John Brownlee - page 238

Sick of third party programs not being able to offer background audio like iTunes does on your iPhone? Guess what? Apple just changed that.

As one of seven new APIs being offered to developers, now anyone can make their app run audio in the background. The big winner here is Pandora, who takes the stage and shows how their music streaming app can now work in the background after only a day of work: the existing iPod controls on the lock screen continue to function and everything! Now let’s see Spotify!

Brilliant solution by Apple here: they’ve enabled multitasking by offering a very limited but comprehensive checklist of services that can run in the background.

Next up: VOIP!

Well, almost everyone called it, but almost three years after the first plaintive cries about the lack of the feature arose, Steve Jobs has just announced that the iPhone OS will be getting multitasking, come summer. Developers can start playing with the preview today.

It’s the biggest of the “tentpole” features Apple is announcing today for iPhone OS 4.0. It works as expected: Jobs double clicks the home button and loads an app switcher, which allows him to cycle through running apps. The app switcher takes the place of the dock. Smooth! Finally!

A great start to a great presentation. Let’s hope, though, that Jobs is being honest when he says they solved the battery drain issue for third party apps, and Apple hasn’t just caved to demand when the feature, while always possible, really wasn’t ready for prime time.

The iPad’s still fresh in every one’s minds, and there’s no shortage of analysts who have wanted to guess how many Apple’s sold yet, but Jobs doesn’t want us to forget how much the iPhone and iPod Touch are kicking ass and taking names.

Here’s the big numbers from Steve’s presentation:

• 50 Million iPhones sold to date

• 35 million iPod Touches

• Safari on he iPhone captures 64% of the US mobile browser usage space, with Android at 19% and BlackBerry at 9%.

• 4 Billion iPad Apps Downloaded through the App Store

• 185,000 Apps available for download

[Image via Gizmodo]

Steve Jobs just took the stage for today’s iPhone OS 4.0 event and started things out with an overview of the pertinent iPad numbers so far.

• 450,000 iPads sold

• 600,000 iBooks downloaded

• 3.5 Million iPad Apps Downloaded

Then Steve showed the slide above, showing a happy little girl hugging her iPad. Enjoy it now, little girl: when the proletariat rise, the consumers shall be the first at the firing line!

[image via Engadget]

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt-Jaz1oRAU

They’re called bullet hell SHMUPS (shoot-em-ups): Galaga style arcade shooters where enemies puke so many bright bad bullets at you that surviving even for a few seconds requires muscle memory down to the pixel… and Cave’s one of the most devious development houses out there at creating them.

Consider me more than impressed, though, by this video from Cave, demonstrating their upcoming iPhone port of ESPGALUDA II. You wouldn’t think a SHMUP requiring pixel-perfect positioning would work on the iPhone, but it’s amazing how good the controls here look.

According to Cave, ESPGALUDA II will be released on Saturday and cost $4.99. Considering beating a game this difficult at the arcades would cost you a couple grand in quarters, that’s a steal: for an unabashedly clumsy and inept SHMUP fan like me, that’s basically like buying a game and getting a MacBook Pro for free.

Carved unibody aluminum may well end up being to the gadget design of the late oughts what wood paneling was to the gadget design of the late 70s, so why not ironically set the trend and transform your MacBook into a laptop Mike Brady could be proud of with these laptop skins from Karvt?

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

The “Get A Mac” series may be over, but Apple’s app-centric iPhone campaign is still as effective as ever. In the latest ad, “Shopper,” a husband explains how he used his iPhone 3Gs and the RedLaser price comparison app to get his wife a new espresso maker.

Unlike other iPhone ads, this one is unique in that it focuses on a sole app, but these ads still really hit the right note to me: they’re down-to-earth messages aimed at the every man focusing on the one indisputable thing the iPhone still does better than every other smartphone out there: software.

He may be homo sapiens‘ answer to a hipster Droopy, but after Steve Jobs, Justin Long is the avatar of the Apple experience thanks to the popular series of “Get a Mac” ads. Now he tells the Onion AV Club that the campaign might be through.

Is printing directly from your iPhone or iPad in the cards for iPhone OS 4.0?

Well, maybe, although the evidence is pretty scant.
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Check the support pages for iWorks, and you’ll find this little note on the subject: “Printing directly from iPad is not currently available.”

The operative word here is currently, and while we’re reading a lot into it, it does at least hint that Apple’s considering how to best go about bringing direct printing to its line of handheld devices… and give iPad and iPhone users one less reason to open up their laptops.

Like many questions about iPhone OS 4.0, we expect to know more about this at Apple’s corporate event on Thursday.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3J0cMAwHUo

You won’t see this on the App Store anytime soon, since Nintendo would pretty much throw a conniption fit, but here’s Super Mario Kart running gorgeously on the iPad through the glories of emulation.

The emulator’s from ZodTTD, who has previously done iPhone’s SNES and N64 emulators. All we need to do now is just wait for the iPad jailbreak to mosey along and we’ll be racing Yoshi and fighting Gannon with the rest of the non-Apple tablet world.

[via Gadget Lab]

The hellish ordeal of going through airport security may involve throwing away all your liquids, walking shoeless on a filthy floor, being groped by a glorified rent-a-cop, and becoming the nude subject of body scans… but at least you won’t need to take your iPad out of your bag along with your other laptops. Yet.

According to the TSA, iPads don’t need to be removed from carry-on luggage when going through X-Ray screening.

It all comes down to thinness: the iPad’s svelte design makes it easier for the scanner to identify. Additionally, since there’s a minimum of peripherals available for the iPad, the tablet is unlikely to be obstructed by other hardware as it passes through the scanner.

Good news for frequent travelers, but consider me suspicious: this is just too reasonable of a position for the TSA to take for me to believe it’ll be in place for long.

Having some problems with your iPad’s WiFi connection? Apple’s aware of the problem, and has some ideas on how to fix them.

According to Apple, the iPad might not automatically rejoin known WiFi networks using third-party routers that are dual-band capable (802.11 b/g and 802.11 n) when each band’s network uses the same name or use different security settings.

Apple’s recommendation? Try creating separate network names for each separate band’s network (ie: add a G to the end of the name of the 802.11 b/g band) and making sure both bands’ networks use the same security settings.

We’ve been lucky enough to not have this problem, but what about you? Is this solution fixing your problem, or is their a bigger issue afloat?

[via Gizmodo]

The guys iSuppli are wonderful techno-vivisecters, capable of dismantling the latest Apple product with a few quick twists of the screwdriver and telling you how much all of the limbs and organs cost.

Predictably, they haven’t waited long to do just that with the iPad. So how much does that pretty 16GB iPad sitting on your lap right now cost Apple to make? Just $259.60.

As a Douglas Adams fan, I’ve always envisioned Apple, and not the great publishing companies of Ursa Minor, as the most likely creators of one of the most remarkable books in the universe, and I was hoping Gelaskins would already have a skin up transforming my iPad into the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by emblazoning it with the large and calming words: “DON’T PANIC.”

Unfortunately, they don’t, but in the meantime, I think this “Keep Calm and Carry On” skin might do the trick.

Check out Gelaskins for more ways to temporarily tattoo your tablet.

Well, it’s official: as rumored, HP’s own would-be iPad killer, the Slate, is basically just a keyboard-less netbook turned inside out.

In fact, it’s such a underwhelming, bog standard effort compared to the iPad that in a leaked internal document, HP saw fit to highlight the iPad’s advantages over the Slate in red.

Apple’s no stranger to slurping up privately-held chipmakers. After all, their 2007 acquisition of PA Semi led to the iPad’s blindingly fast A4 CPU, and Cupertino’s going to need to stay on the cusp of mobile chip development if it wants to keep the iPad and iPhone competitive over the course of the next few years.

In light of all that, the latest rumor being reported by TUAW about Apple’s acquisition of chipmaker Intrinsity has the ring of likelihood (if not necessarily truth) about it. After all, Intrinsity is the company that helped design the Samsung Cortex A8 core, one of the fastest mobile processors there is and one of the few that competes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.

If Apple wants to keep their mobile phones on the bleeding edge, an investment in Intrinsity makes a lot of sense. I guess we’ll just have to see what Thursday’s press conference has in store.

It’s a small change, but a nice one: Apple has just modified the App Store to make it easier to browse for iPhone and iPad apps, and distinguish universal binaries from iPhone-only apps.

It’s a simple change. Previously, iPhone and iPad apps were combined on one page, with only the Top Charts section offering the option between switching between iPhone and iPad view.

Now if you go to the App Store in iTunes, you’ll now see a couple of small tabs at the top of the page that allow you to switch between iPhone and iPad app browsing. Universal binaries will be listed under both headings, but non-universal apps will be exclusively listed under the iPhone heading… pixel doubling just does not an iPad app make.

[via TUAW]

One of these days, some fraudulent soothsayer’s bound to be right, but until then, it’s just as much our obligation to report the rumors of an imminent MacBook refresh as it is yours to digest them with a nice, healthy lick of salt.

According to Taiwanese newspaper Apple Daily, a refresh of Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models incorporating Intel’s new Core i3, i5 and i7 mobile processors is due later this month.

Other spec bumps include maximum hard drive configurations of 640GB and 8-hour battery life expectations across the board.

With every new Apple product comes a fresh wave of exploitative eBay entrepreneurism, but this auction offering to hand-deliver a 64GB iPad anywhere in the world is a bold attempt at a free first-class vacation by some earnest young huckster. Unfortunately, I think the only country in the world meriting a $9,301 round-trip airplane ticket is North Korea, and I’m not sure I’d personally want to be the guy telling that country’s strange, sociopathic space baby of a leader that the iPad doesn’t do video conferencing or Flash.

The iPad’s display may be gorgeous, but if you’re going to read outdoors, you’ll probably want an e-ink reader: if your retinas don’t pucker into singularities from rays of direct sunlight bouncing off of the glass fdisplay, your iPad might still melt into a toxic soup and pour through your fingers.

Well… okay. We cop to the hyperbolic here, but exaggeration aside, the iPad has some significant overheating issues if widespread overheating issues.

Perhaps the problem is best summarized by PC Magazine’s Zach Honig, who posted this image on Twitter… the end result of using his iPad for ten minutes in direct sunlight on a 70 degree day in New York City. He had to pop his iPad in the fridge to get it running again.

I think you can safely chalk this latest Apple patent won’t come to fruition, but it’s an interesting one the nonce: a MacBook Pro with a built in pico projector in the hinge, perfect for giving presentations on-the-go, or just throwing a movie up on the wall for your friends to watch.

It’s neat, but it’s also way to marginalized a feature to expect any time soon, especially given the relative lameness of pico projectors: Apple might well pull this trick out of their hat one day, but not until they can do it right. What do you think?

As they are wont to do, the fine folks of PC World have dropped, thrown, scratched, smashed, hurled, trounced, boiled, frozen and defenestrated their iPad so you don’t have to. If you want to know just how much punishment your iPad can take, go read their iPad Stress Test.

The takeaway here is never to drop your iPad: according to PC World Senior Editor Tim Moynihan, three or four drops onto a carpeted office floor was enough spiderglass the screen. But at least it’s really scratch resistant… and, apparently, donut-controllable. Hit the full article for all the don’ts.

This is what happens when you have one of the most widely anticipated device launches of the year coupled with not enough to go around: someone walks out of the store and. before they can even reach their car, gets their iPad stolen.

In this case, the unlucky victim was Mohamed Aboutaleb of Dover, New Hampshire, who walked out of his local Best Buy with a new iPad only to be accosted by a teenage thief who pushed him to the ground, grabbed his bag and jumped into a getaway car driven by another punk kid… all before he could set up “Find my iPaD” in MobileMe.

Poor guy. We’re tempted to suggest the only safe way to walk around in public with an iPad is by handcuffing it to your wrist, but the consumer frenzy’s high enough with the iPad that that suggestion can only lead to a bloody hacksaw and a spurting stump or two. Better to just hand it over.

[via TUAW]

Ever since the iPhone’s release, one of the most pervasive criticisms of Apple’s handhelds as dedicated gaming devices have been the device’s lack of analog controls. It’s a criticism that has seemed considerably limper as time goes on and developers have figured out to utilize the iPhone’s touchscreen and accelerometer effectively, but for certain genres like fighting games and twitch shooters, there’s still something be said for the good old d-pad.

If a new Apple patent is anything to go by, Cupertino agrees. They have filed an application for a snap-on D-Pad with control buttons that wraps around an iPhone or iPad to offer more precision gaming.

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

Always plucky, ingenious and defiant, it already looked pretty good that the iPhone OS hacking community would manage a zero day jailbreak… and it looks they they’ve done just that in under 24 hours, courtesy of hacker Musclenerd.

It appears that this jailbreak is using the same “Spirit” technique that Geohot demonstrated working on 3.1.3 last week, strongly implying that iPhone OS 3.2 doesn’t close any of the previous firmware’s exploitable holes.

When can the command-line-disinclined expect an idiot-proof iPad jailbreak? No word yet, although Geohot has said that he’s waiting to release his software until Apple rolls the 3.2 firmware across all devices.