The first time you purchase your first LTE-capable smartphone, the biggest shocker of the device isn’t how wicked fast LTE download speeds are, it’s how sinisterly expensive it is to pay for all that super-fast LTE data. Just like 3G data plans, LTE is expensive. In fact, according to to the GSM Association, Americans are being charged too much for LTE data.
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iTrack Solo is a little box which lets you record two inputs directly into your iPad or your Mac. The aluminium unibody box has inputs for a microphone and a guitar, and outputs not only for the iPad but also for your headphones or anything that you can connect to stereo line-out plugs.
Could Amazon be making a go at Apple and Samsung in the smartphone sector? According to Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist, it sure looks that way. According to the report, Amazon is in advanced talks with TI, looking to scoop up their chip business at a cost of billions of dollars. Texas Instruments has been quite vocal about wanting to get out of the smartphone market and has scaled back its support after losing most of its market share to Qualcomm and predicting an unattractive long-term opportunity for them in the smartphone market.
Apple’s iPad Mini event that is rumored to be taking place on October 23rd is going to be jam packed with goodies. The iPad Mini is coming. Some redesigned iMacs might be revealed too. And now we’ve gotten some solid info that Apple will also unveil a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display at the event.
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