(You're reading all posts by John Brownlee)
About John Brownlee
John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Android, as well as our sister site, Cult of Mac. He has written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with his charming inamorata and two tiny budgerigars punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous perverts. You can follow him here on Twitter.email hidden; JavaScript is required
Samsung Is Looking For Developers Who Can Help Them Make Galaxy Apps As Good As Apple’s
Samsung has a problem. It controled 33.1% of the global smartphone marketshare last quarter — Apple was only 17.9% — yet that’s almost entirely in the low-end of the market.
What’s keeping Samsung from conquering the high-end of the market, where all the profit is and which Apple continues to dominate? Software: there is a wide-spread impression amongst consumers that Samsung’s apps just aren’t as good as Apple’s.
That’s a problem Samsung is eager to solve. That’s why they are ponying up $800,000 to developers willing to make great, Galaxy-specific apps.
How Google Pre-Empted Apple’s iRadio Announcement
Earlier this week, Google beat Apple to the punch by launching a streaming subscription music service before Cuperino could unveil its own offering, iRadio.
How did Google managed to do it? Apple has all the music industry clout, so how could Google swing a deal first? Because Google Play Music All Access is essentially a clone of services like Rdio and Spotify, and the contract terms of services like that are easy to copy.
Apple’s iRadio? It’s a wholly different beast.
Google Now Is Getting Way More Powerful And Siri-Like
Google Now was already pretty awesome, but now it’s getting even better on both iOS and Android. And it’s coming to the desktop as part of Google’s Knowledge Graph.
Google Hangouts Becomes A Supercharged, All-In-One Universal Messaging App For iOS, Android & Web
What happens when Google folds GTalk, Voice, Hangouts and Google+ Messenger into one mega-app, then releases it for Android, iOS and the web, all at one go? The new Google Hangouts: Google’s universal messenging apps.
Google Beats Apple To The Punch, Announces Streaming Subscription Service For Google Play
Ahead of Apple’s rumored iRadio WWDC announcement, Google has announced a new subscription music service, Google Play Music All Access.
Android Piracy Outnumbers iOS Piracy By 14:1, Driving Devs To Freemium-Only Model
We’ve heard before that piracy is just killing Android developers. It’s such a wide scale problem that some devs are finding little incentive, between piracy and fragmentation, to actually release their games on Android.
Sadly, the problem doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Another developer has just released details on the massive problem they are having on Android with app piracy. How bad is it? Piracy on Android outnumbers iOS piracy by fourteen to one. Woof!
Cydia Comes To Android
On iOS, Cydia is the premier way to load unsigned apps onto your jailbroken iPhone or iPad… but since Android supports side-loading, it has no place on Google’s operating system, right?
Wrong, apparently. Today, the devs behind Cydia and Mobile Substrate have announced that Cydia is coming to Android. But it won’t be quite what you think.
Samsung Is Prototyping 5G Devices Capable Of Burning 1Gbps
How would you like to burn through your monthly mobile data cap in 16 seconds flat? The answer to that question is probably ‘not very much’ but none-the-less, that’s where technology is headed, with Samsung now saying that they’ll have the world’s first 5G devices on the market by 2020.
Apple Goes A Little Bit Thermonuclear On Google For Pretending To Be Impartial In Samsung Dispute
An amicus curiae or amicus brief is when someone who is not a party in a lawsuit offers information that bears on the case but that has not been solicited by any of the parties. It’s used mostly as a way to make sure that various issues that wouldn’t otherwise come up are heard in court, in hopes against an overly broad legal ruling that might have widespread repercussions. Amicus curiae means “friend of the court.”
Got all that? Good. Maybe now you can understand Apple’s issue with Google trying to issue an amicus brief urging the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals to overrule Apple’s request for a sales ban on Samsung devices. Friend of the court? More like co-defendant.
EFF: Google Will Protect Your Data From The Government, While Apple Will Betray You
Everyone’s favorite digital rights crusaders Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have just released an annual report, ranking the biggest companies in tech for who does the best job protecting your data from being rifled through by the Federal Government.
Google’s really good about it. Apple? They’ll give away all your emails and data if the government just breathes on them, and they won’t bother telling you about it either.
