News - page 1657

The Boombot REX is a ruggedized, wearable JamBox for outdoorsy types. It looks amazing – and even more so because it was invented by Bill and Ted.

Props to the indefatigable Onion News Network for breaking this important story: Apple is promising an update by Christmas that will fix iOS 6 Maps’ unreliable mapping results by physically altering the shape and geography of the Earth’s crust. That’s a solution that Steve “you’re holding it wrong” Jobs could be proud of.

Source: The Onion

On the evening of Apple’s latest earnings call, David Miller, a 40 year old trader at Rochdale Securities LLC, had a great idea. Apple stock price always goes up after an earnings call, right? So what he would do is buy 1.6 million shares of Apple stock worth over $1 billion, then “flip” them the next morning when the stocks rose, pocketing a personal profit of millions of dollars.

A fine plan, don’t you think? There was only one problem: Apple stock actually went down the morning after the latest earnings call. Now Miller is facing 20 years in federal prison for wire fraud, and his trading company might be going under.

Apple released iTunes 11 last week, which introduced a new look and a number of new features. It also took a couple of features away, including Cover Flow and duplicate song detection. While the former appears to be dead and buried now, it looks like the latter is one its way back in a future update.

Da-duh-duh-da-duh-duh-da-DUH-duh. So goes the familiar tune of the iPhone’s default Marimba ringtone, as recognizable (and yet not nearly as annoying) as Nokia’s Gran Vals.

And yet what if you want to mix things up a little, but not too much? Greg Pierce, the wonder-developer at Agile Tortoise – responsible for Drafts, Terminology and others – has done the hard work for you, re-rendering iOS’ alert sounds on acoustic guitar.

Finding an iPad mini right now is like trying to find oil; they’re out of stock almost everywhere — at least where I live in the United Kingdom. Apple retail stores are getting them in, but they sell out in no time at all. The only option for most customers, then, is to order online and endure the lengthy wait for delivery.

That’s what Reddit user ‘vinlays’ did. And after a painful five-week wait, FedEx delivered the iPad mini to his door. That’s a picture of it above.

Casio has announced its new G-Shock GB6900AA wristwatch which syncs with your iPhone over Bluetooth to bring notifications to your wrist. It will notify you of incoming calls, text messages, and emails, and it’ll alert you when your iPhone goes out of range to prevent it from being misplaced. And if you do lose your device, the G-Shock will help you find it.

Productions rates for the iPhone 5 are improving, supply sources claim, just in time for the handset to make its debut in more than 50 additional markets throughout December. Now that Apple has caught up with demand, the handset’s shipping delay has been reduced from four weeks to just 2-4 business days. Suppliers now expect the Cupertino company to sell 45 million iPhone 5 units during the fourth quarter alone.

One thing that nobody sees to have noticed with yesterday’s iOS iWork update is that Pages now tracks changes. And not just changes from other Pages documents, either – it’ll import and export tracked changes from Microsoft Word documents.

This could be huge. Or maybe it just won’t work at all.

Sonos has updated its iOS app and introduced the ability to wirelessly stream music AirPlay-style to your Sonos speaker directly from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Until now, users have had to have a Mac or PC acting as a middleman, but Sonos latest iOS apps remove that requirement.

Following Apple veteran Bob Mansfield cashing in $20 million worth of AAPL, Eddy Cue has decided to let go of roughly $8.8 million in stock. Cue, who’s official title at Apple is “Senior Vice President Internet Software and Services,” recently sold 15,000 shares valued at about $583 per share.

Cue only owns 285 accessible shares in Apple now, but he has a treasure trove waiting for him should he choose to stay with the company for the foreseeable future.

I’m an avid Instragammer. And yes, I even take pictures of food, and clouds and all that stupid stuff. It’s horrible. It’s a bad habit. I need to stop. But I can’t. Maybe if the most loathed band in the world would just make a song about how awesome Instagram is then I’d be motivated to kick the habit.

Nickelback still hasn’t worked Instagram into the lyrics of their next mega-album, but CollegeHumor just created the perfect Nickelback video that destroys Instagram and its users with such perfection it’s unbelievable.

Will it keep me from snapping a pic of the French Toast I’m going to eat for breakfast tomorrow? Nope. But I’ll get rid of all my beautiful fingernail pictures now.

Source: CollegeHumor

As Google pushes more and more into the smartphone and tablet market with its Android operating system, it’s a no brainer to figure out that the company previously mostly known for its search business will come into conflict with the other gorilla in the mobile operating space, Apple. The media frenzy that results from these expected differences can be deafening in its fervor at times.

The press, however, has it all wrong, said Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking to the Wall Street Journal. His take? That businesses must be run more like countries, with diplomatic meetings and the like. He said that “the adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they’ve actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They’re not sending bombs at each other.”

Rayman Jungle Run got an update today, adding ten more levels within a brand-new world for the holidays. The app description mentions, “10 new levels, including a snowy jungle, waterfalls, interactive environments, and a new crazy Land of The Dead challenge.”

There is also an updated character pack available for $0.99 as an in-app purchase, as well. It includes new character Globox, and two new Rayman costumes to use in-game.

LaCie, the fantastic data storage company that was recently acquired by Seagate, has updated its d2 external hard drive with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. It comes in a sleek, minimal, fan-free, aluminum shell that looks great next to any Mac.

With speeds of up to 180MB/s, the only real downside to this drive is that it’s not solid state. LaCie is selling both 3TB and 4TB models.

Netflix’s streaming service isn’t exactly known for having quality content. Their catalog of movies is reminiscent of the bargain DVD bin at your local Walmart. Netflix has been struggling to land any quality licensing agreements and has actually been losing a few. With Redbox Instant on the horizon, Netflix desperately needs to give its members a reason to stick around.

The official iOS YouTube app just got a monumental update in the App Store. Today’s update finally brings support for the iPhone 5’s taller display, AirPlay integration, and a completely new iPad version. Boo-ya!

There are all kinds of services out there that will paint your iPhone into a crazy colored mess, most notably Colorware. But what about taking it to the next level? When each iPhone is made and assembled in a factory, Apple uses a process called anodization to color the device. A new startup called Anostyle will anodize your iOS devices into another color of your choosing, thereby making you infinitely cooler than all your boring black-and-white-iPhone-using friends.

Although using a company like Colorware works fine, it’s often way too expensive and the paint finish is susceptible to cracking and chipping. Not so with Anostyle. The dye is literally charged and fused into your iPhone for all of eternity.

Apple has issued some small updates to its iWork suite in the Mac and iOS App Stores. Pages, Keynote and Numbers have been updated to version 9.3 on the Mac, and a 1.7 update is rolling out to the iOS versions.

The only thing Apple has said about the minor 9.3 update on the Mac is that it adds support for the 1.7 versions of the iOS apps. All updates are recommended for iWork users on both platforms.

Since the iPhone 5 launched in October Apple has limited the number of unlocked iPhone 5s a customer can purchase to 2 units per transaction and only 10 units per lifetime.

Now that Apple’s stock of iPhone 5 units has caught up with demand, Apple has changed its policy on how many unlocked iPhone 5s customers can purchase.

Each month I get my AT&T bill there are usually some small charges hidden away somewhere and I have to hunt through the endless pages of info trying to find out why my bill is off. The cascade of frustration usually results in me calling AT&T asking for an explaination on why this bill is different from last month if I didn’t have any overages.

AT&T customer care is probably tired of talking to people like me, so to make things easier they’re creating monthly personalized videos that will explain all of the charges on your wireless bill.

Here’s an example of what the videos will look like:

This is pure speculation, but I have a suspicion that when Microsoft fired the person responsible for naming the Windows Phone 7 Series Phones, that same person was snapped up by the folks at Ballistic. For how else could you explain the “IPHONE 5 BALLISTIC EVERY1 SERIES CASE,” a case so badly labelled that it even shouts its name?

Apple’s new 21.5-inch iMacs are ridiculously thin and gorgeous. They’re also one of least upgradeable/repairable desktop  computers on the market. It’s possible to swap out the RAM on the new 21.5-inch iMacs, but trying to get an aftermarket SSD into the 21.5-inch iMac might be an impossible task.

Teardowns of the new 21.5-inch iMac revealed that in order to get to the hard drive users will have to separate the display from the main body of the iMac. That task isn’t too difficult, but gluing the display back onto the iMac’s body will be pretty tough. On top of that, once you get inside the 21.5-inch iMac there’s literally no room for an SSD and nowhere to plug it in.

Want to see an amazing chart? It’s right above this post, and it shows the rise and fall of computer platforms (including mobile) as a percentage of overall marketshare from 1975 to 2012.

What does it tell us about the state of the computer industry? Even with iOS’s success, Apple is proportionally selling about the same percentage of computers as it has since the early 1980s. Windows as a platform, though, has fallen from a ninety-six percent share of the overall computer market between 1998 and 2005 to a mere thirty-five percent in 2012.

Why? Apple and especially Android are killing WinTel.

The International Data Corporation has published its most recent mobile market forecast and unsurprisingly, they’re predicting Android to maintain its strong market share lead over the next four years. In fact, there’s really not much surprising about the report at all.