John Brownlee - page 203

With it’s sleek minimalism of line, pearly white hue and surrounding belt of pale wood, Studio Conran’s latest iPhone and iPod dock could be either the speaker dock your Danish-design living room has been waiting for… or the far louder doppleganger of your Brookstone humidifier.

Designed (or at least branded) by famous English designer, retailer and writer Sir Terence Conran, his eponymous speaker dock boasts two fifteen watt stereo speakers, a large volume knob on the side and a streamlined niche to dock its sexy remote.

Recent reports coming out of China that Intel might not have much more time as the exclusive supplier of 3G chipsets for the iPhone and iPad wouldn’t be reason to start expecting a new iPhone coming to a Verizon outlet near you by themselves, but when those reports also peg Qualcomm as Intel’s baseband successor and the possibility of a CDMA iPhone (and iPad!) starts looking a lot more plausible.

If you purchased a MacBook Pro between May 2007 and September 2008 and subsequently had problems with the wonky GeForce 8600M graphic chip inside, NVIDIA has just opted to settle a class-action lawsuit on your behalf.

Back in May, Apple passed Microsoft as the most valuable technology company in the world based upon market capitalization, but the lead was slim, putting Microsoft just $2.94 billion down of Apple’s $222.12 billion. What’s the race look like now?

Well, here’s a hint: since May, Apple has released a new AppleTV, iPhone and iPod Touch while Microsoft has released… nothing. No surprise then that Apple’s now increased its lead over Microsoft to an astonishing $49.53 billion. Apple is now worth $263.75 billion… making it only $52.47 billion shy of displacing Exxon as the most valuable American company.

Curiously, there’s one number that Apple is behind on: patents. In the past eight years, Apple has secured only 1,033 patents, while Microsoft has gone on the offensive, racking up over 8,000 in five years alone. Even Dell has more patents than Apple. If only number of patents alone was an accurate measure of innovation, Dell stock would be a good investment right now.

This is gorgeous.

Sherwood + Meister’s Block 22 iPad stand is carved fro a block of kiln-dried Ipê, lending it a resilient and waterproof build and a handsome natural patina, which in the Block 22’s cases is supplemented with a light finish.

The stand aspect of the Block 22 works about how you’d expect: you just slot your tablet into the 22-degree notch in either portrait or landscape. What I like more though is the round bowl in the back to hold ear buds, connector cable or car keys: it’s a subtle flourish, but an incredibly useful one.

This is just incredibly handsome design, but it’s the price that’s the handsomest single aspect of the Block 22: it’ll only cost you a mere $35.

[via Gadget Lab]

Halloween’s coming up, and I know what you’re thinking: “What costume can I wear that will also accommodate me pocket room enough to carry around my iPhone with me without delving into the more odious choice of nature’s pocket to store my cherished handset?”

Don’t sweat it: we’ve got you covered. Just go as Batman this year and pick yourself up this TDK Batman Utility Pouch, complete with a functional iPhone holster.

Made from cowhide leather, the belt comes with a bronze metal finish, chrome studs and adjustable buckle; only 750 will be made, with each one costing $149. Don’t expect veracity for your money, though. Shamefully, the smartphone Batman uses in the Dark Knight is indisputably a Nokia, not an iPhone.

[via Chipchick]

Running iOS on another device would be a damn intimidating undertaking without the source code, but theoretically, there’s nothing necessarily stopping you from running another operating system on your iPhone or iPad. It’s all ARM architecture, after all. Heck, we’ve even already seen Android running on a jailbroken iPhone, but it just raised the most obvious point: if you can run iOS on your device, why would you want to run another operating system on it?

Like many questions in the hacking scene, it all comes down to “because it’s there,” an answer which probably also explains the image above: Google’s Chromium operating system running on an iPad. The port was accomplished by this guy, who claims that instructions on how to install Chromium to (presumably jailbroken) iPads will soon follow, albeit with some “major caveats.” Like the major caveat of infecting your tablet with an inferior operating system, for instance?

Although the iPhone 4 is superior hardware to even the latest iPod Touch, the fourth-gen Touch does have a leg up on its sibling in at least one area: making FaceTime calls. While the iPod Touch’s FaceTime app makes it easy to initiate video calls through its built-in app, the iPhone makes you place a voice call first.

FaceNow levels the playing field between the fourth-generation iPod Touch and iPhone 4. It’s simplicity itself. Just open up the application, add a contact from your address book and you’re ready to make a FaceTime video call to them: the app will at that point bypass all the usual steps and just make a straight video connection, no voice call required.

Interested? FaceNow is available on the App Store right now, for the attractive price of jack squat.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmF5_b40swc

I type over one hundred words per minute, and by and large, they are the words zombies taught me to type thanks to the fantastic 1999 title, Typing of the Dead, in which wave after wave of flesh eating zombies are splattered into gibs not by the rapid fire staccato of a machine gun, but by quickly typing words like ‘daffodil’ and ‘snapdragon.’

For years, I’ve been waiting for Sega to port Typing of the Dead to iOS to help me do for my texting what I once did for my typing… to no avail. But Screw Attack’s tribute title Texting of the Bread might fill the same void with twice as much cuteness: it takes the central gameplay of Typing of the Dead, adjusts it to fit the iPhone’s soft keyboard and changes the villains to bloodthirsty ginger bread men.

If you’re interested in knowing more, Touch Arcade has posted a thorough review of the game here. Texting of the Bread can be downloaded now on iTunes for just $1.99.

As the AppleTV slides through mail slots throughout the country, enterprising hackers are already hard at work plumbing the secrets of the firmware. They’ve already confirmed that the new AppleTV runs on iOS, and even spotted secret reference to two previously unseen iPhone models, and now we have two more tidbits to ponder.

The first is reference within the AppleTV’s IPSW to the future possibility of Facetime support.

Well, it looks like Apple finally saw fit to let that one engineer responsible for it get back to work: after months of ignoring the iPad and iPhone 4’s increased resolution, the official Remote.app for iOS has finally been updated.

It’s a hell of an update, too. Obviously, Remote now runs in native resolution on the iPad and on Retina Display devices like the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch… but it looks particularly good on the iPad, where the larger display is taken advantage of to deliver an aesthetic remarkably similar to iTunes in portrait mode.

Other new additions include a new more iTunes 10 like icon, compatibility with AirPlay, support for Shared Libraries on iTunes and the new Apple TV and numerous bug and compatibility fixes. As always, you can download Remote for free on the App Store.

If you bought your Mac Pro from between August 2006 and January 2008 and if you’ve noticed your video acting wonky, good news: Apple has heard your plaintive cries and posted a support document acknowledging an issue with that computer’s ATI X1900 XT graphics card.

The iPhone 4 is pretty indisputably the coolest phone you can own, but how cool is it objectively? Not as cool as Aston Martin, apparently: the British luxury sports car manufacturer just smashed its grill into the iPhone and knocked it out of the number one spot as the coolest product around.

Ever since Apple finally published their long-requested App Store Review Guidelines, we’ve been seeing a lot of reversals in previously unbendable policies, with no example of that phenomena being more striking than Apple’s decision to let third-party Google Voice apps back on the App Store.

So far, though, Google’s own official Voice client has yet to be republished to the App Store. Things are looking good, though, that Google Voice for iOS may once again be on its way, with sources telling Techcrunch that Google has already submitted the application to Cupertino.

As I once discovered through unfortunate and unspeakable accident, iPods do not react well when they are dropped in the drink… or, in my case, the toilet. Oh, sure, the flash memory can technically be dunked and will function again as long as it doesn’t short out, but the other electronics aren’t nearly as resilient to wetness without shorting.

That can make the iPod a bad fit not just for clumsy urinators, but more importantly for swimmers. Luckily, there’s H20 Audio to the rescue, a company that specializes in headphones and cases for people who want to listen to tunes while they do laps. They’ve just released the Amphibx Grip for the new iPod nano or Shuffle: a completely watertight case that is fully submersible up to twelve feet thanks to their patented LatchTight locking closure. You can even use the nano’s touchscreen while in the pool through the pane.

The Amphibx Grip is available now directly from H20 Audio and costs $59.99. You can use your own headphones, if you’ve got a waterproof pair, but if you want H20’s own, they’ll cost you another $59.99.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoX1Q8ym2J8&feature=player_embedded

If you’ve just picked up a brand new iPod Touch or you bought an iPhone 4 after the update to iOS 4.1 and are eager to jailbreak, you’re probably looking forward to the SHAtter exploit, which — once rolled out — will not only allow any current iOS device to be hacked, but which can’t be patched by Apple through software.

We’re still waiting for an end-user jailbreak using SHAtter to release us from the shackles of iOS 4.0.2 and above, but the Dev Team just released the above proof of concept video, showing how the SHAtter explot baked into a beta version of PwnageTool was enough to allow them to load their custom IPSW onto a fourth-generation iPod Touch.

Sennheiser is a stalwart brand in consumer headphones, but their latest range will be of specific interest to iPhone or iPod Touch users looking for excellent audio quality coupled with hands-free or Voice Control functionality.

In a headphone range spread across the Sennheiser MM 70i, IE 8i, PX 100-IIi, PX 200-IIi, HD 218i and HD 238i models, each pair of Sennheiser’s latest cans comes with an in-line microphone and remote control.

If you’ve been one of the many people who has expected Apple to drop Google as the default search engine in iOS due to the escalating rivalry between the iPhone and Android handsets, think again. According to Business Insider, Apple and Google have just agreed to extend the deal that makes Google search reign supreme on iOS devices.

The news comes from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who revealed the extension in a recent interview with Charlie Rose.

This week’s Apple patent news comes out of China, where a couple of new iPad designs have been discovered in line drawing, describing an iPad with dual dock connectors and an iPad with a smart bezel button.

Usually when we write about jailbreaking iPods here at Cult of Mac, we’re specifically talking about hacking your iPhone or iPod Touch to be able to run unsigned code… not iPods that are actually able to perform jailbreaks on other devices. That makes this story somewhat unique, because if you have an iPod Classic and a PlayStation 3, you can now use the former to perform a jailbreak on the latter.

The first PlayStation 3 jailbreaking solution was discovered earlier this month, and allows devices that can connect to a PS3 through the console’s USB port to permanently hack the device to run unsigned code. What’s so interesting about this jailbreak solution is that a wide range of devices can perform the hack, from a USB stick to an official controller to a Ti-84 calculator.

The latest variation of this jailbreak uses the iPod Classic family combined with the Rockbox open source media firmware. Right now, the jailbreak only works using select generations of the iPod Nano and iPod Classic, but given Rockbox’s expandable nature, we wouldn’t be surprised to see support creep to other clickwheel iPods — and media players support by Rockbox — sooner rather than later.

About a month ahead of America and Europe, New Zealand clocks fall an hour back when they switch to Daylight Savings Time on the last Sunday of September. Apparently, though, New Zealand iPads and iPhones are proving a tad overzealous when it comes to falling back this year: numerous iOS users are reporting that since yesterday’s switch, their alarms are going off an hour early. Given that Kiwis were already having to wake up an hour earlier than they were used to, that’s quite a rude awakening.

China wasn’t the only country to get the iPhone 4 this weekend. Denizens of both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also got their hands on Cupertino’s latest handset, packed with all the features separating it from its predecessor the 3GS save one: FaceTime.

According to The National, iPhone 4s sold through UAE carriers Etisalat and du as well as those sold by Vodafone in Qatar are missing the FaceTime software, although the forward-facing camera is obviously still there. According to the carriers, they’ve had no hand in stripping the video chat feature out, and they are petitioning Apple to reinstate Facetime soon.

Way back before the iPad, there was the HTC Shift, a 7-inch UMPC with a 1024 x 600 touchscreen, a full QWERTY keyboard, EVDO data functionality and an 800MHz Intel A110 CPU. For mobility buffs, it was then what today’s tablets are to them now, but it cost an arm and a leg at $1,500. Even worse? It ran Windows. Vista. That alone was enough to drop the ‘f’ from the product’s name.

These days, you can probably pick up an HTC Shift pretty cheap on eBay, and while there’s still little to recommend it over an iPad (or, heck, even the Galaxy Tab) it turns out that the diminutive little UMPC is Hackintoshable, with OS X Leopard running pretty much flawlessly on it, with the exceptions of WiFi and the fingerprint reader.

If for whatever reason you’ve got a Shift around, or find yourself morbidly curious enough to pick one up cheap on eBay to make yourself one of the tiniest Hackintoshes around, you can find the instructions over on the XNA Developers forum.

After a long period of scuttlebutt, the Associate Press is now reporting that Target will start selling Apple’s iPad.

Starting October 3rd, Target stores around the country will stock all three versions of the WiFi-only iPad, and apparently (as well as mysteriously) a single flavor of the 3G model, at least according to numerous media reports.

When Apple first unveiled the iPad earlier this year, my dirty secret was that I was less excited about the tablet itself — which innerly I dismissed as just a big iPod Touch — than I was about finally having a use for the gorgeously vintage leather brown courier bag I had picked up at the local flea market months previous for a song, and agonized ever since over something to do with.

Over time, my allegiances have shifted: I love everything about my iPad with a complete passion, where as my bag has become a hated symbol of love crippled by broken promises, like a woman you wait until your wedding night for whose legs fall off mid-coitus. That metaphor isn’t actually as utterly insane as you might think, because my once treasured courier bag’s clasps continuously rip off under the weight of the bag’s contents, and no matter how I might reaffix them, they just won’t stay on.

Meet the iPad courier bag that is going to get me to chuck my old one in the garbage: the Cobra Courier XS, a sleek and sultry bag crafted from black 1680 dernier ballistic nylon and trimmed with the most supple of Nappa leather. Gentlement, this is the kind of bag you buy an iPad for, and I’m even happy with its price… a respectable $145.