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All posts tagged "apps"


Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Google Renames Android Market to Play Store

Posted by Craig Horlacher in "Android News" @ 11:30 AM

http://www.androidcentral.com/googl...books-and-video

"Google's content portal for Android apps, music, books and video content has been consolidated under a new name -- Google Play."

If you haven't gotten the update you probably will very soon. Google is pushing out a new version of the Market called the Play Store. They are also replacing your current Books, Music, and Movies apps with Play Books, Play Music, and Play Movies. I think this move makes a lot of sense rather than educating people that they can use the Android Market on the web with their Windows PC to buy books, music, and video. It's a good time to check for deals too. There are apps for $0.49 and lots of other discounts as well.

Here is one thing to watch out for if you have a Motorola device. This update will cause your Market link at the top right of your app drawer to stop working. Hopefully Motorola will fix this soon on many of their devices. It's not a huge deal since you can still launch the new store using the Play Store icon but it's annoying.


Saturday, April 2, 2011

Still Only 50 Native Apps for Honeycomb

Posted by Craig Horlacher in "Android Talk" @ 05:00 AM

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news...tm_campaign=rss

"50 apps is a pretty small number, and the actual total may be even smaller. The official Android online market, as well as other online message forums for Android enthusiasts, place the number of Xoom apps somewhere close to 50."

Ars Technica has a right up about the fact that after one month of the Xoom being released there are still only 50 native apps available for Honeycomb. It's a good write up with some good points but I disagree with the overall theme. The fact is, while most apps may not be optimized for Honeycomb many of those will work from my understanding. Also, you still have a large screen for viewing photos, videos, web pages, documents, and books. Besides that Android has the huge advantage of having Widgets which means you can actually view data from more than one services/source/app at a time. To me this is something every tablet needs. What good is a big screen if you can only ever look at one thing at a time. I can not imagine being without that ability on my phone. Anyway, check out the article and let me know what you think! Does the lack of native apps bother you with the Xoom if you have one? If you don't have one, is the lack of native apps keeping you from buying one? On a side note I finally got to try out a friends Xoom a few days ago and thought it was great! I was actually surprised because of all the bad things I had read about it. Another friend has ordered one and I can completely understand why! I love the size, the interface, and nothing crashed when I was playing with it. Before I thought I would want a 7" tablet because I don't like the size of the iPad but to me, the Xoom felt great in hand.


Saturday, March 26, 2011

The RIM Playbook Will Run Android Apps

Posted by Craig Horlacher in "Android Software" @ 10:00 AM

http://www.mediabistro.com/thinkmob..._medium=twitter

"After some speculation, RIM has formally announced that their tablet, the Blackberry Playbook, will run Android apps. The inclusion of support for Android apps is huge because it means RIM’s new tablet will ship with the ability to run hundreds of thousands of apps."

Now if you follow the "read" link for all the info you'll see that what it actually will do is run RIM approved apps within an Android "app player" of some kind. This also means you will not have direct access to the Android Market. Android developers that want their app to be available for the Playbook will need to do some work to repackage their app, submit it to the BlackBerry App World, and wait for approval. I think it's smart for RIM to do this but only time will tell if developers will do the work needed to make their app available for the Playbook. I think a lot of eyes will be on the Playbook as well as the HP Touchpad (running WebOS) as so many people have been disappointed by current Android offerings. Also, I know I'm not the only one who thinks iOS is terrible on a phone and even worse on a tablet. The Playbook has some great hardware with 1GB of RAM, dual core processor, 3MP front camera, and 5MP rear camera. It does have a 7" screen which some people may think it too small, for me I think the 10" would be too big. The question is will it work well and will people buy it? What do you think?


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