News - page 2122

Over the weekend, some iPad-specific and resolution-doubled icons found in iBooks Version 1.1 made everyone speculate that the iPad 2 would have a 2048 x 1536 display. Not quite Retina, but close enough.

Unfortunately, the speculation breaks down upon closer examination. Not only are the pixel-quadrupled iBook icons old news, but there’s a conflicting mention of a 1536×800 pixel resolution in the same build.

In fact, Apple’s been suggesting that developers provide a double resolution icon for each iPad app since June. This is just Apple thinking forward: yes, they’d like to have the same pixel density in the iPad as in the iPhone and iPod Touch, but that doesn’t make a 10.1-inch Retina Display economically feasible this generation.

In other words, this resolution-doubled iPad icon business? Much ado about nothing. The iPad 2 might have a Retina Display, but not because of a couple of higher res icons.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ Monday morning announcement he is taking a medical leave of absence couldn’t come at a worse time. As in 2009, when Jobs underwent a liver transplant just prior to CES, this episode comes just days before the tech giant announces what many presume will be another gangbuster financial report Wednesday.

As a result of both Jobs’ cryptic announcement and Apple’s legendary tight-lipped PR, investors and observers are left parsing this morning’s short statement. “I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can,” Jobs said. However, some take the words as possibly the Apple leader’s swan song.

Late next month, Nintendo is set to release the 3DS, the successor to their popular Nintendo DS handheld console. Besides a few bumped specs, the main selling point of the 3DS is its glasses-free 3D display, which Nintendo hopes will give their latest handheld a leg up on the competition… most importantly by giving them a clear point of differentiation from the DS’s number one competitor, the iPod Touch.

How long will Nintendo have 3D superiority over the Touch, though? Perhaps not as long as Nintendo thinks. A new rumor coming out of Japan suggests that the next iPod Touch will have the same glasses-free 3D display found in the Nintendo 3DS, based upon Cupertino’s multiple patents for 3D related technologies.

A little more than two years after the controversy started, graphics chip maker NVIDIA has agreed to a settlement of Apple, Dell and HP owners who bought laptops with faulty GPUs.

For Apple owners, the settlement covers anyone who purchased a MacBook Pro from May 2007 to September 2008.

You might remember that this generation of MacBook Pro was prone to graphics failure due to faulty NVIDIA chips.

On Apple’s part, they have been extremely good about servicing laptops for free that were affected by the bad NVIDIA chips, covering those laptops even out of warranty for up to three years and issuing refunds to those who paid for repairs.

Now NVIDIA’s doing the same. If you paid for a repair on an Apple notebook computer related to the NVIDIA GPU, you can submit a claim by filling out this form. For a replacement, send in this form.

Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence and handing day-to-day control of Apple over to Tim Cook.

Jobs sent the following message to staff this morning:

Team,

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

(Sources: Reuters and Business Insider.)

Three new iPad SKUs have been added to the Best Buy store database, leading to questions about what the unreleased products may be. All three are described as “Apple iPad SKU WiFi,” and two are listed at $599, with the third at $699.

The products show up as “unreleased products” on the Best Buy database for both the online and internal store databases, according to 9to5 Mac, who suggests these new listings could be the Verizon iPad + MiFi bundle, new Verizon CDMA iPads, or even the iPad 2.

When will Apple sell its 10 billionth app? Next Friday morning (PST), according to my calculations.

Here’s how I worked it out. We took a screenshot of Apple’s app counter at about 8am on Jan 14th for our first report about the sweepstakes. It showed ~9,775,350,000.

At 8am this morning (Jan 16), it showed ~9,830,422,000. That’s a difference of about 55,072,000 apps in 48 hours, which means apps are being sold at a rate of ~1,147,333 apps an hour. (CNet says Apple is selling 1,000 apps every second, or 1,200,000 apps an hour).

The counter is approximately 170,000,000 apps short of 10 billion. At a rate of ~1,147,333 apps an hour, it would take 148 hours — or 6 days — to hit the 10 billion mark. Hence, early Friday morning.

Now, I’ve flunked math all through my life, and I am in no doubt I’m totally wrong (plus I’ve done a ton of rounding). So please help me out. When will the 10 billionth app be sold?

UPDATE: Reader Allan in the comments reckons it will be Saturday evening PST. Here’s his reasoning: “The counter is running at about four seconds per 1,000 apps (watching the counter), or 15,000 per minute. That’s 900,000 per hour, or 21,600,000 a day. When the counter hits 9.862 billion, there will be 138 million to go. At 21.6 million a day, it will take 551,232 seconds to go another 138 million, or 6.38 days, which is six days and a bit over nine hours. Set your alarms.”

Macworld is coming up fast and what better way to get attention than wearing our brand new, limited-edition MILF shirt?

The CultofMac team wore these shirts at CES last week and got a ton of compliments. We’re not exaggerating — everyone noticed this shirt. It’s perfect attire for a tech conference: smart, funny, stylish. And best of all — distinctive.

Available in slimming black and just $22.99, the limited-edition CultofMac MILF t-shirt is printed by Seattle-based MightTees. It’s 100% sweatshop-free. Designed, made, and printed in the USA.

Here are some more pictures:

Chris Chang of MICGadget blog has uncovered a new iPad 2 case with a pair of mysterious new holes.

The new openings are a rectangular slot on the upper right side (when viewing the iPad from the front), opposite the volume rocker and lock; and a smaller, squarer opening on the top of the iPad in the middle.

The makers of the case say it fits the iPad 2 “perfectly,” which means the new device may have capabilities.

Chang guesses that the top opening is for HMDI or mini-HDMI, and the side opening for a SD Card. Engadget on Friday claimed the iPad 2 will have an SD Card slot, although it places the opening on the bottom right of the new iPad, not the side.

Check out more pictures below.

VoIP service VoxOx thought its rebranding at CES — which includes a massive effort to unify almost every method of communication known to man, and new features like being able to pick your own phone number for free — was such a big deal, they had an army of extras with duct-taped mouths following around an alien who gave away “dozens” (according to VoxOx) of iPhones at the show.

In fact, the PR stunt attracted so much attention it detracted from VoxOx’s actual message about all the neat stuff they’ve bundled into their reworked desktop app, and that they’re well on the way to having an iPhone app out, pending Apple’s approval (and as should be expected, VoxOx says they’ve focused on putting out an iPhone app ahead of any possible Android app).

Here’s the big picture about some of the new features; everything — apart from some outgoing calls — is free:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBvfa4JX3Tw&feature=player_embedded

A new application called HackCentre which allows a user upload any score they want to Game Centre is making its way to the Cydia store. The application supports every Game Centre compatible game available, and is demonstrated in the video above using the popular Fruit Ninja slicing game.

You will, of course, need a jailbroken device to take advantage of this application.

Personally, I really don’t see the point in HackCentre. Whether your device is jailbroken or not, the application takes a lot of the fun out of Game Centre and is only going to discourage people from using the gaming network. If you enjoy trying to beat global high scores and getting your name on the online leaderboards, you’ve got no chance now that hackers can upload any score they want at the touch of a button.

And if you do choose to take advantage of HackCentre and upload your score, surely the novelty wears off when you’ve finished uploading the highest possible score you can for every Game Centre compatible app you own?

I’ll be looking forward to an Apple fix for this one.

UPDATE: It seems my earlier rant about HackCentre was unnecessary, as the hacker behind application has announced on Twitter that he will no longer be releasing it due to the “overwhelmingly negative” response it has received.

UPDATE: The scheduled launch of News Corp.’s iPad app The Daily, referred to in the post below, has been put off — “for weeks, not months” — according to a report by All Things Digital, the Wall Street Journal‘s tech blog, which is owned by News Corp. The launch delay may be related to issues with the recurring subscription functionality of iOS 4.3 (referred to in the post), according to the All Things Digital report.

Apple may be trying to pickpocket subscription revenue from European publishers, according to separate reports issued Friday.

Under new rules regarding publishers’ apps running on iPad, print subscribers to European newspapers will no longer have access to iOS apps allowing them to read content for free on their iPads, according to the reports. By offering free apps to print subscribers, newspapers avoid giving Apple 30% of the revenue they would earn by requiring subscribers to pay for access to content through apps sold in the App Store.

The supposed restrictions come amid speculation over the kinds of subscription functionality the next iteration of iOS firmware may support. The iOS 4.3 beta was seeded to developers this week.

Some believe the next iOS build will permit recurring App Store software subscriptions, a prototype for which could be the rumored joint venture between Apple and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., The Daily , which could be the topic of an event scheduled Jan. 19, at which rumors have Murdoch and Apple CEO Steve Jobs appearing together.

Thus far, no similar complaints have issued from US publishers and it seems strange, at best, Apple would feel entitled either to a cut of publishers’ print subscription revenue or to dictate whether publishers’ had to charge for apps developed for the App Store.

[AppleInsider]

IK Multimedia, makers of the highly-acclaimed tone-modeling app AmpliTube, have released new iOS software bringing legendary Fender sound to musicians playing and recording with Apple mobile devices.

Available as a standalone tone solution or as in-app add-ons to current AmpliTube users, AmpliTube Fender lets iOS mobile rockers dial up tones modeled on a roster of classic pre-CBS amplifiers including the ’59 Bassman LTD and the 1965 Deluxe Reverb and Twin Reverb, as well as the Super-Sonic, and the Pro Junior.

Players can practice using the built-in SpeedTrainer, which allows up to 50 backing tracks — importable directly from the iPod library on the iOS device or from a computer — to be slowed down to half-time or speeded up to double-time with no loss in pitch fidelity. 36 tone presets can be named, saved and called up on the fly, and each step in the tone chain — from stompbox to amp head to cabinet to mic — is individually selectable, with fully operational controls making for a tweaker’s paradise.

Earlier reports this month tipped a January 19th launch for The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad-only newspaper, but it looks like that launch will now be delayed thanks to problems implementing the new iOS subscription API meant to drive The Daily’s business model.

According to All Things D’s sources, Apple and News Corp have made a joint decision to push the launch back to give Cupertino’s engineers enough time to tweak the implementation of the new subscription service.

These paintbrushes by Don Lee seem like an incredible idea. Called the Nomad Brush, each brush’s bristles are made of conductive fibers, so that it’ll work for painting on the iPad with any paint tool app.

I’m not sure I entirely see the point though. The iPad’s touch display can only register ten touch points at once, with none of the granularity that would be required to capture individual bristle strokes, not just brush strokes. Consequently, a lot of the feel and look of painting with a brush will be lost, especially since the iPad’s display doesn’t register pressure: you might as well use any rubber-tipped stylus instead for roughly the same effect.

Ultimately, it seems like whether or not the Nomad Brush is worth the dosh for you is how much more comfortable you are painting than drawing. If that sounds like you, the Nomad should be out in February.

MacBook Pro owner Tommy reports that his 1.5-year-old replacement battery is swelling and that an Apple service rep told him that this is “normal.”

First, nobody seemed to know what to do with me or who I should talk to. Second, while they Apple Customer Representative could look up the age of my computer by the serial number, they had no way of tracking (and “proving the age”) of my battery by its unique serial number. Third, while nearly everybody I talked to seemed to show much concern over this safety issue, the “Senior Customer Representative” who finally spoke to me was quite apathetic about my battery problem. According to him, this issue is normal and the result of wear-and-tear on the battery and, more importantly, this was Apple’s official position.

Since the battery is too old to be covered by Apple’s one-year warranty, the rep refused to replace it. That is, unless it might cause bodily injury or fire.

Apple announced Friday it will reveal its financial report for the first fiscal quarter of 2011 Tuesday, Jan. 18 at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern. The conference will likely include some gangbuster numbers, including what was behind a reported 23 percent jump in Mac yearly sales. This at a time when PC demand was off 6.6 percent.

Mac sales, boosted by the introduction of a revamped MacBook Air, is just the lead story in a series of likely wins for the Cupertino, Calif. company. Analysts also predict 2010 was a good year for the iPhone. Thursday, analyst Maynard Um of UBS Securities projected iPhone sales of 15.6 million handsets, up from previous expectations if 14.1 million units.

It may be the New Year, but sadly, it appears that the mere turning-over of the calendar isn’t enough to put a stop to the slate of Foxconn suicides: last Friday, a female engineer leaped from her brother’s 10th floor flat to her death after being insulted by a superior, ordered to quit, then sent to a psychiatric hospital on Foxconn’s orders.

The suicide is the fifteenth so far, although the first Foxconn suicide in 2011.

Great news music fans: the excellent European streaming music service Spotify will be coming to the U.S. very soon.

According to the New York Post, Spotify has already signed one major music label and is about to snag Sony Music.

“Spotify is launching in the US, for sure … They’ve got the deals now,” a music industry insider told the Post.

Spotify is “the best desktop music player ever.”

New York Post: Spotify leaps to US. Euro music service near Sony deal

In just a little over 200 million downloads, the App Store will serve up its ten billionth app , and to celebrate the occasion, Apple’s going to give the lucky S.O.B. who downloads the 10 billionth app a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

Well, technically, Apple’s only saying that the person who downloads the ten billionth app has a chance of winning a $10,000 gift card. Note the verbiage (emphasis ours):

As of today, nearly 10 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store worldwide. Which is almost as amazing as the apps themselves. So we want to say thanks. Download the 10 billionth app, and you could win a US $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. Just visit the App Store, and download what could be your best app yet.

The explanation for Apple’s wishy-washiness are pesky American laws that require companies to give an equal chance to no-commitment entries, which is why Apple has provided an entry form that you can fill out up to twenty five times a day. These entries count as make-believe app downloads; if one of these cheapskate entries triggers the ten billionth download, they’ll walk away with $10,000, just as if it were a real download.

Either way, this is super cool. A $10,000 iTunes gift card is probably large enough that even the most addicted app fiend will never have to spend another real-world dime in the App Store again.

With dozens of possible tablets rushing to market in the wake of Apple’s iPad success, suppliers reportedly are straining under the pressure. Tablet shipments will more than triple to 57.6 million this year, with the iPad comprising 70.4 percent of that.

As a result, suppliers are “forced to gamble production capacity on the unrealistically high projections of their tablet customers,” one tablet display executive warns. The gamble means we may see either shortages or excesses in 2011.

It’s been commonly rumored that Verizon was the first carrier Apple approach with the iPhone, only to be rebuffed because of Cupertino’s insistence on retaining control over their phone’s branding and bundled software. Heck, we referenced it the other day.

It looks like that rumor’s not actually true, though. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has admitted in an interview with BusinessWeek that his company was “never in the running” as US carrier partner for the original iPhone’s launch.

The iPad app being demonstrated in this video is called OMGuitar Advanced, and it looks pretty cool. It’s pretty hard to get through the video itself to appreciate the app in motion, though, between the infinite douchiness of the “American Idol” style judges dancing in their seats to the limpest acoustic rendition of Garbage’s I’m Only Happy When It Rains this side of the 2am dorm room of Evergreen State College’s sole emo student. Still, it’s really nice to see people really playing music on the iPad. And OMGuitar certainly looks like an impressive app indeed, for when you’ve just got to travel without your guitar.

 Although Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about new products in the pipeline, it’s pretty easy to predict when they’ll refresh one of their devices as long as you know when they last released an update… and this is doubly true for iOS devices, which follow a strict yearly update cycle.

Knowing this, you’d have to be addled-of-brain and swollen-of-tongue to bet against the iPad 2 shipping anytime before early April: after all, the first iPad shipped in America on April 3rd, a Saturday. If you’re interested in how Apple’s tablet has evolved since then, check out the current generation iPad to see the advancements made over the years.

MacNotes‘s “reliable sources” tipping either an Apil 2nd or April 9th U.S. release for the iPad 2 aren’t really saying anything jaw-dropping then. They suggest, like last time, that the iPad 2 will ship on a Saturday early in April, and, like last time, it’ll be a U.S. exclusive for a a couple months before launching internationally.Also like last time, they say it’ll be six months before big box retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy get to offer the tablet.

Well, yeah. Duh. My guess is the iPad 2 launch will be more or less identical in timing and specifics to the first-gen iPad launch except for one thing: just a hunch, but I’m betting Apple will have both the WiFi and 3G versions ready simultaneously this time.

A lot of the jailbreak dev scene is about waiting. Waiting for Apple to break a previous exploit with a new patch. Waiting to deploy a new exploit that Apple hasn’t even caught wind of yet.

No one’s better at this sly waiting game than the iPhone Dev Team, who have just let everyone know that yes, they’re working on a jailbreaking tool for iOS 4.2.5 (as seen on the Verizon iPhone) and iOS 4.3.

But don’t expect anything while iOS 4.3 is in beta: tipping the community’s hand about what exploits they’ve found before Apple’s finalized the update would be just stupid.

Anyway, according to Dev Team member MuscleNerd‘s Twitter account, It’s silly to release anything during Apple betas… [because] most people can’t take advantage.”

In short, yes, a jailbreak is coming, even for Verizon iPhones… but only start holding your breath once the Verizon iPhone is officially released.