AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

I am using DragonDictate on the iPhone right now. That new iPad, introduce on March 7, will have its own needed dictation function. There are a couple issues we want to examine. One is why does the new iPad not have Siri. The other issue is why dictation function not extended to other iPhones and iOS devices. My iPhone is the CDMA iPhone for Verizon. Using Dragon dictate, it works perfectly well. As a matter of DragonDictate seems to work the same way Siri's dictation works by sending information to Apple's servers to process the voice information. From what I can see, both Siri dictation and Dragon Dictate work in the same manner. Therefore I cannot understand why the new iPad does not have full Siri, and why older iOS devices like the iPhone 4 cannot have needed dictation. One possible explanation is that Siri simply is not ready yet. Siri was a beta function when it was first introduced during the iPhone 4S event last October. The status of Siri has not changed. I am sure ...

The iPad 2 coming in at $399 after the introduction of this year's new iPad with it's Retina Display and awesome new features came as no surprise.  At this point, the $399 iPad 2 is going to have a huge impact on the sales of tablets priced between $299 and $399.  Unless you're stuck in time, $100 isn't that big of a deal as it was even when the original iPad came out in 2010 or even ten years ago.   Now, consider this.  Suppose Apple keeps the iPad 2 around for another year next year's 2013 iPad comes out and the current iPad goes down to the $399 price now occupy by the iPad 2.  that could mean the iPad 2 could potentially drop as to as low as $299.   Don't think it'll happen. The iPhone 3GS has been around since 2009 and continues to be a hot seller, this is a full two years after two new iPhones has been on the market.  So, there is precedent for Apple to keep products around just to capture lost sales while still maintaining its profit margin. The...

For those of you who are still on the first-gen iPad like I am and are looking to upgrade, a quick note here.   eBay is offer a trade-in for cash. Not a bad deal if you're looking to upgrade to the 2012 iPad. As you can see, for my 32 GB iPad, I'm able to get $215.  Not a bad value.  Not great either.  At the end of the day, I'm still very fond of my iPad so I think I'll be keeping it.  I don't know if I'll be upgrading to the 2012 iPad yet.  I might after I've seen the awesome Retina Display and feel the speed of Apple's latest magical tablet. But if you're up for it, eBay is willing to pay you for your older gear. Note:  Even if I decide to get the new iPad, I'm not letting this one go.  It's like the original Mac, an antique.

This proves it. AT&T sucks big time while VZW is using this opportunity to stick it to them. When Apple unveiled the latest iPad on Wednesday, there was a scramble for info on the LTE data plan. As things began to be sorted out, we learned that AT$T is unsure about wireless data tethering while Verizon is stepping up and offering it for free as a part of your data plan. I am sure VZW will extend this offer to other tablet users like those with Android in the coming weeks as well. It doesn't make my issues with the evil wireless providers any batter as far as VZW goes but it does make them less evil for now than AT$T. - Posted using BlogPress

Zynga's social gaming platform is a very interesting take and it marks the ability for the Z to break away from its reliance on Facebook for gamers.  And while Zynga's new social gaming platform (SGP) has a good future, I wonder if it's creating more of a Hulu-like environment for gamers and developers? It just added three new studios, Konami, being one of the biggest and baddest in the video game arena.  And likely, we'll see Z announce more partners in the future.  And I'm liking this quite a bit, much more than Hulu's ad-based and subscription business model. As we know from mobile gaming on Apple's iPhone and iPad and Google's Android, in-app purchases has become very popular and is one of the preferred business models.  This is a recurring revenue that is just right for picking from developers. I'm no stock guy but if I had some money that I don't need, I would consider buy Zynga stocks because of this huge potential.  And as this SGP grows,...

When the news of Michael Jackson's death hit the web, millions flocked to Google to see if the news was true. It was assumed a massive denial of service attack was on-going.  Now, there's anther kind of event that can bring websites to their knees: Apple media events. When the iPhone 4S was introduced, many live blogging sites failed.  You'd think live blogging sites have learned their lessons.  Have they? I started off the day with 7 blogs running simultaneously because I knew most of them will fail by the end of the day.  By the time Tim Cook wrapped up the event and said "expect more innovation from Apple" in 2012, I was down to two blogs because the other sites failed. This gigaom post gave a detailed account of what happened.  So, the answer to the above question is: no. Trust me when I say that the next Apple event this fall for the unveiling of a potentially redesigned iPhone (no more iPhone 5 as Apple has gotten rid of the numeric suff...

The 2012 iPad has 42.5-watt battery compared to the iPad 2's battery coming in at a mere 25-watt.  And yet, the new iPad manages only to meet the battery life of the iPad 2 - coming on at 10 hours of use on WiFi and the same cellular use at around 9 hours.  The main difference here is the vastly improved Retina Display on the 2012 iPad versus the iPad 2. The question is just how much of a big deal is LTE use for the new iPad versus the 3G in the iPad 2?  With both coming in at 9-hours, you have to assume the power consumption are the same.  And the only other factor that might impact the extra power use would be the new display. And you have to marvel at Apple's engineering for managing to fit such a bigger battery inside the 2012 iPad.  You can almost correctly say that the iPad is a battery that happens to have a dense multi-touch screen that runs iOS. A further thought along this line is that the Retina Display is not very efficient.  We already know the...

As I begin to process the iPad media event yesterday, March 7th, it is really hard to begin until we actually have the new iPad in hand and be able to truly get a feel for what the Retina Display and speed it offers.  But there are some things that we might be able to talk about with authority.  That's the iLife and iWork apps that Apple made available.  The newest one is iPhoto. And I'm still in the process of getting to know the app better.  I like iMovie and I am sure iPhoto will not disappoint.   At the same time, I wonder why is Apple competing with other text editing, office suite, and movie/photo editor apps in the app store.  That cannot be a good thing right? Well, it make me thing about Google with the Nexus phones and, soon, tablets.  If we take Google's words at its face value, which is harder and harder to do these days giving their privacy changes, the Nexus hardware serves as a template for how Android devices should be.   And I rec...

In a while, we’ll know what Apple will unveil.  Okay, we kinda already know.  The iPad 3.  Or the iPad HD.  Or judging by this morning’s rumors, maybe Apple might be unveiling the iPad touch.  What I want to speculate about now is the changes Apple made to the App Store before today’s unveiling.  There is a whole new catalog section called “catalogs”.  Why?  Is Apple about to get into more e-commerce? The most logical reason is that Apple want to separate them from the other apps.  So be it.  But with Apple, it might not be so simple.  Think about it.  By offering a catalog section, it makes very sense in and of itself just to separate apps that showcase goods.  It isn’t as if they were getting in the way of app discovery so much. Apple has often bragged about just how many credit cards it has access to via its iTunes and iOS customers.  Apple could be unleashing its marketing prowess and offering its customers e...

News come that Nintendo managed to sell 4.5 million 3DS in the US alone.  While the global 3DS sales figure is more elusive, let’s say closer to 20 million units (I made this up – 10 million or so for Asia and another 5 million for EU and the rest of the world), it’s a viable platform.  Perhaps, we might even seen the platform go across and move closer to 75 to 100 million in five years or so.  And given the still vast size of dedicated mobile gaming from the likes of Nintendo and Sony, the question for gaming developers is where to invest your limited resources. Obviously, the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices have wrecked havoc on the dedicated mobile gaming market and mobile gaming in general will shift towards smartphones and tablets.  In just three years, the collective gaming prowess of iOS and Android have taken over the gaming revenue and it’ll only get worse over time.  Mobile gaming is estimated to take 58% of all revenue while incumbent playe...

Apple recognizes the importance of the Chinese market to its mobile and computing focuses.  Mac sales are doing pretty well, growing faster than the US and Europe while mini-riots break out for iOS launches. Oh, let's not forget about the gray market for Apple goods because Chinese launches lag US and EU launches by months. So, when Apple release the Mountain Lion beta, few were surprised that Apple integrated some popular social network and email services popular in China and most agree it makes a lot of sense for Apple to make it easier for the Chinese mobile warriors to integrate their contacts, calendars, and social needs into their iOS devices and Macs.   As a Weibo user (because I'm trying to learn Chinese), this is perfect.  At this time, I'm unable to figure out how to access Weibo but if you're a fluent Chinese speaker and uses this Chinese version of Twitter, you'd find it very useful.  I know I would, again, if I can figure out how to access it fr...

The winner of the 25 billionth app downloader from the App Store is Chunli Fu of China.  Rumor is that he downloaded Where's My Water?, which he didn't pay for since it was the free version.  Nevertheless, I want to congratulate the dude for it.  He deserves it.  Fu won $10,000 as well as a lot of recognition. Now, comes the part that I wonder if this is just too much of a coincidence that with China being such an important market and opportunity, an iOS winner from China wins this prize.  I mean, seriously, you cannot ask for a better PR campaign than this.  It's likely that with all things Apple, this is getting a lot of positive press. On top of that, there is the iPad trademark battle with Proview.  I'm not sure whether if Apple or Proview has a more positive image in China.  I read a post that many Chinese on Weibo believe Proview is attempting to extort money from a cash rich company like Apple.  So I reckon Fu as winner of ...

We know that social networks like Facebook to Google+ to Foursquare love to boast their number of citizens (users). It sounds great and in Facebook's case, it helps to let the financial community know that they've got about 700 million users as they go IPO. There are also reports that Google+ is like a ghost town and only Googlers are the ones still using it after the initial interests from the media and the curious. Then there is location-based social networks like Foursquare. Personally, I can say that the number active users among my friends list has dropped by 2/3. So, what exactly is going on here? And while Facebook claims to have hundreds of millions of daily users, not quite near the 700 million users that they have, many of them are what I called "lurkers". They're people who sign up for social networks or other services but rarely participate in general or as the network as it is mean to be. After all, according to Wikipedia on lurkers , lurkers ac...

Meet Terry Myerson, head of Windows Phone at Microsoft, needs to talk less and work more on giving us clear answers about the future of WP phones, upgrades, and who can or cannot use Windows Phone 8. See, WP7 and WP8 are entirely different OSes and current WP7 phones are unlikely to ever see WP8. At the Mobile World Congress, Mr. Myerson bashed both Apple's iPhone and Andoid for having shoddy updates. For one thing, he accused Apple of making older iPhones slower thrrough new iOS versions so users will be forced to buy new iPhones. Meanwhile, he said Android devices hardly ever get upgrades. I can't say that Android devices hardly get upgrades. They're slow in coming and only one or too units that I can think of, the original Samsung Galaxy S, isn't slated for Android 4, Ice Cream Sandwich, but that matter still has not been quite settled yet. As for Apple purposefully making older iPhones slower through updates, I've often often about that. As a matter of fact, ...