Earlier this year, Sanho — makers of the super useful Hypermac line of batteries — found themselves in a pot of hot water boiled by Apple’s legal team, who objected to Hypermac’s use of repurposed (and patented) MagSafe cable connectors to juice up hungry MacBooks.
You can’t keep a good product down, though. HyperMac has just relaunched the HyperMac line, this time working around their reliance upon old MagSafe cables so as not to draw Cupertino’s ire once more.
Here’s our 2010 Year in Review of the best 10 hardware peripherals for your iPhone or iPad that we’ve come across in the last twelve months.
If you missed any of these or didn’t get a chance to check them out for some reason or another, don’t fret — all of them are still available and worth a look.
10. AR Drone Parrot
It’s going to be one lucky kid who gets this iDevice-controllable wonder
The AR Drone Parrot is a quadricopter that’s controlled by the iPhone, iPod touch or the iPad. It can be flown indoors or outside and features many sensors, including a front camera ,vertical camera and an ultrasound altimeter. High-tech sensors make it simple for kids to pilot. The AR Drone can also be used in video games, such as AR FlyingAce, a dogfight between two AR Drones.
The AR Drone Parrot is available from Amazon for $299.99
Here’s our 2010 Year in Review of the best 10 hardware peripherals for your Mac that we’ve come across in the last twelve months.
If you missed any of these or didn’t get a chance to check them out for some reason or another, don’t fret — all of them are still available and worth a look.
10. Mac Edition eGo Desktop Hard Drive 2TB
Leander Kahney: Iomega’s new Mac Edition eGo Desktop Hard Drive packs a whopping 2-Terabytes in a compact, stylish package.
The Mac Edition eGo drive is a good-looking complement to Apple’s new glass-and-aluminum Macs. It’s styled to match Apple’s Mac Pro with a sleek, silver case and a grill front.
It’s available in 1TB and 2TB configurations ($159.99 and $249, respectively), and offers several connectivity options: there are two FireWire 800 ports and one USB 2.0 port. It ships with a FireWire 400-to-800 conversion cable, which makes it compatible with Macs without a FireWire 800 port.
Although Adobe itself is hardly on the ropes, having just scored their first billion dollar year in revenue, Apple continues to pummel Flash into the ground, like a berserker rabbit punching the occipital lobe of a downed enemy.
The latest blow? Apple has just launched iAd Producer, a new tool for online advertisers that allows them to create interactive iAd content in an easy, streamlined manner that would have previously required Adobe’s Flash developer tools.
Trying to thumb type a search query into your iPhone on the run sucks, and it’s sow to boot. Google knows it, which is why they have the Google Search app, allowing you to just dictate your search query when typing is otherwise inconvenient.
But it looks like Apple might have noticed it too. New job postings indicate Apple is looking to improve the native voice recognition capabilities of iOS.
After all the eggnog is consumed and the gifts unwrapped, your new and old Macs may need a bit of holiday cheer themselves. Whether you’re trying to setup a new system or infuse energy into an old favorite, a few MacRx columns on such matters resonated with our readers this year.
Read on for refreshers about Fixing Startup Problems, Speeding up Slow Macs, Troubleshooting WiFi Issues, Making Hard Drive Clones, and Managing Your Safari Bookmarks. Some things to do over the holiday break!
Apple’s passing out Christmas gifts early for Mac and iOS developers. The company is offering six development books covering Mac OS X and iOS development — for free.
The new eBooks aren’t really new, but they haven’t been available in the iBookstore until today. Previously developers could either read them online or download PDF versions to read later via developer.apple.com.
The six titles include: Cocoa Fundamental’s Guide, The Objective-C Programming Language, iOS Application Programming Guide, Object Oriented Programming With Objective-C, iOS Technology Overview, and iOS Human Interface Guidelines.
You can download these books to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad from the iBookstore.
According to a recent Houston Chronicle story an iPhone has once again saved the day and solved a crime. This particular iPhone was stolen from a female jogger, who was jogging with a friend, during an armed robbery that occurred in the 700 block of Brittmore on the west side of Houston, Texas.
The alleged robbers exited a pickup truck and confronted the two women according to Houston Police Department (HPD) spokesman John Cannon. An Apple iPhone was turned over to the robbers by one of the women and fortunately neither of them was hurt.
Having sound issues with your 27-inch LED Cinema Display? Apple’s just pumped a fix down the pipe to deal with occasional audio loss experienced by some users.
Previously, Apple’s own tech note explained that some users were noticing that sound from an LED Cinema Display connected to a Mac would intermittently drop sound, and that users may have to unplug the display or even reboot to get the audio working again.
Seems like a big gaffe, but apparently, the new update will fix these issues. That said, it’s a rather unique update by Apple’s standard, so remember to follow the instructions included in the updater application to letter, to minimize accidental explosions, implosions and trans-dimensional vortices.
[via 9to5Mac]
Apple has released an updated version of iBooks, version 1.2, introduces PDF printing and Collections. Collections allow you to organize your books and PDFs.
The app is now able to provide better graphics support for children’s books and there is even an option that will allow you to display more words per page for devices with smaller screens like the iPhone and iPod touch.
It’s available now, for iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad via updates in the iTunes App Store app or grab a copy here.
Check out the iPhone 4 screen shots after the jump.
The iPhone’s impressive GPU is supplied by Imagination Technologies, and it’s already powerful enough to run advanced 3D graphics engines like the Unreal 3 Engine. Unbelievably, though, it’s slated to get a lot better, after it was announced that Imagination has just acquired Caustic Graphics, a company with even more impressive 3D graphics technology to boast of.
Yesterday, we reported that Toshiba would be building new facility in order to supply Apple with high-res displays for future iPhones and iPads… and that Cupertino itself might have sunk some cash in to the project to get it off the ground.
Today, Toshiba’s denying Apple’s involvement.
Apple is under fire in Japan today after a group of the nation’s top publishers have claimed that Apple is approving apps for sale on the App Store when they violate the copyrights of many famous Japanese authors.
Toshiba certainly seems to think their business with Apple is important, judging by the latest news the company is now readying a $1.89 billion production facility to help supply Apple with high-resolution LCD display panels. Re: Retina Displays.
This past week finally saw the unveiling of Google’s long-awaited Chrome OS. Surprising few to none, the big revelation is that Chrome the browser is actually the entire operating system. Using cloud web applications, it will be possible to run a bunch of desktop-ish apps on a Chrome-based netbook at home, then go to work, fire up Chrome on Mac or Windows on your work laptop, and have the same experience there. Pretty snazzy stuff.
It’s yet another take on what cloud-based consumer computing could be (insert “network computing” if you’d like to relive 1996), an heir to the promise of Java and so many others. And it looks to have some legs, even if we’re still quite some ways from seeing commercially available hardware ready to run on it. Many developers will create apps for the platform, and its write-once, read-anywhere (WOMA!) promise is mighty seductive. It would be very easy to imagine a world in which no one develops for traditional desktop operating systems anymore, except for professional applications like video editing and design work. Sounds like bad news for Apple, right?
The new MacBook Air is a remarkably solid wafer of hardware, especially after the recent EFI Firmware Update that solved the occasional issue of graphics corruption when the Air wakes up from sleep.
It looks, though, like there may be a new crisis brewing and a new glitch to address, this time with the Air’s ability to play nice with he official USB Ethernet Adapter.
Something new and unexpected happened to me today. I, like many others including other staffers at Cult of Mac, found ourselves unable to log into mobileme.com. If you attempt to log in the MobileMe log in screen is absolutely no help whatsoever. There is no error message. No warnings — you just cannot log in.
I found out why this was happening by accident. I was attempting to arrange for a tech support call with AppleCare using the Express Lane service that you can access at support.apple.com this morning.
I attempted to log in with my Apple ID only to discover that Apple had expired the password and that I needed to reset it. Surprise! I’m okay with that, but the fact that MobileMe didn’t tell me why I could not log on is typical of that service. After all isn’t MobileMe generally rife with quality issues and just another hobby at Apple, Inc?
If you are in the same boat as the rest of us visit My Apple ID to reset your Apple ID password. I was able to log into mobileme.com after changing my password.
Update 12/10/2010 at 12:33 PM PST: According to some users via e-mail and other sources on the internet Apple has apparently rolled out new password rules starting with the fact that passwords for Apple IDs must be eight or more characters. Apple is also pushing users to use strong passwords that include a number and/or symbol. I don’t know about you folks, but all this is news to me and I’m a paying MobileMe member. I don’t recall receiving any notification from Apple about this. How completely lame is that? A simple warning or pop-up window on MobileMe’s website would have been enough to give me a heads up, but I got nothing. Just a mystery.
The storied Verizon iPhone remains as questionably and rumorous as a cryptozoological specimen: no matter how many times it is reported as a soon-to-be-imminent reality, it never quite seems to come about, no matter how assertive the Wall Street Journal or New York Times seem to be about the matter.
Still, even if it hasn’t come about yet, Apple’s clearly interested in the possibility of bringing the iPhone to Verizon when their exclusivity deal with AT&T ends, as evidenced by this most recent job posting looking to hire a new staff member who is experienced with Verizon’s CDMA network.
Nearly 20 years ago Snagit was introduced for Windows and it has quite a following. It has always been very successful as a Windows utility so it’s odd that it has taken so long to come to the Mac, but it is here finally and worth the wait.
The release version of Snagit for Mac OS X, a screen capture and image-editing utility, is now shipping after spending a year in beta. It’s a bit expensive at $49.95, but I think it is worth the money especially after years of using it in a corporate environment along with a slew of co-workers. Now I’ll have access to it on both platforms.
However, although Snagit on the Mac features the core feature set of the Windows version, that many know and love, it doesn’t have all the features of the award-winning Snagit 10 for Windows. Perhaps that’s why the Windows version is included for free. The serial number you purchase works on both platforms.
A mere half a minute just not enough time to figure out if you actually want to pluck down that hard earned buck on The Pipkins’ classic sonnet, “Gimme Dat Ding”? You now have thrice the time to sample, courtesy of iTunes.
Apple has released another software update for the new 11 and 13-inch MacBook Air models. This update, which is an EFI firmware upgrade, follows the previous update released shortly after the new MacBook Air went on sale and other alleged fixes in Mac OS X 10.6.5.
According to Apple, “This update resolves a rare issue where MacBook Air boots or wakes to a black screen or becomes unresponsive. This update is recommended for all 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air (late 2010) models. ”
Just like the Visible Man, Apple used to make transparent Macs with the viscera tightly packed and clearly exposed inside. The idea was to allow Apple’s designers to see and understand how components actually sat inside a Mac before the case was attached and the beige slapped on.
These transparent Macs were super rare: only ten are known to exist. One such transparent Mac SE was recently put up on eBay with a rather aggressive reserve price of $25,000.00.
I have a bet for my pinky finger with a certain man from the south that Apple will never release the white iPhone 4.
What’s the point? After long delays caused by light leaking onto the camera sensor, the white iPhone 4 has been delayed nearly nine months… and the next-gen iPhone is, at best, due out a mere three months after the white iPhone 4 is set to debut. At that point, anyone who wants one is going to just wait for a white iPhone 5.
I’d always assumed Apple was just hoping that delaying it until spring of 2011 would just get everyone to forget about the white iPhone 4, but their latest official signage at Apple Stores around the country reminds people that the albino iPhone 4 is still coming.
Crap. Maybe I’m about to lose that pinky bet after all.
Apple intends on using the 100 acres of land they purchased for $300 million from HP last month to build a partially domed, green-friendly campus with an intensive subterranean road and transportation network, according to a recent report by a Spanish paper… and they’ve already hired the visionary architect to make the futuristic, utopian campus city happen.
The New York teenager who made a small fortune making white iPhone 4s has shut down his website.
“We have closed the site, possibly permanently,” said Lam, 17, in an email to CultofMac.com.
It’s not clear why Lam shut the whiteiPhone4now.com website down. He didn’t elaborate. But Apple is the obvious suspect. Lam has already received a threatening letter from a private investigator representing Apple, who accused Lam of “selling stolen goods.”
Lam reportedly earned more than $130,000 delivering white iPhone 4s using grey market parts.