John Brownlee - page 227

In response to the slate of employee suicides which has rocked Foxconn over the last six months, it is now being reported that the electronics manufacturing giant is now offering a 66% performance-based pay rise to their workers… built on top of the previous thirty percent pay increase.

Of course, being a performance-based pay raise, that gives Foxconn license to skimp. To be eligible, workers must pass a three month performance review. That gives Foxconn the ability to arbitrarily hold it back from the majority of workers.

Still, if Foxconn does go through with the move, and awards the pay raise fairly, it’ll be a huge improvement that will see the salary of the average Foxconn employee jump from $132 to $292 a month.

According to French blog Mac Generation, we can all expect Safari 5 to be unveiled at WWDC in just a handful of hours.

Rumor? Sure. But they’ve got a convincing looking changelog, boasting a 25% improvement in JavaScript performance, a new Safari RSS Reader which will probably be too simplistic for serious feed junkies, more than twelve new HTML5 features, hardware acceleration in Windows and the option to add Bing as your default Search engine. It also looks like Apple is changing Safari’s address field to function more like Firefox’s Awesome Bar.

At today’s WWDC, the next iPhone might not be the only things we see: Engadget has photos of what looks to be an entirely new input device: a Magic Trackpad.

The Magic Trackpad is essentially a giant, Bluetooth-connected multitouch trackpad for Macs, and will not only support all of the functionality of a MacBook Pro touchpad or Magic Mouse, but apparently handwriting recognition to boot. If that’s the case, I imagine it could function pretty handily in Photoshop as well.

I’ll grab this in a heart beat if the price is reasonable. For most of my desktop work on my iMac, I find the Magic Mouse wanting compared to my MacBook Pro’s excellent trackpad, and it’s atrocious for gaming. With the Magic Trackpad, I could finally have the big trackpad I’ve always wanted for my desktop, transforming it when needed into a mousepad and supplementing it with an excellent third-party gaming mouse.

Confused by which combination of keypresses triggers your favorite shortcut? What about trying to remember which arcane spell of glyphs describes that shortcut in Mac terminology?

There’s a site for that… or, at least, there will be, when its owner gets finished with it. Keyonary is an online directory of keyboard shortcuts . Using the search bar, you simply type in the shortcut you’d like to find and Keyonary will return it to you.

To be honest, the site’s pretty rough right now, and while the presentation is slick, the owner’s entering all these shortcuts in by hand… which means that while Photoshop and OS X are fairly well covered by Keyonary, there’s a lot of shortcuts for other popular Mac apps still to be filled.

Still, we wanted to point Keyonary out… not because of what it is now, but what we hope a little encouragement will allow it to become: an I Use This for user-submitted shortcuts to all your favorite Mac applications.

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The classic German board game Carcassone has finally come to the iPhone with an official port including original artwork, eight different AI players, a cool looking solitaire mode and Internet multiplayer with push notifications.

From the App Store description: “Build a medieval landscape, tile by tile, claim landmarks with your followers and score points. As a winner of the prestigious “Spiel des Jahres” award in 2001, the game allows for a plethora of play styles and strategies.”

The game’s iPhone-only for now, but a universal iPad version is imminent.

I’ve never played Carcassone but it is a game much beloved by my board-gaming friends. I’ve been eager to get my teeth into this one.

Carcassone can be purchased on the App Store now for just $4.99

Samsung is getting into the tablet game with their own would-be iPad killer, but unlike many other Atom-based netbooks, Samsung has a secret weapon: an A4-like mobile CPU created by (now Apple owned) Intrinsity, the Hummingbird S5PC110.

A new report by the Hong Kong based advocacy group SACOM (Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior) says that an eleventh employee has died at Foxconn.

Unlike the last ten deaths, though, the latest reported death wasn’t a suicide. Instead, 27 year old Foxconn employee Yan Li died on May 27th after a continuous 34 hour working shift. Allegedly, Yan —who worked night shifts at Foxconn from 200 — literally worked himself to death.

Yesteday, an AT&T spokesperson put the kibosh on any possibility of using the iPhone’s new tethering abilities to drive your iPad.

“It won’t be possible to tether the iPhone to the iPad to share Internet access,” an AT&T spokesperson bluntly said.

The usual hue and cry against AT&T resulted, but now, AT&T is clarifying matters, saying they don’t have any problem with iPads and iPhones tethered together in conjoined bliss. Rather, they blame Apple.

“You’ll need to speak with Apple. There is no AT&T policy around tethering and the iPad,” a spokesperson told Gizmodo.

Well, that’s certainly good news if true. I can’t think of any reason Apple wouldn’t allow this if their network partners are onboard. Hopefully, then, iPad-to-iPhone tethering is something we’ll see in iPhone OS 4.0.

Our favorite iPhone newsreader app, the wonderfully minimal and elegant Reeder, is finally getting a long overdue iPad version.

In fact, it’s undergoing the App Store approval process as we speak… and as a first look of what to expect, Techcrunch posted some gorgeous shots of what the iPad Reeder app will look like, which merges Reeders existing muted and clean aesthetic (Instapaper for feeds is a good comparison) with functionality like pinching to quick-look at a stack of feeds:

As an indirect response to Adobe’s own We campaign, Apple has unveiled a wonderful new sandbox playground advocating HTML5, which allows users to play around and do a number of things in their browsers that they might not even know HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can do.

It’s a lot of fun as a playground, and certainly shows what HTML5 can do. The only problem? It’s only viewable on Safari: try to run it on any other HTML5-capable browser and you get a message prompting you to download Apple’s own browser.

We’ve been hearing tell of an HDMI-equipped Mac Mini for awhile now, with past reports indicating that prototype Mac Minis spotted by Apple employees had their DVI port replaced with HDMI, thanks to the inclusion of NVIDIA’s MPC89 CPU.

Now Apple Insider is reporting that they’ve heard from four different source who claim that Apple is having Mac Mini supply shortages… usually a “tell” for when a new model is approaching.

Although my affinity for Apple’s iDevices has long made switching an impossibility, I’ve long loved DVD Jon’s DoubleTwist application, a wonderful and streamlined iTunes-replacing program that allows you to sync your music or video library to pretty much any device under the sun.

Today, DoubleTwist got even better. Although the program has long synced to Android phones, the DoubleTwist Player, which finally gives Android what its been sorely lacking: a killer media player app. Even better, it offers some degree of interoperability with iTunes, and allow you to import your iTunes playlist, ratings and playcounts.

It’s free for a limited time, and finally brings an Apple-like media experience to Android phones. The only limitation is the lack of a widget allowing you to control your media playback from the homescreen, although it’s promised soon.

[via Gadget Lab]

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Maker of diabolically intricate pixel-art extrordinaire, the phenomenal eBoy has just released his first iPhone App. Called FixPix, it’s a simple, slightly nauseating but completely addictive puzzle game: you use your iPhone’s accelerometer to tilt cut-out portions of an image back and forth until they perfectly line up, bringing you to the next stage. You can grab it now for only $2.

Every few months, Mac security firm Intego pops up, waves their arms hysterically around and screams that the OS X sky is falling, having identified new malware in the wild. Rinse, repeat.

Their latest report is no different: Intego has identified 30 screensavers developed by a company called 7art and one app called Mishinc FLV to MP3 that are infected with a spyware program called OSX/OpinionSpy.

According to Apple Insider, Apple has started to cull programs on the App Store that offer Dashboard-like widgets to the user.

The most tangible evidence of the purge comes from Developer Russell Ivanovic, whose MyFrame app was removed by Apple for including widget support.

Going straight to Steve Jobs, Ivanovic received this reply: “”We are not allowing apps that create their own desktops. Sorry.”

Apple Insider speculates that this might be preparation work for Apple to introduce their own widgets in iPhone OS 4.0, although surely we’d have seen some evidence of that in beta form by now.

An equally valid reason Apple may be shutting dashboard apps down is because of their strict ban against interpretive code, which is essentially what a widget is.

When you write an email to Steve Jobs, he’ll sometimes write you back a letter with the answers to your questions. “>Write a letter to AT&T CEO Randall L. Stephenson, though, and what do you get? A threat of a cease-and-desist, as Girogio Galante found out.

The exchange was prompted by a slightly miffed but non-threatening email to Stephenson in regards to AT&T’s new data rates, in which Galante threatened to leave AT&T for Sprint. His email closed with the line: “Please don’t have one of your $12/hour “Executive Relations” college students call me – I’ve found them to be generally poorly informed… and they have little  authority to do anything sensible.”

Yet it was one of those very same “$12/Hour ‘Executive Relations’ college students” who called Giorgio. His name was Brent, and after calling Giorgio to “thank him” for the feedback, but while this “college student” may not have been authorized to do anything “sensible,” he was apparently authorized to threaten Galante with legal action if he ever dared to email AT&T’s CEO again.

Could anything better exemplify AT&T’s total contempt for their customers? If you write Steve Jobs, you might have a heated exchange with him, but at least he’s listening. Just attempting to communicate with AT&T, though, is enough to get you potentially sued. What dicks.

In one of the more mysterious statements of the day, HP chief Mark Hurd claims that his company didn’t buy Palm and its webOS operating system to enter the smartphone business, but rather to drive “small form factor web-connected devices.” You know. Tablets and MIDs.

Hurd claimed that HP had no interest in spending “billions of dolllars” trying to get into the smartphone business. “That doesn’t in any way make any sense.”

Uh, really? As Apple has amply proven with the iPhone and iPad, the future of computing is mobile. Whoever controls most of the operating system space in the mobile arena is going to profit big time: this is exactly the reason why Google is licensing their Android operating system for free.

But in actuality, the reason mobile computing is the future isn’t because you can make telephone calls or text messages on mobile devices: that’s just the reason that gets them initially into people’s pockets. It’s mobile internet that’s the future, and someday, our smartphones are probably going to be just tiny, 3G-capable tablets with VoIP capabilities that we keep in our pockets.

While Apple and Google battle it out in the smartphone arena, perhaps HP is playing it smart after all, and trying to position itself to be ready to pounce in the post-smartphone future which iPhone and Android create.

Less than a week after its long overdue update allowing VoIP calls over the iPhone’s 3G connection, nearly five million people have already downloaded the latest update to the popular Skype App from iTunes.

Of course, that’s five million people who are going to go absolutely bonkers when Skype starts inexplicably charging for 3G calls at the beginning of next year.

According to Skype, they are charging to make sure they can maintain quality on Skype-to-Skype calls, but I can’t help but wonder if the long delay in bringing 3G calls to Skype was a roadblock placed by AT&T, who — rightly — see a 3G capable Skype as a threat ti their minutes business… especially once iPhone OS 4.0 comes around and enables VoIP multi-trasking.

Iomega has just released a new slate of eGo portable external hard drives, and at least a couple happily have support for Apple’s own Firewire standard.

The first Mac-friendly eGo is the 1TB eGo BlackBelt Mac Edition, which has both FireWire 400.800 and USB 2.0 connections, as well as Iomega Drop Guard protection and a Power Grip band around the casing which will protect your data against falls of up to seven feet. It’s a pricy drive, though, at $229.99.

Iomega’s second Mac-happy eGo is the Mac Edition eGo Desktop Hard drive, which comes in flavors between 1TB and 2TB, and again comes with FireWire 400/800 and USB 2.0 support. It costs between $149.99 and $229.99.

Additionally, all drives come with a complimentary 12 month subscription to Trend Micro Smart Surfing software for Mac, Iomega QuikProtect backup software, EMC Retrospect Express backup software and MozyHome Online Backup service. That’s a pretty impressive list of software extras.

You should be able to find both drives at Apple stores later this month.

Looking for a display just as big and gorgeous as the iMac’s 27-inch screen for your MacPro? HP has just announced a new 30-inch monitor that will finally give your beautiful machine the LCD it deserves.

The HP ZR30w boasts a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels in a 16:10 aspect ratio, and — according to HP — achieves more than 64 times the colors available on mainstream LCD, with 100 percent accuracy in sRGB colors and 99 percent accuracy in Adobe RGBs. The end result is red, blues and greens that are visibly more lurid.

The new display comes with DisplayPort and DVI-D inputs, as well as an integrated 4-port USB hub and a 6-way adjustable stand. It all comes in dark but decidedly un-Mac-like brushed aluminum.

It’s a gorgeous, albeit slightly beefy display, make no mistake. Unfortunately, the big issue here is the price: the HP ZR30w is a lot of monitor, and it costs a lot of money. $1,299, to be exact. Consider the price of the 27-inch iMac, which is only $400 more expensive: it really is like Cupertino just sold people a top of the line display and threw an amazing Mac in there as a heavily discounted bargain.

Although Steve Jobs seems to think the Foxconn suicides are being overblown, Apple’s “all over” the problem, a new email exchange reveals.

Responding to an Apple fan who forwarded Jobs an e-mail campaign protesting the way Foxconn workers are being treated in China, Steve responded:

“Although every suicide is tragic, Foxconn’s suicide rate is well below the China average. We are all over this.”

Our good friend Graham Bower likes to occasionally send some of his gorgeous Apple product mock-ups our way. His latest creation is a direct response to the recent rumor that the next Apple TV will be a $99 iPhone OS device that streams media to your television set, and answers the question: how do you control a multitouch operating system without a touchscreen?

The answer: make the remote a touchscreen. Graham’s idea is that Apple would ship the new Apple TV with a remote similar to the Magic Mouse, along with a built-in accelerometer.

I’ve mulled over this idea for the Apple TV’s remote before. On first blush, it seems like a great solution, but here’s the problem: the only way a device like this can work is if it introduces some sort of pointer to iPhone OS. For multitouch to work on a display divorced from the actual input device (ie: for multitouch to work when you’re not directly touching the screen on which graphical elements are displayed), you need some sort of icon to show you where your “fingers” are.

Patents are usually dry, dull affairs, but this latest Apple patent has an elegant beauty to it that is more than a little bit breathtaking.

Yes, it’s for a solar-powered iPhone, but Apple being Apple, they’ve got a better solution to solar-charging than just a bunch of ugly panels stuck to the back of the device: the energy collection cells are actually hidden underneath the display. The iPhone itself would look no different, but lay it out in the sun and it will juice itself up.

After just two months of (perhaps overconfidently) offering a $29.99 unlimited, month-by-month data plan to purchasers of the iPad, Ma Bell has already killed it off… and are now replacing it with a vastly inferior and more pricy plan.

The new plan — called DataPro — offers 2GB of data per month for $25. Go over 2GB in a month and you’re charged another $25, with your 30 day window to use that 2GB resetting itself.

Think that’s bad? It gets worse. AT&T is also canceling unlimited data for the iPhone. Current subscribers get to keep their $30 all-you-can-eat plans, but when you new customers or contract renewers will now only get 2GB of data.

The positive side? After over a year of waffling on it, AT&T are finally bringing tethering to the table with iPhone OS 4.0. But you have to pay an additional $20 a month for it, and you’re still only limited to 2GB. To put this in perspective, this is twice as much as Verizon charges for 5GB of tethering data on a $29.99 unlimited monthly data plan.

Our succinct thoughts on the matter, after the jump.

The Chinese are always quick-on-the-draw with their knockoffs, but this may be the first time we’ve seen a iPhone doppelganger before the handset its emulating is even officially announced.

It’s called the GPS iPhone, and it looks pretty convincing. You know, except for the telescoping television antenna. Somehow, I think Ive would choose to do that a little bit differently. You could gouge your eye out on that thing.