John Brownlee - page 131

Okay, not really, but we can dream. Here’s the real deal with this painting.

I pity the fool company who is fighting Apple’s iPhone 5 event announcement with a new product launch or software update today, but we certainly couldn’t let this pass unmentioned. In keeping with their new, more aggressive release cycle, Mozilla has just released Firefox 7 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

What’s new? Speed! Mozilla claims they’ve finally fixed Firefox’s notorious inefficiency in handling memory. Hurrah!

We mentioned this in our last story about Apple’s invites to the iPhone 5 event, but it’s worth it’s own post: Apple’s invitation to it’s “Let’s talk iPhone” event seems to sneakily confirm that Apple will only be announcing one new iPhone at next Tuesday’s event.

And…. it’s official. Apple has just sent out invites to an October 4th event at their Cupertino, California campus, starting at 10am.

There’s not much else to go on right now, short of the confirmation, but we all know what’s coming next Tuesday: the new iPhone, whether the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, or both.

At this point, everyone knows that Apple’s going to unveil the new iPhone next week, which means that your window of opportunity to sell your old iPhone 4 to some sucker has pretty much closed.

Don’t fret, though. We know someone will buy your used iPhone 4 from you for a good price. If you’ve got an iPhone 4 in decent nick, NextWorth.com is promising to give you $250 for it… a $50 premium over their usual trade-in price, no questions asked.

That’s crazy. Crazy… like a fox!

That Facebook engineer who quit for Google after his bosses refused to release his feature-complete app? Turns out they might have been holding it back for a reason: Apple’s going to feature it at next week’s iPhone event, and they’ll show off new Facebook iOS 5 integration alongside it, just like Apple’s already rolled out in the iOS 5 betas for Twitter.

Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that the iPad isn’t a mobiel device, Facebook has been working on a native iPad app com for quite some time. In fact, not only has Facebook been hammering away at it for months, but it was even possible to unlock it on jailbroken iPads using the iPhone version of the app.

So where is it? Back in July, the New York Times said Facebook’s native app would be out in mere weeks. Here it is three months later, and we still don’t have an ETA for something as simple as a native iPad app, even as the world’s biggest social network has announced some of its biggest changes yet at last week’s F8 Conference.

Sick of waiting? You’re not the only one. The lead developer of Facebook for iPad has reportedly just quit the social network in disgust for not releasing the app, which was reportedly feature complete back in May.

There’s not much to say about Catculator, a $0.99 Calculator.app replacement that allows you to perform simple arithmetic on the heaving fuzzy belly of an enormous Studio Ghibili style cat!

But just because there isn’t much to say about it doesn’t mean that hundreds of thousands of iOS users shouldn’t be alerted to the fact that they can do math by poking and prodding an adorable, sleepy cat as soon as possible!

Get downloading.

[via AppAdvice]

AllThingsD says that Apple will announced the next iPhone on October 4th, next Thursday, at a small venue at its own Cupertino HQ. Since All Things D’s “source” is almost definitely Apple itself, that date and venue seems pretty solid.

It’s about the only report about the next iPhone that feels solid. What else do we know for sure about the next iPhone? Pretty much bupkis for sure. Apple has gone to unprecedented and incredible lengths to keep the exact details of the next iPhone secret. It’s the first time Apple journalists have truly felt left in the dark for a long time.

For over a year now, YouTube’s HTML5 web interface has made the official YouTube iOS app seem slow and ungainly. Now it’s one upped f its slow, stupid brother once again by making watching videos on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad even sleeker and easier on the eyes.

Here’s how to access the new design. Just visit https://m.youtube.com/new_visual_design on your iOS device and select “Try The New Visual Design!” Once the app reloads, you’ll be good to go.

I honestly don’t even know why Apple bothers to ship iOS with a YouTube.app installed anymore. The web app is superior to the native app in practically every way.

[via MacStories]

Did you already undergo the rather tortuous process of getting your entire iTunes library mirrored onto Apple’s iTunes Match servers? Well, bum luck, champ, because Apple just reset all its iCloud Libraries a mere 15 minutes ago. You’ll have to start all over again.

The good news, though, is that it might mean Apple will release the iOS 5 Gold Master as early as today.

The latest version of my favorite Bittorrent client uTorrent has a pretty cool new feature: iOS support. And while that doesn’t mean uTorrent’s coming to the App Store, it does mean you have a new and easy way to sync torrented content with your iPhone or iPad.

A couple days ago, it leaked that reputable case manufacturer Otterbox had already made up to three million cases for the iPhone 4S. That number always seemed a little far fetched, but the pictures themselves didn’t like: Otterbox was banking on the next iPhone to be a relatively small update over the iPhone 4.

Today, Otterbox is in the news again, though, with a banner ad showing up on their official website implying we’ll see both the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S next month. But what might seem like a knowing insider’s wink is, in actuality, something very different: a tease.

Malware is a small but real threat to the OS X platform, and so it’s not uncommon for the occasional Trojan to pop up, which Apple then usually nukes from orbit through OS X”s built-in anti-malware database. Rinse, repeat, with the only real danger being those who get infected for a week or two.

Well, here’s the latest temporary nuisance to look out for.

So after months of hype, it looks like Amazon’s finally ready to unveil its 7-inch, $250 Kindle tablet, built upon a custom Android fork and leveraging all of Amazon’s media stores, including the Amazon Appstore, Amazon On Demand, Amazon Kindle and Amazon MP3.

It won’t be official until it launches, but we’ve been hearing rumors of the device for a while now, and have been told Amazon expects to sell 2M of the devices by the end of the year. Now they are sending out invites to an uncharacteristic press conferenmce scheduled for September 28th at 10:00AM.

Can’t wait to see if this is a viable iPad competitor, or just another crap tablet. I have to say, I’m intrigued. If Amazon can do a better job of an entry-level Android tablet than the Nook Color, they might really have something here.

[via This Is My Next]

When iOS 5 ships this fall with iMessage support, it could revolutionize the way we look at text messaging, from the de facto way of quickly pinging a person on our phones to an expensive way we reach out to our friends who inexplicably don’t have iPhones.

But could iMessage have a big competitor in Facebook? It’s increasingly looking like it, as inside sources inside Facebook are now claiming that the social networking giant are working on integrating free text messaging to any number into Facebook chat.

Here’s an interesting little detail from the latest version of Xcode: it supports Marvell’s quad-core, ARM compliant Armada XP processor. Could Apple be preparing to ditch its own A-Series of systems-on-chip and go instead with Marvell for future iPhones and iPads?

Historically, AT&T has tended to hand out early upgrades to the next iPhone to qualifying customers around the time a new iPhone is announced. Which makes the above image very interesting, as it says that AT&T is already handing out early iPhone upgrades to existing customers, coinciding with a mid-October release.

If you need even more proof that Sprint is getting the iPhone next month, here’s another careless move on the part of the nation’s third largest cell carrier: in a move prettty obviously suggestive of a major new smartphone incoming next month, Sprint will cap its data tethering plans to 5GB starting October 2nd… two days before the next iPhone is rumored to be unveiled.

For months, we’ve been talking about the possibility of two iPhones: a speed bump upgrade called the iPhone 4S that may end up also being Apple’s low-cost, prepaid option, and the iPhone 5, the radically redesigned next gen device.

Over the last month or so, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the iPhone 5 is going to show up next month. There’s no evidence for the device in the supply chain, while there’s tons of evidence that the iPhone 4S is coming.

The image above of a new Otterbox case for the iPhone 4S might be the nail in the iPhone 5’s coffin, though.

In my home state of Massachusetts, a fight is brewing between Apple and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, after the latter had her stolen credit card fraudulently drained using iTunes, and Cupertino barely lifted a finger to help her.

Apple’s custom built A4 and A5 processors are the latest target in yet another patent violation lawsuit filed against Cupertino, this time by Taiwanese company VIA technologies.

Long hair game designer and ruminant enthusiast Jeff Minter has designed some deliciously weird games over the years, including Attack of the Mutant Camels, Metagalaci Llamas Battle At The Edge of Time, Mama Llama, Space Giraffe and Llamatron.

Now he’s back, with another game of hoof and horn: the surreal, Doodle Jump like GoatUp.

Ever since the original iPad went on sale, I’ve wondered how it would hold up to a day’s blogging. The answer, according to Ars Technica? Pretty damn well.

With their typical casual carelessness, Sprint has yet again hinted they are getting the iPhone next quarter.