Did you miss out on preordering an iPhone 4S? Afraid to brave the lines outside of your local Apple Store? Skeptical that Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy will get the iPhone 4S you want? You now have another option: go pre-order an iPhone 4S at Sam’s Club today, then pick it up Friday.
We’ve been hearing tell that Facebook would be getting a native iPad version forever, but there’s been no official confirmation until now. Well, point your browser here and take a gander at the official Facebook for iPad webpage, complete with a link to the iOS App Store.
Sadly, that link only leads to the iPhone-only Facebook app, but consider this proof that the native iPad will be dropping soon… maybe even this week.
(Thanks, James!)
Me & Steve Stories — Some of the best stories about Steve Jobs are the personal, intimate ones. We’re collecting them here and will run as many new stories as we can find. If you have a story about Steve you’d like to share, please send us your submissions.
Steve Jobs loved to drive fast, and even late in his life, it wasn’t an uncommon sight to see him zooming down the highway at breakneck speeds to the Cupertino campus. Back in 1979, though, Stephen Stapleton got a joyride that he would always remember from Jobs… all in a breakneck search for Woz!
It’s a busy week for Apple between the launch of iOS 5 on Wednesday and the iPhone 4S on Friday, and there’s no time for mourning. Even so, Apple intends on giving company employees an opportunity to celebrate the life of Steve Jobs on October 19th.
Are you disappointed that after sixteen months, Apple followed the iPhone 4 not with a radically redesigned iPhone 5, but a mere iPhone 4S?
You shouldn’t be. There’s a reason the iPhone 4S is just a slightly better iPhone 4, and it’s because Apple’s looking out for you.
That’s also the reason you should expect an iPhone 5S, iPhone 6S and iPhone 7S every two years, like clockwork.
Back in 2004, designer Felix Sockwell was hired by a respectable design firm that had been contracted by Apple to redesign the iTunes logo. The iTunes logo didn’t actually end up being redesigned until 2010, but I find some of Sockwell’s sketches interesting, even if they are admittedly off the mark. As Sockwell himself eloquently says, “iTunes never needed a sales pitch or promise or proprietary device. They just needed a note in a circle. Boom. Done.”
Check out more of Felix’s sketches in the gallery below, then make sure to read his fantastic thoughts on what it takes to design a great Apple logo over at his blog.
Sprint has a $7 per month Total Equipment Protection Plan allows you to get your device replaced if you drop it on the hard ground, in the toilet, or accidentally blow it up with an explosive device. Seems like a good thing to sign yourself up for if you’re getting a Sprint iPhone, right?
Wrong, for two reasons. One: Sprint isn’t offering the Total Equipment Protection Plan for the iPhone 4S. Two? AppleCare + does the same thing, and at only $99, costs less overall than $7 a month over twenty four months.
We’d have been more interested in this a couple of weeks ago, but the guys over at AppV managed to get their hands on a new iPhone 4S and have done a short video walkthrough of the device, demonstrating the Siri settings interface which allows you to turn voice control on and off, change your Language Settings, adjust Voice Feedback and enable Raise to Speak mode. That’s a new revelation: although Apple’s Siri promo videos hinted at it, this is the first time I recall an accelerometer controlled “Raise to Speak” mode confirmed.
There’s also an early benchmark of Mobile Safari, which proves that the iPhone 4S renders pages about twice as fast as the iPhone 4, which was already pretty much the fastest web browsing experience on the block. The ‘S’ in iPhone 4S does stand for speed, after all.
[via MacRumors]
Apple was aware that Steve Jobs was on his deathbed at the subdued iPhone 4S announcement. Not only that, but they met with police in Palo Alto, California earlier in the week to notify them that Steve Jobs was close to death, and to arrange for additional security around his home.
Up until now, the only way to jailbreak an iPad 2 was to be running iOS 4.3.3 and use the JailbreakMe v3 hack, which was accomplished by going to jailbreakme.com with Mobile Safari and then letting it do its thing.
Well, no longer. The Dev Team’s MuscleNerd reports that Jailbreakme.com is dead. Don’t stress too much, though, because jailbreaks.me will be picking up the slack.
This post has been updated since it was first published. Please note the updates at the end of the post.
While we had no problem getting an iPhone 4S while keeping our grandfathered data plan, that’s because we ordered direct from Apple. On the other hand, we’ve received at least two reports of readers who are being told by AT&T that they have to give up their unlimited data if they want an iPhone 4S. Uh oh. Luckily, there’s a way to make sure you keep your unlimited plan: don’t give att.com the time of day.
At midnight tonight, Apple will kick off preorders for their latest and greatest iPhone, the iPhone 4S.
Here’s Cult of Mac’s guide to the best ways to make absolutely sure you get your iPhone 4S preordered right at the stroke of midnight and in your hands next Friday when it officially launches.
Wondering which iPhone 4S to order at midnight? Check out our own recommendation.
Those mother$@#!-ers! The hate mongering, homophobic sons of bitches at the Westboro Baptist Church are already planning on protesting Steve Jobs funeral. And without a hint of irony, they put out the call for the protest using Twitter for iPhone. Those evil, detestable idiots.
I wouldn’t have imagined that Next Media Animation (the guys behind all of those wacky Taiwanese animated news reports) would have had it in them to do a sweet and tasteful memorial to Steve Jobs, especially not within their Sims 3 animation studio, but they did a damned good job, I thought.
I love that St. Peter managed admissions into heaven on an iPad: that must really cut down on a lot of the paper work. Needless to say, in hell, they use Honeycomb tablets to manage all this stuff.
It’s a downer of a day, but here’s something we can all get a little chuck at: in Japan, Apple might need to change the name of iOS 5’s incredible new Siri voice control assistant. Why? Because in Japanese, Siri sounds an awful lot like a bottom.
For the seventh time, Time Magazine will be appearing on this week’s cover of Time Magazine in a special issue that features a photo essay by Diana Walker, an Apple retrospective by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, and a six-page essay by Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson.
It’s Isaacson’s essay that really got our eyes misting, because in it, Isaacson talks a lot about the walk he once took with Steve in which he was asked to be Jobs’ biographer. Amazingly, Isaacson turned Steve down.
Reader H.P. Hansen wrote in with this shots he took outside of Apple’s Cupertino HQ last night. He says: “This picture was taken at the Cupertino Apple campus tonight. It was pretty amazing seeing all the people coming to pay respects. A white iPad 2 remained illuminated with Apple’s homepage of Steve.”
A couple more shots after the jump.
If you need any more proof of how many lives Steve touched in his 56 years on this world, look no further than any newspaper frontpage in any country or city on Earth. The entire planet is mourning today.
Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend and the guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply ‘make it great.’ He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar’s DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time.
– John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer & Ed Catmull, President, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios
“Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.
By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.
The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him.”
Leander Kahney: Steve Jobs’ death is a horrible shock and very sad — even though we all knew it was going to be sooner than later. Steve had a lot of fans — a strange thing for a mega rich businessman, but he was a singular character, and had a singular influence on all our lives. His products are near universal. It’s a great shame, because I truly believe that he was really just getting started.
Over at Boing Boing, my old colleague Rob Beschizza has taken the entire site as dark as a classic Macintosh in tribute to Steve Jobs. It couldn’t be a more perfect tribute if it tried.
Update: Beschizza tells me that it’s a theme by Stuart Brown.
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
– Steve Jobs at the Stanford University commencement address in 2005
Beautiful. Here’s the video:
Image: Ryan Katsanes
Steve Jobs has been survived by his wife Laurene and three children. They have released this beautiful, terse statement.
“Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family.
In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve’s illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories.
We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.”
