iPhone - page 354

Laaaaaaaaaaadies and Gentlemen, welcome to Friday Night Fights, a new series of weekly deathmatches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?

After this week’s topic, someone’s going to be spitting teeth. Our question: What’s Better? The iPhone’s 3.5-Inch Display, or Android’s 4+ Inch Superphones?

In one corner, we have the 900 pound gorilla, Cult of Mac; in the opposite corner, wearing the green trunks, we have the plucky upstart, Cult of Android!

Place your bets, gentlemen! This is going be a bloody one.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Mark Bowles has a long history making money off of Apple’s designs.

Back in the mid-90s, Bowles helped put together the funding for Power Computing, the first company selected by Apple to make Mac clones. The investment paid off big-time when Steve Jobs came back in 1997 and bought Power Computing for $100 million, just to kill the company off.

Around the same time, Bowles did it again. He helped put together funding for a company called Panorama Designs, which put together the first Mac laptop clones. Motorola eventually bought Panorama Designs for $130 million, but when Jobs came back to Apple, he made sure Motorola (who designed all of Apple’s PowerPC chips) was too petrified of losing their contract with Cupertino that they let their new acquisition just die.

Fast forward fifteen years, and Bowles has figured out a new way to make money off of Apple designs. Unlike his forays in the 90s cloning Apple devices, though, Bowles’s nw company does something different: they make ATMs that buy people’s old iPhones, iPods and iPads for cash on the spot.

Oliver Bussmann, CIO of SAP, makes an unlikely cheerleader for Apple’s iPad — but one who is bound to get noticed. (If you’re now picturing him in a varsity sweater shaking pom-poms, sorry).

But Bussmann is unabashedly enthusiastic about Apple’s magical tablet computer.
SAP deployed some 14,000 iPads to employees last year, making the stodgy German business management software colossal the second largest corporate iPad user worldwide. (Korea Telecom handed over 30,000 to its workers).

“It’s an exciting time. The line between consumer and corporate is fading and we’ve been aggressive in regards to the iPad,” he said. “There’s a  huge opportunity to be in driver’s seat.”

Facing a storm of criticism over the working conditions in factories building iPods, iPhones and iPads, Apple today for the first time released the names of 156 global suppliers along with a report showing mixed success obtaining fair working conditions. One bright spot: fewer children are working on the much-prized Apple devices.

If you need another reason why iPhone rivals just don’t get it, there’s word four of the largest smartphone makers plan to introduce fewer models in a bid to replicate Apple’s success. Ah, if it were only so simple.

The music streaming service Grooveshark, which was pulled from the App Store a while ago after it upset a number of major record labels, has returned to the iPhone — and other mobile devices — with a new HTML5 web app. The app can’t be pulled by Apple this time, but how long will it last?

Remember that stunning iPhone designed by Antonio De Rosa that we brought you last week? It’s called the iPhone SJ and it’s a tribute to Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs. It looked pretty great in the photos we published, but it looks even more awesome when brought to life in this new video.

Apple’s carrier partners in Singapore are removing the front- and rear-facing cameras from the Cupertino company’s latest iPhone 4S before selling it, according to a new report. The doctored devices are aimed at members of the military who are prohibited from taking cameras into their bases.

We’re all fans of Mario Kart and many of Nintendo’s classic titles. But as much as we’d love to see them arrive on iOS, we don’t care much for shameless clones. We’ve seen countless Super Mario clones in the App Store, but Mole Kart is a Mario Kart ripoff that shares more than just a few similarities.

Intel wants to be friends with Apple — or more specifically, Apple’s hoard of cash. As the PC industry craters and mobile devices seem to be the future, the chipmaker wants the tech giant to buy its Medfield design. Although Intel if talking, is Apple listening?

Consumers have another reason besides low-cost designer collaborations to mob their favorite retailer. Target confirmed 25 of its largest U.S. stores will offer an expanded line of Apple gear later this year. The stores join Best Buy in catering to crowds of Apple fans looking to buy more than iPods at their local retailer.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — I hate having three different cameras to address various situations in life – iPhone for when I’m lazy, DSLR when I want to pretend I know how to take pretty pictures, and a GoPro for when I’m doing something adventurous. Thankfully it looks like I’m going to be able to discard at least one of those cameras from my bag now that the MiVue is in existence.

Readdle has issued an update to its popular Calendars app for iOS today, introducing an awesome new interface and a whole host of new features that allow you to add events quicker than ever before, sync even faster with Google Calendars, and use special keyboards for snappier calendar entries.

If you’re after a new iPhone but you find the new iPhone 4S is just too expensive, and the older iPhone 4 with just 8GB simply isn’t enough, then you might want to head down to your local RadioShack before you settle for something different.

The retailer is still offering the iPhone 4 with 16GB of storage for just $99.99 with a two-year contract, but only while supplies last.

If you’re an iOS gamer, there’s no better accessory for your iPhone than a game controller that allows you to use physical controls within your favorite games. And there’s no better game controller than this one, inspired by the retro gamepad from the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Pod2g and his “Dream Team” of fellow iOS hackers seem to be making some pretty decent progress on their much-anticipated A5 jailbreak, promising in their latest blog post that the exploit’s public release is now just “a matter of days” away.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Odds are that giving away free stuff will attract people to your CES booth no matter how high the level of suckiness of said free product. Earlier this morning Case-Mate wasn’t even giving away free cases, they were giving away fragments of free cases, but their booth was still mobbed by an army of swag seeking CES attendees, proving once again that freebies and booth-girls are still a viable way to get your product a momentary flash of attention.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Sennheiser is attacking the audio market with two exciting new headphones: the high-end HD 700s, and the mid-tier anodized-aluminum-crafted Amperior. Both have taken me to my happy place.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Blue has announced three new microphones for Mac, iPhone, and iPad here at CES: The Mikey, Tiki, and Spark. I spent a bit of time at the Blue booth checking out their new mics, and I liked what I saw.

Popular music service Shazam has released a free iPhone app today called Shazam Player. The application is meant to serve as a replacement for the stock iOS 5 Music app, and Shazam is hoping to set itself apart with several marque features.

Firstly, Shazam Player brings LyricPlay to your iPhone’s music library, meaning that you can get fullscreen lyrics for tracks as you listen. You can also watch music videos on YouTube in-app, get tour information, read artist bios, and share what you’re listening to on Twitter and Facebook.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Remember the days before you had an iPhone and played games outside? Using sticks for swords and your hand as a gun? I bet you spent hours outdoors pretending you were some movie superhero trying to rescue Julia Roberts from a a plague of mutant zombie pandas. Then you got into video game consoles and iPhone games and your imagination just went in the toilet. Well, AppGear is here to bring back the nostalgia for your youth and make alien invasions a (virtual) reality.

Well looky here! Turns out the rumors are true and Apple really will be hosting an Education Event in New York City on January 19th. There are no details on what Apple will actually announce at the event, but our guess is it will involves textbooks on the iPad.

The event will be taking place at the iconic Guggenheim muesum, though no information was given on who will be the main speaker.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Yes, it’s true, we’ve joined the masses on Instagram in order to give you more behind the scenes photos of what life is like for the Cult of Mac staff as they pound the streets of Vegas in search of gadgets galore. The team is currently rockin’ the party at CES, and we’ll be sending all our cute little followers photos from the showroom floor and behind the scenes looks at what goes into covering an event like CES. It’ll be like you’re here with us, even though you’re totally not but we wish you were. If you don’t already have Instagram, go download the app right now and add @CultofMac.

And if you’re hungry for even more info, here’s who’ll be on the ground, along with their Twitter handles. Follow us for on-the-floor updates, or if you’re at CES and see one of us, make sure to say hi.

**Update** The iOS Foundations Course bundle is expiring tonight. This is an excellent iOS app development course that will teach you the building blocks for C Programming and Objective-C. There are other courses out there, but these are built with beginners in mind.

Mobile is the future of technology and apps are the driving force of the mobile economy. Those who can build and design apps will be the most sought after talent. Anyone can come up with an idea for an app; it’s the getting it built that’s the tough part. So, if you’ve ever had a killer idea for an iPhone app, then the iOS Foundations bundle could be your chance to learn the one-two punch of iOS app programing from one of the best, Mark Lassoff.

After getting feedback from our customers, we found that the most effective way for a beginner to learn how to build iOS apps is to offer a combo of 2 courses: C Programming: iOS Development Starts Here!and the Objective C for Beginners. And, we’re including both courses for the price of one – just $79.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – In the aftermath of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, there are going to be hundreds of awards — some official, some decidedly not-so — declaring the best product of CES.

Why wait? We can already tell you what we think the best product of CES is: Verizon Wireless’s network, which is the only one that has not been frickin’ smeared into jelly by the insane data and voice demands of the show’s technical elite.