News - page 2085

While GarageBand for iPad is a neat little acoustic sandbox for even we tone deaf plebs, it was of particular interest to musicians who were already heavily invested in GarageBand for Mac. With the iPad version, these musicians hoped they’d be able to put together a few bars of a ditty on the subway or during a flight, flesh it out a bit, then import it into their Mac at home for a polish; alternatively, they hoped they could take their current GarageBand projects on the road with them.

Unfortunately, when GarageBand for iPad actually ended up hitting, it actually was quite difficult to do any of the above. That wasn’t intentional, though, and over the weekend, Apple pushed the 6.0.2 update of GarageBand for Mac out through the usual channels, bringing support for opening projects imported from GarageBand for iPad.

By not bother sweating about the contracts with the labels until after the service was live and leveraging their massive Amazon S2 cloud server cluster for quick rollout, Amazon was able to leap-frog Apple and Google into the cloud with Cloud Locker, a stream-anywhere digital locker for multimedia files.

Now it looks like Amazon wants to try to do it again, this time with mobile payments, and while they may not beat Google and Apple to the punch on NFC, they’ve already got all the rest of the infrastructure in place to use the competition’s NFC chips when they finally start rolling out to handsets.

The Apple iPad turns one year old today. The first day the iPad was available was April 3, 2010. That was the day that I had  the Wi-Fi only model in my hands. It wasn’t until near the end of April 2010 that I finally got a hold of the Wi-Fi + 3G model. My life and the life of countless others hasn’t been the same since.

The iPad was met with some skepticism when it was announced in early 2010. The “magical and revolutionary” device was ridiculed, laughed about, and even mocked. People cried about it and the impact it would have on their businesses and Adobe cried about it. However, all that ended when people and developers got one in their hands.

Initial reviews like the one from Cult of Mac’s very own Leander Kahney were very positive and even first impressions were good. People loved it so much one of them even wrapped it in chocolate — only to give it away again to someone they loved.

The iPad proved itself again and again finding niche and mainstream applications for it at home and at work. The iPad may very well be the most popular Apple computing device in this decade. Although the iPhone may give it a run for its money. We’ll see. Maybe there will be a tie for that title.

The introduction of the iPad 2 last month will keep the iPad juggernaut moving along well into the 21st century. Frankly I cannot wait to see what Apple comes up with next!

Happy Birthday iPad! Congrats Apple.

With an estimated 2.5 million users, MapMyFitness is almost certainly one of the top fitness-tracking services on the web and the iPhone;  which means last week’s announcement that their apps now fully integrate with the Wahoo Fisica dongle should make a lot of people happy.

The MMF website and apps, most of which are free, are already chock-full of features like a deep library of user-generated maps, mapping functions (like route elevation profile generation) and their new nutrition-tracking feature; adding the ability to record sensor data should catapult the system to the top of the heap. The integration with the ANT+ Fisica sensor dongle doesn’t quite extend across MapMyFitness’s whole suite of apps, but hits the major ones, like MapMyRun, MapMyRide and MapMyFitness (all three of which are really almost identical).

Apple launched its new ad campaign for the iPad 2 Saturday based on its founding philosophy of bringing technology to the masses.

A part purported to be destined for a forthcoming iPod nano suggests that the seventh generation device could bring back a camera and video recording capabilities to the second smallest iPod, whilst retaining its current tiny form factor.

The picture above was sent to Apple.pro two days ago, and on previous occasions the Tiawanese site has been relatively accurate with its leaks of upcoming parts and devices. The site recently leaked plans of the revised iPhone 4 built for CDMA and Verizon before its launch, and prior to that it published pictures of a miniature touch screen that later arrived in the current iPod nano.

We received these cryptic press releases from two fairly well-known developers today, and we just thought we’d share them with you — especially since one of them was marked confidential and requested we not reveal anything till Monday; as if! We’re revealing it NOW! (Yes, we’re horribly easy to manipulate).

Toy giant Hasbro Inc. is bringing 3D to your iPhone and iPod.

For about $35, their new goggles called My3D promise to bring a new experience to your Apple devices. Available in black or white, they launch in exclusive at Target stores on April 3; the U.S. retailer has an exclusive for the goggles until June.

The design is a little more streamlined than the version we showed you back in November, but it still looks a little like a View-Master, which first brought the 3D experience to kids in 1939 and slunk off into the sunset due to declining sales in 2009.

Instead of those little plastic discs of the View-Master familiar to kids the world over, with My3D you’ll be able to download special apps from the iTunes store.

There are currently eight free apps available on iTunes, ranging from Tunnel Pilot and Shatterstorm to 360° Shark.

Hasbro promises there will be a mix of gratis and paid content available — likely to include trailers and movie snippets following the 3D film trend.

Concerned citizens in Kentucky can report “suspicious activity” to their state branch of Homeland Security through an iPhone app.

Called Eyes and Ears of Kentucky, the app is offered gratis on iTunes. The handiwork of developers NICUSA, it has been in the store since March 7. So far, it has not received enough reviews to reach an average rating. Through the app, you can report a suspicious incident or activity along with details about the alleged subjects and their vehicles.

Unlike iFixIt’s gag, this Playmobil Apple Store Playset isn’t a real product, but if enough people are interested and Apple’s lawyers look the other way, maybe it could be.

From the description:

A quick peek at the miniature Genius Bar and we were feeling a bit woozy. Then we saw the tiny Steve Jobs presenting in the Keynote Theater on the top floor and that was it. Our wallets popped out faster than you can say Jonathan Ive and we plunked down whatever money was needed to own this amazing playset.

Of course, once we had the playset, we had to get the optional Line Pack to simulate our own exciting Apple product launches. Since it comes with a tiny Woz on a tiny Segway, it was a no-brainer. We decided that Apple & PLAYMOBIL™ together is the most unlikely and awesome collaboration ever. It changes everything.

Think Geek’s brought its April Fool’s Day products to market before, so it’s possible this could become real someday.

Soon, Little Rock, Ark. may be known for more than being the site of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s library. Reportedly, Apple may open its first store in the city of 190,000 this October. Before you get your bags packed for the ribbon-cutting, be aware there’s been similar chatter since 2007.

However, a blog that tracks Apple’s retail moves reports the Cupertino, Calif. company has signed a lease in the Chenal Mall. If the report bears out, the addition could remove a gaping hole in what is described as a ‘black-out zone’ for Apple retail locations. The zone stretches from the Gulf to southern Missouri.

When you bring in your iPhone for repair, Apple has a nasty habit of replacing your iPhone’s standard Phillip’s Head screws with proprietary pentalobular torx screws, which require a very special driver to remove. The result? It becomes all the much harder to repair your iPhone yourself.

iFixIt‘s April Fool’s Day joke this year may be a gag, and a good one, but it’s also a real product: an iPhone Oppression Kit that allows you to replace normal phillips screws with pentalobular ones, or vice versa. $10.

Today’s April Fools Day, which means that most of the news today will be in the form of witless lies propagated by mouth-breathers to try to “gotcha” bloggers, all to appease some ancient Pagan God. We will be doing our best not to partake in the festivities, so in the mean time, please enjoy this video of a Claymation iPad, produced by Svetlana Shokhanova at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow.

The formula for transforming a stock Apple product into something worthy to be sold for a boatload of money to the most garish of Beverly Hills Frankensteins and gaudiest of Middle Eastern Oil Barons is as old as time: buy something from the Apple Store, drizzle it in glue, then roll it in crushed glass and gold foil and voila: a luxury iProduct.

Here’s the latest: the ZShock Lunatik iPod nano watch case, a product with its audience clearly identified in the title. Diamond-encrustations, white gold, Apple’s second-cheapest iPod, all yours for just $18,000.

How successful might an iPhone 5 be on Verizon’s LTE, or 4G, network? Although the new handset with support for the faster technology isn’t expected until late this year, we can get a glimpse via Verizon’s recently-introduced Android-based Thunderbolt from HTC. Nearly a third of Verizon stores report the Thunderbolt is outselling the iPhone.

While 61 percent of the 150 Verizon stores polled by BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk said both the iPhone and the two-week-old Thunderbolt are selling equally well, 28 percent of the locations report more customers are asking for the Android-based smartphone. Just 11 percent said the iPhone is preferred.

Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci becomes the latest head of a PC company to exit after fighting a losing battle to topple Apple’s domination of the tablet market. Apple’s successful iPad and other products is seen as the “key reason” why Lanci left.

Executives at Motorola, Toshiba, Sony, Lenova and Asustek Computer reportedly could also be dethroned, according to an industry publication, citing unnamed sources. “First-tier smartphone and PC brands are still unable to find an effective strategy to counter Apple’s advance,” the Taiwan-based DigiTimes writes.

Supplies of the first-generation iPad are now beginning to dwindle away as Apple sells off the last few units of its original tablet. Since the launch of the iPad 2, the original model has been sold at a discounted price through the clearance & refurbished sections of the Apple online store, and on Thursday the 16GB Wi-Fi model disappeared completely.

32GB and 64GB models of the Wi-Fi iPad are still available in the refurbished section, but there are only 3G models left in clearance.

Despite the launch of the iPad 2, it’s expected that the remaining iPad stock won’t stick around too long thanks to the generous reductions Apple has made to their price tags. The 16GB model was previously listed at $349 before it sold out – $150 below its original asking price – but the cheapest model now left is the refurbished 32GB Wi-Fi at $429.

So, if you’re not happy with a 4-week wait for the iPad 2, and you’re happy to settle for the first-generation device, you’d better get your order in quick before the device is no longer available from Apple.

[via Electronista]

We’re hearing rumors that Steve Jobs is on the verge of resigning from Apple.

Nothing more than that: Jobs is about to leave the company he co-founded 35 years ago. The anniversary of Apple’s founding is today. It was established on April 1, 1976.

This is totally unconfirmed, but there is chatter about it. A local TV news channel has also been asking about the rumor.

Maybe it’s an April Fools’ joke. Most likely, it’s just the Silicon Valley echo chamber. We’re throwing it out because there’s talk about it.

Jobs is still on medical leave that began in January.

Twitter for iPhone users, rejoice: the #dickbar is dead.

Officially called the QuickBar, it was nicknamed in honour of Twitter boss Dick Costolo.

It was supposed to be a discovery tool for Twitter users – a way for them to find out what’s happening, to see trending topics and sponsored tweets.

There was only one small problem: pretty much everyone hated it.

Calling himself “Steve Jobs’ best customer,” a politician in charge of a government efficiency drive in the U.K. hopes to end the “monopoly” from companies like Microsoft, Fujitsu, BT and HP.

Ian Watmore, former head of the e-Government Unit, is now CEO of the coalition government’s Efficiency and Reform Group. He’s calling for smaller, less expensive IT projects (capping them at £100m), criticizing the previous administration’s “over-ambitious projects.”

If you are wondering just how briskly the iPad 2 is selling, you don’t have to wait until Apple announces official sales figures – just ask the online auction site eBay. Thursday morning, the service announced just under 12,000 of the new generation tablets were sold in the two weeks between the start of U.S. sales and the recent launch in 25 additional countries.

Among the interesting figures, a majority (65 percent) of iPad 2s sold through eBay went to domestic customers, nearly double the 35 percent for the original iPad in 2010. Canada and Russia topped the list of international destinations for the iPad 2. Intriguingly, Russian demand for the iPad 2 is much higher than for the first tablet, according to eBay.

If you’ve been wondering when Adobe’s Photoshop offerings on iOS are going to stop being so lame, don’t worry: Adobe’s working on an awesome new iPad Photoshop App, and they just debuted it at PhotoShop World. Make sure to stick around to the end when they show off the 3D style layers animation at the end. Wow.

[via MacTrast]

Bono Vox reportedly handed over another iPod in the name of diplomacy, this one loaded with music by U2 for Argentina’s  President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

U.S. President Barack Obama famously gave the Queen of England with an iPod, loaded with majesty-friendly music like “Dreamgirls” and “The King and I.”

She is said to have thanked him profusely.

He could have at least given her an iPad2 , maybe loaded with the preview of the Spider Man musical.

Best caption for the above photo of their meeting — keep it clean folks! — wins our gratitude for brightening up a Thursday.

UPDATE: You guys are killing us! We’ve been snickering here at the spacious & airy Cult of Mac offices over this all day…Thanks!

UPDATE 2: Seriously, I haven’t laughed out loud this long in ages…Want to do this every day!

Via Perez Hilton

3D is the newest craze in gadgetdom — or, at the very least, a lot of gadget makers would like it to be — and it looks like even Cupertino is interested in getting in on it. a new patent says that Apple has been exploring a multi-camera system for 3D picture taking, hinting at a future iPhone 3D.

Apple appears to be doing its part to revive the U.S. economy. Taiwan-based chipmaker Samsung reportedly will hired 300 new technicians in its Austin, Tex. plant to fill a growing number of orders for the iPad 2. Meanwhile, the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant is paying a little-known company three to four times the going price for LCD screens destined for the new tablet.

Samsung Austin Semiconductor plans to hire 300 more engineers, with most of the plant’s chip production reportedly going to Apple. The new workers follow more than 600 hired in 2010, brining the plant’s total payroll to around 1,700. Although rumor suggested Apple may have used its own A5 chip in the iPad 2, closer x-ray examination found Samsung still powering the next-generation device. Apple is expected to spend $7.8 billion with Samsung this year, purchasing processors, flash memory and LCDs.