers, and a lot of the same rules as the iOS Appstore exists here. Developers will get 70% of their asking price, but then Apple would host the app for them, and charge no additional fees. For certain software houses 70% might be too little (do you think Adobe would give away 30% of the asking price of CS5?), whereas for smaller developers this might be a great deal (think some small company making a utility who does not want to spend extra on hosting fees). Once again Apple would curate all apps, so if the app is of limited use, or does not function as advertised, it will not arrive on the Appstore. Some people do not like this, but the quality of apps inside the appstore would hopefully then be of a higher quality…

Despite the authorization process by Apple, the potential advantages for new computer users will be great. Its clear to see that iOS and Mac are moving closer and closer together…