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There was one person ahead of me at Starbucks. I caught a look from the barista. Was she staring at me or my trembling hand? I stared quickly back down at my iPhone and saw the balance on my Starbucks card in Passbook: $0.11.
Something wasn’t right. I had just topped it up on my way out the door! I had foolishly left my wallet at home, trusting Apple would take care of me on the open road. And here I was, seconds left before I would have to turn away from the till in resignation.
Then I did something stupid. I don’t know if I had mad trust in my supernatural ability to just fix the issue, or if I thought it would be resolved if I just offered to wash my dishes. The barista asked what I wanted, and I ordered anyway. (more…)
Everyone typically becomes bored of something at one time or another. It’s the inevitable loss of interest that causes people to give up that great hobby they’ve been doing for so long, or to stop eating oatmeal for breakfast every morning simply because it’s become stale. Change is good, yes, but eventually the redundant pattern of quitting something and starting another task can start to show — very much so.
One of the most prominent topics of interest is mobile gaming. The industry has been around since the 1970s, but lately it’s evolved to something beyond the classic Donkey Kong Country on a Game Boy and the first iteration of Tetris on a mobile phone. Tense games of Snake were classic back in the day when Nokia ruled the mobile phone market. Now, however, Apple and Google govern the domain. The App Store and Google Play Store have brought many fabulous first-person shooters, adventures of evil swine and vexed avian, and role-playing ventures like Bastion. With all this innovation, something was left behind — what was it? (more…)
There was once a small social network called Path. It existed only on mobile devices, save for the pictures that some people post publicly on Twitter — in my opinion, that kind of defeats the purpose of Path as a social network, but I’m not going to talk about that. Path was getting a lot of critical acclaim up until the point where it was discovered they secretly uploaded your iPhone’s address book to their servers. That whole ordeal was widespread on every major publication and really hurt their credibility.
Back in February, Kevin Whipps discussed how trust had been compromised due to this mistake that Path made. He explained that there’s really no way to fix it since everything already went too far and it looked as if they were really invading your privacy. In any case, I still use the service and rather like it, but it still has a good ways to go before it’s near success. Let’s find out why after the break. (more…)
Last week, the Internet was all in a tizzy about the latest video out of Google, a concept titled Project Glass. It’s this headset that puts a single screen in front of your right eye and displays information about the environment you’re in. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a moment and check out the video, it’s worth the time.
Some are saying that this idea is genius, while others are chastising it as a dumb move and a piece of vaporware. But it does open up a conversation, particularly in regards to the iPhone: What is the future of the device? (more…)
Monday held some big news, as it was announced that Instagram is going to be acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. There were many mixed feelings on this move by the photo sharing service. Some felt that it was unfair to see their precious network disappear into another one, but others — namely users of Facebook — felt that such a purchase would enhance their photo sharing experience. The latter is probably correct, but there’s more to it than that.
Facebook’s main goal of this purchase is to gain users. Just think about it: Facebook is a service that relies on the number of users who frequently visit. When that number begins to diminish, they search for a way to get new users. This acquisition — that’s right, $1 billion for users — is the answer to that problem. Keep reading for a look at what could happen to Instagram. (more…)
As predicted by pretty much everyone, Apple held an event on March 7th, and it was to announce the new iPad, complete with its Retina display and all sorts of other fancy tools. As seems to be the case with the iPad, whatever we find inside could make its way into the next iPhone.
So now, let’s take a look at what the iPad has presently, and what we think will make its way into the next iPhone. Spoiler: not everything will make the crossover. (more…)
As most of you probably know, Apple held a press event this past Wednesday, and they introduced the new AppleTV and the new iPad. Note, that’s note the AppleTV 3 or iPad 3 as some had expected, but just the new iPad.
So what does this mean for the next iPhone? Will we see an iPhone 5, iPhone 4G LTE or just the “new” iPhone? It may not sound important, but it kinda is. (more…)
It’s official: March 7th, we’ll see what the new iPad is going to look like, and what fancy new features will drive people to the mall to pick it up in droves. But this isn’t iPad.AppStorm, this is the iPhone site, so what does any of that have to do with us?
Easy. With the original iPad, we saw the A4 chip that ended up in the iPhone 4, the A5 chip from the iPad 2 is currently in the iPhone 4S — and that’s just the start of it all. So what does a new iPad mean for the next iPhone? Let’s find out. (more…)
Many iPhone apps take their design cues from the status quo; Apple began the iPhone’s life with a light blue, left-to-right application style and many apps still follow a similar pattern. Even if they’re crafted of the finest skeuomorphic Corinthian leather, they’re still just another take on the same old design paradigm.
Then there are the apps that do something special. The applications that throw their hands up and say, “I’m going to be different!” Here are a few of them, and what app designers can learn from each one. (more…)
If you follow anything Apple, you’ve heard about the controversy surrounding the working conditions at Foxconn, the supplier of such products as the iPhone and the iPad. This controversy has been swirling around the news outlets for a while now and things have really heated up over the past few weeks.
I’m here to ask one important question: how much do people really care? Forget about what the press wants you to think and ask yourself that question. Deep down, how much does it really matter? (more…)
