Category — AI

Daniel Eran Dilger

This year, Apple’s mobile iOS platform reached its fifth annual release, adding new support for subscription content, iCloud, and new devices including the iPad 2, a CDMA iPhone 4 and the global iPhone 4S with Siri voice assistance. Meanwhile, the iPod line got no major updates for the first time in its history, as Apple continues to convert its iPod business into iOS device sales.
.
[Read more →]

Daniel Eran Dilger

This year, Apple’s Mac OS X platform turned ten years old, launched the 10.7 Lion reference release, introduced the Mac App Store and iCloud, and delivered a series of new Macs boasting fast, flexible Thunderbolt connectivity and speedy new Sandy Bridge processors.
.
[Read more →]

Daniel Eran Dilger

Fifteen years ago, Apple announced plans to acquire NeXT Software, a move that would ultimately bring Steve Jobs back to the company he cofounded twenty years earlier.
.
[Read more →]

Daniel Eran Dilger

In its first significant update, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform is introducing a new layer of app version complexity for developers and users that offers a glimpse of how both it and Windows 8 will differ from Apple’s existing iOS and Mac App Stores.
.
[Read more →]

Apple’s Safari browser has now exceeded an 8 percent share of web browser use across all devices, powered by strong growth in iPhone and iPad sales.

The new high water mark for Apple’s web browser, combined with Google’s popular Chrome browser, also now makes Apple’s WebKit the second most widely used rendering engine among web browsers, second only to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and just slightly ahead of Mozilla’s Firefox.

According to Net Application’s NetMarketShare data, in the last two years, Microsoft’s IE has slipped from nearly 67 percent share to just 52.8, while Firefox use has slipped slightly from almost 23 percent to July’s reported 21.48. Google’s Chrome as exploded from 2.84 percent to 13.45 percent, while Apple’s Safari share has nearly doubled from 4.07 percent to 8.05 percent.

Chrome and Safari combined now represent more than 21.5 percent of web users, slightly ahead of Firefox even before adding in a small number of alternative WebKit browsers.

A decade ago, Microsoft’s share of web browsing with the Windows-bundled IE reached such overwhelmingly high numbers that it appeared unlikely that any other browser could ever gain more than a scrap of market share, given the apparent lack of any profit incentive to develop an alternative web browser.

The failing Netscape Navigator browser was eventually spun off into an open source project that resulted in Mozilla, which developed the Firefox browser. Its advantages in speed and other features, combined with its independence from Microsoft, quickly created an avid following among both PC and Mac users.

The Rise of Safari and WebKit

In 2003, Apple debuted work on its own Safari browser, after Microsoft stopped actively developing IE for the Mac. Apple leveraged the existing, open source KHTML rendering engine, which it forked to deliver WebCore, a parallel project Apple continued to maintain under the GNU LGPL.

Two years later, Apple released its entire layout engine for Safari under the more permissive BSD license, naming the entire package WebKit. This package proved to be far more valuable to third parties than just the core KHTML-based rendering engine, causing WebKit to immediately be adopted by Nokia for use in its smartphone web browser for Symbian.

Google later adopted WebKit for use in both its desktop Chrome and mobile Android browsers. RIM’s modern BlackBerry 6.0 browser and HP’s webOS browser and entire application runtime are also based on WebKit, as are the majority of other mobile browsers, including Amazon’s latest Kindle browser. WebKit is also used within a variety of applications, ranging from Apple’s own Mail, iTunes and Dashboard to Adobe’s AIR and Creative Suite CS5 and Valve’s Steam gaming platform.

Widespread use of WebKit has enabled Apple (and other WebKit developers) to rapidly deliver and deploy new web standards ranging from Apple’s Canvas to a variety of enhancements to CSS, HTML and SVG, without worrying that there won’t be enough modern browsers available to take advantage of the new features. This has enabled the development of a new open platform for sophisticated web applications, commonly referred to as HTML5.

Shifting the industry toward HTML5

Apple’s successful development of not just a desktop browser in the model of Firefox but also the creation of Mobile Safari for iOS devices as the first very usable, high performance mainstream mobile browser (something Mozilla has yet to deliver itself) has left a tremendous mark not only on the web browser market but in web-related development as well.

The exclusive use of HTML and JavaScript on Apple’s iOS devices without any provision for plugins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight has upended Adobe’s control over the deployment of web video and other dynamic content, forcing the company to bring its development tools to an open HTML5 foundation in order to reach the valuable iOS segment of the market.

Microsoft has also largely abandoned Silverlight, its own Flash-like development environment, to instead focus on standard HTML5 tools for building web apps and services.

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Apple booked a quiet dinner reception for fifty executives at the New York Times, but the VIP guest ended up being Steve Jobs.

Eccentric but effective Steve Jobs pitches iPad to NYT execs
.
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Apple is dramatically rethinking how applications organize their documents on iPad, leaving behind the jumbled file system and making file access between the iPad and desktop computers seamless.

Apple reinventing file access, wireless sharing for iPad

.
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Apple’s new iPad isn’t just a new product for consumers; the company is targeting the new device at business users with features designed to make it attractive to the enterprise market, AppleInsider has learned.

Apple to target iPad at business users with added features – sources
.
[Read more →]

Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider

The big question before today’s Apple event was how the company would deliver a tablet-sized product that any significant number of people might want to buy. On stage, Steve Jobs provided a lot of answers, but the most powerful answer required holding the new device in your hands.

Hands on with Apple’s iPad (with videos and photos)

.
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Apple has signaled a clear intent to muscle its way into the mobile ad market using its recent acquisition of Quattro, a direct challenge to Google’s Android-related ventures.

Apple targets Google’s mobile ads market with Quattro acquisition
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Adding fuel to the already blazing bonfire of excited anticipation surrounding the tablet-sized product Apple is expected to announce on Wednesday, CEO Steve Jobs has being quoted as saying, “This will be the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

Steve Jobs: Apple tablet “the most importing thing I’ve ever done”
.
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Despite a howl of complaints and even lawsuits filed by some disgruntled iPhone users, Apple reiterated that it supports AT&T as a great mobile partner, despite rumored moves to expand its iPhone partnerships in the U.S.

Apple defends AT&T, downplays talk of multi-carrier inevitability

.
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs announced that the company’s annual revenues are now beyond $50 billion, but indicated that even more is in the pipeline to get excited about.

Steve Jobs: Apple a $50B company, excited over ‘major new product’.
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

The hyped anticipation surrounding the Apple Event later this week is looking for clues as to exactly what the company might deliver. One element of the anticipated new tablet’s software side is related to Apple’s 2005 acquisition of multitouch technology and expertise from FingerWorks.

Inside the multitouch FingerWorks tech in Apple’s tablet
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Apple’s anticipated press event later this month is widely expected to debut a new tabled-sized device as a sibling to the company’s Mac, iPod and iPhone product lines. Here’s what has led up to the launch, and why the futuristic tablet hasn’t taken off so far.

The inside track on Apple’s tablet: a history of tablet computing
.
[Read more →]