News - page 1776

Mobile management vendor BoxTone announced an aggressive pricing and sales campaign for its mobile management platform today. From now through the end of September, companies will be able to license BoxTone’s mobile device management (MDM) suite for a monthly fee of just $0.99 per device.

The move comes just a week after BoxTone announced the latest generation of its mobile management tools that includes the now-discounted MDM module as well as modules focused on mobile app management (MAM), mobile device support solutions for help desk agents and IT support teams, and a mobile operations module for monitoring and managing mobile IT staff.

Don’t forget your iPhone’s password, because if you do your device might get disabled for  a few decades. That’s what happened to this poor fellow’s iPod Touch. After erroneously entering his passcode ten times the iPod locked up and said it can’t be used for another 22,338,550 minutes. That’s 42.5 years he’s going to have to wait to listen to The Biebs new album. The poor sucker.

The longest a time lock on iOS is supposed to last is 60 minutes, so this is obviously a bug. A really bad bug. Should this ever happens to your iPod you can fix it by plugging the device into your Mac and restoring it to your last backup.

Source: Reddit

When it comes to using mapping APIs on mobile, it’s hard to think about any name other than Google Maps. However, the truth is that Google Maps doesn’t fit the needs of every developer and/or company. Thankfully we live in a country that allows competition and choice (even though large companies continually try to squash it). There is, in fact, a broad number of mapping solutions available to developers, and with Apple and others recently abandoning Google Maps, we’ve seen a spark of interest in these alternatives. One that’s been working hard to provide a viable option to its customers is deCarta.

Have you ever wondered how much time you spend in an app? There are those staple iOS apps most of us use everyday (Phone, Messages, Mail, etc.), and then there are our favorite third-party apps from the App Store. Which apps command the most of your time? Now there’s an easy way to find out.

A new jailbreak app called App Analytics tracks your app usage on the iPhone and iPad. Once installed via the jailbreak App Store known as Cydia, App Analytics stays out of the way. The app is simple, lightweight, and scarily revealing.

We’ve been drooling over the amazing power of Leap Motion’s powerful 3-D motion control software since we first got wind of it back in May. It’s the coolest way to interact with a computer since the invention of the mouse, and it looks like Leap Motion is bringing in some serious firepower to help get the company’s first product off the ground.

Former Apple VP, Andy Miller, has just been hired as Leap Motion’s COO and President. Miller left Apple in August of 2011 after working as Apple’s VP of Mobile Advertising since 2010 when his mobile advertising company, Quattro Wireless, was purchased by Cupertino. Hiring Miller gives Leap a significant figure who’s familiar with Silicon Valley and the challenges Leap will face when marketing their product against Microsoft’s Kinect controller.

Parallels, the company behind the acclaimed virtual desktop software that lets you run Windows alongside OS X on your Mac, just scored a big name. The former vice president of Mac Software Engineering at Apple, Bertrand Serlet, has joined the board of directors at Parallels. Serlet will bring his knowledge and expertise of all things Mac to Parallels, and he is also working at a startup called Upthere in Palo Alto.

Serlet left Apple in 2001 after working for 14 years alongside Steve Jobs at NeXT and then Apple. He led the original development of OS X and previously worked at Xerox PARC, the research facility where Jobs was inspired to begin work on the graphical interface for the original Macintosh.

There’s no shortage of under-the-radar games on the iOS App Store that have ripped off some art, an idea, or even an IP from bigger and more successful products, but we haven’t seen a rip-off as shameless as Armed Heroes for a while, which seems to have stolen all of its art assets wholesale from the wildly successful (and wildly addictive) Mac and PC action game, Torchlight.

If there’s a sucker born every minute, that person is probably hoping to find a crazy-cheap deal on an iPad or iPhone in the newspaper.

The San Francisco Examiner published an article about Apple’s flap with local government over their withdrawal from the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment (EPEAT) rating system with a half-page ad selling discount iPads right below it. An ad that was way, way too good to be true.

Apple is expected to launch Mountain Lion next week. At the same time, the company will be launching Mountain Lion Server. The new edition of Apple’s server platform is revolutionary in a lot of ways, not the least of which is its $19.99 price tag.

Mountain Lion Server includes the basic server functionality that you’d expect from a product intended for the small to mid-size business (SMB) market. That means features like file sharing, network printing, client backups, website hosting, VPN, email services, centralized contacts for an organization, and shared calendaring. All of that is important and Mountain Lion Server seems destined to make those services easy to set up and manage.

In addition to those basic capabilities, however, Mountain Lion Server comes with some pretty incredible functionality for businesses or workgroups of any size or type. Here are ten of the big money features that are easy to overlook.

If you’ve ever used Steam’s platform for purchasing and downloading games — and you probably have if you’re a Mac or PC gamer — then you’ll already be aware of just how great it is. In fact, if there’s one platform that beats the Mac App Store when it comes to buying games, it’s Steam.

And that rivalry could be about to get a whole lot greater. After a list of productivity software categories briefly appeared within Steam’s mobile app, it looks like the company could be about to take on Apple’s store by selling apps as well as games.

AgileBits has updated its 1Password app with Retina graphics in the Mac App Store. Version 3.9.6 of the password manager is available now as a free update for existing customers in the Mac App Store, and version 3.8.20 is also available from the AgileBits website. The Mac App Store version plays by Apple’s sandboxing rules, while the web version does not. 1Password is sold for $50 in the Mac App Store and $70 on the web.

1Password will also be ready to run on Mountain Lion when Apple ships the OS later this month.

Every once and a while here at Cult of Mac, we like to peel open our gadget bags and catalogue what’s inside them for a bit of fun in our “What’s in our gadget bag?” series. The scope of our gadget bags has nothing on Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s, though: his bag contains two iPads, a MacBook Pro, two iPod nanos, three iPhone 4Ses, an iPhone 4, a Mophie, a Jambox and even more.

When Apple unveiled iOS 6 and released the first beta at WWDC back in June, it quickly became apparent that a number of new features wouldn’t be supported on older devices like the iPhone 3GS, and Apple mentioned these restrictions in the fine print of its iOS 6 preview page.

In the iOS 6 beta 3 release, however, shared Photo Streams and VIP mail — two of the features that are unsupported on older devices — are now supported on the iPhone 3GS.

If you tend to stick to using the unified inbox in Apple’s built-in Mail app in iOS, then accessing your draft messages is a bit of a pain. First you have to remember which of your accounts you created the email with, then you have to hunt down the drafts folder for that account.

In iOS 6 beta 3, however, accessing all your drafts is as simple as holding down the new mail button, which takes you to the new page you see above. Isn’t that handy?

Source: Reddit

I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing Pokemon on my Game Boy, and I’d love to be able to relive those days on my iPhone. Unfortunately, Nintendo is adamant it won’t be bringing any of its titles to iOS. While that’s a huge disappointment to most of us, some developers see it as an opportunity to create some great alternatives.

Little Masters is exactly that — an alternative to Pokemon for iOS. And as you can see from the screenshots above, it’s remarkably similar.

While most CIOs and IT leaders are taking steps to reduce their reliance on RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), some major BlackBerry business customers are ready to abandon RIM’s services and its BlackBerry smartphones in one fell swoop. The latest company to announce such a migration is the Australian airline Qantas.

The company told the Australian (registration required) that it had made the decision to trade its 1,300 BlackBerry devices and related service packages for iPhones. The move, which Qantas expects will deliver significant cost savings, follows a company-wide survey in which a “large majority” of employees said that they’d prefer iPhones.

Like other companies and organizations that have announced similar transitions this year, Qantas chief information officer Paul Jones pointed to the iPhone’s ease of use and popularity as reasons for selecting the iPhone.

Microsoft’s free My Xbox LIVE app for iOS just got a brand new update that introduces the ability to use your iPad as a remote control for your console. You can use it to navigate your way around the menus, control media playback, and to “find fresh entertainment” in the new Discover section.

iOS 6 beta 3 has been available to registered developers for a matter of hours, and already the software has a tethered jailbreak courtesy of the iPhone Dev-Team. Like previous beta jailbreaks, however, this will not install Cydia on your device.

In an effort to make its sixth-generation iPhone slimmer than previous models, Apple will reportedly introduce a new display that features clever  “in-cell” touch technology that allows it to become significantly thinner than existing iPhone displays by negating the need for a dedicated digitizer. According to sources for The Wall Street Journal, mass production of these displays has already begun.

What would an “Applefied” Coca-Cola ad look like? Or Levi’s, and Starbucks? Art director Bryan Evans has been wondering that himself and has created a series of ads for popular products that mimic Apple’s style. Take a look at what the world would be like if every ad looked like an Apple ad.

Even though Apple hasn’t confirmed the iPhone 5, nor whether it will use the mini SIM card it won the design proposal for, many European mobile carriers are placing orders for the tiny little smartphone cards in anticipation of the iPhone 5 launch, which is rumored to drop in September or October of this year.

So, check this out. The folks behind CameraSize, a clever little web site that compares camera specifications with easily viewable images for size comparison, have created SensorSize. Ever wondered what the camera on your iPhone 4S is packing? How about comparing it to other smartphones, point and shoot phones, or – gasp – actual DSLR cameras?

SensorSize will do it all, with a nice little infographic, as you can see above.

In the continuing saga of Apple and Samsung in the copyright infringement trial in California recently, it seems as if Apple has a much stronger position than many people might believe. This isn’t a case of Apple stifling innovation, but rather of Samsung knowing very well that it has a weak case in both the claims it is defending against as well as the claims it has brought to court itself.

Planning and managing a business event can mean anything from hosting a small cocktail party to putting on international conferences and conventions and everything in between. Three of the key parts of any event, however, are invitations or registration in advance of the event, guest/attendee check-in at the actual event, and professional follow-up afterward.

Or Multimedia of London decided to make the guest/attendee management part of events simpler and more streamlined when it launched its Event Check-In Pro app for the iPad last year. With the success of that launch, the company retooled its app to offer two difference feature sets – standard and pro – and a range of pricing options.

The updated app, which hit the App Store late last month, offers a range of features that can be used for handling one-day workshops or week-long multi-session conferences.

One of the many clever little touches accompanying last week’s official unveiling of the Tweetbot alpha for Mac was the icon: signifying’s the app’s alpha status, the blue robotic bird icon we all know and love on iOS was replaced with a metallic silver egg. Get it? Because it’s still not hatched.

I still love that joke, and it’s a great example of the little things Tapbots does that sets them apart from the rest… but I have to say, over the course of the last week using Tweetbot as my Mac Twitter client, I’ve missed having Tweetbot’s iconic blue bird in my dock. Here’s how to give Tweetbot for Mac the same icon as on iOS.