iPhone News Updated

Apple’s iPhone 5 Delay Just Opened The Door For Google And Microsoft

Despite the recent wave of adoption of Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone is still the gold standard in smartphones.

Every other new smartphone that is launched is compared directly with the latest iPhone, and, so far, they’ve all fallen short.

But Apple’s delay of the next iPhone–the iPhone 5–has opened the door a crack for Android (and even Research in Motion and Microsoft) to regain some ground. And if the delay is indicative of some sort of problem at Apple, the door could swing wide open.

From a high-level perspective, Apple is fighting the same battle that it fought–and lost–in the 1990s. It is selling an integrated hardware-and-software device and a closed development platform, while its competitors are aiming for ubiquity and spraying their platforms across every device that will have them.

In the 1990s, this strategy resulted in Apple becoming a niche “premium” player and almost getting killed off, while the ubiquitous Microsoft became the most powerful tech company in the world. Google, with Android, is now playing the same role that Microsoft played in the 1990s.

This re-run of the PC battle is different in two key ways from the one in the 1990s, in part because Apple clearly learned a searing lesson from that decade.

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Geo Hunters pits iPhone users against local monsters

A new role-playing game for the iPhone uses Google Maps to let players battle monsters in their own neighborhood.

Geo Hunters has debuted in the App Store, game developer YD Online announced Tuesday. The app lets you take a picture of your face and attach it to your game’s character—a warrior, a hunter, or a wizard—and battle invading aliens on a satellite-view landscape of the actual neighborhood where you’re playing.

But the app isn’t merely location-centric—it will also reflect (through the lens of fantasy) what’s going on in the news. While you might defeat and capture monsters in your own neighborhood using weapons, armor, and potions, developers say new monsters will pop up on maps around the world to reflect areas that are currently appearing in the headlines. And there’s also the social aspect: once you’ve defeated a monster and added him to your collection, other players in the game can try to steal the creatures—along with the power they give you—and add them to their own menagerie.

Geo Hunters is free, and compatible with any device running iOS 4.3 or later.

[Thanks: http://www.macworld.com]