News - page 1859

In most regards, Consumer Reports do great work, but when it comes to Apple’s mobile devices, they’ve historically tended to act like bozos. Quickly jumping upon the Antennagate bandwagon when the iPhone 4 came out, Consumer Reports refused to recommend Apple’s latest handset for over a year. When the iPhone 4S came out, Consumer Reports grudgingly said it was worth buying, but not as good as Android phones. Are you for real?

Anyway, yesterday, in response to reports that the new iPad ran hotter than its predecessor, Consumer Reports eagerly promised to investigate, sniffing another scandal. They’ve now published some preliminary results, though, and surprise! They’re surprisingly sensible.

According to a new report, Microsoft will launch Windows 8 this October. That tracks with the company’s announced plan to launch the latest version of Windows before the end of the. The launch will include traditional PCs like desktops and notebook as well as tablets. How successful Microsoft and its partners will be in taking business and consumer tablet marketshare away from the iPad remains an open question, however.

With all the recent protests outside Apple stores, you might think this placard-carrying duo was taking the Cupertino company to task about labor in China.

Nope: it’s a publicity stunt for a play called Robot the Rock Opera. Members of the merry troupe of the Planet X Players descended on the Cherry Creek Mall store in Denver to promote the upcoming play.

Despite the fact that it was the day of the new iPad launch, they were allowed in and given the boot (albeit cordially) by Apple employees after handing out a few flyers about liberating Apple’s robot voice assistant Siri from “slavery.”

Cult of Mac talked to writer/director Seth Iniguez Bertoni about how services like Siri are leading to “digital servitude,” whether Siri considers the work fair labor and how the actors got that mesmerizing silver sheen.

Over the past two years, the Internet has been flooded with stories about the next iPad-killer. The iPad-killing hype has been applied to the Cisco Cius, Motorola Xoom, BlackBerry PlayBook, HP Touch Pad, and Galaxy Tab just to name a few. Several of these products were specifically hyped at being business tablets – alternatives to the iPad in the workplace.

At the end of the day, however, the iPad still rules the tablet space in general and the business tablet in particular. Despite being a “consumer” device, the business tablet market is really the business iPad market. The latest statistic to drive this point home is that, during the new iPad launch, Apple sold more iPads in one weekend during than one quarter of Android tablets ever sold.

Sales figures like that pose a question for IT departments – Is there a point to developing support models for Android tablets?

iOS is the best mobile OS in the world but it certainly isn’t without its flaws. There are a few areas that need improvement. Is the iPhone Lockscreen one of them? We’ve seen conceptual designs that change the information displayed on the lockscreen and this new idea proposes to change the way the camera is accessed on the lockscreen, but does it make any sense?

Dealing with customer service representatives can be one of the world’s most torturous experiences. Apple isn’t perfect, but they usually give customers the best experience possible, no matter. Proving that point, earlier today a story surfaced of Tim Cook stepping in and forcing AT&T to make a special exception to a request the deny to most customers.

When third-place carrier Sprint first got the iPhone 4S, it quickly became clear that they had literally bet the company on the notion that Apple’s popular handset could save them from being steamrolled by AT&T and Verizon. In fact, Sprint agreed to pay Apple $20 billion over the next four years just to secure rights to the iPhone, whether they can sell them or no. The whole company is riding on the iPhone.

That could have turned out to be a big mistake suggests a new report today, which says that the nation’s third largest carrier is on the verge of going bankrupt. And what bankrupted them? The iPhone.

In a response to reports that the new iPad can get pretty toasty when compared with the iPad 2’s heat output, Apple has responded with an official comment telling everyone to take a chill pill. According to Apple, the new iPad operates “well within our thermal specification” and there shouldn’t be a cause for concern.

Full response from Apple:

Carriers are constantly talking about the limited spectrum available for mobile devices. That’s the reason that give for instituting data caps and throttling heavy users. It’s reasonable to assume that carriers exaggerate the real issues somewhat when the trot this argument out as a case for data caps and tiered data pricing (they make a lot of money that way), but it is true that radio spectrum is a finite resource. With Cisco predicting an 39-fold increase mobile traffic use will over the next four years, carriers will need to find creative ways to manage the slices of spectrum that they have.

One option is to offload service to Wi-Fi networks. All iPhone (or other smartphone) users do this already to some extent when we connect our iPhones to our home networks. They deliver better performance and let use as much data as we want without having to worry about it impacting our next bill. Two mobile trade groups are looking to turn this same offloading model into a large scale option for carriers to deliver better mobile broadband while taking the load off their 3G or 4G networks.

Do you know anyone that owns an Android tablet? I sure as heck don’t, but they have to exist out there in the wild just like the rare and fabled Sumatran white rhinoceros, which native legend has supposedly living deep in the Indian rain forests. Which is rarer? But I digress. My point is that right now, Apple’s iPad is pretty much the only tablet you’ll see other people using because Apple is beating the pulp out of Android tablets with their massive sales numbers, and Apple maintains the momentum from the launch of the new iPad nothing will stop them.

Analysts predict that Apple’s new iPad, which has already sold over 3 million units, is shaping up to boost sales of the device by a whopping 156% year-over-year. The tablet is expected to become “measurably larger” that the entire PC market.

Indie musicians have long had a difficult time getting accepted into iTunes, but it’s possible that’s coming to an end. Apple has just released it’s iTunes Producer 2.6.0 software update to a number of users, despite the fact that it has historically only been available to musicians, record labels and other partners of Apple’s iTunes Connect portal.

It’s been an expensive month for many the Apple fan. The new iPad isn’t cheap, and after spending between $500 and $830 on a new top-of-the-line tablet, it might be hard to scrape enough money together to actually furnish your iPad with apps, music or movies.

Don’t worry, we got you covered. Here’s how to save 20% off all App Store or iTunes purchases.

One of the feature on the new iPad is its dictation capabilities, a feature also available on the iPhone 4S (which also boasts Apple’s Siri virtual assistant feature). There are quite a few ways that high quality dictation and other speech to text capabilities could useful to professionals in many fields.

The problem is that in order to get that high quality dictation functionality, the new iPad and the iPhone 4S rely on Apple’s servers to do much of the work in turning your speech into text. More importantly, it isn’t just snippets of voice recordings that get sent to Apple. Personal data from your iPad or iPhone 4S gets uploaded as well and much of it remains associated with you and your device. That’s a general concern for most of us, but for professionals in regulated industries like healthcare or fields that require confidentiality like finance and legal professions, it becomes a critical privacy concern and may even break the law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iox5Q2nWi-Q

The staggering difference in quality of the new iPad’s display isn’t hype, it’s real. It’s a jaw-dropping difference, one that finally turns the iPad into the promise of its potential: a living, breathing page through which the wide world can be explored. The new iPad is the best consumer display on the market at almost any price, period…

Which makes it completely befuddling that in a blind test, a surprising amount of Apple Store customers couldn’t tell the difference between the iPad 2 and the new iPad.

Stick with photography long enough, and eventually you’ll need a a camera remote so you can trigger your DSLR without touching it.

Trigger Happy, an applaud-worthy idea currently on Kickstarter, let’s you do just that, but with your iPhone and one simple cable instead of one of those expensive, camera-specific triggers.

Apple’s new iPad has been available to purchase in the U.S. and nine other countries for just four days, but over 200,000 units have already been smuggled into China for sale on the grey market. Natives are reportedly importing the device into the city of Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong, for a profit of around $20 on each device.

I never thought I’d get excited about boring credit cards, but Geode is an incredibly neat little kit which turns your iPhone into a payment system that can be used anywhere. And not some fancy NFC-style POS terminals, either. The Geode works anywhere you can use a regular credit card.

Having slipped to 2-3 weeks last week, shipping times for the new iPad through Apple’s online store have already eased to just 1-2 weeks.

Free apps that display in-app advertising are sucking the life out of your cellphone’s battery. A team led by Abhinav Pathak, a computer boffin at Purdue University, Indiana, found that around “65%-75% of energy in free apps is spent in third-party advertising modules.”

Translation: Free apps like Angry Birds and Facebook may actually cost you more than paid apps in the end.

Yesterday we reported that a number of new iPad adopters are taking to Apple’s Support Communities forum to voice their concerns about its operating temperature. Many feel the new slate gets a little too warm during prolonged use, and they’re concerned it’s a serious issue.

Thermal imaging has now confirmed that the third-generation iPad does indeed get around 10° Fahrenheit warmer than the iPad 2, but it’s really nothing to worry about.

Blizzard, the company behind the hugely popular MMO World of Warcraft, has revealed that is constantly looking at ways in which it can bring its title to the iPhone, and admits that it would be “foolish” not to explore the possibility. It promises that as soon as it has perfected the mobile experience, we’ll know about it.

In our new Apple-inspired graphic tee, Cult Of Mac reached back into the year 1983 to breathe new life into this classic Steve Jobs creation.

The Apple Lisa computer debuted with a mere $10,000 price tag, but her epic cost left her lonely with nary a desk to sit upon. We liked her sexy style and vintage look though, so partnered with Seattle indie brand Might Tees to make her sexy-curves available again on our new In Love With Lisa graphic tee.

But here’s the best part: this new tee is finely crafted and printed right here in the beautiful USA, ships worldwide, and is available now for just $25 — only .0025% her original selling price!

The numbers basically say everything. AAPL closed at over $600 per share for the first time in Apple’s history today, and it’s only fitting considering what was just announced. The new iPad sold a jaw-dropping 3 million units since its launch 4 days ago, making it the most successful iPad launch ever by a long shot. Not only that, but Apple announced shareholder dividends this morning — a decision that obviously pleased Wall Street.

When does it stop? That’s the question one has to ask when faced with the overwhelming success Apple is continuing to see with every new product. The Cupertino company’s earnings have been growing exponentially with ever business quarter, and Apple is already the most valuable company on earth. Absolute craziness.

It spits out the bullets, laughs in your face, rips out your heart, consumes it as it steams and then, without drawing in a single breath, screams a primal scream as it stares, unblinking, directly into the sun.

No, just kidding. Gorilla glass or not, it turns into Swiss Cheese. Still, beats those stupid drop tests, doesn’t it?

Can’t watch the video above? Click here.