John Brownlee - page 117

Earlier this morning, we told you about a promising untethered jailbreak for most older devices capable of running iOS 5. Unfortunately, though, this jailbreak will only work on past-gen devices like the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and the iPod touch.

Why? So far, the A5 chip inside of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S have proven impossible to jailbreak by conventional methods. The iPad 2 was jailbreakable under iOS 4.3.3 thanks to the JailbreakMe 3.0 userland exploit, but since then, no further jailbreaks — tethered or untethered — have been identified.

Here’s the good news, though. French jailbreaker Pod2G just took to his Twitter feed and while he didn’t confirm his new jailbreak exploit would work on the iPhone 4S or iPad 2, he at least suggested that it was possible it would. Could this be the ray of hope every iPhone 4S owner has been looking for?

Holy crap. Check out this photograph of all the people who queued up for the opening of Apple’s new Grand Central Terminal location, as photographed by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt. You’d think this was an iPhone 5 launch!

Also interesting to me: look at the number of Apple Geniuses on hand. Most stores would be lucky to have that many customers at once, let alone need that number of employees to handle their customer base.

Are you a rag-swaddled, impoverished soul, prowling the cold, ice-swept streets in an O. Henry-esque search for the perfect Christmas gift that can be had for your loved one for less than $420? The Spirit of Christmas is here with the deal for you: Apple has just dropped the price of all their refurbished iPad 2s, and they now start at just $419.

If you’re a big fan of The Beatles’ psychotropic adventure to save Pepperland from the hopping foots and music-hating Blue Meanies, here’s a great deal: Apple is offering the children’s e-book adaptation of The Beatles Yellow Submarine for free to anyone who wants to download it.

Holy cow! They’d been teasing it forever, but all of sudden, now it’s here: Square-Enix has just released their beloved SNES era classic Chrono Trigger on the App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch!

Following their annual holiday tradition, Apple has just published iTunes Rewind 2011, their list of their own personal best apps and games across twenty-one categories. And as usual, there’s some surprising choices.

Today, Twitter announced a new design for the popular micro-blogging site that will start rolling out over the next couple of weeks, which they hope will make it easier than ever to connect with other users and discover great new content.

If you go to Twitter.com, you won’t see the sexy new interface for a while yet, but as part of their push to update all officially supported Twitter platforms to the new paradigm, Twitter has pushed out a totally overhauled version of the Twitter for iPhone app.

When Apple will release the next iPad and what form it will take when they do are only at the theory stage, but smart money says that Apple will release it in the same time table they do every year: March or April.

However, according to Citi analyst Richard Gardner, we may get it a bit early: February 2012. And when it comes, “several sources” have confirmed it will have a Retina Display.

Otherwise, what we know about the iPad 3 is mostly speculation, though it seems likely at this point that it will be slightly thicker than the iPad 2 in order to accommodate the dual LED lightbar necessary to illuminate the Retina Display. That means it won’t be backwards compatible with iPad 2 cases, though the Smart Cover will still work.

In a new patent just published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, Apple has described a future system for controlling Macs using body language and gesturing, much like the Xbox 360’s Kinect. But frankly, if any Apple product is likely to use motion control, it’s the rumored iTV.

How do you know you’re reading a report from a bug-eyed, sensationalist quack? When they take the newest and hottest trend and then say, “It’s almost as bad as this other popular trend amongst godless teenagers today!”

Here’s a good case study. Over at Fox News, a psychiatrist is claiming that Siri is just as damaging psychologically to kids as “violent video games!” WHAT?!?! Heaven forfend!

I love Rocksteady’s series of Batman games for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. They are loving, incredibly crafted tributes to the Dark Knight clearly made by fans who get Batman, who is equal parts acrobat, brawler, psychopath, hero, detective and muscle. That’s why I’m excited to check out Batman: Arkham City Lockdown when it is released later tonight.

According to Japanese Mac blog Macotakara, the iPad 3 will be backwards compatible with current Smart Covers, despite the fact that it will be so thick as to not work with iPad 2 cases.

Macotakara claims that they don’t know the reason the iPad 3 will be thicker than the iPad 2, but we do: it’s necessary in order to install the twin-light system needed to lluminate the iPad 3’s Retina Display.

As for the image above, your guess is as good as ours. Macotakara seems to think it somehow relates to an iPad 3, so maybe it’s the unbranded aluminum back panel of one or something? As for the Smart Cover backwards compatibility, considering that all that is necessary to keep a Smart Cover on are magnets in the right places, I wouldn’t be surprised if Smart Covers continued to be backwards compatible for future iPads for many generations to come.

We’ve seen a lot of images of the inside of the new Grand Central Terminal Apple Store ahead of its Friday grand opening scheduled for 10AM, but up until I saw this three-minute YouTube video walking through it, I had no idea just how big the space was.

It’s just huge. I suppose it would have to be, given the amount of traffic this store is going to get, but even so, it’s going to take the average person at least a few minutes to walk from one end to the other.

[via Apple 2.0]

Not happy with your iPhone’s tinny speaker? If you’ve got 30 G’s to help solve the problem, BEHRINGER is ready to sell you the biggest, baddest iPhone/iPod speaker dock this side of Mount Olympus: the iNuke Boom, a 700 pound monster speaker system measuring 8 feet wide and 4 feet tall that can output up to 10,000 watts of sound.

Holy crap. That thing will have you sneezing skeleton. The iNuke Boom isn’t available quite yet, but it’ll be on display at CES 2012. We’ll make sure to stop by BEHRINGER’s booth then and see how many fillings we can knock out of their sockets with the iNuke then.

This morning we reported that Apple had provided some more details to the Cupertino City Council about their proposed plans to build a new “spaceship” campus, including a render that showed a roof entirely tiled in solar panels.

How much power would that generate, though? Enough to power a million Apple TVs.

There’s a lot to like about iOS 5’s Notification Center, but unfortunately, it’s not nearly as configurable as it could (and perhaps should) be.

If you want to wring more power out of your Notification Center, though, we’ve got good news: there’s a really simple way to turn Notification Center into a quick launch bar for all your favorite settings and contacts. Even better? Unlike many Notification Center tweaks, there’s no jailbreak required.

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the so-called iTV, Steve Jobs’s “cracking” of the HDTV problem. But what if the iTV is just a rumor, and Apple instead plans on fixing television by making iMacs into HDTVs?

In my opinion, this statue designed by Hungarian software maker Gabor Bojar is absolutely petrifying, but there’s no doubt that the photo gallery of its construction first posted by the International Business Times is beautifully shot and captivating. We’ve got more images of this bronze Steve Jobs statue after the jump, including an amazing one of Steve Jobs getting his neck welded shut.

Some of us have been playing with it for months, but if you’ve been looking forward to Facebook’s sexy new timeline interface, good news: it’s just gone live in New Zealand, and should be creeping out to other countries around the world soon.

Did you love that gorgeous “Here’s To The Crazy Ones” letter press poster we showed you earlier today, only to balk at the $200 asking price?

Here’s a poster that might float your boat, especially if you’re an App Developer: this beautiful radial infographic shows off the last ten years of the iPod and iTunes. And if you’re willing to print it yourself, it could cost you as little as $99!

It’s usually pretty hard to get excited about an Apple Dock Connector, but this one’s fantastic. It uses a Russian Nesting Doll style of cascading connections to fit a mini USB plug into a micro USB plug and then in turn into an Apple 40 pin dock connector plug. For just $20, then, this is literally the only USB cable you need. Awesome.

[via Everything USB]

We heard it was coming, but now, we’ve got a release date: Grand Theft Auto III is coming to iOS next week!

For the second year running, AT&T has ranked as the worst carrier in the United States in an annual satisfaction survey.

One of the things that really stands out using an iPhone is just how smooth it feels compared to using Android. Where as Android is laggy, with a measurable interim between when you touch the screen and when the OS responds, iOS almost seems to anticipate what you want to do before your finger touches the display.

How has Apple managed this incredible feat? A better question might be: “How has Google managed to screw up Android’s multitouch so much?” According to Andrew Munn — a software engineering student and ex-Google intern — Android is so messed up that Google might never be able to match an iPhone or iPad’s performance. Ouch!

Looking for last minute gift ideas for the proud rebel or misfit in your life? What about this beautiful letterpressed poster by Brightwurks replicates the full text of Steve Jobs’s iconic 1997 “Crazy Ones” ad, with all proceeds going to Acumen Fund, a charity that helps relieve poverty.

The poster is printed on 140# paper and measures 10 inches wide by 26 inches tall. It’s stunningly beautiful, but letterpress isn’t cheap: expect to pay $95 for it unframed, or $195 framed. Full poster can be seen below.