Weekly Mobile News Roundup – July 4 2014

Once again the week is coming to an end and that means it’s time for a roundup of the past weeks news!

Siri Will Soon Understand You a Whole Lot Better – It all started at a small academic get-together in Whistler, British Columbia. The topic was speech recognition, and whether a new and unproven approach to machine intelligence—something called deep learning—could help computers more effectively identify the spoken word.

iPhone captures 42% market share in the United States for May – The latest numbers reveal that the iPhone remains the most popular smartphone in the United States, with 41.9% market share for a three-month period ending May 2014. Samsung was the second most popular smartphone maker with a 27.8% share, attributed to its Galaxy-branded devices. LG (6.5%), Motorola (6.3%) and HTC (5.1%) round off the top five.

iOS journaling app Day One goes free for the first time in past 12 months – now, for the first time in almost a year Day One for iOS has gone temporarily free in celebration of the upcoming Independence Day weekend (regularly a $4.99 download), courtesy of Apple’s ongoing Free App of the Week promotion.

Reflecting on the iPhone After Seven Years – A great deal has been written about the iPhone and its phenomenal pedigree of engineering and design. And with Sunday, June 29 bringing the seventh anniversary of its original release in 2007, there’s been even more talk surrounding the groundbreaking device.

Sunrise’s move to Mac reflects its calendar-app dominance – Sunrise Atelier stands ready to dominate the calendar-app market. The Sunrise Calendar app is now available for use on your Mac. It was originally designed for Google Calendar, but it has branched out to many platforms including iPhone, iPad, Android, Exchange, and iCloud.

Disney brings popular Facebook soccer game Bola to iOS – With both the U.S. and England now knocked out of the FIFA World Cup, Disney has just now taken the opportunity to release an iOS version of Bola, the hugely popular Facebook soccer game developed by Three Melons and acquired by Playdom back in March 2010.
Read more at https://www.cultofmac.com/#7ICbIZfWSlivuh8s.99

Apple Confirms 3rd-Party Extensibility and Robust Editing Features in OS X Photos – Although still far from its public debut, more and more information about the new Photos app for OS X is making its way to the public.

LA school district puts $1 billion iPad rollout on hold – The Los Angeles Unified School District decided to blow its entire $1 billion tech budget on an iPad for every student last year, but after security hacks and supply issues got the program off to a rocky start.

Apple is now releasing improvements for its iOS Maps app every single day – When Apple first ousted Google Maps from its mobile devices and released its own mapping solution for iOS, it was something of a disaster. A beautiful disaster, at times, but a disaster nonetheless. So much so that Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized for the company’s terrible Maps app and Apple recommended several third-party alternatives.

Facebook Messenger now available for iPad – In addition to a Pages Manager update with new commenting and posting features, Facebook Messenger has quietly gained long-awaited universal support for the iPad in an update this morning.

Samsung pokes fun at ‘wall huggers’ and their iPhones – Samsung has used its position as Apple’s main competitor in the smartphone market to its advantage quite well, using some of their best marketing techniques to poke fun at features (or, what they perceive as a lack thereof) in the iPhone lineup. In a new advertisement, that trend continues with a focus on batteries.

5 Things You Can Do Right Now To Personalize Your iPhone – We all share the excitement that comes with a new phone. The unboxing, the fresh scent of new tech and all of the fun stuff that comes with a new iPhone. All too often, the excitement dies down.