Griffin has a new lineup of charging accessories at CES in Las Vegas, one of which is ideal for those who have collected an entire family of iOS devices. It’s called the PowerDock 5 and it charges up to five devices at any one time, storing them away neatly to save space on your desk.
Apple has today announced that the App Store has surpassed a whopping 40 billion downloads, with almost 20 million seen in 2012 alone. A record-breaking December, helped by another successful Christmas, boosted this year’s figures, with more than two billion downloads during the month.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Let’s be honest: any moron can crap out an iPhone case. Sketch out a quick model in CAD, send a few emails to someone in Shenzhen, and just a couple weeks later, a buttload of cheap plastic iPhone cases will hit your door. The fact that it’s literally this easy to make an iPhone case is what makes reporting on iPhone cases just so tedious: they are literally a multi-billion dollar industry fueled by brain farts.
Which is why I like Sculpteo, and was charmed as they lead me through a demonstration of their service. Unlike most of the bozos at CES, they aren’t hiding the fact that any moron can crap out an iPhone case. In fact, that’s their whole business: they want you to be that moron.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – When I videochatted over Skype with one of Belkin‘s PR people a few days ago, I told them I was dumbfounded at the sound coming from the tiny speakers built into the pre-production Thunderstorm case they sent me to play around with (the review notes I scrawled down actually read “pretty fucking amazed with this thing”). Nate, whose face I could see gazing at me from Belkin’s Los Angeles office, seemed stoic. “Invariably people have that same reaction… we call it ‘the thirty seconds of wow.’ ”
Are you a designer? Do you want to become a designer? Have you ever thought about bringing out the creative in you? Well, Cult of Mac Deals has an incredible offer that’s tailor-made for someone just like you – allowing you to feed your inner design spirit with over 3,000 creative items! That’s right…The Mega Design Bundle is here, stronger than ever — and has been extended!
When you open a new iPhone and boot it up for the first time, you’ll notice that Apple has already installed a bunch of apps for you.
It’s a great idea, because it lets you use apps right out of the box. Even the newest, most confused user can tap on an app icon and start trying various things.
Here’s the problem: Most users don’t replace the default apps with third-party alternatives. They mostly use the apps that came with the phone.
And this is why Apple should stop making apps: The default Apple-made apps are giving iPhone users a second-rate experience.
Picking up a new skill is a very popular new year’s resolution. And this Cult of Mac Deals offer will go a long way in helping you pick up a skill that can bring both pleasure and profit – designing iOS apps.
The iOS App Design Course bundle is just $79 for a limited time, and if you have beginner level knowledge of Photoshop and a desire to learn iOS app design, this course trio will help you quickly learn how to design both iPhone and iPad apps and icons.
iGuy is a new iPad and iPad mini case from Speck that’s built for one thing: taking a beating from sticky little kids. It’s design buries your device inside a bed of flexible foam that ensures no matter how many times its thrown, dropped, or sneezed on, it will come out looking as good as new.
The iGuy’s handles make the iPad easy to hold onto — not matter how small the user’s hands are — and the feet allow the device to be stood up when watching movies and cartoons. And despite all that EVA foam, you can still access all your iPad’s ports and buttons, as well as use its cameras.
iGuy comes in four colors — orange, green, red, and purple — and it’s likely to be the best iPad accessory you buy.
Amazon Instant Video is one of the best reasons to sign up for Amazon Prime. It’s not as good as Netflix yet, but it’s getting there, and it’s cheaper. To make things better, Amazon just announced that they’re adding A&E’s networks to Amazon Instant Video.
The licensing agreement between Amazon and A&E gives Prime Instant Video customers access to popular shows from A&E, bio, History, and Lifetime. So now you can watch all the shenanigans of Duck Dynasty right from your iPad or Kindle Fire.
You like robots? You’re gonna love this. This is an iPad app all about robots. Just robots, nothing but robots, loads and loads and loads of robots. It’s made of robots, in the same way we are made of meat. It’s fantastic.
Forbes Magazine has today made its debut on Newsstand, and it promises to provide you with the “ultimate Forbes experience combining all the original magazine reporting on business, technology, and investing with the dynamic interactive content from Forbes.com” Users can buy single issues as and when they wish, or commit to a monthly or yearly subscription.
This is one Google Now bug that Google won’t be too happy about: a glitch that causes the service to randomly “praise the iPad” when a user performs certain voice searches. Google Now reads out its response, but adds “he now praises the iPad” to the end of it. Check out the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqLBZ4Dh8Hk
Using QuickIO, an iOS app we reported on a couple of weeks back, you can stream your media from your Mac to your iOS device, be it an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
Today, the app was updated to include support for streaming that very same media to your Apple TV.
Zinio, the popular digital newsstand available to Android and iOS devices, has slashed up to 50% off its top 100 magazine subscriptions until. The deal includes titles like Macworld, GQ, Wired, Playboy, PC Magazine, and many more, and it’s valid until Monday, January 7.
DockMinimal is – surprise! – a minimal dock. It’s only minimal in looks, though, as this thing not only holds your iPad at pretty much any angle you want, it also works with almost any tablet-like device you have.
Hell, there’s even a hidden stylus.
According to Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition Creative Director, Trent Oster, the development team has “hit a snag” in getting the game up and running on Android OS.
According to a Tweet on his Twitter account, Oster says that the Android version of the highly regarded RPG will be a bit longer in development.
Cregle, the makers of the iPen, a Kickstarter-funded iPad stylus, have upped their game with plans for a second generation digital pen, called appropriately enough, the iPen 2. It’s also gotten a Kickstarter project, and it’s also going to have an iPad model. What’s different this time, though, is that the iPen 2 will have a Mac version of the digital pen, allowing you to write directly on your iMac or Apple Cinema Display.
The holidays were great for me, but they were probably even better for Apple. Fiscal Q1 is when Apple always has record-breaking sales numbers, and this year will probably be no different.
Apple has announced that they will release their first quarter earning report and call on Wednesday, January 23, 2012 at 2:00pm PT.
Apple’s iBookstore is reportedly heading to Japan this year, finally delivering its popular e-book store to the ever-growing number of Japanese iPad users. The Cupertino company is said to be in the process of negotiating deals with a “handful” of Japanese publishers to supply a local version of their titles at launch.
Apple was on fire in 2012. Along with the incredible iPhone 5, we saw the first retina tablet and the pocketable iPad mini. This was also the year in which Apple let the iPod touch out to play, giving it features on a par with the iPhone 4S instead of using leftover components from Google’s leftover Nexus parts bin.
But not everything from Apple made it into our top ten. The Retina MacBook Pro, despite being an amazing machine, is still a laptop, albeit one with a hi-res screen and no DVD player. And the new iMac’s most interesting contribution to tech is the HDD/SSD Fusion Drive. Sure, it’s skinny, but who really cares about a thin desktop machine? It’s like making the world’s thinnest lawnmower.
Most of the rest of my picks reflect the fact that high-tech consumer electronics are now as utterly mainstream as the iron or the microwave oven. Sure, us nerds still love to play with the latest crap, and there will always be plenty of ill-informed consumers who are suckered into buying cheapo Android tablets, but these days gadgets generally Just Work, and the differences are in the little details.
That’s why we have fitness widgets alongside fancy portable speakers and implausibly good-for-the-price headphones.
So, should you be in the mood to read yet another end-of-year best-of list, carry on.
Looking to design an app that gets the attention of those shopping in the iTunes Store? Today’s Cult of Mac Deals offer consists of a free video tutorial that explains important aspects of design – aspectx that propel apps ahead of the competition.
Apple has always been against the stylus and touch-based devices that require one for input. Its iOS operating system was designed specifically for fingers — not pens, and Steve Jobs once said “if you see a stylus, they blew it.” But that hasn’t stopped the Cupertino company from working on one of its own.
A new patent application published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office last week shows Apple’s work on an “Active Stylus,” a revolutionary new multifunctional stylus that’s designed to overcome the common problems with existing solutions.
2012 was a very different year for Apple. For starters, it was Tim Cook’s first year as CEO. While much of Apple has remained the same, Cook has definitely shown that he is a different type of leader than his predecessor. Apple is evolving into something new.
Between four press events and the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple announced an unprecedented slew of new products in 2012. Every single major product was refreshed to some extent, which leaves even more speculation as to what Apple has up its sleeve for 2013.
There have been key executive firings and hirings, heated lawsuits, and scandals. In the midst of everything, Apple managed to become the most valuable company on earth.
While there are many big Apple moments from this past year, we’ve gathered what we think are the 10 most notable stories. Here they are:
Just in the last year, we’ve published over 400 helpful tips and tricks for both iOS and OS X. That’s a lot of learning, and a lot of information for you to go through. We though it might be nice to take a look back through them all and come up with our favorite tips, organized into topical sections for your browsing pleasure, below.
Thanks to affordable offerings like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Google Nexus 7, Android tablets continue to increase their market share and claw away at the iPad’s lead. However, Apple’s tablet remains king of the web, accounting for a whopping 87% of tablet web traffic in North America.