Boy! Come the iPhone 4 launch date of June 24th, which electronics store do you suppose is going to have the biggest line snaking out the door? Microsoft’s new store opening in San Diego’s Fashion Valley Mall selling an exciting array of obsolete Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphones, or the Apple Store selling brand new iPhone 4s just four blocks away?
The MacBook Air is a beautiful machine, but with a puny hard drive, no optical drive and one USB port, sometimes its paucity of ports and specs can put the pinch on you.
The Apricorn Aegis NetDock aims to help you supplement your MacBook Air’s specs by umbilicaling your USB port to an attractive little box that merges four USB ports (two of them powered), a dual-layer DVD burner and a 500GB hard drive (or, if you prefer, an empty 2.5-inch SATA hard drive enclosure).
It’s pretty tiny, too. The Apricon Aegis NetDock is only 6.25 x 5.75 x 2.125 inches. The only real problem is it requires a power cord, but powering all of this off of a single USB port is a bit much.
The Aegis Netdock costs $189, or just $89 if you supply your own hard drive.
If you’re a developer itching to deploy any one of iOS 4’s 1500+ new APIs, good news: Apple has started accepting iOS 4 apps for submission.
There’s not much more to say, except for a personal plea to developers to get a move-on, since I want some multitasking apps to test come June 21st. And if you’re the developer of Skype or Reeder, that goes double for you.
People are making a big deal about this report from Chinese news site ON.CC, in which they assert that the financial impact of Foxconn’s recent pay raises (a direct response to the dozen-odd suicides of workers this year) will cause the Taiwan-based contract manufacture to shutter its mainland China factories and lay-off up to 800,000 Chinese workers.
Uh, guys. Maybe we’re wrong, but didn’t we already talk about this? The ON.CC piece seems to be clearly referring to the recent shareholder meeting in which Foxconn announced plans to open a new automated facility in either Taiwan or Vietnam, and to offload some of the immediate work from its Chinese facilities to Vietnam as a counter-measure against the very worker stress that is prompting the Foxconn suicide problem.
Foxconn was explicit at that meeting that this was just workload lightening to give their Chinese workers a room to breathe. They’re not shuttering Shenzhen! They’re not laying off anyone… at least, in the immediate future. It’s just a badly translated Google page with a factually incorrect interpretation of what was discussed at the meeting. Or am I missing something here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmZkrdhOjeQ
What exactly happened to cause the WWDC WiFi Meltdown during Steve Jobs’ keynote? Does Apple just not know how to set up a Time Capsule or what?
As it turns out, the problem was just what Apple said it was: too many 3G and MiFi devices. Over on the Future Tense blog, Glenn Fleishman has a very clear explanation of what happened and why.
A sensationally-titled piece over at Gadget Lab posted on Wednesday asserted that Jobs’ claims about the iPhone 4’s Retina Display being so dense that individual pixels were unobservable to the naked eye was “false marketing.”
Not so, says the Bad Astronomer himself, Phill Platt, who uses what he knows about optics and resolution from his years spent calibrating cameras aboard Hubble to prove that Jobs’ (mostly) told the truth when it comes to how the iPhone 4’s display looks from twelve inches away.
On Monday, Apple made a big deal about exactly how tough the new iPhone 4 glass was, bending it almost thirty degrees on stage without a sliver of a crack webbing across the glass.
Pretty impressive! Too bad you can’t even drop an iPhone 4 from waist height onto the ground without it shattering, finds repair shop iFixYourI (who don’t have an iPhone 4, but do already have replacement parts).
Where’s the blame, according to iFixYourI? The bezel. Previous iPhones had counter-sunk glass flush with the bezel, while the iPhone 4’s glass actually extrudes a little bit, so the bezel can’t protect it.
iFixYourI says design flaw. Possibly, but as a commenter points out below, it’s worth noting that a hollow iPhone 4 (as we have here) is going to have glass more vulnerable to drops than one supported by an interior hardware architecture. Furthermore, Apple seems aware of just this vulnerability: their new cases seem almost sole-mindedly designed around eliminating the exact sort of shock impact being discussed here.
Either way? Whether your fingers exude butter or not, you’ll probably want one of Apple’s new iPhone 4 bumpers. Probably the pink one, too.
Looking for a stylish and affordable way to hook your iPhone or iPod to your 50-inch plasma? Konnet Technology has just unveiled its new, $49.95 ReflexDock Pro, which looks like a pretty fantastic tool for the job.
In addition to piping out your audio and video to a larger screen thanks to included AV Out cables, the ReflexDock Pro also will charge your iPhone. It even includes features like Advanced Sound Reflection, designed to enhance audio and speaker quality when the iPod or iPhone is docked. And yes, Virginia, it’s iPhone 4 compatible.
My only criticism is actually the image Konnet is choosing to use to showcase their product. Sure, it’s a pretty accurate appraisal of how an iPhone-compressed video will look when smeared across a 50-inch plasma without the proper encoding, but creative license and all.
According to Slashgear, the ReflexDock Pro should be available soon on Amazon.
According to a new report by Reuters citing three inside sources, everyone’s favorite television streaming service Hulu is preparing a subscription-based service that will be available on numerous non-PC devices, with the iPad and Xbox 360 prominently named.
Other than that, there’s little information, but rumors in the past have indicated that a premium Hulu service would be subscription-based and get you access to a complete library of older content, as opposed to free Hulu’s library of newer episodes and randoms.
Since Hulu hasn’t announced anything at this week’s WWDC, if the rumor is true, it’s likely that they will announce their plans for the Xbox 360 console at next week’s E3 gaming expo.
The question is: Netflix is already available for the iPad, and it already offers a lot of old television shows available for streaming. Is there room for another subscription-based service on the iPad streaming much of the same content?
A few days after Tweetie for Mac was named a winner in Ars Technica’s design awards for best Mac OS X software, Tweetie and Twitter for iPhone developer Loren Brichter has said that an iPad version is in the works… and he soon plans to get back into the update cycle for Tweetie for Mac as well.
Yesterday, we posted an iBook that had been hollowed out and modded into a working iPad keyboard dock.
Today? The same concept, but accomplished far more elegantly with a vintage Mac Classic… complete with a custom MacOS desktop to keep things appropriately retro.
AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui has responded to the recent change in the iOS developer agreement which precludes ad companies owned by Apple competitors in the smartphone arena from collecting the same user statistics available to third-party ad agencies and Apple’s own iAd.
Not so surprising? He’s not thrilled about it.
Last week, as Valve released the Half-Life 2 games to Steam for Mac, hey noted on their forums that the OS X port of their frenetically cartoonish team multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 needed a little more time to bake.
Now, in the least oblique hint ever, Valve teased last night that Team Fortress 2 will be available on the Mac later today.
Big things are happening RIGHT NOW at Valve. Things involving cultivated tree-fruit. BIG things. Things that rhyme with “grapple.” Things that rhyme with “Speem Gortress zmavailable on the Babac.”
If the last few weeks’ Steam for Mac releases are anything to go by, Team Fortress 2 should debut on the Mac at a roughly 30% discount to entice new players.
I can not even tell you how much I’m looking forward to this. Any interest in a Cult of Mac Team Fortress 2 match this weekend? It’ll give some of you the long craved-for opportunity to smash the back of my head into jelly with an aluminum baseball bat while simultaneously shooting me with a bazooka!
Up to 114,000 iPad owners have had their privacy breached thanks to a snafu on the part of AT&T that ultimately (but inadvertently) traded user convenience for security.
The vulnerability was discovered by researchers at Goatse security, who were able to write a script that harvested iPad 3G owners’ ICC-IDs (or integrated circuit card identifier, used to identify SIM cards to a network) and email addresses through the exploitation of a hole on AT&T’s website.
iPhone and iPod speaker docks are usually interchangeably designed affairs, which is what makes the brightly colored iCrystal speaker from Speakal such a breath of fresh air: the dock itself is a lovely Pantone hue of red (black or white are also an option), connected to two alien eggs breaking open to reveal the day-glo, audiophonic yolk: the iCrystal’s pulsating speaker pods, which promise to deliver 360 degrees of sound.
The iCrystal runs on AA batteries, and can connect to televisions, stereo systems or non-Apple MP3 players through a 3.5mm auxiliary input jack. The iCrystal plays and charges all iPods and iPhones to date, although it’s unknown if there’s anything preventing it from similarly docking an iPhone 4.
The iCrystal is available now from Speakal’s website for just $79.99.
If you’re looking for some new external storage to rock your Mac, Western Digital has just announced some new drives specifically tailored for Mac Heads.
Coming in flavors of one and two terabytes, the My Book Studio LX line come in brushed aluminum cases which, if you squint, kinda-sorta match the Ive aesthetic.
The drives come with both FireWire 800 and USB 2.0, and are available for $199 and $299 for the 1TB and 2TB models, respectively. They’re available now.
Providing you’ve got the wherewithal to jailbreak your iPad, Apple’s tablet makes a fine SNES emulator, thanks to SNED HD for iPad, which looks absolutely amazing at the iPad’s 768p resolution. Even better, you can pair it with the ControlPad app for iPhone for more convenient controlling with your iPad docked or balanced on your knees.
Foxconn’s recent move to more than doubling the salaries of their factory workers was a good first step in stopping the cycle of suicides that has plagues the Chinese electronics manufacturer over the past six months… but the gesture was a bit muted by Foxconn’s policy of compensating the families of suicide victims by almost ten years’ salary. It incentivized self-murder, and the cash payout can be traced as the reason of at least one jumper’s death.
Yesterday, in a wise move announced at their annual shareholder meeting, Foxconn announced they would be discontinuing the compensation scheme. It’s about time, although Foxconn themselves were reluctant to lay the blame on the feet of their compensation scheme: instead, they predictably blamed the media for inspiring copycats.
At the same meeting, the company also announced that it will be relocating a good chunk of their manufacturing work, largely due to the worsened earnings forecast prompted by their recent wage increases. Basically, it sounds like Foxconn — sick of employees and their easily frayed psyches getting in the way of their bottom line — want to do what they can to get rid of them entirely: they plan to build a fully automated facility in either Taiwan or Vietnam.
In the meantime, Foxconn will be shifting some orders to Vietnam to reduce workload in their Chinese factories, although this move supposedly won’t result in any layoffs.
Psst. We’re not going to tell you where to get it, but if you happen to have some seedier connections, we can tell you that yesterday’s Gold Master Build of iOS 4 works on any iPhone or iPod Touch, whether or not its UDID has already been reported to the dev center. That means, if you know where you’re looking, you can install iOS 4 on your device right now… provided your device is a 3G, 3GS or second or third gen iPod Touch. Make sure to grab the right IPSW for your device.
Better? If you’ve got a 3Gs, you can already jailbreak it, although we recommend being cautious and if you don’t know what you’re doing, wait until the Dev Team releases the new 4.0 compatible PwnageTool… which they swear should be available within the month.
With the launch of Apple’s own iAd network imminent, Cupertino has chosen to clarify its position in regards to third-party advertisers: app developers are still allowed to pass on certain non-device data to ad companies besides iAd, but you need Apple’s explicit permission to do so… and you definitely can’t do it if the ad company in question is owned by Google.
As found in the developer terms’ revised section 3.3.9, Apple says that developers can pass on certain kinds of data like user location or UDID to Apple-approved third-party companies. They then explicitly say that the companies receiving the data will never be approved if they are owned or affiliated with developers or distributors of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or “development environments other than Apple.”
In other words? A big cock block to Google-owned AdMob. The big question is this: can Apple really avoid an advertising anti-trust case by only excluding advertising megaliths like Google from collecting the same data as the smaller advertising companies allowed to freely play in the iOS walled garden?
This antique iBook has been hollowed out and transformed into a working iPad keyboard dock, with a new Apple aluminum keyboard replacing the iBook’s and the iPad itself nuzzled into the iBook’s LCD display hollow, connected together through the umbilical of the official iPad Camera Connection Kit.
This user hack is a bit of a kludge, but we don’t care: we love it anyway. Sure, it can’t close without scratching the iPad’s display, and it would be even cooler if the iPad charged when the iBook was plugged into the wall socket. It reminds us of Lenovo’s now-cancelled Ideapad U1 hybrid tablet/notebook, and makes us wistful for the day Cupertino itself will try to merge the iPad with the MacBook into a single iBook-like device. We can dream!
We mentioned earlier today that the secret behind the iPhone 4’s Retina Display isn’t just the quadruple pixel density over the iPhone 3Gs, but Apple’s amazing new process that completely eliminates empty space between the LCD and touchscreen, resulting in a display that looks like the pixels have been painted directly on the glass.
Want to see what we’re talking about? The above comparison shot comes from Engadget and compares the iPhone 4’s Retina Display with one of the previously cited industry bests, the HTC Evo 4G’s display.
Granted, the HTC Evo 4G is throwing 38% less pixels at the display than Apple, but even so: look at how those app icons are basically throbbing through the iPhone’s glass, while the Evo 4G’s display looks like it has been submerged in a thin layer of dirty water.
Cupertino’s got a lot of flack for their prudish stance on adult-oriented applications on the App Store, with Steve Jobs himself famously saying that if revolutions are about freedom, than the iPad is revolutionary because of its freedom from porn.
Regardless about how you may feel about Apple censoring the content an adult can consume on a device that he owns, though, at least Apple’s not going to be alone in ridding their app marketplace of all adult content: Microsoft plans to do the same thing with their Windows Phone 7 Marketplace when it launches later in the year.
Steve Jobs himself described AT&T’s early update pricing for the iPhone 4 as “generous,” and generous it is — suspiciously so. How generous?
Well, if you qualify for an upgrade before December 31st, the 16GB iPhone 4 will cost you just $199 while the 32GB model will cost you $299. Things get a lot steeper if your upgrade is after the start of 2011, though, with prices jumping to $399 and $499, respectively. Don’t want to sign a new contract, but still want an iPhone 4? Prepare to pay $599 to $699.
Those who have had the luck to play with an iPhone 4 before it’s official June 24th launch have all confirmed that the new handset’s quadruple-density Pixel Display is just as gorgeous as Apple is boasting.
But over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber points out another reason the iPhone 4’s display is so bright, crisp and lurid: a new production process that eliminates the space between the LCD and the touchscreen.