News - page 2068

Steve Jobs can’t stop porn on Apple devices, but low FaceTime adoption can, apparently.

We’ve been following the rise of FaceTime adult chat company iP4Play since it launched in August 2010.

Now Cult of Mac has learned the company is bust: operations officially ceased last week.

iP4Play blames slow adoption of FaceTime, Apple’s videoconferencing technology, rather than any failings of the company. Not enough people are using FaceTime, whether for sex chat or anything else, the company’s CEO says.

Ouch! Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen took stage today at the All Things Digital D9 conference to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg.

Watch the smug get slapped right off of Narayen’s face after he laughably tries to claim that contrary to Steve Jobs’s argument that Flash is a dead technology, it’s currently running on 130 million Android devices.

There are many reasons to envy the British. Marmite. Branston Pickle. Savory Pies. First Run Doctor Who. Kelly Brook. Now there’s a new reason to envy them: they can pick up an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2 for just £99, or around $162.

With the last remaining label having just inked a deal with Apple to launch iCloud, music industry insiders are now talking to the press about what they know about Cupertino’s upcoming music streaming service. Specifically, they’re answering the question everyone’s been asking all along: how much will iCloud’s music streaming cost?

The last major music label has finally been wooed by Apple, just in time for Steve Jobs to present iCloud at Monday’s WWDC.

We don’t know about you, but personally we are more excited about the next version of iOS than we are the next version of  the iPhone. The iPhone 4 is fairly adequate and meets most of our needs, but iOS has a lot of room for improvement. WWDC 2011 is just around the corner and we know that Apple will be announcing iOS 5 there so here is a round-up of the current rumors surrounding the next version of iOS.

MacRumors has a sneaky spy shot of the new iCloud icon, courtesy of a banner going up at WWDC. Hope Steve Jobs doesn’t see the pic. It’s pretty sloppy work by those two banner hangers. Who thinks they’ll be fired by day’s end?

Then again, Jobs already let the cat out the bag, letting everyone know that Monday’s keynote will be about iCloud, iOS 5 and Lion.

And here’s another, better pic:

Just like last year, Apple’s kicking off WWDC a little earlier than its June 6th start date with an official WWDC 2011 app, which is now available for download on the App Store.

While much has been made over Apple’s uncharacteristic pre-conference spilling of the beans regarding the impending announcement of a new, web-based service called iCloud, no one really knows what this “amazing,” “fantastic” and “magical” new service is going to look, feel or sound like — and won’t — until Steve Jobs unveils it to the audience at San Francisco’s Moscone West auditorium next week.

Still, we can put together a reasonable idea of the service iCloud will provide based upon Lala, the streaming music service Apple bought back in 2009. Assuming that Apple is basing iCloud on Lala and filling in the blanks with the latest industry reports and rumors, here’s a complete overview of what we think iCloud will look like when it’s announced on Monday.

I’m not exactly sure that this custom sewn slipper for the aluminum foot of an iMac or Cinema Display is worth €29.00 when my girlfriend could probably sew one up for me for the price of a couple of Milky Way bars, but crafted from vegetable tanned leather and premium wool, it sure is gorgeous.

In fact, it transforms the iMac’s ascetic aluminum foot into something that would look totally at home in the mahogany-lined smoking room of a 19th Century Gentleman’s Club….

Hmm. Wait, actually, I take it back. This is totally worth your €29.00, which translates roughly to about $42.

If you’re someone who has even the smallest regards towards fashion, then you’ve probably given some serious thought as to which bag to use for toting your precious MacBook around. What you wear says just as much about you as your MacBook does. If you’re looking for something that looks great for casual occasions but can also feel dressed up enough for business meetings, then you need to consider the Arnald Work Bag from The Property Of. We were lucky enough to receive a bags from the Amsterdam based company and here’s our take.

Following an explosion on May 20th that killed 3 people and injured 15 others, Foxconn has today reopened its iPad 2 polishing workshops in Chengdu after an investigation into what caused the explosion has now been concluded.

Need a little more wiggle room for media on your iPad? Want to share a movie to your girlfriend on her iPhone while you simultaneously watch the same movie on your iPad in the other room? Kingston’s Wi-Drive has you covered, but some serious drawbacks make this a hard recommendation to make.

When it comes to mobile, Microsoft has been caught with its pants down twice in the last four years.

The first time was when the original iPhone completely turned the smartphone industry upside down overnight back in 2007. Microsoft was so slow to respond that by the time they released their first true touch-based operating system, Windows Phone 7, in November of last year, they had gone from a dominant player in the smartphone market to losing almost all of their market share.

Before Microsoft could even get Windows Phone 7 out the door, though, it happened again. Apple released the iPad in 2010, and this time, iOS didn’t just revolutionize smartphones… it attacked the very foundations of Microsoft’s Windows empire itself, cannibalizing laptop sales and utterly destroying the netbook market.

Creating a new iOS app can be a daunting task. Keeping track of all the ideas, pricing schemes, graphics, and collaborations can leave a developer feel swamped. The guys behind App Cooker hope to solve all those problems by providing the most advanced iOS mockup tool made exclusively for the iPad.

Jam packed with incredible features, App Cooker aims to be a must-have tool for all app developers and designers. Here’s a quick video of some of the things App Cooker can do for you:

After almost a decade of turning a blind eye to speculators squatting on domain names prominently featuring Apple’s trademarks, Cupertino is finally trying to take back iPods.com. Once it has the domain, though, what does Apple plan to do with it?

Apple last update for iwork.com was released in January this year. Users were notified via e-mail, that enhancements to iWork.com Apple’s public beta online service for iWork ’09 users had been released.

This announcement came out of the blue at the time regarding a service that has definitely been off the radar for a long time and in beta for longer than I can remember. It’s future isn’t clear considering the pace at which Apple is deploying features on it. Perhaps that will change this year with the rumored release of iWork ’11 and the imminent release of Apple’s iCloud services at WWDC 2011 next week.

Now that ex-Microsoft business veep Stephen Elop has taken over the floundering handset giant Nokia and inked deals with his old employer to use their mobile operating system, you’d think he’d want his employees to start using Windows Phone 7 handsets… preferably Nokia ones.

Not so. He wants them using iPhones.

In the bizzaro land of both tech marketing and Wall Street analysis, reality can sometimes become twisted. For example, despite the long struggle to get Verizon onboard, one observer suggests Apple could leave them behind in the dust with the next iPhone by launching with 4G support on AT&T’s network only.

Have you ever been invited to a meeting but you have no idea where it’s located or how long it will take you to get there? Well, in the future your iPhone may be able to tell you through dynamic calendar alerts.

When MobileMe gets rebranded as iCloud on Monday, it’s most anticipated feature is the ability to scan your iTunes library and automatically mirroring it in the cloud without uploading a single audio file. The big question about scan and sync has been whether it will only work with tracks purchased in iTunes, or if it’ll work with tracks ripped from CDs, purchased from Amazon MP3 or — yes — even pirated. Apparently so… because Apple will pay the record industry for every pirated track.

We don’t know where this came from.

We don’t know who made it (J.G. Thirlwell, perhaps?).

We don’t even know if there’s an iPad or iPad 2 ensconced within this case’s leathery, plush-lined folds.

We’d love to find out (tell us if you know), but until we do, mere ignorance will not stop us from posting this exquisite iPad Case, because all we can see is that gorgeously medieval gold emblem, showing Isaac Newton lazing under an apple tree, waiting for the full weight of gravity to come crashing down on his head. That was Apple’s original logo back in 1976.

As Apple retail stores begin to clear their inventories of the AirPort and Time Capsule wireless networking devices, could Apple be planning a refresh for these devices during WWDC next week?

With just 4 days to go until this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference and the unveiling of Apple’s new iCloud service, the company decided now would be a good time to take control of its $4.5 million purchase for the domain.

GarageBand and iMovie for iOS, and while iMovie’s update is just a bug fix patch, GarageBand has gotten some more meaty improvements.