We published our top five favourite apps that came out this year earlier in the week, but we don’t just review apps on this blog, oh no we don’t, every week we also take a look at a bit of News that we think you would want to hear about. Here are the biggest tech news stories (in my opinion anyway) that we’ve talked about over the last 12 months.
A collection of entrepreneurs, creatives, students and small business founders based in Cardiff have formed Cardiff Start to help encourage growth and start up businesses. The official launch event was on April 11th this year and so far the group has grown a massive following with currently over 350 members.
Hailed as the biggest thing to happen to iPhones since the launch of the iPhone. iOS essentially was just a redesign, bringing it up to modern standards, flattening everything out and just generally making it better. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay for at least another 10 months when inevitably iOS 8 is launched to coincide with the launch of the iPhone 6
The app store’s birthday is on the 10th of July 2008, when it was first launched there were 500 apps available to download. Today over 50 Billion downloads have been made and over $10bn has been paid to developers worldwide. Not bad for an idea that I would imagine started out as a ‘What if we let people publish their own applications for our phones?’
Many moons ago, everyone wanted a 3310, it was THE phone to have. Over time though as phones got smarter, faster and more feature rich, Nokia got left behind. Falling deeper and deeper into trouble, the Finnish manufacturer sold its entire mobile arm to Microsoft (who funnily enough were having trouble getting anyone other than Nokia to adopt their mobile OS).
Apple launched two phones at once for the first time ever. The 5s came with a fingerprint sensor and was a bit faster than the 5, but to be honest no major changes. The 5c now comes in a variety of colours, brightening up phone shops around the world (no one was particularly interested in it really).
iTunes create a whole new Kids section to iTunes Connect. A definite hint at their aims to use their devices for more educational purposes in the future.
If anyone thought Nokia or Microsoft were having a bad year, feel sorry for BlackBerry. The once great phone manufacturer has had trouble after trouble this year. After announcing the colossal amounts of debt they were in and putting themselves up for sale, the deal to buy them has fallen through and they have fired their entire board. We could very well see the end of them by the middle of 2014.
It may not seem like a big thing right now, but by the end of 2014, iBeacons are going to be huge. Useful pretty much only as a marketing tool, you will soon start seeing these palm sized devices in stores around the world, pinging notifications to your phones.
Thats it! My very rapid run through of the biggest tech news stories in 2013, there will be another post from us on Monday with some Christmas cheer for you all.