News - page 1724

Remember Samsung’s dishonest, offensive “It Doesn’t Take A Genius” ad that, as my colleague Alex heath wonderfully put it, tried to proclaim the Samsung Galaxy SIII to be a better handset than the iPhone 5 by making its “contrived spec list” longer?

Well, two can play at that game. If you’re going to selectively leave features off of one phone to make yours look like you can do more at it, well, we’re only a quick Photoshop away from turning the tables.

As a final note, I love what this ad says about Samsung. They still just don’t get it: they’re still playing the spec game when Apple has built its billions upon the true fact that no one gives a shit about specs anymore. The proof is in the experience.

Source: Reddit

FitBit, my favorite fitness and activity-tracking widget, has at last gotten a brother and sister, putting an end to that awkward only-child behavior which surely would have developed otherwise (animal torture; computer programming; you know the drill).

The newborns have been named FitBit Zip and FitBit One, the baby and the smart overachiever of the family, respectively. The One can also sync direct with your iPhone.

Apple has issued a press release this morning confirming that iPhone 5 pre-orders topped two million units during its first 24 hours of availability. That’s more than double the record held by the handset’s predecessor, the iPhone 4S, and Apple has warned that while the majority of pre-orders will be delivered on launch day, September 21, “many” are scheduled to be delivered in October.

Canon seems intent on fighting camera phones with Wi-Fi and large sensors. Also: ISO 12,000.

With Apple’s initial iPhone 5 pre-order stock gone within just one hour on Friday, we knew the company’s sixth-generation smartphone was going to be huge. Even Apple itself has said that it has been “blown away” by the demand. It’s little surprise to hear that the iPhone 5 has broken AT&T’s sale record, then, making it the fastest-selling iPhone the company has ever sold.

MacHeist 4’s first nanoMission is live as of now, according to an email I just got from the organizers. Solving this one will net you one copy of NetShade, a $30 anonymous proxy software for your Mac that will let you search all those websites privately. While the prize isn’t a slam dunk by any means, it’s a nice little bit of kit for relatively little effort along with a bit of fun. Oh, and you’ll also be helping MacHeist donate 25% of the proceeds to a charity cause, so it’s definitely worth the karma points.

Ticket to Ride Pocket is one of those games whose very existence seems absurd. It’s an iPhone version of an iPad version of an online game that originally gained popularity — massive popularity — as a board game. But the talented people over at Days of Wonder (who publish the entire series) managed, inconceivably, to make a triumph of TTR Pocket through careful execution and attention to detail. And today is your last chance to own it for free, before it heads back up to $2 at midnight.

Veteran iPhone case-maker Incase sent us this image of all four iPhone forms in profile — each covered by a version of their Slider cases, which, as Incase says, has been available since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. We thought we’d share it; simple, yet fascinating, isn’t it. The pace of change has slowed somewhat of late. At least, cosmetically anyway.

Oh, right — the Slider; you can pre-order your $35 iPhone 5 Slider case now, and Incase will ship one to you when they become available in October.

Source: Incase

With iOS 6 right around the corner, Google’s official YouTube app for iPhone couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s a great app — much better than Apple’s built-in YouTube app — and it’s headlining this week’s must-have apps roundup. It’s accompanied by Poster, a great new blogging app; Journal for Evernote, and Google Drive.

Look at that. Just look at it. That’s Samsung’s latest anti-iPhone 5 advert. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Not only is it one of the most slanted product comparisons I’ve ever seen, but it’s got a pitiful message: “Our phone is better because our contrived spec list is longer!”

SAN FRANCISCO — American companies are rightly proud to show off any manufacturing facilities supporting jobs during the current recession, and San Francisco-based Timbuk2 is no exception. This week, the company known for its messenger bags showed us the hangar here in the Mission district where workers cut and sew colorful swaths of material and help contribute to the local manufacturing economy.

As a group of reporters was ushered through the trendy open-plan set-up, it made us think about what a factory tour of Apple’s manufacturing plants would be like. We’ll never know, of course. Tim Cook would never allow a tour like this one.

Our all-new CultCast is an Apple iPhone 5 media event extravaganza, and you my friend, have a front row seat.

Don’t miss this special episode, where we’ll tell you everything you want to know about Apple’s new iPhone 5, iPod Nano and Touch — we even include a discussion on Apple’s new EarPods, the most amazing perfect best earphones ever engineered… PERIOD.

Plus, the feature we’ve all been waiting for is here: the iPod touch Loop! We’ll ponder how we ever lived without this amazing new iLanyard, and what life looks like now that it finally lives among us.

Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s newly updated and freshly debugged Podcasts App.

Read on for the show notes!

Fieldrunners 2 is finally available in HD on the iPad, and it’s headlining this week’s must-have games roundup. It’s accompanied by a terrific new platformer called Apocalypse Mac, Miniclip’s answer to Temple Run, and a wonderful adventure golf game that I can’t put down.

The only people that really need to know all of the iPhone 5’s dimensions down to the nearest hundredth of a millimeter are case manufacturers, and rabid fanboys that can’t devour enough Apple knowledge. Apple posted the blueprints for the iPhone 5 in the developer center, but for some reason they can be accessed by anyone even if you don’t have an account.

The full high-res blueprints show crazy small details, like the degree of the proximity cone for the camera, and the difference in thickness between the antenna band and the display screen. It’s everything you’d need to know to make your own iPhone 5 case. To access the entire high-res blueprint PDF you can click here.

Source: Apple Developer Center

Via: Joel Johnson

So, I’m hanging out on Twitter, basking in the Tweet-flow (you know what I mean, right?), when I start to notice this thing happening. FTL. I see it in a tweet by a game developer I follow. Then I see it in a tweet by another smart person I follow. Then it’s almost everywhere. FTL. FTL. Starship captaining (is that a real word?). FTL.

I think, “For the Loss?” Well, maybe. Or perhaps, “Faster Than Light,” says my inner sci-fi geek. Looking it up on the interwebs, I see that it does, indeed, refer to the speed at which we cannot go, and it is for sure a sci-fi geek’s dream. I also notice that it came out today, which is why everything’s all a-twitter.

Sword of Fargoal 2, an upcoming game for Mac OS X, iOS, PC, and Linux, just launched a fund raising project on Kickstarter. This will be a sequel to the iOS and Mac OS X game that was itself a re-imagining of the original Commodore 64 game from 1980.

The team is high-end, as it includes original developer Kevin McCord, developer Paul Pridham (Saucelifter, Punch Quest), Emmy award-winning animator Charlie Canfield, and British composer Daniel “LittleBigPlanet” Pemberton–all of whom contributed to the highly-reviewed iOS/Mac port from a couple years ago, published by Chillingo/EA.

The Kickstarter campaign was launched to help take the sequel, Sword of Fargoal 2, from 80 percent done to fully done. The extra funding will help the team add new music, animations, and graphics to the game, as well as polish up the game engine itself to ensure fluid movement and controls.

Add another mark in the “winning” column for Apple today, as a judge from the US branch of the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Apple did not infringe any of the four patents brought before the commission by Samsung.

Judge James Gildea posted his ruling in a short notice on the court’s website. He also found that Samsung was unable to prove that it had a “domestic industry” that used the patents in question. This last bit has to do with a requirement of the ITC that the patents being brought before the court must actually be used in the same country as that court. This ruling is preliminary; the full ITC panel will review the ruling early next year.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, an updated release of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role playing game coming from Bioware, has been delayed until November 30, 2012, according to the company’s forum. The Mac and iPad version was scheduled to release in September, sometime soon after a September 18 PC release date.

Now, all three versions will ship at the end of November.

During the onslaught of iPhone 5 news that’s been circulating this week, a tethered jailbreak for the final iOS 6 Golden Master (GM) was released. The iPhone Dev-Team announced the update yesterday.

While iOS 6 will be unleashed for the public to download on September 19th, hackers have already been working on finding exploits to create a public jailbreak release.

Shipping estimates for iPhone 5 preorders slipped to 2-3 weeks only a few short hours after they were made available this morning, and initial stock continues to dwindle as the day wears on. Apple is expected to shatter the previous preorder sales record it set with the iPhone 4S, and demand for a new iPhone has never been higher.

Although specific preorder sales numbers have not yet been released, Apple has said that it’s “blown away” by how well the iPhone 5 has done so far.

Every time Apple launches a new iPhone they use a lot of fabulous adjectives to describe how incredibly mind blowing it is. They usually use the same adjectives over and over to beat it into your small feeble brain that this new iPhone is revolutionary, fast, and cool.

The guys at Buzzfeed made a ridiculously amazing video full of a video editing precision that contains all the adjective Apple has used to describe the iPhone over the last five years. It’s glorious, so watch it below.

When the original iPod nano was introduced on September 7, 2005, it was one of Apple’s greatest design achievements. In a bold move, Apple decided to replace their iPod Mini with the unbelievably small iPod nano, even though the 2nd-gen Mini had only been on the market for eight months and was the popular iPod.

Over the last eight years, the iPod Nano has experienced more design changes than any other Apple product. It’s gone from metal to plastic, tall to fat, and click-wheel to touch, with more color changes than a chameleon. 

Instagram: Probably the best thing to happen to photography in recent years. InstaStory: a slick and simple little app which turns your Instagram photos into slideshows, and adds music. If you have an Instagram account, and you have an iDevice, then you should be downloading this free app right now.

Looks like T-Mobile’s serious about getting you to come to their network with your unlocked iPhone 5, even if they still don’t have a deal in place to sell them directly. What you see here is that T-Mobile is already ordering nano-SIMs, and you’ll be able to slap them into an unlocked iPhone 5 starting in mid-October. You won’t get LTE, of course, but if that doesn’t matter to you, you might save a few bucks.

Source: TMO-News

If you are one of the many who were holding off on buying a new smartphone until after Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, it’s now time to make a decision. You’ve seen what the iPhone 5 has to offer and now it’s time to compare it to what’s available on Android. I’ll show you a few options, how they compare to the iPhone 5, and then you can decide what’s the best option for you. Ready to explore?