John Brownlee - page 163

Since February, consumers who have wanted to buy an iPhone 4 have had a bit more choice when it comes to carriers than they once did, but even so, there’s still a healthy demand for the ability to unlock an iPhone to wirelessly handshake with any compatible carrier. International travelers, for example, might prefer to be able to easily slap a cheap foreign SIM card into their iPhones when traveling abroad as opposed to paying exorbitant roaming rates, while regular consumers who have run out their contract might like to be able to take their iPhones to another network.

Unfortunately, right now, the only way to accomplish this is either to convince AT&T to unlock your iPhone (good luck with that) or to unlock your device through a jailbreak. Apple could be preparing to make switching your iPhone from one carrier to another easier though, as a recent patent awarded to them details a method in which Apple could wirelessly and remotely reprogram iPhones to work on different carriers.

Not that I think we’ll see that system ever come into play, but wouldn’t that be nice: some mechanism to invoke the ability to actually use the phone you paid for on whatever network you want? Perchance to dream.

One of the reasons Apple’s competitors have had such a hard time manufacturing their own sub-$500 tablet is because Apple’s got a lock on most of the world’s available touch panel supply. Things aren’t going to get any easier for them: Apple has just added Chimei Innolux as a third supplier of touch panels for the iPad 2.

From a consumer perspective, hopefully this means more iPad 2s, which still remain constrained. How constrained? A month after launch and people are still camping overnight to get one. Like they were Phantom Menace tickets or something!

Everyone backup your iTunes library then light their iMac on fire and dramatically hurl it out of your window while blaring “God Save The Queen” from your iPad, because new iMacs are on their way!

Well, or so the theory goes. 9to5Mac reports that iMac supplies are becoming constrained. Since Apple’s Tim Cook is basically some sort of Cylon when it comes to having exactly enough stock on-hand to match demand, that’s as much an unmistakeable sign that new hardware is coming as the heavens rending in twain to make way for a seraphim riding a flaming rhinoceros would be for the Apocalypse, or at the very least, the day the PlayBook outsells the iPad.

What’s in store for the new iMacs? Apple’s new 10Gbps bi-directional I/O port, ThunderBolt, is a lock, and I expect we’ll see some blazing new Sandy Bridge chips as well.Either way, the last iMac refresh took place in July, so we’re about due.

The iOS App Store might be a walled garden, but that’s not to say that developers and publishers don’t have the elbow room to engage in some of the principals of capitalism, like cross-promotions. Just don’t be surprised if one day, Apple routs you out.

The latest example of Apple clamping down on developers for engaging in practices that they don’t quite think is critic is the crackdown on pay-to-install apps, which now appears to be in effect, with publisher TapJoy claiming that Apple is actively banning such apps from the App Store.

Back in March, a U.S. Magistrate ordered Steve Jobs to undergo limited questioning in relation to an antitrust lawsuit pressed against Apple by RealNetworks, who were shut out of iTunes when they figured out a way to wrap songs purchased via their Harmony software in a simulacrum of FairPlay DRM convincing enough to be played on 2004’s iPods.

Apparently, that limited questioning happened a few days ago between RealNetworks’ lawyer and the Apple CEO, who is currently on medical sick leave. Personally, I imagine that it consisted mostly of monosyllabic grunts intermixed with a series of contemptuous stares withering plucked from the physiogonomic vocabulary of some dandy Star Prince crash-landed upon Planet Feculon and forced to cavort with its natives. Either way, the transcript will doubtless be juicy.

We may never get to read it though. Apple has just asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit. Just when it was getting good!

Samsung makes some great ARM-based smartphone chips… and even fabricate Apple’s in-house-designed A5 CPU, so when Samsung talks about the future of chips, they’re talking in part the future of the iPhone.

And what is that future? According to a Samsung rep, Samsung is “planning to release a 2GHz dual-core CPU-equipped smartphone by next year” that will have “the data processing capacities of a regular PCs.”

That’s a huge leap in the clock speed of the current A5 SoC, which maxes out at 1GHz per core. It does not appear that Samsung intends on keeping these chips to themselves, though: Samsung apparently hopes to sell the compontents to other manufacturers as well.

Could Apple be one of them? Maybe not, but it seems obvious that Apple will have a chip with similar capabilities available around the same time. If that’s right, then next year’s A6 CPU might boast 2GHz clock speeds per core. Just imagine demoing Infinity Blade on that.

With early morning lines outside the Apple Store still 50 man deep, it’s pretty clear that Apple’s had a hard time supplying the demand for the iPad 2… but a new manufacturer joining the iPad 2 supply change might soon help matters.

According to Digitimes, Apple is now testing a new LED backlight maker called Everlight Electronics in order to expand their component supply for the iPad 2.

Presumably, the LED backlights in questions are the companie’s 2,000 millicandela backlights, which the company has been shipping to other Taiwan-based tablet makers for the last month.

Will the new Everlight Electronics LED backlight, will the iPad 2 get any less scarce… and will it be any less prone to the bleeding issues of previous backlights? Time will tell.

Back in January, Don Lee introduced the Nomad Brush, a paintbrush with bristles made of capacitive fibers that can be picked up by an iPad’s display. Now comes the Flow, a nearly identical product trying to get off the ground over at Kickstarter.

It seems like a great idea at first blush, but then the problems occur. The iPad’s touch display can only register ten touch points at once, which means that if your brush has more than ten bristles, you’ll be losing a lot of granularity and detail. Consequently, a lot of the feel and look of painting with a brush will be lost, especially since the iPad’s display doesn’t register pressure. With a capacitive brush, then, you’re still trusting whatever art software you’re using to emulate the bristles… just not the brush stroke.

To be fair to Anthony and Russ, the creators of Flow, they seem to acknowledge in their Kickstarter video that the Flow won’t allow for the same precision as a real brush with real paint: instead, the Flow is all about eliminating friction, maximizing precision and using a drawing accessory you’re most comfortable with. For $20, that’s the kind of cheery logic that makes sense.

Whether it comes in June or it comes in September as the latest rumors suggest, people aren’t really expecting the hardware to be a shock. It’ll definitely pack Apple’s new A5 SoC as boasted by the iPad 2; it might boast a Qualcomm baseband allowing the same hardware to run on both CDMA and GSM networks; it will probably have a revised antenna design to mitigate the chances of Antennagate II. These are no-brainers.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s of Concord Securities supports this view of the next hardware, with a twist: she says that the iPhone 5 will be announced in September and start production that same month, but not be released until October.

Kuo’s got a pretty good record here. In the past, he successfully forecast the quality (or lack thereof) of the iPad 2’s cameras, as well as predicted that the white iPhone 4 wouldn’t be released until April of this year. Hardly Criswellian soothsaying, but not bad.

Kuo also claims that when the iPhone 5 is released, it will boast an 8MP camera sensor. We’re guessing he’s talking about this one, which not only will allow the iPhone to shoot in 1080p video, but will also improve image quality by affording the smartphone 35% better low light sensitivity.

Once the last great hope of device manufacturers looking to topple the iPad colossus with a tablet of their own, the Motorola Xoom — the first tablet running Android 3.0 Honeycomb — has been a bust, largely thanks to the simultaneous launch of the iPad 2. It is estimated that Motorola has sold less than 100,000 Xooms since the tablet was launched in February, compared to a million first-month sales of the first-gen iPad (and much higher if unreported unit sales of the iPad 2).

Now, manufacturers preparing their own Honeycomb tablets are bracing for their own failures, with at least two upcoming tablets postponing their launch dates as their faith in Honeycomb as a viable platform upon which to mount a true iPad killer wanes.

One frustrating aspect of Apple’s decision to do everything through the iPod Dock Connector is that unless you buy some special cables, there’s no way to use your iPad to, say, pump video to an external display while also charging your tablet… something you might want to do, especially for extended video sessions.

Enter this clever cable that will charge any iOS device whilst simultaneously pumping video out to an HDMI port which you can hook up to any HDMI-equipped television or external display. It’s not a cheap cable, coming in at around $84, and it’s Japan-only for right now… but if you’re looking to use your iPad 2 to drive your plasma screen television for hours on end, this might be your only bet.

After launching to the tune of 100,000 downloads per month, Wired magazine’s iPad edition has settled down to a more subdued distribution of between twenty- and thirty-thousand downloaders monthly. In order to try to get that number on the rise again, Conde Nast is set to offer the May issue of Wired for iPad for free with the download of the official app.

Free magazine content isn’t the only new edition to Wired, though. Conde Nast has baked in some new (and overdue) sharing features to the app, allowing readers to share links to articles on Facebook and Twitter. Since some of Wired‘s iPad content isn’t online, the app handles these links clunkily, by directing those following the link to download the latest issue of Wired magazine instead. Surely, the Daily’s approach of a screenshot capture of the page would be a better fit?

Also new to the Wired app: new shopping features that allow Wired reader to click a “buy now” button next to product names, advertisements, product reviews and the like. This will send readers over to Amazon via the in-app browser; any purchases made will give Conde Nast a referral payment.

Why the sudden generosity? Wired’s Howard Mittman said that it was time to show users how much the Wired app has improved, and giving away an issue for free was the best way to do it.

Park Bench Software has fallen afoul of CBS over the former’s Star Trek inspired diagnostic application, DiagnosticPADD, which uses an interface lifted from the PADD device used by the crew members of the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

It’s worth noting that while Park Bench Software never cites Star Trek in the app or the app description, it appears that CBS is well within its rights here to force the removal of DiagnosticPADD from the App Store. After all, they own the trademark on PADD, and the applications’ interface is clearly modeled after the LCARS computer interface, which CBS has a copyright for.

That said, it’s rather sad that CBS decided to go the C&D route here when they could have just had a conversation with Park Bench Software and licensed them to release an officially sanctioned Star Trek version of DiagnosticPADD. Surely that would have been a better version for everyone: CBS, Park Bench and the fans.

Bamboo has some marked advantages. It’s attractive, cheap, lightweight, environmentally sustainable and an excellently edible distraction in fending off a sudden panda-in-musth attack.

The Silva is a particularly handsome exercise in bamboo. Shaped to fit 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros, the Silva case is CNC machined and hand assembled, then fit with a leather strap for easy carrying. Inside, things are padded with wool felt. Despite its strength, the end weight is negligible just two pounds.

Attractive? Check. Lightweight? Check. Environmentally sustainable? Check. Excellently edible, as long as you don’t mind a panda gobbling your laptop? Check. The only quality the Silva case does not share with its material of choice is cheapness: one of these will cost you $180.

id software is a game developing company known for pushing the hardware of any platform they embrace, starting from their earliest triumphs on the PC with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake and continuing last year with Rage HD on iOS.

Don’t expect to see id software release their games on Android any time soon, though. It’s just not worth their effort, and it’s all about the benjamins… or at least jacksons.

It’s the brand of Adobe’s shame: “Flash Player Required.” Almost four years after the iOS platform took the world by storm, Adobe still hasn’t been able to get Flash Player on Apple’s platform, and while their arguments that Apple was just being unreasonable might have held some weight a couple of years ago, the failure of even modern Android systems to deliver decent Flash performance is very much a testament to the correctness of Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash.

It looks like Adobe’s finally ready to give up the fight, at least in part. Adobe has just announced a new method in which Flash video content can be streamed to iOS using HTML5.

In a followup to Bloomberg’s story this morning, the Wall Street Journal says that Apple is positively confirming the release of the white iPhone 4 this spring. You know… again.

Other than that, there are no details, including whether or not Verizon, AT&T or both will get the device. There’s also no word as to whether Apple releasing the white iPhone 4 after a nine month delay means that the iPhone 5 will be delayed past June, although that’s certainly where the smart money is resting right now.

The white iPhone 4 was originally supposed to come out shortly after the black iPhone 4 debuted in June of last year, but it has been repeatedly delayed due to issues with light leaking through the glass plate and onto the camera sensor.

If you purchased a MacBook Pro between 2007 and 2008, you’re probably aware that Apple had more than a little bit of trouble with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GTs they used to build the Pros that generation. In fact, Apple’s been repairing MacBook Pros for customers for free since October of 2008 if they experience blank screens or image distortion issues related to the faulty GPUs.

A new report by Mobile Magazine suggests, though, that the tool Apple has been using to determine whether or not a defective 8600M GT is responsible for rendering your MBP unusable is in itself faulty, and may have resulted in several false positives for logic board and not GPU issues.

The problem? Apple’s fixing 2007 and 2008 MacBook Pros with GPU issues for free. Logic board replacements, on the other hand, usually cost more than a grand.

When I first bought my iPad 2, I did so for one particularly sordid use. Coming home, I drew the blinds, closed the bedroom door and turned my iPad on with a moan of anticipation. When my girlfriend came home from work unexpectedly an hour later, she discovered me in the dark — startled but defiant — smearing goo all over my tablet.

I speak, of course, about 2D Boy’s multi-platform, physics puzzler sensation, World of Goo. It’s one of the best games on the iPad, selling over 125,000 copies in its first month on the App Store alone. And now? World of Goo HD has gotten a universal update, allowing owners of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and last two generations of the iPod Touch to enjoy their own sordid goo-smearing session.

If you already own World of Goo HD on iPad, the universal update is free. If you only want to play the game on your iPhone, though, you can purchase the handheld version sans the HD for just $0.99. Trust me, that price makes World of Goo the best value on the App Store, bar none.

The guys over at iLounge wanted to figure out why Apple had decided to so radically change the design of the iPad dock between the first and second generation of the device, so they decided to tear that sucker open and see what they could find.

Their conclusion? The iPad dock was made bigger and heavier to provide a more stable base, which is obvious enough. But I was more interested by their takeaway:

The biggest takeaway from the experience? Case incompatibilities aside—and they increasingly seem to be by design—Apple builds these docks amazingly well. Given that we’re talking about $29 accessories that look like they’re made entirely from plastic, they were surprisingly challenging to disassemble, resilient to all but surface damage, and unusually substantial for items that could have just as easily been rendered disposable. The industrial engineers only cut obvious corners on the sequel in ways that would never impact an average user, replacing internal screws and glue with more efficient fasteners. They obviously also created a dock that uses substantially more metal than before while maintaining the same $29 price. It’s actually pretty impressive.

Of course, that’s the difference between Apple and other electronics makers in a nutshell: a commitment to quality in even the most superfluous accessory. The iPad Dock could have just been a piece of molded plastic with a USB passthrough cable, but it’s not.

[via 9to5Mac]

Late last night, the iOS App Store experienced a wide scale bug that affected the listings of hundreds of apps. Under the app’s “Requirements” listing, a new product became listed as possibly compatible with iOS apps after iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad: “ix.Mac.MarketingName.”

What does it mean? Possibly and even probably nothing, but the “Mac” designation in the string implies a Mac that can run iOS apps.

Steve Jobs isn’t exactly the kind of guy to let a grudge go. That’s why when Google released Android and it featured a “pinch to zoom” feature just like iOS, Jobs decided to make sure that Apple board member and Google CEO Eric Schmidt couldn’t steal any of Cupertino’s other bright ideas… like the original iPad.

The lightning-fast Thunderbolt standard might be confined to 2011 MacBook Pros for now without a lot of accessories to boast of, but just you wait: Intel has announced that they are releasing Thunderbolt development kits that will finally enable every Joe and Jane Manufacturer to make some devices that can capitalize upon the standard’s 10Gbps bi-directional data transfer capabilities.

So here’s the question. Obviously we can expect to see a host of new gadgets soon boasting a Thunderbolt port, including the usual gaggle of hard drives and Blu-Ray drives and printers. When they come, though, will any products eschew USB 3.0 for ThunderBolt entirely, though?

If so, or if not, who will win the upcoming battle between the USB 3.0 and ThunderBolt standards? Let’s just hope Thunderbolt’s not another Firewire.

For years, the oscilloscope was my favorite gadget for being such a ubiquitous instrument in the basement laboratories of 50s B-Movie scientists. As a kid, I didn’t know what an oscilloscope did, but it was clearly important somehow in the business of creating atomic supermen, or taking over the world with giant octopodes, or operating a Billion Bubble Machine.

In all things, there must be an end to innocence, though, and eventually, I found out that an oscilloscope is just a pretty bog standard machine allowing you to measure oscillations in voltage or current, and has nothing to do with playing God or conquering this world of man. I abandoned it as a favorite gadget, and moved on to playing with my iPod.

The oscilloscope seems to have come looking for me. This is the Oscium iMSO-104 oscilloscope kit, a hardware kit that will turn your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad into a mixed signal oscilloscope just by attaching it via the dock connector. There’s even an array of multitouch gestures at your disposal to change analog input level, zoom in on axes, move input readouts and so on.

Want your iPhone to look like a dusty, flickering prop from Bride of the Atom? There’s an app for that, and it’s free. The kit itself, though, will cost you $300.

[via Gadget Lab]

With the February release of the Verizon iPhone and the Schiller-claimed shipment of the white iPhone 4 “real soon”, rumor consensus at this point has the iPhone 5 pegged for a September launch instead of a traditional summer unveiling.

Could it end up being even later than that, though? A new analyst report says that it might slip later, with iPhone 5 production only set to start in September.