Samsung's newly hired design chief hails from Jony Ive's old studio

Should be interesting

Samsung may be looking for a design overhaul soon, and it picked someone from the outside to lend a hand. Lee Don-tae is the Korean tech giant's new global design chief, who will report to Samsung Electronics President Yoon Boo-keun and work from the company's Design Management Centre. Lee Don-tae is a former CEO of Tangerine, a London-based design studio founded by none other than Apple's aesthetic guru Jony Ive. His work includes an S-shaped redesign of the British Airways business class cabin, a layout that created enough space for the seats to lie flat.

The company shuffled its design staff last May too, following the lukewarm reviews of the "defiantly plastic" GS5. A Samsung official told Korea JoongAng Daily that Lee would lead the overall design of products, including smartphones. While it sounds like the projects will include more than just handsets, we'll have to wait and see just how involved Lee gets in the company's massive family of gadgets. If you've been hoping for a different look to the Galaxy S line, though, you may soon get your wish.

Source: Engadget

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Apple: if only every tech firm could be this unsuccessful

Apple isn't stuffed, but that doesn't mean it's completely safe

Is Apple's software falling behind its hardware?

There's a bit of an internet storm brewing around Apple this week, based partly on a blog post by developer Marco Arment: writing on Marco.org. He suggested that Apple's software quality control isn't brilliant.

He's right. I can point angrily at Mail, which keeps breaking; Safari on iPad, which keeps crashing; Continuity in Yosemite, which keeps ringing long after I've answered and ended a call; iMessage, which keeps going weird; or iTunes Match and AirPlay, both of which only seem to work when I don't want to listen to music.

The thing is, though, I could have said pretty much the same thing about previous OS Xes, iOSes, iWork apps, Logic Pro, iPhoto… the list of Apple annoyances goes back a long way.

Does Apple ship stuff that contradicts the "it just works" line? Oh yeah.

Has it been doing it for years? Oh yeah.

Is it getting worse, and if it is, does it matter?

Let's have a look.

Android 5.0 Lollipop adoption rate is so low it didn’t appear on Google’s distribution

So sad

Android 5.0 Lollipop has been out for almost two months now, but as you should know by this point, that doesn't mean very many people are actually using it. Actually, according to Google’s new platform distribution numbers, even fewer people than expected are on the latest and greatest Mountain View has to offer. Lollipop didn’t even hit the 0.1% cutoff required to be represented in the data.

Once per month, Google aggregates data about the various Android devices that check into the Play Store. This data is turned into some nifty tables and graphs for the developer dashboard, which app makers can use to better target devices. The largest chunk of active Android devices this time is represented by Jelly Bean (all three versions collectively) at 46%, followed closely by KitKat at 39.1%. The oldest version still showing up in the data is Android 2.2 Froyo (0.4%), which is positively ancient by technology standards — it was released in May 2010.

Google TV is dead, Android TV has risen

Google TV officially retired as Android TV rises from its ashes

RIP, but the writing was on the wall

Long live Android TV

We can't say we're surprised...

Google has announced that support for Google TV has ended, a move we knew was coming with Android TV rapidly gathering pace.

Google TV never had much success, and Google has now announced in a Google+ post that the service is officially being laid to rest.

The post was aimed at developers, but officially confirmed something we had assumed for a while. In its place, Android TV has arrived. Sony and Philips are both to use the system as a smart TV interface in their 2015 models, giving it a much better chance at a bright future than its predecessor.

It was time

Google TV failed to catch on, with the official Nexus Player given limited distribution and only a few third-party boxes using the system ever made. A common criticism was that the platform was slow and cumbersome to operate.

"With this shift, we encourage you to transition your living room development efforts to Android TV apps and Cast-enabled apps," the Android TV team wrote in the Google+ entry, telling us all we need to know about the company's smart TV direction.

Source: TechRadar

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BBM is coming to Android Wear

About as far from a BlackBerry as you can get

Android Wear is getting fruity

Android Wear is only as useful as the apps that support it, and it's about to have a new high profile addition in the form of BBM.

The new Android Wear features include the ability to read messages from your wrist and see who they're from, flip between messages and accept invites from other BBM users. You can also pick from a list of predefined messages to send a response from your wrist or use your voice to dictate a custom response.

So you can keep your phone in your pocket and read or even respond to messages when your hands are full. It's not been confirmed exactly when BBM for Android Wear will be arriving, but in an official blog post BlackBerry claims it's coming soon.

Oh and if you're a BBM user but not sold on Android Wear then don't worry, because apparently this is just the company's first step in supporting cross-platform wearable technology. BBM on the Apple Watch anyone?

Source: TechRadar

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