‘Confide’ is Like Snapchat for Text Messages [iOS Blog]

With the image-based Snapchat reaching huge levels of popularity with its ephemeral image and video messaging, new app Confide looks to offer the same type of secure, self-destructing messaging for text.

The app allows users to send messages to anyone with an email address — prompting those users to download the app — and conceals the contents of messages until they swipe to select it. It also alerts senders when screenshots are attempted and sends read receipt messages so senders know when their message is read.

The company is pitching Confide as an app for business executives and others to send messages to each other that they would prefer HR or legal departments not find out about.

Gigaom writes:

Brod added that Confide is different from Snapchat and other disappear apps in that it connects potential users through their email addresses, not by searching their phone contacts. This means that if someone sends a message to a person who doesn’t have the app, they will receive an email that informs them there is a message from the first person waiting for them in the app.

To address the issue of screenshots, which can provide a way to preserve disappearing messages, Confide uses a “wand” feature that requires recipients to pass their fingers over the message to reveal additional words. The app also includes a notice feature, common among other disappear apps, that alerts the sender if the recipient took a screenshot of the message.

Confide for iPhone is a free download from the App Store. [Direct Link]

iPhone ‘Halo’ Driving Corporate iPad/Mac Adoption, 25% of Cisco-Owned Laptops Are MacBooks

Apple is seeing increased success in selling its wares to large corporations thanks to the iPhone, reports The Wall Street Journal. A number of Apple products have acted as “halos” over the years, selling to first-time Apple owners and seeing that penetration lead to sales of more products.

The iPod helped drive Mac adoption with consumers, particularly amongst college students, but the iPhone is the most successful product in Apple’s history and has driven tremendous amounts of Mac and iPad sales. One-quarter of Cisco’s company-provided notebooks are Macs following that company’s decision to allow employees to choose which platform they preferred.

Many companies are deploying custom applications for iPhones and iPads, with the iPhone often being Apple’s first foothold in a business.

LG&E and KU Energy LLC, Kentucky’s biggest electric utility … approved the iPhone for employees in 2010. It then introduced iPads, and built apps such as one to help its helicopter patrollers survey 5,500 miles of high-voltage power lines. Using an iPad’s global-positioning system, patrollers can pinpoint the location of a problem and select from a menu of common issues, such as a damaged pole or an overgrown tree.

“For years, we looked for some way to automate this and we heard all sorts of fairy tales, but we could never find anything,” said Robby Trimble, LG&E and KU’s manager of transmission-line services.

Now, the utility’s engineers who run power plants use iPads to record how much electricity is generated. Warehouse managers use the tablet to scan bar codes and track the utility’s tools and materials.

Forrester says Apple accounts for 8 percent of global business and government spending on computers and tablets — that number does not include the iPhone — and could rise to 11 percent by 2015.

Apple executives frequently mention enterprise adoption and custom app development in earnings release conference calls with analysts, touting large corporate adoptions of iOS devices and how companies are using internally developed apps. The company also has large websites profiling how businesses are using both the iPhone and iPad.

‘PAC-MAN’ Named App of the Week, Available for Free [iOS Blog]

Namco Bandai’s classic PAC-MAN app has been named Apple’s App of the Week, and as a result, it is available for free for the first time since its initial 2011 release.

PAC-MAN is based on the classic arcade game and the gameplay focuses on navigating Pac-Man to eat pellets and fruit while avoiding ghosts. Along with the original maze, the game offers eight other mazes that all feature ghost-free bonus modes.

Who can forget the countless hours and quarters spent avoiding pesky ghosts while chompin’ on pellets and gobbling up fruit for bonus points?

– Arcade perfect classic PAC-MAN
– 8 new mazes for all new challenges
– Two different control modes
– Three game difficulties
– Retina display support

During its years on the App Store, PAC-MAN has ranged in price from $0.99 to $6.99, but it has not been offered at no cost. The app, which can be downloaded from the App Store, will be free for the next week. [Direct Link]

U.S. Mac Sales Grow 28.5% in Holiday Quarter, PC Market Suffers Worst Decline Ever

Apple saw its U.S. PC marketshare rise from 9.9 percent to 13.7 percent in the holiday quarter year-over-year, according to data just released from Gartner. The 28.5 percent rise shows a substantial increase in Mac sales, largely at the expense of HP and Toshiba.

Dell and Lenovo are the only other PC firms who saw significant rises in marketshare in the quarter.

In the U.S., PC shipments totaled 15.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2013, a 7.5 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2012 (see Table 2). Despite a 10.3 percent decline in shipments, HP continued to be the No. 1 vendor in the U.S., as it accounted for 26.5 percent of shipments.

“Holiday sales of technology products were strong in the U.S. market, but consumer spending during the holidays did not come back to PCs as tablets were one of the hottest holiday items,” said Ms. Kitagawa. “We think that the U.S. PC market has bottomed out. A variety of new form factors, such as hybrid notebooks, drew holiday shoppers’ attention, but the market size was very small at the time. Lowering the price point of thin and light products started encouraging the PC replacement and potentially some PC growth in 2014.”

Gartner’s Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q13 (Thousands of Units)
The U.S. PC market fared slightly worse than the global market, dropping 7.5 percent in unit sales, from 17.07 million units last year to 15.8 million units this year. Continuing a trend from the last several quarters, tablets have continued to eat into PC sales and though hybrid tablet-notebooks have appealed to some shoppers, the market size for those devices remains very small. As a result of the demand for tablets, the overall PC market saw its worst unit decline in history.

Apple’s U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-4Q13 (Gartner)
It’s important to note that this data is preliminary — last year, Gartner revised its preliminary Apple numbers from 12.3% down to 9.9%, likely because last year the newly introduced iMac was in extremely short supply.

Apple’s US PC marketshare has seen consistent growth over the past seven years, rising from just under 5 percent to the current 13.7 percent.