httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpjpVAB06O4&feature=player_embedded
Okay, so tomorrow, Apple’s going to announce iOS 5’s new feature, Assistant, which allows you to control your iPhone 4S using just your voice. Big deal, you might be thinking, somewhat sarcastically. But it is a big deal.
In fact, one of the co-founders of the company behind Apple’s Assistant technology says it’s no less than a “world-changing event.”
Well, this is certainly unexpected. Apple may have kept secret a big change to the App Store that they’ll announce at the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event tomorrow: app rentals.
Gizmodo’s been locked out of Apple events indefinitely since they bought a stolen iPhone 4 prototype, but that doesn’t mean they are without resources to get scoops: they sent a spy into Foxconn’s new factory in Brazil, and walked out with proof that Apple will unveil a cheaper iPhone 4 sometime soon with the model N90A.
Pictures after the jump!
Steve Jobs is already richer than most of us can ever dream. He’s worth more than 8 billion dollars according to the most recent estimates.
But he could be richer. A lot richer. In fact, a single mistake once cost Steve more than twenty nine billion dollars.
Earlier today, Apple released Beta 9 of iTunes 10.5, and wow: for the first time since they rolled out the beta, iTunes is actually mirroring our songs to the cloud. Previously, it would just hang indefinitely. So if you’ve had problems with iTunes Match before, give it a shot now: it seems to be working fine.
Note, however, that it takes forever. Didn’t Steve Jobs said it would mirror in seconds?
Are you running Lion on a MacBook Air that shipped with a Snow Leopard restore drive? Would you like to turn that sexy Apple-emblazoned USB stick into something that will restore your slim laptop to the latest and shiniest version of OS X in a pinch?
Great news: it’s actually possible to rewrite the MacBook Air Software Reinstall USB Drive to restore Lion to your Macs, not Snow Leopard. And while it’s not for the faint-hearted, nor is it for the superhacker.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GDSL-89cEg&feature=player_embedded
NBC’s The Office decided to poke some fun at the tablet craze last night with Dunder Mifflin’s introduction of a new would-be iPad Killer, The Pyramid, so called so you can say to your friends: “I unleashed the power of the Pyramid.” Unlike competing tablets, it computes its storage in the Ls, and without the Memory Booster Pack, barely weighs three pounds.
[via All Things D]
Hey developers! Get downloading! Apple has just released iTunes 10.5 Beta 9, which is needed to use iTunes Match. The download is 103MB, and makes some slight changes to the iTunes Match interface.
With a new version of iTunes out, could a fresh beta of iOS 5 be far behind… maybe even the GM?
Release notes after the jump:
I’ve never found a stylus for the iPad that I’ve really liked. Whether an aluminum tube filled with cheap capacitive foam, or something more beefy like Wacom’s official $35 Stylus, I’ve found that more often than not, iPad stylii are maddeningly unpredictable when it comes to registering the tip of the pen and where a pen stroke actually starts.
That’s why I’m blown away by this demo of the XStylus Touch by Hong Kong inventor Elton Leung. He’s noticed that all styluses have an issue with where the pen stroke starts, and he’s designed an incredible stylus that seems to register on the iPad at the exact pixel when it first comes in contact with the display.
This morning, a report surfaced that the next iPhone would come with 64GB of storage for the first time ever. It’s looking pretty solid.
At the same time, rumors have been bubbling up for the last couple weeks that Apple would soon be discontinuing the venerable iPod Classic… and today’s move to axe the iPod Clickwheel Games section of the iTunes Store certainly seems to confirm as much.
That’s a bummer. Okay, sure, iTunes Match and iCloud take some of the hurt out… but what if you want to carry your whole music collection around with you without having to sign up for a data plan? For customers like that, the death of the only 120+ gigabyte iPod is a bitter pill to swallow.
Don’t worry. A new 128GB iPod touch is almost definitely coming.
We all know that the writing is on the wall for the venerable iPod Classic. It’s a touchscreen world now, unfortunately, and with the global rollout of iCloud and the rise of streaming a la carte services like Spotify and Rdio, there’s just no reason for Apple to sell 160GB iPods anymore.
One casualty of all of this though? The apps. Before Apple rolled out the App Store for iOS, they experimented with software for the iPod, namely through iPod Click Wheel Games. Now Apple has killed off that section from its online store.
If you’re expecting to see iPads with a “Assembled in Brazil” marker engraved across the aluminum back starting next year, think again. Brazilian officials are now claiming that “crazy demands” by Foxconn could totally nix the $12 billion deal, keeping iPhone and iPad manufacturing firmly rooted in Asia.
Right now, it’s looking unlikely that the next iPhone will be a true new design, a real iPhone 5. Instead, it looks almost certain that Apple will announced the iPhone 4S on Tuesday instead… an upgraded device that looks almost identical to the iPhone 4.
That said, the sheer volume of reports that say that Apple has been working on a thinner, teardrop shaped iPhone with a bigger screen are hard to ignore, and many industry folks’ best guess is that that device will come in 2012. And here’s what it will look like.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB11hiwupKM&feature=player_embedded
This is a total fake, for a number of reasons: the date on the unlock screen isn’t the same as the one on the calendar, and the apps obviously activate themselves before the guy doing the supposed iPhone 4S actually touches them.
Got to say, though, this is still one of the better YouTube fakes we’ve seen, and we’re guessing the boys at ECA Games are responsible, given that their unreleased stunt motorcycle game Rock(s) Rider is prominently featured in the app. Well done, scoundrels!
Yesterday, Amazon announced what is likely the first and only true alternative to the iPad in the Kindle Fire, a $199 Android-based tablet smartly tied into Android rich cloud ecosystem of games, apps, books and video on demand.
No matter how you slice it, the Kindle Fire is the first tablet to really understand that most of what makes a mobile device isn’t just hardware or an off-the-shelf operating system, but a library of easily-accessed contents. It’s not just the apps, it’s the movies, it’s the music, it’s the magazines, it’s the ebooks. And Amazon is going to provide these things for $300 less than Apple does.
So now that all the dust has settled, we want to know what you think: does Apple have anything to worry about from the Kindle Fire, or is this less a fire than a bunch of smoke?
[polldaddy poll=”5544143″]
Let us know your answer in our poll after the jump, and feel free to expand upon them in the comments.
According to 9to5Mac, the next iPhone isn’t just popping up in AT&T’s inventory system: it’s in Apple’s too, and it’s confirmed to pack a dual-core A5 SoC.
A China Unicom executive has just confirmed that Apple’s next iPhone will be 4G-capable. But surround air quotes around 4G, because we’re not talking LTE: we’re talking 21Mbps HSPA+ technology. In other words, marketing 4G.
We’re just putting this out there: a tipster just sent us a picture of what he claims is the packaging label barcode for the iPhone 4S, coming in white with 16GB of storage. According to the label, the part number will be MD239F/A. All other information that could be used to identify the device has been obscured.
Is it real? We don’t know. It would certainly be trivial to Photoshop. That said, if this is real, it confirms that the iPhone 4S is Apple’s official product name for the next iPhone, and unlike the iPhone 4, it’ll come in white from the get go.
Is Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek huffing the magic hallucinogen jay bone? He claims that Apple canceled an iPad 2 HD, despite having already built a million of them, but also, that Apple will be launching the iPad 3 in January. What?
Twitter is, of course, about to become deeply baked into iOS 5, and that’s going to drive a lot of traffic to the micro-blogging service’s servers. So what is Twitter doing to get its servers prepared for the rush of new traffic? Injecting them with radioactive super-server serum?
The answer might surprise you: not a damn thing.
On Twitter, one of Cult of Mac’s readers said calling the Kindle Fire competition to the iPad 2 was like calling a Kia competition to a Porsche.
It’s an interesting analogy. True, the Kindle Fire’s hardware is inferior to the iPad 2’s in almost every way. It boasts an 800MHz dual-core processor to the iPad 2’s 1.2GHz A5 dual-core powerhouse. The screen is smaller than the iPad 2’s, though it has better pixel density. It only has 8GB of storage, it has no 3G, no GPS, no camera. It only registers two points of multitouch to the iPad 2’s eleven, for god’s sake. So the analogy seems to fit, right?
Not so fast. Sure, Apple’s hardware is great, but Apple has proven that hardware is only as good as its software. That’s why Apple’s products are so magical: they are a seamless amalgam of excellence in software and hardware design, intertwined.
It’s a philosophy towards design that Apple’s competitors have just never understood. And that’s why the Kindle Fire is going to be huge, the iPad’s first real competitor. The Kindle Fire is going to be a Kia that drives like a Porsche, and when Apple counters it — and I think they will — it’ll be going head-to-head with an iPad mini.
Amazon just announced its long anticipated tablet, the Kindle Fire. And while the hardware doesn’t compete with iPad, the price certainly is: it’s a fully-featured tablet with access to millions of apps, games, songs, movies, TV shows and books, all for just $199.
Our favorite friends at iFixIt have taken their rusty bone saws and hacked through the aluminized breastplate of Apple’s new 27-inch Thunderbolt display to find what they find inside
Their conclusion? Considering the fact that there’s no computer inside this thing, the Thunderbolt display sure has a lot of guts!
On October 7th, Sprint has a Strategy Update event scheduled that will probably be filled with talk about the next iPhone, which is rumored to be coming next month to Sprint’s network. Expect another revelation, though: insiders are now tipping that Sprint will also announce their own LTE 4G network next year, signaling the obsolescence of their existing WiMax infrastructure… and paving the way for playing host to an LTE-equipped iPhone 6.
You know who has a vacation blackout for employees in mid-October? Apple, who is ready to announce a new iPhone next week. You know who else has an employee vacation blackout for mid-October? Sprint, who — you guessed it — is widely believed to get the iPhone 5 next month.
Guess who’s following suit? Yup, AT&T. And not only are they blacking out vacations for the iPhone 5, they’ve even already got the next iPhone n their system.
