News - page 1843

Late last week, Microsoft pulled the Service Pack 2 update to Office for Mac 2011 from its upgrade servers after users complained that the update created problems with the Outlook email and calendar application. The move also coincided with reports that Office vulnerabilities could lead to additional malware infection risks.

Microsoft had released the update the previous week (April 12). After initial reports that users were getting an error messages related to Office 2011 database, the company posted advice for users to follow before attempting to install the update and a work around for some of the problems that users experienced. A few days lated Microsoft pulled the update completely.

The iPhone 4S is hardly a fatty, but it is thicker than many of its Android-powered rivals. However, thanks to in-cell touch technology and other improvements Apple is expected to make to the sixth-generation iPhone, the handset could measure in at just 7.9mm thick — 1.4mm thinner than the iPhone 4S.

We’ve heard plenty of speculation surrounding the future of Apple’s 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros in recent months, which are soon expected to adopt a new form factor and Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge processors. However, according to one analyst, there may no longer be a MacBook Pro… or a MacBook Air.

Instead, Apple will release an all-new MacBook that combines the qualities of both, while the 17-inch MacBook Pro will be discontinued completely.

It’s a big day for Adobe, with the announcement of two new products: Creative Suite 6, and a new subscription service called Creative Cloud, which it describes as “a hub for making, sharing, and delivering creative work, and a radical new way of providing tools and services that will change the game for creatives worldwide.”

Clear, the hugely popular to-do list management app from Realmac Software, has received its first major update since hitting the App Store back in February. Version 1.1 brings new themes, new gestures and new features, in addition to a whole host of tweaks and fixes that make Clear even more of a joy to use.

Update: It appears that the app’s developer has started replacing the channels with ads for “Futubox.” A classic scam. The app did work at one point, but we no longer recommended buying it now.

Update 2: It looks like Apple has yanked it from the App Store.

A $0.99 iOS app has surfaced over the weekend in the App Store called “TV English Premium.” The universal app allows anyone to stream 55 premium TV channels live without paying for a subscription. An iPhone or iPad also does not need to be jailbroken to stream for free. For only $0.99, you can have access to many BBC and premium U.S. TV channels in HD on your iOS device.

We’ve seen quite a few hardware/app combinations that promise to turn your iPhone into a beautifully simplistic remote control for your TV, but most of them fall short with a level of complexity that always brings us back to our old remote control setup. The VooMote is different. Not only is it ridiculously easy to use, but it looks great, has a minimal footprint, and is completely customizable so it adapts to whatever configuration you might need. Just plug in the Zapper to your 30pin connector and that’s it. Boom! You’re ready to go.

Its light-weight design is the size of a paperclip which maximizes the convience factor as it effortlessly converts any iOS device into a smart universal remote that controls virtually all your A/V gear. Within the app you can customize the layout and look of your remote screen so you don’t have a bunch of buttons bothering you that you never use. You can even create macros to execute a series of functions with only one touch. There’s no extra hardware to setup. No messy menus. Just a simple accessory to rule your television dominion. It’s available in a multitude of vibrant colors including, Red, Pink, Blue, Green, White and Black. The VooMate Zapper is awesome, and at $69.99 it’s cheaper than most universal remotes on the market.

Today we’ve teamed up with VooMote to giveaway two brand new VooMote Zappers to two of our lucky readers. Entering the giveaway takes less than a minute and you’ll be that much closer to having the best universal remote on the market.

Here’s How To Enter:

Apple has added a new page of iPhone app suggestions for business users. The page, titled iPhone at Work, lists apps broken down into five major categories: organize your day, view your business, manage projects, meet anywhere, and travel light. Each of those sections is further divided to show off the ways that the iOS apps Apple bundles with the iPhone and third-party apps can be used in business.

If you’ve ever wanted to know the pros and cons of jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad, episode 9 of The CultCast just hit iTunes, and you’re not going to want to miss our breakdown of everything jailbreak. Interestingly, Apple seems to have covered up the word “Jailbreak” in the show title on iTunes, but you should see the full word when you actually download the show. (Apple can’t have the big bad j*******k word in its iTunes Store, now can it?)

And speaking of iPads, is your new retina-beauty plagued with the same yellow-tinted screen others on the web are experiencing? We’ll tell you what the problem is and what to do about.

All that, iPad mini rumors, and a whole lot more on this week’s CultCast — subscribe now on iTunes!

Microsoft has decided to jump into the mobile management marketplace. The company has announced plans to retool its Intune cloud-based desktop management service to manage iPhones, iPads, and some Android devices. The news follows RIM’s similar decision to include iOS and Android management in the new BlackBerry Mobile Fusion console that it designed for its PlayBook tablet.

Microsoft’s Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of the company’s management and security division division showed off the new version of Intune at Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas. Anderson’s presentation, however, wasn’t able to illustrate Intune’s upcoming iOS management capabilities because the iPhone used in his demo failed to perform properly with the Intune release being used – an event that The Register reported as seeming “as though the spirit of Steve Jobs was in the room.”

Chinese ingenuity and resourcefulness is an amazing thing, and we see it in action every time we pick up an iPhone or iPad. We also sometimes see it when iPhones are smuggled into China. First, Chinese iPhone and iPad smugglers were using crossbows and ziplines to get over the border, and now they’re cutting open glass beer bottles, stashing iPhones inside then gluing them shut.

This woman was caught trying to smuggle over 200 iPhone 4s and iPhone 4Ses at the Sha Tau Kok border this way. Wonder what she did with all that beer. And imagine finding an iPhone at the bottom of your brew. Usually the only thing I see there is pink elephants… and maybe the occasional dead mouse.

[via MIC Gadget]

The United States Department of Justice has already filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five other e-book publishers for alleged e-book price fixing in the lead up to the launch of the iBookstore, breaking Amazon’s wholesale monopoly on e-books and forcing them to adopt the agency model.

Apple believes it’s got a really good case against such allegations, and wants to go to trial to fight the charges. So do publish Macmillan and Penguin, who have refused to settle the case. But it looks like they won’t *just* have to defend themselves in the United States, but now up north as well, as price-fixing class action lawsuits against Apple and other publishers have started being filed in Canada as well.

Apple, Google, Intel and four other tech giants failed to convince a judge to dismiss an antitrust suit brought against them. The suit alleges that the companies conspired against hiring each other’s employees and District Judge Lucy Koh in her decision said:

“The fact that all six identical bilateral agreements were reached in secrecy among seven defendants in a span of two years suggests that these agreements resulted from collusion, and not from coincidence,”

While Apple, Google, and Intel are the three largest firms in the suit, other major companies, including Adobe, Lucasfilm, Pixar and Intuit are included.

With the number of Flashback-infected Macs dwindling more each day and Apple’s release of software updates that can both clean an infected Mac and prevent infection or reinfection, it’s easy for IT departments and individual Mac users to think that the crisis has passed. That doesn’t mean that it’s time to forget about the issue of malware targeting Macs, however. In fact, the entire event has been a wakeup call to IT and security professionals as well as to the wider Mac community – Macs are not invincible.

When reflecting on the Flashback events of the past couple of weeks, there are five major themes or lessons for businesses and IT department to consider when it comes to supporting Macs going forward.

Way back in the dark days of the 1990s, when smartphones had styluses and mobile apps were made from Java, I yearned for a way to stream music from my Sony Ericsson P900 to my stereo via Bluetooth. At the time, it was impossible.

Fast forward to the present day (by drilling down through several hard-to-navigate menus and hitting the tiny “skip” button with the tip of the stylus) and there is an embarrassment of choice. These days I’d rather pick up my JamBox and carry it into the living room rather than fire up the proper stereo that’s already in there.

Joining this wealth of wirelessness is the Audio Cube from Satechi, an inexpensive, pocket-sized Bluetooth speaker with all of the features you’d expect.

The iPad is hands-down, one of the best platforms to play video games on. Games just seem to envelop you in a wave of child-like wonder once you start playing. One of our favorite types of iPad apps are Tower Defense games that force users to employ strategy combined with realtime action. There are hundreds of games out there, but one of the coolest and unique games we’ve played is Tesla Wars by Synaptic Wave.

A few years back Seattle Rex had gone all out on a 17” MacBook Pro – spending approximately $4,500 on the then top-of-the-line machine ($5,100 including AppleCare). The particular MacBook Pro he bought turned out to be defective. The laptop’s Nvidia graphics processor started displaying symptoms of the defect shortly after his AppleCare expired. A few days later the laptop died completely – it wouldn’t even start up. At the time Rex’s laptop broke down the defect was a known and well-documented issue. Apple had even issued a tech note and was replacing defective models as they failed.

One of the interesting tidbits to emerge from testimony during Oracle panent infringment trial against Google is that Oracle had considered producing its own smartphone and buying either RIM or Palm. The testimony came from Oracle chief Larry Ellison, who was a close personal friend of Steve Jobs. Ellison is, in fact, quoted as describing their relationship as “best friends” in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs.

The news raises some interesting questions – not the least of which are whether Jobs knew of the plan and what impact Oracle jumping into the smartphone game against the iPhone might have had on their friendship. Jobs was obsessed with the idea that Google and its former CEO Eric Schmidt (also a former Apple board member) had ripped off Apple’s iOS design work in creating Android.

As you may know, Apple is being targeted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for calling the new iPad “4G-capable” when Australia not only doesn’t have any LTE networks, it will never have LTE networks compatible with the new iPad.

Apple’s already changed the wording on its website in response to the complaints to make it clear that Australian customers buying an iPad WiFi + 4G are only getting HSPA+ speeds at best, but that may not be good enough. Regulators are now targeting Apple in a lawsuit over their use of the term 4G, and Apple’s already preparing its defense.

That defense? That 4G doesn’t actually refer to any specific technology, but is just a marketing term. And honestly, at this point, that’s about right?

We’ve all been there, that moment when the bill for that great mobile plan you signed up for comes in. Monthly access charges, usage charges, surcharges, taxes, governmental surcharges & fees — the list goes on… and on… and on. The FCC and others call this “bill shock,” while I call it well… we’ll save that for another day. Regardless of how we feel about these charges and fees, they are the services we signed up for and agreed to pay. Unfortunately it’s not always easy to monitor our usage and it can be very easy to incur overage charges when it comes to services like data and text messaging.

Earlier this month, five regional U.S. carriers announced that they would begin carrying the iPhone 4 and 4S. All were offering the devices at $50 less than the standard list prices of the larger national carriers (AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint). All five carriers are in more rural areas of the country that aren’t well served by the national carriers. Two are in Alaska, for example.

Probably the most widely anticipated gaming release on the Mac scene this year is Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo III, which is due to be released — after years of buzz and a twelve-year gap since Diablo II — on May 15th.

The Diablo games are fantastically-tuned hack-and-slashes in which you explore randomized dungeons, collect loot and gelatinize waist-deep hordes of monsters, and if you’ve never played one, you either hate gaming or have been woefully deprived.

Luckily, we can right that problem easily enough. Although there’s a month left before Diablo III is available to purchase, you can play the game’s beta up to level 13 for free all weekend long.

Your iPhone’s touchscreen might look just like a single pane of living glass, but there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye. Every iPhone is comprised of multiple layers: an LCD that actually blasts the pixels out of the Retina Display, a glass substrate laye separating the LCD from the touch layer that translates your finger swipes and prods into input the system can read, and a layer of protective Gorilla Glass on top.

Obviously, Apple’s existing touchscreen tech works well, but having so many different layers has its drawbacks. A big one is that it adds to the iPhone’s thickness. But Apple may already be on the cusp of inking a deal with Sharp and Toshiba to adopt in-cell touch panel displays, which should lead to a slimmer, lighter iPhone 5.

Cydia is home to one too many lock screen tweaks. There are classic packages like LockInfo that enhance the iOS lock screen with all kinds of handy shortcuts and features, but there’s also tweaks like LockLauncher that are messy and ugly. With that said, FastLock is a refreshingly simple take on lock screen shortcuts for jailbroken iPhones.

Popular music recognition app Shazam released a standalone music player for the iPhone back in January. The app lets you scan your iPhone’s library and play back tracks with Shazam’s lyric service, LyricPlay. You can also queue tracks and create playlists specifically for the Shazam Player.

As of today Shazam has updated its music player app for the iPad. The latest update packs LyricPlay and Retina graphics.