French designer Philipe Starck teased us all last week when he revealed during a radio show interview that he had been working on a “revolutionary” new product with Apple that would launch within the next 8 months. As the news began to circulate, Apple quickly denied working with Starck, and the designer backtracked on his comments.
Starck has now confirmed that he was actually helping the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs design his own yacht.
An unconfirmed report surfaced yesterday saying that Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted at Valve’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. Whenever Cook is spotted out and about, people take notice. The CEO of the world’s most valuable company doesn’t personally visit other tech companies to simply have a chat.
Many speculated as to why Cook would be visiting Valve, maker of popular game series like Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal. Valve also boasts an incredibly robust online PC gaming platform called Steam that operates similarly to Apple’s App Store.
We’ve gotten word that Cook was indeed at Valve yesterday, and what’s more, Apple is planning a full-on assault to take over the living room. This assault won’t just be limited to the long-rumored Apple HDTV set, but will also include a revolutionary home console as well.
The French designer Philippe Starck, famous for both his interior design and mass produced goods like toothbrushes and chairs, revealed in a recent radio interview that Apple has been working on a “revolutionary” new product that will be unveiled within the next 8 months.
When Apple first debuted the new 1080p Apple TV in March, they said they’d brought their set-top box up to spec with the rest of the industry by including what they called a “single-core variant” of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S’s A5 processor.
But how is it an A5 processor if only has one core? The answer is that technically, the A5 inside the Apple TV is still a dual-core chip, but one of them’s a dud.
Aereo is a great service for denizens of New York City. For $12 per month, you get to stream local live TV direct to your iPad, iPhone, Roku box, Apple TV, or just about anything with an internet connection. It’s simple, it does nothing but relay the free-to-air channels already available to any New Yorker, and of course the TV companies are already trying to shut it down.
The folks at FireCore have released a new jailbreak for the latest Apple TV iOS version that Apple released on March 7th. The set-top box’s interface was revamped alongside the release of the third-gen Apple TV, and FireCore’s tethered jailbreak will work on the second-gen Apple TV running iOS 5.0.
New versions of Seas0nPass and aTV Flash (black) have been released to enhance the Apple TV experience on the latest software.
Just hours after its release on March 16, Apple’s new iPad was jailbroken by the iPhone Dev-Team. Their announcement gave us hope that an exploit for A5 and A5X devices running iOS 5.1 would be available within weeks, but it now seems like we’ll be waiting a whole lot longer than that.
If you like keeping your Apple TV jailbroken, bad news. While it’s not outright impossible that a jailbreak will be found for the third-generation, 1080p Apple TV, it’s going to be a lot more complicated than the one that was exploited for the second-gen version.
Most analysts have seemed to agree that Apple’s new Apple TV set, dubbed the “iTV,” is going to launch sometime during 2012. However, Asian research group CLSA has released a note today saying that Apple won’t release the product until 2013, with Sharp providing the display panels.
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The video above is probably enough to make iPad 3 owners rush out and buy a copy of AirServer for your big-screen Mac. It shows the difference in the speed of video mirroring natively to the the Apple TV 3 and mirroring to the Mac using AirServer. The first is dreadfully laggy. The second is like playing with a wired controller. But that’s not all: The newest version of AirServer processes the video before displaying it, making for much better results on the big screen.
Complementing the launch of the new Apple TV, an iOS software update made some significant changes to the Apple TV user interface after the new iPad keynote. Over the last couple weeks the new UI has received a heavy dose of criticism from fans who feel like the new interface is a step backwards, and it turns out that those criticisms may be true. Literally.
According to one ex-Apple TV Engineer, the new Apple TV UI has been on the table for about five years, but Steve Jobs himself allegedly didn’t like it and rejected its implementation. Now that Jobs isn’t around “to say no to bad design,” the UI was resurrected.
Porthole is a Mac app which will stream all the audio coming from your computer to AirPlay speakers, instead of just the music from iTunes. It’s kind of like Rogue Amoeba’s excellent AirFoil, only much less fine-grained in terms of control.
With all the rumors surrounding Apple’s intense negotiations to acquire licensing agreements with Hollywood studios for its upcoming television, it can be easy to forget about another aspect of the equation that needs to be reinvented: the remote. When Apple does unveil its long-awaited ‘iTV’ to the dismay of cable providers, you can bet that it won’t come with a clunky clicker like every other TV on the market. If there’s anything that needs to be changed about the industry, it’s the tool we use to communicate with our TV sets.
How would Apple do its own remote? Some have speculated that the iTV will be completely controlled by Siri, but there’s more to the puzzle than just voice control. In fact, you probably already use the future iTV’s remote every day.
The new Apple TV has been opened up to reveal the same old 8GB of storage, along with 512MB RAM — double that of the previous generation Apple TV. XBMC forum member aicjofs got bored one day and decided to rip open his own Apple TV to see what was inside — a nerd after our own hearts.
As expected, third-gen Apple TV pre-orders have started arriving early in the mail. The set-top box includes 1080p HD video support and a faster processor. It comes with an updated interface and sells for $99.
Shipping estimates in Apple’s online store for the new Apple TV have slipped past tomorrow’s launch date, but those who were lucky enough to pre-order before stock sold out should be getting their device in the mail either today or tomorrow. We’ve got an unboxing for you to check out.
On first sight, the Yaro digital audio system looks unpromising. It’s an amplifier/speaker set from Kanto AV Systems that’s small, black and looks like something Spinal Tap might use on a farewell tour.
But it turned out to be about the loudest, most responsive, richest, most faithful sound-media player I’ve heard.
With all the attention deservedly going to the new iPad, it can be easy to forget that Apple also launched a third-gen Apple TV set-top box at its March 7th media event. The little hockey puck included 1080p HD video support and a faster processor, but that’s basically it. Not much has changed since the last Apple TV.
Apple has given early review units of the new Apple TV to certain publications to review. Here’s what they have to say:
The Apple TV isn’t positioned as a business or enterprise product, but its small size, easy setup, and AirPlay make it a very solid presentation tool – and the low cost doesn’t hurt, either.
While the Apple TV has the obvious advantage of being wireless and integrated with other Apple products, specific business advantages beyond its small form factor and the ubiquity of HDTVs and other HDMI-enabled display devices like projectors aren’t always immediately obvious (though those are pretty big advantages in their own right) – but at least one company is designing its business solutions around Apple’s so-called hobby device.
Business Intelligence developer MicroStrategy has taken the Apple TV/iOS combination to a new level by building its mobile apps around AirPlay and the Apple TV.
In their rush to announce the new iPad on Wednesday, Apple hurried through the details of their new Apple TV and didn’t talk much about the new ability to stream your movies straight from iCloud to your Apple TV or iOS device. What’s awesome about the new feature is that it works for movies that you didn’t even buy from iTunes: iTunes Digital Copies.
Does the idea of an Apple TV with Siri functionality make the insides of your toes tingle with excitement? We’re there with you, and we totally want to know what it would be like to have Siri in our living room whispering us sweet nothings. Apple didn’t announce a new iTV with Siri functionality yesterday, so we’ll have to wait a little while longer to see what the future holds, but to hold us over till that day comes, Tripp and Tyler made a new video to show us what a Siri TV would be like.
It is absolutely breathtaking.
Tim Cook kind of rushed past the Apple TV update yesterday. On the surface of things, not much changed: 1080p was the only real new feature, as the new iOS-like interface and Netflix sign-up are also available on older Apple TVs via update. But under the hood, the little black box is powered by a custom single-core A5 chip.
Disappointing news for those of you that haven’t pre-ordered a third-generation Apple TV already: the shipping estimate just fell to 1-2 weeks instead of guaranteed delivery to your doorstep on Friday, March 16th.
The new Apple TV set-top box streams 1080p HD video and features a revamped user interface. Tim Cook wasn’t kidding when he said we should all pre-order the thing as soon as possible during today’s keynote.
In the slew of software updates Apple has released today, version 5.0 for the Apple TV brings the new user interface that was demoed during today’s keynote. The new icon-based interface harkens to the feel of iOS with “channel” hubs for content providers like Netflix and MLB.com.
5 app-like icons are displayed for each row under the interface’s top marquee. Apple’s cloud-based iTunes Match service can be used to access your music library on the Apple TV, and iTunes Home Sharing can be used to access libraries locally stored on your network. You also have direct access to Netflix, MLB, NBA, NHL, Apple’s own Trailers app, Wall Street Journal Live, YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes Podcasts, Internet Radio, Photo Stream, and Flickr.
Netflix was a big part of the new Apple TV presentation today, and almost like an afterthought, the streaming video king has an announcement of its own: Netflix is getting enhanced integration with iTunes and the Apple TV.
Naturally, the biggest upgrade to Netflix on Apple TV is support for 1080p video an Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, but Netflix has also announced that users will now be able to sign up for Netflix directly on the Apple TV and even pay using their iTunes account.
That’s a big coup, but it also implies Netflix is giving Apple a 30% cut of every sign-up. Given how many studios are fleeing them lately, seems to me like Netflix could use all the money it can get.
Well, eager readers, we’re just a couple short hours away from Apple’s iPad 3 event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and while nothing’s ever certain up until the moment Phil Schiller announces it, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s coming.
The question is: do you care? Are you excited about a new iPad 3, or a new Apple TV, or even a budget iPad 2? Or is your old iPad still working just fine, or do you think this is a bunch of hype all together?
Let us know in our poll, then join us in the comments to tell us what you think Apple will announce and what you’re most excited about. We’ve got to kill time before the announcement somehow!