The Raspbery Pi project is a darling little exercise in ingenuity. It looks like a USB thumb drive, but instead of 2GB of flash, it’s a fully functional computer running Debian Linux, featuring a 700 MHz ARM 11 processor, 128 MB of RAM, a USB port, and an Ethernet port… all for just $35. Splendid, splendid geekiness. Hanging this from your car keys, you can literally get connected anywhere. But where’s the Apple angle?
Try this one for size: it supports AirPlay.
After a red-hot introduction and a hectic holiday period that left Apple looking over its shoulder, orders for Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire tablet are slowing, cut in half to 3 million units for the first quarter of 2012, Friday reports claim. During the last three months of 2011, around 6 million of the devices flew off the shelves, making it Amazon’s best-selling product.
Rovio is at it again, this time with an Angry Birds Seasons update to celebrate the Chinese New Year and the beginning of the Year of the Dragon. In this blockbuster franchise update, our favorite angry aviators are allying themselves with the mythical mighty dragon to help thwart the imperial swine from swiping their offspring. This new theme features popping fireworks, glowing lanterns, and red envelopes bursting with money — all in celebration of China’s biggest and longest festival.
Earlier today, iOS 5.0.1 hacker extraordinaire pod2g said that the long anticipated iPad 2 and iPhone 4S jailbreak was “almost ready to pop”. Considering he’s been promising the jailbreak any time now for a couple weeks, though, what does “almost ready to pop” really mean?
It means keep hitting “refresh” on your browser. pod2g has just written a new blog post, and he’s now promising the jailbreak in just a few hours, courtesy of a tool called Absinthe.
Apple could be set to bring its popular retail stores to India following the Indian government’s decision to allow 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) claims Apple is already interested in opening stores in India, with the Cupertino company reportedly in the process of finalizing its business plan.
It sounds like a plot line straight out of Hollywood: washed-up cell maker teams with down-on-its-luck software giant to overtake a Silicon Valley tech behemoth. But researchers believe 2015 will be the comeback year for Nokia with Microsoft Windows Phone replacing Apple’s iOS as the No. 2 smartphone operating system.
Back in 2004, I couldn’t afford $499 for an iPod, so instead I got a 20GB Dell DJ for $299. Honestly, it wasn’t a bad little MP3 player, but it looked like it had been designed by some sort of extraordinary, irradiated orangutan toiling away in the bowels of the Kremlin during the Soviet electronics revolution of the late 1980s. I realize that analogy doesn’t make any sense, but just look at the design and button placement on this thing, and all will become clear.
My DJ lasted me quite a few years, but when I finally upgraded to an 80GB iPod Classic in 2006, I breathed a sigh of relief. The lesson? Accept no substitutes.
On that note, here’s the latest bizarre Communist clone of a popular Apple gadget: the Red Pad, named after the only book a loyal Maoist ever needed in the 1960s-era Chinese Communist Party, his Little Red Book. It looks just like an iPad, but it’s tailored specifically to run apps compatible with China’s massive state propaganda machine. Oh, and it costs twice as much as an iPad 2!
The only problem? After poor reviews, the Chinese government has wiped out all mention of its existence.
Two of the reasons Apple’s iPhone is yet to adopt LTE connectivity is that existing LTE chips are just too large for the iPhone’s slender form factor, and they eat up so much power your new iPhone 4S wouldn’t even last the six hours that you currently get if it was hooked up to an LTE network.
However, a new Apple patent application reveals that the Cupertino company has already set about revolutionizing its batteries to make them thinner and more efficient — possibly making way for LTE connectivity in the iPhone 5.
Apple’s iPhone looks set to make its debut on China Telecom after the Cupertino company was granted a vital network access license needed to launch the device. The license is believed to be one of the final hurdles to overcome before the iPhone arrives with China’s third-largest mobile carrier.
Apple seems to be pushing its “store-within-a-store” concept this year. The Cupertino company has already established stores within Best Buy in the U.S., and it has plans for a further 25 to be installed within Target stores. But it seems the concept is going international, with plans for an Apple retail store within the world famous Harrods department store in London.
There’s been a lot of fuss overnight about what exactly Apple is claiming ownership of in the Terms and Conditions associated with its new iBooks Author application for Mac. The fuss is understandable, because the wording of the license agreement gets a little bit muddy.
Having been promised just over a week ago that an untethered jailbreak for Apple’s A5 powered devices was “just a matter of days away,” we were all expecting to see Cydia and all sorts of fancy tweaks installed on our devices by now. But of course, these things take time. After all, we want a smooth and reliable experience when we come to jailbreak our most prized possessions.
While the exploit still isn’t quite ready for public release, it’s certainly very close. Pod2g has issued further details on his team’s work, revealing that all the “technical hurdles” have already been overcome, and that they are just ironing out the final bug fixes before the hack goes live.
We told you a few days ago that retro classic SoulCalibur was headed to the iOS App Store. As of today the fan favorite title is available in the App Store for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users.
Comparing uprisings in the Middle East to what happens when a manager brings his or her own iPhone to work seems like a bit of a stretch, but IT executives say the effect has provoked a similar shake-up.
The people (read: employees) have brought about a groundswell of change in the corporate world by opting to bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and choosing their own apps. This has upended the “regime” of IT departments, who used to be able to control what devices employees used and what ran on them.
What do Dr. Seuss, William Faulkner, J.K. Rowling, George Orwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Stephen King have in common? All six were repeatedly rejected when trying to publish their first famous novel. With the announcement of iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, Apple isn’t just giving the education system a much needed boost: they’re attempting to resurrect the dying art of the written word by taking absolute power out of the hands of publishers and putting it in the hands of aspiring writers. We’re on the cusp of a renaissance.
Following the release of Apple’s self-publishing tool for the Mac today, iBooks Author, it’s clear that Apple wants to change the way books are created and published online. Specifically, Apple wants to bolster its own iBookstore with the best content, and authors will have to agree with that mission whether they want to or not. If you want to make money, it’s the iBookstore or the highway.
Today Apple unveiled its digital textbook software for the iPad and Mac. We’ve covered every aspect of the announcement, including the event’s three main releases: iBooks 2, iBooks Author for Mac, and the iTunes U app.
While Steve Jobs mentioned his desire to revolutionize the textbook industry in Walter Isaacson’s official biography, Apple has been relatively silent about its plans to take the education market by storm. As it turns out, the company’s dream for digital textbooks comes from a student intern’s pitch in 2008.
I told you Saturday what Apple’s education initiatives launched today mean from a technology competition perspective: Apple intends to wrest control of the entire publishing industry from Amazon.com.
But what does it mean for educators and students? I talked to seven innovative educators and one university student live during the Apple announcement to find out. The conversation took place in a Google+ hangout that I recorded.
Eager to try the new iBooks Author tools? Better have an iPad. In fact, even if you do have one, you can’t even preview what your e-book will look like on an iPad itself without connecting the device to your computer.
What a bummer. That’s convoluted, and cuts right out authors who want to publish their e-books through the iBookstore without necessarily spending $499 on a device first. Considering there’s already an iOS simulator as part of Apple’s development tools package, why didn’t they just hook iBooks Author’s preview functionality up to that?
[Thanks for the tip, Roger!]
Have you ever arrived at the office and realized that report you need for the meeting today is still on your Mac at home? I’m sure that at some point we have all needed access to our home computer while we’re away from home, and it’s actually a lot easier than you might think thanks to the free LogMeIn app for iOS.
If you missed this morning’s Education Event at the Guggenheim in New York City and our live blog coverage wasn’t good enough for you, Apple has posted up the full footage of the event over on their site. You can stream it here or download through iTunes here.
It was a fantastic event, but man, do I wish Steve could have been there.
Today’s Education Event at the Guggenheim in New York City was by all reports supposed to be “demure,” but that didn’t stop Apple from making a big splash. In fact, today’s event may have marked the most concerted attempt by Apple to revolutionize the classroom since the original Apple IIe.
Among today’s announcements? A new version of iBooks that makes textbooks on an iPad fully interactive, along with free authoring tools so easy-to-use and revolutionary that literally any author can create a beautifully formatted interactive e-book. Coupled with iTunes U — perhaps the most comprehensive classroom learning software ever — and a pledge to keep the price of all textbooks at $14.99, Apple’s goals are clear: they want to get an iPad in the hands of every student in the country.
There’s only one problem, right now: the lack of a budget iPad. It’s a problem Apple can (and should) fix.
For a “small, demure event,” Apple announced a shocking amount of new stuff at today’s Education Event: a new version of iBooks with e-textbook support, iTunes U’s new virtual classroom app, iBook Author (which should revolutionize home publishing) and even several incredible, interactive textbooks. We’re wondering, though, of all this stuff, which of today’s announcements do you find most revolutionary, most exciting?
Tick off your answer in the poll above, then join us in the comments, where we’ll be discussing what Apple’s announcements mean for the future of iOS and the e-book industry.
With today’s announcement of iBooks Author and iBooks 2, Apple intends on making expensive, bulky textbooks and exploding book bags a thing of the past. But one thing they didn’t mention is that while an iPad 2 may be thinner than a traditional textbook, iBook textbooks gain bulk in a different way: the files are absolutely huge.