Patent troll Lodsys’ attacks upon indie iOS developers for using Apple’s in-app purchasing mechanism is a hot topic at WWDC 2011, so this news couldn’t be better timed: a Michigan law firm representing some unlikely companies with deep pockets has just attacked the validity of Lodsys’ patents.
Just days after Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced his iCloud service will ‘demote’ PCs to just another device, we are seeing confirmation from high-profile tech analysts. Thanks to the iPad and iPhone, the day of the PC is becoming dusk.
Think talking on your iPhone is safe? Think again: hackers and data thieves can intercept your phone calls under iOS 4. That’s why Apple’s rolling out a new feature in iOS 5: a warning that pops up when you engage in a so-called ‘unsecured call.'”
Need a new Mac right now, but want to wait until Lion drops in July to spare yourself paying an extra $30 to upgrade from Snow Leopard. Don’t sweat it: if you buy a new Mac now, Snow Leopard will give you Lion for free when it is released next month.
Shares of Research in Motion fell to a four-year low Tuesday as observers weighed-in on the impact of Apple’s iMessage, the just-announced iOS 5 instant-messaging app that could steal (yet again) RIM’s thunder.
Images © 2011 Lonnie Lazar · All Rights Reserved
Lost in the hoopla of Apple’s WWDC software revelations this week — from iMessage, to iCloud, to iTunes Match — has been coverage of what may prove to be the company’s most enduring revolutionary influence, which is the one it’s having on the Art world.
This crazy-looking thing is Stance, an iPad holder designed to sit in cup holders everywhere.
In iOS 5, there’s a new “Music” app that combines the functions of the iTunes and iPod apps. Instead of separate apps for shopping and playback, Music is a one-stop shop for tunes. That’s the app’s icon above.
Here’s a screenshot tour showing it in action — including the new ability to download Purchased music from the online iTunes store.
It took the iPhone Dev-Team less than 24 hours to successfully perform a tethered jailbreak of the first iOS 5 beta, but hopes that an untethered jailbreak would be developed before iOS 5 goes public later this year have now been crushed.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M
Steve Jobs has been keeping extremely busy this week. One day after delivering his WWDC Keynote address, Steve headed back to Cupertino to appear before the city council to discuss Apple’s new plans for their campus. While pitching the construction and design of the mega-structure, Jobs commented that the building will look ‘a little like a spaceship.’
The Apple Design Awards just concluded at WWDC, and the winners are…
Remember last year, when Energizer debuted its iPhone 4 backpack battery at CTIA? It was actually made by PowerSkin, and it was the less-powerful cousin to the dual (Verizon and AT&T) compatible PowerSkin case just released.
This could be the app that launches or resolves 1,000 spats: Talk-o-Meter monitors your conversation to show who talks more.
The iPhone app monitors the conversation by distinguishing between two voices to elaborate on who is getting the most air time and who is patiently listening.
With every new iOS beta, we get our first glimpse into the future of Apple’s iOS devices, and iOS 5 Beta 1 is no exception.
Want to test out iOS 5 but don’t have a developer account? No worries: a new vulnerability makes it pretty trivial to upgrade to iOS 5 on any iPhone.
Be careful, though… rolling back to iOS 4 if things go south isn’t officially supported. This is for pros only, and there’s a lot that can go wrong.
Apple’s new iMessage app was one of the biggest surprises at WWDC yesterday. Once I got iOS 5 and Lion installed on my devices, I asked our Twitter followers what they wanted to know about the new OSes and we got a lot of questions about iMessage and how it works. There seems to have been a bit of confusion regarding the new service, so let me help explain how iMessage works on iOS 5.
iPhone 4 and iPad 2 cases from Sena Cases
Feeling lucky? You can win a bunch of gear at the first CultofMac.com WWDC meet & greet during this Thursday June 9th, at Il Pirata bar and restaurant in San Francisco.
Apple released an update to iBooks today that incorporates a new feature called read-along plus the usual improvements and bug fixes we typically expect from Apple.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW_swJiebIA
Third-party warranty sellers SquareTrade want to make you cringe (and pull out your wallet) by showing you just what happens if you drop your iPad.
Or maybe your toddler drops it, face down. Or an irate spouse makes a smashing exit.
In a bout of self-congratulation as laughably misguided as that of the toothless hobo hanging outside of Albert Einstein’s office claiming that whole Theory of Relativity thing was his idea, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows Phone is now “feeling flattered” that Apple copied so many great iOS 5 ideas from Windows Phone 7. As if.
Amongst other rumors about iOS 5 that somehow just disappeared into the ether come yesterday’s WWDC 2011 keynote was the advanced Nuance-powered voice control features that has been reported extensively over the past few months. The only mention of voice recognition was a throwaway line on a slide: “Option to speak text selection.”
Is that it? What happened to the voice control that we were all promised? Don’t worry just yet: according to a couple of prominent sources, Nuance-powered voice control is still coming to iOS 5.
As much as I love my Apple TV, I’m still rather irked that Apple is yet to offer a Netflix substitute for its U.K. users. It now seems that Apple has snubbed those of us across the pond once again with its iTunes cloud services, which apparently won’t be making their way to the U.K. anytime soon.
For those of us with snoopsome inamoratas who just can’t seem to understand that a man has needs of the flesh that simply can not be met by the conventional and must needs be profane… Mobile Safari under iOS 5 has a new Private Browsing option, which is more colloquially known as ‘Porn Mode!’
First, Apple kills the PC, then it attacks a weakened BlackBerry, and finished up sticking it to its carrier partners. Not bad for one day’s work in Silicon Valley.
No matter how many months of rumors and insider reports precede an anticipated Apple announcement, it’s probable that, when Steve Jobs actually reveals the product on stage, it’s going to be radically different than what people are expecting… but iCloud could be the most radical deviation yet between the fancy of pre-announcement hype and the reality of Apple’s finished product.
What people expected from iCloud was a streaming cloud locker for your media collection: iCloud would scan your iTunes library and automatically mirror them on a central server, allowing you to stream any song you owned to any device you owned without being bothered with local storage.
What people got? iTunes Match. It scans and matches your iTunes library in the cloud, sure, but there is no streaming: any time you want to listen to an album that’s not on your iPhone or iPad, you’ve got to download it from the cloud onto your device.
No streaming? What was Apple thinking?