Why Apple and Samsung will Rule the Future of Television
There are several trends in television that will concentrate hardware sales in the hands of just a few companies, but will enable consumers to have a much deeper televisual experience.
How Television Will be Consumed
On February 1st, 2013 Netflix released its first commissioned series, House of Cards. Not only was this a first for the company, it was a first in another sense too.
Television series have been traditionally released on a schedule. This made sense in an era of over-the-air broadcasts when distribution was limited by available slots.
However, in an era where television is distributed by broadband internet, people are consuming programmes at their own speed. For some, that might be occasionally, but for many they binge on a series until …
Make Your Own Passbook Passes
They say that the best way to understand a new concept is to try it out, and at Digital Possibilities we heartily agree with that sentiment.
We believe also that Apple’s Passbook is an important technology that will move us towards the e-wallet nirvana, and that this technology should be embraced by consumers and businesses alike.
Hence we have launched a Passbook Pass generator. We wanted to make it open and easy to use, hence there are no sign-ups necessary, it’s really a case of configuring your pass and receiving it on your iPhone! Easy Peasy.
Take a look now:
When using the Passbook Generator, think about how you may integrate it into your business. …
Why Apple Shouldn’t Buy DropBox
John Gruber suggested on daringfireball that Apple should buy DropBox because that is what everyone is using to get documents from their iPads to their computers. What John has caught on to, is that there is a problem with the document transfer process in place, and I will be the first one to agree with him on this point.
However, Apple has taken a decision to abstract away the filesystem in iOS. On the Mac, in OS X, the filesystem is still very much in evidence and is the principle way of accessing files. Yet, I do believe that Apple would eventually like to abstract the filesystem on OS X as well, pretty much in the same way that they …
Why the Google Nexus 7 is More Expensive than an iPad Mini
Here’s the thing, we all know that both Amazon and Google are using the razor-blade model to sell their tablets, but according to a piece by John Kirk, it sounds like this model will not be sustainable.
Apple doesn’t need to lower its pricing to deliver “the tablet death blow” to its competitors. Apple’s competitors are doing a fine job of starving themselves of profits as it is.
When your competition is giving razors to men with beards and hoping to make their profits on the sale of blades, you don’t attack them – you ignore them.
John Kirk
Amazon released their Q3 results today, and although they don’t break out information on the Kindle’s value performance, the whole Amazon group reported a loss.
So what would happen …
Apple Announces the new iPad Mini
It’s been a while coming, and here it is, the new iPad mini. It’s an 8inch tablet, smaller than its 10inch big brother but larger than the 4 inch iPhone. Here are a few initial thoughts on the device:
Size
It’s so much smaller and handier than the standard iPad. I certainly think it will be great for a whole lot of uses, especially reading books where the iPad still seems large and the iPhone is small. The smaller size makes it much more portable too, which will lead to a lot of new business applications.
Networking
Yes, the new iPad Mini has LTE – this is big for businesses that like the …
iPad Mini Event will be available Live on your Apple TV
Apple has added a new category box to the homescreen of your Apple TV called ‘Events’, just in time for today’s announcement of the new iPad Mini.
No longer will we have to watch live blogs to find out what’s happening, but can concentrate on getting up to the minute analysis of the impacts of Apple’s new product launches.
This is a major step too in the maturation of Apple TV. Apple is seeing it as an important channel to be able to communicate with some of its more fervent customers. Lets face it, Apple’s biggest fans have bought Apple TV to use with their iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs.
The next question that one can pose is …
Ten Ways the New iPad Mini will Create Opportunities for Business
On Tuesday 23rd October, Apple is expected to reveal their long awaited smaller iPad. There are a lot of ideas about what this device is expected to achieve and what it will be like, and in any case it will provide opportunities for business.
As of yet, as the name of the device has not been announced, we will for thr purposes of this article call it the iPad Mini!
The iPad mini is expected to be around 8 inches diagonally compared with 10 for the standard iPad and 7inches for the RIM Playbook, Google Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire.
A new form factor will share some of the same uses as the standard iPad, but with its different physical …
iCloud is Making iOS App Development Cheaper
When iCloud was released by Apple, one of its great promises was to make development cheaper by enabling developers to sync data between different devices without having to create their own backed syncing systems.
Syncing is a difficult problem to solve, so to have open APIs available to developers can be a big help and can help support different use cases between smartphone, tablet and desktop editions of applications while allowing them to have a consistent view of data.
On the latest version of 5by5.tv‘s Build and Analyze, Marco Arment was describing the developments process of his new product The Magazine. What I particularly picked up on was his description of how much of a no-brainer it was …
Why All Retailers Need to Get on Passbook!
Yesterday Starbucks Canada updated their iOS application to enable Apple’s new Passbook feature. I really think that this is the beginning of the realization of the promise of location-based marketing.
How Awesome is Passbook?
It’s awesome. It made it really easy to pay for my coffee this morning. Normally I have to do a search for the Starbucks app and wait while it loads up. Not this time, a quick tap to the home screen, passbook and opened up the Starbucks pass. I even think that the POS system was more easily able to scan the passbook barcode than the one in the Starbucks app.
This was a great first experience in the …
How Tall Fonts are Changing Mobile Interface Design
Smartphones are tall and thin. Especially the new iPhone 5 that is taller than previous versions, and therefore relatively thinner.
So therefore, should fonts that are used on smartphones be fat and round? Most fonts used on a screen, and the first computer screens were a square shape, are roughly square. Hence one can ask the question of whether it makes sense for smartphone fonts to be square or tall?
Designers are increasingly opting for tall. This means that you can get not only more text on the screen on a line, but with the white space between characters more visually aligned with the size of the smartphone’s screen. This leads hence to a more comfortable viewing experience.
A great example of how this principal has been applied …
