“Despite sharing stage time with Adobe just this week, a playable version of Pac-Man on the page works with both the iPad and iPhone – revealing that it’s not using Flash,” Electronista reports. “Apple’s phones and other touchscreen devices instead use swipe gestures to steer the classic arcade game.”

Electronista reports, “Although it goes without a plugin, it still includes most features of the Namco original.”

Full article here.

Frommer reports, “So why did TechCrunch get it wrong? The TechCrunch post is based on the latest monthly ad statistics from AdMob, a mobile ad network that’s being acquired by Google. Specifically, one graph in AdMob’s report showed that in March, Android’s percentage of ad requests in AdMob’s network surpassed theiPhone for the first time.

“TechCrunch takes this to mean that Android Web traffic exceeded iPhone Web traffic. “AdMob measures mobile ad impressions, which is a proxy for overall traffic,” TechCrunch’s Leena Rao explains,” Frommer reports. “That’s simply not accurate. While Android’s user base — and Web traffic consumption — is growing and could eventually rival Apple’s, AdMob’s ad request data is NOT a proxy for mobile web usage in general.”

Frommer reports, “iPhone users still outnumber Android users in the U.S. by at least 2 to 1, based on recent comScore data… It is not valid to say that Android passed iPhone in web usage using only AdMob’s ad statistics as evidence.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“The 27-year-old Powell—a North Carolina State University 2006 graduate and talented amateur photographer—is an Apple Software Engineer working on the iPhone Baseband Software, the little program that enables the iPhone to make calls,” Diaz reports.

“On the night of March 18, he was enjoying the fine imported ales at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a nice German beer garden in Redwood City, California. He was happy. The place was great. The beer was excellent. ‘I underestimated how good German beer is,’ he typed into the next-generation iPhone he was testing on the field, cleverly disguised as an iPhone 3GS,” Diaz reports. “It was his last Facebook update from the secret iPhone. It was the last time he ever saw the iPhone, right before he abandoned it on bar stool, leaving to go home.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Analyst Maynard Um with UBS issued a new note to investors Wednesday morning, in which he noted a recent Q-Series survey that found Apple leads the smartphone industry in both mindshare and retention rate,” Marsal reports. “Among respondents, 56 percent said they believe Apple is the best smartphone manufacturer, and the implied retention rate among a sample of 310 users is 95 percent — well beyond, Um noted, anything else seen ever in the industry.”

“‘While we believe that this retention can change rapidly, anecdotally during our survey we even received emails from three respondents asking when the next iPhone will be available,’ the analyst wrote,” Marsal reports. “A whopping 90 percent of iPhone owners think that Apple is the best handset maker on the market.”

Marsal reports, “The report also issued the first estimate from UBS on iPad sales. Um expects Apple to ship 2.1 million in its 2010 fiscal year, growing to 4.6 million in 2011.”

Source: MacDailyNews

Direct link via YouTube here.

Source: MacDailyNews

• Two-Button Screenshot
• Double-Click Camera
• Three-finger Zoom
• Hold for Voice Activation
• Double-Tap Safari
• Concurrent Voice and Data

Full article here.

“Apple has yet to reveal the reason it is pulling protective products from its shelves. A popular speculation is that Apple wants to promote the idea that its product’s screens are sturdy enough that they don’t need to be protected (even though anyone who’s ever dropped an iPhone knows this is far from the case),” Jacobsson reports. “That’s no explanation for why Apple is also banning antiglare, mirrored, and privacy film, unless they also hope to promote the idea that their screens are easy to read in the sun, can double as mirrors, and have magical privacy properties.”

Jacobsson reports, “Another speculation is that the products, while popular, are hard to apply and thus have a higher rate of return than other products.”

Apple’s “latest iPhone and iPod Touch screens are surprisingly resistant to, well, everything — from finger oil to water to barbecue sauce, and don’t scratch very easily. Even my iPhone 3G (without the [3GS's] ‘oleophobic’ screen) is pretty resistant to scratches… Macworld points out that it’s probably no coincidence that Apple is pulling screen protectors right before the introduction of the iPad — but why? Could Apple be thinking of debuting its very own line of (OLEOPHOBIC) screen protectors?”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“The company is still negotiating with media companies for a price cut on TV shows that people can download onto the device, said people familiar with the matter,” Kane and Schechner report.

Kane and Schechner report that “nailing down the content has proven difficult as some potential collaborators weigh the advantages of working with Apple against the potential threats to their current sources of revenue, these people add… The last-minute discussions show the complexities that Apple and Chief Executive Steve Jobs are facing in creating a networked multimedia device, which has pushed the company to pare back some of its initial intentions for the iPad’s release.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science, in the press release. “Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”

Crowd Science’s methodology applies rigorous sampling and research techniques to online populations, allowing for real-time results. Indeed, a significant event affecting the research – the debut of Nexus One on January 5 – occurred midway through the Dec. 24. 2009 to Jan. 21, 2010 study period. Rather than being a disruptive factor, however, the Crowd Scientists were able to measure how the launch affected the attitudes of respondents. For example, awareness of the Android operating system jumped six points – to 66% from 60%. Moving from awareness to familiarity, however, results were stable throughout the research period – at about 10% for all smartphone users excluding Android owners.

Awareness of the Google Nexus One phone itself following launch was found to be 91% amongst iPhone users, 75% amongst Blackberry users, and 73% amongst users of other smartphones.

Other survey results include:
Android users skew younger and less affluent than iPhone and Blackberry users. Users of all types of smartphones had downloaded more free applications than paid ones during the preceding seven days, with iPhone users significantly more likely to pay for apps, Android users leading in free apps, and Blackbery users far behind on both fronts. Both Android users and iPhone users were found much more likely than Blackberry users to use their phones only for personal use (32%, 28% and 16% respectively). On the other hand, 7% of Blackberry users use their phone only for business, with that category of user minimal with iPhone (1%) and non-existent in the Android base.

For the survey, the Crowd Scientists tapped 1,140 respondents who were randomly recruited via the Crowd Science Sample Beta program from websites serving more than 20 million unique visitors. The vast majority of respondents (44%) used a regular cell phone, not a smart phone. iPhone users represented 17% of the respondents, followed by Blackberry users (15%), Nokia (10%), Windows Mobile (4%), Android (3%) and Palm (2%).

More Details from the study here.

Mac

Dupree points to “some pretty definitive evidence that future iPhones and iPads will have video chatting capability… Icons were found in the 3.2 SDK which seem to indicate that there will be video calling on a future iPxxx device.”

Also, Dupress reports, “Hidden in some of the underlying iPad telephony apps are some VideoChat strings that are equally, if not more, telling evidence of future VideoChatting capabilities… Also, we’ve found some references to ‘iChat.’”

Full article, with screenshots, here.

Source: MacDailyNews