Here are the latest and greatest things that happened this week. Users reported YouTube down for a few hours, Huawei builds its own OS and iPhone registers a few new patents.
YouTube down
It doesn’t happen too often, actually it hasn’t happened for a really long time, but on June 22nd 2016 YouTube website went down. It was down only for a few hours in most locations, but with over a billion users, for sure people noticed 🙂
The cause for YouTube going down is not know until now.
Huawei is building its own OS to potentially replace Android
Huawei’s engineers admitted working on the development of a brand new OS for their devices. The OS is to replace Android in case Google’s usage policies of Android come in conflict with the companies objectives. To be honest that does not sound too good, especially because I love Android. However I can understand Huawei’s decision business wise, since the marriage between device and software links the producer to Google like a carriage to a horse.
Huawei is number 3 on the market after Apple and Samsung, and already for some time now Samsung’s Tizen OS has been out in the open, so Huawei is only following suite.
New Apple patents
Apple holds about 9800 registered patents in the US alone. So it’s not really surprising that they’ve just registered a few more on June 23rd, 2016. As all other Apple inventions these are also exciting and I look forward to seeing them put into practice.
The first patent is the Apple smart stylus. This is basically a stylus packed with sensors to detect touch, gestures and movement. It will detect when users rotate the stylus, how much pressure is applied against the surface or even when users squeeze it.
The second patent is related to a touch sensor display that detects how the user holds the iPhone by sensing the position of the thumb along the side of the device. This information is taken by the iPhone which provides quick access menu buttons or icons that are easily reached using the thumb. The sensors are not limited to touch detection and can also include finger print and proximity sensors. The iPhone equipped with these sensors can easily detect whether the user is left handed or right handed and therefore present the extra UI elements accordingly.
Samsung launches samsungvr.com
After launching their 360 camera Samsung Gear 360, Samsung has launched this week their new website for uploading 360 viedeos and photos samsungvr.com. This is obviously a response to both Facebook and YouTube similar service. I would say the more the merrier, so good job Samsung.
