iPad - page 164

With the absence of Steve Jobs looming in the background, Tim Cook and his team faced a mountain of questions as they marched into 2012. Who would be the visionary now? Would the iPhone continue to be successful? What’s going to happen to the Mac now that the iPad has become a beast of its own?

The most important question Apple faced going into 2012 was whether they could maintain their supremacy. With competitors closing the gap, Apple doesn’t have Steve Jobs’s vision, charisma, or negotiating prowess anymore, and 2012 has been the year to prove that Apple can endure. The challenges and adversaries Apple is facing in 2012 has made this single year the most important one ever for Apple, and yet they’ve been able to come through in the clutch and blow us away with an army of incredible products and strategic moves.

Microsoft’s awesome Xbox app for iOS got a major update this week, and it’s kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup. It’s accompanied by another great update to Clear, a terrific list-management tool; plus a nifty counting app for iPhone, and a new photography app that lets you apply awesome effects to your photos.

Apple’s current “hobby” — also known as Apple TV — doesn’t tell us much about Apple’s future plans for the living room.

It’s a good product under the right circumstances. But five years from now, living rooms are going to be transformed by all-encompassing systems that turn TVs into video phones, gaming systems, home automation control centers and artificial intelligence assistants.

Does Apple have what it takes to compete in the living room? 

Lucky Frame made one of my favorite games on iOS ever, Pugs Luv Beats. It’s no surprise, given the game’s focus on my favorite dogs of all time and a wicked-cool beat-making mechanic, adorable graphics, and a spin-off app, Pug Synth. They put out Bad Hotel, next, a quirky and innovative take on the castle defense genre that has the games studio’s signature graphic style and musical theme.

Now they’re taking a similar electronica vibe and marrying it with a two-button, arcade-style side-scrolling game on iOS called Wave Trip. And it looks a beaut.

Mike Schramm writes about technology and games for Joystiq and TUAW during the week. He’s also a pretty decent guy. He also finds it fun to code on the weekends. I know, it makes no sense to me, either.

Schramm has just released his second iOS game to the iTunes app store, and it’s called Benediction. Actually, the full name is Benediction – a game by Mike Schramm, a name most likely necessitated by the many other apps out there with a version of the word ‘benediction’ in the title.

Benediction has three things going for it. Those three things got me to download the game, then play the game, then continue playing the game until I was forced to set my iPhone down and actually do some work. This is a great game, and you’ll be sad if you don’t check it out for yourself.

Advertisements are a vital part of what makes the Internet tick. Even though a lot of them are annoying and intrusive and ugly as hell, they provide websites (like us) with the cash flow needed to give you all the infotainment you can eat for free.

Sometimes those ads are just freaking horrific, and solutions like AdBlock make the web a better, more visually appealing place. Now you can get the hardware equivalent of ad-blocking software in a super portable box called AdTrap. 

The Ballistic Tough Jacket is the clearest case of overkill I have seen in a while. If you need protection at the cost of size, weight and style, then you should probably buy one now. Otherwise, read on. The case is actually pretty useful.

What is it with Thailand, Apple and Buddhist temples lately? First, an abbott of the Wat Phra Dhammakaya said that Steve Jobs was kickin’ it in the afterlife as a mid-level angel with his own celestial palace. Now, a temple in Thailand’s Chom Phra district has decided that Buddha carries around an iPad with him wherever he goes.

Anytime you think you’re scoring a super hot deal on Apple’s latest amazing device, you really should make sure everything’s 100% legit before forking over $200 to some shady dude at a gas station. That’s the lesson Jalonta Freeman learned when she found out the “$800 iPad” she purchased was really just a mirror.

Freeman was fueling her car at a gas station when a man pulled up beside her saying he had a bunch of gadgets he was selling for cheap. Thinking it would make a great Christmas present, Jalonta decided to purchase the man’s “brand new” iPad that he claimed was worth $800. He sold it to Freeman for $200 and quickly drove away.

Apple’s new 4-inch iOS devices — namely the iPhone 5 and the fifth-generation iPod touch — appear to be suffering from a strange glitch that means they struggle to keep up with rapid touch inputs, particularly when scrolling at a 45-degree angle. The problem, which isn’t present on older iOS device like the iPhone 4S, is demonstrated in the two-minute clip below.

Have you ever purchased an iPad from Walmart, then got it home and found its box was battered, or worse, the device itself was smashed? It probably happens a lot in Pikeville, Kentucky, where employees at one Walmart store have fun with Apple’s latest tablet by throwing new units around the stock room.

And if that wasn’t stupid enough, they also recorded themselves doing it for a video that explains “why you don’t buy an iPad from Walmart.”

Following its change in policy regarding FaceTime over cellular, AT&T has announced a new holiday promotion for tablets, including the iPad. Beginning this Friday, November 9th, AT&T will discount any tablet by $100 with the purchase of a two-year Mobile Share or tiered data plan.

Any tablet purchased at an AT&T retail location or through the carrier’s online store will receive the discount if a two-year plan is also purchased.

The little Jambox speaker isn’t the loudest, or even the best-sounding portable speaker out there, but somehow it is the most popular, and it’s probably the most portable. And it’s certainly the most cute.

I have one and I love it. Sometimes, though, you just need more. And that’s the idea of the Big Jambox, the best-named product of the year. Is it just a bigger version of its little brother? Kinda, but not quite.

The “world’s first panoramic monitor” might not sound appropriate for the Cult of Mac, but when you find out about some of its tricks, you’ll see why I’m bothering to tell you about it.

The monitor is from LG, measures 29-inches on the diagonal and has a wide, wide aspect ratio of 21:9, and a rather lame resolution of 2,560 x 1,080.

According to a new rumor, iPhone assembler Foxconn Electronics is discussing plans to build manufacturing plants in the U.S. Possible locations for the new plants include Detroit and Los Angeles, but Foxconn may be conducting evaluations in other cities as well.

Foxconn and Apple have come under fire over the last few years for terrible working conditions in assembly plants. The assembly of the iPhone and iPad being conducted in China rather than the U.S. was even a debate point in the recent presidential election. Bringing manufacturing jobs into the U.S. may help heal Foxconn’s reputation.

Just like Blue Microphone’s non-digital Spark, the new, Digital Spark microphone has been put together with an armful of we’re-not-playing-around components and features. Things like a beefed-up condenser capsule, a Focus selector that toggles between a low-frequency bias and a detail bias, and an adjustable desk stand with shock mount. But this Spark is built for iPads (or iPhones); though its USB connector means it’ll work just fine with your MacBook Pro, iMac, Sony Vaio, Samsung Galaxy Tab or anything else with a USB input.

The iPad mini is rather perfectly sized for an e-reader: light, easy to hold, super thin. What better way to show off your reading street cred with a set of luxuriously tasty book-themed images? They’re perfectly sized for the iPad mini, with higher resolution options for its larger, more Retina-enabled bigger brothers, too.

The FlexiShield Skin from MobileFun is a translucent silicone case for iPad mini that’s designed to offer long-lasting protection, extra grip, and a slender profile that “highlights the form of your iPad mini” rather than spoiling it.

It provides impact and scratch protection to the back of your device, while still allowing you to access all of its buttons, ports, and switches. It costs $16.49, and it’s available in white, purple, and black.

One of my favorite lines used by people defending Samsung during their $1 billion legal beatdown from Apple was the claim that Apple doesn’t have a patent on glass rectangles with rounded corners. “You can’t patent the rectangle,” they would say.

Yeah, well Apple just did. Kind of.

After a review by a patent examiner on Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Apple an additional design patent for the iPad’s “ornamental design.” The design feature cited in US Patent D607,286 for a “Portable display device” pretty much appears to be a literal rounded rectangle.

When Apple’s annual capital expediters report for fiscal 2012 was released, it was discovered that Apple spent $10.3 billion when they had only planned to spend about $8 billion. The discrepancy in the huge change from Apple’s original forecast left some wondering what that $2.3 billion went to.

If one analyst is correct, that $2 billion may have gone to Sharp to help bail them out of their financial problems, and keep display supplies flowing for Apple’s products.

The iPad mini is an incredible tablet, and I haven’t been able to put mine down since it was delivered last Friday. I love how thin and light it is, and that it will run all of my existing iPad apps right out of the box. There’s no ignoring the fact that it doesn’t have a Retina display, however.

The iPad mini’s low-resolution display sticks out like a sore thumb the second it lights up. It’s not awful — it’s still better than the iPad 2’s display, and after a few days you stop worrying about it. But it’s noticeably worse than the Retina iPad’s display.

If this has been stopping you from picking up the iPad mini, then you might want to hold onto your cash until its successor arrives next year. According to sources in Apple’s supply chain, the Cupertino company is already working on its 2048 x 1536 Retina display.

A federal jury in Texas has ordered Apple to pay patent holding firm (“patent troll”) VirnetX $368 million for a patent-infringement complaint. Following its success, VirnetX is now working to get Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and Mac products banned.

Sometimes a problem is solved by sweating the details until a solution is reached. A solution so elegant that it appears to be the only possible answer to the problem. A solution so thoroughly worked through that it seems effortless.

Other times, the designer will think of something, grab the first parts that comes to hand and call it good. The solution might work, but it won’t be getting stocked at the Apple Store any time soon. The Clutch is one such solution.

The world converges yet again as Microsoft has just updated its My Xbox app, which released last December, giving it a new name to boot. SmartGlass has been the talk of the gaming community since E3 this past summer, as the technology and gaming giant launched its intitiative to rule your living room using the devices you already have; namely, your iPad, iPhone, or Android device.

Prokofieff

Microsoft announced today on the official Skype blog that all Messenger users will be using Skype soon to connect with each other via instant message or video call. Microsoft released Skype 6.0 a few weeks ago, which already lets users sign into Skype via their Microsoft account. ONce they do so, their Messenger contacts are there, ready to use.