News - page 2098

If you’re unable to get your paws on a new iPad 2 even at an Apple flagship store, you may be fighting organized grey-market forces. The New York Post reports today on a group of scammers who use strength in numbers to buy iPads from the Fifth Avenue Apple store in New York:

“The illicit, highly orchestrated scheme was in full gear yesterday, with a ringleader doling out massive wads of $100 bills to about five cohorts. The sidekicks then went up and down a line of about 200 Asians outside the store and around the corner, handing out the money.

“The scammers in line then went inside and bought iPad 2’s — wiping out the store within minutes.”

The slabs of scarcity are then sold on the street for up to $2000, or immediately sent to Asia for resale.

When it comes to iPhone photography, some folks are Hipstamatics while others are Instagrammers. For the latter bunch there’s now a new app for iPad called Instagallery (iTunes link) that lets users do all kinds of fun stuff with the Instagram API.

Users can view all Instagram photos as a gallery on the iPad, see popular photos, or sign in to to see photos from those people they follow. They can view their own photos, “like” photos, read and add comments, see what users their friends follow, and more.

Instagallery was developed by InfinitApps, costs $1.99 and is available in the iTunes App Store.

Adobe’s Photoshop Express application for iOS has been recently updated to version 2.0, and introduces a brand new camera pack available through an in-app purchase. The camera pack costs $3.99, and for that you get three great features that promise to deliver professional results and better photos, including noise reduction, a self timer, and an auto review mode.

Find out more about these features after the break!

While it may be difficult for Apple Store employees to keep their cool while rabid iPad fans are camped outside waiting for the latest shipment of the next-generation tablet, the Cupertino, Calif. company is telling their retail locations to keep calm and hold onto the new shipments for a day.

The request is part of a new tactic Apple reportedly has undertaken after assessing the first weekend of iPad 2 sales where the new product quickly flew off the shelf. The goal is to provide Apple Stores a chance to “calmly and accurately” handle new supplies – even if it requires telling customers a “little white lie.”

The latest MacUpdate Bundle is just an insanely good deal. For $50, you get Parallels, 1Password, App Tamer, Divvy, TechTool Pro 5, Civilization IV, DVDRemaster Pro 7, and a handful of others. This is actually one of the best bundles I’ve seen in a while: the Windows VM machine Parallels and the incredible password manager 1Password are indispensable on my Mac, while App Tamer helps stretch my MacBook Air’s battery to iPad-like levels, and Civilization IV remains the best iteration of Sid Meier’s classic strategy game. Get get get!

The iPad 2 didn’t get a Retina Display this generation like the iPhone 4… but there’s more to the quality of a display than just pixel density. Now Dr. Raymond Soneir of DisplayMate Technologies has performed tests on the many other characteristics of the iPad 2’s display, putting it in a shoot-out against that of the iPhone 4.

The results? Outside of pixel density, the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 have almost identical performance. That’s a good thing on the hardware side… but a bad thing when it comes to software.

Phil Schiller has promised us that the white iPhone 4 is going to be coming this spring after long delays, but previous reports have suggested that it might be a GSM-only affair, leaving Verizon customers with no options but to buy the black iPhone 4.

iTunes 10.2 begs to differ, though. Within the resource files of the latest version of iTunes, you can find icons for the white iPhone 4 in both CDMA and GSM flavors, as differentiated from one another by their different antenna banding.

That’s no guarantee of a CDMA white iPhone 4, of course, but it certainly implies that Verizon customers will be able to get their hands on one in the coming months… just a couple months ahead of the launch of the iPhone 5.

If you want to gauge future auto output, you could check how many cars are coming off Detroit’s production lines. A similar check has prompted one analyst firm to reduce its revenue estimates for Apple. A “notable” drop in production at iPhone manufacturer Foxconn could result in fewer products available to consumers.

After hitting 84 percent year-over-year growth in December, the manufacturer grew just 37 percent in January and 26 percent in February, according to JMP Securities. Growth is “tracking well below” 70 percent sales growth for the March quarter, and 50 percent in June, analyst Alex Guana told investors Wednesday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueGl0qL-oLo

“It comes with a camera in the front, one in the back, and one in your neighbor’s shower.”

Another great free plug for Apple’s hot-selling device.

Rarely consumed with a desperate rush to issue any new music of their own, electropop pioneers Kraftwerk have come up with a better idea: get the fans to do the work for them.

So the Kraftwerk app lets you inside the Kling Klang Studio, in a manner of speaking, giving you access to some cheerfully bleep-tastic musical buttons in exchange for nine of your fine American dollars.

Given that the App Store is awash with sequencers, loopers, samplers and other electronic music apps, many of which offer quite a lot more in terms of functionality, this one might be left to the fans only. But for those who value the looking-cool as much as the making-sounds, perhaps it’ll be nine bucks well spent.

An game app created by psychologists says it can help users extinguish their smoking habits.

Called Nicot, the $4.99 app is the result of a study by the Canada Research Chair in Clinical Cyberpsychology and the University of Quebec in Outaouais.

Researchers there say they found that virtually crushing butts in the game boosted quitting success rates by 15%. If the would-be ex-smokers also used pharmacological aids (patches, gum and the like) and attended a  follow-up clinic, those rates were boosted to 50%.

Increased data usage — particularly music downloads — fueled a 3.7 percent jump in fourth-quarter net profit for China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless carrier announced Wednesday. The news comes as Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly is ‘very interested’ in creating an iPhone that works on the nation’s home-grown 4G standard.

China Mobile earned 32.4 billion yuan during the quarter ended Dec. 31, higher than the 31.8 billion yuan analysts had expected. In the wake of the report, chairman Wang Jianzhou announced plans to increase handset subsidies by 15 percent in order to attract more data users. Data service revenue comprised 31 percent of the carrier’s operating revenue in 2010. Data “was an essential driver of total revenue growth,” Wang said.

One of the drawbacks of the cheaper, WiFi-only iPad 2 is that it doesn’t have GPS — so it can’t run any of those beautiful fullscreen navigation apps.

GPS is limited to the more expensive 3G iPad models. But if you own a GPS-enabled iPhone, you’re in luck. The WiFi-only iPad 2 inherits GPS functionality when it’s tethered to an iPhone.

The trailer for Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard is the first “interactive” game trailer I’ve seen. Check it out below. You hit the hotspots to “play” the game. Pretty cool. Reminds me of Myst.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t get the initial text from AT&T offering me 1,000 free Rollover minutes.  I had to beg for mine by sending a simple text containing the word “yes ” to a  number (11113020) that people shared with me.

I’d heard that AT&T was sending out texts or notices (not sure which) that some of the people asking for these minutes would not be getting theirs, but today beggar or not I got mine as you can see from the screen shot above.

Thank you AT&T!

So what about you? Did the AT&T overlords grant you 1,000 free Rollover minutes?

Two iOS game developers based in Japan are doing their bit to help out with the recent tragic events in their country by slashing the prices of some of their most popular iOS titles and donating 100% of the proceeds to the Red Cross Disaster Relief. Sega has reduced the price of all four of its Sonic titles, while Capcom has reduced the price of Street Fighter for a limited time:

• Sonic the Hedgehog – $1.99
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – $2.99
• Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1 – $3.99
• Sonic Spinball – $0.99
• Street Fighter IV – $0.99

If you’ve been thinking about purchasing these games, there’s never been a better time to buy them, and they’re even more satisfying when you know your money is going towards such a great cause. And if you already own them, why not gift them to a friend?

After the tragedy of the recent 9.0 earthquake and the resulting tsunami, Apple has decided not to launch the iPad 2 in Japan on March 25th.

“We are delaying the launch of the iPad 2 in Japan while the country and our teams focus on recovering from the recent disaster,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris.

There is no rescheduled launch date planned, and the length of delay will depend upon how long it takes for Japan to recover from recent tragedies, which have culminated with the threat of meltdown at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Yesterday, Apple Bitch broke the news that Apple Stores would be opening an hour early today to start selling a new shipment of iPad 2s to customers. Today, they’re noting that while many stores did open early in case they had iPad 2s to sell, most stores received no new iPads at all… and those that did only got an extremely limited number of units (less than half a dozen).

I can personally confirm this, as I went down to Boston’s Boylston Street Apple Store this morning an hour before opening time. While the Boylston Street Apple Store did did have staff waiting at the door at 8:30am, nearly an hour and a half before opening time, they confirmed that they had no new iPad 2 units to sell when asked, and suggested checking back the next day at the same time.

Overall, if you haven’t ordered an iPad 2 already, it looks like we’re going to see an extremely constrained number of Apple Store iPad 2 units for the next month at least. However, reports indicate that the store will put any new units up for sale first thing the next morning after their delivery, so if you want an iPad 2 sooner rather than later, calling in late for work might be the only way to get one.

When it comes to attracting consumers to video subscription services, convenience wins out over other factors. That’s the message behind new research finding Netflix gets 60 percent of the U.S. digital subscription market, leaving Apple’s iTunes No. 3, with just 4 percent. Cable giant Comcast placed second, according to a NPD Group report on domestic digital video demand between January and February 2011.

The iTunes service tied with satellite provider DirecTV and entertainment behemoth Time Warner. Although the Apple service began in 2006, iTunes began renting movies in 2008 and 99-cent TV episodes in 2010. Despite consumers knowing iTunes had a more up-to-date inventory for rent, Netflix was given the nod due to the “overall shopping experience” and “value for price paid,” NPD announced Tuesday.

Here’s a weird fun fact for you on a slow news Tuesday: there’s a very real familial link between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and TV’s Homer Simpson. Here’s how.

As some of you may know, Steve Jobs was put up for adoption as an infant. What you may not know is that Steve Jobs’ birth parents are Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, who put him up for adoption because they weren’t married at the time.

Later, when they married, they had another child: Mona Jandali. However, Jandali abandoned both Mona and her mother when Mona was five. Joanne eventually remarried, at which point Mona decided to take her stepfather’s name and became Mona Simpson.

Desktops? Laptops? The conversation has shifted to tablets, and Apple appears to be at the center of this whirlwind. Yet another research firm is forecasting the global growth of “tab computers.” Canalys expects to see 52 million of the devices shipped this year – and Apple’s iPad will account for 75 percent of the sales.

The numbers mirror an earlier Goldman Sachs forecast for 54.7 million tablets, 37.2 million from Apple. Analysts at JPMorgan had a more dire warning: there could be a tablet ‘bubble’ as rivals push production, yet see limited sales.

Leave it to Gelaskins, makers of some of the best looking protective “covers” for electronic gear on the market today, to have nearly 300 choices for personalizing your iPad2 already in stock.

Much of the artwork available for these striking gear condoms (printed on feather-light, flexible space-age material invented by 3M) is intricate, busy and wild — taking away, in some eyes, from the elegance of Apple’s iPad design.

Here, for readers’ consideration, then, are a dozen creations of a more subtle bent, which tend to both command one’s attention as artwork, while supporting a showcase for the latest iteration of Apple’s post-PC mobile communication platform.

Each iPad2 skin sells for $29.95 through the Gelaskins website, where you can see the whole mind-blowing collection — along with their vast inventory of skins for other devices.

OK, this is a little WTF, and I haven’t yet been able to verify it myself (because reception’s pretty good where I live), but: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zante over the The Next Web says he’s discovered a trick to improve iPhone 4 reception: stick it in a glass.

Although we won’t know for certain how many iPad 2 tablets were sold this weekend until Apple releases actual figures, that hasn’t stopped a patchwork of estimates and insider reports. The latest metric coming to us is that 7,200 of the next-generation devices were sold Friday at the Cupertino, Calif. company’s New York City flagship store, the first day the iPad was available.

While the report cites a “well-connected source,” the numbers seem to echo a statement on weekend iPad 2 consumer demand. Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster and his team found 1,109 people were lined-up at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store this weekend – up from 703 when the original iPad was released in 2010.

Speaking of Samsung, can you tell that Apple’s biggest rival in the nascent tablet market is feeling the heat from the iPad 2? According to new rumors and the leaked spec sheet above, Samsung’s already readying to counter Apple’s second-gen iPad by dropping the price of their 7-inch WiFi tablet the Galaxy Tab to just $399, undercutting the cheapest iPad 2 by $100 bucks.

It would be a smart move by Samsung. After the iPad 2 was announced, Samsung openly admitted that they would need to reconsider the pricing of their forthcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1, a ten-inch version of the original Galaxy Tab that is more iPad-like in form factor.

Of course, it also implies a certain degree of desperation to take a credible share of the tablet market from the iPad. At $399, Samsung would almost certainly be selling the Galaxy Tab at a loss. $399 is about what I think a Froyo-based 7-inch tablet should cost, but it’s probably not what it does cost to manufacture. Samsung won’t be able to keep this up forever.