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.
Apple has sent out an email to developers saying that iTunes Match has updated alongside the release of iTunes 10.5.1 beta 2. The update includes a “number of important stability and performance improvements” and iTunes Match has now been made available for testing on the Apple TV.
Developers that have been using iTunes Match must update to iTunes 10.5.1 beta 2 to continue using the service. Once upgraded, iTunes Match can be enabled on all supported Apple devices. On the Apple TV, select “Music” and then “Turn on iTunes Match.” Your music will then be available for streaming on Apple’s set-top box.
Walter Isaacson’s warts-n-genius biography of Steve Jobs is a publishing sensation – over 380,000 copies sold in the U.S. alone in the six days since its October 24 launch.
Not surprisingly, pirated versions of the ebook are also a hit.
PBS is slated to air a new documentary on Steve Jobs tonight, November 2nd. The documentary will feature multiple interviews with several personalities that have been in contact with Jobs throughout the years, as well as rare clips from an interview with Jobs himself in 1994.
While the documentary will be airing on PBS in the US at 10:00 PM ET, the feature will also be aired on the UK’s Channel 4 tonight at 11:05 PM.
A cash-strapped county in Ohio hopes to help social workers become more efficient by equipping them with iPads. Instead of the hand-written notes many of them now take during house calls while working with at-risk kids, they can save time by typing on the tablet computer.
Dubbed “Operation iPad,” the $300,000 purchase of 187 Apple devices is considered a major upgrade for the staff at Jobs and Family Services in Hamilton County, Ohio.
Online retailer extraordinaire Amazon wants to become your steady real-world shopping companion.
They’ve launched a free augmented reality app called Flow for your iPhone. It works like this: you see something in a store, point your iPhone at its UPC code and a stream of information comes to you including product information, customer reviews and related products.
It just got a whole lot easier to install Lion on your hackintosh, thanks to Tonymacx86’s new “UniBeast” bootable USB drive utility. In case you didn’t know, a hackintosh is basically a PC that’s been modified to run OS X, and some people create pretty sweet hackintosh setups for half the price of an Apple-branded equivalent.
UniBeast is a new tool that makes it easy to install Apple’s newest desktop OS, Lion, on your hackintosh. Not only does UniBeast get rid of the need for an iBoot CD, but it also creates a bootable Lion USB flash drive.
Technology columnist and occasional Cult of Mac (CoM) contributor Mike Elgan was on Macbreak Weekly Tuesday talking about his recent CoM piece, “In Defense of Steve Jobs.” The story led to an interesting dialogue between he and Leo Laporte, one with a Jobsian twist I’d never heard before.
Apple has seeded iOS 5.0.1 to developers in the iOS Dev Center. The beta adds enhanced multitasking gestures for the original iPad, fixes the battery life bug that has extensively plagued iPhone 4S users, and adds several other fixes.
Apple also issued a statement prior to seeding this developer beta saying that it was aware of the battery life bug in iOS 5. The public 5.0.1 update is expected to drop in a few weeks.
Apple has issued an official statement to AllThingsD saying it is aware of a battery life bug in iOS 5 that causes users’ battery performance to drastically decrease when running iOS 5 on a range of devices. An iOS 5 update will be issued in the coming weeks to fix the bug.
The team at 6Wunderkinder is well known for Wunderlist, one of the best task manager apps for the Mac and iOS platform. Wunderlist has quickly become a favorite among the GTD (Getting Things Done) community, and it remains one of the slickest task managers with cloud sync in the App Store.
6Wunderkinder has a new project up its sleeve called Wunderkit, and it looks like a dream come true for the collaborative productivity app scene.
Well, that didn’t take long. Just three hours after Google released their official Gmail for iOS app, they’ve already pulled it.
Why? Well, despite our initial enthusiasm, it kind of sucked.