John Brownlee - page 193

The iPhone 3G’s sluggishness under iOS 4.0 is so legendary that it has sparked an entire class action lawsuit, but does iOS 4.2 improve things any? Yes, according to TipB: they say that Apple has greatly improved the iPhone 3G’s performance when typing, scrolling, pinching, zooming and browsing under iOS 4.2.

Is that enough to end Bianca Wofford’s class action lawsuit? Probably not… but it certainly makes her claims of an Apple conspiracy to force obsolescence of the iPhone 3G a lot harder to believe than it was already.

Back in August, Doom creators id software promised to blew us all away with a demonstration of their next generation Rage engine running on the iPhone 4 at sixty frames per second. It was just a proof-of-concept, but don’t worry, there’s a game in there… and it’s going to be called Mutant Bash TV.

Syncing your iPhone or iPod Touch all too often takes the device entirely out of commission, but it doesn’t have to be that way: Omnio’s WOWKeys transforms your iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch or iPhone 4 into an extension of your keyboard for both the Mac and PC.

If a new patent spotted by the USPTO archeologists over at Patently Apple is believed, Lion might boasts a new way to navigate menus that would make Mac OS X more suitable to touch input than ever before.

The new 11.6-inch MacBook Air is extremely netbook-like in dimensions, if not in specs or price, but if that $999 tag doesn’t do it for you, the gadget sweatshops of China would be happy to sell you a Hackintoshable MacBook Air clone for just $260, right down to the official Apple logo.

Apple’s official line of headphones and earbuds have always been pretty lackluster in my eyes, but a secret acquisition might mean that Cupertino is planning on changing all of that: according to reports, Apple might have quietly purchased a small Bluetooth wireless headphone designer a couple of months ago, and are hard at work in their labs on a new pair of totally wireless cans.

I don’t many people who have disputed Adobe Flash Player’s impact on battery life — especially since Ars Technica discovered that merely having Flash installed on the new MacBook Air took two hours off the battery life — but nonetheless, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch thinks it’s somehow indicative of a coordinated Apple plot to put them out of the business of interactive web content.

Lately, updates to Apple’s official Mac software suites have tended to be first rumored by the strange source of pages for the idiot’s guides seeded on foreign Amazon dot whatever bookstore pages… and sure enough, that oh-so-reputable source is already touting iWork ’11 as coming out sometime in the near future.

But when exactly? Probably shot down the tube along with the splintered iLife ’11 apps when the Mac App Store launches, according to reports.

Remember the ApplePeel 520? It was basically an iPod Touch case that contained a cellular radio: plug it into your jailbroken iPod Touch and you could transform it into an iPhone… or at least make or receive phone calls and text messages with it. Right.

Well, Yosion — the company who made the device — is now preparing a version of the ApplePeel 520 for the iPad. They don’t seem to want to turn the iPad into a big phone with it, though, but rather to bring 3G capabilities to WiFi-only iPads.

iOS 4.2 is likely to be released sometime this week, unifying the iPhone and iPad into one operating system while simultaneously bringing AirPrint, AirPlay and more to all devices. For iPad owners, it’s a particularly exciting update, since it brings many of the features (most obviously multitasking) that iPhone owners have been taking for granted since iOS 4.0.

The Gold Master Seed has gone out to developers, so it’s imminent, but when exactly is iOS 4.2 coming to us regular joes and janes? It’s unknown, but there’s a couple of good guesses: either November 9th or November 12th.

The November 9th date comes via Inside-Handy, which says that Apple told Deutsche Telekom (aka T-Mobile in Germany) of the release date.

On the other hand, the November 12th release comes from reports that Apple will be pushing some carrier updates in Europe on November 12th.

In all honesty, both these dates are pretty suspect, but considering the fact that Apple is probably going to release iOS 4.2 and iTunes 10.1 this week, there’s a good chance one of them will be right… at least as a fluke.

Last week, the Skyfire browser made headlines for two separate “firsts” on the iOS platform.

First up, Skyfire finally did what Adobe couldn’t and brought Flash to iOS, albeit non-natively. Instead, the Skyfire browser converts Flash videos to HTML5 on their own servers, then pumps the HTML5 to your iPhone or iPad instead.

Pretty neat, but I actually like Skyfire’s second accomplishment more: they managed to be the first iOS app to ever “sell out.”

Quite a trick with an infinitely copyable, digital good, but the Skyfire team had a good excuse: their app was selling like such gangbusters that the servers used to convert Flash to HTML5 on the fly couldn’t cope with demand. They’d sold out of bandwidth, not copies of the app itself.

Skyfire has spent the weekend beefing up its servers. The good news is that if you’re lucky, you should be able to buy Skyfire again soon. The bad? Skyfire’s selling the app in batches to make sure they servers don’t get overwhelmed: they’ll put the app back up on the App Store for a little while, pull it, then put it back up a few hours later.

An interesting approach to say the least. If you’re interested in giving Skyfire a spin, check out their Twitter feed for word when the next batch will go live.

Speculation and squatting on app names has been a going on in the App Store for a while. It eventually became so problematic that Apple initiated some serious new guidelines aimed at cracking down on App Store squatters who were sitting atop popular app names without any app to show for it. That policy change seems to have worked in cutting down on name squatting in the iOS app store…. but if early indications are to be believed, it appears that Apple’s forthcoming Mac App Store might have an even bigger squatting problem on its hands, and that problem could keep some of the Mac’s best loved software frozen out of the Mac App Store indefinitely.

Without a front facing camera, there’s not much an iPhone 3GS can do with FaceTime, even if it could be be enabled… but when has the mere logistics of a hack gotten in the way of the jailbreak community? Here it is: FaceTime on the iPhone 3GS, courtesy of iPhoneIslam.

How much is a good iPad app worth? According to a new report, quite a bit more than a decent iPhone app… and the margin between the two is growing every day.

How far in advance would Apple film a commercial for the second-generation iPad? Depending on the answer to that question, Apple might be readying the iPad 2 for release, getting an ad in the can for next April… or, well, not filming an ad for the iPad 2 at all.

This is a huge hack: a plucky modder has resurrected a Macintosh SE/30 using a Seagate Dockstar, a small Linux server running a 1.2GHz ARM processor, a few USB 2.0 ports and 128MB of RAM. Not only does it work as a server, but in runs a Mac emulator, and even the floppy drive works… but it reads SD cards mounted on a floppy-shaped protoboard instead of ancient 5.25 discs! He even restored the Mac to pristine condition by bathing it in chemicals to return it to its vintage, unyellowed color. Amazing!

Remember Epic’s stunning display of the Unreal Engine 3 running on the iPhone with Epic Citadel? That was more of a technology demonstration than anything else, but the first proper game running Unreal Engine 3 is coming to the App Store soon in Chair’s Project Sword, a swipe-controlled fighter with an RPG level-up and equipment mechanic…. and as you can see from the trailer above, it looks breathtaking.

As a gamer, I’ve slowly gotten used to the virtual D-pads and buttons in iOS games, but in all honesty, I still miss the tactility of real buttons underneath my thumb pads.

That said, I can’t imagine who would go in for this: the Tactile+Plus is a transparent overlay you put over your iPhone or iPod Touch’s screen to lend tactile feedback to a virtual D-pad.

The iPhone is undeniably huge in Japan, where the device accounts for over sixty percent of all smartphones sold. The iPhone 4 alone has been the number one selling handset in Japan for the last 18 weeks.

That’s not to say its dominance is unassailable though. Call it a spin, call it a blip, but this week saw the iPhone fall out of the number one spot in Japan for the first time in over four months, as Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy S smartphone careened into the standings at number one.

Ever played Lazer Tag? If Apple has its druthers, next time you play it, it won’t be with big ray guns and fluorescent sensors, but with your iPhone.

Apple’s gaming plans are described in a newly discovered patent dated April 2009 for “Interactive Gaming with Co-Located, Networked Direction and Location Aware Devices.”

The nitty gritty’s a lot cooler than that dry legalese description, though: what Apple is describing here is away to take advantage of an iPhone’s gyroscope, accelerometer and GPS to turn your handset into an aimable device that can talk to other iPhones that it is pointed at.

Last month, it was widely reported that Apple had reached yet another milestone with its App Store by chalking up it’s 300,000th app. The only problem with that number? It wasn’t true: while there were 300,000 apps in the App Store, a lot of those apps were inactive, meaning Apple hadn’t quite crossed the threshold for their milestone.

Still, time heals all, and now, Apple has actually racked up its 300,000th real app thanks to the average of 5,452 iPad apps and 12,218 iPhone apps uploaded each month.

Apple’s not ready to throw their hat into the USB 3.0 ring just yet. As Steve Jobs made abundantly clear in an email last week, Cupertino’s doesn’t see USB 3.0 taking off, at least until Intel starts officially supporting it… and evidence suggests that Apple might avoid USB 3.0 entirely in favor of Light Peak.

But what if you want USB 3.0 on your Mac now? Well, Apple’s not serving up official drivers yet, but LaCie’s stepping up to fill the void: they’ve just announced USB 3.0 drivers for their line of solutions.

To get USB 3.0 on your Mac, first you’ll need to buy one of LaCie’s cards: either a $49.99 USB 3.0 PCI Express Card or the $59.99 USB 3.0 ExpressCard/34, both of which will bring a couple of USB 3.0 (and backwards compatible USB 2.0) ports to your Mac Pro or MacBook. Then install the free driver and you’re ready to pick yourself up one of those blindingly flash USB 3.0 external drives that are all the rage right now.

Not a bad solution for Mac Pros, but ExpressCards can be fairly irritating to have hanging out of a MacBook, and obviously this won’t help you if you’ve got a MacBook Air, Mac mini or iMac. Still, if you’re committed to being on the cutting edge, LaCie’s happy to take your cash and make it happen.

If you’re a network administrator in love with the svelte, stackable design of Apple’s Xserve line, you’d better stock up: Apple has announced that they will be discontinuing the Xserve line starting January 31st, 2011.

With an effete wave of his hand, Steve Jobs could have you and everyone you cared about bludgeoned to death in the night by turtleneck-wearing goons armed with iPhone-stuffed socks, but that’s not enough to make him crack the top ten in Forbes’ list of most powerful people on the planet.

Nonetheless, the strongly spoken Apple CEO has managed to go up quite a few notches on the list, buoyed by Apple’s successes in the mobile arena. He climbed from the 57th spot last year to number 17 this year.

The latest update to Snow Leopard — Mac OS X 10.6.5 — hasn’t even shot down the Software Update pipeline to users yet as a beefy download, but that’s not stopping Cupertino from seeding early builds of 10.6.6 to developers.