If you own a Samsung Galaxy and are a Jay-Z fan, then you will probably be happy to hear that Samsung is giving away one million copies of “Magna Carta Holy Grail” to owners of its flagship smartphone 72 hours before the album’s official debut on July 4.

Jay-Z hinted at the endorsement deal on Sunday when he appeared in a TV commercial during Game 5 of the NBA finals, along with Pharrell Williams and producer Rick Rubin. The tagline was “The Next Big Thing”–a teaser for the early release of “Magna Carta Holy Grail” on Galaxy devices.

Samsung bought 1 million copies of the album, which is scheduled for release on July 4, to give to Samsung Galaxy owners. The Wall Street Journal reports that Samsung paid $5 each for the albums–reaping Jay-Z $5 million for “Magna Carta Holy Grail” before it even goes on sale.

The deal is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it could help Samsung further polish its image in the U.S. as it continues its heated rivalry with Apple. Though Samsung is the top smartphone seller in the world, with a 28.8% percent share of the global market according to IDC, iPhones continue to lead in the U.S. Samsung’s Galaxy series has performed very well in the U.S., but the Korean company still suffers from lingering perceptions that it’s just a copycat thanks to the drawn-out Apple-Samsung legal battles over patents. An endorsement deal with one of the U.S.’s top rap artists may help Samsung gain more cred with consumers, especially younger ones.

The deal may also help Samsung’s Music Hub, a streaming music service available on Galaxy devices, compete with Apple’s iTunes Radio, which will be included with iOS devices and offer preview of tracks before they are available elsewhere.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Not content with following Nokia’s past playbook, by saturating the mobile market with countless iterations of its smartphone hardware, pushing a whole Galaxy of gizmos at every price point and form-factor fancy you can think of, Samsung has gone one further. It’s opened an R&D centre in Espoo, Finland, right on Nokia’s doorstep. Literally on Nokia’s doorstep. If you were in any doubt that Samsung is the new Nokia, this really has to be the final call.

Samsung said the R&D facility, its first in Northern Europe, is being located in Finland because of “the excellent technology development eco-system in Finland”. Which is basically another way of saying ‘thanks to Nokia, and the tech skills of the local people who likely acquired them working at or with Nokia at some point over the past several decades’. Nokia’s presence in Finland has helped build a thriving startup culture, thanks to the pool of local tech skills and experience but also as Nokia has had to reduce its own headcount it has actively encouraged entrepreneurship through its Bridge Programme by supporting former employees leaving to found their own startups. The irony now is that Samsung is looking to tap into an ecosystem Nokia has been helping to build up.

The R&D center — which is part of Samsung’s strategy of ramping up spending in this area this year, up from the circa $10 billion it spent on R&D activities last year — will focus specifically on development of open source software and “advanced technologies in the domains of graphics, web & security for digital devices such as smartphones, tablets, Digital TV and PCs”.

Another irony here is that as Samsung has gobbled up the marketshare Nokia used to own, the Finnish former phone giant has been forced to pull in its horns – to operate with far fewer resources than it had during its mobile heyday (when it too could produce a phone for every price-point and pocket) — thereby limiting the types of devices it can push into. Which in turn leaves room for a company like Samsung to target more development cash at other device type categories, like tablets, a category where Nokia used to play. In a sense, Samsung is just expanding into the footprints of Nokia’s past success.

Samsung said it plans to recruit at least 50 experts in the various technical domains that the R&D center will focus on in the coming years. It also plans to “steadily grow” the facility, pushing research into whatever tech areas it decides it needs to down the line.

As well as thumbing its nose at Nokia by tapping into local Finnish talent, siting an R&D Center in Northern Europe will give Korea-based Samsung a base to plug into a regional network of research and academic organisations, as well as getting close to European startups and businesses.

Europe has been a stronghold for Samsung smartphone hardware, so building closer ties to the region makes sense to futureproof its lead here. A lead Nokia has been trying to dent with its Windows Phone-based Lumia smartphones. Evidence of a slight uplift in sales for Windows Phone in markets such as the U.K. may be another factor pushing Samsung to drive deeper into Nokia’s territory — hence its stated intention now, with the Espoo Centre, to “actively build relationships and co-develop cutting edge technologies with our Finnish partners”.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Foursquare this morning has launched a pretty new visualization feature called Foursquare Time Machine, which offers a new way to view a history of your check-ins on an interactive map. And oh, it’s also an advertisement for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone. Hey, look, Foursquare is trying to make some money by using your data! How clever!

The company has long since allowed users to delve into their check-in history through a searchable timeline it offers on the Foursquare.com website. And while the new Time Machine offers a briefly fun diversion for bored office workers looking for a little escapism, there’s not much value to it as a real product feature that you would return to again and again, following your first, more curious exploration.

As the Foursquare blog post explains, Time Machine lets users view their history and “zoom through time and space” to visualize your check-ins and “discover all the places you should head to next.” On that latter point, it appears to be referring to the images at the bottom of the Time Machine page which suggest other venues near your top check-in spots, which you can click on and save for later, if you choose.

Users can also compile and then share their stats as a custom infographic to networks like Facebook and Twitter, which is seems many are excited to do.

But all this is really just a front to allow Foursquare to show you (and generate some revenue from) a large Samsung Galaxy S4 ad. The site is branded on the left side and on the top right (upon first launch), and, after clicking “fetch my history,” the middle of the Time Machine’s top navigation teases “The Next Big Thing.” As that experience loads, Samsung Galaxy S4′s branding shows yet again. There is literally nowhere on this micro-site where you can’t see the word “Samsung.” To be clear, this is not a Foursquare product or feature, this is only an ad.

The company has been busy in recent weeks beefing up its online experience at Foursquare.com, in an effort to get more users to consider visiting its site on the web where it could monetize better through ads. This is tough, since Foursquare is still generally known as a mobile check-in app, and not the Yelp alternative it now wants to become. In addition, Foursquare has been opening up its platform to more businesses and advertisers, striking deals with the major credit card companies for member discounts, bumping up its sales force, and more, all in an effort to finally make some money. And it has bought itself a little more time to figure things out, too, thanks to its recent $41 million round, closed this spring.

It’s a timely move for Samsung as well, as the branded Time Machine experience comes on the heels of a recent Reuters report stating that Galaxy S4 sales were going to disappoint. Brokerages downgraded Samsung, citing weakening profit growth for the company. Though the S4 became the fastest-selling smartphone since its launch in late April, that momentum has now slowed, leading Samsung to a need for bigger and more creative ads.

You know, just like this.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Poor Nokia. Samsung doesn’t stop. It’s just announced a new iteration of its flagship Galaxy S4 handset which has a digital camera embedded in its rump. The Galaxy S4 Zoom has a 10X optical zoom lens on the back, giving it two clear aspects: from the front it looks exactly like Samsung’s flagship S4 smartphone. But from the back it looks like a point and shoot digital camera.

The result is a hybrid handset that squeezes the ability of Nokia’s carefully crafted PureView cameraphone brand to stand out. Sure, Nokia’s high end phone lenses might still have better — or at least decent — low light performance, but to the untrained consumer eye which device is going to look more capable in the camera department?

This one:

Or this one?

And that’s before Nokia has even got around to launching the long rumoured ‘true PureView’ Lumia. Which will possibly look a little like the original (Symbian-based) 808 PureView — so something along the lines of this:

If you’re going to ask consumers to lug around a bulky, heavy phone, might as well make it look as much like the camera they used to own as possible. Familiarity will aid the trade off, helping them justify carrying a much larger device because it clearly melds two functions. Meanwhile Nokia’s PureView brand has to shout even louder to get noticed. And no matter how great their camera algorithms are, a lens that relies on digital zoom alone simply doesn’t look as capable as an optical zoom lens.

As well as a 10X optical zoom, the Galaxy S4 Zoom has a 16 Mega Pixel CMOS Sensor, Optical Image Stabiliser (so it’s raining on the Lumia 920′s parade too) and Xenon Flash. So basically Samsung is pushing into all the areas where Nokia is trying its utmost to differentiate its flagship Lumias vs the Android-powered competition (i.e. low light photography and extra steady video). Nokia could still push the boat out on megapixel count — if it launches a 41MP Lumia — but that’s a nerdy specs game to play that’s unlikely to have an impact on the mainstream consumer.

Beyond looks and specs, Samsung has also embedded new camera functions into the S4 Zoom designed to tie hardware and software together. For example, a feature called Zoom Ring allows the user to activate an in-call photo sharing feature by twisting the zoom ring on the device and then capturing and sending an image to the caller via MMS — all without having to suspend the call. The Zoom Ring can also be used to activate the Quick Launch and Shortcut features to navigate to the camera and through its modes quickly, again by twisting the ring.

Of course, the S4 Zoom will stand and fall on camera performance — so there’s a lot riding on the quality of the optics and the smoothness of its functions. But from the outside, at least, Samsung has created a device that bellows a heck of a lot louder than Nokia’s Lumias do, for all the marketing cash Nokia has poured into PureView. Even if Nokia can produce some camera comparisons that rank its kit over Samsung’s, being technically better isn’t always enough in the fiercely competitive smartphone space. Having the marketing brashness and brass neck (and massive budget) to get noticed is what counts.

Samsung has not released full details of all the markets where it intends to sell the S4 Zoom but has confirmed the handset will be coming to the U.K. this summer, and the U.S. and other parts of Europe from Q4. Like Nokia with the original 808 Pureview, Samsung dabbled in this area before with last year’s Galaxy Camera but that device was a Wi-Fi/3G/4G connected camera only, so did not include a phone dialler function. The Galaxy S4 Zoom is a full hybrid of phone plus camera, and yet another iteration of a flagship brand. This is Samsung continuing its strategy of iterating its portfolio to saturate the market by pushing its hardware into all the niches, large and small.

Nokia, meanwhile — which used to follow a similar strategy to Samsung, i.e. by producing a vast portfolio of devices across multiple price-points and form factors — now has a larger mountain to climb to get its camera-focused flagship phones noticed by the general consumer. Since switching to the Windows Phone platform, Nokia has had to rein in its portfolio to fit the shrinking size of its business, no longer having the resources to spread its hardware so far. But even while it’s focusing its remaining energy on specific niches, like high end cameraphones, Samsung is harrying those efforts by pushing its fingers in all the smartphone pies.

Click to view slideshow.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

So Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Mini and Galaxy S4 Active have officially made the leap from unimaginative rumors to unimaginative reality, which leaves only one oft-rumored version of the popular smartphone left unaccounted for — the curious S4 Zoom.

As the name sort of implies, this Galaxy variant is said to blur the line between smartphone and camera, and we may now be getting our first look at the thing. A set of images from both SamMobile and TechTastic purportedly show off the photo-centric S4 Zoom ahead of a big Samsung press event in London later this month.

It’s hard to judge from the unflattering angles, but these images depict a device seems to be more camera than phone. The thickish frame, protruding lens obscuring a 16-megapixel sensor, and rounded butt are all design choices that are more reminiscent of point-and-shoots than they are of any standard smartphone. Too bad then that the supposed spec sheet that’s been attached to the S4 Zoom seems wimpy in comparison — that hefty sensor will supposedly be accompanied by a 4.3-inch qHD AMOLED display and a 1.6GHz dual-core processor.

If the S4 Zoom is indeed the real deal — and at this point it just about seems like a lock — Samsung may find that it’s not alone in using smartphones as a platform to show off their camera prowess. Persistent rumors of a Nokia Windows Phone sporting one of the company’s mind-boggling PureView sensors have been floating around for over a year now, and a handful of spurious “leaked” images of one such device (codenamed “EOS “)have been circulating these past days. Hell, just earlier this morning we were treated to what may be the smoking gun — a purported recording of the EOS’ gigantic rear camera pod blinking at us.

In case you missed the PureView hullabaloo from last year, Nokia’s EOS isn’t expected to feature the comparatively puny sensors seen in the company’s recent Windows Phones. No no, rumor has it that it will instead sport the same 41-megapixel camera sensor that first graced the chubby 808 PureView back in 2012.

But I think there’s a bigger question here that hasn’t been adequately answered yet — who do these companies think we’ll buy these things? I suspect I may be in the minority on this one, but I’ve always though that the camera-first approach that some OEMs fiddle around with is just sort of silly. Yes, there’s definite value in being able to capture compelling shots on the run, but really: do people really care how good their photos look once quality inches past a certain threshold?

After all, the way we visually memorialize things has changed since the dawn of smartphone epoch — most images don’t wind up printed and tucked away in photo albums any more. They get hastily MMSed to friends. They get marred by fugly filters and splayed up on Instagram. And in some cases (I’m looking at you Snapchat), the real value of these photos is knowing that they’ll quickly be lost to the ages, a pointed rejection of the archaic permanence of images chemically etched on dead tree material. Camera quality ranks pretty low on my list of criteria when it comes time to buy a new phone, and leaning too heavily on one aspect of a device could be… problematic to say the least.

The closest thing Samsung has had to the S4 Zoom to date is the Galaxy Camera, and the company has never broken out Galaxy Camera sales for we hardware business dorks to dig into. Still, the device was hamstrung by carriers requiring customers to buy a data plan along with the thing (a Wi-Fi version was announced just two months ago). And while Nokia has kept its PureView numbers a closely guarded secret, enthusiasts have estimated that the Finnish phone company managed to sell over half a million as of Fall 2012.

That’s a very solid number considering all the 808′s potential sticking points, and Nokia’s moving a solid number of Lumia phones these days so Nokia must be hoping that PureView and Lumia are two great tastes that really do taste great together. Thankfully, we probably won’t have to wait much longer to see these two duke it out — while the S4 Zoom is expected to be outed this month, the EOS could see the light of day as early as July 9.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Freemium wireless data startup FreedomPop has been out to undercut traditional wireless carriers on data plan costs for over a year now, but now the company wants to up ante once more. In exchange for a recurring monthly fee of $0, users of the company’s forthcoming phone service will be able to get 500MB of wireless data access, 200 voice minutes, and unlimited messaging starting later this summer.

Oh, that’s not enough for you? For an additional $10, you get unlimited voice too.

FreedomPop COO Steven Sesar says that everything the company has done so far — from attempting to wrangle a deal with LightSquared to fine-tuning the value-add features of its currently data-only service — has all been so the company could eventually offer this sort of freemium mobile service.

“This is always been what our M.O. was about,” Sesar told TechCrunch. Originally the team (which has swelled to around 60 people over the past few months) was waiting for Sprint to launch its LTE network more widely before taking the plunge, but ultimately decided that VOIP quality over 3G was enough to warrant bringing the service to market sooner.

The company plans to release a handful of WiMAX-friendly Android smartphones when the service officially launches later this summer, and the lineup is surprisingly strong — Sesar said that the Samsung Galaxy S II and S III would be among the devices that would launch with the service, along with at least one more handset. The devices will retail for between $99 and $199, though at this point it’s unclear whether FreedomPop will sell the devices out right or hinge on a deposit method the company has mulled over in the past.

Thankfully, prospective customers can choose from a selection of devices that FreedomPop doesn’t strictly offer on it’s own. Sprint (FreedomPop’s more prominent network partner) pulled back the curtain on a bring-your-own-device program for MVNOs earlier this year, and FreedomPop confirmed to TechCrunch that their new phone customers will eventually be able to fire up existing Sprint devices on the company’s freemium phone service.

At this point though, FreedomPop is still being very cagey about how exactly the experience is going to work for its users. Aside from pointing out that this is a “purely data play” and that voice calls would be routed over a data connection, Sesar wouldn’t divulge any more details — I get not wanting to spread the secret sauce, but a little extra transparency could only help FreedomPop lock up more credibility as it gears up to take on carriers in a bigger way. FreedomPop announced a partnership with textPlus earlier this year to bring messaging and voice calls to the service’s users, but both parties have been keeping mum on the subject until then — it’s possible that this endeavor has been built on the back of that tie-up, but we’ll have to wait and see for now.

As always, it’s the company’s hope that customers who have latched onto their free monthly plan will indulge themselves with additional services (like that $10 voice bucket mentioned earlier). These past months have been a trial run of sorts for FreedomPop to work out the strange economics of its freemium services, and things seem to be going well — Sesar notes that there are “hundreds of thousands” of FreedomPop accounts and that gross margin on its services are over 50 percent. That doesn’t mean that this gutsy move will ultimately pay off, but the company appears to be on relatively firm footing for now and the lure of free service may be too much for some consumers to handle.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

After unboxing last week’s Galaxy S4 Mini, Samsung is keeping the pedal pressed to the metal by announcing another new launch variant of its current flagship smartphone — this time aimed at users who want their device to be made of slightly tougher stuff. Iterating its portfolio in this way is how Samsung squeezes the competition by making it harder for them to differentiate on price, size or special features like water-resistance. Sorry Sony.

The Galaxy S4 Active is being badged as a phone for outdoorsy types — hence it’s dust and water resistent to IP67 (one below the highest possible rating) and has a fully sealed design. This means it can be submerged in water one meter deep for up to 30 minutes, so great for dropping in puddles and streams, not so great for dropping when you’re scuba diving.

Although Samsung’s marketing material makes it sounds like a rugged phone, there’s no specific mention of impact resistance or especially toughened glass in the specs — so if you’re after a phone to take to work on a construction site you’re probably better off with one of these bad boys (having seen my TC colleague Chris Velazco do his best but fail to crack the CAT B15′s will by throwing it at some fake rocks). The thing is, truly rugged phones are necessarily chunky so there is always a trade off.

With the S4 Active you’re getting flagship smartphone power and looks in a slightly less fragile package than usual but not one that looks like it belongs on a building site. The S4 Active is 9.1mm thick and 151g heavy vs the S4′s 7.9mm and 130g. So, basically the S4 Active is a phone for Samsung fans who don’t want to have to worry about taking their expensive phone to the beach. Aside from its sealed design, the one notable hardware design change on the Active vs the S4 is the single home button being replaced by three physical keys: menu, home and back.

Under the hood, the Active has a 1.9GHz Quad-Core Processor, plus the same 2,600mAh battery as the S4. The 5.0’’ Full HD TFT LCD screen includes what Samsung calls its ‘Glove Touch’ feature, meaning it can be operated while wearing gloves — a trick the company appears to have borrowed from Nokia.

On the S4 Active’s rear is an 8 megapixel camera (the S4 has a 13MP lens) to which Samsung has added a new software mode — called Aqua Mode — to improve the clarity of underwater photography and video. The camera’s LED flash is also co-opted into acting as a torch via the shortcut of long pressing on the volume key. So handy if you’re trying to stumble back to your tent in the dark.

Other software features include ‘S Travel (Trip Advisor)’ – which offers “travel assistance, local information, and recommendations” — plus Samsung’s ‘S Translator’ software for text or voice translation.

The S4 Active will go on sale this summer, initially in the U.S. and Sweden. Pricing has not been confirmed — nor has specific market availability for the three  colour options: grey, blue and orange.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Troubled Taiwanese mobile maker HTC, which has seen its profits plummet as it struggles to compete in an Android mobile space dominated by its Galaxy-spewing rival Samsung, is losing (yet) another senior executive. Bloomberg reports that Chief Operating Officer Matthew Costello will step down after less than three years at the company. Costello joined HTC in December 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Bloomberg reports that Fred Liu, currently HTC’s president of engineering and operations, will “take on Costello’s responsibilities in an expanded role covering operations, quality, sales operations and services”. The details were in an email to employees obtained by the news agency, which also notes that despite stepping down as COO Costello will stay on as an executive adviser after moving to Europe. We’ve reached out to HTC for comment and will update this story with any response.

Costello’s departure is the latest in a string of senior exec loses at HTC, including its Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Greg Fisher, Chief Product Office Kouji Kodera, Global Communications VP Jason Gordon, Global Retail Marketing Manager Rebecca Rowland, digital marketing chief John Starkweather and Eric Lin, manager of product strategy — all within the past three months. Last November the company also announced the appointment of a new Chief Marketing Officer, Benjamin Ho, to replace John Wang from January, with the aim of turning the marketing noise up on HTC’s innovations.

The company’s prior ‘quietly brilliant’ marketing messaging has fizzled against the onslaught of Samsung’s well-oiled and funded marketing machinery — which is pretty much the opposite of quiet. So it barely seemed to matter that HTC made a cracking Android flagship in the HTC One, arguably the best Android flagship on the market, because selling smartphones has become a game of who can shout the loudest for the longest. A game of brash tones, if you will.

But there’s one bright spot amid all this gloom for HTC. The company has just posted monthly revenues for May showing a 48.03% surge in sales — its best uplift all year (it has, however, been a terrible year for HTC). It’s still 3.35% down year-on-year but considering April’s revenues were down 36.87% that’s a substantial improvement. May’s revenues were NT$29 billion ($970 million).

Whether HTC can claw back from the brink with one star phone in its portfolio is, however, debatable. Its Facebook Home gamble, with the HTC First, looks to have backfired, as that device has been withdrawn pre-sale in Europe and its position in the U.S. looks perilous. Meanwhile Samsung keeps on firing forth iterations of its Galaxy flagships aimed at saturating the market with differed sized and priced versions of its hardware, leaving even less wiggle room for HTC.

Still, another quietly positive note for HTC is that Google looks to be stepping in to try to help out a little, by offering a Google Edition of the HTC One for sale on its Play Store. After all, an Android ecosystem dominated by Samsung is not without problems for Mountain View — for Android ecosystem health/biodiversity reasons — but also because of the risk that Samsung starts to hold too many of its cards. Whatever Google’s motives, HTC could certainly do with a few friends in high places right now.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Like most people, I was following Tim Cook’s talk at the D11 conference with great interest. And while it generated a lot of headlines, it became apparent quickly that not much was actually being said. Just to make sure, I went back and watched the entire interview. One thing stuck out above all others:

It was boring.

It’s not just that Cook wouldn’t answer any of the questions about new products and/or services — of course he’s not going to do that — it was that nearly everything that was said had been said before. And that made me wonder, what was the point of Apple even agreeing to do this interview?

My guess is that Apple and/or Cook himself wanted to take on some of the questions surrounding Apple lately head-on. This seems like the M.O. of Cook’s Apple. Whereas the company under Steve Jobs was almost defined by the secrecy and silence on issues, Apple under Cook seems ready to answer any and all critics.

All too ready.

A couple months ago, it struck me as odd that Apple SVP Phil Schiller would rip into Samsung (or, in the correct Cook parlance, Sam-SUNG) right before the unveiling of the Galaxy S 4. It seemed defensive. And it made Apple look like they were in a position of weakness, when they really weren’t, as the bungled debut made clear that week.

Obviously, Steve Jobs would answer to his critics from time to time — see: Thoughts on Flash, for maybe his most famous example — but he seemed to choose his (public) battles wisely. Certainly, there’s something compelling about Apple opening up a bit more under Cook. But frankly, I don’t need to hear answers or non-answers to every little critique thrown at Apple.

Why is Apple not winning the battle for market share? Because they make and sell their phones at a premium. It’s not rocket science. And it’s not something Apple should have to apologize for. This is a very conscious choice they make. Maybe in the long run it’s a mistake, maybe it’s not. But they’re the ones in charge of that fate!

Why is Apple being singled out by Congress as potential tax evaders? Because they make more money than every other company in the history of the world that is not an oil company (and more than even many of those now). Nearly all of Apple’s peers use the same don’t-call-them-loopholes loopholes in our tax code, Apple just does it with more money because they make more money.

One question during the D interview was about if Apple had stopped innovating. After all, it’s been so long since the last truly innovative product, the iPad, came out. Um, the iPad came out three years ago. Three years! Guess how much time there was between that product and the last “truly innovative” product, the iPhone? Three years. Guess how much time there was between that product and the last “truly innovative” product, the iPod? Five and a half years.

Newsflash: true innovation takes time. Apple has by far the best track-record in recent history when it comes to such products. But how quickly we forget how long each one took to come to market. There needs to be a Turn so we can appreciate the Prestige. But screw that. We want more, better, faster. Cue Louis CK.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

These are all obvious things that anyone with half a brain should understand instinctively. But blog posts need to be written about something (all the better if they’re now against a company that subsequent posts have built up over the years) and Congressmen need to make (or keep) names for themselves somehow — John McCain just wants automatic app updates, okay?!

And so we have this sideshow around Apple that only serves to distract from what Apple is actually good at: making great products.

And a funny thing happens when Apple tries to answer all these questions over and over again: they validate them. Oh, he’s being asked about Android again! Oh, watch him dodge this Samsung question again. Man, he’s really on the hot seat. Apple is so screwed.

Sometimes Cook gives honest, straightforward answers — but they’re boring. Sometimes he’s purposefully vague — and we’re annoyed that he’s hiding something.

The truth is that we don’t really want most of these answers. If Cook answered every inbound product question, we’d be happy for five minutes and then disappointed by next week. And by the time the product came out, we’d be downright bored and irritated that there was nothing new.

The good news is that Cook and Apple are still well aware of all this. “We believe very much in the element of surprise,” Cook said during the D interview when pressed to answer questions about upcoming-yet-unannounced products.

And so I ask again: why does Apple agree to these interviews? And why do they now seem dead set on pleasing everybody all the time? Congress is one thing — sending Cook to answer the questions himself seemed to have the intended effect of making Senators go gaga. But an interview when they have absolutely nothing to talk about — just two weeks before they will have quite a bit to talk about, at WWDC, no less — strikes me as very odd.

I think it’s time for Apple to revert more to their old ways. To go back behind the curtain. I know Cook is not supposed to ask himself what Jobs would have done, but most of the non-answers he gives seem to be straight out of the Jobs playbook anyway — “unprecedented” may be the new “boom”. Keep the magic alive by keeping things mysterious. By not talking until there is something to say. By not talking until there is something to ship.

“What we have to do is focus on products,” Cook said at one point during the D interview. Agreed.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Apple appears to have renewed interest in investigating gaze detection similar to what Samsung offers as “Smart Stay” tech on the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4, which can stop a screen from dimming and going to sleep when a user is actively watching it. A new patent application (via Unwired View) describes Apple’s version, which uses the front-facing camera along with the onboard accelerometer to auto-switch between a predetermined screen power down time and making sure the display stays on for reading.

The system works by using the accelerometer to detect whether the device is being held still, and then by using the on-board front-facing camera to check whether a user is also actively looking at the screen. The accelerometer piece can prevent unnecessary use of the camera component, by stopping the camera from activating at all, which is key in terms of making the feature both battery efficient and effective.

Apple has filed this application as of January 25, 2013, but it’s actually an updated version of one filed back in 2008. It doesn’t describe some of the more advanced features that Samsung included with its Galaxy S4, including eye scrolling and  a feature that pauses video when a user looks away from the screen. But it does lay the groundwork for future functionality controlled by a smartphone user’s gaze, and provides an intuitive method for incorporating facial feature recognition into a future version of iOS or the iPhone in a practical way.

The big benefit here is indicative of the different ways Apple and Samsung are thinking about similar kinds of tech; the whole point is to eliminate one more settings a user has to worry about, by handling power conservation techniques in a completely automatic way, instead of via manual input (currently, a user selects from a variety of screen sleep time options). The renewed interest in the patent could indicate that Apple is building this into something like iOS 7, but it could also just mean that it’s refreshing its patent suite for fresh legal attacks on its rivals. Still, this is one invention that would provide an elegant and useful UX update to iOS devices.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch