Earlier this year, a little Swedish company called C3 Technologies took CES by storm, demonstrating their incredible iOS and Android apps that leveraged formerly top secret missile targeting technology to create ultra-realistic 3D maps.
Fast forward seven months, and C3 Technologies’ website is a ghost town, and C3’s parent company, Saab, has sold off it’s 57.8% stake in the company in a deal that is worth over $157 million dollars.
So who bought them? Our best guess: Apple.
What do you do with 18 iPads and some remedial stop-motion expertise? You do what the guys over at iPStand did and play Tetris with them, complete with a chiptune cover of Korobieniki playing in the background.
Ironically, because there’s only 18 iPads, though, iPStand can never get a true tetris and clear four rows at once. If only they had 24!
Man, it snuck up on everyone, but the second-gen Apple TV got a huge update in the last hour. The iOS 4.3.3 update for the Apple TV 2 does add some minor things like Vimeo support to the feature set of Apple’s set-top box, but here’s the real biggie: you can now buy any television show directly from your Apple TV, then access and stream them using your iTunes account.
If you have the slightest interest in jailbreaking iOS devices, then I’m sure you’ve heard of Comex, the genius behind JailbreakMe 3.0 and an eminent member of the jailbreaking community. Despite keeping any personal details about his private life a secret since he began cracking Apple’s gadgets, Comex reveals his real name, his age, and what he’s up to in his first interview.
This video of the “iPad Head Girl” walking around New York City is a new viral marketing campaign from Hearst, the company behind the new Cosmo For Guys publication that launches today on the iPad. Her expensive headwear features four iPads that show her head from different angles. But the best thing about this pricey hat is that when you’ve finished looking at her face, you can read her like a book. (Or magazine.)
Although we don’t know exactly when Apple will release the iPhone 5, one feature of the next-gen handset is clear: the pent-up demand could double Apple’s smartphone marketshare. A recent survey found nearly half of Android owners want iPhones.
It seems Adobe is beginning to accept the slow demise of Flash with the release of a brand new tool for creating HTML5 animations and webpages. The first beta of ‘Edge’ is available to download now from Adobe’s Lab website, but is a little limited in its current form.
Apple might unveil three high-definition TV models in 2012, an analyst told investors over the weekend. Unlike previous rumors, this one includes a slew of details about the hardware and price. But do specs from unnamed developers make this version any more believable?
While Apple and Samsung’s globe-spanning IP lawsuit hasn’t made a dent in either company’s business up until now, the first real blow has landed… and it is Samsung walking away with the bloody nose, as a new development in Australia means Samsung can’t sell their iPad-like Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet on the continent until further notice.
This morning’s report that claims the iPhone 5 will now launch a month later than its expected September release will be a huge blow to some, but as long as you’re not too concerned about having your device made by Apple, you can get an iPhone 5 today in China.
After a torrent of speculation surrounding the Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone in recent months — nearly all of which has offered the same launch date — it seems the iPhone 5 may not be arriving this September after all.
To those of you who scoffed at Steve Wozniak when he said that machines will one day take over as superior beings, leaving us humans as the “dogs of the house,” take note: It seems Woz’ vision is very much becoming a reality for some Foxconn workers, who are set to be replaced by robots over the next three years.
A casual observer might be forgiven for thinking that to Apple, Google is Enemy #1. Apple’s most profitable (and therefore important) businesses center on the iPhone and iPad. The most serious competitors in both these product categories run on Google’s Android platform.
The belief that Google is the enemy makes intuitive sense on two counts. First, when you, the gadget-happy user, chooses a device, you may consider an iPhone or an Android device side-by-side. Clearly, you’re choosing between them, and Apple and Google are competing against each other for your business. Likewise for a tablet.
Second, we’ve all been trained to think of technology platforms as the main battlefield for industry control and dominance. Long-time Apple fans still feel the burn of the Windows-Mac wars, which in fact continue to this day.
But this user perspective masks the business reality, which is that there is far less head-to-head competition between Apple and Google than you might think.
Of all the product tie-ins Apple never approved, getting an iPod for predicting a death has got to be the worst.
Cynical journos have long had newsroom betting pools on when public figures would meet their makers but website whenwillamywinehousedie.com brought that gallows recreation to the Internet public back in 2007.
The prize? An iPod Touch.
If you’re a member of the Mile High Club, chances are that you own an iPhone.
A new report from AllThingsD says that two-thirds of Gogo in-flight WiFi users favor the iPhone as their browsing device of choice. 20% of mobile WiFi usage is attributed to the iPod touch, while Android only accounts for 12%.
We’ve all seen a ton of Apple knockoff computers, phones and iPods, but I did a double take the other day when I spotted these “tablet” and “touch” calculators meant to look like Apple’s iPad and iPad Touch at a drug store here in San Francisco.
Might make a good gag gift or stocking stuffer, but who uses standalone calculator anymore?
It’s been rumored that Apple will eventually introduce Near Fields Communications technology in an upcoming iPhone model, but speculation that such a technology will be implemented this year has been all but debunked.
If you’re itching for the ability to have NFC-like “wave and pay” capabilities on your iPhone 4, then it’s your lucky day. A simple hack has been discovered that turns your iPhone 4 into a NFC-capable device.
Remember how ugly Apple’s online Order Status page was? Well, Apple has finally cleaned up its online store web design to reflect the rest of its top notch aesthetic taste.
While this isn’t particularly huge news, it’s still worth mentioning. Now you can see the order status on that new MacBook Air you just bought on a prettier webpage.
Do you remember WebM? It was the video compression technology Google spontaneously announced early last year as an open, free alternative to the H.264 codec, used by Apple in every video shown on the iPhone, iPod and iPad.
Despite the fact that Google said that this was completely free, and H.264 is technically subject to a number of royalty fees, uptake on WebM has been pretty slow. Steve Jobs himself thought it was such a non-starter that all he did was link to a screed against WebM that argued that it was just a slight variation on the H.264 codec, and well covered by MPEG-LA’s patent pool… something that was likely to get Google sued.
Well, here comes the lawsuit.
One of the perpetual complaints levied at Apple over the years is the fact that iTunes is a bloated mess of an app that tries to do too many things at once to maintain Apple-style elegance.
No doubt Apple would love to address these concerns, but what it would take is a complete overhaul and rewriting of the software from the ground-up. Give how much of Apple’s business links into iTunes — everything from apps, to music purchases, to iBooks, to iPhone, iPod and iPad syncing — that’s a prohibitive task.
A prohibitive task, according to reports, that Apple’s already in the thick of.
Hey there, true Beliebers! You know who jailbreaks? No less a personage than Mr. Justin Bieber, that chart-topping iTunes artist!
Do you feel like you have to be just a huge honking moron to use Internet Explorer instead of a superior browser like Safari, Chrome or Firefox? That might not just be hyperbole: a new study has found that the IQ of people using IE is lower than the average of those using competing browsers.
Don’t expect another Nokia-like settlement in Apple’s current legal wrangles with HTC and Samsung. The Cupertino, Calif. tech giant could convert courtroom victories to market gains over Android worth more than $30 billion a year, argues one analyst.
AT&T has just slashed $98.99 off the price of Apple’s iPhone 3GS allowing you to purchase the device for as little as one cent. There is a catch, however. A device that cheap will come with a few warts.
Apple’s new MacBook Air models don’t ship with OS X Lion on a USB thumb drive like they used to. That diminutive little white wedge of flash storage is gone, no where to be found inside of the box that these computers ship in. If you want one, you’ll need to pay Apple $69 for the privilege in August.
That’s a potentially big problem for some users. Yesterday, I found this out the hard way after an attempt to install Mac OS X Lion onto a 32GB Class 10 SDHC card failed. Apple’s failure to ship their new Macs with any media can leave you with a hosed Recovery HD partition, and a potentially lengthy fix may be the only way to get it back.