News - page 1696

Last year, Apple announced that a “small number” of 1TB Seagate hard drives used in 2011 iMacs could fail under certain conditions, and were eligible for a free replacement. Now Apple’s extended that program to all iMacs sold between October 2009 and July 2011.

According to the new support page, if you have a 21.5 or 27-inch iMac with a 1TB Seagate hard drive, Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will replace the hard drive free of charge. They’ve even included a handy little form to figure out if your iMac is affected. (My 2009 27-inch iMac luckily isn’t).

One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t necessarily have to bring your iMac back to the Apple Store: in some areas, if you contact an AppleCare representative, you can take advantage of an in-office or home repair option, so if you are going to get your hard drive replaced and don’t want to lug forty pounds of aluminum and silicon to your local Apple Store, ask about this option.

Source: Apple

Dropbox photo-sharing just got a little more handy. Now, if you head over to Dropbox.com in Mobile Safari, you get a fantastic new mobile view which lets you swipe and tap your way through your photos.

The iPad mini is getting all the hype this month, but we haven’t heard much about the line of new iMacs that should be coming out some month soon. Apple hasn’t updated the iMac lineup in over 531 days, but according to a new rumor, a redesigned iMac might be unveiled at the iPad mini event on October 23rd.

Yesterday, sky adventurer Felix Baumgartner hurled himself out of a 30 million cubic foot helium balloon hovering at the edge of outer space and fell 24 miles down to the earth, making him the first human outside of a vehicle to break the sound barrier. What else is there to say except the man has balls of steel?

Well, maybe this: Felix Baumgartner uses a MacBook. And like everything else he does, he does it like a boss.

You mess with the bull, you’re going to get the horns. Google discovered this when they launched Android, their own competitor to iOS, a move which ultimately resulted in Apple jettisoning the search giant’s products almost entirely from iOS 6. Now Samsung is finding out the same thing: not only has it been found guilty of infringing Apple’s intellectual property and been told to pony up a $1 billion fine, but now Apple is now taking away their portion of Samsung’s multi-billion dollar manufacturing business.

Scapple — a cross between scabs and Snapple? Thankfully not: Scapple is in fact a brand new (as in beta) mind-map app for writers. What’s that, you say? There are already a ton of mind-map apps out there? That’s true. But none of them comes from the developer of the awesome Scrivener.

Director Rian Johnson has released a director’s commentary for his sci-fi thriller Looper. The gimmick here is that this isn’t a DVD extra, nor do you have to pay for it. The track is available as a free MP3, and you are supposed to load it up onto your iPod and listen along in the movie theater.

After much speculation, the last piece of the iPad mini puzzle has fallen into place, as a complete list of European prices of the iPad mini have leaked to the Internet, confirming that the iPad mini will come in multiple variations and ship with LTE capability.

The iPhone-Dev Team has updated its popular Redsn0w tool to offer full iOS 6 compatibility, including an official Cydia app. Until now, the iOS 6 jailbreak was strictly for developers, and so Cydia was not installed automatically when jailbreaking an iOS 6 device. Now it’s ready for the public.

Geekbench benchmarks for the new iPod touch prove Apple has made lots of improvements to the fifth-generation device, with its dual-core A5 chip making it significantly faster than its predecessor. When compared with iPhone performance, however, the iPod touch is lagging far behind.

Despite the same 800MHz processor, the new iPod touch is still slightly slower then the iPhone 4S, and not even half as fast as the iPhone 5.

SoftBank, Japan’s third-largest carrier, has this morning announced that it will acquire Sprint in a deal worth $20.1 billion. The company will purchase $8 billion in newly-issues shares from Sprint, in addition to $12.1 billion in existing shares — giving it a 70% stake overall.

Amidst the criticism of Apple’s new iOS 6 Maps app, many users have been (not so patiently) waiting for Google to release their own official Maps application. While Google has confirmed that they have yet to submit an application to the App Store, they certainly have one in development. If these photos that were leaked today are to be believed, we could have our first glimpse of Google’s new Maps app.

While the interface isn’t impressive by any means, it sure beats the likes of Google’s miserable Gmail app it released last year. From the blurry pictures posted by developer Ben Guild, it appears that Google has brought over some Android design language into the app. Ben says the app will support the iPhone 5’s increased resolution, and will offer similar two-finger rotation gestures as the current iOS Maps app.

It seems like every time we get a new gadget from Apple, we spend the next weeks (and months) complaining about all the little features we think aren’t as good as they should be.

Well, the world has noticed what complainers we all are, and on yesterday evening’s Saturday Night Live, our bemoaning and grumbling was put in the proper perspective.

Thanks: Stephen

It’s back to the Mac on this week’s CultCast, and on our newest episode, we’ll tell you everything we know about Apple’s rumored 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro, and why you might be seeing it before the year is through.

Then, is Apple’s Passbook really going to take over the world of tickets, coupons, and payments? It’s tough to imagine, especially with how little Passbook can do now. But imagine coupons on your lock screen right when you need them and making payments with nothing but your iPhone. Ready to leave your wallet behind? Passbook may soon let you do exactly that.

All that and our three favorite Mac apps on our latest CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes, or easily stream The CultCast via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Read on for the show notes!

Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a brand new Newsstand publication that’s “loosely about technology,” from Instapaper developer Marco Arment. We also have an awesome new email client that turns items in your inbox into tasks and to-dos, a great little iPhone app for remembering recommendations, the ultimate unarchiver, and more.

This week’s must-have apps roundup includes two classic console games that have been reborn on iOS, including Sega’s hugely enjoyable Crazy Taxi, and Acclaim’s 1999 classic Re-Volt — both of which first made their debut on the Dreamcast. It also includes a great little action platformer called Ivy The Kiwi?, a wonderful puzzle game called Girls Like Robots, and more.

Another year, another iPhone. Since 2007, Apple has been churning these gadgets out like it’s a bodily function. Each iPhone is undeniably better than the last, although sometimes not in every respect.

iPhone fans always say it’s the best phone because it has the best overall user experience, best out-of-box experience, best industrial design, best selection of apps and a few other things perceived as being “best.”

But the iPhone itself is not the best thing about the iPhone platform. It’s the universe of crazy customization and expansion products that support the iPhone. 

It’s the weekend, and if you’re looking for a cute little romp through the monster-battling arena for some down time, Mo’ Monsters just went live. It’s a free to play game from Rumpus, a development studio out of San Francisco, and it’s fairly typical tap-tap-tap fare, with some cute characters and fun monster capturing mechanics in addition to the standard battling.

If you’ve been wanting to play The Witcher, CD Projekt’s well-regarded RPG based on the book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, now might be a great time to do so. The game has just been patched with support for Lion and Mountain Lion, letting more modern Macs join in the fun.

As you know, the upcoming media event for Apple’s smaller, thinner, and less expensive tablet, the as-yet-named iPad Air iPad mini, is being widely reported as happening on October 23,2012.

While the invites haven’t gone out yet, we’re seeing a rumor that the event will focus on iBooks, which makes a ton of sense considering that a smaller iPad is in the same market category as a device like the Amazon Kindle Fire, which is kind of like a souped-up eReader, with media consumption its main purpose, at least from Amazon’s perspective.

While this seems like a plausible rumor, I’m not ready to fully embrace it yet.

Grove has long made some of the sexiest Apple accessories around, hewing them out of polished bamboo and then laser etching them with attractive designs of your choice, so it’s no surprise that the Portland, Oregon based outfit now have cases available for the iPhone 5. Also unsurprising is just how gorgeous they are, especially in their etched incarnations.

You’ll pay, of course — Grove’s iPhone 5 cases start at $79 without any engraving, and go up from there to $99 for one with a design and $129 for a custom engraving. Fashion never comes cheap.

Source: Grove

The Internet is filled with tons of beautiful wallpapers to decorate your iPhone 5 with. The problem is in order to find the high quality ones you have to sort through an endless pile of crap. You don’t got time for that, so one benevolent person has created this massive collection of high quality iPhone 5 wallpapers just for you.

You’re bound to find something you like in the collection, and the layout of the Tumblr page is great for quick browsing on your desktop, and it works fine on the iPhone 5 too. Hurry up and dig in.

Source: iPhoneFiveWallpapers Tumblr

Apple Maps have received a WWE beat down of bad publicity since iOS 6 launched a few weeks ago, but maybe all the drama was a bit overblown. In a survey of 4,300 customers conducted by ChangeWave Research, ninety percent of iPhone 5 owners claimed they “haven’t experienced any problem” with Apple’s Maps app. Six percent of those surveyed said that they think Apple Maps is somewhat of a problem, and only three percent claimed it’s a very big problem

The survey also discovered that one-in-three consumers plan to buy the iPhone 5 in the future, and that 31% of consumers think that Apple switching to the new Lightning port will be “somewhat of a problem” because of the extra costs of buying new cables and adapters.

Source: ChangeWave Research

When Apple first unveiled the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro back in July of this year, they used two images to specifically highlight the incredible resolution of the new display. The first was a shot of a herd of zebras running through the grass captured by photographer Steve Bloom. And the second? A photograph of an eye in full Ziggy Stardust make-up, taken by Swiss photographe Sabine Liewald.

The only problem with that latter photograph? According to the photographer, Apple never properly licensed it to be used in Retina MacBook Pro marketing materials. And she’s now suing over it.

Passbook is supposed to be one of the big new features of iOS 6. Its magical card keeping system is supposed to help you ditch all your coupons, tickets, passes, rewards cards, and maybe even replace your wallet all together someday. The only problem is that there aren’t a lot of places you can actually use Passbook yet.

It’s not that Passbook isn’t a great feature. It’s awesome. People really want to use it. The MLB wants it to replace their ticketing system someday. But because it’s only been out for a few weeks, there are a limited number of apps that take advantage of it, which makes it seem like a bit of a let down. On the CultCast last night we talked about how we haven’t had the opportunity to use Passbook much, but we’re wondering what your experience has been with it so far. Have you actually used it? If so, what do you think? If you haven’t used it, what can be done to get more businesses and people on board?

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac Forums and tell us about your experiences with Passbook so far.