Buster Hein - page 226

Even though they’re not leading in marketshare, Apple’s iOS devices account for more than 60% of all mobile web consumption. Because of this, many websites provide custom layouts for multiple devices so that users can enjoy an optimized experience regardless of whether they’re viewing a website from their iPad, iPhone or MacBook.

However, with the new iPad mini Apple has made it impossible for developers to deliver an optimized experience for the device, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon.

If you own a lot of shares of Apple stock, today is going to be a great day. For the second time this year, Apple is set to give its investors $2.5 billion worth of dividends. This is the second time Apple’s done a payout this year, with the first payout occurring on August 16th 2012.

Apple announced their $45 billion stock dividend and repurchase plan back in March 2012, and they expect to spend $45 billion over the next three years.

A person’s birthday is the one day of the year where it’s totally ok to gloat as people shower you with their affections throughout the day. It’s the one day where it’s ok to want to feel a little special.

Even Siri wants to make you feel special. If you tell Siri, “It’s my birthday,” she’ll start singing a sprited version of “Happy Birthday” before remembering that, oh crap, that song is copyrighted. Better luck next year.

Via: Reddit

99.95% of the time I pray that my Mac will never get a bug, but now part of me holds on to a sliver of hope that I will one day see an OS X bug that is as beautiful as this. A very small number of Mac users have reported that Launchpad has thrown out a new bug that crystalizes all of the icons on the Launchpad screen.

The way the bug occurs is pretty simple – the blur effect and crystallise effect are two built in core image filters and somehow Launchpad is applying the crystallise effect when it should be using blur. It’s a bit whacky and goes away after a bit, but it sure is spectacular.

Here’s how the bug morphed another Mac user’s screen:

As Apple and Samsung try to purge themselves of dependency on one another things are bound to get even more ugly over the next 12-18months. A report came out earlier this week that Samsung was planning to raise the price on Apple’s processors by 20%.

The significant price increase would mean Apple’s cash cow – the iPhone – wouldn’t have as profitable margins which would negatively effect Apple’s bottom line. However, an official at Samsung has come out today to deny the changes and says that a 20% price hike isn’t coming.

Apple is not a company that is afraid to introduce a product that will cannibalize other Apple products. No one buys iPod Classics anymore, they buy an iPod Touch or iPhone. The MacBook Air cannibalized sales of regular MacBooks. And many assumed the iPad mini would cannibalize sales of the iPad, but that assumption is false.

Some analysts believed the iPad mini would cannibalize sales of the iPad by a rate of 10 to 20 percent. A new survey by Cowen and Co. shows that while the iPad mini has been selling well, it hasn’t been cannibalized its bigger sibling, but it is killing PC sales.

While Apple Stores across the U.S. continue to enjoy a lot of success, Apple is looking to expand their retail operations overseas in countries such as China, Turkey and now Brazil.

According to a new press release, Apple has informed the Brazilian press that they plan to open their first Apple Store in Rio de Janerio next year. If the Rio de Janeiro store is successful, Apple is likely to follow it up with more retail locations in Brazil, which is also where Foxconn has built new factories to assemble iPads.

Every time Apple introduces a new product they love to compare it to a common object that shows just how magically small it is. The MacBook Air fits inside an envelope. The iPod Classic is the size of a deck of cards. The iPad mini is thinner than a pencil. And the 4th generation iPad with Retina display is thinner than a penny! Wait, what?

A typo on Apple’s website says that the depth of the iPad is .37mm, which would make it about as thick as four sheets of paper copy. For sake of comparison  a penny has a depth of 1.57mm, so the new iPad is hella skinny. Obviously the image should show .37 inches thick, not millimeters. We’re just surprised this little mistake has slipped through Apple’s perfectionist fingers without much notice.

Source: Apple

Via: Reddit

The last few weeks have been a bit rocky for Apple and its new CEO Tim Cook, but that hasn’t stopped it from enjoying record breaking successes thanks to the iPhone 5 and iPad.

Every year the people at Fierce Wireless rank the top 25 most powerful people in the U.S. wireless industry, and for their rankings this year Tim Cook managed to grab the number one spot.

The iPad mini is the cheapest tablet Apple’s ever made. At $329 we think it’s an alright deal even though it needs a Retina display. But if you’re put off by the cheap price tag and demand something a bit more extravagant, you can always dip your iPad mini in 24kt gold.

Gold & Co. have plated the iPad mini in both gold and rose gold and will probably sell a limited number of the blinged out iPad minis to any dufus who wants their iPad mini to scream “1%.”

Apple’s new Maps app leaves a lot to be desired, and while there are some decent alternatives out there, the only worthy replacement for Apple Maps is either Google Maps or Nokia’s Maps. Neither company has an iOS app ready to go just yet, but Nokia is planning to change all that.

In a few weeks Nokia plans to release a maps app for iOS called Here. The app will be free for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch owners, and Nokia is hoping that it will persuade some iOS users to try out their smartphones as well.

Last week we reported that Apple was planning to ship initial iPad mini with LTE pre-orders on November 16th, and it looks like units are finally ready to leave home base and make their way to your doorstep.

Customers who have pre-order the iPad mini with LTE are now reporting that Apple has sent them confirmation that their iPad mini has shipped and is en route to its destination.

Despite losing some of the tablet marketshare to Android tablets this year, the iPad and iPhone are still the two most popular non-PC devices to watch video on. A new study on video monetization conducted by FreeWheel found that Apple iOS devices make up more than 60% of all non-PC/Mac video viewing.

Even though Android tablets and smartphones have seen major gains, they’re still a work in progress and their users don’t consume media as heavily as iOS users.

Apple’s retail stores are ridiculously successful. For the last few years Apple Stores have been the top performing retail locations in the world in terms of revenue per square foot.

This year Apple Stores earned twice as much revenue as the next most profitable retail chain, Tiffany & Co. RetailSails  analyzed the world’s top performing brick-and-mortar U.S. retail chains and found that Apple Stores averaged $6,050 in sales per square feet, while Tiffany & Co. earned $3,017 per square feet.

Throughout 2012 Tim Cook has continued to put his stamp on Apple and its culture. One move that we haven’t heard much until now is his decision earlier this year to allow certain employees to spend 20% of their work time pursuing new projects that may help Apple.

20% time has become a prominent employee incentive at other companies throughout Silicon Valley as it has been popularized by Google who got the idea from 3M. The incentive allows employees to spend 20% of their time on side projects, but it hasn’t been adopted by Apple until now.

It looks like Apple’s iPhone 5 supply is finally catching up with demand. Last week shipping times for all iPhone 5 models from Apple’s website were listed as 3-4 weeks, but that’s now improved to 2-3 weeks.

While iPhone 5 supply at Apple Stores across the country has been fairly solid, Apple has limited the amount of stock available online. Shorter shipping times for online orders means that Apple is more confident that they are able to meet the overall demand for the iPhone 5.

The iPhone 5 and iOS 6 have only been out for a few weeks but Apple’s got a new update for iOS 6 making its way through the pipeline. Apple just seeded iOS 6.1 beta 2 to registered developers.

We’ll let you know if there are any new goodies in beta 2 once we get it onto our precious little iPhones.

Our friend Chris over at Braeburn Acoustics had a couple of new iPhone 5s laying about their shop, so they thought, “hey, what would it look like if you made a Fraken-iPhone 5 by smashing together a white iPhone 5 with a black one?”

The results are what you see in the picture above. The white antenna band on the black display face looks pretty awesome, but we wouldn’t recommend doing your own experimental surgeries on the iPhone 5 unless you’re a highly skilled mad scientist.

One of the newest Apple Stores in the world opened up just a few weeks ago in Palo Alto, just a stone’s throw away from Apple HQ in Cupertino. The new store is supposed to be a sort of prototype for future Apple Stores and features a glass facasade that allows passersby to view the entire store from the street.

It’s a fabulous new building, except for one thing – customers have started to complain that the store is just too noisy and loud for their liking. One Palo Alto blogger/resident even tried to go all scientific on Apple by measuring the decibel levels in the store so his complaints would be totally legit.

We think the design of the iPhone 5 is pretty stinkin’ gorgeous. Only problem is that its anodized aluminium casing has a tendency to scratch up very easy.

Once you’ve accrued a few scratches on your iPhone 5 you might mourn the loss of its brand new look, or you could just scratch it up even more to make it look totally awesome. It sounds counterintuitive, but that’s what one YouTube user did and the results are pretty awesome.

Take a look at the video below to see the result –

With the absence of Steve Jobs looming in the background, Tim Cook and his team faced a mountain of questions as they marched into 2012. Who would be the visionary now? Would the iPhone continue to be successful? What’s going to happen to the Mac now that the iPad has become a beast of its own?

The most important question Apple faced going into 2012 was whether they could maintain their supremacy. With competitors closing the gap, Apple doesn’t have Steve Jobs’s vision, charisma, or negotiating prowess anymore, and 2012 has been the year to prove that Apple can endure. The challenges and adversaries Apple is facing in 2012 has made this single year the most important one ever for Apple, and yet they’ve been able to come through in the clutch and blow us away with an army of incredible products and strategic moves.

Advertisements are a vital part of what makes the Internet tick. Even though a lot of them are annoying and intrusive and ugly as hell, they provide websites (like us) with the cash flow needed to give you all the infotainment you can eat for free.

Sometimes those ads are just freaking horrific, and solutions like AdBlock make the web a better, more visually appealing place. Now you can get the hardware equivalent of ad-blocking software in a super portable box called AdTrap. 

When you order an iPhone 5 from Apple’s website the current shipment timeline is 3-4 weeks. Foxconn’s chairman Terry Gou recently said that they’re having a hardtime keeping up with the demand because the iPhone 5 is the most complex gadget they’ve ever assembled.

It doesn’t sound like Apple is able to catch up with the demand for the iPhone 5 in a timely manner, but one analyst at BTIG Research says that supply of the iPhone 5 is “almost in balance.”

Anytime you think you’re scoring a super hot deal on Apple’s latest amazing device, you really should make sure everything’s 100% legit before forking over $200 to some shady dude at a gas station. That’s the lesson Jalonta Freeman learned when she found out the “$800 iPad” she purchased was really just a mirror.

Freeman was fueling her car at a gas station when a man pulled up beside her saying he had a bunch of gadgets he was selling for cheap. Thinking it would make a great Christmas present, Jalonta decided to purchase the man’s “brand new” iPad that he claimed was worth $800. He sold it to Freeman for $200 and quickly drove away.

After a long hard fought year, Apple plans to let employees take some extra time off for Thanksgiving, and just like last year, they plan to close iTunes Connect for a week during Christmas, meaning developers won’t be able to push out app updates from December 21st till December 28th.

Apple sent an email to developers earlier today confirming that iTunes Connect will be closed for the holidays. iTunes Connect is the developer portal used to manage applications to sell in the App Store, meaning developers won’t be able to submit new apps or app updates during that time.