Apple’s next-gen smartphone is widely expected to feature 4G LTE networking like the newly-released iPad. Rumors peg the product release for later this year, but no real evidence for the device has surfaced quite yet, including carrier partnerships. AT&T and Verizon are expected to be onboard as usual, but what about Sprint? The iPhone 4S debuted on all three carriers last October, but Sprint is relatively new to its Apple partnership.
According to comments from Sprint CFO Joe Euteneuer today, Sprint will be able to sell the 4G iPhone when it’s debuted by Apple.
Ever wonder who exactly Samsung hired to test out the Galaxy Note before shipping it out to retailers across the globe? It was no easy task finding a quality assurance team that measured up to the pure magnitude of the Galaxy Note, but after interviewing nearly a dozen teams, Samsung went with lead QA Engineer Peter the elephant and his expert team of mixed mammals.
Mike Daisey. Most of you are probably sick of hearing about his scandal with This American Life regarding the lies he told the media and his audiences about Apple’s manufacturing environment overseas. But there’s one more part to the story. Daisey has revealed what he plans to do with his show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, moving forward.
He’s vowed that he will continue performing in the face of his critics. There will also be some changes made to reflect the inaccurate information that were recently uncovered.
Technically, this is the most your new iPad's battery should ever be charged.
Last week, Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies discovered that when he charged his new iPad, it continued to draw current long after iOS reported its lithium-ion polymer battery as being 100% charged.
Doing some experiments, Dr. Soneira discovered that if allowed to charge until the point where the 10W charger stopped drawing full current from the mains, his iPad could last 11.6 hours on a single charge, compared to just 10.4 hours if he unplugged it the second it reached 100%.
Why does the new iPad do this? Dr. Soneira believes that it’s a bug in the way the new iPad reports its battery charge. Apple has since spoken out and called it a “great feature” in iOS. But what the heck is really going on?
The truth is more complicated. Apple’s being disingenuous calling this a “feature” of iOS. In fact, technically it harms your new iPad’s battery. That said, it’s certainly not a bug, as Dr. Soneira emphatically suggests. Rather, this is the way all gadget batteries charge. To understand why this is, and how you can maximize your device’s battery life and longevity, you first need to understand a little bit about how batteries charge.
Do you like the pull-to-refresh feature found in many popular iOS apps? Well, you might want to prepare to see it go the way of the dodo, as Twitter is now trying to patent it.
Not everyone is ready to jump on the BYOD bandwagon
Yesterday, we covered a report that asked whether or not most people really want the option to bring their own technology into the office. That report showed that despite the media hype and the broad interest that CIOs and IT leaders are showing in BYOD programs, it may only be one out of every five employees that’s clamoring for the right to bring their personal iPad or iPhone into the office.
If that’s the case, why are so many users hesitant or even hostile to the BYOD model?
These iPhone-powered doggies are ridiculously cute. The little fellas use iPhones for their faces and brains, and can shuffle around the table (or neighborhood, we guess), barking, blinking and even sneezing. It’s a little like a virtual pet, only real.
Zynga hated the game ex-OMGPOP dev made for his wife, so he told them to get bent.
Zynga — the publisher of some of your favorites games on iOS and Facebook — is a pretty scummy company, well known for ripping off other companies’ games wholesale and then having their own employees vote it up in the rankings. Sleazy!
So when they purchased OMGPOP, the company behind the wildly addictive and stupendously successful iOS and Android game Draw Something, eyebrows arched all over the blogosphere. Surely it was only a matter of time before Draw Something transformed from a good-natured game of remote Pictionary into something that makes babies’ brains into slurpees. How long until evil struck OMGPOP? Less than a week!
David Artuso from cellpig and Michael Rondinelli from EyeSee360 offer us their best tips for ensuring your Kickstarter project is a success.
With millions of dollars pledged to all kinds of projects every week, it’s no wonder that Kickstarter has become one of the most popular funding sources for getting a new product off the ground. The process is simple: Start a project, spread the word, then — if your idea is a good one — watch the pledges roll in.
If you’re a budding entrepreneur with a great idea for a Mac or iOS accessory, or even an app or game, then Kickstarter could be the fastest and most effective route to success. Not only is it a great source of funding, but it also helps you establish just how popular your product will be.
Here at Cult of Mac we’ve stumbled across a handful of really outstanding devices that wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for Kickstarter. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. While creating your project may be pretty straightforward, ensuring it succeeds is hard work.
To help you out, we’ve spoken to a couple of companies who recently used Kickstarter to launch their latest products, and they’ve given us some feedback and a few tips on how to ensure your Kickstarter project is a success.
Will a new era of healthcare privacy enforcement keep the iPad out of healthcare?
The costs of not complying with HIPAA (the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which includes self-reporting of data breaches, can be steep. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee recently finalized a settlement with the Department of Health and Human Services for $1.5 million for a recent breach (on top of a $17 million price tag for the investigation and remediation actions). HHS seems to be making a a show of high profile enforcement as a way to encourage better compliance among smaller organizations, including hospitals and individual medical practices.
This raises the question of whether or not using the iPad in healthcare increases the risk of privacy violations. If so, will a show of force on the part of HHS dampen the enthusiasm for the iPad in healthcare?
Apple spokesman Michael Foulkes accepted the award on behalf of the company's co-founder.
The Cupertino Chamber of Commerce posthumously awarded Apple co-founder Steve Jobs with the President’s Award at a banquet held over the weekend. Apple spokesman Michael Foulkes, who was there to accept the award, was choked up after the council showed a short tribute clip that combined photos of Steve with a video of his last presentation to the council.
Don't expect Harry Potter or Near-Dead Dumbledore to appear on the iBookstore.
J.K. Rowling’s enormously successful Harry Potter series is about an incompetent orphan who lucks his way through a series of magical adventures despite being essentially inept. Tens of millions of people — myself included! — have enjoyed them over the course of the last decade, but only in dead tree form. Bizarrely, Harry Potter has never officially come to e-books up until now.
Of course, no longer. As one last magical trick, Harry Potter has made the jump to a number of e-book stores, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google and Sony. The only company left out? Apple’s iBookstore.
Foxconn, the company that assembles almost all of Apple’s devices —- plus plenty more for the likes of Amazon, Dell, Microsoft, and Sony —- has confirmed today that it has secured a 46.5% stake in Sharp’s giant LCD plant in Sakai, Japan. The deal is expected to help Sharp improve its performance, and could make low-energy IGZO displays a possibility for future iPads
It's name might be terrible for Google searches, but It's Playing is a great little app
Watching movies on the new iPad is pretty great. Getting those movies onto the iPad isn’t quite so great, especially if you live in a country that doesn’t sell iTunes movies, or if you rip your own DVDs. The forthcoming 3.0 version of It’s Playing for iPad, though, not only plays pretty much any movie format without having to re-encode it on your computer first, it also puts in some amazing new features not seen anywhere else.
The new iPad promises to deliver 4G connectivity in Australia... but it's not compatible with Australia's 4G networks.
Well, it seemed like only a matter of time before Apple’s promises of 4G data on its new iPad got the company into trouble. Australia’s competition watchdog is now threatening to sue the Cupertino company over its ‘misleading’ advertising for the new device, which can actually only connect to 4G LTE networks in the U.S.
Despite the promise of royalty-free licensing, Nokia is still against Apple's nano-SIM proposal.
Despite promising that it would provide its rivals with royalty-free licenses for its nano-SIM technology, Nokia still isn’t convinced by Apple’s proposal for the next-generation of miniaturized SIM cards. The Finnish company has already spoken out against the tiny SIM, but following Apple’s offer of free licensing yesterday, it has labelled the plan nothing more than an attempt to devalue the intellectual property of its rivals.
Siri is still popular among many iPhone 4S owners, but not everyone uses it to its full potential.
For some iPhone 4S users, Siri is a novelty that quickly wears off within a week or two of unwrapping the handset. But believe it or not, 87% of iPhone 4S users are still using the intelligent assistant at least once a month, according to a new study. Not many of them are using it to its full potential, however.
The updated Guardian is cleaner and clearer, but still doesn't support retina graphics
The Guardian’s excellent iPad app has been updated to make it cleaner, faster and easier to use. The Guardian is the one Newsstand periodical I pay for because, even though you can get almost all of the same content on the website for free, the app is outstanding.
The new version makes it even better. However, there is one huge omission: support for the new iPad’s Retina Display.
Is peer pressure driving the the BYOD trend rather than pressure from workers?
BYOD is certainly one of the biggest technology buzzwords right now. The concept of users supplying their own iPad, iPhone, or even their own MacBook can create challenges for IT, but it can also provides advantages. Users choosing the devices and apps that they feel most comfortable and productive using is one. Businesses not needing to pay for mobile devices themselves or plans to support them is another.
One of the basic assumptions when it comes to considering, testing, and implementing a BYOD program is that the ability to bring personal tools into the workplace is something that users ultimately want and think will improve their work. The rest of the discussion, including practical issues like device or data management and the range of devices to be support, is predicated on this core assumption that BYOD is desirable on the part of users.
But what if that isn’t really the case? According to a report based on research in Australia and New Zealand, that may not be the case and it may actually be a form of peer pressure driving the BYOD revolution more than pressure from users.
Apple has released Safari 5.1.5 in Software Update with a fix for those running the browser in 32-bit mode. The small update doesn’t have any known changes other than the 32-bit fix, and it weighs in at a slim 46.4 MB. The update will still require you to restart your computer, sadly. The last public release of Safari was version 5.1.4 on March 12th.
Safari 5.2 is currently in the hands of developers. The next major iteration to Apple’s browser includes great Mountain Lion features like iCloud tabs, a unified address bar, and more.
Good battery life is essential for a mobile device to succeed in the post-PC era, and Apple’s iOS devices continue to pack upgraded internals and improved battery technology into every product iteration. iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users can use a handful of tips and tricks for conserving precious battery on the go. Many of the tips are pretty basic, but every little bit counts when you’re trying to make it through the day on one charge.
Here’s a roundup of tips and tricks for saving battery life on your favorite iOS device:
After she won, Apple flew her to the Beijing to accept her award. Chunli was escorted to Apple’s Chinese corporate headquarters and then taken to the Sanlitun Apple store to accept her gift card and talk to the press.
This video is old — it hails from the original iPad’s 2010 debut — but it’s still a gorgeous piece of eye candy: a 3D, CGI tour through 35 years of Apple product design. Absolutely stunning.
Farming and agriculture are among the unusual places to find iPads at work
It doesn’t take a huge stretch of imagination to picture some of the ways that the iPad can be used in the workplace. The idea of it as a sales tool, an electronic medical chart, and as a digital textbook device all come immediately to mind as common on-the-job iPad uses. But the iPad’s versatility lends itself to a variety of industries and jobs that you’ve probably never considered.
One example is agriculture management from the cab of a farm combine – one of the unexpected places to find the iPad that Hard Candy Cases CEO Tim Hickman mentioned to me during a recent conversation. His company, which also produces the ruggedized Gumdrop Cases, has received bulk orders for iPad from some surprising sources and has led to iPad adoption in places beyond where most of us would expect. I decided to follow up on that conversation with some research of my own.
The Verizon iPad will let you create a Personal Hotspot to share your LTE connection.
With all of the questions surrounding the new iPad’s battery life and heat temperatures, users will be comforted to learn that Apple’s latest tablet can serve as a mobile LTE hotspot for a staggering 25.3 hours. That means you could technically use your iPad’s Personal Hotspot feature for more than a day on a single charge.
