Apple’s much-anticipated iPad mini is expected to make its debut in mid-October, but it may be a little more difficult to get hold of than other iOS devices. According to sources in the Cupertino company’s Taiwanese supply chain, iPad mini shipments are already stumbling due to the low yield rates of the tablet’s aluminum chassis.
Pelican made a name for itself making tough cases for the military, firemen and other hazardous sorts who generally place their delicate gadgets in harm’s way. Now they’ve taken their extreme-environment case technology and built four new backpacks around it — two of which have crushproof/waterproof compartments.
I’m kind of obsessed with wallpapers for my Apple devices. That’s why I got excited when the guys at 2048pixels contacted me about their site’s 2.0 launch. I wrote about 2048pixels back in May, and it’s been cool to watch the site evolve with more and more awesome wallpapers over the last several months.
In case you didn’t know, 2048pixels is a website that offers free wallpapers for the third-gen iPad’s Retina display. You can discover and download them right from the site on your iPad, and version 2.0 brings a number of improvements, including the ability to edit wallpapers on the iPad before you download.
Cult of Mac reader, Scott, asks this week:
“I would like to find out how to create a hyperlink in my Sig using my iPad. Example: Find me on twitter ( with twitter being a hyperlink taking them to my home page.”
I’ve shown you how to use Emoji in your signature, taking advantage of the rich text abilities of iOS 5 and up, but iOS 6 adds HTML support for signatures. Now you can put any rendered HTML into your signature on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Here’s how.
Apple’s Universal Dock is anything but universal. It won’t work with any iPads, it won’t work with the iPhone 5, and it sure as hell won’t fit a Motorola Xoom. And unless you’re using it two-handed, and you’re wide awake, it doesn’t even work very well with the iPhone or iPod Touch.
The Complete Dock, on the other hand, works with almost anything. Hell, if you wanted to dock your cruise ship in it you probably could.
My sense of proportion has been hopelessly corrupted by a lifetime of telling girls that six centimeters is actually six inches, so I’m very excited by the prospect of an app that can tell me the size of something just by taking a photo of it.
That app is called CamRuler, and it works by comparing the size of an unknown object to that of a known object. If you ever put a coin or a small model dinosaur into a photo to help show scale, then you already know how it works.
When you think about it, the iPad 3 is possibly the best platform for simulated pinball, like, ever. Why? Because even though it’s very small, it has a high enough resolution for even the most complicated tables. And it has an accelerometer to activate the tilt warning. But more importantly, the iPad’s great accessibility options (like voiceover) mean that even a deaf, dumb or blind kid should be able to play a mean pinball.
All you need are some buttons to flip the flippers.
The Wall Street journal reports that Apple’s upcoming iPad mini has now entered mass production with component suppliers in Asia. According to two people familiar with the matter, the device will have a 7.85-inch LCD display — as previous rumors have suggested — and it will be priced to compete with cheaper tablets like the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD.
Brian Eno has a new app out. It’s called Scape. Like other apps he’s produced, it’s about making music – even for people who have no musical skill or knowledge whatsoever.
I use email for a ton of different reasons. I use it to communicate with family, friends, colleagues, and business partners. I use email to keep track of things I need to get done today, tomorrow, and far into the future. Chances are, you do, too.
One of the ways I use email to keep myself on track and informed is by flagging emails for later perusal. I also mark things as read and unread to signal that I am done with the email, or that I need to actually read it later.
Now you can do these things right in the iOS 6 Mail app. Here’s how.
Phiaton’s new Moderna MS 200 earphones ($149) sound good and have great sound isolation, sure, but what’s more important is how good they look plugged in to your new iPhone 5.
iOS 6 is spreading like wildfire across Apple’s iDevices. Within two days of its release a quarter of all iOS devices had adopted Apple’s newest mobile operating system, and its use continues to grow. Chitika Insights has released their new data on iOS 6 adoption rates and they’ve found that 60% of iPhone users have already installed iOS 6, but only 39% of iPod touch users are on the new iOS.
The New York Times has today launched a new, “experimental” web app designed for optimal reading on the iPad. Built using HTML5, the app is available exclusively to digital subscribers with tablet access, as well as home delivery subscribers who link their account for digital access.
The app boasts a number of unique features, including four new ways to read the NYT, new “swipe-friendly” navigation gestures, and more.
A study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found a massive boom in tablets over the last 12 months, with 25% of American adults now owning a tablet of their own. As you might expect, the iPad is the most popular device out there at the moment, claiming more than 52% of the market. But that may not be the case for too long.
Android tablets are rapidly catching up, and in the not-so-distant future, there’s a good chance they will be king.
We learned this morning that the iPad Mini might be announced on October 17th after invites get sent to the press on October 10th. Everyone has a fairly good idea of what the iPad Mini will look like, but it can never hurt to see a few physical mock-ups for the sake of comparisson.
The latest mock-up photos to hit the Internet show what the iPad Mini will look like in comparison to the new Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 7, and the new iPad. The iPad’s design is noticeably more blocky as it’s missing the tapered edges of the iPad. Check out the photos after the jump.
I'm a sucker for bags, and — like TV's Dexter — I have come to be at peace with my darker side (I'm just starting season 4 though, so maybe he gets all crazy after becoming a father and everything). I realize that no matter how many sleeves, totes, backpacks or messenger bags I buy, it will never be enough.
I haven't yet started bagging up the old, discarded models and tossing them into the Gulf Stream to be carried off to a watery grave far away, but it can't be long. In the meantime, help talk me down from dropping almost $200 on this simple but gorgeous wool and leather sleeve.
Apple is bound to make an iPad Mini someday soon, and for the last few months the rumors have been saying they’ll be announcing it in October. According to Fortune, Apple is set to mail out iPad Mini invitations on October 10th, which might suggest the actual keynote will be held on October 17th.
Have you ever looked at your iPad and wished it ran OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system? I have — like when I attempted to use WordPress in mobile Safari. But a Mac-powered tablet is no longer just a dream, thanks to the Modbook Pro. The Modbook Pro comes with all the benefits you get with an iPad, such as a touchscreen and excellent portability, but it runs Mountain Lion. And you can pre-order yours from October 3.
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.
There’s an important list every serious outdoor junkie has at least heard of — it’s called the Ten Essentials, and it lists gear no adventurer should journey into the wilds without. But it was codified long before the digital age arrived; now that power-hungry electronic gadgets are a part of adventuring, a relaible backup fuel tank is pretty important. It could even make the difference between life and death.
That’s where Mophie’s Juice Pack Powerstation Pro ($130) comes in. It’s a monstrous 6000 mAh chunk of a battery guarded by a ruggedized, military-spec housing — and it’ll charge practically anything short of a laptop.
Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is an awesome new Twitter client that reminds me of the old (and awesome) Tweetie app — before Twitter bought it and ruined it. It’s accompanied by Camera+, which now supports the iPhone 5’s larger display, and comes to the iPad; an awesome new update to Mixel; and more.
Siri has been updated along with the rest of the iOS in the new iteration from Apple. The personal voice assistant can take dictation, help you plan your wardrobe around the weather, keep track of your buddies, inform you on all sorts of sports information, and help you choose the best movie to go see, all using basic spoken English. You can discover more siri tricks to help you get the most out of your device in this article.
Of course, it helps to know what kinds of questions and commands you can actually say to produce the desired results. Here’s five things you can do with Siri the right way, so you can spend less time repeating yourself and more time going to those movies and meeting up with those friends.
FIFA 13 kicks off this week’s must-have games roundup, delivering a much-improved version of everyone’s favorite soccer sim. In addition to new visuals and optimization for the iPhone 5, FIFA 13 finally boasts an online multiplayer mode, allowing you to play against friends and random opponents over the Internet.
We also have Rovio’s latest release, Bad Piggies; a stunning adventure RPG called Lili, a new Monsters Ate My Condo game, and more.
I have to admit, I was intrigued by Passbook when I first heard of it. An app that keeps my airline and movie tickets together with my coupons and customer loyalty cards seems like a good idea. For now, however, Passbook in iOS 6 seems like a placeholder to me, an app with no real purpose in and of itself, a place to link to other apps.
Apple quietly added a little explanation in the form of a paragraph in the iTunes Store page for Passbook apps which shows, at least, that they’re planning on more and that they understand that we all might feel a bit nonplused about one of the bigger features of the new iOS.
One of the improvements Apple made to Safari 6.0 was to take the search and address bars and roll them into one — just like a lot of popular web browsers do. The change hasn’t been made to the mobile Safari app,
But there is a good reason for that omission.