John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
If you’ve decided to pick up one of Apple’s miraculously thin new MacBook Airs, but have a large media or photo library, you’re probably going to have to pick up an external USB hard drive to go with it: those SSDs are blisteringly fast, yes, but they’re not exactly voluminous.
What external hard drive can match the Air’s resplendent svelteness, though? Try the Hitachi G-Drive Slim. It’s only 0.39 inches thick and clocks in at 320GB for $99.99. That’s not a lot of storage space for the price, but then again, neither is the Air.
Well, what do you know: the guys over at Plex, who make one of my favorite media center apps for the Mac, have jailbroken their second-gen AppleTV and managed to get the Plex client up and running on the little $99 box.
The proof of concept’s a little rough around the edges, but once this is polished up, it could be a huge boon for AppleTV owners hoping to expand their box’s capabilities. Sure, you still need to stream your media from a paired Mac, but Plex supports a lot more codecs than AirPlay. I can’t wait to see this project progress.
This is a pretty neat spin on the freemium model: Capcom Arcade is a free title that bundles many of Capcom’s classic arcade games — including Street Fighter II, Commando and 1942 — together in a virtual arcade. Just like in a real arcade, to play the games, you need tokens, which you can buy in-app. Otherwise, Capcom Arcade is happy to dole out free tokens every day, which you can then use for a limited number of plays.
It’s a clever little approach. Usually, freemium games use in-game virtual goods to make money, but Capcom’s turned that idea on its head by making a play of their games themselves into a virtual good to be consumed. I wonder if other classic arcade publishers with a presence in the App Store will catch on: Sega, I’m looking at you.
Been holding out for redsn0w before jailbreaking your iOS 4.1 device. Good news: the Dev Ream has just released the latest version which will allow you to jailbreak your iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G, 3rd or 4th generation iPod Touch and second generation AppleTV on either Mac or Windows machines. It uses geohot’s limera1n exploit, and also adds “custom bootlogos for iPhone3G/iPhone3GS/iPod2G users (with qualifying bootroms)” and an option that implements the ‘DFU’ button in PwnageTool” in Windows.
Interested? Grab it here, and let the hacking commence.
Last week, Steve Jobs responded to a Mac owner’s question about future USB 3.0 support by saying that Cupertino didn’t see it taking off yet, specifically because Intel has yet to support it.
When we reported that story, we speculated that Apple might view USB 3.0 as a technology that may — like Blu-Ray — be technically superior to what preceded it, but would be quickly made obsolete by an entirely different approach. In Blu-Ray’s case, streaming video came along; in USB 3.0’s case, we suspected it would be Light Peak, a new optical cable technology that Intel is working on that would be a single universal replacement for pretty much any digital cable out there, from USB to SATA to HDMI.
Maybe we were right. According to Cnet, Light Peak is on target for a 2011 debut, and Apple is expected to start shipping machines with that standard in the first year.
Right now, if you want live television on your iPad, you are basically limited to using the EyeTV to stream it from your computer. What if you don’t want to be umbilicaled to your desktop, though>
Meet the Tizi, a small peripheral box being sold in Europe that pairs with your iOS device over WiFi and watch the terrestrial boob tube wherever you are.
Yesterday, Facebook hosted a media event to announce the company’s plans to tie local business advertising into its Places functionality, but at the Q&A following the event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a surprising claim: the iPad’s not mobile.
The characterization came after an attendee asked Zuckerberg when the iPad would get a native Facebook app.
The answer? Never. Facebook expects you to use the Facebook website on the iPad. And why? Because Facebook only makes app for mobile devices, and “the iPad’s not mobile… it’s a computer.”
Ask most iTunes users and they’ll agree that 30 second song previews are simply too short to inform a decision on whether or not to buy a song… but if the music labels had their druthers, they wouldn’t even allow that, which makes it amazing to me that Apple has successfully employed its clout to triple the length of iTunes song samples.
If you’re a Mac developer hoping to squeeze some more sales out of your software by bringing it to the Mac App Store, rev up your engines: Apple has notified developers that they are now accepting submissions.
When owners of the iPhone 3G started reporting massive performance issues with iOS 4, we knew it was only a matter of time before the first lawsuit dropped, and here it is, lodged by plaintiff Biana Wofford in the Superior Court of California for San Diego.
The lawsuit’s even crazier than what we expected though: it thinks Apple conspired to make iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G suck so that users would be forced to upgrade to a new model.
Bringing home your new Mac only to notice a perpetually stuck pixel in the display can be teeth-gratingly irritating, especially when it proves impossible to convince a blank-faced Genius that that lodged speck is so distracting that it absolutely demands an LCD replacement.
Here’s some information that will help you know if Apple will be willing to replace your device due to stuck pixels. An internal source at Apple has leaked the complete internal policy on the acceptable number of anomalies in a display required for Apple to issue a replacement.
Belkin’s a big name in accessories, and you’ve probably got at least a few of their iPod or iPhone cases floating around your house. Today they’re expanding their line-up for the iPad with two new offerings: the Grip 360 + Stand and the FlipBlade.
The Grip 360 is an all-in-one accessory that can be used in three configurations: as a carrying case, a handheld case and as a stand. On the back is a flexible hand strap that makes the iPad easier to hold one-handed; the strap titularly rotates 360 degrees depending on which configuration you want to hold your iPad in, or removed entirely. It sells for $69.99.
The FlipBlade is a bit different: it’s a compact support for the iPad that allows you to prop your tablet up in either of its orientations, and which folds up for easy traveling. The design’s nice, but at $29.99, seems a bit overpriced for something a cheap plastic business card holder will do with more portability for less than a buck.
Eager to get the full iTunes experience on your AppleTV? It’s one step closer to reality: Apple will introduce support for iTunes LP and iTunes Extras on the new AppleTV sometime soon, according to a letter from Steve Jobs.
Back in 1993, Trilobyte and Virgin Interactive released The 7th Guest… one of the games to be done mostly in full-motion video, and the first game to ship exclusively on CD-ROM. Now it’s got another laurel to add to its belt: Trilobyte says that it’ll be coming to iOS sometime in December.
It’s not the only FMV Trilobyte title planned for the App Store. Shortly after The 7th Guest launches for the iPhone, Trilobyte says they will re-engineer the sequel — The 11th Hour — for iOS as well.
When The 7th Hour hits the App Store, it’ll cost $4.
To be completely honest with you, the thing that amazes me most is that The 7th Guest can even fit on an iPhone. I remember when the game first came out and I was amazed at the seemingly dozens of CDs it shipped on: I remember being astonished that a single title could possibly encompass that many discs.
Of course, in retrospect, most of those discs were taken up by badly compressed full motion video… and compression’s come a long, long way since then. Still, I’m staggered: has technology really come so far? Obviously, but it’s still sometimes hard to deprogram my expectations.
Just a couple weeks ago, Apple updated their iLife suite up to the year 2011… but despite the fact that iLife ’11 requires Snow Leopard to run, Cupertino did not see fit to upgrade the executables to 64-bit…. even though programs like iMovie ’11 would certainly have benefited from the support.
What about Final Cut Studio, then? Last updated in July of 2009, Final Cut Studio is one of the top movie-editing software packages around… and it too could desperately benefit from some 64-bit support.
Evan Agee recently emailed Steve Jobs to see about Final Cut Studio, expressing his hopes of a 64-bit update to the package. As he’s sometimes wont to do, Apple’s CEO fired back a reply: “Stay tuned and buckle up.”
Before the iPad debuted, the tablet market was basically limited to niche convertible laptops with stylus-driven displays largely marketed to digital artists. The iPad changed everything: it placed the tablet as a bridge device between a phone and a laptop and made it less about the creation of a few specific types of digital media than a gadget aimed at the consumption of digital media.
It was a genius redefinition of a product class, and Apple’s basically dominated the tablet market ever since it was released. You might be surprised by how utterly complete the iPad’s domination of the tablet market is, though: according to statistics released by Strategy Analytics, the iPad accounts for 95.5% of all tablet sales.
That number’s going to go down, of course. The iPad basically caught gadget makers with their pants down, and we’re only just staring to see devices like the Galaxy Tab and the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook creep out of electronic makers’ design factories to challenge the iPad’s crown. Apple’s percentage of the tablet market is largely due to the fact that there just aren’t any good tablets out there besides the iPad.
So that number’s going to go down, but by guess, with that sort of head start? Apple’s still going to sell more than half of all tablets made for at least the next couple of years.
Apple’s patent battle with Nokia might not be going to plan for Cupertino’s lawyers: staff of the International Trade Commission have reportedly told the judge in the case that Apple’s patent allegations are “unfounded.”
The case is being heard for the first time before Judge Charles Bullock today, but as Bloomberg reports, the third-party of the ITC does not feel Apple’s patents have merit.
November 7th’s turning out to be an important date for big box retail. It’s not just the day that Target’s slated to get the iPhone for the first time, but also the day that all 158 Best Buy Mobile stores will finally get the iPad.
Best Buy’s Mobile store locations are more Lilliputian Best Buys that focus on mbile electronics and are most often found in shopping malls or in congested downtown city locales.
There’s some obvious advantages for Apple pushing the iPad through as many outlets as it can this holiday season. Cupertino clearly does not want anyone to be able to fall upon the excuse of merely not being able to find an iPad or iPhone to buy a loved on this Christmas, and by selling iPads at Best Buy Mobile, Apple is able to expand its retail presence even to malls that don’t have an Apple Store.
Pretty soon, about the only excuse anyone’s going to have not to own an iOS device is sheer obstinance.
Apple’s advertising team has thrown a lot of hyperbolic adjectives at the iPad like “legendary”, “amazing” and “magical,” but their latest advertisement might be pressing it. “Cinematic,” sure. “Elementary”…. uh, okay. But by the time we’re at “full size” and “electric,” I think maybe we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Evil Dead — Sam Raimi’s story of five horny college kids who go to an abandoned cabin in the woods to do their rutting and accidentally unleash an ancient, murderous evil — isn’t as well known as its sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. It’s a more serious and frightening film, and Bruce Campbell’s Ash (known in the first movie as “Ashley”) has yet to become the chainsaw-handed, catchphrase-spitting zombie killer we’d all come to know and love later in the franchise.
It also seems like a bad fit for an App Store game, but I’ve got to tell you, this trailer for the upcoming Evil Dead game has won me over. You’d think using Mii-like bobblehead avatars to tell the story that prominently features melting zombies, ankle-stabbing and tree rape would just fall apart, but instead, the trailer’s just incredibly funny and well done… not to mention loyal to the spirit of the (NSFW) original trailer, which I’ve embedded below.
At first, Chris Pollock‘s hack to connect his iPhone to a computer’s serial port seems like a “because I can” sort of project, but in reality, it appears that it’s actually incredibly useful.
Why? Chris apparently works in IT, and as it turns out, a jailbroken iPhone armed with a serial port connector and many of Cydia’s console packages is a godsend for an IT worker: it’s an entire computer that you can just whip out of your pocket in a pinch to do some mainframe troubleshooting.
Fantastic. Now if only your could use this serial port hack to sync through iTunes.
If you’re the type who likes to do all of your shopping in one place, good news: Target stores have confirmed that starting on November 7th, the Big Bullseye will be selling the iPhone.
The Sesame Street Workshop’s charming take on Apple’s “There’s An App For That Campaign” and featuring the so-called “iPogo” is plenty cute, but after watching the whole thing, does anyone else think that the idea of a pogo stick with knives built into the handle might not entirely be child-friendly?
If you use a pair of Monster brand headphones using Apple’s Remote and Mic technology and if you’ve been noticing your iPhone or iPad fritzing out on you when they’re plugged in, don’t worry: it’s not in your imagination and you haven’t just gotten a dud pair. There’s an issue with Monster cans, and Cupertino is very aware of it.
It seems that Google and Apple might be in another bidding war… this time to acquire BOKU, a payment startup which aims to bring “bank-grade payments technology” to mobile gadgets like the iPhone or iPad.
