According to reports last month, Apple is working on a reprogrammable SIM module for future iPhones that would allow Cupertino to sell iPhones directly to customers without it being locked to a specific carrier.
Hey, guess who doesn’t like that idea? Hint: the carriers.
Deals on Apple products tend to be depressingly meager when you’re buying new, as I discovered yesterday when I did some price comparisons on the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air, only to discover the most aggressive deal I could find on the laptop was a whole five dollars off the retail price. Yet that’s all too typical: Apple products tend not to dip dramatically lower than their MSRP unless they are either refurbished or subsidized by a carrier.
Consider our jaws dropped, then, by the biggest deal on a current-gen Apple product we’ve ever seen. TJ Maxx — TJ Maxx, of all places! — is offering the iPad in at least some stores for a cool benjamin off the regular price.
Apple was on a roll yesterday: not only did their crackerjack team of programmers manage to release a new point update for Safari 4 and 5 resolving many existing issues, but they also pushed down the Software Update pipeline a new Boot Camp and MacBook EFI update.
Unscrew the salt shaker and empty it onto your uvula, because it’s Digitimes rumor time. According to the always questionable publication, Apple’s already got the parts suppliers for the iPad 2 lined up… and they’re ready to name names.
This new iPhone case from Kalomix is pretty mysterious: it turns the back of your iPhone 4 into a working chalkboard.
I knew I was old the moment I realized that the foundation of my every Sunday’s pleasure was wandering down to the newsstand and picking up the latest issue of the Economist, so I’m both a little sad and a little delighted to note that I’ll no longer have to make that journey: the Economist is coming to the iPhone and iPad.
Apple has just released an incremental point update for Safari 5 on both the Mac and PC, Safari 5.0.3, as well as Safari 4.1.3 for Mac OS X Tiger.
Safari 5.0.3 is largely a security and stability release, although there are some notable improvements including more accurate top hit results in the address field, more accurate results in top sites and more reliably pop-up blocking.
You can download the new version either through Software Update, or directly from Apple’s website.
The best-looking game to ever hit iOS has now arrived on the App Store: id software Mutant Bash TV (based on an engine derived from their forthcoming next-gen shooter Rage, and taking place in the same universe) has just hit the App Store.
Google’s Docs service is meant to make office documents easier, more accessible and more collaborative by bringing them into the cloud. Instead of needing to purchase or download an office software suite, you just go to a URL, load up the web application and you’re good to go.
It’s a fantastic product, but as the desktops and notebooks we used to compute on have gradually been replaced by mobile products like smartphones and tablets, Google Docs has fallen behind.
There’s great news today for users interested in bringing their Google Docs with them on their iPhone, though: Google has just announced that they’ve vastly improved the functionality of Google Docs on iOS, and you can now even edit your documents on your iPhone or iPad.
The secret sauce is Google’s new document editor, which supports editing within Mobile Safari, albeit with a few limitations. They’re in the process of rolling out the new document editor, and it’ll work on iOS 3.0+ devices, as well as Android 2.2 Froyo… now downloads required..
Verizon’s Twitter account might have tipped the forthcoming arrival of the iPhone to America’s biggest CDMA network, but Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is still playing coy about the possibility of a Verizon iPhone.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Seidenberg says that a Verizon iPhone will only arrive “when Apple thinks it’s time.”
Apple’s iAd network has already shaken up the mobile advertising world here in the United States since its July debut, but come December, it’s going to do the same to Europe, Cupertino has just announced.
Steve Wozniak — that wonderful bear of a tech evangelist — may love his iPhone, but he’s not banking on iOS to handily win the smartphone wars: instead, the Apple co-founder says that Google’s Android operating system will be the dominating platform.
If you’ve got a second generation AppleTV and looking to add a couple of o’s to its oomph, Fire Core have just announced that they’ve got you covered: they’re porting their popular aTV Flash software from the first-generation AppleTV to the second, complete with Last.fm and browser support.
If you had twenty seven billion dollars, what would your dream be? I’d probably get myself some of those ab implants I’ve had my eye on, and perhaps pay for an oiled massage or two from Amanda Seyfriend and Anne Hathaway that they would be contractually obliged to apply without using their hands.
Billionaire Eike Batista has a radically dream, though: he wants to steal Apple manufacturing from China and bring it to his home country of Brazil.
Last week’s great disappointment was the discovery that Apple had mostly pulled AirPrint support from OS X 10.6.5, which would allow you to print documents directly from iOS to almost any shared network printer. Native AirPrint support was trimmed only to a small number of AirPrint-compatible HP printers, and while hacks exist to get AirPrint support back via the command line, they’re a little beyond the capability of most users.
Enter FingerPrint, a new application from Collobos Software that enables AirPrint printing over Bonjour for many of the omitted printers. It accomplishes its neat trick by fooling Bonjour into broadcasting your normal printer in such a way that iOS 4.2 can see it.
You don’t need fancy Bluetooth technology to make a good wireless headset: all you need to do is plug your iPod shuffle into the side-mounted 3.5mm jack on the side of the right can. Ingenious. $50 will get you a pair, in Japan at least, but we’ll have to wait for this set (or a knockoff) to cross the shores.
[via Gadget Lab]
Although Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash was a devastating opening salvo against Adobe’s bloated, buggy and insecure browser plugin, perhaps the most brutal attack in the war between Apple and Flash was Cupertino’s decision to exclude it from the software shipping on the MacBook Air… a move that has notably saved the Air two hours in battery life while simultaneously making Adobe look like a bunch of inept chumps.
Now Adobe CEO Shantau Narayan is commenting on the matter at this week’s Web 2.0 summit. Asked by Engadget about the MacBook Air’s battery life improvement without Flash installed, Narayan responded: “When we have access to hardware acceleration, we’ve proven that Flash has equal or better performance on every platform.”
Which is, of course, a besides-the-point response. Performance isn’t the issue: energy efficiency is.
However, it does seem like Adobe is ready to admit there may actually be an issue they can address, because Narayen followed that comment with an admission that Adobe was working in the labs to optimize a beta for the new Air. Not that you’d catch me dead installing it at this point, but your mileage may well vary.
We were skeptical of yesterday’s purportedly leaked shot of a new CDMA iPhone running on the Verizon network, but perhaps e’re wrong: a recent Tweet coming from Verizon’s own Verizon Careers Twitter account seems to suggest the iPhone is coming to the network soon.
The evidence is admittedly a bit ambiguous. The operator of Verizon Careers’ Twitter account pimped their recent addition of the iPad to their mobile line-up, and was then asked by Twitter user slink317 for an “iPhone hint?”
Verizon Career’s response accompanied a retweet of slinky123’s question: “yes that is the latest scoop.”
The wording’s pretty strange, but we’re not sure how else to read that besides as a quasi-official confirmation that the iPhone is coming to Verizon sometime soon. Lending some veracity to that interpretation, the Verizon Careers tweet in question has since been pulled.
What do you think? Is the Verizon coming to iPhone, or was this just some low-level drone paid to man a Twitter account making a mistake and openly speculating on Verizon’s iPhone future?
One New York teenager was so put out by Apple’s endless delays in delivering the white iPhone 4 that he used gray market sources to build a $130,000 business selling them himself.
17 year old Fei Lam started whiteiPhone4now.com after production problems (namely, light leaking through the casing and onto the camera’s sensor) caused the first of the white iPhone 4’s delays.
Like many similar sites, whiteiPhone4now.com sells aftermarket conversion kits that allow iPhone 4 owners to mod their iPhone 4s to a white model themselves.
Unlike most of those other sites, though, Lam knows a guy who knows a guy who works at Foxconn, and was able to get Apple certified white iPhone 4 components shipped to him straight in Queens.
There’s a reason Amazon’s responding to Apple’s Beatles iTunes coup by slashing pricing on Fab Four CDs instead of undercutting the iTunes price in their own music service, Amazon MP3: Apple’s secured the online exclusive to Beatles tracks until sometime in 2011.
The competition is scrambling to keep up with Apple after they finally succeeded in landing the Beatles catalogue for iTunes: in the hour since the announcement, Amazon has already dropped the price of at least two Beatles offerings to undercut Apple’s own prices on the same albums.
Apple’s accompanied its surprise announcement of the Beatles coming to iTunes with the expected press release, but this one’s more worth reading than normal: it’s filled with winning quotes from Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
After a decade’s absence from the most popular music store on earth, the Beatles have finally come to iTunes today… and to pay tribute to Beatlemania both past and present, Apple is celebrating the occasion by streaming The Fab Four’s history making concert at the Washington Coliseum back in February 11th 1964 on the official Apple.com website.
There’s no shortage of iPad docks out there, but most offerings force you to dock in portrait position, which can make typing on your iPad via a Bluetooth keyboard something of a pain.
Altec Lansing’s latest dock, the Octiv Stage, fixes that by allowing you to swivel the iPad when it’s docked between landscape and portrait, while also packing in some impressive speakers to add a little bit of oomph to your iPad’s audio output.
It’s a nice looking dock, if a bit beefy, but unfortunately it has an equally beefy price: $150.
As predicted, Apple’s big iTunes announcement today wasn’t iTunes in the cloud, or streaming, or a subscription fee… it’s John, Paul, Ringo and George. After ten years, the Beatles and their music catalogue have finally hit iTunes.
Although it’s not been announced on Apple.com as of writing, the Beatles’ presence on the iTunes Store now commands most of the upper fold. The entire catalog seems to be available, along with a link to the band’s page, the Beatles Box set and more. You’re even getting a decent deal on the Beatles Box Set: it cost $250 when it was released last year, and currently costs $154.99 on Amazon at a heavily discounted price. Apple’s price? Just $150 for every Beatles song ever recorded.
The sudden resolution of Apple’s decades-long standoff with Apple Records, first for the Apple trademark and then for the Beatles catalog, has happened swiftly. One thing’s for sure: however Steve got Apple Records and EMI to agree to iTunes’ terms, it’s going to make one hell of a read when the story finally comes to light.
Although many of us already own the Beatles’ catalog — I have the full collection of the recent remasters already converted to lossless MP3s — and while many will be apathetic to this news, this is a big win for Apple, as the record labels release their death grip on one of the last digital music holdouts.
CDs and records aren’t the future of music anymore: iTunes is, and the labels have finally been forced to give up one of their last aces-in-the-holes in order to stay relevant.
