Apple acknowledges iMessage issue that hijacks your number when switching to Android

The Messages iOS app ties your phone number to your Apple ID, and ensures that people sending texts to your number arrive over iMessage, a free service, rather than SMSes through carriers, which is paid. This is great for all iPhone users, unless you happen to switch to an Android or Windows Phone.

Even after switching to a different platform, the Messages app on your friends’ iPhone continues to think that you still have an iPhone, and texts they send are delivered over iMessage, which means that you won’t see these texts on your Android phone. Moreover, the messages show up with a “Delivered” status on the sender’s iPhone, so they won’t even come to know that these messages aren’t going through.

Adam Pash, formerly of Lifehacker, had the same problem. He spoke to Apple tech support about this issue, and found that a lot of users are facing the same problem, but Apple doesn’t have a clear solution:

[Apple tech support] called me back, then explained

1. This is a problem a lot of people are facing.


2. The engineering team is working on it but is apparently clueless as to how to fix it.


3. There are no reliable solutions right now — for some people the standard fixes work immediately; many others are in my boat.

One of the solutions to this problem is removing your iPhone from My Support Profile (instructions), but this hasn’t helped Pash solve the issue. Other solutions include resetting the Apple ID password, logging out of FaceTime and iMessage from all iOS devices, but these haven’t helped Pash either.

Apple is probably not doing this intentionally, but for a user, this acts like a lock-in, and makes it very difficult to switch from an iPhone, given that there’s no easy way to fix this issue or let people know that you’re no longer on iMessage.

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Research Project Cider Makes Running iOS Apps on Android Possible

A bunch of PhD students at Columbia University have managed to get iOS apps running on an Android tablet, and they have a video to prove it. The team of computer science students are using an OS compatibility architecture called Cider to accomplish this, which runs multiple binaries on one device, rather than utilizing a traditional virtual machine.

The full abstract from their recently-released research paper:

We present Cider, an operating system compatibility architecture that can run applications built for different mobile ecosystems, iOS or Android, together on the same smartphone or tablet. Cider enhances the domestic operating system, Android, of a device with kernel-managed, per-thread personas to mimic the application binary interface of a foreign operating system, iOS, enabling it to run unmodi?ed foreign binaries.

This is accomplished using a novel combination of binary compatibility techniques including two new mechanisms: compile-time code adaptation, and diplomatic functions. Compile-time code adaptation enables existing unmodi?ed foreign source code to be reused in the domestic kernel, reducing implementation effort required to support multiple binary interfaces for executing domestic and foreign applications.

Diplomatic functions leverage per-thread personas, and allow foreign applications to use domestic libraries to access proprietary software and hardware interfaces. We have built a Cider prototype, and demonstrate that it imposes modest performance overhead and runs unmodi?ed iOS and Android applications together on a Google Nexus tablet running the latest version of Android.

Basically, to achieve this amazing feat, the team had to use many different binary compatibility techniques including diplomatic functions, which enable the iOS apps running on the device to access and interact with Android hardware and software. Check out the team’s official demo video of Cider below:

 

In the video, the team demoes a host of well-known iOS apps running directly on a 2012 model Nexus 7 tablet. Using Cider running on top of the Android OS, apps like Yelp, Apple iBooks, and Apple iTunes Remote all perform fairly well considering they were built to run on a completely different kernel. As you might expect, though, not everything works perfectly; apps that rely on certain hardware such as the camera and GPS won’t work completely.

One of the main goals of this project was to reduce lag and make running iOS apps on Android a feasible and smooth possibility, but Cider still doesn’t work perfectly. Apps still suffer from a decent amount of lag, but probably less than they would if they were being emulated. The research paper says that this is due to an incomplete implementation of OpenGL ES. 

While there aren’t any known plans for Cider to ever be released as a full-fledged product, the team says that it plans to continue development and it’s definitely interesting to see that something like this is possible. You can read the full research paper here: Cider: Native Execution of iOS Apps on Android.

[TheNextWeb]

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Apple's share of US mobile phone market grows to 18.5%

A new survey of U.S. mobile subscribers has found that Apple's iPhone continues to take a larger share of the overall market, up 1.4 percentage points to 18.5 percent.

Apple's growth in the three-month span ending in November gave it the largest point change of all handset makers. Apple's growth was enough to put it ahead of LG, which fell from 18.2 percent of the mobile market in August to 17.5 percent in November, good for third place.

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BlueStacks’ App Player Brings 750,000+ Android Apps To Mac

Back in June, BlueStacks, a company specializing in Android virtualization, had released a public alpha of the App Player for the Mac, that allowed users to run a limited number of Android apps on the Mac such as Fruit Ninja, Pulse etc.

Today, the company has released the beta version of the App Player, which gives access to more than 750,000 apps on the Mac.

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Apple Seeks Injunction to Ban Sales of Samsung Galaxy S III Next iPhone To Be Thinner, Feature HD Front Facing Camera: Analyst

FOSS Patents reports that Apple has filed a motion for preliminary injunction in the U.S. to ban sales of Samsung Galaxy S III for infringing related to Siri - the personal assistant feature that is exclusively available on iPhone 4S and data tapping patent.

FOSS Patents reports:

Apple is on the offensive against Android. Earlier this week it filed an ITC complaint requesting an immediate import ban of 29 allegedly-infringing HTC devices. There's an important overlap: the "data tapping" patent that Apple is seeking to enforce against HTC's current generation of products is one of two patents Apple is using against the S III.

Apple purchased the S III in the United Kingdom, where Samsung launched it on May 29. The U.S. launch date is June 21 -- precisely two weeks after the preliminary injunction hearing.

Apple's motion notes that "[a]ccording to press reports, Samsung has already sold over nine million preorders of the Galaxy S III; indeed, the Galaxy S III has been reported to be the most extensively preordered piece of consumer electronics in history."

Apple has filed a motion for preliminary injunction in the U.S. to ban sales of Samsung Galaxy Nexus for infringing four patents back in February. Apple has now asked the courts to also include Samsung Galaxy S III as another product targeted by Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction for infringing its patents.

According to FOSS Patents, Apple "will limit its current request for preliminary relief against the Galaxy S III to the '604 [unified search, i.e., Siri] and '647 [data tapping] patents, because it is clear that infringement can be shown with respect to these patents based on the current record".

Samsung Galaxy S III is expect to go on sale in the U.S. on June 21st.

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Apple May Abandon Its ‘Thermonuclear’ War Against Android

In the last two years or so, Apple has launched a patent war with manufacturers of Android based smartphones such as Samsung, Motorola and HTC for blatantly copying their products, which has shows no sign of abating. Most the companies have countersued Apple for infringing on their patents. 

Steve Jobs had explained to his authorized biographer, Walter Isaacson, that this aggression against Android-based smartphone manufacturers was meant to communicate a message:

“Google, you f–king ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off. Grand theft.” Jobs swore he would “spend my last dying breath” and “every penny” in Apple’s coffers “to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this.”

But according to the cover story titled Apple's War on Android in BusinessWeek, Apple may abandon its thermonuclear war against Android under Tim Cook. BusinessWeek claims that Apple and Samsung have communicated lately about patent suit settlements.

People familiar with the situation, however, note that top-level executives at both Apple and Samsung have communicated lately about potential settlement options. Apple CEO Tim Cook does not seem to share his predecessor’s passion about laying all foes to waste. Cook appears to view litigation as a necessary evil, not a vehicle of cosmic revenge.

Though the two companies are talking about a settlement, we doubt the patent wars will end anytime based on the map of Apple's legal assault against Android by BusinessWeek, which gives a glimpse of the patent battleground.

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Study Reveals HTML5 Games Run Three Times Faster on iOS Than on Android

Spaceport.io - a cross-platform mobile development tool maker reports that based on the study it carried out recently, HTML5 games run three times faster on Apple's iOS than on Google's Android.

VentureBeat who were the first to report the news provide some about the test carried out by Spaceport.io to come to this conclusion:

Spaceport.io created a benchmark dubbed PerfMarks to test performance at running HTML5 code.

The benchmark tested a device’s ability to animate image movement — a key measure of game performance. The report measures the number of moving images on a screen at 30 frames per second (FPS), a frame rate which provides a near-native user experience.

After repeated tests, iPhone 4S scored 252 PerfMarks and iPad 2 scored 327 PerfMarks, which is a huge improvement from the 53 PerfMarks scored by iPhone 3GS in 2009.

In comparison, Samsung Galaxy Nexus scored 147 PerfMarks, Kindle Fire scored only 25 PerfMarks and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 score only 65 PerfMarks. Though we're not sure how they came up with 3 times from those figures, it's quite clear that you don't want to be playing HTML5 games on an Android based smartphone or tablet.

Spaceport.io founder Ben Savage had this to say about the tests:

“HTML5 is getting faster over time, as seen in the latest OS updates across Android and iOS. Although this is a welcome trend, there is still a long way to go. We hope the spaceport.io PerfMarks report will act as a bellwether for mobile browser and operating system creators who hope to better serve the HTML5 game development community.”

Spaceport.io plans to publish the second PerfMarks report at the second annual HTML5 Game Developer Conference to be held on May 21st in San Francisco, which will be an interesting read as it should include benchmark results from iPad 3 that will be unveiled on Wednesday.

[Spaceport.io via Venture Beat]

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