Last week our intrepid Apps on Tap columnist Brooke Neuman focused her attentions on March Madness, the annual ritual of college basketball. Of course most of us know that if March Madness is near at hand then so is that other piece of deeply entrenched college rituals and priorities - Spring Break. Everyone breaks out of their winter slumbers and heads out to warmer climes to release the pent up hormones of college youth. Yeah, yeah. We know. But we certainly honor the tradition, and some of us even cherish it. And of course living as we do in a smartphone age, well, there are now lots of mobile apps to help you maximize your Spring Break time - and our intrepid Brooke has scoped out the best of them for you.
Breaking out of winter slumber isn't limited to college students. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins seems to be breaking out of his as well though we aren't sure it’s a good idea. This week Heins managed to get in some digs at Apple and the iPhone, suggesting that it is old technology past its prime. We'd be just a bit careful about getting too feisty - especially when BlackBerry itself, which officially launched in the United States on Friday, is still sitting on a razor's edge between possible success and failure. And especially after Apple announced this morning that the iPhone has now won its ninth straight J.D. Powers and Associates award for ranking “Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Consumer Smartphones." Awards speak louder than CEO words.
It's particularly interesting that this week the Pentagon - a federal mainstay of BlackBerry business - appeared to be ditching old BlackBerry devices in favor of a mix of iOS toys that include iPhones, iPads and iPods. Turns out that isn't actually true, though the details we've received don't necessarily suggest BlackBerry will be selling huge numbers of new Z10s to the Pentagon any time soon.
Not that Apple hasn't seen a bit of negative noise itself recently. In particular we refer to the fact that it finally released an update this week, iOS 6.1.3, that fixes a lock screen bug that allows hackers access to contacts and other info. But no sooner did Apple release the update than another hack was discovered that still allows hackers to bypass the screen lock. The new release also delivers big improvements to the Maps app though it's specific to Japan. Too bad those hackers are so tenacious. Rumors have it that Android is also susceptible to the hack though details here are scarce.
Last week we heard all about the new Samsung S4, which had its coming out party in a weird and whacky show put on by Samsung at Radio City Music Hall. This week we were able to find out just how much it costs Samsung to build the S4 - and how much of the cost ends up returning right back to Samsung due to the company using so many of its own Samsung-built parts. It turns out its quite substantial.
One of the things that was supposed to be a star of the show was the introduction of long rumored eye-tracking technology that would allow the S4 to monitor eye movements and be aware of what a user is doing, allowing the S4 to, among a few other things, automatically scroll text and start and stop video. Samsung did not quite deliver on the entire list of anticipated capabilities. And it turns out that LG not only announced the same capabilities before Samsung did but it may now be moving to sue Samsung on patent infringement for the technology.
One of the things lost in all the hoopla concerning the S4, LG's new flagship device, Blackberry and iPhones - and every other new feature possible these days is the thing that underpins all of them - the wireless network, and more specifically high speed wireless otherwise known as LTE. A new report from ABI Research suggests that LTE data traffic is going to explode in 2013 and grow by over 200 percent worldwide. That is a lot of high speed wireless data we'll all be generating.
We ourselves never have any problems with our smartphones. And yet, we know that the carriers deal with huge numbers of support center calls every day that costs them plenty of dollars - and often leads to customers feeling dissatisfied - both with their devices and the support services. FOTA (firmware over the air) update vendor innoPath has long supplied technology to help carriers and device manufactures solve device problems, but this week the company took a next step, and launched mobileMD, new software that allows users themselves to manage self-care capabilities for their mobile phones. It's worth checking out.
We'll leave you this week with the following - Have you ever wondered or otherwise considered just how many consumer devices are connected to the Internet in the United States? Granted, it may not be something you think about all the time but the number is quite large, and it is growing significantly larger every day due to our fondness for wireless devices that create all that LTE traffic. How many unique devices is it?
Have a great weekend!
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