Google preps its Siri competitor. Time thinks very, very different. And apparently developers don’t like it when the U.S. government causes their apps to be pulled from the App Store. The remainders for Wednesday, December 14, 2011 need some hot cocoa.
iOS: A visual history (The Verge)
It seems like the first iPhone has been around forever, doesn’t it? Luckily, the intrepid folks at The Verge put together this copiously detailed visual look back at iOS’s history so far. Fun fact: If you try to read this incredibly long story on your iPhone, you’ll have to scroll through exactly 932,117 screens.
Google’s response to Siri is codenamed Majel, could be released by end of year (Android and Me)
Word on the street is that Google is hard at work on its answer to Siri, the voice-recognizing virtual assistant built into the iPhone 4S. Rumor has it that Google codenamed its technology Majel, which proud nerds won’t need to Google. The good news: We’re inching ever closer to the inevitable YouTube video showing Siri and Majel engaged in a passable discussion. The bad news: They’ll most likely be plotting to destroy the human race.
Steve Jobs loses to ‘The Protester’ as Time’s 2011 Person of the Year (Apple Insider)
Those evil geniuses at Time are simply brilliant. Rather than name Apple’s late co-founder and onetime CEO Steve Jobs as its Person of the Year, the venerable magazine instead chose to recognize “The Protester.” Jobs fans around the globe were angered by the snub, and rose up in a massive, simultaneous protest—before realizing that they’d just proven Time right.
Developer of Fake Driver’s License App Responds to Apple (Mac Rumors)
DriversEd was an app for creating mock driver’s licenses; Apple pulled the app at the request of U.S. Senator Bob Casey. Now, the developer’s steaming mad, because he says the app made it very obvious the bogus IDs were just that. One imagines the reviewer at Apple who initially accepted the app feels just sick over the latest developments—assuming he first generated himself a License to Ill.
Product News
PDFpen 5.6.2 – Adds new preferences, including an option to issue a beep when an OCR session is complete. ($60 new, numerous bulk licensing options available)
MacJournal 6.0 – Sports a redesign for Lion, adds a calendar mode, word counts, and numerous new blogging options. Also new is Timeline mode for reading entries in chronological order, and an option to create specially-formatted books from your journals. ($40, $20 upgrade from previous two versions)
Gmail for iOS – The update adds custom signatures, the ability to create vacation responders, and a basic built-in sketch tool. (Free)