News - page 1755

Twelve South is really good at making attractive, beautifully packaged and well marketed accessories for Apple lovers.

Often, their accessories seem born from a small idea — what if your MacBook could look like a book, or what if you could attach your iPad to an arm connected to your Mac — but through excellence in execution, these small ideas quickly become indispensible.

The BackPack, first released in late 2009, is such an indispensible small idea: a little shelf to for your iMac or Apple Display. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you’ve ever struggled with a way to manage the external drives or devices connected to your desktop, that little aluminum shelf quickly became such an integral element to your Mac that it’s as if Apple had built one into every Mac.

Now here comes the BackPack 2, and it’s better than the original in every way.

Apple kicked off 2012 with its education event in New York. At that event, the company announced its electronic textbooks for iPad initiative, iBooks Author, and the revamped iTunes U. According the Apples latest financial data, the education initiative has paid off with both iPads and Macs being purchased by schools in record numbers.

A 21st century vision of education , however, is about more than getting the iPads and MacBooks into the classroom. It also requires technology goals, professional development for teachers, high-speed access to up-to-date content, education-centric portals for students and teachers, back-end systems, and education apps or software.

Are Apple products truly superior to the competition? Or are they just marketed a lot better? Either way, there’s no denying that Apple can build hype around a product like no other tech company on the planet, but all that superb marketing ain’t cheap.

Testifying during the Apple vs Samsung trial today, Phil Schiller revealed that Apple has spent over $1 billion marketing the iPad and iPhone since their respective launches.

Apple has always had a lot of “crazy” ideas that they throw around the company and see if it’s something they could do really well. The iPhone and iPod came about because Apple was frustrated with their MP3 players and cellphones, so they decided to see if they could do it better.

In the past there were even rumors that Steve Jobs wanted to design a car. Well during Phil Schiller’s testimony this morning at the Apple vs Samsung trial we found out that those iCar rumors actually had some serious weight behind them.

Was the $14 iPhone macro lens a little too rich for you? If you can’t afford to drop the price of a cheap lunch onto a DIY photo accessory for your $650 phone, then perhaps I can interest you in Zaheer Mohiuddin’s $1 version.

That’s right: a $1 macro lens for the iPhone (or iPad). The only work you’ll need to do is take a walk to the dime store and find a roll of tape.

Lantronix, a company which sounds like a Transformer, has added a home version of the xPrintServer to its lineup. Like its office-bound older brother, this xPrintServer lets you print to any printer in your home via AirPrint.

Real Racing has been a staple of the App Store’s gaming catalog for years. As a game that pushes the boundaries of what iOS devices can do with console-like graphics, the developers behind Real Racing are always improving with new iterations. Real Racing 2 was one of the first games to take full advantage of the iPhone 4S’s faster processor and the iPad 2’s ability to stream 1080p video over AirPlay.

Now the folks at Firemonkeys (a combination of IronMonkey and Firemint’s gaming studios) have announced that Real Racing 3 is coming this year. A specific date has not been confirmed, but the game will feature real racecourses from around the world and 22 cars will be in each race.

The USDA is working its way through an ambitious iPad deployment that may come to serve as a model for a range of government agencies within the U.S. and around the world. The challenge was to develop a simple, intuitive, and effective field survey and data collection system.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is a division of the USDA that is charged with surveying and reporting agricultural data across the country. NASS operates in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico. With a staff of around 3,000 enumerators NASS conducts thousands of survey each year about agriculture across the country. The service has been operating since the mid-1800s and, until the iPad, it conducted surveys and collected data in pretty much the same way that it had back in the 19th century – with paper forms filled out by hand and mailed to various field offices. Although various technology initiatives have been tried by NASS since the 1980s, none was a successful fit before the iPad.

It’s taken a while, but finally the pressure-sensitive iPad styluses are starting to ship after a long, long time in development. Now Adonit, the company behind the hot, hot Writer jeyboard case for the iPad, has launched its Jot Touch.

Yes, that’s “launched” as in, “you can buy it right now,” as in “$99 and ships in 1-2 days.”

iPhone rumors have reached a fever pitch with the word on the street being that Apple is holding its fall iPhone event on September 12th, and mainstream media is even paying attention to the rumor mill during primetime. Everyone wants to know about Apple’s next smartphone, including millions of iPhone 4 owners with expiring contracts.

What do you do when you want to buy a new smartphone? You sell your old one. That’s why eBay has seen a huge 70% spike in used phone trade-ins during the last few days.

Mophie, the JuicePack company, has flipped out and gone in a totally new direction, head first into an equally crowded market: iPhone sports camera enclosures. Mophie’s version is called the OUTRIDE, in ALL-CAPS.

In the weeks leading up to Apple’s rumored September 12th media event we’ve seen real-looking and not-so-real-looking leaks of the next iPhone. Rumors say that the sixth-gen iPhone (commonly referred to as the “iPhone 5” for clarity’s sake) will be taller and thinner than its predecessor. The device is expected to boast a 4-inch display, 4G LTE, and a redesigned form factor.

A new video has surfaced alongside a series of images comparing the current iPhone 4S front panel with the iPhone 5’s larger front panel.

If the iShower didn’t look like something you’d find next to you if you were laying in a hospital bed, it might just be the perfect summer speaker. As the name suggests, it’s a waterproof speaker whose Bluetooth connection keeps your iPhone safely away from anything wet.

The day has finally come, folks. Legendary designer Surenix has brought the benchmark iPhone jailbreak theme called “ayeco”n to the iPad. We showed you a sneak peek of ayecon for iPad last week, and the Winterboard theme is now available for everyone to get in Cydia. It look gorgeous.

Popular and useful note-taking and synchronization app Evernote has just updated its Mac app to version 3.30. The new version adds new keyboard commands, a new premium user account, new user controls and LinkedIn support, which is also now available in the web-cased Evernote client. In addition, Evernote sports a handy slideshow option for notes that involve pictures. This will look really nice using Evernote’s new Retina display support.

The Tweetbot for Mac Alpha just got its coolest update yet. A version released today brings multiple columns for different timelines that can float freely or attach to each other and form a Twitter command center of awesomeness. The update packs other features too, like a menu bar interface, geotagged tweets, and Notification Center integration with multiple Twitter accounts at once.

Ever wanted to try your hand at iPhone app development? The folks at Code School want to teach you, via a series of web-based coding courses focused on learning to code for iOS now available for backing at Kickstarter. The new set of coursework is called Try iOS, and it will use video, in-browser activities, and a hands-on approach to teaching anyone how to code for the iPhone.

We want to create Try iOS, a Code School course which teaches how to build your own iPhone apps. Our course will combine high quality screencasts, in-browser code challenges, and gamification principles to make learning fun. There will be no need to install anything, since students will build iPhone apps using our in-browser iPhone simulator.

Remember the excluded Samsung documents we told you about yesterday? The ones that Samsung sent out to the media after they had been denied the ability to enter them into court? We told you how Samsung’s lawyer, John B. Quinn, argued that sending them along to journalists was neither unethical nor illegal. Apple has a different opinion, which they filed in court today.

As the NFL pre-season kicks off, the league has begun reminding fans about the various online programming and mobile apps that it offers. While we still have a month before the season starts, August is the time to check in with how your favorite teams are shaping up for the new season. It’s also the time to begin researching your fantasy football draft options – if you haven’t already.

For the preseason and fantasy prep time, the NFL is offering a  mobile apps – many of which will be familiar to fans with iPhones and iPads. We’ll be taking a look at the various official and third-party fantasy tools for Mac and iOS users as the pre-season rolls on, but here’s a quick look at the official options from the NFL.

A Japanese repair house posted photos of what looked like the iPhone 5, and we were all sold. They looked like what the rumor mill predicted, and they had just the right amount of realness to send the internet into a tizzy. Now, Neowin has pictures from an anonymous source in Bangkok, Thailand of what could be the next iPhone. Maybe. Possibly.

Not long go, we reported to you that the FPS Dead Trigger had given up the fight and gone free on Android, due to an “unbelievably high” piracy rate. Today, it appears that Madfinger Games, the developers behind Dead Trigger have given in and made the game free on iOS as well.

Even though the iPad is a really great gaming device, I pretty much only use it to read. It’s great, it just doesn’t feel like all the books I love with their neat cover art.

Out of Print is a new company that is trying to get people to start reading more by promoting classic literature in cool ways. Their latest product is a series of iPad cases designed to look like classic books by using the same materials used in real book covers.

The iPad continues to dominate the global tablet market and, according research firm IDC, the iPad is responsible for the strong growth of tablets across the board.

While the numbers announced during Apple’s most recent financials call continued to show strong year-over-year growth for the iPad, they didn’t illustrate how significant the iPad’s growth is compared to the rest of the tablet market.

It was recently revealed that jailbroken iPads are not able to use Amazon’s new Instant Video app. The issue is a common one that similar apps, like HBO GO and DirectTV, have dealt with in the past. The reason jailbroken iPads couldn’t access Amazon’s video streams seemed to be related to DRM. Amazon may or may update the Instant Video iPad app with a fix, but in the meantime, there’s an easy way for jailbroken iPad users to get around the restriction right now.

You know that feeling you get when you see an iPhone accessory that’s so ridiculous you feel like you have to have it? Behold the Philips FWP3200D 300W Mini Hi-Fi System (say that 10 times fast). This giant jambox wants to make you the ultimate party rocker, but only if you’ve got £299.99 ($470) to drop. With a pair of 2-inch tweeters and 5.25-inch woofer, the “Party Machine” features a dual iPhone and iPod dock made to look like two classic turntables. Plug your iPhones in, and they will literally spin around as the beats blast.