News - page 1798

Doctors may be fans of the iPad as a clinical tool, but they’re not certain that Apple’s iPad, the 5000+ health and medical apps in the App Store, or other mobile technologies are safe and effective health tools for patients. That’s the gist of a report by PwC Global Healthcare. The report was based on surveys of physicians, healthcare management professionals and payers, and mobile technology users in ten countries around the world.

According to the report, just under two-thirds (64%) of healthcare providers acknowledged that mobile technologies offer potential benefits for patients, but feel that mobile health (also known as mhealth) is virgin and untested territory. As a result, the majority of doctors (73%) don’t suggest iOS or mobile health apps to their patients and some (13%) even discourage patients from using them.

Some people complain – quite wrongly – that Apple’s design team is there solely to fight with the engineers. The thinking goes that Jony Ive spends his days doodling beautiful, thin boxes with no ports, and the engineering team then argues to get things like screens, batteries and data ports put back in.

Utter nonsense, of course, but at Sonos, it appears that this is just the way things work: The shape of its new $700 Sonos Sub was picked by customers (customers!) and then the Sonos engineers had to make a speaker to fit inside.

Sydnee from Kanex is a new accessory that allows users with an entire family of iOS devices to charge all of their gadgets (well, four of them) simultaneously. It requires only one main socket, and it coverts that into four USB ports — capable of pumping out 2.1 amps of power — for your iPhones, iPads, or iPod touches.

Apple confirmed at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month that its next major update to Mac OS X, dubbed Mountain Lion, would be released to the public sometime during July. The Cupertino company is yet to make that release date more specific, but according to one report, we can expect Mountain Lion to pop up in the Mac App Store on July 19.

Thanks to Apple, every manufacturer now feels like they need their own voice assistant and so begins the borderline mental illness campaign of conversing with your phone. Samsung announced their own version S-Voice, which is launching with the new Samsung Galaxy S III in a couple of days. Now, LG has decided to jump on the voice wagon by announcing their own voice assistant service Quick Voice.

If, like me, you’re patiently awaiting the delivery of your new MacBook Pro and you’re wondering how well it’s going to play some of your games, check out its performance while running Skyrim at a resolution of 1920 x 1200 on “ultra settings,” with 8x anti-aliasing, and 8x anisotropic filtering.

I think you’ll agree it looks absolutely incredible.

If you decided not to purchase a new MacBook Pro with Retina display simply because almost nothing inside it can be repaired or upgraded at home, then you’ll be pleased to know that the other new MacBook Pro (the one without a Retina display) is just as repairable as its predecessor, earning a 7/10 repair score from iFixit.

Here’s how it compares to the next-generation model on the inside.

Some of you may already be familiar with Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, not just because it has the longest name the App Store has ever seen, but also because it was one of the most impressive iPad titles that was shown off at E3 earlier this month.

It’s now available to download — completely free — and it looks incredible on the new iPad’s Retina display. Whether or not you’re a fan of the Magic franchise, this is certainly a title you should check out.

The New York Post introduced a paywall last year that meant iPad users accessing its website with mobile Safari would be redirected to its official iPad app, and would then have to pay a monthly subscription fee to access its content. However, it has now performed a complete u-turn and scrapped that paywall completely.

With all tickets for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference sold in a matter of hours, there’s a good chance the vast majority of you didn’t get to attend. However, if you’re a register developer, you can now access each and every WWDC 2012 session video — all 113 of them — online.

Blog GM Authority posted today that General Motors cars, the Chevrolet Spark and Sonic, would be among the first to integrate with Apple’s promised eyes-free feature announced at WWDC this past week.

Macbook Pros with Retina displays; Mountain Lion’s best new features; the secrets of iOS 6; Apple announced a glut of new software and hardware at last week’s World Wide Developers Conference, and if you’d like to relive the glory, or need help making sense of it all, don’ miss the second part of our special-edition WWDC CultCast.

Subscribe now on iTunes to catch both of our special WWDC episodes, and peep the full show notes after the jump!

iPhone users on the go will now have access to the same great Google offers as Android users thanks to the new Google Offers app for iOS. The app allows users to browse and redeem hundreds of local offers as well as deals from the dozens of participating deal sites. With Google Offers for the iPhone you’ll enjoy:

One of Steve Jobs’s favorite quotes was by Wayne Gretzky, a famous hockey player: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” From the beginning, Apple has been all about looking ahead to the next greatest thing, not concerning itself with aligning with other companies.

It might be Google’s turn to take a lesson from Apple and do the same, or they may miss out on an opportunity of monumental proportion. What is the opportunity you ask? AirPlay.

The MacBook Air has never been a slouch in terms of performance, but with the 2012 model, SSD performance is scoring a whopping 217% higher than ever before.

In tests run by OSXDaily, read speeds reached a maximum of 461MB/s, and write speeds hit 364MB/s, a dramatic increase over the 2011 model, which scored just a modest 145MB/s read speed and a 152MB/s write speed.

Maybe you were exploring the nether reaches of a Venezuelan jungle yesterday and missed the news that Microsoft announced that they’re making a cool looking tablet called the Microsoft Surface for Windows RT.

Despite some huge holes in the announcement, some people like Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz have gone on to claim that Microsoft’s Surface just made the iPad and MacBook Air obsolete.

We’re actually kind of excited about the Surface and think it looks like an intriguing product, but saying that it’s better than the iPad and MacBook Air at this point is absolutely absurd.

When the iPhone was first launched in 2007, it was designed to support one screen resolution, and nothing more. Later, with the launch of the iPad and the Retina display on the iPhone 4, Apple had to optimize its concrete user interface elements for larger, higher resolution displays. Today, we have not only a Retina display on the iPad, but a rumored 4-inch iPhone as well, likely debuting in the fall.

With all of these different screen resolutions to handle, Apple has stealthily implemented a feature into iOS 6, one which will allow developers to intelligently scale their apps to fit nearly any screen resolution.

They’re not for everyone, but if you like ensconcing your Apple devices in sumptuous leather bound hides as if they were dusty and mysterious tomes just pulled off an ancient library shelf, no one does it better than TwelveSouth with their BookBook series.

TwelveSouth has had a BookBook case for iPad for awhile, but they just gave it an overhaul, slimming it down by 33% and featuring an all-new interior frame that allows you to position the iPad at an angle for typing or watching movies.

The new BookBook for iPad is available now in brown, black and red and costs $80. We’ve got one, and we’ll be posting a review in the coming days.

Source: TwelveSouth

Yesterday, we reported that according to the speculation of display expert Dr. Raymond Soneira, the new Retina MacBook Pro could conceivably use Sharp IGZO display technology originally meant for the new iPad.

At the time, we were a little skeptical of the claim. Turns out we were right, as the new displays don’t use IGZO at all.

Mobile advertising as an industry has been slow to evolve since the introduction of the iPad. A study that we reported earlier this year found that many advertising companies fail to take advantage of the mobile ad capabilities offered the iPad even though iPad users are significantly more likely to interact with ad content.

A more recent study shows that companies hesitant to develop iPad and tablet-optimized ad content are passing up major opportunities to engage customers. It turns out that, in addition to being more likely to interact withs ads, iPad users are more likely to make purchasing decisions based on iPad or tablet-optimized ads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RksyMaJiD8Y&feature=player_embedded

We’re a little late on this, but last night, Apple started airing a new iPad commercial. Called “Do It All,” it’s another app-focused commercial emphasizing the powers of the Retina display, and how it does more than just make your screen prettier: it immerses you more deeply, allowing you to learn, create and play harder. Beautifully done.

I’ve lost count of how many “iPhone 5” images we’ve seen in the last few weeks, but until Apple unveils the device itself, it’s hard to be sure any of them are genuine. But one manufacturer is taking a huge gamble on them. He’s so convinced by these images that he’s already producing and selling cases for the sixth-generation iPhone. And if he’s wrong, he’ll replace every single one for free.

Bento originally made its iOS debut on the iPhone 3G way back in 2009, and it has been supporting iOS devices ever since. Today the latest release, Bento 4, which promises to be the “redesigned, reinvented and revolutionary new version of the leading personal database app,” is now available on the iPad.

And it has 50% off its regular price tag for a limited time.

Microsoft’s announcement of its new Surface tablets got the entire tech industry’s attention yesterday. The announcement was big on drama but not so big on details. Despite showing off the new Surface devices and using them to build hype for Windows RT and Windows 8, Microsoft left out some key points of information like pricing and a clear understanding of how the devices will fit into mobile tech market.

The announcement also left many technology pros scratching their heads in confusion about Microsoft’s decision to own the entire computing process in the way that Apple does – from hardware to OS, to the app market. Another head scratcher, particularly for CIOs and IT leaders, is how or where Surface devices will fit into businesses.

In an email sent out to iOS developers today, Apple has announced a new rule that requires all apps to be submitted for approval with high resolution 1024 x 1024 icons and artwork. That’s a higher resolution than the display built into the iPad 2 — for an icon.