News - page 1820

Hearst, the publishing conglomerate that includes several of the world’s largest magazine brands, sees a bright future of iPad and tablet editions. Duncan Edwards, CEO of Hearst Magazines International, delivered some surprising statements as to what that future will look like at this week’s World e-Reading Congress in London.

The most surprising statement was that Hearst doesn’t plan to include interactive content in its digital publications despite work done in the company’s little known App Lab and the belief that users will pay more for a digital edition. Edwards also described mix of devices used by Hearst digital subscribers. That mix is headed up by the iPad but with Barnes & Noble’s Nook platform right behind it.

Just a day after releasing Sparrow 1.2 for iPhone, the Sparrow team has issued an update to Sparrow for Mac. This release brings a number of new features, improves Sparrow startup times, and quashes bugs.

Do you hate those morons who wander through the streets whilst tapping text messages into their phones? Do you want to knock the stupid handset out of their hands every time you’re forced to swerve or step aside to avoid them? Then you might consider moving to Fort Lee, New Jersey, where police have started fining pedestrians who they catch texting while they walk.

Google Chrome is quite possibly the best web browser you can install on your Mac or PC, and it could soon be the best browser on your iOS device, too. According to one analyst, Google is “definitely” bringing Chrome to the App Store this year — possibly before the end of this quarter — which is bad news for Apple.

The Justice Department’s anti-trust suit and the accompanying class action suit brought by various states (totaling 31 plus the District of Columbia) on behalf of consumers against Apple and the major publishing houses has always been tinged with more than a little irony. After all, the alleged price fixing and collusion actually broke Amazon’s monopoly-like hold on the ebook market. In doing so, it opened the door for products and platforms to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.

The idea of Apple as a sort of digital age Robin Hood is a powerful one in the narrative and one that could give Apple a viable case in the anti-trust suit if the actually goes to trial. Unfortunately, new evidence in the class action suit throws a bit ice water on Apple’s attempt to cast itself as the good guy (or at least as the better guy than Amazon).

With Apple’s entire family of iOS devices now kitted out with high-resolution Retina displays, it’s time for the Cupertino company’s Macs to get the same treatment. We’ve speculated about Retina display MacBook Pros for some time, but there’s been little mention of a high-resolution display for the iMac.

But fear not. Those of you with a love for Apple’s all-in-one won’t get left behind when the Retina display upgrades begin their rollout.

We’re all familiar with just how stringent Apple’s App Store approval process is, but the journey iOS apps take between submission to Apple and finally reaching the App Store is a mystery to most of us. However, one Facebook profile gives us a sneak peek into Apple’s testing lab.

Dive Apple, a female who lives in San Francisco and looks like an upside-down cat, is an App Store reviewer whose Facebook profile reveals a lot about unreleased iOS apps and life behind a desk in Cupertino.

Apple’s next-generation iPhone could finally put an end to fragile smartphones by adopting a flexible OLED display that can bend and twist without so much as a crack. The technology will reportedly come from Samsung — one of Apple’s biggest display partners — which claims to have already received “huge” orders from certain companies.

Ever fantasized about owning your own Apple Store so you could do whatever the hell you want inside? Maybe you’d throw a cool party, dress up as Steve Jobs and chill with Vanilla Ice and Johnny Ive while crashing through the iPod tables playing a drunken game of Red Rover. I don’t know what you’d wanna do inside, this is your fantasy.

If you’re in the market to buy a pristine, almost-genuine Apple Store, my local third-party Apple retailer, The iStore, has sadly closed its doors after 17 years of business and is liquidating all their furniture. You can buy all the signage, fixtures, displays, and Genius Bar for only $38,500. Think about that for a second – for less than $40k you can have your own Genius Bar. Admit it, you want one.

Here’s some pictures of the Apple Store goodies your $38.5k will get you:

While the threat of the Flashback trojan has seemed to largely subside, Apple has released a tool for removing Flashback from older Macs running OS X 10.5 Leopard. A Flashback removal tool was released for Lion and Snow Leopard users a month ago, and now Leopard Macs can get in on the action. Yay for antivirus software!

Apple has also released a Leopard security update that automatically disables outdated versions of Adobe Flash player.

Today has been a huge news day for the MacBook Pro, but the rumormill isn’t done churning just yet. A new report is claiming that Apple will release updated MacBook Pros this summer and that they will make the switch from using AMD GPUs to Nvidia graphics.

Late this afternoon The Verge confirmed Joanna Stern’s report that the new MacBook Pros will feature new Nvidia graphic chips. The report cannot confirm which specific chip will be used, but it is believed to be similar to the 28nm GeForce GT 650M – a chip that provides similar power and performance efficiency to the 28nm GeForce GT 640M.

Rumors surrounding Apple’s new lineup of MacBook Pros have been picking up steam over the last couple weeks, with several reports over the last several days revealing more and more details surrounding the next-gen notebooks.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple will announce its new MacBook Pros at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) on June 11th. The new MacBook Pros will feature super hi-res ‘Retina’ displays, Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors, and solid-state drives. We can also expect more announcements at WWDC regarding OS X Mountain Lion, iCloud, and iOS 6.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

MobileIron was one of the first companies to launch support for Apple’s mobile management framework. The company has a rich experience of helping organizations of all kinds manage iOS and mobile device deployments. MobileIron’s team has experience solving mobile management issues in business, healthcare, government ,and education markets. The company focuses on developing an integrated solution using its cloud technologies and existing business/enterprise systems and infrastructure. At the same time, MobileIron focuses on making initial deployment and ongoing management as efficient as possible while still providing effective device and network security. The company also offers a range of monitoring feature that go beyond security including tracking of device and app use, network performance, and mobile expenses – all under the moniker Mobile Activity Intelligence .

iMessages is really cool, and apparently it gives AT&T’s CEO bad dreams of happy customers because it gives us sweet little SMS messages for free. For the most part, iMessages works really well, except there are times when messages get all delayed you miss some important conversations between friends. Brian Chen at the New York Times’ and a number of other iMessage users have been experiencing frequent delays lately with their messages, but here’s a quick way to fix it.

As AT&T continues to roll out its LTE network across the country, some markets are getting markedly lower speeds for LTE iPads and other devices. In fact, two of the company’s largest markets are getting speeds below the national average for AT&T’s LTE service and below Verizon’s LTE service in those areas. Those two markets are Los Angeles and Chicago – but several other cities may be in for the same issues as AT&T expands its LTE service in the coming months

Intel may be the biggest world’s biggest chip maker, but the company failed to cash in on the mobile technology craze. Staying focused on desktops and laptops where it had a near lock on general computing market, Intel missed out taking the lead in smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

Now trying to play catchup, Intel has introduced its own ARM-competing tablets. The company is so confident (or arrogant) that it thinks it can make chips so compelling that Apple “can’t ignore” them for future iterations of the iPhone and iPad.

Facebook has begun rolling out an improved photo layout for its news feed across its mobile web, Android, and iOS apps. The update addresses the way a series of photos are displayed in a feed, making it hard to see each small thumbnail. Thanks to the new design, album photos will be displayed more elegantly in a collage-like view. You should start seeing the new look across Facebook’s mobile apps today.

We all remember the Zune. Microsoft’s failed attempt at an iPod competitor gained about as much traction as Windows Phone 7 has during the last two years. Apple already had its hands around the music industry’s neck with the iPod and iTunes — there was no room for something like the Zune. It wasn’t that the Zune was a bad product, it was just too late to the game.

Former Microsoft executive Robbie Bach was in charge of the Zune division, and in a recent interview he acknowledges that Microsoft made a mistake releasing the Zune in the first place.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) will be the source of many new announcements from the Cupertino company in the coming weeks. iOS 6 is widely expected to be demoed for developers, and there are whispers that we may even see some new hardware. Expect June to be a crazy month.

A new report from The Wall Street Journal says that Apple is planning significant upgrades to iCloud that it will announce at WWDC. New photo sharing features for posting and commenting on pictures in iCloud will be announced alongside the ability to wirelessly upload and sync videos across iOS devices.

You probably hate cable just as much as I hate cable, right? There’s like five shows on this planet that I want to watch, but I have to wait around for them to air or record them to my DVR, and I can’t take them with me unless I want to be naughty and download them illegally. Getting video wherever, whenever you want it should be a staple of the 21st century but cable companies aren’t making that easy because they refuse to embrace new technologies like Apple’s AirPlay service.

In a telling interview, Time Warner Cable’s CEO, Glenn Britt, admitted he doesn’t know what the heck AirPlay is, and thinks it’s too hard to get video from your computer to play on your TV.

I have a love/hate relationship with destruction videos. Love because, well, who doesn’t love seeing how tough our gadgets really are? And hate because smashing up perfectly good items shows everything that is shameful and bad about our wasteful modern society.

So it is with mixed feelings that I bring you Kai W of DigitalRev TV and his series of ever-more-cruel ordeals for the Canon 7D SLR.

Last week, Adobe created a firestorm of user unrest when it issued a series of security bulletins impacting three applications of its Creative Suite and said that users must pay to upgrade to the latest versions of the apps if they wanted patches that would close the vulnerabilities.

The company was quickly besieged by users, technology professionals, and security experts demanding that it reverse course and offer security patches to users who couldn’t afford the upgrades (or didn’t want to spend the money). Even though company quietly backpedaled and announced it would offer security updates without acknowledging the reason for its about face or offering an apology, the gaffe raises concerns that Apple’s yearly OS X release cycle might lead it down a similar path.

Remember when Siri was saying that Nokia’s Lumia 900 was the “best smartphone ever?” Obviously it wasn’t Apple that programmed such an answer; Siri uses WolframAlpha to those kinds of questions. In this instance, it was a case of out-of-date information and poor review ranking.

Now that the whole fuss is over, you can ask Siri “What’s the best smartphone ever?” and get the correct result. Looks like Apple changed the answer. Who would have thought our iPhones would have their own egos in the year 2012.

Last week a Chinese news site called ChinaDaily published a report saying that Foxconn CEO Terry Gou said his company was “making preparations for iTV, Apple Inc’s rumored upcoming high-definition television.” The statement was then turned into a whirlwind of Apple iTV/HDTV “confirmed by Foxconn CEO” stories that made the rounds.

Foxconn is now saying that its CEO did not confirm Apple’s rumored television set in any way.

The federal government along with U.S. wireless providers will be rolling out a new Emergency Text Alert System this month. The service will be free and will provide geographically targeted wireless emergency alerts for life-threatening events such as: tornadoes, flash floods, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, dust storms, extreme winds, blizzards and ice storms. The text alerts will be brief and will inform consumers to seek additional information or immediately seek shelter if necessary. You may have experienced such alerts via third party weather application or private services but this will be the first national service by the federal government and the wireless industry.