News - page 1485

If you purchased an iPhone 5 last year, you might remember how easily the black iPhone scratched and chipped. Christened ‘Scuffgate’ by upset owners, the black iPhone 5’s propensity for scratching even prompted Phil Schiller to comment upon the issue, saying such scratches were “normal.”

Well, no, they’re not, Phil. The white iPhone 5, for example, isn’t nearly as scratch prone as the black iPhone 5. Be that as it may, at this point, the iPhone 5’s scratchability can be taken as read. But what about the gold iPhone 5S? Will it be as scratchable as its black brother, or as pristine and unscuffable as the white model?

Nitro is a very promising new todo list app for the Mac (plus a bunch of hippie platforms). It keeps your notes in a plain text file on Dropbox, and is available free from the Mac App Store.

One of the best hacks to come to the Apple TV in the last year is PlexConnect, an amazing little program that hijacked the Trailers channel on your Apple TV and connected it to the Plex home media library running on your Mac. What the hack meant was that you could stream your Mac’s entire video or media library to your Apple TV just by navigating with the remote… no AirPlay required.

It was wonderful, but Apple doesn’t like hacks. That’s why PlexConnect is now dead. (Update: It’s back!)

Apple has purchased AlgoTrim, a Swedish firm specializing in image and video compression techniques, for an unspecified price. It could pave the way to better iOS device battery life, and much improved photo and video quality across Apple line-up of devices.

What would a weekday be without an as-yet-unavailable Kickstarter project? It would be a day without hope, without longing for the future, and without… effortless style for the untamed spirit.

Yes, “Effortless Style for the Untamed Spirit” is indeed the slogan being used to pitch an organizer for your MacBook charger. Seriously.

Pixen is one of my favorite Mac apps. If any of you follow me on Twitter or similar, you will have seen my Scary Baby avatar. That was built by me, one pixel at a time, in Pixen, probably running on an old white iBook.

Pixen is — as you may have guessed — a pixel editor for the Mac, and now it’s available in the Mac App Store.

No messing around with iLuv’s new camera case for the iPhone 5. It’s called the Camera Case, and it turns your iPhone into a little Leica-alike.

“The Executive.” The very name brings to mind leather cellphone accessories, oversized black onyx desks and “business class” seats on a 737, which consist of a curtain between you and the oiks, an inch of extra legroom and a terrible, plastic-wrapped breakfast to shove into your gullet during the 25 minutes of non-restricted flight time.

And “The Executive” is also the name of a Bluetooth keyboard designed — presumably — for using in those cramped “business class” seats.

You may be familiar with Pocket. It’s the shiny, fast, easy-to-use counterpart to Instapaper’s current lameware offering. And you may be familiar with Kobo, maker of e-readers and tablets.

Now, Pocket and Kobo work together, putting all your read-later articles onto your e-ink reader or tablet without a middleman.

Twelve South, the maker of the BookBook and other fine case and accessories, has debuted a versatile MacBook stand called the GhostStand. The transparent apparatus suspends any MacBook model, and the name implies that you’re not supposed to even know it’s there.

Parallels is known for allowing Windows apps to run alongside OS X without the need for a restart. It’s the only emulator of its kind that’s sold in the Apple Store, and now Parallels is venturing into another store of Apple’s, the iOS App Store.

Parallels Access is a new iPad app that lets you control your Mac or Windows PC from anywhere. What sets it apart is that Access “applifies” desktop programs to make them look and behave like native apps on the iPad.

The dizzying pace of iblazr‘s evolution has been difficult to keep up with over the last month.

It started out as an iDevice flash with four Cree-made LEDs that plugs into the 3.5mm jack. Then it gained a diffuser, and a short while later its designers added a reflective backing and redesigned the lens over the LEDs.

Now, the little flash has a cold-shoe adapter that’ll allow it to be mounted onto a DSLR.

You can thank Bluetooth technology for making cycling safer. “How’s that,” you ask, as you wolf down a Lemon Sublime Gu? The answer lies with the growing number of Bluetooth speakers designed to be mounted a bicycle; listening to music from a speaker obviates the dangerous (and often illegal) temptation to wear earphones on the bike.

The latest is Outdoor Tech’s Buckshot, a tiny, ruggedized (to IPX-5) shotgun shell-shaped speaker with a rubber mount for attaching it to a handlebar; it even doubles as a speakerphone. What separates the Buckshot from most other bike-friendly Bluetooth speakers is its diminutive size, and its price — the Buckshot is just $50.

Source: Outdoor Tech

Oh, hey, look, it’s another game from Rovio, the 800-pound gorilla avian in the gaming world, with more money and sales than pretty much everyone else, based on one intellectual property.

When Rovio mentions a new game, especially one based on Angry Birds, we listen.

Apple is now free to sell its products to customers who plan to bring them to Iran, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. Treasury Department has loosened its trade sanctions on Iran, but Apple is still not permitted to sell directly within the country or to its government officials.

When Apple introduced iOS 7, one of the new features was a section in the App Store called “Near Me.” The idea is simple: using some kind of location-based algorithm, the App Store shows you apps that are relevant to your specific area. It’s like Genius, but more specific.

Apple obviously wants people to use Near Me, as the category is given the center menu button in the iOS 7 beta App Store. The feature wasn’t enabled in earlier betas of iOS 7, but some users are now able to use it to find apps.

Most days, you won’t hear us talk too much about a gaming genre that’s been beaten to death with a large stick, but upcoming Puzzle Knights is an exception to that rule, what with it’s interesting blend of, yes, matching colors, but also tactical strategy, light RPG elements, and online arena battles.

The game is expected to release sometime in the first or second week of September, so keep your eyes on this one. It’s exclusive to iOS, but will let you connect via Facebook to battle your FB friends.

Football season is nearly upon us and that means an all-new version of Madden is ready to bust onto screens. Madden 25 for iOS was released this morning and for the first time ever, EA Sports has made the game free-to-play while also offering in-app purchases.

Madden 25 boasts a new Ultimate Team feature that allows players to custom build their own NFL superstar team by collecting player cards or purchasing them from the Auction House. The game sports some new tap & swipe controls for a more intuitive experience, along with the new Solo Challenges, head-to-head mode, and more.

Here are the full release notes:

There’s a nifty image editing feature inside Instagram for iPhone that helps you quickly straighten out wonky images before you upload them. It’s fast, and it seems to do a great job of straightening out your photo without any manual tweaking.

That’s thanks to Instagram’s intelligent correction technology, which uses data captured by your iPhone’s internal sensors to establish the orientation of your device when your image was taken.

Apple has today rolled out a new Apple TV update that adds yet more apps to the $99 set-top box. As expected, music video streaming service Vevo is part of the mix, as are the Weather Channel and the Smithsonian, and two new apps from Disney.

Unlike Apple, Google likes to make its hardware compatible with all of your other gadgets — regardless of which platform they’re running. So you may have purchased a $35 Chromecast dongle to work with your iOS devices. If so, you’ll be interested in Google’s new Chromecast app, which lets you set up and manage your dongle from your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

It stands shorter than a Steve Jobs doll. It can be held in the palm of your hand. It runs System 6, and elicits squeals of delight from vintage Mac fans.

It is the Smallest Mac in the World.

Hot on the heels of the news of the world’s oldest working Macintosh comes a breakthrough of much more modest proportions. John Leake, co-host of the RetroMacCast, has created what may be the world’s smallest working Macintosh using a Raspberry Pi computer, PVC, some off-the shelf parts and a Mac emulator running under Linux. He calls it “Mini Mac.”

Why? As Leake writes on his blog, “this is one those ‘because I can’ projects with no practical use – my favorite kind!”

There will almost certainly be new iPads this fall, and the Apple Predictotron in the CoM basement says that we’ll see a Retina-screen iPad mini, plus a thinner, smaller iPad 5 – a kind of enlarged iPad mini, complete with tiny side bezels.

Which might create a dilemma. You see, Like many folks I have all but ditched my large iPad for the mini. I still long for that amazing screen whenever I pick up the Retina iPad 3, but the mini is so just so damn convenient I choose it over the big version every time.

But what if the iPad 5 is small enough to compete with the mini?

Steve Jobs was known for his incredible presentation and keynote skills. The man could sell anything, but he needed a proper tool to do so. That tool was Keynote, which would eventually become part of the iWork suite. But how was keynote created?

In the two weeks preceding every major Apple product launch, the buy-back companies start circling, trying to convince you to sell your old iPhones and iPads to them instead of the competition. This year’s iPhone 5S and 5C launch is no exception, and even Apple is rumored to be starting a buy-back program.

Gazelle is one of the oldest “recyclers” of used iOS devices, and we have recommended the service before. This year, though, their service is getting even better, because they are allowing now offering a price-lock guarantee.