Oh man, it’s too bad it’s too late to add this to my Christmas list. The Armstar is a gauntlet ripped straight from the forearm of Batman himself, featuring a working stun device, camera, flash light and iPhone / iPod dock, all in one piece of Kevlar arm armor. And Kevin Costner helped build it!
If only we’d found out about this a couple months back, I know what would have won our best of 2011 accessories award!
[via Obama Pacman]
Wahoo’s popular ANT+ Fisica dongle, which allows the iPhone to read signals from fitness gadgets like heart-rate monitors, pedometers and bike sensors, is probably most widely used fitness iPhone accessory since its release a little over a year ago. And today, Wahoo took the first step toward killing it.
One of the unfortunate byproducts of owning an iOS device is that your Home button can become a little sluggish over time. When you get your new iPhone or iPad and use it initially, the Home button works smoothly, but it can eventually become less responsive.
Fortunately, there’s a subtle trick in iOS for recalibrating your Home button. After performing this tip on your personal iOS device, you should notice that your Home button is considerably more responsive when you’re navigating throughout iOS.
We’re all familiar with Apple’s iconic white earbuds, and those of us who’ve popped for their $80 canalbuds are familiar with how Apple makes higher-end earphones. But Apple doesn’t make headphones — If they did, would they be like the new Incase Sonic ($150) set?
Remember how digital cameras did in film? That progression appears now to be in its second-generation as the iPhone and other smartphones seem destined to do away with the ubiquitous point-and-shoot digital camera. A new report finds phones take a third of all photos as phone-based photo quality dramatically increases.
Does talk of the Euro economic crisis make your eyes glaze over? Perhaps this will get your attention: The down European economy is costing the iPhone marketshare as consumers keep a tight hold on their cash. The bright side: the U.S. and U.K. love of everything Apple has become stronger.
Presumably, it takes intelligence to become rich, which is what makes it so mystifying to me that so many “luxury products” are things that only swollen-tongued mooncalves would actually buy. Take, for instance, Gresso’s custom iPhone, which costs $30,000, and tries to justify that with three in-laid clocks with ten year time reserves apiece… despite the fact that if you just turn it on, the iPhone has an infinitely more accurate clock for as many time zones as you care to throw at it. Oh, there’s also the ubiquitous slathering of Swarovski crystals, if crushed glass floats your boat. Horf.
Apple has never shown favor to emulators in its App Store (with the exception of examples like the Commodore 64 app), so it’s surprising to see iMAME available in the App Store for free right now. iMAME allows you to run thousands of classic arcade titles if you’re lucky enough to have the original ROMs.
The emulator app includes 9 less-than-popular arcade games to run, but the possibilities are pretty endless if you know what you’re doing.
Are you ready for 2012? Tighten your seat belts, here comes the start of chatter about an iPad update and iPhone 5 Part Deux. The 2011 iPhone 5 that morphed into the iPhone 4S, plus a wider range of iPads could set Apple up for either just a good 2013 or a spectacular 2013. Either way, don’t expect a repeat of the monster revenues predicted to end 2011.
How many Android-powered devices are in use? Android promoter and Google Vice President Andy Rubin shed some light on the question Tuesday night. Rubin said 700,000 devices are being activated by carriers each day. However, the figure could confirm reports earlier this week that Android’s growth has slowed following a red-hot summer.
We’ve seen some crazy accessories for Apple devices over the past year. Some of them have been so inventive that we’ve marveled at their originality and design, whereas others are so simple and functional that we’re knocking our heads wishing we had thought of something so elegant. Over the past year we’ve tried to cover the most important new accessories for Apple devices, and we’ve narrowed down the favorites to a list of 10 accessories that we think are the best of the best.
Now it’s your turn to tell us if you think we’re right, and let us know which is your favorite Apple accessory of 2011. Take a quick glance at the 10 items below and then vote in our poll to let us know which you think is the true winner.
Following a report published yesterday that detailed the problems users were having when attempting to download apps from the App Store under iOS 3.1.3, Apple has quietly issued another App Store update today to rectify the issue. Those who are still running this firmware on their iPhone or iPod touch should now be able to download new apps directly to their devices again.
Yesterday we told you about AT&T’s decision to back out of its proposed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile. After facing heated scrutiny and antitrust concerns from both the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice, AT&T couldn’t take the heat any longer.
As part of the deal falling through, AT&T has agreed to pay T-Mobile $3 billion in cash for breakup fees. The money combined with the two carriers’ spectrum and roaming deal makes T-Mobile the only winner of the failed merger.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol hits theaters everywhere tomorrow. Surprisingly, the movie actually got really good reviews and is positioned to be one of the top movies of the holiday season. We went and watched the film this weekend at IMAX and enjoyed the dose of big-budget popcorn entertainment that reminded us how huge action movies used to be a lot more fun than the annoying and cringe-worthy action flicks that hit the screen en masse nowadays. Thanks a lot Michael Bay.
The success of Mission Impossible 4 shouldn’t come as a huge surprise though to anyone who is familiar with the director Brad Bird. Having worked at Pixar for a number of years, Bird has directed popular films such as The Iron Giant, Ratatouille, and The Incredibles, as well as leading the creative teams behind Toy Story 3 and Up. Being a Pixar alum, Bird had the opportunity to work with Steve Jobs and remarks that, “he wasn’t about making something that was going to be cool next week, he was about making something that was going to be cool 100 years from now.”
As a fan of Apple, Bird places Apple products throughout his newest movie and uses them as tools for Ethan Hunt and his team to do some really awesome stuff. Here’s some of the coolest uses of Apple technology in Mission Impossible 4 (we’ll try and keep the spoilers at a minimum).
Pulse is one of our favorite personalized news aggregating apps, but the latest app made it even better than ever, adding a redesigned catalogue with sexy coverflow action, an improved UI and even a new Zite-like Smart Dock to supercharge an already great app.
The courtroom battles between Apple and Samsung seem never-ending. The latest chapter: Apple now claims its South Korean patent pal is copying not just smartphones and tablets, but also their cases. During an Australian court hearing, Samsung’s lawyer said Apple believes the cases infringe 10 patents.
iOS hacker Pod2g, who has become increasingly famous over the last few weeks thanks to the progress he’s made on an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5, is one step closer to jailbreaking the iPhone 4S. Apple’s latest iPhone was tricky to hack thanks to its new dual-core A5 processor, but Pod2g reports the new chip “is not a problem anymore.”
The rumor is now official: Apple, the world’s largest consumer of flash memory, has paid $500 million for consumer-grade flash memory maker Anobit. The move solidifies Apple’s supply of solid-state memory used by the iPhone, iPad, iPod and MacBook Air. The half-billion dollar price tag tops the inflation-adjusted $472 million acquisition of NeXT back in 1997.
If you thought Android was on a roll and RIM was toast — surprise, surprise. The mobile operating system that Google built continues to cool down while Apple and the Waterloo, Ont. gang that can’t shoot straight gain momentum. Just half of November mobile ad requests came from Android-based devices, a new report shows.
EA has kicked off a huge iOS sale that has seen dozens of popular games reduced to just $0.99 in a bid to top the App Store’s charts this Christmas. Some of the company’s hottest games are included, a number of which haven’t only just been released, such as Dead Space, FIFA 12, Tetris, and Trenches II.
Here’s the complete list of titles on sale for just $0.99!
New at PhotoJojo is this crazy Holga iPhone lens case that gives you nine special effects for your photos.
Users who are still running the iOS 3.1.3 software on their iPhones and iPod touches are reporting that a recent App Store update has blocked them from downloading new apps directly to their devices. The update was issued on December 16, and users have been unable to download new apps since, though they can still download updates to existing apps.
Though it wasn’t in our readers’ top 10, Apple named Localscope the best navigation app of 2011. Yeah, well they ain’t seen nuthin’ — its new update adds a whole new exploratory facet to the app that’s arguably cooler than the app’s original focus.
VoxOx’s free telephony app was already heavy on features when it launched earlier this year. Now it adds two more big features: outbound faxing capability (previously the app only had the ability to receive faxes) and two-way, realtime SMS translations.
According to a report from App Data, Facebook for Android garners more daily users than Facebook for iPhone. Android’s very own Facebook app boasts 58.8 million daily active users while Facebook for iPhone attracts 57.6 million.
Based on App Data’s projections, the Android adoption of Facebook’s app is accelerating faster than iPhone user adoption.