Compatibility with that upcoming OS That Must Not Be Named.
Unless Lord Voldemort is suddenly in the programming business, that has to mean iOS 5.
The official release date of iOS 5 is merely “Fall”, which is an incredibly nebulous time period. These updates hint that we might get closer to the final release, probably at some point in September.
Sohu.com has a report up saying China Telecom, China’s third largest mobile carrier, will not only be fielding the iPhone this year, but two new iPhones. We’re fairly sure an iPhone 5 is coming this fall, and we’ve heard for a while now an iPhone nano/budget iPhone might be coming with it. (Two new iPhones in one year? I’ll have to call Phil and ask how to deal with that many reviews!)
“According to Sohu.com, China Telecom will offer two types of iPhone that include the iPhone 5 and a ‘simplified iPhone 4,’” says White. “Essentially, this potential ‘simplified iPhone 4′ would be a more economical version of iPhone to target a broader customer base in developing countries such as China, allowing for an expanded market opportunity.”
Apple already owns 66% of mobile profits with one fairly high-end phone. If they get the second, more economical phone (on carriers with plans to keep those costs down), especially for new smartphone adopters and emerging markets, they could push that already astronomical figure even higher.
[Sohu via AllThingsD]
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is now finally available in the App Store. If you’re into role playing games, this is one of the most highly anticipated games of the year!
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is available on the iPhone for $15.99. Screenshots after the break.
Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.
Facebook is the most popular app on the iPhone and we’ve often said Twitter and iOS go together like chocolate and peanut butter. But social networks rise and fall. Remember MySpace, Jaiku, Buzz… Friendster? And hey, how about Google+ now that it’s expanding beyond the techie early adopters, or LinkedIn which seems to always hover neither here nor there.
Which social networks do you use regularly? Let us know in the poll up top and give us the details, including which one(s) you prefer, how often you use them, — and your profile link(s) if you feel especially social about it — in the comments below.
Apple may be ready to switch to a single, unified operating system that powers all of its computing products if Jeffries analyst Peter Misek is to be believed. To be released next year, the A6 system-in-a-chip with a new quad-core processor may apparently be powerful enough for mobile tasks along with more advanced personal computer usage. The A6 may mark the first time that the same chip is featured within a Mac system and mobile devices either in conjunction with more advanced Intel processors or to replace them. Misek points towards less-demanding Mac systems exclusively featuring the A6, although he does not say that outright.
A fault in the ARM processor lineup that would be used within the A6, and that has been utilized within the A4 and A5 that the iOS devices utilize, would be that they are only 32-bit, meaning that they cannot take advantage of more modern processor management. It is not until 2016 that 64-bit ARM processors are set to make their way into the market. However, once that does happen Apple’s process of unifying iOS and Mac OS would reportedly be finished.
The current separation between iOS devices and Mac systems is more than justified. After all, they both have different interfaces best suit for their distinct control methods. It may be more so the underlying elements powering the operating system that become unified, though the report does not specifically mention whether they will become one-in-the-same or simply more alike.
Mac OS X Lion, an update released last month for Mac systems, brings some elements of iOS’s interface design to the platform. That includes a page-based app library, full-screen apps, as well as a focus on multi-touch gestures. An App Store for Mac was also recently released following the App Store’s success on the iPhone and
Misek states that the merger would be done so that iCloud can become better-integrated, “Users want to be able to pick up any iPhone, iPad, or Mac (or turn on their iTV) and have content move seamlessly between them and be optimized for the user and the device currently being used. We believe this will be difficult to implement if iOS and OS X are kept separate.”
We do not fully trust his explanation regarding that since file management across two platforms is not a relatively difficult task. Apple seems to have designed the operating systems well enough so that they can have unified features such as iCloud provides. In fact, at the core of iOS is Mac OS X.
I would be more compelled to see if this leads to product combinations – a iMacPad Air, anybody?
[analyst report via
For some reason, today seems to be a day in which all sorts of sequels to well-loved titles have hit the app store.
For people who love both Glee and rhythm games,
EA’s second game in the Shift franchise has hit both
As discussed
Finally, an official sequel has been released for the megapopular Cut The Rope game. Cut the Rope: Experiments is available for iPad (
Google has updated its web app for Gmail with the inclusion of pull down to refresh, new transitions and updated icons to take advantage of the Retina display of the iPhone 4.
