News - page 2061

It’s a total embarrassment, but less than a year after Microsoft finally “caught up” with Apple’s three year lead and released a modern, multitouch smartphone operating system in Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is having to do it again, this time having been caught with their pants down by the iPad.

Their solution? Windows 8, the next version of their desktop operating system, carefully optimized to support power-sipping ARM processors and skinned with a special, tablet-specific operating system. Now a report suggests that Microsoft will rush Windows 8 to market to make sure that the iPad 3 doesn’t eat Microsoft’s tablet lunch before they’ve even sat down to the table.

If you want to find a Symbian owner in Australia, the best place to look might be in line at the Apple Store. Apple is now Australia’s No. 1 mobile phone vendor as Symbian maker Nokia lost nearly half of its market share during the first quarter of 2011.

In an attempt to comply with pro-consumer laws, Apple is going to allow customers who mistakenly purchase an iOS app or get burned by a shoddy one the ability to get a refund within seven days of purchase. Don’t get too excited, though: you’ll have to live in Taiwan to take advantage of the revised return policy.

While the most war many of us will see on our iPads is a spot of Angry Birds, Singapore’s got bigger plans for Apple’s tablet: they’re issuing an iPad to each new recruit to use in action on the battlefield.

All that’s left for BlackBerry-maker RIM is to rearrange the deck chairs. After losing its smartphone market, its smartphone subscribers, and Wall Street, the Waterloo, Ontario handset company now sees its developers manning the lifeboats headed for Apple’s iOS. Coders say they’re tired of inconsistent interfaces and applications that just won’t work.

Remember Marathon? If you’re a long-time Mac user, sure you do: back in the early 90s, Bungie’s sci-fi FPS series was the one shining light illuminating the Steveless Dark Ages of Macintosh gaming. Even if you’re only a recent convert to Mac, though, you’re probably familiar in a roundabout way with Marathon: it takes place in the same universe and is the direct prequel to Bungie’s bestsellingHalo series for the Xbox 360.

Either way, we’ve got great news for any Apple gamer. Marathon’s coming back… this time for the iPad.

On June 14 Apple began selling its GSM iPhone 4 unlocked in America, but what if they don’t have any left when you go to pick one up at your local store? Well, the guys at the checkout can now take an AT&T iPhone and unlock it instantly for you.

Starting in 2012, if you want to see Samsung and Apple together, your best bet is in a courtroom. The two rivals’ “frenemy” status apparently has reached the breaking point, with a “deafening” roar of leaks indicating the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant will dumping Samsung built A5 and A6 processors as part of a larger purge that could completely eliminate the Korean manufacturer from Apple’s entire supply chain.

Come iOS 5, Apple might finally win the war against jailbreakers. Even if the Dev Team prevails, though, Apple still might succeed in limiting jailbreaking to tethered exploits only, as well as finally axe the ability for users to downgrade to older versions of iOS.

Apple released its iOS 5 beta 2 firmware late last week, and in addition to modifying push notifications and activating Wi-Fi syncing, it has also killed one of the most popular and user friendly unlock tools for the iPhone 4.

When Apple releases the new iPhone in September, which is it going to be: a modest speed bump called the iPhone 4S or a major update called the iPhone 5? Both, according to one analyst. Is he nuts?

BestBuy.com — a major Apple reseller — has now stopped shipping the current-generation of Apple’s ultraportable notebook as an upcoming refresh becomes ever more apparent.

About a week ago I spent $2 on Penultimate, an iPad app that lets you scribble notes on the screen and save them in notebooks. Maybe I didn’t have to though, because tablet-maker Wacom has recently released their own free iPad app, Bamboo Paper, that does basically the same thing. Almost.

Late on a Friday summer afternoon when everyone’s about to get early cocktails, Apple goes and releases the new iOS 5 beta we’ve been waiting all week for.

iOS 5 Beta 2 is now available to registered developers. The build is 9A5248d.

As usual, there’s skimpy release notes; but it looks like WiFi syncing has been turned on.

Here’s some good news for fans of retro arcade games on the iPad.

A Software Development Kit for the fantastic iCade iPad cabinet is now available free of charge, Ion Audio has just announced.

Richard DeVaul — an MIT PhD and Apple’s Senior Prototype Scientist working under Jonny Ives — has left Apple for Google. In him, Apple has lost one of their top, super secret skunkwork guys… one of the few in Cupertino tasked with building out hardware concepts for the next big thing.

Macworld magazine has given Apple’s controversial update of Final Cut Pro X a cautious thumbs up.

The new version of Final Cut Pro rocked the video editing world with its ruthless embrace of the new at the expense of the old. Lots of veteran FCP editors are outraged by the update, which has a whole new code base and workflow. The new software can’t even open old FCP projects!

But Macworld says that’s the price to pay for progress. The new software has been rewritten for a tapeless, metadata-based video workflow, and though incomplete, it’s a huge imporvement:

With Final Cut Pro X, Apple is once again out to completely re-invent the video industry. This is a truly groundbreaking release for a 1.0 software version, and I hope that the professional features that many video editors currently use will be made available soon.

Macworld: Review: Final Cut Pro X

UPDATE: Skype has confirmed that the video is real. The app has been submitted to the App Store, and is pending Apple’s approval.

Earlier today, Skype allegedly posted the above video to their official YouTube account, then just as quickly whisked it away. We don’t know if it’s legit or not, but we hope so, because Skype for iPad looks great.

I have a personal request: I’d like to ask for your support for a charity bike ride I’m doing in July.

I’m riding the Tour of the California Alps, better known as the Death Ride, to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program.

I’m $1,000 dollars short of my fundraising minimum ($3,500). I’d like to ask for your support.

If you can help in the fight against blood cancer, please make a pledge using this link (use the “Make a Donation” widget at the right). It’s fast, easy and totally secure. I only need 20 people to make a $50 donation (or one person to make a $1,000 pledge). The deadline is Monday June 27 — just three days away.

The Death Ride is a very challenging 130-mile route that goes up and over five mountain passes in the awesome Sierra Nevada. It  features 15,000 feet of climbing in one day, most of it between 6,000- and 9,000-feet above sea level, where the air is pretty thin. Here’s the elevation map. For an idea of how high that is, see this amazing infographic. It’s a masochistic ordeal.

Many thanks for reading this — and for your support. I’d appreciate you sharing this post via email, Facebook or Twitter. Every penny counts, and it’s for a very good cause.

Much beloved Spotify has been trying to launch in America for years now. During that time, they’ve faced considerable challenges in convincing a music industry worried about alienating Apple to give the greenlight to their excellent all-you-can-stream subscription service.

But it’s finally come together, and now there’s even a firm date being thrown around: the freemium music service will launch in the States between July 5th and july 15th.

Apple has just published a new transition guide for MobileMe customers looking forward to switching to iCloud.

The good news? Apple has confirmed that you’ll still get access to web apps for iCloud Mail, Contracts, Calendar and Find My iPhone. The bad? Say goodbye to iWeb, Gallery and iDisk.

Let’s put Apple’s golden touch in perspective, because it’s a super power eerie and miraculous enough that it makes competitors puke in mortal terror (hey, it happens!). Consider this: Apple makes more from selling one Mac than HP does from selling seven PCs.

Apple has initially ordered 15 million iPhone 5 handsets from two manufacturers say reports. If correct, the first-month figure is about five times the number of iPhone 4 units the Cupertino, Calif. company sold during the same four-week period in 2010. Could the iPhone 5 be Apple’s first truly international launch, or merely the launch where supply is least lopsided compared to demand?

UPDATE: I totally screwed this one up. When my contact, TuneUp founder Raza Zaidi, told me iTunes in the cloud has only 20% of the all the music listed in Gracenote’s big database of music, I interpreted it to mean that the upcoming iTunes Match service would mirror only a fraction of most music libraries. What I failed to realize was that 20% of music in iTunes represents the most popular 20%. The remaining 80% is all the music in the long tail. So when Apple rolls out iTunes Match in the fall, it will indeed likely mirror most music libraries, just as Apple claims. In a clarifying note, Zaidi says matches will likely be 95% or higher. In addition, the Get Album Artwork feature in iTunes isn’t powered by Gracenote, as the post implies. Sorry for the mistakes. Teach me to post before my morning coffee.

When iTunes Match goes live in September, Apple promises to instantaneously match any of the tracks in your iTunes library to the iCloud… as long as it already has your music in its mega music library. What Apple hasn’t said is that as much of 80% of your music might not be recognized by iTunes Match… and the only way to get that music into the iCloud will be to spend days manually uploading gigabytes at a time.

Those of you who are yet to experience Team Fortress 2 are missing out… but you no longer have an excuse not to give it a go — Valve just made the game free to play… forever! That makes it easier than ever for you to come play with Cult of Mac!