FNB has released a new Banking App customised for tablet devices, complimenting a much larger tablet device strategy for the Bank. From today, the App is available for download from today in app stores across Apple, Android and Windows 8 devices.

“The new Banking App, designed specifically for tablet devices, was developed with ease-of-use as a key priority and utilises the full capability of the latest tablet devices. It is completely custom-made and not a re-skin of our existing smartphone App.” says Farren Roper, Head of FNB Connect ISP and Business Operations.

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There are a few big dogs in tech that always seem to know more about what is going on behind the scenes at Apple. These include guys like MG Siegler and John Gruber amongst others. These guys started chatting on Branch, and there are some very interesting blurbs of info which will be of great interest to fans of the iPhone.

Apparently the iOS7 update is bigger than originally planned, and is currently running behind. Apple has moved engineers from the Mac OS X 10.9 team to hurry up the iOS7 development. The big news with iOS7 is that Scott Forstall (which headed up iOS since day one) has moved away from Apple, and Jony Ive (the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design) has taken his place for UI design.

The new iOS7 changes is apparently so big that current engineers are using special filters on their phones so that no one can peak over and see the new design. iOS has been heavily criticised for its skeumorphic heavy interface, and the new iOS will have a lot cleaner design.

Some other interesting observations from the online chat: (more…)

The iPad has been taking the enterprise by storm, and it is clear that among many office workers it is quickly becoming the device of choice for taking meeting notes, emailing and keeping up with your calendar. With the average person moving to a more browser centric work style, it is only natural to see that corporate will find tablets more enticing.

But there are a few things that PCs still do better than tablets.  Not everyone agrees that tablets are the future of computicket, but I do particularly like Steve Jobs’s vision for the future of tablets:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms. Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular.”

“PCs are going to be like trucks,” Jobs said. “They are still going to be around.” “only one out of x people will need them.”

One of the key areas where tablets still suffer is with proper Office suites. (more…)

The iPhone 5 has been unveiled. As widely predicted, its all-new design features a thinner metal case, a larger screen, and a new connector. It also packs iOS 6, which includes Apple’s Maps, Apple’s new proprietary mapping and navigation app and the replacement for Google Maps on iOS.

To welcome the iPhone 5, ALK have optimised CoPilot Live for its new taller screen for an a better widescreen navigation experience. They have also integrated with Apple’s Maps in iOS 6. A user will be able to find and select a location on Apple’s Maps and then navigate there using CoPilot’s offline, voice-guided, turn-by-turn GPS guidance. As with all CoPilot apps, CoPilot’s maps are stored on the phone for use when there is no mobile or data connection available.

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If you have read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, you would already know that Apple started working on a tablet computer before the iPhone was made. Steve Jobs also admitted to Walt Mossberg that when he saw what his UI guys came up with on the tablet, he saw the opportunity to shift the touch interface to a phone and ordered the teams to focus on the iPhone first:

“I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got [rubber band] scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!’ So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone”

But recent court filings which included depositions by Jony Ive have uncovered some engineering samples of some of the first tablet machines which would later take shape as the iPad. This tablet originates between 2001 and 2004, which just goes to show how many years of development go into any new product at Apple (makes a person wonder what they are busy with for 2020?). The tablet is a lot thicker than the original iPad of course, and it is made from plastic, which is consistent with Apple’s design language at the time (think iMac G4 and later).

Here are some more pictures: (more…)

Well maybe not purgatory but three days of disappointment at least.

What on earth am I talking about? iOS 6, dear readers and how it’s the most disappointing piece of software I’ve used in ages. Before I get lambasted by the Apple faithful I’d like to state for the record that I’m still not comfortable with Android and I don’t see myself using an Android phone despite being tempted by the HTC One X. For me, iOS 6 is the Cindy Crawford of mobile operating systems: really hot back in the day, still pretty hot right now but not exactly in its heyday. I’ve been using iOS 6 on my iPad for the past three days and it’s extremely mediocre.

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HP has had some tough times in the past year – after their then-CEO Leo Apotheker announced that HP would be stepping out of the PC game, their sales figures took a small dive, but luckily he got ousted before such rash moves. HP is now once again back in the number one spot when it comes to overall PC sales worldwide.

Canalis’s research now starts to include tablet devices under PC sales, and Apple’s iPad sales has contributed significantly to Apple’s sales numbers, but even so, HP’s sales was slightly higher overall. So Apple was in second place, Lenovo in third (with big increases in sales) and Acer and Dell taking the fourth and fifth spots.

What is clear however, is that tablet devices has started to eat away at the previously very popular netbook market:

“The total client PC market grew by 21% to 107 million units. Importantly, while the pad category exhibited the highest growth – more than 200% year on year – notebook and desktop PC shipments were up too, rising 11% and 8% respectively. Netbook shipments, however, were down 34% on the year-ago quarter – the sixth such fall in succession.”

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Pricing for the new iPad 3 (or just “the new iPad”) has just been announced by the Core group, and the pricing is similiar to what iPad 2 pricing was before it was discounted to clear stock for the iPad 3rd Generation. With pricing starting at R5000 for the base 16GB model with Wifi, we reckon it is still very good value for money. The new iPad launches on 27 April, and here is the full pricing rundown:

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