News - page 2009

Cloud storage services like Box.net aren’t taking iCloud lightly since on Wednesday they announced a new promotion, which you might find hard to resist considering that Apple’s newly released iCloud only offers users 5GB of free storage.  Box.net is offering 50GB of free online storage for anyone that has a free Box Personal account on any iOS device. Read that again — 10 times the amount of storage that iCloud offers and it is free!

Each year, the lines for Apple’s iPhone become more of a circus. Last year, it was pro line-sitter Greg Packer at the head of the line, giving tons of TV interviews.

This year, app developer Dillon Horowitz has brought a cow, a calf and a goat to Apple’s flagship NYC store.

Here’s something that I won’t know is real or not until I receive my iPhone 4S tomorrow, but never the less it’s funny and entertaining at the same time. So without further adieu its Shit That Siri Says from the website with the same name more after the break.

The iPhone 4S is going to be officially released tomorrow, but a few lucky people have already gotten the one they ordered. The lucky people at iFixit managed to get their hands on an iPhone 4S that was delivered early. They wasted no time disassembling the latest iteration of the iPhone 4S for your viewing pleasure.

You can check out their video teardown after the break.

The iPhone 4S looks like the iPhone 4, but under the hood it’s a whole new beast.

Here’s the first side-by-side picture showing the differences inside:

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak is already in line for his iPhone 4S. According to Woz’s Twitter account, he’s first in line at the Los Gatos Apple store.

“The long wait begins,” Woz tweeted, “I’m first in line. The guy ahead was on the wrong side and he’s pissed.”

Sprint has finally chimed in to end the confusion about whether or not the carrier will unlock the iPhone 4S for customers. In a statement given to Macworld, Sprint clarified that the iPhone 4S will indeed be unlocked at first, but a SIM lock will be “pushed to the devices shortly after launch.”

Reports from earlier this week said that Sprint’s iPhone 4S would come with an unlocked micro-SIM that would allow customers traveling internationally to insert another SIM from any GSM carrier. This would allow customers to avoid roaming charges.

With the iPhone 4S now available on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, many consumers are wondering which carrier offers the best deal. New customers have lots of options on the table for selecting an iPhone 4S. There are also customers considering moving to a new carrier once their current contract expires.

AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all offer competing voice and data plans for the iPhone 4S that make it difficult to decide on which carrier to choose. Let’s try and figure out which carrier offers the cheapest plans for US iPhone 4S customers.

(Image by Cain and Todd Benson, used under Creative Commons license. Thanks Cain and Todd!)

Users of photo sharing site Flickr have started posting their own tributes to Steve Jobs. This digital portrait by Cain and Todd Benson is just one example – there are hundreds more.

In the market for a new MacBook Pro? Updated models are coming, with all MacBook Pro models tightly constrained, including the 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch models.

We’re curious how many of you will be braving the crowds to get yourself an iPhone 4S tomorrow. Answer our poll, then fill us in on your exact plans in the comments.

It’s hard to believe it came out ten years ago, but when it first popped up on the PlayStation 2 back in 2001, Grand Theft Auto 3 was a revelation: the very first true 3D open world game, filled with fast driving cars, casual gunplay, irreverent humor and an obsession for low-brow thuggery for which Rockstar Games has become famous.

From Grand Theft Auto III, a whole series of games was born, including Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto IV.

Now Grand Theft Auto III is coming to iOS on October 28th. It’ll only work on an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S, and time will tell how Rockstar handles the controls, but this is exciting indeed. iOS already has a GTA game in Chinatown Wars, but as excellent a game as it is, it isn’t a 3D open world.

Me? I’m just hoping this heralds the release of Vice City or San Andreas next year. The former’s my guilty favorite, and the latter GTA4 didn’t even come close to matching.

It’s been a big year for Apple, one that’s set sales records around the world and seen the launch of some of Apple’s biggest and best products ever: the iPad 2, the iPhone 4S, iCloud, iOS 5, Siri, OS X Lion.

It’s also been a hard year, with Apple founder and ex-CEO Steve Jobs passing away last week.

In recognition of everything that’s happened for Apple this year, and to give employees a chance to give thanks, Apple CEO Tim Cook has just sent out an email to Apple Corporate Employees, telling them to take all of Thanksgiving week off, with pay.

When Apple introduced MobileMe, they really created a cluster$@#! of a situation with Apple IDs because they forced you to make a new one when you signed up. That means that millions of MobileMe users have two Apple IDs: the one they’ve used forever to buy songs, movies and apps, and another Apple ID forced upon you for MobileMe.

Well, now iCloud is here and MobileMe accounts have been ported and almost all of MobileMe’s services are now free. Wouldn’t it be nice to frickin’ be able to merge those two IDs into one so you don’t have to worry about this crap anymore?

Don’t hold your breath. Apple’s not playing.

Australia may soon become an Android-free zone. That’s the opinion of patent experts after an Australian court hit Samsung with a temporary sales ban. Although the sales halt mentions only the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the patents involved could touch every tablet and smartphone based on Google’s mobile software.

The iPhone has been good to Pegatron Technologies. The Taiwan-based hardware manufacturer, along with Foxconn, supplies Apple with iPhones and iPads. The company recently announced received orders from the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant for 15 million iPhone 4S handsets, up from 10M orders previously expected. More than 2 million of the new iPhones will ship during the fourth quarter

I’m seeing a lot of comments about slow backups and restores on my post Early iOS 5 Installation Problems Surface As Upgraders Cannot Restore/Update Their iPhones [Updated] and most of the time that problem is caused by bloat in an iOS device user’s Camera Roll.

Apple never intended that users use the Camera Roll for picture and video storage to show off to your friends and family.  Here are a couple of tips to help resolve this problem.

Only a marketing genius could take an also-ran technology company selling little-known products to few customers and turn it into the coolest underdog with a cultish following spending billions of dollars on products they did just had to have in order to exist. In short, that was Steve Jobs, the “greatest marketer of the ages,” according to AdWeek.

At Apple’s press events, Scott Forstall is the guy who introduces the company’s latest developments with the iOS firmware. He also pops up in the company’s infamous marketing videos in which they use words like “amazing,” “revolutionary,” and “magical.” But Scott’s not just that guy who gets up on stage every so often. He’s an incredibly important member of Apple’s executive team, and in a profile by Bloomberg Businessweek, he’s described as a “mini-Steve” who’s driven, obsessed over little details, and a magnificent salesman.

Guess who is tearing down the iPhone 4S? Our favorite gadgeteer vivisectionists over at iFixIt, that’s who. They’re in the middle of spilling the iPhone 4S’ guts right now, but we’ll update this post if they find anything interesting, Stay tuned!

If you shopping for an iPhone 4S and looking to trade-in an earlier Apple handset, you could get up to $200 off from one electronics retailer. The policy is just the latest appearing as stores ready for Friday’s rush of iPhone customers.

We’ve been getting a lot of reports this morning that iCloud is down for many users around the world, and Apple’s own iCloud system status page confirms it.

While it’s natural to fear a MobileMe style debacle, we’re guessing that this is just related to iCloud being hit with an unfathomable amount of early adopter traffic, and will settle down shortly as Apple brings up more servers to cope.

Still, if iCloud is timing out for you or loading incredibly slowly, it’s not just you: the rest of us are having these problems too.

With their usual alacrity, those jovial hacker nerds over at the iPhone Dev Team have already jailbroken iOS 5. But there’s a caveat: it’s tethered only, for now. Also? Don’t even think about jailbreaking an iPhone 4S or iPad 2.

Apple has been destroying PC sales, that’s not counting the red-hot iPad. Depending on which analyst you listen to, the Cupertino, Calif. company for the past 22 quarters has seen growth either 20 times or 80 times faster than the PC industry.

We’ve heard some wonderful stories from people who were lucky enough to have met Steve Jobs, all of which describe Steve as a remarkable man who was, amongst other things, determined, driven, and passionate. Steve knew what he wanted, and he was committed to making it happen, and to photographers who worked with him, that made him a very challenging photo subject.