I have used Mailplane on and off for years. I love that it turns the great Gmail interface into a proper desktop app, complete with drag-and-drop attachments, notifications and an icon in the dock and tab switcher. But I never liked its super power of spinning the CPU of my Mac at all times, even when supposedly idle.
Now v3.0 is out, and it seems to have solved the latter problem, while adding a few new features.
Got a few minutes to read something? Not sure which of your saved Read Later article to pick? Then you need Readtime, a new iPhone app which picks articles based on the time you have available. Dial in the length of your coffee break or the average time taken to clear your bowels in the morning, and Readtime will return a list of appropriately-long articles.
Who knew there was room for yet another iPhone currency converter in the store? The folks behind Currency, that’s who, a conversion app that is as minimal as its name.
It’s gotten to the stage that I’m so loaded up on cloud storage for my photos that I could toss my iPhone into the toilet and not lose a thing (well, apart from the action shot of the toilet bowl framing my shocked face as the iPhone shoots its last photo). But while Dropbox and Everpix are great, sometimes you just want to rock an old-school USB stick and transfer photos to and from you iPhone with a stick of plastic.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, all compact cameras looked like the Ricoh GR. they might not have been as sleek-looking, but they had big finger grips, a giant full-frame sensor (35mm) film and a fixed wideangle lens.
Now, proving that large sensors are the new black, the GR is packing a DSLR-sized APS-C sensor into its tiny body.
The time has come. Funny or Die’s Steve Jobs mockumentary featuring Justin Long has arrived. iSteve is available for streaming in non-Apple-friendly-Flash on Funny or Die’s website. The “biopic” lasts about 80 minutes.
Warning: It is not as hilarious as we thought it might be. In fact, it’s pretty bad. It’s also historically inaccurate in many, many ways. I barely made it through the first 10 minutes. Kudos to you if you can finish. Ashton Kutcher’s JOBS is starting to look a lot more legitimate.
Source: Funny or Die
Messaging alternative MessageMe just updated today with several new features, like the ability to chat in landscape mode if that strikes your fancy.
The iPhone app won’t save chat doodles to the camera roll by default anymore; you’ll be able to save them if you like, or turn the feature off completely, saving valuable space on your iPhone should you so choose. The Voice Notes feature has been improved, and you can search for other MessageMe users using their email.
Audio now works for messages with video, and you can save videos as well in the new version. There’s also other “minor fixes and performance improvements” to be found.
Jefferies analyst Peter Misek is at it again. Apparently his own trips to Apple’s Asian suppliers are leading him to predict that the rumored iPhone 5S, which has yet to be announced by Apple, will most likely be delayed. His delay timeline is based on earlier predictions that the iPhone 5S would come out in July, which would in itself be odd, since Apple has typically released iPhones on a yearly cycle, putting a new one sometime in September or October.
He’s also on record as predicting that an even-more-rumored low-cost iPhone will also be delayed until the fourth quarter of this year, and that the iPhone 6 won’t actually happen until 2014.
After being fired from his post at Apple for the Apple Maps fiasco last year, Richard Williamson has found a new home at one of tech’s other superstars – Facebook.
Richard Williamson played a key role in the development of the iPhone’s software under Steve Jobs. After working at Apple for more than a decade, Williamson was put in charge of the Apple Maps team that replaced Google Maps in iOS 6.
Apple just released a new software update for its popular iPhoto app today. iPhoto 9.4.3 contains bug fixes, along with some new features for Photo Stream, like the ability to delete photos by dragging to Trash, and exporting Photo Stream photos through the File Menu.
There was another update released for Aperture as well. The Aperture 3.4.4 update also has some improved Photo Stream features, along with several bug fixes.
Here are the full notes for both iPhoto and Aperture:
There has been an unprecedented amount of drama surrounding the removal of AppGratis, a popular app discovery tool Apple recently pulled from the App Store. An online petition with over 800,000 signatures begs for Apple to bring AppGratis back into the App Store’s good graces. Heck, the French government is pissed. What’s all the fuss about?
Apple said that it pulled AppGratis for sending app promotions to iOS users via push notifications. The discovery service coordinates with third-party developers to offer discounts for paid apps. Apple also said that AppGratis behaved too much like the App Store itself.
It looks like AppGratis’s sins run deeper.
According to a leaked document, AppGratis was charging developers large sums to get their apps to the top of the App Store’s charts.
Back in 1983, Apple took a retreat to La Playa Carmel, a popular Californian resort. During that retreat, Apple’s employees rioted, skinny dipping and drinking and throwing what was later called a “college beer bash.” As a result, Steve Jobs and co. were banned from La Playa Carmel forever. But La Playa Carmel has new owners now… and they’re ready to welcome Cupertino back with open arms.
As more cable subscribers start to embrace the idea of ditching cable for services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, cable companies are quickly trying to entice subscribers to stay by offering TV everywhere on every device.
Time Warner Cable announced today that starting tomorrow, TWC subscribers will be able to stream live TV to their Apple devices for the first time ever. An update for TWC’s iOS app should roll out tomorrow that will make 11 live national news, sports, and entertainment channels available to subscribers outside of their home, via an iPhone or iPad.
Have you ever wondered: if Apple makes billions of dollars off of music downloads, why are they supposedly planning on launching their own music streaming service, iRadio, later this year? Wouldn’t such a service actually lead to less downloads?
It’s a good question, and there’s a good answer.
Earlier today it was revealed that Facebook was about to launch version 6.0 of its official iOS app, and now the update is available in the App Store. Facebook 6.0 brings Chat Heads from Facebook Home on Android, little chat bubbles that pop up whenever you get a new message in the Facebook app. There are also stickers, which are basically large emoticons you can send in messages.
On the iPad, Facebook has redesigned the news feed to make it better a better overall experience.
Kicking Google Maps to the curb last year in favor of its own homegrown solution caused quite a stir last year for Apple. Most of the rage over Apple Maps has died down, but Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, sees no reason why things can’t be repaired.
In fact, Schmidt admitted today that Google would love to work with Apple to set Google Maps as the primary navigation tool on iOS. With tensions between the two companies still being tight, we’d say there’s not a slim chance in hell of that happening, but Schmidt thinks it could.
There may not be a lot of agreement on whether or not Mac sales are up or down right now, but one thing’s for sure: the overall PC market is dying, with the latest quarter seeing the largest overall contraction in PC sales in the last two decades.
That’s not to say you can’t make a lot of profit still selling PCs, but as the chart above proves, profit is no longer linked to volume… and as they do in the smartphone and tablet markets, Apple owns the largest share of the profit to be had.
Remember when you got frustrated that you had to wait in a virtual line to use Mailbox, the hot new iPhone app that promises to fix all of your email woes? Well now you have to wait no longer. Mailbox’s reservation system is gone, and the app is now free for everyone to use!
You’ve always been able to download Mailbox from the App Store, but unless you’ve been lucky enough to get in, the app only displays the number of users waiting in front of and behind you. 10 weeks later, that is no longer the case.
Loren Brichter is somewhat of a rockstar in the iOS app developer community. The Wall Street Journal has called him the “High Priest of App Design.” If you don’t know Brichter by name, you know him by his work: Tweetie and Letterpress.
Twitter bought Tweetie and turned it into the official Twitter app for iPhone and iPad. Letterpress is a hit word game Brichter created after he left Twitter. He also worked with a small team at Apple on the first iPhone back in 2006 and 2007. Now he’s helping out at Facebook.
Even though there are rumors that Facebook and Apple might be working to bring Facebook Home to iOS, it’s hard to believe Apple would give up so much control of iOS to Facebook.
For those craving for some Facebook Home action on iOS, there’s a new Facebook app update that will bring the most buzzed-about features of Facebook Home to your iPhone: “Chat Heads.”
Hot on the heels of this morning’s leak from casemaker Tactus of a new case mould for the iPad 5 (and the intriguing hint of a June 18th announcment), an entirely different Hong Kong casemaker is showing off a case mold for the iPad 5 which largely supports the previous report.
Looking for what to buy that sainted mother (or hard-drinking old bat) in your life? There’s an Apple product for every occasion, which is why Apple has already updated its website ahead of next month’s Mother’s Day to encourage you to buy an iPad, iPad mini, iPhone, gift card or photo book for your Mom… with free shipping, natch.
Source: Apple
The New York Times has won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for “Explanatory Reporting” for its nine-part iEconomy series into Apple’s business practices and the working conditions inside Foxconn’s Chinese factories.
The Times was praised for its “penetrating look into business practices by Apple and other technology companies that illustrates the darker side of a changing global economy for workers and consumers.”
iSteve, a Steve Jobs parody biopic from Funny or Die, will now premier on Wednesday, April 17. The movie was scheduled to start showing yesterday, but was delayed following the explosions during the Boston marathon.
One of the apps commonly toted as a replacement for iOS 6’s Maps app after the latter was released (and proved to be something of a debacle for Cupertino) was Waze, a crowd-sourced traffic app.
Now, according to a new interview conducted on-stage at AllThingsD’s Dive Into Mobile Conference, even Waze CEO Noam Bardim was surprised by how many people hated Apple Maps, and said that two years previously, consumers would have thought is was amazing.