Well, that didn’t take long: mere hours after Apple officially dropped their new App Store subscriptions service, the first magazine apps using the new billing system are hitting the App Store, courtesy of Popular Science and Elle Magazine.
I’m old enough that I’ve stopped giggling at Chinglish in most of its forms, but I hold a still hold a pecial place in my heart for the way the knock-off shops of Shenzhen will mutate and mutilate the iPhone’s branding when slapping a name upon their crappiest phones. Perhaps why I love it so much is that, unlike Chinglish, these guys know exactly what they are doing.
Consider, for example, the iPhoue, found at the notorious Shanzhai Market by our friends over at M.I.C. Gadget. Instead of going through all the hard work of releasing a competent phone, these guys just contented themselves with turning the “n” in “iPhone” upside down, slapped an Apple logo on the handset, dusted their hands and called it a day, without even considering the hysterical pronunciation of the resulting “brand.” Gentlemen… meet the iFoo.
It can be hard to find a condom when you need it… or so I keep trying to convince my girlfriend. Needless to say, she’s unconvinced, and as proof has called my attention to the New York City Health Department’s new condom locator app for iOS.
New York City is one of the most progressive countries in the nation, and it’s easy enough to find free condoms at many locations spread throughout the city. Thanks to the new app, though, there’s simply no excuse to not have your pockets perpetually stuffed with prophylactics: just type in your address and it’ll automatically find the five nearest spots to pick up some free sheaths.
Early today, Apple finally unveiled its long-anticipated App Store Subscriptions service, while simultaneously making official a pretty big effective rule change in the way in-app purchases / subscriptions work: app developers now need to make the exact same purchases (at the same price) available in-app as are available out-of-app, giving Apple at least the chance of getting a 30% cut.
Although Apple says this rule has always been on the books and they’re only now enforcing it, it’s a huge change that is likely to complicate a lot of existing business models.
For example, Amazon’s Kindle app currently channels all in-app purchases through the Amazon.com website, but soon, the Kindle app will have to make all the titles in its e-book library available as in-app purchases available through Apple. Since Amazon’s cut on every e-book is already less than 30%, every e-book they sell through Apple (for which they will have to pay a 30% cut) will result in a loss. Amazon can’t respond by offering in-app e-books at a higher price to cover the Apple tax, because Apple has prohibited it.
It’s a pickle: Amazon either has to raise prices of Kindle e-books all around, sell e-books to iOS owners at a loss, or stop selling e-books through the iOS Kindle app altogether. Amazon’s not alone in this: other services in similar predicaments are Hulu and Netflix.
Unfortunately, though, they don’t have long to try to figure out alternatives: Apple has allegedly given publishers until June 30th to fall in line with the new policies or get kicked out of the App Store.
For services like Hulu and Netflix, where most users subscribe through a web interface, this probably isn’t a big deal, but it’s Amazon and Kindle that are clearly in Apple’s crosshairs. I don’t know what Amazon will do, but if I had to hazard a guess, I think they’ll stop selling e-books in-app on the iOS platform all together. That’s a drastic solution, though, and not really very good for Amazon in the long-run. Perhaps the most obvious solution is a good, old fashioned lawsuit?
Last week, one of the most interesting Mac programs to come out in years hit the App Store in Sparrow for Mac, an elegant and attractive e-mail client that looks and acts a lot like Twitter.
I loved it, comparing it to more full-featured clients like Postbox 2 by saying Sparrow was “the equivalent of skipping stones, not piloting a submarine.”
I decided to reach out to Sparrow for Mac team member Dom Leca and ask him a few questions about the origins, inspiration and future of the e-mail program that treats your Gmail as if it were Twitter.
Valve Software’s Portal 2 is the most anticipated Mac game of the year, but strangely enough, while we’d recommend playing it on your Mac… you’re better off buying it on the Sony PlayStation 3.
Why? Portal 2 will be distributed via Valve’s Steam digital delivery service, and one of Steam’s features is functionality called Steam Play, which allows you to purchase your games on the PC and play it on the Mac, or vice versa.
When Portal 2 is released in April, though, it’ll be the first Valve game that boasts Steam Play on the PlayStation 3 version. Because Portal 2 for the PS3 will be distributed exclusively on optical discs, you won’t be able to play the PS3 version if you buy Portal 2 on your PC or Mac… but you will be able to play the game on your PC or Mac if you buy a retail copy of the PS3 version. That makes the PS3 version the better deal, at least in theory.
Speaking of which, Portal 2 is now available for pre-order from numerous outlets, including Steam, and pre-orderers are being offered a myriad of different perks for forking over their cash early, including $5 discounts, exclusive in-game skins and more. Pre-orders start at $44.99.
Portal 2 will be available on the Mac during the week of April 18th.To run the game on your Mac, you’ll need to be running OS X 10.6.6 with a 2GHz or higher processor, at least 2GB of RAM and a video card better than an ATI Radeon 2400 or NVIDIA GeForce 8600M.
In the latest version of the iBooks e-reading app, Apple took an innovative step to prevent users from opening books on jailbroken iPhones… and honestly, it’s pretty neat.
Over the course of the last week, Apple has began reaching out to current MacBook Air owners on what they’d like to see in future versions of their tiny miracle of a laptop.
A Taiwanese Mac rumor site with a sometimes-accurate history of predictions is now claiming that Cupertino is testing three radically different prototypes of the next iPhone.
The first prototype is allegedly a Blackberry-like iPhone 5, boasting a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard for faster typing. Ostensibly, such a device would be aimed at business users and texters.
The second prototype? Just a spec bump, making the iPhone 5 the equivalent of the iPhone 3Gs to the iPhone 4’s iPhone 3G. The design would closely resemble the existing iPhone 4, merely upping battery capacity and the megapixels on the rear camera. Presumably, it would also upgrade the iPhone line to the rumored dual-core A5 CPU which will debut next month with the iPad 2.
Of the third prototype, nothing is known, but it may be the 4-inch iPhone 5 we posted about earlier today.
If you’ve ever seen a friend’s Android phone and marveled at just how big it was compared to your iPhone, Digitimes thinks you should start getting used to the bulk: they claim that Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone will pack a 4-inch display to directly compete with Android’s larger displays.
It’s a curious rumor. If true, it would make the iPhone 5 the same footprint as Samsung’s Galaxy S and Nexus S smartphones.
For many users, the Verizon iPhone is a big step-up from AT&T when it comes to quality service. Service on Verizon is simply more dependable: calls don’t drop as much, the person you’re speaking to seems clearer, etc. That’s 95% of what most people care about.
That’s not to say the Verizon iPhone’s a slam dunk for everyone, though. It has its drawbacks. Verizon’s CDMA network can’t handle the simultaneous juggling of data and voice. 3G speeds are inferior to AT&T’s. And, if you’re a business user, the Verizon iPhone has some serious limitations when it comes to conference calling: not only are you limited to conference calls with just two other people, but you can’t switch between conference calls either.
These aren’t problems with the hardware: just limitations with Verizon’s CDMA network, and ones that every Verizon user has to deal with. This isn’t likely to be an issue for more than a small percentile of customers, but if you’re one of them, and need your network to handle conferencing robustly, you might want to think twice before making the switch.
The iPad 2 isn’t the only new Apple product that is likely to hit stores in March. For weeks now, supplies of existing MacBook Pro models have been plummeting, and given Tim Cook’s obsession with supply, that indicates a refresh across the board.
So when can you expect the new MacBook Pros? Unknown, but according to Danish Blogger Kenneth Lund, the date he’s hearing in Denmark from Apple Resellers is March 1st.
You only need to take the quickest and most cursory glance at the newsf eeds to know that the iPad 2 isn’t just coming, and it’s right around the corner, hitting Apple Stores no later than sometime in April.
But if you need more proof, consider this: AT&T is having a massive sale on all iPad accessories. They’re clearing house of all the accessories that in a few short months won’t work with the current-gen iPad, and they’re desperate enough that they’re slashing prices literally in half.
Yup, all iPad accessories are now 50% off at AT&T. You just don’t discount accessories on a successful current product like this if you aren’t expecting them to be obsolete soon. As for how soon, if AT&T knows something the rest of us don’t, my guess is that we’re looking at a March launch for the iPad 2 instead of April. Why clear house now if there’s still two months to go?
For the second year running, Apple has been named Barron’s most respected company in an annual survey of money managers.
Now that Apple’s killed off the XServe once and for all, there’s not a lot of options when it comes to fitting the existing Mac server options into a standard 1U rack space… or is there?
The RackMac mini by Sonnet Tech allows system admins to install two Mac minis in a standard rackmount enclosure while allowing full access to the CD drive, power LEDs and even the IR port on the unibody mini.
I’m no admin, but Sonnet seems to have thought of everything here, right down to a wiring and ventilation system to prevent the Mac mini from overheating. Each kit costs $16.
Apple doesn’t let app developers assign functions to the iPhone’s physical buttons. It’s easy to understand their point in the matter — those physical buttons are for system settings, not as function keys — but I’ve always wished Apple would make an exception when it came to camera apps. Using an onscreen shutter button just isn’t very nice, especially when you’re trying for a self-portrait.
The Camera Mic App is an ingenious dodge against the prohibition against using the iPhone’s physical buttons as a shutter in a camera app: instead, it uses the iPhone’s mic itself as a shutter button. Just load the app and tap the mic when you want to take a picture.
Briilliant, and only $0.99. If you take a lot of duck-lipped Facebook self-portraits, this is the app for you.
Over at Geek.com, I took Sparrow — the new Tweetie-esque Gmail client for Mac, now available on the Mac App Store — for a spin.
What’d I think? I really liked it… so much so that it has dislodged Postbox 2 as my e-mail client of choice.
Here’s a bit of my review:
Sparrow treats email a lot like Twitter, a four-year old micro-blogging medium still in the process of evolving. It’s a presumptuous move on the part of Sparrow’s developers, and one many users will just never be able to get beyond, either because they needmore functionality from an email client… or, after decades of using email one way, they just can’t believe that they could be more productive treating it more ephemerally…
How seriously do you take your email? How much can you go with its flow? Power users will be driven mad by the lack of sophisticated mail wrangling functionality in Sparrow, but that’s the whole point. Sparrow wants you to treat your inbox like a stream that can be dipped into, not an ocean to be tamed; it’s the equivalent of skipping stones, not piloting a submarine.
You can read the whole review here, and stay tuned to Cult of Mac for an interview with the Sparrow team next week in which we discuss the philosophy and future of the app.
We see a lot of Kickstarter pitches come through our inboxes, but WALdok is one of the rare ones that actually catches our interest.
The idea is pretty simple. The WALDok is a compact speaker dock for the new iPod Nano that fits into any wall socket, juicing your Nano even as it plays your tunes. That’s not particularly innovative in and of itself, but where WALdok is aiming to distinguish itself is in audio quality: not only does the design include a large 40mm driver for precise highs, excellent audio clarity and robust volume, but the WALdok has been designed with a spacious bass chamber inside the body to act like a subwoofer, achieving a fuller and richer low-end response,
WALdok looks like an absolutely gorgeous product, taking complete advantage of the modularity and portability of the Nano while making it easy to take both your tunes and your charger with you on the road, wherever you go. WALdok is now looking for backers, and production will begin once $30,000 has been committed, with a single WALdok starting at $79.
Sorry, guys. If you want to woo that random slice of scrumptious across the cafe, making eyes at her over your iPad isn’t the way to do it: you’d be better off pulling out your MacBook Air.
So says Retrevo, who have asked consumers in time for Valentine’s Day if they notice other people’s gadgets, and how likely they are to be attracted to someone based upon that gadget.
As you can see, according to Retrevo’s results, reading a book is sexier than e-reading your iPad. An iPhone or MacBook is the most likely gadget to get you some action. As for showing an interest in the creative arts, it seems universal: artists give pretty much everyone a big rubbery one.
Notice that the results, though, are heavily skewed towards men finding a girl attractive if she’s reading, drawing or using a gadget. The fairer sex, on the other hand, seems less interested in the superficial traits implied by an iPhone 4, iPad, drawing easel or volume of Sartre.
In other words, if you’re a girl and want a guy to notice you, play the geek. Guys? As usual, you’re out of luck: women just aren’t superficial enough to be easily seduced. Or so my girlfriend keeps telling me.
The Verizon iPhone may cost the same as its GSM counterpart, but it’s making Apple about $16 more profit per handset sold, according to the latest data from iSuppli.
iSuppli’s teardown of the Verizon iPhone’s bill of materials adds up to just $171.35 for every 16GB device, compared to the $187.51 estimated cost of the AT&T compatible iPhone 4.
iSuppli asserts that Apple had made “significant changes in its design and component” selection for the Verizon iPhone.
Apple’s usually pretty good about making sure that even if their latest iPhone doesn’t ship fully patched, an update is waiting for users the second they plug it into iTunes for the first time.
No surprise, then, that on the first day of the Verizon iPhone’s official release, Apple has already issued a patch to the firmware, resolving a bug that affects the accuracy of the Verizon iPhone’s exclusive (for now) Personal Hotspot… namely in its data reporting.
Of all the bugs to afflict the Verizon iPhone at launch, one that potentially misreported how much data was being used is the most egregious. Because Verizon charges $20 per month for 2GB of tethered data, with each additional gigabyte costing another $20, any discrepancy in data reporting could have led to some big problems.
If you don’t intend on using the Personal Hotspot feature on your new Verizon iPhone, this is not a critical patch… but if you do, better grab it now, before you find yourself staring at a higher bill than you expected.
According to insiders speaking to Techcrunch, Apple’s iAd service is underperforming relevant to their expectations.
In fact, what was meant to be a service that would turn online and in-app advertising on its head has struggled to find many advertisers at all.
Although pointedly explaining that he has no direct knowledge of such a move, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has just posted a fascinating piece speculating that 2011 might not just see the release of the iPad 2, but the iPad 3 as well.
If you lose your iPhone, you’ve got a lot more to worry about than just having to buy a new phone or restore your contacts. German experts have just demonstrated that bypassing the security passcodes and gaining access to the iOS keychain on any iPhone is just a matter of six minutes.
They’ve already got Nintendo running scared when it comes to the handheld gaming market, and now some new code in the latest iOS 4.3 Beta 3 firmware indicates that Apple may be planning on doing the same thing to Microsoft and Sony through the $99 AppleTV already in millions of users’ living rooms.
The latest beta of iOS 4.3 indicates that the current generation AppleTV may soon support online gaming, with several references to “ATVGames” and “ATVThunder” pointing towards a gaming controller, Game Center support, online multiplayer and even an AppleTV App Store.