News - page 2032

Send a lot of texts and looking to get your first iPhone? AT&T just became a less compelling option, as Ma Bell will be eliminating their $10 a month texting plan on August 21st.

Open up the App Store on your iPhone and you’ll find a plethora of apps that introduce augmented reality to your iPhone, but for now, that’s the only way you can get it. Apple is yet to make augmented reality a native feature, but a recently discovered patent application suggests the technology could one day appear in the built-in Maps app for iOS.

One thing you hear a lot from people who think that Apple has no case against Samsung for ripping off the iPhone and iPad’s designs is that the design of a touchscreen smartphone or tablet is “obvious.”

Well, sure, obvious once Apple did it. But check out what tablets looked like before the iPad: they were all Windows laptops with styluses. Now look at them: slates of glass all designed to be directly interacted with through your fingertips, like a frame into media.

[via Mac Rumors via OP]

Apple’s plans to build a new retail store — complete with a glass roof — on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, were approved at the Santa Monica Planning Commission meeting last night — apparently without question.

Grand Theft Auto III is the very reason I purchased a PlayStation 2 all those years ago, and even to this day it remains one of my favorite games. Imagine my delight, then, when I woke to find it in the Mac App Store this morning.

If you owned an Apple notebook before 2006 when the MagSafe method of charging was introduced, you’ll know that if someone tripped over your power cord, they often took your computer down with them. Now we have the MagSafe, we don’t have to worry about the fool in the coffee shop who isn’t looking where he’s going, because your power cord just pops out with a slight tug.

According to a new Apple patent, MagSafe technology could also be heading to iOS devices to safe them from clumsy feet.

Somewhere, as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries is playing n the background, squadrons of Parrot AR Drones face off against Griffin’s new Helo TC somewhere over the Atlantic (since Parrot is based in France and Griffin in Tennessee, I figured that’s where they’d probably meet up).

This is one time where the bridesmaid wore white, sort of upstaged the bride and nobody minded.

Besides the Lion USB keys, the only thing new that came about after the Apple Store crashed offline for hours all around the world earlier today? On the Mac Pro page only, you can share the model of Mac Pro you want to select on either Facebook or Twitter.

Totally bizarre. Presumably Apple will roll this out to other Apple Store pages, but it seems like a pretty strange and useless addition to us.

Edit: Apparently, it’s on the iPod Classic page now too. Huh.

This week, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer took part in a conference call hosted by Gleacher & Company, an investment firm. No surprises here: someone asked Oppenheimer what Apple thought of the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google.

Oppenheimer’s response? Classically understated. “$12.5 billion is a lot of money.”

You should probably read “too much money” into that statement for Apple’s snide opinion on the matter.

In a surprise move, Skype has released a WiFi app that allows users to access over one million hotspots with Skype’s pay per minute credits. The app is clearly geared towards international travelers, and Skype is offering its new WiFI app for free in the App Store.

The image above would seemingly brook no further comment without sniggering. To all appearances, it is a prosthetic to strap onto your iPad, possibly for use with some tele-dildonics app that snuck by the App Store review process. But looks can be deceiving.

Is it time for Apple to tweak its back-to-school sales campaign? An analyst claims Mac sales are off up to 40 percent, as consumers become more sensitive to prices. But the report differs from another forecast suggesting Mac demand is “encouraging.”

From the “maybe I can get these on Cydia” department: musician and artist David Byrne has created a number of authentic looking app store listings for fake iPhone apps, as contributions to a social media-related art exhibition being held in New York City next month. One handy offering is called Invisible Me, an auto-reply app for texts and emails allowing you to avoid work while pretending to be engaged. Sweet!

In the first of its kind, an iOS developer recently paid $50,000 to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint charging child-oriented apps collected personal data without parental knowledge. Broken Thumbs Apps, sells several games, such as Zombie Duck Hunt, Truth or Dare, and Emily’s Dress Up.

Andy Miller, the founder of Quattro Wireless who became Apple’s VP of mobile advertising and the head of iAd after Apple acquired his company for $250 million, is leaving the company.

Love Apple’s wireless Bluetooth keyboard but fed up of buying new batteries? Logitech’s new K75o keyboard could be the answer: a wireless keyboard — complete with a numeric keypad — powered entirely by the sun, which is sure to save you a small fortune and help the environment.

Attention patent shoppers: aisle one has a deal on digital imaging. Kodak is worth billions – not as a company, but for its patent portfolio. Indeed, just a portion of Kodak’s intellectual property is worth more than five times its stock value. Are you listening, Apple?

Are these white suited factory workers building iPhone 5 screens? It sure looks like it, given the elongated home button, widely rumored to be a capacitive number in the next iPhone. It’s even alleged to be taken in Wintek’s touchscreen plant, which handles the iPhone 4.

It certainly looks pretty legit to us. What do you think?

[via MIC Gadget]

Remember that court ruling in Korea last month that ordered Apple to pay out around $950 to the first person to sue over the whole Locationgate fiasco? Well, we knew it wouldn’t stop there.

27,000 users are now suing the Cupertino company for around $930 each — that’s a whopping $25 million lawsuit.

Woe be the mighty HP. Retail giant Best Buy wants the PC maker’s tablets off its shelves after selling just 25,000 TouchPads. That’s not all, Walmart and others are also having trouble getting rid of the devices, according to a Wednesday report. Say it with us: there’s no tablet market, only an iPad market.

For the past several hours, the Apple Store has been down, but unlike when we usually say that, Apple’s seemingly not doing just maintenance… instead, store.apple.com seems to have totally crashed.

Making things stranger, the Apple Online Store fell over on a Wednesday, as opposed to the traditional Tuesday maintenance period. Some users have reported in the last hour the usual ‘We’re Updating The Store” message… so could a new product be imminent?

We covered Google’s new Photovine photo sharing app when it first hit the App Store back in July, but it was initially available only to a select few users who were lucky enough to get an invite. But now we can all join in on the fun, because today Photovine is officially open to all.

Apple’s retail stores are famous for their wow-factor, with the iconic glass cube above the Fifth Avenue store in New York City, the rooftop gardens atop the Boylston Street store in Boston, Massachusetts, and the glass cylinder that leads into the Pundong store in Shanghai.

But there could soon be another store to add to our list of the weirdest and most interesting Apple stores on Earth, with plans of a huge new store on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica that features a breathtaking glass roof.

Following recent issues with iPad displays from LG Display, which has forced the company to turn to rival Samsung, Apple is said to be considering a $1 billion investment in Sharp to secure touch screens for the iPhone and iPad.