AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

Source: Barron's . I don't know if Apple's last quarterly announcement spoke to a saturation of the high end market or not. I don't know if Samsung's reduction of the just released Galaxy S4 spoke to the same thing. But there is a change in the buying habit of the smartphone market that could be bigger than just the top end. But looking at Apple's iTunes revenue growing of 25% to nearly $4 billion, you have to take notice. It's likely that Amazon and Google saw some kind of growth that points to a shift in how they see their apps/mobile ecosystem. More so than Apple, at least in the beginning, Google likely saw Google Play as a source of direct revenue and profit than Apple. Apple wanted to sell iOS devices and Macs and it's iTunes ecosystem was to be an integral part of that. It was mean to operate at a break even point only. But as revenue exploded, it's like iTunes has added to the billions in cash that Apple gets every year. For Amazon, it's...

I know that many folks are very happy over the near $1 billion charge that Microsoft took out on the dismal sales of Surface tablets. I reckon it's for both the RT and Intel versions. However, Microsoft, successful or not (Xbox is a success while we can get into many of its other failures like Zune), has never been known to go to bat once and leave the game entirely. It spent years on Zune and ended with an utter failure that decimated not only its own effort in the portable and streaming music industry but those of its partners as well. Xbox is a bit more successful and I think it's beginning to eek out a bit of profit even though the console market could be in trouble. For argument's sake, let's call this a success. Either way, Microsoft didn't put one out product, see it fail, and walk away entirely. Even with Kin , which lasted only months, Microsoft is back now with Windows Phone with increasing success. So, while Surface sales have not caught on like many...

I totally enjoy the fact that my iPad has long battery life and I appreciate the ability to go through a couple of days or more without worry about having to charge it. Still, one can't get enough of hours as far as battery life goes. My ideal battery life for a mobile device, be it a phone or tablet, is a week. Obviously, we are years if not a decade away from that realization. For now, I believe Apple has to increase the battery life on the iPad further. For three generations now, the iPad has been stuck at 10 hours. It's time that we see Apple increase that by 50% to 15 hours of battery life. There are a couple of reasons why the 2013 iPads slated to be introduced this fall has to have increased battery life. One, like I said, it's been three years since the original iPad and we're still at 10 hours. The ability to have a nearly day-long battery for a mobile device has changed how we have become a mobile society. The ubiquity of the iPad cannot be understated...

This is a statement from a email Apple sent out regarding their prolonged downtime of its developer site. Apparently, it redid its site and database, and beefed up its security after an attempted hack to access encrypted information. Here is Apple's statement: Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then. In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we’re completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database. We apologize for the significa...

Source: Phone Arena Thing have really gotten bad for Blackberry. I'm the hopeful optimistic type so when I don't say this lightly. But I'm about to call it for Blackberry. It's over. I'm am sorry to say. I can't see Blackberry pulling a super magical rabbit out of a hat. At this point, it doesn't been have a hat to pull anything out of. There is a very, very slimmer of chance things can improve. Its Q10, a form factor that most Blackberry fans and most business users are familiar due to its physical keyboard, maybe stave off any Android and iPhone assault this fall and winter a bit. Even then, it's only a temporary measure at best. It's unlike Blackberry has what it takes to move beyond 2014 as an independent concern. Even now, Blackberry is having trouble keeping its head above water in its fight against Windows Phone for third place in the mobile market. Once a while back, Blackberry could rely on third world markets to gain in these markets but th...

We all know that Apple refreshed the new line of Macbook Airs for 2013 at Monday's WWDC keynote with amazing new processors along with much needed longer battery life.  The 11" Air battery life will go up to 9 hours while the 13" version will get up to 12 hours. However, we didn't get everything we wanted.  At least, I did.  That's Retina Display on the 11", or, for that matter, the 13".  Sure, we know that the integrated processor that comes with Intel CPU, while much improved, still are no where near the point where Apple is comfortable adding a Retina Display which would require more processing power while maintaining this level of battery life. However, there is one other reason.  Retina Display yield.  According to Macdailynews , Sharp has down off  11.6" displays with 2,560×1,440.  That is about double what we have now with the 11" Air resolution at .  Even if Apple wanted to sacrifice some battery life for the sake of adding a Reti...

Apple's WWDC keynote by Tim Cook and a few of  his executives is over with.  It was a big event.  I would call it a success only in the sense that Apple held serve: it shows it can innovate in some areas and keep updating OS X and iOS where there have been some shortcomings. We're still waiting to see if the folks there can get more some unique details about today's event because I do have a few questions about them.  For instance, with OS X Mavericks, which current Macs in the wild will be supported.  I've got a late-2010 11" Macbook Air and I'm hoping I'll get some love.  And if so, which features will be availabe? And while we learn today that iOS 7 will support up to iPhone 4, what features will be available to iPhone 4 and 4S users?  For instance, with iOS 6 last year, iPhone 4 users did not get live navigation or panorama feature in the camera app.  So, what features will be missing from iOS 7 for iPhone 4/4S?  And for that matter w...