John Brownlee - page 232

Responding to a number of iPad WiFi issues including weak signal reception, forgotten passwords, dropped connections and other network problems, Apple tech support has promised a patch for a “very small number” of beleaguered iPad owners.

According to a recently published note on Apple’s tech support site, iPad owners having problems connecting to WiFi networks should first consider updating their router firmware, using WPA or WPA2 wireless security, renewing your IP address, switching channels and (bizarrely) “adjusting screen brightness.”

If none of that works, hold out for a patch. According to the note, ” Apple will address remaining Wi-Fi connectivity issues with a future iPad software update.” Hopefully sooner rather than later.

ADR Studio, an Italian design house, posted this great render of what an Apple iWatch might look like. It’s just a concept design, but I’d buy this product: think of what Apple could do with it!

For one, the iWatch concept realizes the promise of Microsoft’s own SPOT operating system in that it would bring widget-distillable information to your wrist in the form of apps. You could pair it with Bluetooth to your phone to display incoming calls, instant messages or text messages. An iWatch could also pretty much replace the iPod Shuffle and Nike+ for joggers: strapped around your wrist, it could easily keep track of the distance traveled or your heart rate.

Wishful thinking? Definitely. But I still want one, and think Apple should make it: if Cuptertino’s ultimate goal is for everyone to have an iDevice on them at all times, no accessory is as ubiquitous as the wristwatch.

Before the iPad was officially announced, Steve Ballmer took the stage at CES and unveiled the HP Slate, a Windows 7 running tablet PC to be released later this year. According to Ballmer, the device was proof that Microsoft could do a multitouch operating system just as well as Apple.

On their part, though, HP seems to disagree. Their recent acquisition of Palm puts them in control of webOS, a fantastic mobile operating system designed from the ground up for mobile phones and tablets. As a result, it looks like they’ve canceled Slate in favor of a forthcoming, webOS-based tablet codenamed the Hurricane.

According to The Examiner, the Hurricane could be released in Q3 of 2010. HP’s acquisition deal isn’t due to be finalized until July 31st, so that’s the earliest possible date we could see a webOS tablet.

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First released in December 1996 for MacOS 8, ReBirth RB-338 was a revolutionary synthesizer by Propellerhead Software that emulated two Roland TB-303 synthesizers, a Roland TR-808 and a Roland TR-909 drum machine. In the late 90s, it wasn’t an easy task even getting a computer to run ReBirth… but almost fifteen years later, it works flawlessly on the iPhone, featuring built-in FX units, some full featured pattern sequences and a scalable interface.

It looks fantastic, and while I think it would probably be a better experience on the iPad, you can’t overlook the cool factor of mixing some fresh, professional quality beats together on the bus. It costs $6.99

According to Macworld.com.au’s sources, several thousand items of new Apple stock with the product number MC516LL/A K87 BETTER BTR-USA are now on their way to Australia… and while they aren’t quite sure what it is, they’re positing it might be an updated MacBook Air.

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The guys over at Redmond Pie have gotten their jailbroken iPad working with the Magic Mouse, thanks to the BTStack Mouse Driver application, which can easily be found on Cydia.

I’m struggling to see the point of this, other than “because we can.” You simply can’t do anything with a mouse under iPhone OS, short of badly emulate the job of a finger. There’s no contextual menus to open, no text to highlight, no windows to move around, no dock to multitask with. Why would you bother?

Using a mouse with a finger-based OS makes about as much sense as using a finger to navigate a mouse-based OS (and we all see the hatchet job Windows 7 did there). If you want a mouse so badly, just buy a netbook already… don’t fool yourself that using a mouse under iPhone OS is anything besides sheer pig-headed folly.

The latest MacBook Pros’ ability to seamlessly switch between integrated Intel graphics and their discrete NVIDIA GPUs is a wonderful feature, capable of saving hours of battery by only employing the more powerful and power-hungry card when an application really needs it.

The problem is, there’s a lot of poorly programmed applications out there that trigger the discrete GPU when Intel’s integrated graphics should suffice. Until these applications are updated, it can be maddening to watch your laptop suck up hours of battery life because it’s treating Tweetie like its Crysis.

gfxCardStatus is a neat open-source menu bar application that allows you to control which graphics card your 2010 MacBook Pro is using at any given time. For the most part, you’ll want to leave it alone and let OS X juggle GPUs, but if you happen to notice your text editor triggering a discrete GPU switch, gfxCardStatus will help you rein it back in.

It’s free to download, so if you have a 2010 MacBook Pro, grab it now.

[via Boy Genius Report]

If you live in Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain or Switzerland, you can now pre-order your very own iPad, just like those cowboys in America have been yodeling about! Just hit up your local online Apple store and register your pre-order for delivery on May 28th.

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The iPad Camera Connection Kit has always been an intriguing accessory, not just because it allows the iPad to directly interface with cameras and SD cards, but because it seemed like a ripe target for hackers to add third-party support for other USB accessories once the jailbreaks were in. In fact, when it was first announced, I wondered how long it would take someone to figure out how to get their iPad reading data off a USB hard drive.

Not very long, it turns out. Max Shay has just posted an in depth walkthrough on how to hook up an external hard drive to your jailbroken iPad.

It’s not simple: you need a split USB cable to supply enough juice to the hard drive and an external computer with a terminal application to fool the iPad into mounting the external storage. But as a proof of concept, it’s pretty interesting stuff: I wonder how long its going to take hackers to figure out how to use the SD dongle in the iPad Camera Connection Kit to give the iPad expandable storage.

iHome’s pantheon of docks, clocks, and speakers for the iPhone and iPod are pretty hard to keep straight, but their flagship iP90 alarm clock docking station has always been one of their more visible products… and now they’ve updated it with a host of new features that make the iP90 a better buy than before.

Like its previous incarnation, the iP90 will charge and play music from the iPhone and iPod, and functions as a speaker dock, a dual alarm clock and an AM/FM radio. The new iP90’s most immediately obvious improvement, though, is a larger and more clear display, as well as improved sound quality thanks to Reson8 stereo speaker chambers as well as adjustable bass and treble.

In addition, the iP90 now has a Time Sync feature that automatically sets the time on your clock to the more trustworthy time on your iPhone or iPod. A switch for changing the clock to daylight savings time is also there, although if your phone is setting the time for you, I don’t really see the point.

Like the earlier model, the iP90 looks like a good addition to any iPhone owners bedside table. It will cost $99.

In a post on Yahoo’s Mobile Blog, the big purple Y! seems pretty gobsmacked that 10% of iPad traffic is coming from outside of the US, despite the fact that there has yet to be an international roll out of the tablet.

Ostensibly for keeping track of your kids, employees or your child labor’s iPad surfing, Mobile Spy’s iPad Spy is probably really meant for the jealous paramour, the sleazy private dick or the professional identity thief: it allows you to record the email and website visits of anyone using the iPad on which it is installed.

iPad Spy runs as a background process, so it requires a jailbroken iPad to work. When it’s installed, there’s no hint that anything is running, but the software will record all of your emails and website visits and silently upload the data to a website to be perused by the (probably malicious) installer.

Sure, this technically could be used as another level of iPad parental controls, or to make sure your employees aren’t looking at porn on their company iPads, but let’s face it: this is really just for creeps. If you’re paranoid about such things, the best advice is to just not trust any iPad with a Cydia icon on the homescreen.

[via Gizmodo]

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Now that Spirit is out, emulation on your iPad is finally possible for everyone who can click a “Jailbreak” button and launch Cydia.

Even better: the iPad’s larger screen real estate finally makes an iDevice into a satisfying emulation console when paired through Bluetooth with a standard Nintedo Wiimote. All you need to do is jailbreak your iPad, download the latest version of snes4iPhone through Cydia ($5.99) and pair your Wiimote with your iPad to set Samus spin jumping with perfectly analogue precision.

Couple this with a $0.69 business card holder and you’ve got yourself a fantastic portable SNES you can be proud of.

[via Touch Arcade]

Taking their cue from start-ups like Square, Visa is planning to get in on the iPhone payment act, with a line of special iPhone cases that will allow you to make credit card purchases at retail just by waving your handset in front of a cash register.

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber pointed out this excellent alt-universe mock-up of what icons for non-universal iPhone apps should look like on the iPad home screen.

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Macs do bundles better than anyone, but if you’re a Mac gamer, the Humble Indie Bundle might be the best one yet. Not only do you get to name your price for five amazing Mac indie games worth $80 — World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra Overture and Aquaria — but you get too choose if you want your money to go to support Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or line the developers’ pockets with filthy lucre.

Right now, the average contribution for the pack is just $7.87, with the total money raised over $360,000. I’m sure Cult of Mac readers can push that average contribution number up a few sense: these games, these developers and these charities are all worth your money.

Apple’s always experimenting with new ways to interact with their devices, and their latest patent takes that experiment one step further into turning your iPhone into a programmable heart rate monitor.

The patent describes a design in which a series of electrodes are seamlessly embedded into the iPhone’s shell in such a way that they are not “visibly or haptically distinguishable on the device.”

You may not be able to see or feel these electrodes, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do anything: instead, they’ll constantly measure your heart rate, with the data used to do anything from measure burned calories to change your music depending on your mood to automatically discharge the battery as a “paddle shock” when your heart suddenly explodes. Win!

With the FTC trying to decide whether or not it will pursue Apple for antitrust violations in relation to its newly announced iAd network, this leak from Apple-owned Quattro Wireless detailing iAd’s competitive advantage over other mobile advertising networks has some interesting timing.

The leak describes iAd’s VIP, or Verification of iTunes Purchase, program. Essentially, the program is aimed at developers who want to use iPhone ads to promote downloads and purchases of their own apps. Because VIP ties directly into iTunes sales data, developers who use iAd to promote their apps can get exact numbers on their ads’ conversion rates… no code, SDKs or APIs required.

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This promotional video for the Clamcase may seem like it was helmed by a directorial alum from the CSi: Miami school of film making, but don’t let the swooping camera angles and the blaring AC/DC fool you: the Clamcase looks like a must have accessory for the iPad. It’s a laptop-like shell for the iPad that combines a case, a stand and a Bluetooth keyboard in one slim form factor.

The video and product images are pretty clearly just product renders, but none the less, if the Clamcase ever becomes a real product — and it certainly looks like it will — this is going to be an easy buy to recommend for iPad road warriors.

[via Mac Rumors

Over the past few days, the latest beta of the iPhone OS has afforded a treasure trove of revelations about upcoming software improvements, but few previously unknown details about the hardware of the upcoming 4G iPhone and iPod Touch.

This is news, though: two new presets in the underlying architecture of iPhone OS 4.0 tease the possibility that the next iPhone, and possibly the next iPod Touch, will gain the ability to shoot 720p video.

These are the video presets in question:

AVCaptureSessionPreset640×480
AVCaptureSessionPreset1280×720

That’s about what we expected: phones are more than capable of recording HD videos these days. Still, it’s nice to get further confirmation that the iPhone’s wimpy camera modules are about to get an industry-best upgrade.

Infamous crap-gadget house Brando’s latest dispensable accessory is a compact Bluetooth keyboard that they claim is perfect for the iPad, which crams 52 keys into a form factor no larger than the iPhone in a device only half-an-inch thick. It costs $37.

I don’t get it. If you want to type on your iPad, you can use the on-screen software keyboard or connect a Bluetooth keyboard if you prefer a more physical and tactile typing solution. How is using a physical keypad the size of an iPhone easier than either of those options? The keyboard’s cheaper than Apple’s own alternatives, but not cheap enough to be so useless.

It’s a bad time to invest in a portable USB hard drive as a Mac fan. Apple’s dropped Firewire support on many of their notebooks, but have yet to adopt the USB 3.0 standard, leaving Apple customers stuck using aging and slow USB 2.0 hardware.

If you’re looking for a new hard drive, then, it’s easy to recommend Seagate’s new FreeAgent GoFlex line which can connect to most interfaces, including USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and eSATA.

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As the resident sadomasochist in love with roguelike games, I’ve been waiting for months for Dinofarm Games to release their lovingly crafted take on the genre, 100 Rogues. Now they have, and it’s available on the App Store for $4.99! Kalloo! Kallay!

During a call discussing News Corp’s latest financial results, Rupert Murdoch told investors that the Wall Street Journal has been extremely successful on the iPad, and it’s far more profitable for them than similar content on the Kindle, at least on a per subscriber basis.

An exciting new feature in the latest iPhone OS 4.0 beta might finally address a long standing complaint of both users and app developers: the inability to easily move non-media files between the iPhone and a computer. According to Boy Genius Report, iPhone OS 4.0’s new File Sharing feature will allow you to transfer and sync files directly between your iPhone and your computer.

All you do is plug your iPhone into iTunes, go to the Apps tab and scroll down. On the left side of the screen, you choose an app from a list of supported programs, while the right side of the screen allows you to copy files into that app’s sandbox or save them from your iPhone onto your computer.

The File Sharing feature doesn’t work yet, but it’s an exciting hint at things to come. It looks like a lot of the office and productivity suites on the iPhone OS are about to get a lot easier to use across multiple platforms.