Back when I had a jailbroken iPhone, one of my favorite Cydia tweaks was a hack called Switchy, which came to life based upon an initial forum post mocking up a more advanced app switcher for iOS. I’m hopeful, then, that the same will prove true for this new switcher concept posted over the weekend, which might be the best looking, most attractive and most functional app switcher we’ve seen yet.
The visionary co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, may have been dead for a year today, but the fruits of his incredible imagination, indefatigable quest for perfection and keen design eye are still ripening and shaking from the tree of the company that he created. The recently released iPhone 5 and new Lightning Connectors were approved by him before he died, the upcoming iPad mini was greenlit personally by Steve, and Apple’s upcoming roadmap for the next couple of years will probably be filled with projects that he personally oversaw.
Some of Steve Jobs’s last unrealized products loom larger than others, though. Here are the five incredible products from Steve Jobs that we still haven’t seen.
Plug in your iPhone or iPad and charge it up, and you’ll notice that while the first 80% or so will go by pretty fast, they actually kind of suck at charging up that last 20%, taking a lot more time to do so than it feels like they should.
There’s a reason for this. Charging batteries up to “full” is a complicated process. There’s no real way to tell if a battery is completely “full” so all you can do is measure the voltage, which (and this is a vast simplification) tells you how much resistance is being met when you try to put more electricity into the battery.
That’s why it takes so long for an iPhone to charge that last 20%. It charges full blast until it measures a certain voltage, then goes into what’s called “trickle mode” to slowly allow small sips of electricity into the battery until it thinks, based upon some software calculations, that the battery is more or less full. But a new algotihm could make the time it takes to charge your iPhone or iPad go by a lot faster.
Steve Jobs was irreplaceable, but he does have his analogs. Driven, charismatic men who created their own companies based upon their ability to imagine a complete product that had never existed — “a perfect new product, whole, already manufactured sitting before him” — and spend tireless years to bring it to the world.
One of those analogues was Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid. And the number of parallels between his life and Steve Jobs’s life were incredible.
The new 4-inch, fifth-generation iPod touches aren’t out yet, and Apple will only stubbornly insist that they are shipping sometime this month, but Sam Adams at Today’s iPhone noticed yesterday that the Australian Apple website listed ship dates for the new iPod touch as being between two-three weeks.
Not a long time to wait, certainly, but still disappointing considering they were announced three weeks ago and still won’t be shipping out until the end of October.
Source: Today’s iPhone
How things have changed. Five years ago, Apple shipped every iPhone with a dock; now, they claim that no one uses one, and aren’t offering an official iPhone 5 dock at all.
Luckily, you now have an option. Coming in an attractive hardwood version or a choice of either regular or black aluminum, the Lightning Dock is a no-fuss, no-frills dock that works with or without a case and depends on the incredible strength of the new Lightning Connector to keep the iPhone upright.
It also works with the new fifth-generation iPod touch, and it’s pretty cheap: the hardwood version will only cost you $24.95, while the aluminum version is $10 more. That’s without an included Lightning cable: if you want them to ship you one, it’ll cost $20 more.
Source: Lightning Dock
Via: iMore
In a timed announcement made exactly on the one year anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death, Chrisann Brennan — Steve Jobs’s highschool sweetheart and the mother of American journalist and writer Lisa Brennan-Jobs, for whom the Apple Lisa was named — has said that she will be publishing a memoir next year.
Back in 1983, when Apple was first developing MacPaint and its less-featured sister app for the Apple II, MousePaint, they had a menu option called “Aids” which contained image manipulation tools. You can see this menu in documentation for the original AppleMouse II.
Before release, though, this menu was renamed Goodies, and intriguingly, it was done so because of rising awareness of the AIDS epidemic. The more you know!
Even though Apple has already debuted the new Lightning connector, there still aren’t any third-party accessories that actually boast Lightning compatibility. Part of that is because Apple has still not made Lightning connectors — which are hard to counterfeit by design — available to third-parties. Even when Apple does make the connectors available, though, any accessory makers who wants to make gadgets that are “Made for Lightning” will have to do so in Apple-approved manufacturing facilities, which won’t be an option until at least November. That could make it tricky, but by no means impossible, for some accessory makers to get their products on the shelves in time for Christmas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Zjrv9-Botx8
You know, I really like this Nokia ad mocking iPhone users over their lack of color choices.
Featuring a joyless, shifting line moving slowly forward to consume the monochrome iPhone 5, it shows a gray world thrown into anarchy when one customer dares to ask about their color choices. Then, when that customer steps out of line, he sees a number of bright, vibrant, colorful people wandering around, uniquely bopping and having fun. They are all carrying Lumias.
The iPhone 5 might be the thinnest, sleekest iPhone yet, but it’s not the most environmentally friendly. It’s close, though.
It’s pretty much an open secret that I can’t stand Twitter, and about the only thing I really like about Facebook is photo sharing, so I really love Instagram. In many ways, it’s against my better instincts, since I’ve always hated the romanticizing of Polaroid and other low-grade cameras of the 1970s by millennial hipsters… a romanticizing Instagram is pretty much built around.
But Instagram’s a lot more than that, and I think this video by Casey Neistat nicely illustrates why: regardless of what filters you use, Instagram is about sharing your life openly, honestly and without being disingenuous. While Twitter is all bluster and sanctimony, and Facebook is all mindless affirmation, Instagram at its best is about sharing the essence of your life.
There are also some great tips in Casey’s video on how to not be an annoying jackass on Instagram, so that helps too. If you love Instagram, check it out.
Via: Laughing Squid
If someone told you that iOS 6 Maps had one advantage over Google Maps, and that it was 80% more efficient in using data, you’d probably quip, “That’s because it’s 80% less accurate” then do an air drum roll and punctuate the whole thing with the sound of a cymbal crashing that you made with your mouth.
Joking aside, though, it’s true. iOS 6 Maps uses way less data than Google Maps, and it has nothing to do with accuracy, but with its beautiful new vector graphics.
Conan O’Brien loves to do bits on the latest Apple product, and the latest iPhone 5 feature to become the fodder for laughs is the new Panorama feature, which Chris Parnell & Deon Cole says is the perfect photographic equipment for the well-endowed male. While Deon Cole’s delivery is perfect, it’s Chris Parnell’s matter-of-fact dissection of the joke — “that Deon is implying that his penis is too large to be capture in a normal camera aspect ratio’s field of view” — that pushes this bit over the top for me. Tell me about it. Just don’t shoot it in bright light or it’ll get a purplish hue, although chances are, if you need to shoot your penis in panorama, it’s already got one.
Source: Team Coco
Screen protectors aren’t sexy or glamorous. They’re like condoms: prophylactics for your smartphone screen that are difficult to put on correctly, feel worse than going bareback, and are just disgusting totems to the shame and filth of your lifestyle when greasily wadded up and hurled into the nearest waste basket.
The only thing I hate more than screen protectors is watching the inevitable patina of nicks and scratches milkily cloud up my iPhone screen. Over the years, I’ve tried a bunch of iPhone screen protectors, from the inevitable Invisible Shield to the PureTek Roll-On. Last year, though, I finally found my favorite screen protector for the iPhone 4S: the Spigen Glas.t, a sheet of 0.4mm tempered glass that not only is easy to apply, but feels just the same as riding your iPhone bareback.
Now the iPhone 5 is here, and Spigen has released a new, longer GLAS.t to match the new iPhone’s longer dimensions. For my money, just like its predecessor, this is the only screen protector you should even bother with.
Apple has a cash hoard that is worth more than one hundred and ten billion dollars, but that money doesn’t just sit in a bank collecting interest. Apple invests it, using a Nevada-based asset management corporation called Braeburn Capital. And it might just be the world’s largest hedge fund.
In a post by Jeff Atwood over at the excellent Coding Horror, there’s this brilliant chart showing the “hyperbolic performance improvement” of the iPhone since it first debuted in 2008. As Jeff points out, in just five years, the iPhone has seen a factor of 20 performance improvement in Browsermark and a factor of four improvement in GeekBench, at least doubling performance every year.
When Apple was doing its damnedest to kick people out of MobileMe in June this year and get them to use iCloud instead, one of the incentives they gave the soon-to-be disposessed was a free offer that former MobileMe members would get 20GB of iCloud storage gratis, instead of the 5GB Apple gives the rest of us suckers. But it was only for a limited time, until September 30, 2012.
Looks like Apple may have extended their offer, though. Some iCloud usersare now noticing that they’ve got 25GB of iCloud storage to play around with until September 30, 2050, when their free 20GB should have been snatched away from them yesterday. Even more interesting is that some non-MobileMe users are seeing the same deal, and have found themselves getting a free 20GB bump in storage.
Apple did something unprecedented today.
I’m not talking about Tim Cook’s apology for iOS 6 Maps. While it’s rare, Apple has apologized before, especially recently: see John Browett’s admission that the company had “messed up” when cutting shifts among Retail Employees, and Apple’s public about-face when pulling out of the EPEAT rating system. One of the things that makes Apple great is they’re not afraid to be as harsh on themselves as they are on the competition when they’ve fucked up.
No, what Apple did today is far more uncharacteristic than an apology. They suggested that you use a third-party app instead of their own.
Not only has Apple apologized for the embarassing state of iOS 6 Maps today, and not only has Tim Cook personally advised users to try competing app products like Bing, Mapquest and Google Maps as they get iOS 6 Maps’ shit together, but Apple is now promoting Maps alternatives at the very top of the iOS App Store listings. This is an unprecedented admission of fault by Apple. It’s mea culpas all the way down.
Via: Twitter
The iPhone 5 quietly went on sale this morning across twenty two additional countries, but not everyone is paying the same amount of money for their iPhones, between exchange rates and local taxes. In fact, according to Setteb.it, Americans pay the least amount of money overall for the iPhone 5, while overseas, those in Hong Kong get the second-best deal around.
Royally shafted? Italy, which pays as much as €949 for a 64GB iPhone 5, unlocked and unsubsidized. That same phone costs almost 25% less in the United States. Someone up there’s smiling down on us Yanks.
Source: Twitpic
Via: iClarified
In addition to posting an extraordinarily classy apology for the iOS 6 Maps fiasco written by CEO Tim Cook, Apple has also gone to the length of pushing online a page explaining how to add a website icon to your home screen in four easy steps, and while the website they use for the example is Apple.com, they clearly mean for you to do this on maps.google.com.
Source: Apple
Netflix has just updated its iOS app with iPhone 5 and iOS 6 support. That means full 16:9 widescreen on your new iPhone’s display, which was sorely needed: though dedicated video apps are the most obvious ones to benefit from the change in aspect ratio of the iPhone 5, Netflix has been slow-to-the-draw in adding support for the new screen resolution, especially compared to the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
You can find the new version in the “Updates” tab of the App Store app, or by clicking here. It’s a way more pleasant experience.
The iPhone 5 has a slightly bigger battery than the iPhone 4S, but it’s still not enough to break the bank to charge over the gadget’s lifetime: according to energy efficiency experts Opower, the iPhone 5 should only cost about forty-one cents per year to charge.
In the aggregate, though, that’s a lot of power: enough to power Cedar Rapids, Michigan Iowa.
Nokia might have fudged some of their demos of the Lumia 920’s camera, but there’s no denying that the PureView technology that camera is based is incredibly impressive, especially in low-light. The iPhone 5, though, is no slouch when it comes to low-light either. How do they stack up?
Engadget recently went to Nokia’s Tepere, Finland R&D complex and were given access to a testing suite, where they were able to do low-light comparisons between the Lumia 920, the iPhone 5, the HTC One X and the Galaxy S III. Using each camera, they took photographs of a static scene at around 5 lux, which is about the same lighting level you’d see on a dimly lit city street in the middle of the night.
While the Lumia 920 was the clear winner, the iPhone 5 wasn’t too far behind, especially when compared to the absolutely terrible efforts of the HTC One X and Galaxy S III.
Source: Engadget