Following reports Apple is set to introduce a new self-checkout system in its retail stores using its Apple Store app for iOS, the Cupertino company has begun preparing stores with EasyPay signs that inform customers they can pay for certain products by themselves.
One of my first favorite portable video games was a boxing game on — of all platforms — a Casio calculator (that’s right — you think your life’s tough, try living in a world where the most entertaining handheld a kid can play with is a calculator). The third-person perspective of Manny Pacquiao: Pound for Pound, a new iOS title that’s expected to be released soon (pending approval by Apple), reminds me of that game. But with features like swiping for attacks, customizable outfits and being able to level attributes, it’s bound to be, well, a knockout.
Feral Interactive has released the popular game Batman: Arkham Asylum in the Mac App Store. For $39.99, users can download the title and play it on any authorized Mac.
The game has been highly regarded since its release, with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprising their roles from Batman: The Animated Series as Batman and the Joker.
Apple’s head of security has left the company, according to 9to5Mac. The site’s sources are reporting Apple’s Vice President of Global Security, John Theriault, has departed the company after the recent scandal involving the lost iPhone 4S prototype.
John Theriault has been responsible for managing Apple’s security division since 2007. His departure will be added to the growing list of Apple executives that have jumped ship in recent months.
People peddling pretend iPads in U.S. parking lots have now gone mobile. First spotted in North Texas, a 50-person strong scam ring has branched out to Florida, Georgia and Mississippi.
Walgreens has begun deploying iPads to pharmacy employees as in-store tools for helping customers with prescriptions. The initiative is a slow rollout, with Walgreens only sending iPads out to 16 stores in the Chicago area.
A designated employee will wander the aisles of each Walgreens with an iPad in-hand. The iPad probably won’t help you buy the right birthday card, but you’ll be able to get information on medicine and other pharmaceutical needs.
MacRumors is reporting that Apple is set to unveil its improved Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York City tomorrow. The unveiling is scheduled for 10 AM Friday, November 4.
Construction workers have already begun to remove the giant walls surrounding the new and improved glass structure around the flagship store. The $6.6 million renovation started back in June and was reported to be nearing completion earlier this week.
Kevin Rose and his new company, called Milk, has launched an app called Oink in the App Store. We told you about Oink awhile back when Rose demoed the project in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Summit. The app has now been made available to everyone.
Oink is an app that enters the user-reviewed, location-based scene of other apps like Yelp and Foursquare. Taking cues from Rose’s first success, Digg, Oink lets users rank things based on the context of a certain city or general location.
Jawbone has released the UP wristband and iOS app to help you keep track of your physical activity, sleep patterns, and exercise schedule. The wristband serves as a lightweight monitor that’s to be worn at all times, while the iPhone app is used to offload data and show recorded activity along with other details, such as running routes and sleep pattern graphs.
Priced at $99, the UP aims to revolutionize healthy living in the digital age. The Jawbone UP iPhone app is available for free in the App Store.
A folder in OS X Lion has been discovered by Mac OS X Hints that uses iCloud to automatically sync stored documents between Macs. While iCloud stores your saved documents from Mac and iOS devices on iCloud.com, Apple has yet to implement a polished, Dropbox-like way to let users sync iCloud data between desktop machines.
Tucked in the “Library” directory in Lion, the “Mobile Documents” folder syncs iCloud documents and app data between your devices. A nifty workaround lets you use this folder as a wirelessly-updated document hub for your Macs.
No, it’s not just you: Siri is down for users around the country, hard, with no ETA or fix in sight.
Users who try to access Siri get this response: “Sorry, I am having trouble connecting to the network.”
Of course, Siri’s labeled a beta product, and it’s likely Apple is already working on this problem. We’ll tell you more once we know what the hey’s going on ourselves.
Think Android phones are pieces of junk? Now you’ve got the data to prove it. A recent study has conclusively proven Android phones are much more prone to breaking than iPhones and even BlackBerries, and their cheapness is costing telecoms big: up to $2 billion a year, in fact.
About twelve hours after iOS 5 was officially released, I went through the considerable bother of downgrading my iPad 2 back down to iOS 4.3. iOS 5 was a great update, but for me, it had one fatal problem: it broke my beloved Stanza e-reading app irrevocably, and going without Stanza on my iPad was as impossible to contemplate as living without Mail or Safari.
For Stanza lovers, the situation is extremely frustrating, because Stanza breaks so totally under iOS 5 that you can’t even load an ebook without the app crashing. However, the original developers can’t update the app, because they sold it to Amazon.
When Amazon originally bought Stanza back in 2009, they promised they weren’t buying Stanza just to kill some of the free competition to their own Kindle e-reader. And, in fact, Amazon has updated the product several times since 2009, notably to bring excellent iPad support to the app.
But with iOS 5, Amazon appears to have abandoned all support for Stanza. That’s particularly frustrating, because not only was Stanza the best non-commercial e-reader around, it had many features the competition still doesn’t have: for example, its excellent typesetting and formatting options, its wide range of supported formats and its killer swipe-to-dim feature, which makes reading ebooks easier on the eyes.
Watch Steve Jobs: One Last Thing on PBS. See more from PBS.
Did you miss the Steve Jobs documentary Steve Jobs: One Last Thing that aired last night on PBS or the UK’s Channel 4? Those nice guys over at public broadcasting have slung the whole movie up online for streaming, free.
My kids are huge fans of Disney’s interactive Cars toys for iPad, but if you’re after something a little more grownup, then maybe these iPawn game pieces from Jumbo are more your thing. They’re the first iPad accessory that aim to bring board games to life, by providing real pieces that work on your iPad’s touchscreen with a variety of games.
Remember HP’s fiasco with the Slate, then the TouchPad? You’d think the company would run from the tablet market like a Silicon Valley investor with his hair on fire — but you’d be wrong.
Remember the old line about the enemy of your enemy is your friend? Well, that could apply to how Apple views the Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon. Originally seen as a rival to the iPad, the $199 7-inch device could actually scramble an already disorganized band of Android-based Apple competitors.
Apple has targeted a number of mobile pornography websites that use the company’s popular smartphone in a bid to attract you to their saucy, one-hand wares. The Cupertino company has filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization which targets seven hardcore websites in total, all of which use the word ‘iPhone’ in their domain names.
DigiTimes is a throw-stuff-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks kind of news org, so along with predicting that Apple will radically overhaul their iMac, iPhone, MacBook Air and iPad lineup in 2012 comes a separate report all about the iPad 3.
In the details, though, the iPad 3 report is much more interesting, because it predicts Apple will miss a March/April release window for the iPad 3 and instead launch in late summer.
According to a recent survey, if you own a smartphone in the U.S., you’re likely younger than 35 years old. By contrast, if you are older than 45, a basic feature phone is likely your preferred handset. Welcome to the Smartphone Generation Gap.
A number of early iPhone 4S adopters who chose to purchase their device with a commitment from Sprint have been plagued with painfully slow data speeds when using the carrier’s 3G network. Despite having a full signal, some users have been subjected to data connections that are just unusable.
Following a recent statement that promised its data speeds matched those of its competitors, Sprint is now investigating the issue of slow data speeds, but claims that it is unable to replicate the problem.
Apple is supposedly is preparing to overhaul its key product trifecta: the iPhone, the iPad and iMac, as well as the MacBook Air in 2012. The report, based on the tech giant’s “upstream supply chain,” echos existing chatter the company will unveil new versions of its products in the coming year.
Apple pushed out an iOS 5.0.1 update to registered developers yesterday, which fixes a number of bugs and addresses an issue with poor battery life on a number of its devices. However, it also fixes another glitch that Apple didn’t mention: the iPad 2’s Smart Cover hack, which allowed anyone to gain access to your passcode protected device using only its Smart Cover.
Nothing says “hey baby, how you doin’ ” quite like expensive, cutting edge-technology wrapped in luxurious wool. Libratone’s new AirPlay-equipped Live and Lounge speakers don’t just say it, they sing it. With a European accent.
So we’re all pretty aware by now that the iPhone has regressed back to it’s 3GS days and become a bit of an energy pig again. Battery-maker Mophie is appealling to a group of people who’d feel this most keenly — namely, the outdoor set, who tend to use the iPhone’s juice-sucking GPS — with the Mophie Outdoor ($120) battery for the iPhone 4/S.