Counterintuitively, for the fourth year running, the winners of 148Apps annual “Best App Ever” contest have just been announced at Macworld / iWorld 12012. And my girlfriend’s going to be positively giddy, because the app that she’s spent most of the last year grinding her fingers down to the bone playing has won: Halfbrick Studio’s Jetpack Joyride!
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — As you walk the exhibit floor here at Moscone West, there are the much larger booths that make up the bulk of what you’ll see. But there are also some of the smaller booths — known as “pods” — that a lot of the mobile apps are housed in. There’s plenty of iOS apps being featured in this area of the hall, and plenty to discover.
One of my favourite apps I’ve found here is called — oddly enough — FavorIt, an app that lets you and your friends share what their favourite apps are with one another.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWorld 2012 — At the media preview last night at Macworld/iWorld, VIPOrbit Software had a ton of news to offer.
First, they unveiled a new version of VIPOrbit for the iPhone. The latest version has new features requested by its users, an improved user interface and an enhanced Dashboard.
Then they debuted VIPOrbit for iPad, bringing signature features from the initial iPhone app to iPad users.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — Talking on stage about her love of technology and gadgets, New Yorker writer Susan Orlean rhapsodized her iPad, and told how she converted her husband to Apple technology.
A self-confessed geek, Orlean told how the iPad solved all the problems she had with working and traveling with technology. She had a Danger Sidekick, but would go nuts taking notes on it. She finds her MacBook too heavy to carry all day.
She also not afraid of losing or damaging her iPad. “I can it take with me to take notes but it won’t have my life on it if it gets lost or stolen,” she said. “It solved all of my problems.”
And her favorite app?
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — There are no shortage of iPhone cases being showcased here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, but only one grabbed my attention at last night’s media preview. It was a case called Flygrip, and it promises to keep your iPhone in hand so you can do other things without worrying about dropping your valuable device.
Macworld/iWorld marks the launch of FlyGrip, and I was given a unit to test out.
As a bit of a productivity nerd, it was great to see a couple of apps that revolve around that niche having a presence at the Macworld/iWorld media preview. One of these apps was Pocket Informant, which looks both elegant and compelling. And its available for both the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. For those looking to get a little bit more productive and want a pleasurable-looking experience while doing so, this might just be the app for you.
Pocket Informant fully integrates your calendar, tasks, notes and contacts into one spot, which allows you to focus on everything you’ve got going on in a day. This is a bit of a departure from other productivity-type apps in that they tend to put the emphasis on your tasks and let everything else fade into the background. Pocket Informant keeps everything close at hand and visible so that you don’t miss out on somewhere you’ve got go, someone you need to get in touch with or something you have to do.
Above: Macworld organizer Paul Kent on why the show is being rebranded as iWorld 2012.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — In an era when trade shows are almost extinct, Macworld is a dinosaur. And that’s in a good way.
Now in its 28th year, Macworld has survived when other trade shows haven’t. That’s largely because the show has been quick on its feet, switching focus and venues as times have changed. It’s transformed from a business-to-business show into a consumer-oriented one.
This week, the focus is entirely on end users, as Macworld attempts to rebrand itself iWorld. It will be about the Apple-oriented lifestyle, highlighting apps, art and music. Attendees can see what people are doing — or they can do themselves — with their devices.
In the video above, organizer Paul Kent talks about the transformation into iWorld. Below, he explains what to expect at the show this week.
This year’s edition of Macworld, taking place January 26-28, is shaping up to be a bit of a departure from Macworlds of the past. 2012 is a year of evolution for the event, now branded as Macworld/iWorld.
And that evolution begins tonight with a blast.
Apple’s vice president of worldwide iPod, iPhone, and iOS product marketing, Greg Joswiak, was spotted roaming the show floor at CES in Las Vegas yesterday, despite no official appearance from the Cupertino company. Joswiak admitted he was there “scouting the competition,” but it seems he’s not the only one. According to one report, more than 250 Apple employees altogether are in attendance this year.
Apple has a treat in store for us in 2012, according to one Digitimes report, which claims the Cupertino company will release not one but two new iPad models, one of which will boast more than twice the battery capacity of the current model, with a 5- to 8-megapixel camera.
Wow! 2011 has been one of the most interesting years in recent memory for Apple Inc. Of course the death of Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, stands out as one of the most important events of the year for Apple, but there have been a load of other stories too that have made 2011 a very memorable year for the fruit company. From one controversy to the next, to record-breaking earnings, and new products, Apple has plowed through 2011 with a steady determination to be the best technology company on the planet. Only one device underwent a redesign (the iPad), while other form factors stayed the same. Instead of focusing on making pivotal leaps forward with hardware, Apple’s main focus of 2011 was to fortify their strong foundation in the software game.
Here’s Cult of Mac’s look back on the Apple in the year 2011.
As Apple once did at Macworld, Microsoft has headlned the CES keynote for years now, but when Steve Ballmer takes the stage in 2012, it’ll be for the last time… and the reasons sound very familiar.
Although for many years Macworld was the place where Apple showed off their new products, the company decided to orphan the expo in January 2009, claiming trade shows were now superfluous with the dawning of the Internet.
Of course, Macworld’s recreated itself since then as a place for third-party companies to show off their wares, but as Apple has increasingly emphasized its iOS side of the business, the Macworld name has started seeming anachronistic.
You probably won’t be surprised what Macworld’s organizer’s are renaming the conference. You may be surprised at what a charmless mouthful it all is, though.
Macworld magazine has given Apple’s controversial update of Final Cut Pro X a cautious thumbs up.
The new version of Final Cut Pro rocked the video editing world with its ruthless embrace of the new at the expense of the old. Lots of veteran FCP editors are outraged by the update, which has a whole new code base and workflow. The new software can’t even open old FCP projects!
But Macworld says that’s the price to pay for progress. The new software has been rewritten for a tapeless, metadata-based video workflow, and though incomplete, it’s a huge imporvement:
With Final Cut Pro X, Apple is once again out to completely re-invent the video industry. This is a truly groundbreaking release for a 1.0 software version, and I hope that the professional features that many video editors currently use will be made available soon.
Macworld: Review: Final Cut Pro X
With another WWDC looming on the horizon and Apple taking the unusual step of pre-announcing things like Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud, speculation turns towards what we haven’t been told. At many Apple events the most exciting announcement is often that feigned afterthought… just One More Thing.
This year, the One More Thing is rumored to be the iPhone 4S, despite the fact that Apple has set the expectation that WWDC will be all about software, not hardware.
We’re skeptical, but to keep you busy speculating over the weekend, we’ve updated Cult of Mac’s “Just One More Thing” interactive timeline to relive the excitement of the last thirteen years of Apple annoucements.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Given the explosion of visual art inspired by mobile devices running Mac iOS and apps developed to help artists create work on them, it came as a bit of a surprise to see the way Macworld organizers chose to display digital art at the 2011 Conference and Expo.
The Expo’s art was placed in “digital art galleries” displayed on 27″ Samsung wide-screen TVs housed in unobtrusive kiosks, dispersed in the cavernous hallways of the 2nd and 3rd floors, where only a portion of the conference’s attendees — media personnel and those who purchased something other than Expo Only tickets — was likely to see it.
This is curious in the light of recent attention given to the digital creations of artists producing work on the Mac platform, which in years past could be seen framed, on brightly-lit wall space, in the middle of well-trafficked concourses.
Click on images in the gallery above to see artist and title information, as well as the curious distortion effects rendered in iPhone photographs of art (made, in many cases, ON iPhones) displayed in a digital TV slideshow.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Two years ago, when Apple announced the company would skip the Macworld Conference and Expo after 2009, some took the news like a punch to the gut — and many wondered if the twenty-five year-old event would survive.
But without Apple totally dominating the event, the show has become what it was always supposed to be — a place for the wider Apple community to meet and mingle.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Dolly Drive, a new cloud-based storage solution specially tailored to Mac specifications, launched Thursday from the Indie Spotlight at Macworld in San Francisco and looks to be one of the smartest plays — and best values — to come out of this year’s show.
Remote storage accessible from anywhere, any time, Dolly Drive is designed to work exclusively and specifically with Apple’s Time Machine, giving Mac users an inexpensive, seamless method for creating secure, redundant (in some cases, perhaps, primary) backups that can be accessed to restore digital files from any location with an Internet connection.
With tri-level security including authentication encryption, data transmission over secure tunnel and multi-leveled, complex authentication protocols for third-party access to data at Dolly data centers, a Mac user can feel confident in the security of data stored for as little as $10 per month for 250GB. Other pricing plans prove Dolly Drive is serious about delivering value for a service that should be attractive to computer users of any sophistication level.
No other remote storage solution we’re aware of is engineered to work directly through Time Machine, nor is any so dedicated to serving Mac users.
This is definitely one of the nicest finds we’ve seen at Macworld 2011 and well worth further exploration.
Yeah, I said Sinbad! Apparently it’s an old joke that everyone has a “I-met-Sinbad-at-Macworld” story, after all, he’s been coming to Macworld since 1985. Well since he was going to be here anyway, they asked him to get on stage and give a keynote, and I’m glad they did because it was fantastic.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 – The twin booths for Livescribe and Evernote are mobbed this morning. Though the alliance between the popular virtual notebook and productivity suite and the MP3 pen was announced a few months ago, there’s something about seeing what they can do together that makes for a real-two-great-tastes-that-taste-better-together moment.
Ray Toledo of Evernote is busy fielding questions from teachers — three stop by while I’m there — who are asking questions about how to use the service to keep notes in a cloud system that can be accessed by students. He shows them how Evernote can recognize handwriting so you can take a picture of a whiteboard then search for the term in your database, share it online with groups or send it as an email.
It’s not the first time he’s been asked these questions — Evernote has an ongoing series on how to use the service in education — and he also assures them that the free version is probably sufficient the needs of most for pennywise educators. (As an Evernote aficionado and prolific clipper, I’d tend to agree. I’ve never exceeded even a third of 40 megabytes free space per month.)
They’re also showing the slick looking Echo, but Toledo assures me that if I update the software for my 2GB Pulse model, I can still integrate with the note service.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Despite the demise of the xServe, Apple products can be and are a good fit in the enterprise, according to John Welch of the Zimmerman Agency, who spoke on Apple in the Enterprise at the Macworld Industry Forum Wednesday at Macworld 2011.
First of all Apple is not an enterprise company — it is not Microsoft, not Cisco, not IBM.
But Apple doesn’t need to be an enterprise company to be a source of solid products that work well in the Enterprise, said Welch, who spoke from 20 years of experience deploying Apple products in business.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 –There’s no great secret to understanding what Apple has up its sleeves, according to Jason Snell, editor-in-chief of Macworld magazine, who spoke to attendees about “How Apple Does It” at the Macworld Conference and Expo Industry Forum Wednesday morning.
Anyone who makes a habit of keeping up with technology news understands one of the longest running games in the business involves predicting what Apple will do next.
Despite its reputation as an obsessively secret company that consistently produces products no one ever thought they needed until Steve Jobs invented them, Snell described Apple as a consistent, rational company that doesn’t do anything unexpected — and doesn’t rely on crazy mind control to achieve its success.
From the company’s very founding, the roles Jobs & his cofounder Steve Wozniak played suggested Apple’s future: Jobs understood marketing and Woz was technically brilliant at making complex technology work. One of them understood products and the other understood technology; the way they worked together would become Apple’s greatest strength and one day set their company apart from all others in American business.
Macworld 2011 is finally here, and those of you lucky enough to be attending will be amongst the first to discover the coolest new software, hardware, and accessories for use with our favorite Apple devices; as well as expert advice, demonstrations, and instructions on how to get the most out of these products.
To help you survive the four days of excitement and celebration, we’ve compiled a great list of iOS applications that will ensure you experience the best of both the Macworld Expo, and the beautiful city of San Francisco. The applications we’ve selected will help you find a taxi to your accommodation when you touchdown at the airport; navigate your way around the city and discover everything there is to see; find the best places to eat, drink, catch a show, or meet friends; and lots more.
However, our list of applications isn’t just for those attending the conference – for those of you stuck at home this week, we’ve also included some great applications that will ensure you’re kept up to date with the latest news and everything that’s unmissable at Macworld.
Check out our list of applications after the break, and here’s to a great Macworld 2011!
Heading to San Francisco to MacWorld? Here are some things to do during your precious free time – between strippers, actors and coffee, we’ve got you covered.
1. Go to a Strip Club
Eleven of the city’s big name strip clubs in North Beach are offering free or discounted admission with your Macworld badge. They include the SF classic hotspots like the Hungry-i, the Condor and the Garden of Eden as well as Centerfolds and the Gold Club.
It begs the question: do they think Macworld is exclusively a man’s world, or that all Macs are horny and lonely? You decide.
Extra tip: if you’re into multitasking — and don’t mind the smell of strawberry body oil while you eat — the Hustler Club reportedly has an excellent happy hour buffet.
Procrastinators and cheapskates rejoice. Today is your lucky day!
The popular coupon site Johnny Funcheap is offering Expo tickets for just $10. That’s a $15 savings (normally $25).
Just enter the priority code FunCheap.
Macworld 2011 starts on Thursday, January 27 and runs until Saturday, January 29. The show floor is open from 10am – 6:00pm all three days.