If you’re an iPhone lover, this video of an excavator destroying one hundred and twenty-seven iPhones underneath its treads is sure to stand your hair on end. It’s like watching a bulldozer dig a mass grave.
Don’t worry, though: these aren’t real iPhones, convincing as they might seem. They’re merely convincing replicants.
Macworld/iWorld 2013 is coming in just two days, and Cult of Mac will be there, reporting live from the showfloor.
Macworld has an amazing history of being the launching pad for some world changing products. The iPhone debuted at Macworld. So did the MacBook Air. And iTunes. Again and again, products announced at Macworld have shifted the very pillars of technology.
Macworld is more than just a celebration on everything that is wonderful about iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apps, and the people who use them. It’s a summit that measures the very pulse of Cupertino’s incredible impact upon the world around us. With Apple at the top of it’s game, it’s more important than ever.
Not convinced? Here’s a ten minute history of the last 15 years of Macworld.
It’s back! 500px — the photo sharing app that was yanked from the App Store last week for letting users check out artful, non-pornographic nudes — has returned to the App Store, with some changes to keep genitalia and nipples away from impressionable eyes.
When it’s released, the new 128GB will be the highest capacity yet, but what does it mean in practical terms? How many games, apps, photos, songs, and videos will the new 128GB iPad store?
We did the math. Here’s what you can fit on your new 128GB iPad.
Here’s a great idea: put this magnetic paperweight on your desk and enjoy the relaxed tranquility of knowing that your cables will never fall to the floor again.
Or try this even better idea: go grab the super-strong rare-earth magnet from one of your disused iPad cases (or even its over-engineered packaging) and tape it to the edge of your desk. Voila! (or wa-la! or viola! as forum-posting morons like to say) – you have your own free cable tidy. And better yet it won’t actually untidy your desk by cluttering up its surface.
Foursquare, everyone’s favorite check-in service, has released a new app today, but it’s not for jokers checking into their local pizza place: it’s for the guys who own that pizza place.
Not so surprisingly, it’s called Foursquare for Business, and it allows you to do all sorts of business-y things to track how engaged your customers are and get the word out.
I consider Apple’s Lightning SD card adapter to be a step backwards – the original camera connection kit not only included an SD dongle and a USB port, but it also provided them in convenient, pocketable, non-be-cabled form.
Thanks to the fine folks at Photojojo, though, you can now relive the excitement of not using a cable to plug in your SD card with the Lightning SD Reader.
Apple and the U.S. carriers have always had a bittersweet relationship. Carriers love Apple because the iPhone brings people into their stores, but carriers are also pressured by Apple to pay high subsidies so that Apple can maintain its high profit margins.
Given that there’s way more competition for the iPhone these days, Apple’s chokehold on the industry is starting to loosen. Carriers are trying new business models for selling smartphones. T-Mobile recently announced that it would be doing away with subsidized two-year contracts altogether. Instead, customers will pay a cheaper price up front for a device like the iPhone and then pay monthly installments towards the full price of the phone.
Carriers want to drive retail prices down on smartphones so more people will buy, and Apple may have to adapt to that model in the near future.
For some reason, Apple released a 128GB iPad this morning. And a lot of people are scratching their heads over it.
It’s not that a 128GB iPad is an unwelcome thing, of course. More storage for apps, movies and music is always a good thing… except, if it’s just a matter of soldering in a couple of 64GB NAND modules instead of a couple of 32GB NAND modules, why the heck didn’t Apple release a 128GB iPad when they refreshed the iPad in October?
In other words, why now? Why announce it today, on a sleepy Tuesday morning at the tail-end of January? And who is this thing for, anyway?
I’ve got a theory.
Apple is all about the iCloud these days, and Microsoft is also betting on the cloud with its new Office productivity suite. Today Microsoft announced the availability of Office 365, its new paid subscription service for accessing and editing your content from any computer via the Office website. Office 365 also lets you install the Office suite on up to five PCs or Macs.
Office 2013 has also been released for Windows machines. Mac users are still stuck on Office 2011.
Writing Kit is one of the best text editors on the iPad (and iPhone), but it can be a little confusing at first. It’s made for people who write for a living, and specifically for those who write for the web. To this end, Writing Kit contains not only a world-class Markdown-friendly text editor, but a web browser, quick-research tools and connections to an embarrassment of other web services.
Once you get used to it, Writing Kit will quickly become your writing app of choice. With that in mind, here’s a guide to help you make the most of it.
I have a hate/hate relationship wireless SD cards. Hate because they never quite seem to work when I really need them to, and hate because they promise so much, and then they crash my damn camera. Again. Wait, I have another one: They also kill the battery.
The new ezSh@re from world-famous manufacturer 1 LZeal mightn’t do anything about the first two, but it can fix that last one.
Fact: I was once taking some notes about an exhibit in a gallery/museum in Berlin and a guard told me to stop using my cellphone. It was in fact an iPod touch, but whatever – try explaining that to a German security guard when you can’t speak German.
If I’d been in Gabriele Meldaikyte’s art exhibit, though, I could have continued pinching, tapping, swiping (and giving the finger to the guard) without even touching my “phone.” How? Interactivity.
Apple has officially announced a 128GB version of the fourth-generation iPad, coming in both WiFi and WiFi+ Cellular models. They’ll be available next week on Tuesday, February 5th, in black or white, and cost $799 for the WiFi model and $929 for the WiFi + Cellular model.
In the official press release, Apple’s not trying too hard to emphasize this as anything more than what it is: a doubling of storage capacity on the high-end. The timing, though, is curious, coming just a couple months before a (presumed) March or April iPad event; this perhaps implies that a fifth-gen iPad isn’t incoming until later in the year.
It’s curious that Apple has taken so long to release an iOS device with 128GB of storage, when the flash modules Apple has needed to do it have existed for years. Is a 128GB iPhone on the table next?
Sweden-based DICE game studio, owned by EA and known for high-end console and PC games like Mirror’s Edge and BattleField, recently posted a job advertisement for a Mac OS X Engineer to work on the company’s Frostbite gaming engine.
Here’s hoping that as many EA games as use the Frostbite engine will come to Mac OS X in the coming years.
Did you sign the Change.org petition to get a Mac port of super-popular multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA), League of Legends? Have you waited with bated breath since it was first announced, and then wept with frustration when it was cancelled? Have you downloaded the unofficial iLoL port and suffered through any beta glitches just to get you some League of Legends on your favorite computing platform?
Well, the wait is (almost) over, as developer Riot Games has finally admitted that it is indeed working on a Mac client, and it will be available within a month.
Perhaps you’ve been combing through iOS 6.1 on your iOS device looking for the little changes that Apple hasn’t mentioned. A couple of our readers certainly have. One little change is pretty easy to spot: the lockscreen music controls have been redesigned with an aluminum finish.
Now we’re well aware that this tweak came in the first iOS 6.1 developer beta back in November, but for the many of you who just got 6.1 today, this is something totally new.
It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s nice to see that Apple is still interested in making smaller aesthetic changes to iOS on a regular basis.
Thanks: @RazrMann
George Hotz is known to his legions of online fans as “geohot,” the infamous hacker who was the first to unlock the iPhone and crack the Sony PS3. Hotz has been flying under the radar lately, but he’s about to make his first foray into the App Store with a new iPhone app.
The app is called Reactions, and it’s currently being reviewed by Apple. The idea is relatively simple, and it has the potential to either be a massive flop or make it big. It’s photo sharing with a twist.
Are you the kind of person who jumps up at the end of a movie, skipping the credits to get to the parking lot (or restroom – thanks, giant soda tub) before everyone else? If so, you’ve probably missed some pretty neat after credit experiences, called stingers. These are extra little bits of movie, teasers, or even bloopers, that are shown after the credits roll to reward the die-hard movie goers for their patience. The recent run of Marvel movies, for example, all teased the eventual Avengers movie at the end of Captain America, The Hulk, and Iron Man. If you left early, you’d have missed it.
Luckily, now, there’s an app to make sure you never do, and, conversely, you don’t sit around for an entire credit roll for no reason.
You’ve probably seen quite a few headlines today about Twitter’s new Vine iPhone app displaying pornography. Vine went live in the App Store last week, and the video sharing service has garnered quite a bit of attention due to its parent company, Twitter.
Vine was made an Editors’ Choice by Apple in the App Store, but the app has been de-promoted following all the porn hubbub. Apple has yet to give an official comment on the issue or pull Vine from the App Store completely.
What does all this mean for Vine, and more importantly, the App Store’s policies on porn?
Last week Twitter released Vine, an iPhone app that’s kinda like the Instagram of video. You take a 6-second video and share it in your feed. It’s a pretty simple idea, and Facebook just coincidentally added the ability to shoot video in its official iOS app.
A new update to Facebook’s app also adds the ability to send audio messages to your friends. The app’s nearby tab has also been redesigned.
Many people thought that without Apple’s injecting blood directly into the arteries of Macworld, the expo would quickly shrivel and die.
They were wrong. Apple may not have participated in the event since 2009 but things are still going strong. Macworld has transformed itself from an Apple launch event where Cupertino announced products like the original iPhone and taught customers how to use them, to an event where people celebrate the culture that permeates Apple fans and binds them together.
In three short days, thousands of iFans across the globe will converge on San Francisco’s Moscone Center to celebrate everything that is great about Apple. It’s going to be a great show. Already, Macworld/iWorld 2013 is set to be one of the most entertaining Macworld conferences in recent memories. It’s going to be packed with celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Will.i.am, while over 350 companies show off their new products to Apple fans who will love getting to hangout with each other and swap stories on everything Apple.
Here’s what to look forward to this week at MacWorld/iWorld 2013:
iOS 6.1 was suddenly unleashed on the world this afternoon, and the update includes some minor updates. There’s Fandango movie ticket purchasing through Siri, LTE support for a dozens of new carriers, individual song downloading with iTunes Match, and more.
A small but notable change in 6.1 is the re-promotion of Passbook-enabled App Store apps in Passbook itself.
iPhones and iPads aren’t the only products receiving some love from Apple today. Along with the surprise release of iOS 6.1, Apple just pushed out an update for the Apple TV as well.
The new Apple TV software version 5.2 can be downloaded right now. It includes a number of new features such as support for Bluetooth keyboards, iTunes’ Up Next feature, and iTunes in the Cloud.
ANAHEIM, Calif. – Rising from the ashes of XO Wave, a digital audio workstation for editing music WAV files, comes Xonami, a real-time Internet-based audio editing tool that allows two or more people to work on a music file from different locations while keeping their changes up to date.
As one person makes changes, they are rolled into the work of others. As changes come in, you see them updated on the screen. The connection between the users is secured and files are stored in the cloud. Producers or mixers can either work on existing sound files or they can capture a live recording and work on it in real time, and no one has to be in the same room.
Xonami is still in beta test but users can sign up with a mailing list to keep up to date.