By now, you’ve probably heard that Apple has a large data center in North Carolina which powers much of the iCloud ecosystem that Apple debuted in 2011. What you may not know, though, is that the small town of Maiden, North Carolina almost lost the contract with Apple. Thanks to GigaOm, we now know how it all went down.
Pixelmator, a beautiful image editor for the Mac that Apple could have designed itself, is about to receive a huge update. Version 2.1 Cherry will be going live “very soon,” and the folks at Pixelmator have revealed that the Cherry update packs full support for the new MacBook Pro’s gorgeous Retina Display.
Adobe has yet to update its Creative Suite for Retina, so Pixelmator will be the first image editing app of its class to be fully optimized for Apple’s newest display technology.
I’m a big fan of G-Form’s protective iPad cases. I use one on bike tours to keep my iPad safe in a pannier no matter what’s going on outside, and I love the relatively thin form-factor which comes courtesy of its special-sauce material which stiffens and absorbs shock on impact.
I even like the weird, retro-futuristic designs. But for those of you who prefer something a little more understated, there are now two new G-Forms to tempt you: the Reverse Ballistic Edge and the Extreme Hydro Sleeve.
News Corp., parent company of The Daily, could very well discontinue the iPad-only newspaper in coming months. According to The New York Observer, The Daily has been losing News Corp. $30 million a year, and the tabloid has been placed “on watch.” News Corp. will supposedly “reassess” The Daily after the presidential election this November.
The Daily was the first mainstream paper to be delivered exclusively on the iPad. Since The Daily was introduced onstage with Apple’s Eddy Cue in 2011, the publication has expanded to the iPhone and Android devices.
Since its debut back in 2009, the iPad has dominated the tablet market. At the time of writing this piece, the device holds around 55% of the market share in the United States. Rival tablets from the likes of Amazon, Samsung, and HTC have tried to do battle with it, but they’ve had very little impact on its success.
But there is one tablet that Apple will need to keep its eye on: Microsoft’s new Surface. It’s already being dubbed an “iPad killer” by some, and although we’re skeptical the Windows-powered slate will “kill” Apple’s device, there are a number of reasons why the “Pro” variant will have more of an impact than you think.
Nikon has gone all Microsoft on us and pre-announced a piece of hardware ahead of this year’s Photokina show. The kit in question is a huge monster of a lens, the 800mm ƒ5.6, which will take the place of the current 600mm ƒ4 as the longest autofocus lens in Nikon’s lineup.
Back in 1992, sci-fi futurist and console cowboy cyberpunk William Gibson of Neuromancer fame helped come up with a puzzle that has been puzzling computer cryptographers ever since.
At the 1992 Meeting of the Americas Society, a 3.5-inch disk meant to run on a Mac PowerBook was distributed alongside a limited print noir art book by Dennish Ashbaugh and Kevin Begos, Jr. On the disk was an unknown poem Gibson had penned called “Agrippa (a book of the dead)”. When the disk was plugged into a PowerBook, the text of the poem was displayed exactly once… and then a script on the disk caused the poem to be permanently scrambled so it could never be read again.
Two decades later, one cryptography student is trying to get to the bottom of how it all works.
Environmental activist group Greenpeace called out Apple’s reliance on coal power for fueling its iCloud data centers back in April. Apple responded by saying that all of its data centers will eventually be powered by 100% clean, renewable energy. Greenpeace was happy about Apple’s bold stance on the issue, saying that it was a “great sign that Apple is taking seriously the hundreds of thousands of its customers who have asked for an iCloud powered by clean energy, not dirty coal.”
Now Greenpeace is saying that Apple’s plans to make its data centers truly coal-free “are still far from complete.” While Apple’s energy footprint has become significantly cleaner in recent months, the Cupertino-based company has yet to offer a viable plan for fully eliminating its use of coal, according to Greenpeace.
Would you pay $20 to keep your Apple earbuds in your ears where they belong? Me too. Especially if the solution was as tiny, neat and portable as the earbuds themselves. So keep your fingers crossed (or better, stump up some cash) and hope that Zach Herbert and Adam Orshan’s Kickstarter project gets funded.
We’re still a few months away from Apple’s new iPhone unveiling, but that hasn’t stopped a number of Chinese retailers from selling the device in advance. They’re using the mockup pictures that have been circulating for weeks to make a quick buck from the hotly-anticipated handset, with some asking for as much as $8,600 a piece.
Imagine you had a 24-inch iPad which could be propped up to any angle. Imagine further that this iPad can be hooked up to your Mac and used as an external display, and that the color gamut of that display shows 97% of the Adobe RGB space. Now add in a pressure-sensitive pen along with the multi-touch goodness.
This is Wacom’s new 24HD.
Our iPhones and iPads, which enable us to work and be on call virtually anywhere at any time, will lead to more than half of us working while on vacation. That’s the result of a new study that looked at how technology impacts the work/life balance. iOS devices are common players in the bring your own device (BYOD) era. As BYOD programs lead many of us to use our personal iOS devices and other mobile technology for work-related tasks, they also encourage an “always on” attitude from employers and employees alike.
The study, commissioned by enterprise remote access vendor TeamViewer, shows that just over half (52%) of professionals expect to work while on vacation in one capacity or another.
It also comes on the heels of a similar study that we reported last week. That study showed that always-connected devices like the iPhone and iPad lead most of us to work well past the end of the business day. A practice so common, in fact, that many of us will work an extra seven hours outside of normal business hours and outside of the office each week.
A new iPhone case called the Yellow Jacket protects your phone — and your ass! It’s actually a powerful stun gun. Best of all, it adds about 20 hours of battery life to your iPhone!
Thanks to The Red Ferret.
This is interesting: Apple has just applied for a patent showing a way that they could allow the iPod nano to sync and charge through pins positioned in the clip. What’s most interesting about this is that it implies that the iPod nano could ditch the 30-Pin Dock Connector, just like the Shuffle.
Get in your doomsday bunker because Rovio has released a new game. That’s right, Casey’s Contraptions Amazing Alex is now available on both the Google Play Store and App Store. You’ve seen the trailers and now it’s time to see how much weight Rovio’s name carries.
Hardware news site Kitguru.net has put up an extensive gallery of images which they believe is the iPhone 5 in the wild. We disagree: this is pretty clearly a rough model someone has put together for the purpose of getting the jump on making cases or accessories. But it still shows what the consensus is amongst accessory makers with ties to the Far East about what the next iPhone will look like.
If you’ve though of an awesome idea for an iOS app, but you haven’t got a clue how to write code and you haven’t got the time to learn, then App Idol may be able to help. The competition is giving you the chance to win $1,000 and see your app idea turned into a reality. But you’ll have to be quick; the deadline for applications is July 24.
Parallels 7, arguably the best desktop virtualization tool for Mac, has been updated to take advantage of the new MacBook Pro’s high-resolution Retina display. Its cousin, Parallels Mobile for iOS, has also received the same treatment, and now supports the Retina display in the new iPad.
NASA has unveiled a new app for iOS today, which aims to teach you all about the spacecraft that is uses to explore our solar system. Called Spacecraft 3D, the app uses augmented reality to present each machine right in front of you, so that you can get up close and personal to see how they move, and learn how they work. It’s completely free, and it works on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Anyone taken a look at the price of a professional photo editing software package, lately? Yeah, we dare you.
Redditor jayfehr noticed that Apple design award winner Pixelmator is currently on the Mac App Store for a quarter of it’s regular ($60) price, coming in at a nice $14.99 for this fairly beautiful looking Mac OS X image editing and paint program.
Startup Aereo has been allowed to continue sending live TV programs to iPhones and other mobile devices in the New York City Area. Many networks had sued Aereo for copyright infringement, claiming that the company was illegally copying and then re-broadcasting their content.
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan refused to grant the preliminary injunction brought today by the networks – including ABC, NBC, and CBS – to shut down Aereo while the original suit itself was heard by the courts.
Update: Hey, look at that! Tiny Wings HD just showed up in our iTunes App Store.
Tiny Wings 2.0 is available now in the app store, as a free update to the original sleeper hit by developer Andreas Illiger.
After a cute little music box teaser trailer was posted earlier this week, igniting the joy of fans and the media alike, it seems as if the wait is (almost) over.
No sir, that’s not an Apple store you’re looking at, that there is a bona fide Samsung store. What looks like an episode of Punk’d, is actually Samsung’s first Canadian retail store in Metro Vancouver. This 140-square-metre store is located in Burnaby’s Metropolis at Metrotown and offers a plethora of Samsung’s latest mobile devices, as well as demo stations to see how they function and interact with other Samsung products such as TVs.
Mountain Lion Server is the final chapter in Apple’s march from the enterprise data center – a march that started five years ago when Apple introduced a simplified management interface for small business as part of Leopard Server. The first sure sign that Apple had decided to tailor its server platform only for smaller organizations came with the cancellation of the Xserve.
To experienced OS X Server administrators, Lion Server looked like a patched together product that still had much of its former enterprise capabilities but with advanced administration tools that had been gutted like a fish. All of which pointed to Apple moving forward with its narrower focus and a simplified management app call simply Server.
Research firm Gartner just released its numbers for PC shipments during the second quarter of 2012, and Apple was the only company in the top 5 vendors to see an actual increase in PC shipments. Every other PC manufacturer suffered a significant decline, totaling a 5.7% drop in overall U.S. PC shipments.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, tablet and iPad sales are increasing exponentially. A recent report even estimated that tablet shipments will surpass the PC in the next 4-5 years.