Earlier today, two men and a woman tried to rob the Apple Store in Otay Ranch Town Center, Chula Vista, San Diego. They failed, and after a shootout with a security guard on duty, one of the men is dead.
During the annual Qingming Festival, Chinese residents honor their dead ancestors by burning fake luxury items and money, sending them into the beyond for the spirits to enjoy.
In Malaysia, there’s an entire cottage industry of fake items that springs up during the festival, allowing Confucian practitioners to buy all sorts of simulated luxuries expressly for burning.
This year, what’s the hottest fake gadget being burned during Qingming? Fake papercraft models of Apple’s iPad 2, of course.
It can be expensive to upgrade your iPhone before your 2 year contract is up. You’re largely paying off your iPhone through a two year subsidy, after all, which means that if you want the iPhone 5 after you just got the iPhone 4, AT&T — while delighted to extend your contract — needs some dosh to not come out behind in the deal.
No one debates that. What people do debate, though, is how much money it should cost an end user to upgrade their iPhones early. Currently, it can cost up to $499 to upgrade to a 32GB iPhone 4 before the end of your two year contract… even if you’re in your last months of the existing contract.
Well, guess what? It’s about to get worse. Starting yesterday, new pricing for iPhone Early Upgrade Pricing went into effect, bumping the price of an early upgrade another $50 across the spectrum of AT&T iPhone models.
While GarageBand for iPad is a neat little acoustic sandbox for even we tone deaf plebs, it was of particular interest to musicians who were already heavily invested in GarageBand for Mac. With the iPad version, these musicians hoped they’d be able to put together a few bars of a ditty on the subway or during a flight, flesh it out a bit, then import it into their Mac at home for a polish; alternatively, they hoped they could take their current GarageBand projects on the road with them.
Unfortunately, when GarageBand for iPad actually ended up hitting, it actually was quite difficult to do any of the above. That wasn’t intentional, though, and over the weekend, Apple pushed the 6.0.2 update of GarageBand for Mac out through the usual channels, bringing support for opening projects imported from GarageBand for iPad.
By not bother sweating about the contracts with the labels until after the service was live and leveraging their massive Amazon S2 cloud server cluster for quick rollout, Amazon was able to leap-frog Apple and Google into the cloud with Cloud Locker, a stream-anywhere digital locker for multimedia files.
Now it looks like Amazon wants to try to do it again, this time with mobile payments, and while they may not beat Google and Apple to the punch on NFC, they’ve already got all the rest of the infrastructure in place to use the competition’s NFC chips when they finally start rolling out to handsets.
Unlike iFixIt’s gag, this Playmobil Apple Store Playset isn’t a real product, but if enough people are interested and Apple’s lawyers look the other way, maybe it could be.
From the description:
A quick peek at the miniature Genius Bar and we were feeling a bit woozy. Then we saw the tiny Steve Jobs presenting in the Keynote Theater on the top floor and that was it. Our wallets popped out faster than you can say Jonathan Ive and we plunked down whatever money was needed to own this amazing playset.
Of course, once we had the playset, we had to get the optional Line Pack to simulate our own exciting Apple product launches. Since it comes with a tiny Woz on a tiny Segway, it was a no-brainer. We decided that Apple & PLAYMOBIL™ together is the most unlikely and awesome collaboration ever. It changes everything.
Think Geek’s brought its April Fool’s Day products to market before, so it’s possible this could become real someday.
When you bring in your iPhone for repair, Apple has a nasty habit of replacing your iPhone’s standard Phillip’s Head screws with proprietary pentalobular torx screws, which require a very special driver to remove. The result? It becomes all the much harder to repair your iPhone yourself.
iFixIt‘s April Fool’s Day joke this year may be a gag, and a good one, but it’s also a real product: an iPhone Oppression Kit that allows you to replace normal phillips screws with pentalobular ones, or vice versa. $10.
Today’s April Fools Day, which means that most of the news today will be in the form of witless lies propagated by mouth-breathers to try to “gotcha” bloggers, all to appease some ancient Pagan God. We will be doing our best not to partake in the festivities, so in the mean time, please enjoy this video of a Claymation iPad, produced by Svetlana Shokhanova at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow.
The formula for transforming a stock Apple product into something worthy to be sold for a boatload of money to the most garish of Beverly Hills Frankensteins and gaudiest of Middle Eastern Oil Barons is as old as time: buy something from the Apple Store, drizzle it in glue, then roll it in crushed glass and gold foil and voila: a luxury iProduct.
Here’s the latest: the ZShock Lunatik iPod nano watch case, a product with its audience clearly identified in the title. Diamond-encrustations, white gold, Apple’s second-cheapest iPod, all yours for just $18,000.
If you’ve been wondering when Adobe’s Photoshop offerings on iOS are going to stop being so lame, don’t worry: Adobe’s working on an awesome new iPad Photoshop App, and they just debuted it at PhotoShop World. Make sure to stick around to the end when they show off the 3D style layers animation at the end. Wow.
[via MacTrast]
3D is the newest craze in gadgetdom — or, at the very least, a lot of gadget makers would like it to be — and it looks like even Cupertino is interested in getting in on it. a new patent says that Apple has been exploring a multi-camera system for 3D picture taking, hinting at a future iPhone 3D.
Over at his official Twitter account, iPhone hacker Comex is airing some heady suspicions about Apple’s latest strategy in the cat-and-mouse jailbreak game. The talented hacker behind the Spirit and JailbreakMe 2.0 exploits is suggesting that Apple might have a spy within the iPhone Dev Team itself, allowing Cupertino to close exploits in their iOS software before the Dev Team can release a working jailbreak with them.
Yesterday, Apple opened up registrations for 2011’s WWDC, and within ten hours had already sold out of tickets. The more interesting rumor from yesterday, though, was that Apple would refrain from unveiling the iPhone 5 at this year’s WWDC, instead focusing entirely on software. That would mean that instead of the iPhone 5 shipping in June, as it has historically done, the iPhone 5’s launch would be pushed back until later in the year.
After the initial shock, the rumor sounds extremely likely. The report came from Jim Dalrymple over at The Loop, whose sources are solid. Moreover, the early year launch of the Verizon iPhone and Apple’s continued delay in shipping the white iPhone 4 (while repeatedly promising it’s still coming) all imply that Apple’s not planning the iPhone 5 in June, but will push it until later in the year, to debut before the holiday shopping season.
Over at Slashgear, Chris Davies brings up one interesting point: a late 2011 debut might give Apple more flexibility in making the iPhone 5 4G compatible. Qualcomm’s next LTE chipsets are due out at that point, and will allegedly boast improved power efficiency… the very issue that led Apple to leave LTE support out of the Verizon iPhone earlier this year.
If Apple does delay the iPhone 5 until later in the year, it’s all the more likely we’ll see a sizable update boasting 4G capability. For Verizon users, that means LTE; unfortunately, on AT&T, their HSPA+ “4G” smartphones are actually throttled to be slower than their regular 3G phones. If the iPhone does go 4G later this year, the Verizon iPhone 5 is going to be the clear winner: AT&T’s 4G network is a disgrace, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get substantially better anytime soon.
Steve Jobs was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and Steve Jobs walked with God. According to the Jerusalem Post, this divine partnership will result in Apple building a veritable ark of an Apple Store in Jerusalem.
Measured in the go-to unit for ark building, the new Apple Store would be 185 cubits long and 185 cubits wide, or about 50,000 square feet in size. To put that in perspective, that’s absolutely gigantic: it’s the size of a football field, or about the size of a supermarket with 12-14 aisles. It would be humongous, without a doubt the largest Apple Store on Earth.
Why build such a massive Apple Store in Jerusalem of all places? “Symbolic reasons,” natch. In fact, the Jerusalem Post goes as far as to say that this Apple Store would house the world’s first “Apple Digital Library,” which would be open to the public.
It’s nice to think of an official Apple Store in Jerusalem, but I think we can all agree that a Home Depot sized Apple Store smack dab in the middle of one of the oldest cities on Earth sounds more than a little bit like wishful thinking. Some reporter annoyed with not being able to get an iPad 2 through Apple’s official Israeli reseller, iDigital, perhaps?
What can we expect when Apple previews iOS 5 at this year’s WWDC starting on June 6th? More robust integration with MobileMe’s forthcoming digital locker feature, that’s for sure, but what else?
For a hint, look at Cupertino’s acquisitions over the last year, says TechCrunch’s MG Siegler. He points to Apple’s 2010 acquisition of Siri, a startup branding its services as those of a virtual personal assistant.
Siri released a cool iPhone app that allowed you to ask your phone real world questions and have it cough up and map answers to you. For example, ask “Where is the nearest Starbucks?” and Siri would draw you a map, complete with walking instructions, as well as allow you to call them with just the click of a button. Ask “What’s playing at the local drive-in?” might pull up showtimes.
Very swift stuff, and now it’s being reported that Apple has deep baked Siri functionality right into iOS 5. That’s always been the rumor, but the idea of iOS doing this sort of stuff natively is just so sweet it’s liable to make one a little nauseous if they think too long on it.
Apple Insider is reporting that a bomb threat has been made against Apple’s Elk Grove, California distribution center, with three builds evacuated as the threat is assessed.
Apple’s official Camera Connection Kit for iPad is pretty accommodating when it comes to sucking photos out of your digicam and into your iPad. Using the array of dongles, you can either suck content in through USB or just slap your SD card.
What about users stuck with that old stalwart standard, Compact Flash? Sure, you can slurp your pictures in by connecting your DSLR or video cam to your iPad 2 via USB, but what’s the fun in that when you can do it directly, thanks to this Compact Flash Card Reader for iPad.
The price is $30, which is the same as Apple’s official Camera Connection Kit costs, and comes with a built-in USB reader that can also suck in video and photographs from any thumb drive. If you’re looking to supplement your iPad with another photography-minded dongle, this looks like a good buy.
When Microsoft’s own answer to the iPod debuted back in November of 2006, one neat little feature it boasted that the iPod didn’t was the ability to share a song on your Zune with a friend for up to five plays by squirting it through WiFi to them when both your Zunes were in range. It was a really neat idea that, like many mechanisms allowing a user to lend digital content, ended up being crippled by chintzy, overly protective publishers.
Perhaps for just those reasons, Apple never did come up with their own way to share songs between iPods, but now, there’s an app for just that: Eavesdrop, which allows you to broadcast your iPod’s music library to any iOS device within range over WiFi and Bluetooth.
It’s a really neat idea. Unfortunately, since the functionality isn’t baked into iOS, both you and your friend will have to pay $1.99 for the Eavesdrop app to listen to each other’s music… and I can’t help but wonder how long it’ll be before Apple pulls the app due to recording industry complaints. So get it while it’s hot.
Apple’s tagline for this year’s WWDC is “Join us for a preview of the future of iOS and Mac OS X.” Jim Dalrymple over at the Loop says that tagline is worded very carefully, and that according to his sources, Apple will not announce any new hardware at the event… pushing the release of the iPhone 5 back indefinitely.
Traditionally, Apple unveils the newest iPhone every June at WWDC, along with iPod Touches in September and new iPads in March, but according to Dalrymple, Apple’s going to mix this up this year. Why?
“You get caught up in patterns, and it holds true, until it doesn’t,” Gartenberg told The Loop. “There is no reason for Apple to follow a predictable yearly pattern, and it keeps their competition off guard a little bit.”
As he seems to do every year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs not only made Barron’s list of the world’s most valuable CEOs… he was declared “without a doubt” the most valuable one.
Taking his place amongst bigwigs like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathwawy), Reed Hastings (Netflix) and more, Steve Jobs is cited for racking up 100 million iPhones sold, the release of the iPad and Apple’s incredible golden touch overall.
Barron’s list of most valuable CEOs isn’t a popularity contest: it’s based on the objective metric of stock performance, which has been on such an upward trajectory for the past few years that seemingly the only thing that can sink it is Jobs’ retirement (and even then, given the talent and culture Jobs has put together over at Apple, only temporarily).
This isn’t the first distinction Barron’s has awarded Apple this year: back in February, Barron’s handed Apple its second Most Respected Company award in as many years.
Just in case you thought these guys mistook the line outside of London’s Regent Street Apple Store for a line for Justin Bieber tickets, guess what? The UK’s sold out of iPad 2s.
Boy, I sure wish we had this here: down in Oz, would-be Australian iPad 2 buyers can reserve their tablets right through Apple’s official retail site, then walk in and pick them up the next day. Magic!
Well, magic if any of Apple Australia’s retail stores actually had any iPads to dole out, which they don’t.
Still, Apple Retail stores are getting new iPad 2s in on a three or four-times weekly schedule, which means that if you’re an Australian wanting to get an iPad 2, constantly refreshing that page and swooping in on any available unit is probably the most painless way for you to get yourself an iPad.
Maybe we’ll see this same functionality roll out to the States? Sooner please, Apple.
[via MacStories]
Brits depending on their iOS devices to wake them up for work or school in the morning got a seriously gaffe-prone error call this morning, after alarms all around the Isles failed to go off at the proper time this morning, ranging from going off one hour too late to not at all.
It wasn’t just Brits either. The rest of Europe’s iPhone owners were plagued by the same bug, after clocks were moved forward by an hour on Sunday.
The culprit? Apparently, that same stupid time change bug that hit iPhone users last autumn.
It’s not entirely clear if this is a bug still present in iOS 4.3 or one that is only affecting users who have failed to update from iOS 4.2.1.
Any of our readers in Europe want to help us get to the bottom of this? Join the comments and give us a rundown of what happened with your alarms this morning, along with what device and version of iOS you have.
Apple just announced the official dates of this year’s WWDC expo, and as rumored, they are June 6th and June 8th. Accompanying the announcement, Apple has posted a teaser page for their annual Apple Designer Awards, which seek to recognize “apps that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation and outstanding design.”
The good news here is that, unlike last year, Apple will be giving out awards to both iOS and OS X developers. This is a relief, since only iOS developers were recognized last year, with Steve Jobs mysteriously saying that this was just “the normal cycle of things.”
The bad news? If your software isn’t on the App Store, Apple’s not going to bother recognizing your software, no matter how excellent. With the iOS App Store, that’s a non-issue, but considering the fact that the majority of Mac software isn’t on the Mac App Store yet, it prevents developers with a choice: either give Apple a 30% cut of all of your software sales or don’t qualify for an award. That’s sure to cause controversy.
The first “real” competition to the original iPad was the 7-inch Android-based Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it looks like the first “real” competition to the iPad 2 will be the Galaxy Tab 10.1, a Honeycomb tablet boasting a 10.1-inch, 1280×800 display, a 1GHz dual-core CPU, dual-antenna WiFi, a 3MP back-facing camera and a 2MP webcam that starts at prices of just $499… all in a form factor that Samsung claims is both thinner and lighter than the iPad 2.
Well, except it turns out that Samsung’s claims about a thinner iPad 2? They appear to not be true.
Fritz Nelson of InformationWeek ended up getting a couple comparison shots between the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the iPad 2, and found that contrary to Samsung’s claims, the Galaxy Tab was still slightly thicker.
It’s possible that the unit on display was a prototype, so maybe the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is thinner than the iPad 2. But my guess is it’s all a marketing lie, considering the fact that Samsung’s also been busted for hiring actors to pretend to be fans of the Galaxy Tab.
Who really cares? Honestly, if buying a tablet with Android installed on it isn’t going to dissuade you — and it should, given the execrable history of past Android devices being updated to later, more feature-rich versions of the OS by their manufacturers — a matter of a couple millimeters and a couple of actors isn’t going to cure you of your delusions either.