Wall Street has spent most of the last six months hyperventilating about the future of Apple, chomping at their fingernails and openly wondering if Apple is taking too long to innovate in the post-Jobs era.
Over at the Apple Gazette, Robin Parrish has put together a simple graphic, showing Apple’s historic product pillars. Essentially, if you add it all up, the average time between major product pillars for Apple is three years and ten months.
Have you ever written this in a forum, addressed to a software developer: “I have $50 here which I’ll totally give you if you make this app”? No, of course not, because that would make you a thoughtless individual — we all know that software costs way more than that to develop.
Take NumLock, for example. It’s exactly the kind of app that forum-begging is made for. It turns back on the num-lock that Apple removed from its keyboards for seemingly no reason other than the aesthetic. How much would you promise a developer that you’d “totally pay” for an app to re-enable the number keypad? Well, now you can put that money where your, uh, keyboard is, and pitch in to DenVog’s cheap-as-chips Kickstarter campaign.
Rovio’s original Angry Birds game for iOS has today been updated with 15 new Bad Piggies levels, and is now available for free for the first time ever on both iPhone and iPad. The incredibly popular title was first introduced to the iPhone back in December 2009, and it’s been priced at $0.99 ever since.
But if you’re not one of the many millions who have already downloaded it, now is the perfect time to grab it.
Flexibits’ fantastic calendar app Fantastical has reached v1.1. In numerical terms, this is just the addition of 0.1 to the original 1.0. But in terms of app goodness, it’s much more hugerer.
There’s no shortage of weather apps in the App Store. Every week it seems like a new weather app is enticing us with beautiful graphics and a unique design aesthetic.
While the apps are plentiful, there hasn’t been any mobile-oriented hardware related to checking the weather. It’s an untapped market many haven’t given much thought to. In the age of the iPhone, what value does a traditional thermometer even have?
Robocat has already put out some great iOS weather apps, and now it’s launching a Kickstarter campaign for Thermodo, a physical thermometer which integrates with the iPhone.
Our Killian Bell tossed around words like “terrific” and “impressive” when he reviewed the Nuu MiniKey for the iPhone 4/S two years ago. Now, the little backlit Bluetooth keyboard-case has almost arrived (it drops March 15) for the iPhone 5, with a whole slew of improvements.
Infinite Dreams has come a long way since we first discovered their virtual-pottery app, Let’s Create Pottery HD, at the App Store in 2010. They’ve since created a smash-hit tower defense game, and unveiled the first touchscreen coin-slot arcade console based off an iOS game.
Now, with the help of 3D printing, they’re turning virtual pottery into the real thing.
Social media iOS app, Path, updated today to version 3.0.1, adding some new features to the purported all-in-one personal social network’s iOS app. The update adds private messaging along with photo filters and stickers designed by a small group of indie artists for the app.
The sequel to classic puzzler/adventure game, The 7th Guest, is currently in development for iOS, Mac, Android, and Windows PC, according to Polygon, who spoke with Trilobyte Games’ co-founder, Charlie McHenry, today. The game should feature the atmospheric horror and clever puzzles that the series, which includes The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, is known for. The 7th Guest 3 will be set in the Stauf Mansion, as well, and should be in real-time 3D, instead of that pre-rendered stuff of the past. Whew.
Adding photos and videos to a conversation in the iOS Messages app isn’t as streamlined as it could be. You have to tap the little camera icon, then tap whether you want to take a new photo or select one from your Camera Roll. It’s functional, but not optimal.
Let’s take a look at two jailbreak tweaks that help streamline the process of adding photos to messages.
Did you know that Chipotle had an iPhone app? Well it does, and that app allows you to order from your iPhone and skip the line when you arrive to inhale your burrito goodness. It’s a beautiful idea, but the app itself has not been so beautiful for the past few years. Today Chipotle updated its app with iPhone 5 support, the ability to select brown rice, and so, so much more.
As of January 26th, it is now illegal for you to unlock your smartphone if you want to use it on another network. Carrier unlocking has been legal in the U.S. for years, but in October the Library of Congress ruled that unauthorized unlocking is a crime.
The Obama Administration has already voiced its opinion that citizens should be allowed to unlock their smartphones without risking criminal penalties, and a senator from Oregon just introduced a bill that would making unlocking legal again.
If you’re using Twitter on your iPhone instead of a third-party client like Twitteriffic or Tweetbot, version 5.4 has just rolled off the App Store updates pipeline, bringing better search, better conversation views and more. But it also yanks some features, including the ability to upload from Mobypicture, Vodpod and Posterous.
Last year, Apple launched its Labor and Human Rights page to give some transparency to the human rights controversy’s it’s been having with supply chain workers. Along with numerous explanations on what Apple is doing to make sure its supply chain workers are treated fairly, the company releases the percentage of supplier work-hour compliance every month.
For the first time since Apple started tracking its supplier work-hour compliance metric, they just hit 99% compliance in January 2013.
You know those black balls in the kid’s section of the Apple Store? Yeah, you probably shouldn’t sit on them: underneath the fabric exterior, they are essentially gigantic sponges soaked with the pee of a thousand children with such weak bladder control that they just hose off when they get excited, even in the Apple Store.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a picture of one black ball Apple was getting rid of after a bunch of kids had whizzed all over it. As the former Apple employee and Redditor who posted it says: “Just one of the nasty little “ewwws” lurking in arguable the coolest retail environments around.”
Source: Reddit
Miguel de Icaza isn’t a casual PC user. He’s a life-long Linux user whose main claim to fame is the creation of GNOME, a completely free desktop environment for Linux and other Unix operating systems.
But de Icaza no longer bothers with Linux. He’s abandoned the platform for a Mac.
In the competition between iOS and Android, Google’s Android operating system has been growing in the U.S. much faster than iOS until now. For the first time, Android actually lost some of its U.S. marketshare in 2013 while iOS gained a few points.
comScore just released its report on the U.S. smartphone market and had some very encouraging news for Apple. While most other manufacturers are slumping, Apple is increasing its lead on Samsung, HTC, Motorola and LG in the U.S.
In the latest spat of the carriers, AT&T ran a one-page ad in newspapers last week attacking T-Mobile and claiming that the purple carrier drops two times more calls and is 50% slower.
It hasn’t taken long for T-Mobile to respond with their own one-page newspaper ads, which are simply brilliant: “If AT&T thought our network wasn’t great, why did they try to buy it?” Touché. T-Mobile’s got a couple of other ads to taunt AT&T, which you can check out here.
Source: Tmonews
The Rumor: Apple is going to kill the headphone jack in favor of Lightning connected headphones.
The Verdict: You're kidding right? Forbes writer Gordon Kelly laid out his argument why the headphone jack is going to get axed after seeing Apple's MFi specifications for headphones using the Lighting port.
Apple's never been afraid to kill old tech, but there's not a single Lightning cable headphone set on the market yet. How's Apple going to placate millions of unhappy customers who now have to go buy Lightning headphones?
According to Gordon, Apple will just sell everyone an expensive Lightning port to 3.5mm headphone adapter, which isn't totally unprecedented, but there's a huge difference between swapping a proprietary port for another (30 Pin for Lightning) and ditching the world's most popular audiojack. Ditching the headphone jack in the next two years is about as likely as Apple releasing a hologram iPad next year - not gonna happen.
Yesterday, reports hit that Tim Cook and Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine had met to talk about ‘Project Daisy,’ Beats’ secret project that, in some form or another, seems to involve music discovery.
No one’s quite sure what Project Daisy actually is, but Cook seems interested in it. It could be a music discovery engine, à la The Echo Next. It could be a streaming service like Rhapsody or Spotify. No one except Iovine and Cook know for sure.
The story about Apple and Beats’ CEOs meeting made me wonder. Apple has been a major player in the digital music business for 12 years now… yet they have never once delivered a pair of premium headphones the likes of which Beats has become known for. Why not?
Not everyone is convinced that Apple’s iWatch would be a success, and you can add Swatch’s CEO, Nick Hayek, to the pile of detractors.
Hayek says that he doesn’t think the iWatch will be a revolutionary device, because your wrist can’t handle a display big enough to interact with. But despite Hayek’s aversion to the iWatch, Apple’s reached out to him over the years for help on materials and watch batteries.
Apple has asked a federal judge to dismiss a consumer lawsuit that alleges the Cupertino company maintains a monopoly on iPhone apps because it does not allow them to be purchased elsewhere, Bloomberg reports. Attorneys who filed the suit back in 2011 also ague that Apple’s 30% cut of developer revenue is increasing the prices of iOS apps.
Office supply chain Staples began selling the Apple TV and Apple accessories via its online store in late February, and by the end of this quarter, it will also be selling them in its brick and mortar stores across the United States. The company’s CEO announced the move today.
Everyone’s favorite recalcitrant Scottish blogger, programmer and whisky drinker Matt “Legend” Gemmel has made available these fantastic iPhone 5 wallpapers, ready for your retro-tendo reminiscences.
Matt made the set of five tall-papers (what I somewhat annoyingly just decided to call the iPhone 5’s tall wallpapers) to commemorate his new-found love of Nintendo gaming on the Mac.
Yeah yeah I know. Another damn iPhone tripod mount. And on Kickstarter no less. I hear you: “Come on Sorrel, you handsome beast you1. Can’t you pick something new to write about?”
Well, cynical but smart reader — this one’s different. I promise. And it’ll work with pretty much any camera-phone ever.
One of the cool things I loved about Apple’s Mail.app was the way it provided a visual preview of the attached files that came in my email. It was nice to be able to see exactly what was sent along with the email.
Some folks, however, might not dig this feature, and might want to turn it off. Maybe it helps them feel better, or they don’t need the visual preview. For whatever reason, if you’re one of those people, here’s how to turn it off.