Alongside the fifteen new countries that will get the iPhone 4S on November 11th, Apple’s latest and greatest handset will also come to its fourth US carrier: the little known regional carrier C-Spire Wireless. And for subscribers on a budget, the iPhone 4 will be coming to C-Spire too.
Do you remember Microsoft’s top secret Couriet tablet project? It was a dual screen, book-like tablet first leaked well before Apple unveiled the iPad, created by J. Allard, the mind behind Microsoft’s fantastic Xbox console.
It’s a concept that has aged well, mostly because it’s one of the only tablet designs around that isn’t just trying to rip off Apple’s idea of what a tablet should be wholesale. It’s still, in fact, brought up as an example of how Microsoft could have competed with Apple in the tablet market from the get go.
So what happened to the Courier? Why wasn’t it released? It all came down to the fact that Bill Gates had an “allergic reaction” to the project because it didn’t run Outlook.
GarageBand is one of the best apps you can show off on your iPad 2 to convince even the most ornery skeptic, and it just got even better: with the 1.1 update, GarageBand is now a $4.99 universal app, and can run on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.
Oh, this is slick. The PlugBug by TwelveSouth is an accessory for your MacBook that solves the problem of how to charge an iPad 2 and your laptop at the same time from a single outlet, and it does so pretty damn ingeniously if you ask me.
So here’s the deal. Apple’s got their MagSafe power bricks so protected by patents that it’s impossible to sell, say, an aftermarket MagSafe brick that charges a MacBook and iPad from the same bifurcating cable.
TwelveSouth got around this restriction in a pretty clever way. At the top of every MacBook power brick is a removable wall socket adapter, which you can even plug standard laptop power cables into. The PlugBug just snaps into the power brick adapter slot and offers a 10W USB port to simultaneously charge your iPad and MacBook at the same time.
I love it. Heck, I’m putting in my order now. If you want to do the same, it’ll cost you just $34.99 with free shipping in the US.
Over the weekend, we showed off Siri running on a jailbroken iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G thanks to the tireless efforts of iPhone hackers chpwn and Steve Troughton.
Clearly, Siri works just fine on lesser devices like the iPhone 4 and iPod touch, but despite this, chpwn and Troughton warned that we wouldn’t see an authorized release anytime soon. Now chpwn is clarifying why, and it’s just as the Dev Team warned us: Siri on non-iPhone 4S devices require piracy.
With a cough of dust and a slithering of centipedes, The Who’s Peter Townshend has once more fallen out of his coffin to roam the world. This time, rock and roll’s elder statesmummy has emerged from his tomb with a purpose: to call Apple and iTunes a “digital vampire” that “bleeds artists.”
Last week’s three-month minimum delay to their Xeon-class Sandy Bridge processors may be the final nail in the Mac Pro coffin, inside sources are now reporting.
What’s this? Looks like a unibody MacBook Air, right? Don’t bet a kidney on it: Shenzhen’s Evil Confederacy of Mad Scientist Cloners have managed to almost perfectly rip off the feel of Apple’s bestselling MacBook Air, including unibody enclosure, for under half the price of Apple’s ultraportable.
And you know what? For a piece-of-$%@! netbook dumped into a MacBook Air-like shell, it’s not a bad machine for the sub-$500 price.
Last night, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates was on ABC News to discuss continuing foreign aid as well as his philanthropy work. During the interview, he was asked about Steve Jobs’s less than kind words about him in Walter Isaacson’s bio: specifically, the part where Jobs (unfairly) says that Bill Gates had no original ideas and got rich just by ripping other people off.
Gates’s response is gracious enough. He says that Steve Jobs and he had a long history with each other, and their relationship as colleagues-turned-competitors was complicated, but that he doesn’t fault Steve for anything he said about him.
For me, though, the weird part is when Bill Gates says he helped create the original Mac. Maybe Gates doesn’t spend all his time ripping off other people’s ideas, but he sure seems to like ripping off posthumous credit for them.
Over the weekend, Apple launched three new iPhone 4S ads: one for the iPhone 4S’s incredible new 8MP camera and iOS 5’s Photo Editing abilities, one for iCloud and one for Siri. They all really speak for themselves, but even so, this is Apple advertising at its finest.
You can find the other two ads embedded below.
When I, through sheer exertion of will, lift this moribund pile of musky flab out of the desk chair to which it transhumanistically is trying to absorb, put on my sweatbands and take myself out for a wheezing, gasping “jog”, RunKeeper is my preferred app for tracking the whole ordeal.
The free app is already pretty great. It uses your iPhone’s GPS sensors to track your running speed, distance and route; additionally, it allows you to program different run templates, calculate calories burned and share your favorite runs with other users.
But today’s update makes RunKeeper even better, with a host of new features that widen the distance between all the other jog-tracking apps out there.
This has been all over the place today, but if you’re stuck for a Halloween costume idea and have two iPad 2s lying around, here’s a great suggestion: just initiate a FaceTime call between your iPads, duct tape them to your torso, pull on a ripped hoodie and smear fake blood all over yourself. It’ll look like someone shot a cannonball right through you!
Don’t like your Halloween costume to be so gory? If you’re a fan of Valve Software’s incredible Portal series, you can follow the instructions above and instead of using fake blood. surround the two holes with an orange and blue border. Voila! You’ve been hit with a teleporter gun!
This weekend broke news that Apple was already hard at work on OS X 10.8, so it would be natural to assume that in the next version of OS X, Cupertino will bring even more iOS functionality to their desktop operating system: stuff like Airplay and iMessages.
Nope. But don’t be too disappointed. AirPlay and iMessages are reportedly coming to OS X 10.7 Lion, instead.
The official Apple Store app is already a useful tool if you have to sally forth into meat space, allowing you to schedule appointment times at your local Genius Bar, reserve items for pickup at your local Apple Store and the like.
Come November 3rd, though, the Apple Store iOS app is set to gain some cool new functionality: the ability to check your own purchases out at Apple’s physical retail locations.
It’s been three years since the last major design refresh of the MacBook Pro, and we’ve been hearing whispers for almost a year that the next major update would see Apple’s professional line of laptops take on some of the characteristics of the MacBook Air line: slimmer profiles, ubiquitous SSDs, no optical drives.
If those updates sound swell to you, good news. Inside sources say Apple’s already working on the skinnier MacBook Pro, and the new LCD displays have already been developed.
If you’d asked me to bet on it, I would have said that OS X 10.7 Lion would be the last iteration of the Big Cat family. After all, where else is there to go? All of OS X’s releases have been named after successively bigger cats, and with Lion, Apple finally reached the biggest cat of them all.
Apparently, though, Apple envisions at least one more version of OS X before retiring the Big Cat OS once and for all. MacRumors reports that Apple is already testing OS X 10.8 internally.
Any bets on what the next version of OS X will be called? There aren’t any bigger cats, at least not without dipping a toe into cryptozoology, which would be awesome. I still favor ‘Manticore.’
This could be fake, but it certainly looks real to us: iPhone hackers chpwn and Steve Troughton say they’ve gotten Siri working on the iPhone 4 and fourth-gen iPod touch, and they’ve got video to prove it. So it is possible. Sadly, though, both hackers say that whatever method they used for exploit is not for public release any time soon, so the rest of us poor suckers will just have to keep twiddling our thumbs.
According to the iPhone 4S Siri Operating Manual, “Siri is a learning computer that adapts to your environment and personality, answering your requests as it identifies your wants and needs.”
But what happens when Siri makes an evolutionary leap in intelligence while you and your drunken buddies are goofing off with her? As this hysterical video from LaughPong makes clear, it can lead to a moment of extreme awkwardness.
Seriously, if there’s one Siri humor video you watch, watch this one. I think it’s the funniest Siri gag yet.
(Thanks, Brittany!)
Having problems with battery life since upgrading to the iPhone 4S? Apple may be getting in touch with you to help them troubleshoot your battery problems, hopefully solving the iPhone 4S’s woeful drainage issues once and for all.
Great news for iOS gamers: the Assassin’s Creed series is coming to iPhones and iPads. But expect a radical formula change when Assassin’s Creed: Recollection hits the App Store. Instead of freely exploring an ancient city in search of targets to assassinate, Assassin’s Creed: Recollection is a board game.
30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy (with some help from Law and Order: SVU‘s Richard Belzer and Ice-T) makes a compelling case for why whatever Steve Jobs’s “I finally cracked it!” moment was when it comes to solving the so-called television problem, it probably wasn’t a Siri-controlled iTV.
[via iClarified]
Although we Yanks and select Euros already have iPhone 4Ses in our pockets, the iPhone 4S launch is hardly over. Far from it.
Today, Apple started selling the iPhone 4S in twenty-two other countries. Those countries are: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Any Liechtensteiners care to report on how the lines are looking over there?
Holy cow, this is an awesome deal. The latest game from Halfbrick Studios — the guys behind Fruit Ninja — is called Jetpack Joyride, and between me and my girlfriend, I’ve probably put more time into it in the last couple of weeks than I did into my senior year thesis.
It usually costs ninety-nine cents, but Halfbrick Studios has teamed up with Apple to offer Jetpack Joyride for free to people who sign up for the official Apple App Store Facebook page.
That’s a heck of a deal. Too bad I already own Jetpack Joyride! Let’s hope the next freebie is this good.
Late last month, Apple rolled out the iTunes Music Store to twelve new European countries. Now they’ve done the same for the iTunes Movie Store, so if you’re Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian or from Cyprus, hey, go nuts!
[via MacTrast]
Care to see just what Apple means when they talk about Android’s fragmentation problem? Check out this incredible chart put together by Michael Degusta. Not only are most Android phones out of date, but almost half of the smartphones on this chart have never been up-to-date with the latest version of Android OS, even at release!
Comparatively, every release of iOS has been backwards compatible for at least three years. No wonder the iPhone developer community is so strong: devs and users alike can count on almost every iPhone owner being on the current, most bug-free version of iOS!