Wouldn’t it be great if your iPhone automatically increased its speaker volume when you pulled it away from your ear, or decreased it as you moved it closer? According to a new Apple patent recently published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, this could be a feature of future iPhones.
The iPhone 5S could come with a sapphire crystal capacitive touch home button that incorporates a new fingerprint sensor, according to supply chain sources in Taiwan.
Apple is expected to do away with the traditional physical home button, which has long been one of the most unreliable components on iOS devices. It’s thought that using sapphire crystal, which has a hardness second only to diamond, will prevent the button from getting scratched and ruining the fingerprint sensor.
It’s taken three years, but HeartMath has finally responded, in the form of a major redesign, to the concerns we (and probably other critics) voiced over their original emWave stress-management gadget.
Where the emWave required plugging in to a USB port and cost $300, their new Inner Balance system works with pretty much any 30-pin iDevice and sells for just $99.
As video surveillance goes, Netgear’s VueZone system is about as easy and user-friendly as it gets. But does VueZone sacrifice power and performance for ease-of-use? We tested the two-camera system, which cam with two motion-detecting cameras, four magnetic mounts and the master gateway for $290. It also came with a one-month trial subscription to the Premier service subscription; the no-frills Basic service, which allows you to montitor up to two cameras remotely from your computer, is free.
I have a complicated relationship with gloves. On the one hand, I love that they keep my fingers from falling off in frigid weather. But then there’s the frustration at their complete lack of cooperation when I’m trying to use the touchscreen on my phone. As a result, I end up either constantly removing and re-donning my gloves in an endless cycle that freezes my delicate fingers anyway — or abandoning my phone altogether in disgust.
The problem is that most touchscreens rely on our fingers to act as conductors, and conventional gloves block that conductivity. But glove-makers have rolled with the times, and there are solutions — gloves that allow conductivity to pass through the glove’s fabric and onto the screen. One of the most buzzed about is Outdoor Research’s Sensor Gloves ($69), which use real leather that doesn’t appear or feel any different than leather used in non-conductive gloves.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 -
Keeping your posture in check likely isn’t something you often think about on a daily basis. With so many things going on everyday, you may not realize just how bad your posture is, though. That’s where the LUMOback sensor comes in.
The LUMOback is essentially a belt that you wear which detects exactly how you sit and stand throughout the day, and records the data to a companion iOS app. In addition, the sensor will vibrate to tell you if you’ve been sitting or standing poorly for too long.
So, check this out. The folks behind CameraSize, a clever little web site that compares camera specifications with easily viewable images for size comparison, have created SensorSize. Ever wondered what the camera on your iPhone 4S is packing? How about comparing it to other smartphones, point and shoot phones, or – gasp – actual DSLR cameras?
SensorSize will do it all, with a nice little infographic, as you can see above.
The area where the fitness tech companies congregate at CES seems to get larger and louder every year — and based on the preview emails or stuff we’ve chatted about on the phone, fitness at CES 2012 looks like it’ll be bigger than ever.
Here’s a fun, kinda crazy way to use the sudden motion sensors that come in some Mac notebooks, like the newer unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros. These sudden motion sensors are used by Apple to detect when a laptop with a physical spinning hard drive is dropped, and therefore this tip won’t work on the 2010 or 2011 MacBook Airs that shipped with flash-based, non-spinning SSDs. Using a third-party app, you can pick up your laptop and give it a shake-to-undo option, just like the one on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
Those of you wishing for an 8-megapixel camera in the upcoming iPhone 5 might just be in luck. According to a report from Taiwan Economic News, Apple has secured deals with two manufacturers who will supply 8-megapixel cameras for Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone.
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![Add ‘Shake To Undo’ To A Mac [OS X Tips]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/shake2undo.jpg "shake2undo")
![Two Suppliers Will Provide 8-Megapixel Cameras for iPhone 5 [Report]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/iPhone-4-camera-shot.jpg)
