A gang leader who orchestrated the production of counterfeit credit cards and then used them to purchase over $1 million worth of iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks from Apple Stores throughout the United States has been sentenced to up to nine years in prison.
Like its predecessors, Apple’s latest iPad promises to provide you within around ten hours of battery life for surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music. But with its high-resolution Retina display and LTE connectivity, it needs a much bigger battery to do that.
And we all know how long it takes for that battery to charge, because it has been well documented since the device made its debut earlier this year. But the cost of keeping it running may be a lot less than you think.
CineXPlayer, the excellent, rock-solid, play-anything video player for iOS, had gotten yet another big update. Every time the app is bumped to a new version, I wonder what the developers will be able to add next time. And today’s answer is… Quite a lot.
Earlier this week, Microsoft revealed their new “iPad killer,” a sleek and sexy tablet they’re calling the Surface. The guys over at Gizmodo think it looks even better than the iPad and the MacBook Air. We don’t. Who’s right? What better way to find out than to grab Gizmodo’s Editor-in-Chief, Joe Brown, and let the fists fly on an all new CultCast.
Can Joe convince us that Microsoft is the coolest company in tech right now? Or will the CultCast crew enlighten the Gizmodo chief? Find out on a titillating new episode — and don’t miss the reveal of our favorite new gadgets!
Hit the subscribe button right now and read on for the show notes.
One of concerns for IT departments as first iPhones and then iPads and other consumer-focused technologies began creeping into the workplace is how to support the personal devices and apps of employees. That issue took center stage this week as security vendor Fortinet identified that most millennial workers feel that support and security for their mobile devices and other technologies is their responsibility and not the responsibility of an employer or IT department.
What that means is that many IT departments may need to rethink what technical support means. That isn’t a new concept. Various studies and reports have shown that members of Gen-Y prefer to engage support resources using a range of technologies beyond a helpdesk phone line including email, texts, and social networks. As this new vision of support emerges, one model for the future help desk is the Genius Bar from Apple’s retail stores.
On average, iOS is the most expensive mobile platform for developers. It’s the second most profitable mobile platform overall behind RIM’s BlackBerry. One in three mobile developers can’t earn enough money to living from the apps that they produce.
Those are some of the details contained in a new report from mobile analyst and strategy company VisionMobile. The report delves into the heart of the so-called app economy and provides a range of information and statistics about app development, its costs, and the income potential that comes from being an iOS, Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone developer. If you’re considering a career as a mobile developer, this is must-read report. For the rest of us, it’s a fascinating sneak peek into the experience of app developers around the world.
I’ve waited over two decades to own a real robot. It was one of those silly childhood dreams to own something straight out of Terminator that obeys commands, spies on people, and rains down havoc if need be. Even though we’re in the year 2012, we still haven’t managed to create affordable robots, which is a pretty big letdown if you ask me. Thankfully, we’re getting closer, and playing with the new Parrot AR. Drone 2.0 has given me hope that the toys of the future are going to kick some major ass.
CloudOn is one of the more interesting options for working with Office documents on the iPad. The company offers a cloud-based version of the core Microsoft Office apps plus Adobe Reader. Unlike a virtual desktop solution, CloudOn provides just the applications and not a full Windows desktop. When it comes to creating and editing documents, CloudOn’s app relies on popular cloud storage options: Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
As a startup, CloudOn has seen strong growth since it launched its service earlier this year. The company announced a new round of funding this week ($16 million) and used the opportunity to tease users with details of its upcoming plans, most notably support for group editing and collaboration as well as expansion beyond the iPad and Android tablets.
Satechi’s Portable Energy Station is the backup battery you need if you have a new iPad aka iPad 3. Why? Because its 10,000 mAH battery is almost as capacious as the 12,000 mAH (45 watt-hour) battery in the iPad 3 itself.
One of the ironic twists about the anti-trust lawsuits against Apple and the major publishing companies is that Apple’s entrance into the ebook market actually broke Amazon’s virtual monopoly on the ebook business. In the process, publishers gained the ability to control ebook pricing, which can be seen as actually encouraging competition in the industry.
While the U.S. Department of Justice and attorneys general from many states are pursuing lawsuits around the matter, not every country would see the situation in the same terms as the U.S. government. In France, for example, publishers can legally control pricing and are protected from booksellers undercutting their business as Amazon had been doing with its power over the ebook market. It’s even possible that France’s laws protecting publishers may have served as inspiration for the agency model that Apple used in building the iBookstore.
Gameloft’s Asphalt series has been one of the most successful racing titles on iOS, and its latest addition promises to the “newest, fastest, most visually stunning” edition yet. It’s called Asphalt 7: Heat and it’s available today on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for just $0.99.
For that you get the chance to race over 60 cars — including a DeLorean! — over 15 tracks, in both single and multiplayer game modes.
Remember SlideWriter, the innovative iPad text editor that turned one impressive keyboard concept into a real app, which we told you about back in May? Today it’s finally available to download from the App Store for just $0.99 for a limited time.
Enterprise security vendor Fortinet decided that the best way to understand members of the millennial generation (or Gen-Y) and their potential impact on IT and security policies was to ask them directly for their views on technology in the workplace. What Fortinet learned will probably keep CIOs and IT leaders up at night.
Most millenials view BYOD programs and the ability to choose the technology they use for work as a right rather than a privilege and have few qualms about outright ignoring policies that restrict that right – even in situations where they know that important data breaches could be the result.
Most worrying for IT leaders, however, is that most young workers feel that device and data security is their personal responsibility even when sensitive business data is stored on or accessed from their personal iPhone, iPad, or other device.
According to a poll conducted by discount site CouponCodes4u, less than one-quarter of American consumers will consider buying Microsoft’s newly unveiled Surface. The discount site used the poll to study the overall tablet space and to determine brand awareness and perceptions across the U.S. market. It found that only 22% of respondents would consider buying one of the Surface tablets.
The survey, which was taken by 1,578 Americans in the 21 to 35 age bracket, also found high brand loyalty among tablet owners for both the iPad and for Android.
InboundWriter is one of those stunning, trick applications you’re surprised even exists. It’s a web-based text editor that allows you to see — via a big speedometer-like gauge — how well you’ve tuned your document to be search-engine friendly (otherwise known as search-engine optimization, or SEO), and then gives you the tools to tweak your document’s SEO to perfection. And yes, it’s free — so long as you don’t go over eight documents per month.
But since its launch early this year in May of last year, InboundWriter has been running on Flash, making it annoyingly unavailable on the iPad. But that’s about to change; it’s been re-worked from the ground up to run on HTML5, and has even had its aspect ratio optimized for the iPad.
Alien Blue, undoubtedly the best third-party Reddit client for iOS, has just received a great new update on the iPhone. In addition to a long list of improvements and optimizations, version 2.6 brings the ability to sort your subreddits into groups, and then sync them via iCloud; Retina subreddit icons, a native Imgur album browser, a native GIF player, and lots more.
Almost nightly I scrabble around in the dark trying to find the 30-pin dock connector dangling from my desk so I can plug it onto my depleted iPad without disturbing the Lady, sleeping beside me. I say “almost” as sometimes I fall into a drunken sleep with my spectacles askew and the iPad still in my lap or – more often – the Lady refuses to sleep with me and goes to her own room.
And every time I struggle to find the plug, I wish for something like the illuminated CordLite cable.
Doctors may be fans of the iPad as a clinical tool, but they’re not certain that Apple’s iPad, the 5000+ health and medical apps in the App Store, or other mobile technologies are safe and effective health tools for patients. That’s the gist of a report by PwC Global Healthcare. The report was based on surveys of physicians, healthcare management professionals and payers, and mobile technology users in ten countries around the world.
According to the report, just under two-thirds (64%) of healthcare providers acknowledged that mobile technologies offer potential benefits for patients, but feel that mobile health (also known as mhealth) is virgin and untested territory. As a result, the majority of doctors (73%) don’t suggest iOS or mobile health apps to their patients and some (13%) even discourage patients from using them.
Sydnee from Kanex is a new accessory that allows users with an entire family of iOS devices to charge all of their gadgets (well, four of them) simultaneously. It requires only one main socket, and it coverts that into four USB ports — capable of pumping out 2.1 amps of power — for your iPhones, iPads, or iPod touches.
Sure, iMovie is now available on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, but nothing beats a big old screen to edit your video on. You no longer have to export the video from your iOS device to your iTunes or iPhoto, then import into iMovie. With iMovie ’11, you can bring it right into the app with no middle steps. How refreshingly simple! Here’s how.
Some of you may already be familiar with Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, not just because it has the longest name the App Store has ever seen, but also because it was one of the most impressive iPad titles that was shown off at E3 earlier this month.
It’s now available to download — completely free — and it looks incredible on the new iPad’s Retina display. Whether or not you’re a fan of the Magic franchise, this is certainly a title you should check out.
The New York Post introduced a paywall last year that meant iPad users accessing its website with mobile Safari would be redirected to its official iPad app, and would then have to pay a monthly subscription fee to access its content. However, it has now performed a complete u-turn and scrapped that paywall completely.
Macbook Pros with Retina displays; Mountain Lion’s best new features; the secrets of iOS 6; Apple announced a glut of new software and hardware at last week’s World Wide Developers Conference, and if you’d like to relive the glory, or need help making sense of it all, don’ miss the second part of our special-edition WWDC CultCast.
Subscribe now on iTunes to catch both of our special WWDC episodes, and peep the full show notes after the jump!
Maybe you were exploring the nether reaches of a Venezuelan jungle yesterday and missed the news that Microsoft announced that they’re making a cool looking tablet called the Microsoft Surface for Windows RT.
Despite some huge holes in the announcement, some people like Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz have gone on to claim that Microsoft’s Surface just made the iPad and MacBook Air obsolete.
We’re actually kind of excited about the Surface and think it looks like an intriguing product, but saying that it’s better than the iPad and MacBook Air at this point is absolutely absurd.
They’re not for everyone, but if you like ensconcing your Apple devices in sumptuous leather bound hides as if they were dusty and mysterious tomes just pulled off an ancient library shelf, no one does it better than TwelveSouth with their BookBook series.
TwelveSouth has had a BookBook case for iPad for awhile, but they just gave it an overhaul, slimming it down by 33% and featuring an all-new interior frame that allows you to position the iPad at an angle for typing or watching movies.
The new BookBook for iPad is available now in brown, black and red and costs $80. We’ve got one, and we’ll be posting a review in the coming days.
Source: TwelveSouth