Latest Gadgets, Tablets and Smartphones
Twitter is working on a way to let users retrieve all tweets they have ever sent. At the moment, historical tweets tend to fall off the system after you hit a certain amount of tweets… sometimes around 1000 although the bar often shifts.
Twitter still has the old tweets but just doesn’t have a way of letting you see them.
Apple [AAPL] posted third quarter results last night along with all the numbers of how many of each device sold. In total the company saw 26 million iPhone activations along with 17 million iPad activations as well as 4 million Macs sold.
Samsung has quietly removed the local search features on the international version of the Galaxy S III. The OTA update that became available only made mention of being a stability update but after install the local search functions on the device were removed. This is specifically talking about the built-in Google search app.
Apple has announced that the OS X Mountain Lion release date will be today. The announcement came as expected in the quarterly earnings call held yesterday.
“We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we’ve got in the pipeline.”
The video below shows a Raspberry Pi powered universal translator. The setup includes two RPi units along with one user wearing a Vuzix headset so that words are put in the users vision. Bluetooth mics are used to send the voice to a Microsoft translation service which replies and then puts the response in your language on the screen.
Microsoft is very keen on making Windows 8 run as smooth as possible where graphics are concerned (think the whole UI and everything you look at). The company doesn’t want any form of sluggishness. Four main goals were created so that the team behind Windows 8 could work on providing powerful graphics capabilities across the board.
Goals:
1. Ensure that all Metro style experiences are rendered smoothly and quickly.
2. Provide a hardware-accelerated platform for all Metro style apps.
3. Add new capabilities to DirectX to enable stunning visual experiences.
4. Support the widest diversity of graphics hardware ever.
The 6th generation iPhone rumours have continued to be written ever since the iPhone 4S launched. One of the big changes, other than a change of dock connector, is that the device might include a larger 4 inch screen. On all iPhone models Apple has opted for a 3.5 inch screen, but rumours have strongly suggested that Apple will break away and opt for a larger screen.
A new version of BlackBerry 10 was launched recently to developers (BB10 Dev Alpha). Along with that new launch the OS comes with a new voice command system. At the moment, it appears that RIM is using the same technology that Apple uses (Nuance) as the voice responses appear to be identical to what Siri sounds like albeit, far less advanced at the moment as there’s a lack of things it can do.
Over the past year there’s been several indications that Microsoft [MSFT] will be launching a new version of Office for iOS devices. Although nothing has been made available yet by Microsoft, a new job opening strongly hints that Microsoft is preparing the new app for launch.
Google [GOOG] has created a very basic “Getting Started” video for the new Nexus 7 tablet that launched recently. The video is as basic as it gets in that it shows you how to plug in your device, power it on and then walks you through the various setup menus which includes language selection and registering a new Google account or entering your own Google account details.
Yesterday we wrote that Apple is to do away with the 30 pin connector on the new iPhone and instead, will opt for a 19 pin (smaller) connector. The main reason for this appears to be a space saving exercise so that the few extra mm can be used for other chips such as LTE 4G etc…
The Galaxy Nexus on the Verizon network in the US has had a price drop taking it down to just $99.99 when you sign up for a two year contract. Reasons for the drop are not known although it could be a number of reasons such as the launch of the Galaxy S III taking away the sales or perhaps Verizon has information about Google preparing a next generation smartphone for launch in the near future.
