More refinement involves now making the system work smoothly. There are about twenty steps to make it working, said Troughton-Smith. He wanted to be sure that his technique does not break other components in the background and is very safe to use.

Siri Service on Apple iPhone 4

Other details would come once the whole process was cleaned up. Steve Troughton-Smith did not want to insert himself the code in the Cydia jailbreak store, as he wanted a proof of concept. Being interpreted as illegal is also a possibility he would want to avoid.

The hack shows why Apple did not implement it on the iPod touch. The microphone is not powerful enough to receive voice on a consistent level, such as on the iPhone. However, the iPhone 4 appears to process tasks at a similar speed the iPhone 4S does. This suggests that Apple perhaps did not have enough time or simply lacked resources to backport Siri. Another hypothesis would be that Apple held off in order to encourage early sales.

Apple had only about a twenty percent edge in published applications out of 600,000. Only 24 percent of the iOS titles have ever been pulled from Apple’s App Store, while 459,589 applications for the iPhone and iPad are alive. In the case of Windows Phone, the amount was even lower, i.e. 13 percent, but the store is only a year old and many developers did not have to back out.

The existent gap between Apple and Google is mainly due to their respective attitudes towards application submission, according to the researchers. Google’s policy led to more demo and beta versions but also application spam and, in some cases, malware that escaped Google’s control. About 78 percent of all the applications pulled were freeware, which suggests that many of them were dropped due to insufficient commitment of the developers who would certainly be more careful if the applications were paid.

The stricter policy adopted by Apple related to application submission led to higher quality titles with better chances of staying in the App Store, the same analysts observed. As developers were not forced to provide a fast growth of the store, they cared more about the output and this led to better results.

Google claimed to have sent an updated version of the application at about the same moment as it left the App Store, but it was pulled to avoid the creation of a negative experience for the users of iOS 5. Many of the users just have updated their devices. The absence of Google Voice was the first time when it had not been available on the iPhone since the release in November 2010.

The history of the application has been relatively stable since then, after two years from the moment the company blocked it from the store.

The most recent Symbian-based devices of Nokia, such as the C6-01, C7, E7 and N8 represented fifteen percent of the total. Other important figures Nokia is proud about include over 40,000 applications in a library and 158 developers from 41 countries reaching more than one million downloads per developer for their applications. At the same time, a quarter of the total number of downloads were applications offered for older devices, belonging to the Series 40.

Nokia believes that part of its success is owed to increased support for carrier billing than what was offered by other companies, which provide online application stores while depending on separate accounts. Nokia is also offering beta programs which permit in-application billing and in-application ads that maintain it on par with other stores like those of Apple and Google.

Nokia’s results place it above some stores like Hewlett Packard’s webOS App Catalog or Windows Phone Marketplace, but it is still behind market leaders. For instance, Apple’s App Store, with more than 350,000 applications and 17.6 million application downloads per day in September, is believed now to have reached more than 20 million.

The developer of the software did not say how the new Photoshop version was to be realized neither did he specify a timeline. Supporting Android and other platforms has not been mentioned.

A version of Photoshop dedicated to the iPad would be helpful to eliminate the lack of content creation, which is one of the most cited defects of the platform. A complete iOS edition is supposed to go on trailing behind the desktop. It would however permit much more image manipulation and would provide a significant independence for these younger devices.

]]> http://www.htlounge.net/art/15362/photoshop-for-ipad-presented-by-adobe-real-layer-support.html/feed 0 http://www.htlounge.net/art/15320/eu-formal-complaint-filed-by-microsoft-over-google-dominance.html http://www.htlounge.net/art/15320/eu-formal-complaint-filed-by-microsoft-over-google-dominance.html#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:47:52 +0000 adina http://www.htlounge.net/?p=15320 A few days ago, Microsoft filed a complaint to the European Union, incriminating Google for unfair competition. The document is backing earlier complaints, partly generated by a Microsoft subsidiary and maintains that Google had excluded competition systematically. Many complaints were centered on YouTube, deliberately excluded from results of search for rivals, for example Bing. Access of Windows Phone to YouTube was also intentionally limited by Google, denying the searches allowed only for Android- and iOS-based devices, said Brad Smith, Microsoft General Counsel.

He also argues that Google, on mobile applications, had offered Apple the same power to find metadata as it is possible on Android, for the simple reason that Apple has not a competing search engine. As it seems, Google had obstructed Windows Phone only to penalize Microsoft because it owned Bing.

Smith explained that Microsoft’s YouTube application on Windows Phone was no more than a browser which displayed the YouTube mobile website and had nothing of the functionality provided to competing phones. According to Smith, Microsoft is open to the release of a high quality YouTube application for Windows Phone. The company only needs the permission of access to YouTube the same way other phones already use, but Google has refused to provide this permission so far.

Other accusations referred to Google denying access to book publisher content and to recent ruling prohibiting attempts to function as a repository for books with right owners that either had been lost or had given consent. It appears that Google has blocked searches coming from other sources than its own engine.

Interoperable data has reportedly being denied to advertisers in case they were using other ad platforms than AdWords or AdSense. If usable information is missing anywhere else, companies have to first consider Google and only later other alternatives. The limitation is supposed to hurt the industry as companies neither did nor could spend ad money elsewhere than at Google, Smith added.

According to these allegations, it results that Google is making unfair deals and blocks other search engines. It also seems to increase prices for competitors seeking for ads.

Google responded mildly to the accusations. Considering Microsoft’s complaint from 2010, the new one was not surprising at all, said spokesman Al Verney. He added that his company would be happy to explain everybody how its business works.

The European Union has taken the complaint seriously and promised to be involved, but also said it would not provide more information of its approach.

On the other hand, Microsoft has been declared guilty many times by the European Union for misusing its monopolies with both Windows and Office. It has even been punished for ignoring an earlier ruling and fine. The company had been fined 1.68 billion Euros, $2.39 billion equivalent.

After at least a decade of experience with the European Commission, Microsoft does not take lightly the filing of formal antitrust complaints, said Smith. The company recognizes the importance of a permanent balance between competition laws and wants to make sure that technology innovation continues to move forward.

They are available in the United States only so far and let users to save up to 5GB of music for future use. Amazon’s servers are used for free and tracks can be played back by using the web or any Android phone.

It is sufficient for a customer to buy just one album at Amazon MP3 and the 5GB of the Amazon Cloud Drive are raised to an impressive 20GB. Even more space can be bought, as storage plans kick off at $20 per year for 20GB of storage.

Music can be stored in both AAC and MP3 formats, so that DRM-free tracks of iTunes can be loaded up too onto the Cloud Drive. Moreover, albums that were bought from Amazon MP3 do not count versus the storage quota.

Users are able to access tunes via the Cloud Player and also listen to them on the web, but an Android Cloud Player service is now part of the updated Amazon MP3 Android application. This means that music fans can snag preferred tracks from their online stash without needing to overcharge their phones.

The new digital services of Amazon can also store documents, photos and videos, providing a perfect backup solution. No information has been unveiled on when the services will be available, but T3.com may provide news as soon as it gets it. Competitors Apple and Google will certainly dislike the launch of the new services by Amazon, before they could make the same move.

Having a premature launch is determined by avoiding any claims that it would know its rivals would do the same soon. Google is supposed to be in internal tests with Google Music and would offer an equivalent for both Android and the web in the spring. Apple has given hints at iTunes tie-ins to its datacenter, which are presumed to stream media to an iTunes client or to an iOS device. The deadline would also be in the spring.

All three hope to overcome technical difficulties raised by modern mobile devices and at the same time getting an edge over their rivals. Anyone owning an iPad, a Kindle, a Xoom, or another tablet or phone as well would get a full catalog and would not have to store it locally or let a computer stay online at home. Apple and Google as well were supposed to have planned this kind of service in 2010, but label concerns about potential piracy may have needed many months to ease.

Amazon may have an advantaged thanks to its existing infrastructure. It owns one of the few services that allow downloads as well as streams for rented videos or purchases. The locker would give users a safety net as well as a way of easily transferring a title to other devices where there is no internet access guaranteed. An Amazon Prime unlimited movie service has been recently launched, which is set to compete directly with Netflix.

BlackBerry Tablet operating system, BlackBerry 6 and upcoming variants are making more and more use of HTML5 and other web code in order to help application development. This takeover may see RIM offering a ready-made emulator tool which lets at least some application writers to preview their code without an important outlay for the copy of VMware Fusion to reproduce native applications.

It is still unclear if this move would eventually marginalize the Apple TV set-top box (this serves as a hardware solution for linking audio- and video-based content to hardware through HDMI and other physical connections). Even if the device has recently been updated with some new features, the second-generation version backed off from built-in storage and relies on streaming content.

If the reports prove to be correct, this strategy shift is expected to help boost video sales through the Apple iTunes store. The company pays $4 per AirPlay-supported device sold, even if it is still unknown if the video expansion would link to a jump in licensing fees.