News - page 2039

If you really had reason to encrypt your phone calls — or were on the payroll of the MI6 —  perhaps a $1,600 yearly subscription to a cell phone call encryption app service would make sense.

Most of the time, police are in the news for recovering stolen iPads. Now an officer has made headlines for suspicion of stealing the must-have gadget.

A police officer was put on paid administrative leave on suspicion of swiping an iPad at the airport. She says she “found it” after going through a TSA security checkpoint.

By punching a big, conspicuous button on an iPad, Pope Benedict XVI has just launched the new official Vatican news site. Then he sent a tweet from the official Twitter app and afterwards a bunch of old men kissed his knuckles. Between this and Google+, it was a big day for technology.

[via Rome Reports]

By most accounts, Google’s new social network Google+ at least looks pretty good.

As it turns out, there’s a reason for that: it was designed by the guy who designed the original Macintosh.

Google’s just helped put another nail in Adobe Flash’s coffin. Their new tool is called Swiffy, and it allows you to easily convert simple SWF Flash animations and games into HTML5 compliant code, viewable and interactable on any iPhone or iPad.

Remember that Lulzsec hack the other day that showed that AT&T was already testing iPads on their next generation 4G network?

Well, there’s even more interesting information in the leak than that. Complete details about AT&T’s proposed LTE data plans make it clear that when Apple does release an iPhone or iPad 4G, prohibitive data caps, massive overage charges and automatically throttled bandwidth will be the rule of the day.

Google’s just launched their biggest attack against Facebook yet with Google+, a new social networking service that emphasizes the sharing of content and updates to groups of people instead of Facebook’s universal wall spooge approach. But is Google+ destined to be just another wanna-be failure like Buzz and Orkut, or could it instead finally lead to Apple and Facebook to put their differences aside and strike a deal for iOS 6?

The first non-Apple laptop supporting the new Thunderbolt standard has now officially been announced in the Sony Vaio Z, and it’s an impressive machine… for a Windows PC. Unfortunately, though, Sony’s implementation of Thunderbolt is hobbled by a hubristic decision to use a different connector than Apple, , along with a petulant refusal to adopt Apple’s Thunderbolt brand name.

Undoubtedly the most simple jailbreak solution to ever be available for the iPhone is the JailbreakMe online exploit from Comex. Apple quickly patched this hack shortly after its release, but Comex has updated the JailbreakMe page with a teaser its upcoming relaunch… reminding people that this was a jailbreak a LONG time in the making.

Even as Apple starts issuing refunds to developers angry that Final Cut Pro X leaves out some of the features upon which they depend most, new evidence suggests that those must-have features are already in Final Cut Pro X’s source code, just waiting to be turned on.

Wow. Apple’s latest version of their professional video editing software Final Cut Pro X has proven to be such a PR mess for them that according to reports they are now backing down from their strict “all sales are final” policy for the App Store and issuing refunds.

Contrary to yesterday’s rumors, a new analyst report suggests that the iPhone 3GS will remain the low-end iPhone even after the iPhone 5 drops in September… making it the first iPhone to spend over three years on the market.

Short of Sprint’s WiMax, Verizon LTE has no actual competition to speak of in the 4G market. AT&T and T-Mobile’s “4G” is really just supercharged HSPA+ 3G technology, after all. So the results of PC Mag’s nationwide mobile bandwidth test shouldn’t be much of a surprise: Verizon LTE just mops the floor with the competition.

That’s not going to last though. Here’s why.

After fifteen years of vaporware limbo, Duke Nukem Forever finally hit consoles earlier this month to a near universal critical drubbing. If you were afraid that Mac gamers were going to miss out on one of the most poorly reviewed games of the year, though, don’t worry: Duke’s coming to the Mac!

Well, okay, the most delicious iPhone would involve bacon and an iPod button made out of Cheetos. This giant iPhone made out of fruits and vegetables would be better on your heart, though.

The only real rival Apple has in tablet sales is itself, one analyst said Tuesday. Despite the claims, competitors “have made an imperceptible dent in the trajectory of iPad sales.”

A group of hackers have discovered a vulnerability with Apple’s Dev Center which leaves the site open to phishing scams. Unless Apple fixes it soon, users could find themselves unknowingly redirected to malicious websites that attempt to steal their credentials.

The latest addition to Apple’s online store is a fancy new high-speed Thunderbolt cable designed to connect your Thunderbolt-equipped devices to the latest iMacs and MacBook Pros.

Apple has released Thunderbolt Firmware Update 1.0 for Macs that ship with the new Thunderbolt interface.

Second-generation Apple TV users across the globe are reporting that they are not able to update their devices to the latest firmware. The complaints can be seen on a sizable thread on Apple’s Support Communities website.

Now that the iPhone has sent the the common point-and-shoot camera the way of Kodachrome, there’s no excuse for bad pics.

Designer and photographer Dan Marcolina wrote a well-received book on iPhone Photography called iPhone Obsessed. Now he’s got an iPad app companion to the book, which teaches even more tips and tricks.

Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.8 last week while I was traveling and I managed to find a nice Wi-Fi connection to use to update my 13-inch MacBook Air. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the new OS release until today. I found something nice while looking through the System Profiler for any changes. Mac OS X 10.6.8 had added TRIM support to all Macs that have SSD drives installed — a feature that will benefit my MacBook Air.

There’re absolutely zero reasons not to get this incredibly slick, fly-by-the-seat-of-you-pants remake of the 90’s classic racing shooter Death Rally iOS game unless you hate fun or you’re dead.

I picked up a Magic Trackpad this weekend, and while browsing Apple’s instructions printed on the box was struck by the similarity between the tagline and photo of the hand with the trackpad, and the original ads for the Macintosh and its revolutionary mouse back in 1984. As well as how much simpler the directions for use are today.

Look familiar?

Beating Skype to the iPad by just one day, VoIP app Fring is now available as a universal app on the iOS App Store, and it has one big advantage over Skype: not only can it work as an IM client, playing nice with Facebook, MSN Messenger, GTalk and more, but it’s also the first iPad app to support group video-calling over WiFi and 3G.

A fantastic update to a fantastic app. You can download it here.