The iPad Air might be the lightest iPad yet, and a true glimpse of the future of tablets, but Apple’s still managing to make a healthy profit on each tablet sold. In fact, iHS iSuppli pegs the build price of each iPad Air is just $274 for a 16GB WiFi-only model. Apple sure does know how to make a margin, doesn’t it?
Something big is coming from Pebble, makers of everyone’s favorite e-ink smartwatch. We’re just not entirely sure what it is yet. But we have an idea, and it has to do with Pebble apps developers.
Sold gets bought by Dropbox. That’s a headline writer’s dream, and I just got to write it. Why? Because — wait for it — easy-selling service Sold just got bought by Dropbox.
Many people would have you believe that Apple is successful not because their products are superior, but because they’re advertising is. They actually have a point, but not in the way they mean. Yes, Apple’s advertising is superior, but it’s not because Apple spends loads on it. In fact, Apple’s advertising budget is far tinier than Microsoft and Samsung’s.
We’ve seen a few dongles that let you track your devices from your iPhone using Bluetooth, and we’ve seen some that let you fire your iPhone’s shutter the same way. But the Wise Button does both. I wouldn’t call it wise, but I would call it useful.
When Apple announced iTunes Radio at WWDC this June, it looked like a lot of subscription radio services would take a massive hit. But for Pandora, things couldn’t be better. Since Apple’s new service made its debut alongside iOS 7 back in September, listening has increased by 9 percent.
Leather gloves are useful for many things: driving, punching, jewel thieving, murdering and doing sex. But one thing they weren’t good at until now was iPhone-ing. Mujjo has totally fixed that.
The Braven 650 is one of the best portable speaker I’ve tested. It’s small, tough, light and it sounds great. It even manages to include a remote play/pause function, although you have to be in on the secret[1]. And now Braven has come out with the 710, an update which adds a whole bunch of neat extras.
The iPhone 5s wasn’t the first smartphone to offer a fingerprint scanner, but it’s undoubtedly the most popular one to date. In fact, it’s so popular that Touch ID is now driving massive growth in the smartphone fingerprint scanner market, with sales of fingerprint scanning handsets expected to reach 525 million units in 2017.
Wow. Nikon has finally announced its Df DSLR after a long teaser campaign, and it looks like a winner. It’s a full-frame DSLR with a bunch of retro-style knobs and dials all over its body.
All demand, but no supply!
24 hours after being launched in India, retailers sold out of the iPhone 5s — leading to retail chains asking for replenished stocks, following an unprecedented demand for the new smartphone.
Despite a budgetary increase of 32% from $3.381 billion in 2012 to $4.475 billion in 2013, Apple still spends less than 3% of its revenue (net sales total $170.91 billion so far this year) on Research & Development of new products: something that will surely give ammunition to those skeptics who claim less innovation is taking place under Tim Cook’s command than it ever did while Steve Jobs was at Apple’s helm.
Right?
In more welcome airport-related news than the reports that Apple’s Maps app steers people the wrong way across Fairbanks Airport taxiway, Apple has released an update (version 1.3.3) of its AirPort Utility — the app which allows you to manage your Wi-Fi base stations, including AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and AirPort Time Capsule, from the comfort of your iOS device.
Originally unveiled at Apple’s last iPhone media event, the Nike+ Move app has been released in the App Store for the iPhone 5s. The app utilizes the latest iPhone’s M7 co-processor to track the user’s physical activity and display it as NikeFuel, the same system used for Nike’s FuelBand.
Narrated running is probably the best way to describe the new Story Running feature embedded in Runtastic’s updated app, but the outfit’s new Libra scale is more interesting.
Apple is continuing to build its manufacturing presence in the U.S. with a new plant in Mesa, Arizona. The project is projected to bring 2,000 local jobs and the building will be completely powered by renewable energy.
Sapphire glass will be made at the Mesa plant in conjunction with GT Advanced Technologies. Apple uses sapphire—a material that is incredible durable—in small parts of the iPhone, like the protective glass over the camera sensor. The Touch ID sensor in the iPhone 5s is also made of sapphire.
Finnish developer and all-around success story Rovio Entertainment announced Monday a new cross-over collaboration with Korean-based GungHo Entertainment, the makers of the almost as highly successful match-three mobile game, Puzzles and Dragons.
The pissed-off avians will show up in the popular role-playing/color matching mashup as an Angry Birds-themed dungeon from November 18 through December 1 of this year. You’ll get to challenge the Angry Birds as enemies in the dungeon, in contrast to their hero role in the Rovio-produced titles.
Western Digital has been emailing customers and warning them about hard drives “experiencing data loss when updating to Apple’s OS X Mavericks.” The problem seems to effect multiple kinds of drives, including the company’s popular MyBook lineup.
According to Western Digital, the incompatibility with Mavericks isn’t a hardware-level issue, but something to do with the software that is shipped with the drives it sells.
When the iPad Air went on sale, it was discovered that T-Mobile was offering 200MB of free data per month to customers who bought the tablet on its network. What a steal! On top of that, you can walk into T-Mobile and pay $0-down for a 16GB iPad Air. T-Mobile all of a sudden looked like a much more attractive carrier choice.
But if you think you can just walk into a T-Mobile store, pay nothing up front, and walk out with a new iPad and free data plan, you are sadly mistaken.
While Apple hasn’t released any official sales numbers for the iPad Air yet, AT&T is reporting that it saw over a 200% increase in iPad activations during the last three days.
Maybe I’m just a sucker for a dramatic Blade Runner-style soundtrack, but this new shooter from publisher Crescent Moon Studios and developer Tasty Poison Games (Pocket RPG) looks pretty darn exciting.
First person shooters are hard to do well on iOS, especially with a lack of physical buttons, but if anyone can do it right, these folks can. Of course, with the possibility of a physical controller due to Apple’s new controller code in iOS 7, things can only get better.
Check out the trailer to see the game in action.
Most developers have had their iOS 7 apps ready for weeks but Apple is still racing to update all of its own apps to mesh better with iOS 7’s new look. The Remote app for iPhone and iPad is the latest Apple app to get the iOS 7 treatment as Apple just published version 4.0 to the App Store.
The updated app comes with an all new iOS 7-style look as well as support for iTunes 11.1 but there’s no mention of new features in the release notes so it looks like we’re just getting a facelift for now. iPhone and iPad owners can use the device to control Apple TV as well as remotely access computers on the same Home Sharing account to play music, queue up additional songs, create playlists and more.
The new update can be found in the App Store for free.
Source: iTunes
Coloring Pages for Zane — Education — Free
Coloring Pages for Zane is a simple app that contains coloring-book-style pages you can send to your AirPrint-enabled printer with just a few taps before you let your little ones loose on them with all the crayons. It’s so simple, in fact, that the kids can run it themselves, and that’s by design. The developer made it for their autistic son so that he could easily print out his own pictures and get right to the important business of coloring them in. It launches with a selection of images; additional pictures are available via in-app purchases. But that warm feeling you’re getting in your heart right now is free.
We’ve barely had the iPhone 5s in our hands for more than a month, but is it too early to start dreaming up what the next iPhone will look like?
Recent rumors have claimed Apple will beef up the screen size on the next iPhone to 5-inch, so one of our favorite concept artist, Martin Hajek has released some new concept images of a golden iPhone 6 that sports a 4.8-inch screen by upgrading to an edge-to-edge display so that the size of the iPhone doesn’t get bigger as well.
The mockup is missing Apple’s fancy new Touch ID feature which will undoubtedly be available on the iPhone 6 and future iPhones, but the all-metal backing and thinner design would be excellent improvements to go along with a bigger display, even if you hate that its dipped in gold.
Here are a couple other looks at Martin’s gold iPhone 6 concept:
Developer Gaijin Games’ Bit.Trip Presents Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien quickly became one of my favorite games this year when it launched for consoles and PC back in February. It had a lot of personality, precise gameplay, and was just challenging enough to keep you on your toes but not enough to be frustrating.
The iOS port, Bit.Trip Run!, keeps the original’s levels, fantastic graphics, and entertaining narration from voice actor Charles Martinet (the voice of Nintendo’s Mario). So it’s mostly the same game. But it drops the necessarily accurate button controls in favor of taps and swipes for the mobile platform, and that really cuts the game down a few notches. I’d almost say that it makes it unplayable, but that’s not quite the case.
But it does take a great deal of patience to play well.