Apple’s third-generation iPad finally goes on sale in China today, more than four months after making its debut in the United States. And unlike previous iPhone and iPad launches in China, which have been marred by huge crowds and violent scalpers, this one has been described as “quiet” and “low-key.”
The Speck FabShell Luxe is a form-fitting hard shell for the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S that aims to stand out and be unique with a genuine leather trim that coats the sides and the back of the case.
Its reinforced, one-piece construction promises to be super strong and shock absorbent, protecting your device from scratches, scuffs, and drops. It features rubber buttons for your sleep/wake button and volume rocker, and provides access to your mute switch, headphone jack, camera, and dock connector.
The FabShell Luxe comes in black, “cognac” (tan), burgundy, and “hunter green,” and offers a one-year warranty. But is it worth its $50 price tag?
I use my iPhone camera to keep track of a lot of things. When I’m in the bookstore, I take photos of books I want to buy, or show friends. I take pics of meals to track what and how much I eat, and I take photos of my kids and pets as often as possible.
I don’t take video that often, though it has been known to happen. However, I can really see the utility in having some sort of audio recording capability along with my photo taking – sort of a quasi-video thing – and Phonogram does just that.
You know those annoying friends that grab your iPhone at parties and then think it’s cool to explore all your pictures, texts, phone calls, and every other crevice of your iPhone? Some people don’t understand that there’s this thing called privacy, and that you have to get permission to look through all that stuff. It’s in the constitution. Look it up.
Apparently the privacy laws that some people thought we had with our iPhones actually don’t apply to police seizures, as two recent court rulings have shown that it is totally legal for police to seize an iPhone and impersonate the owner. If your iPhone ever falls into the clutches of the police and they want to sext with your ex-girlfriend, you’re just out of luck because that’s totally legal.
The wireless spectrum crunch is forcing most mobile carriers to consider options to address a future in which there simply isn’t enough frequency available to easily meet the ever-growing demand for 3G and LTE connections. One idea that has been floated is developing systems that can offload mobile data onto Wi-Fi networks.
That idea isn’t new. In fact most iPhone and 3G/LTE iPad users tend to offload data service to home or public Wi-Fi networks. Doing so has clear advantages to consumers in that it helps avoid any overage fees and it can provide a faster connection in some circumstances.
Dealing with limited spectrum resources, however, carriers have been forced to consider ways of offloading data themselves rather than waiting and hoping that users to take action on their own.
It was recently discovered that AT&T will likely charge for FaceTime over 3G when iOS 6 launches for the public this fall. Users could previously only use Apple’s FaceTime when connected to a WiFi network, but iOS 6 (now in its third developer beta) will allow for FaceTime over both WiFi and a cellular connection.
Sprint, the nation’s third largest carrier, now says that it will not charge its customers for FaceTime over 3G in iOS 6. Both AT&T and Verizon still refuse to give any details.
A recent Reynolds Journalism Institute study indicates that the iPad is becoming a primary vehicle for many users to consume (read, listen to, or watch) daily local, national, and world news and that it is leading a revolution in terms of how frequently people read news as well as how much news they read on a daily or weekly basis.
The survey noted that the iPad is the preferred large media tablet on the market with news consumers surveyed with an 88% share of that market. The Kindle Fire was the top pick among small media tablets with 68% of the news consumer market. The iPhone was the overall preferred smartphone with 39% of the news consumer market.
It also noted that the iPad (and other large tablet devices) seem to be encouraging news reading among all demographics including young adults. Among young adults (18 – 24 years old), 67% read news on one or more mobile devices and averaged five hours of news reading/consumption per week. Among young adults with iPads, 84% read news on their device(s) for an average of 7.3 hours per week.
The OKSU printer is kind of like a real life Pinterest concept, only cooler, and not just for girls. Found some Prada shoes you like but can’t afford? Print their picture out on the OKSU, pin them to your wall or something so you can drool over them everyday, and then when you finally got enough cash to buy them, you just drop the picture on top of the OKSU printer and the website pops up on your MacBook, iPad, or iPhone automatically. It’s magic, ta-da!
Bring your own device (BYOD) programs that allow employees to use their personal iPhones, iPads, Android devices, or other mobile technologies in the office are becoming more mainstream. While there are many advantages to allowing or actively encouraging employee-owned devices in the workplace, reducing costs isn’t one of them for most companies despite the fact that cost reduction is one of the most common goals for a BYOD program.
In fact, companies are more likely to see costs increase after adding BYOD as an option for employees. That’s a common perception that is being proved accurate by a new study that looks at home companies are handling BYOD, the cost savings or increases associated with BYOD, and the mobile platforms supported by BYOD programs.
Vertical Video Syndrome is a very serious problem, but it’s totally preventable. Next time you’re sitting on your couch, watching your baby and cat play together and think, “Oh snap, the spawn of my loins is like sooo freaking cute! I just totally need to film him for the 73rd time and upload it to Facebook for my friends.” That’s cool, go ahead. Film the crap out of your baby. But turn your iPhone horizontal so we can all enjoy that footage.
Only you can prevent Vertical Video Syndrom, so make sure to politely share this image with all your friends, and make the internet a safer place.
Image: Reddit
Apple has been granted what has been described as “the mother of all software patents,” which covers a whole host of features that Apple pioneered with the iPhone. Not only is this huge for Apple in its fight against copycats, but it could have a significant affect on almost every single device that rivals the iPhone or the iPad.
There’s a growing consensus among IT leaders that organizations need a contingency plan in the event that RIM experiences a sudden and unexpected meltdown. That concern is so strong that 70% of IT managers are planning to replace RIM’s BlackBerry management tools with third-party options over the next one to two years – a move that could ease the transition away from BlackBerry devices to iPhones, iPads, and other mobile technologies.
Seeking to capitalize on that concern, mobile management powerhouse MobileIron announced yesterday that it is opening its training and certification services to any IT professionals that are administrators of RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).
MobileIron, which we profiled during our Mobile Management Month series, offers one of the most full-featured mobile management solutions on the market, and is the only company to offer training and certification centered specifically around mobile management technologies. Until now, however, the company’s MobileIron University training service was available only of MobileIron customers and partners.
The poor working conditions in Foxconn’s Chinese factories have been widely documented for some time now, but the reports have seemingly done very little to dissuade workers from applying for Foxconn jobs.
Thousands have reportedly turned up to the company’s Chengdu and Zhengzhou plants in the hope of securing a “summer job” that is likely to involve the assembly of Apple’s new iPhone, and possibly even an “iPad mini.”
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson responded today to the recent rumor that the telecommunications company is planning to charge customers for data used in FaceTime calls over 3G. The feature was announced for iOS 6 in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco.
Asked about the rumor at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Stephenson acknowledged the rumor, but then also said it’s “too early to talk about pricing,” which may in fact be executive-speak for, “we won’t tell you how much we’re gonna charge.”
The uses for Apple’s iPhone and iPad in healthcare seem to be growing by leaps and bounds. The latest field of medicine to take note of the power that iOS devices offer doctors and healthcare providers is ophthalmology. A new study shows that the iPhone may make a better tool when reviewing certain types of ophthalmology images that a standard desktop PC workstation.
What’s truly amazing is that the iPhone used in the study was a four-year-old iPhone 3G.
According to a new study, mobile technologies like the iPhone and iPad aren’t delivering all the applications and features that most small businesses feel they need to succeed. The issue is less with Apple (or Google or RIM) and more with the developers and technology partners that create and market solutions tailored to the somewhat unique needs of the small business market.
The study was performed by Techaisle, a research firm that specializes in the small to mid-size business (SMB) market. It looked at whether small businesses felt that they were getting adequate options and support from cloud and mobile technology vendors. It found that across several areas, mobile technology solutions are failing to provide needed capabilities.
Even though the iPhone 4S didn’t come with a radical new design and a few features customers were hoping for, it was still Apple’s most popular iPhone ever. During the first quarter of its availability, Apple sold over 37 million iPhone 4S units, but analyst Gene Munster says Apple is going to murder than number and sell at least 80 million iPhone 5’s.
Mobile management vendor BoxTone announced an aggressive pricing and sales campaign for its mobile management platform today. From now through the end of September, companies will be able to license BoxTone’s mobile device management (MDM) suite for a monthly fee of just $0.99 per device.
The move comes just a week after BoxTone announced the latest generation of its mobile management tools that includes the now-discounted MDM module as well as modules focused on mobile app management (MAM), mobile device support solutions for help desk agents and IT support teams, and a mobile operations module for monitoring and managing mobile IT staff.
Using Apple’s recently released Podcast app for your browsing and discovery needs? Apple’s latest evolutionary step in the podcast world is a standalone app that took the podcasts out of the standard Music app and gave them a home of their own. This makes a lot of sense, as most podcasts are not strictly music. Audio, yes. Music? Not always.
The hype around the release of the app has been about discovery, of course, as giving the media type its own separate place for users to look at, complete with Apple’s own special sauce for featuring and categorizing things for their users, really helps us all find the podcasts we didn’t even know we wanted to listen to.
However, once caught up in the discovery process, you might not have known that you can subscribe to any podcast, whether it is featured or not, right from the Podcast app itself.
Don’t forget your iPhone’s password, because if you do your device might get disabled for a few decades. That’s what happened to this poor fellow’s iPod Touch. After erroneously entering his passcode ten times the iPod locked up and said it can’t be used for another 22,338,550 minutes. That’s 42.5 years he’s going to have to wait to listen to The Biebs new album. The poor sucker.
The longest a time lock on iOS is supposed to last is 60 minutes, so this is obviously a bug. A really bad bug. Should this ever happens to your iPod you can fix it by plugging the device into your Mac and restoring it to your last backup.
Source: Reddit
Have you ever wondered how much time you spend in an app? There are those staple iOS apps most of us use everyday (Phone, Messages, Mail, etc.), and then there are our favorite third-party apps from the App Store. Which apps command the most of your time? Now there’s an easy way to find out.
A new jailbreak app called App Analytics tracks your app usage on the iPhone and iPad. Once installed via the jailbreak App Store known as Cydia, App Analytics stays out of the way. The app is simple, lightweight, and scarily revealing.
Every once and a while here at Cult of Mac, we like to peel open our gadget bags and catalogue what’s inside them for a bit of fun in our “What’s in our gadget bag?” series. The scope of our gadget bags has nothing on Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s, though: his bag contains two iPads, a MacBook Pro, two iPod nanos, three iPhone 4Ses, an iPhone 4, a Mophie, a Jambox and even more.
I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing Pokemon on my Game Boy, and I’d love to be able to relive those days on my iPhone. Unfortunately, Nintendo is adamant it won’t be bringing any of its titles to iOS. While that’s a huge disappointment to most of us, some developers see it as an opportunity to create some great alternatives.
Little Masters is exactly that — an alternative to Pokemon for iOS. And as you can see from the screenshots above, it’s remarkably similar.
While most CIOs and IT leaders are taking steps to reduce their reliance on RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), some major BlackBerry business customers are ready to abandon RIM’s services and its BlackBerry smartphones in one fell swoop. The latest company to announce such a migration is the Australian airline Qantas.
The company told the Australian (registration required) that it had made the decision to trade its 1,300 BlackBerry devices and related service packages for iPhones. The move, which Qantas expects will deliver significant cost savings, follows a company-wide survey in which a “large majority” of employees said that they’d prefer iPhones.
Like other companies and organizations that have announced similar transitions this year, Qantas chief information officer Paul Jones pointed to the iPhone’s ease of use and popularity as reasons for selecting the iPhone.
Microsoft’s free My Xbox LIVE app for iOS just got a brand new update that introduces the ability to use your iPad as a remote control for your console. You can use it to navigate your way around the menus, control media playback, and to “find fresh entertainment” in the new Discover section.
