When Apple unveiled the third-generation iPad earlier this year, it reduced the price of the iPad 2 to just $399 in an effort to provide fans with a more affordable option, and to stave off the competition from cheaper Android slates as much as it could. But with the iPad mini set to make its debut tomorrow, will there still be a need for the iPad 2?
One analyst thinks not.
Borderlands, Gearbox Software’s awesome first-person shooter series, is set to make its debut on iOS this month. Revealed in a advert within a Borderlands 2 digital strategy guide, the game will be called Borderlands Legends and it’ll allow you to play one of four original Borderlands heroes for the first time on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
A wonderful new news app from Reuters kicks off this week’s must-have apps list, providing you with an “unprecedented photography experience” that allows you to immerse yourself in the biggest news stories from around the world. Also included in the roundup is a terrific app for making mobile websites from your iPhone, a new weather app, and more.
Kicking off this week’s must-have iOS app is the 1997 violent driving sensation that is Carmageddon. It finally makes its debut on iOS, and it’s an exact port of the original. It’s accompanied by Sonic Jump, Sega’s latest release; Mikey Shorts Halloween, and True Skate.
When the folks at Griffin were choosing a mythical creature for which to name their company1, they might have gone with Janus instead, to better reflect the schizophrenic nature of its offering: serious computer accessories vs. frivolous toys.
That’s not to say that the toys are bad. On the contrary, Griffin’s iOS-controlled choppers look amazing. And now they’re joined by these remote-controlled monster trucks.
There are reasons why you should always understand how technology works before taking scandalous pictures of yourself and sending them to your lover. You don’t know where those pictures are going to end up. You might snap a naughty picture with your iPhone that then gets sent to your iCloud Photostream that is then synced with your school’s iPad. Then your students might be playing around on that school iPad, find the pic of you lookin’ saucy, and then all hell breaks loose.
That’s exactly what happened to one middle school teacher. The weird twist to the story is that the teacher didn’t get fired or suspended for having nearly pornographic photos of herself on a school device. The students that found it go suspended instead.
Reuters’ new iPad app is called The Wider Image, and it’s dedicated to showing off the news agency’s photographs. It’s free, and if you want to spend the next few hours lost in amazing photojournalism from around the world, whilst learning a bit about that same world, then go download it now.
If you have any idea what an ollie is, or a 50:50 grind, or a heel-flip (or — if you grew up in the 1980s, an acid drop or boneless), then you should buy True Skate right this minute. Seriously. I’ll wait.
Why? Because — despite some v1 limitations — True Skate is the closest you’re going to get to a dead-on skateboarding sim in 2012. The only things missing are the security guards to come and harass you, and bad fast food.
Microsoft claims its new Surface RT tablet, which begins shipping later this month, has a display that’s superior to the Retina display in the third-generation iPad. But according to DisplayMate CEO Dr. Raymond M. Soneira, that may not be the case. After some basic comparisons, Soneira found the Surface tablet’s display is “significantly less sharp” than the new iPad’s.
New, mini iPads; new, thinner iMacs; 13-inch Macbook Pros with Retina displays; you could wait till Tuesday to discover all the great products Apple’s about to unleash into the world, but that’s what grandpas do. Join us on our newest CultCast, and find out everything we know and expect from next week’s big media event right now. And, um, no offense to actual grandpas, cause I love grandpas, they’re the best.
Plus: 3rd-party lightening adapters and cables—they’d make great stocking stuffers, am-i-right? We’ll tell you when you can finally expect to see them in stores.
All that and more on our newest CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes, or easily stream The CultCast via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Read on for the show notes!
As a publicly traded company, Apple submits its financial reports every quarter to let their investors know how well the company is doing. However, Apple is under no obligation to share specific financial results about each of the individual products it sells, data that it is still trying to protect via the court in the Apple v Samsung case in Northern California.
However, rabid interest in the specifics continues unabated. In a survey reported today, CNN Money asked 61 Apple analysts, 31 from Wall Street and 30 independent analysts, what their estimates were for specific device sales in the quarter that just ended on September 29, 2012. Turns out, the analysts estimates were all over the place when it came to predicting the number of iPads sold.
Telltale Games announced today that iOS users can now download Episode Three of The Walking Dead: The Game, entitled “Long Road Ahead,” to their iPhone or iPad. It’s the third of five episodes in the critically acclaimed series based on Robert Kirkman’s zombie drama, The Walking Dead, which started as an award-winning comic book, then made its way to become a critically-acclaimed television series on AMC.
Shared Photo Streams are fantastic, of course, barring the niggling detail that only the person who creates them can add photos to them. Sometimes, though, as with all tech, things don’t necessarily work the way they should. For example, sometimes you won’t be able to see comments that have been posted by subscribers. Other times, deleting a comment from a shared Photo Stream via iPhoto or Aperture won’t be reflected on your iPhone.
Here’s how to fix that.
Aside from being fatter and heavier than the the last-gen model, and running hot, and taking like a year to charge, the iPad is almost perfect. Apart from all those problems, of course.
But while those issues all stem from jamming a multi-million-pixel display into a mobile device, the iPad’s speaker is another matter. It sounds just fine — if you’re standing behind the iPad that it.
The SoundJaw Unlimited — itself a sequel to a thinner product — fixes that. And fixes it good.
White gadgets became an iconic symbol under the careful craftsmanship of Apple. When Apple released the original iPod 11 years ago in classic Apple white, everybody wanted one, and eventually every gadget manufacturer in the world tried to copy that style.
Over the last few years though, black iDevices have started to gain in popularity over their white brethren. Black is classy, professional, and always down for a good time, whereas white is starting to come off as fun but a bit more feminine. Some people think white is making a comeback, but a new study suggests that nearly 70% of Apple owners prefer black over white now, and there’s no turning back.
Days of Wonder have decorated their so-addictive-you-can’t-stop-playing-to-eat iPad train game, Ticket to Ride, with a new Halloween-themed update. As if I don’t lose enough time to this damn game.
Apple’s upcoming iPad mini is set to shake up the tablet industry for a second time later this month. Its 9.7-inch tablet is the king of premium slates, and the smaller model is expected to dominate the entry-level market. But it won’t just cost rivals like Amazon and Google — it’ll cost Apple, too. You see, for every five iPad minis sold, the Cupertino company is expected to lose one 9.7-inch iPad sale.
The cubicle wars continue unabated, sparking an arms race of unprecedented idiocy.
Now the conflict is escalating with a new weapons system coming online that could tilt the balance of power: A $130 iOS-controlled ping pong ball-dropping drone aircraft.
Called the iStrike Shuttle, the 3-channel office drone is remotely piloted via an iStrike Controller app on your iOS device by way of Bluetooth.
The app features G-Sensor and Joystick modes for flight control.
The iStrike Shuttle is available in November from Hammacher Schlemmer and Dream Cheeky.
Here comes the video.
Apple has lost its appeal against a High Court ruling in the United Kingdom that deemed the Samsung Galaxy Tab does not infringe its copyright for the iPad. Despite the similarities between the two devices, the Court of Appeal upheld its decision that Samsung did not copy the iPad when producing the Galaxy Tab.
Apple will now have to place “prominent advertisements” in magazines and newspapers, explaining that Samsung did not infringe its design.
The folks at Klout, the social network influence web company, want you to be recognized for your Klout score wherever you go. Their iOS app has added Perks and a special Passbook-enabled influence card that you can access right on your iOS device when you’re out and about.
On the internet, comments can be as important as the content being articulated about. Of course, comments can also be rude, hateful, or just plain ridiculous. You know, like much of the content on the internet, as well.
So, if shared Photo Streams are like little photo social networks that contain only the people you invite, comments should never be a problem, right? Well, I don’t know about your friends and family, but mine can be both irreverent and irregular in their commenting activities. That’s why it’s handy to be able to delete comments that the original Photo Stream poster doesn’t want any more.
Here’s how to get rid of those commenting curiosities.
Each time Apple’s made a significant update to a device this year it’s received a significantly larger screen size or resolution. First the iPad came out with a Retina display along with the MacBook Pro, and now the iPhone 5 has a bigger display as well.
That’s great for your eyeballs, but it also means that the average size of apps is growing too, which may end up costing you more in data fees in the long run.
Some radical Orthodox Christians in Russia are starting to have a hard time with Apple’s logo that decorates every iPhone, iPad and MacBook. These Russian Orthodox believe that the half-bitten logo is anti-Christian and represents the act of original sin committed by Adam and Eve in Garden of Eden when they first bit into an apple from the Tree of Knowledge.
To get past Cupertino’s symbol of evil while still using their products, many radical Orthodox, including priests, have swapped the Apple logo out for the much more “holy” image of the cross, a symbol of Jesus Christ.
To vastly simplify matters, every LCD screen is made up of a bunch of pixels connected to each other with a mesh of tiny little wires. These pixels don’t actually emit light themselves, but simply regulate the color of the light being displayed in that pixel. Behind this mesh is a lamp, and before a pixel can light up on your screen, the light from this lamp needs to shine through this mesh of wires. Because this mesh is so densely packed, though, the lamp needs to shine very, very brightly to get through… and the brighter an LED light shines, the more power it soaks up.
This is why the new iPad needs such a massive battery. The Retina display has over 3 million pixels in in a tiny area, which means the mesh behind the display is even thicker and more densely packed. To compensate, Apple needs to use a very bright light to shine through this extremely dense mesh, which results in worse battery performance over all.
What if there was a way to make the mesh of wires behind every pixel a lot less dense? That’s the idea behind Sharp’s IGZO technology, and the reason why we’ve been excited about it finally coming to Apple products since at least the beginning of the year. Now it looks possible that, with the iPad mini, we could finally get our wish, as Sharp is now announcing that their IGZO tech comes in 7-inch varieties… and they are releasing a tablet to prove it.
The violent driving sensation that is Carmageddon makes its debut on iOS today, 15 years after it was first released — and subsequently banned for its twisted mix of automotive killing machines — on Mac and PC. It’s available to download right away from the App Store, and it’s free for today only — so grab it quick.