News - page 2126

A game developed by a 14-year-old has knocked Angry Birds from its perch as the top free game in iTunes.

The game, called Bubble Ball, is a physics puzzler developed by Utah teen Robert Nay. Nay wrote the 4,000 lines of code using Corona SDK. He did have had a little help from his mom, Kari, who lent a hand with the graphics. Although he’s only in the 8th grade, Nay has been programming for six years and currently codes in languages including HTML, PHP, AJAX and Java Script.

Bubble Ball launched December 29, shortly after iTunes announced that Rovio’s Angry Birds ruled the roost as the top paid and free game.

Nay’s game has had some three million downloads since launch.

What’s it like?

Players try to move  a bubble from point A to point B. To keep things moving along, players use  geometric shapes to create ramps, platforms and catapults to send the bubble to its destination.

Simple, but perhaps that is what catapulted it to the top of the crowded gaming heap on iTunes.

I haven’t played it yet, but looking forward to checking it out: I’ve got three versions of Angry Birds on my phone already.

Source: IB Times

Steve Jobs’ latest medical leave of absence was announced one day before Apple scheduled their fiscal Q1 earnings result… which in and of itself had been scheduled during a strange period, given the scheduling history of such calls.

That was no accident, of course, but an interesting post by Andy Zaky over at the Seeking Alpha blog reveals not only the reason behind the timing, but shows that Apple and Steve Jobs had been planning this for well over a month, if not longer.

What’s worse: someone steals your car – or they steal your car with an iPad in it?

A man in Paterson, New Jersey managed to track down his stolen car thanks to the Find My iPhone app installed on his iPad.

The man reportedly left his 003 BMW X5 in a Costco parking lot at 11:30 a.m. and returned about 40 minutes later to find the car missing.

I quite like the look of Kensington’s new combination dock, stand and battery charger for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Called the PowerLift, the dock packs in its own battery to provide an additional boost of power for when you just can’t get to the mains.

It’s not a piddling battery either. The PowerLift actually will give your iPhone jolt enough to power it for another 3.5 hours of talk time, 1.5 hours of FaceTime, 5 hours of video and 20 hours of music. That’s a respectable amount of juice for when you just can’t get to the mains.

Of course, the PowerLift’s larger battery means it doesn’t have the most streamlined design in the world, but if you look at it as a travel dock that just happens to also be an external battery, there’s a lot to love here.

The Kensington PowerLift is available now for pre-order on Amazon for $50.

Verizon may have dropped its “New Every Two” promotion before the advent of the Verizon iPhone, but that’s not to say they don’t want to help some of their existing customers along with an upgrade.

AirView is a free new app that allows you to send video wirelessly between your iOS devices, as well as from iTunes to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

As perhaps is obvious from the app’s name, AirView taps into the AirPlay functionality in iOS 4.2 which allows you to beam video from your iPhone or iPad to a compatible device like an AppleTV. However, AirPlay doesn’t let you beam video from iTunes to your iPhone, or from your iPhone to your iPad.

AirView remedies that. Just open it on any iOS device and it will show up on your WiFi network as a new destination for video, just as if it were an AirPort Express or AppleTV.

Pretty neat, but grab it now: who knows how this might fall afoul of Apple’s sometimes inscrutable whims.

[via Gadget Lab]

Much of the Apple blogosphere consensus is that now that the Verizon iPhone is a real product, we should see a mass migration of Verizon users ditching their Android phones in favor of an iPhone 4. The rationale goes that the only reason Verizon has sold so many Android handsets is because it was the only thing close to the iPhone every Verizon subscriber really wanted.

That was always a perspective too black-and-white to be true, and now a new study has come out from Zokem, finding that while iPhone owners are most loyal to their existing smartphone, Android owners are the more likely to upgrade to a new Android phone than even iPhone customers.

Here at Cult of Mac, I’ve posted time and time again why I don’t think the iPad 2 will have a Retina Display, even though Apple definitely wants to give it one. It’s all about economic feasibility, and the bottom line is that an iPad packing nearly the same amount of pixels as a 27-inch iMac isn’t going to come in at a sub-$500 or even sub-$600 price range.

It appears that Daring Fireball’s John Gruber agrees. His sources, which are usually impeccable, tell him that the iPad 2 simply does not have a Retina Display, and will still run at a 1024 x 768 resolution.

Although much of Apple’s public exposure is in the U.S. and Western Europe, Asia – particularly China – has recently grown in prominence. Indeed, Tuesday, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said the tech giant earned $2.6 billion in China during the last financial quarter.

The figure encompassing mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan is a four-times increase from just a year ago and almost what the tech giant earned in the area for the entire fiscal 2010.

In the early days of the browser wars, Microsoft CEO and co-founder Bill Gates infamously is credited with instructing executives to ‘cut-off the breathing’ of upstart Netscape. Could long-time rival Apple be following Microsoft’s advice when it comes to another nascent computing technology, tablets? After slamming Android-based tablets as “bizarre” and their second-generation as vaporware, Apple quietly signed a $3.9 billion deal to ensure a smooth flow of components to its products.

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, filling in for CEO Steve Jobs while on medical leave, described a 2005 $1 billion deal to ensure flash memory for its iPods, iPhones and other memory-intensive devices, as “an absolutely fantastic use” of its growing cash bankroll. The Cupertino, Calif. company has been criticized for letting $59.7 billion in cash accumulate without either making investments or rewarding investors with stock dividends. Tuesday, Cook said Apple had made another deal with suppliers of unspecified strategic components.

Well we finally got to see the Verizon version of the iPhone 4 (big yawn) and I know many iPhone 4 users on AT&T are excited about a chance to own an iPhone that won’t drop calls (Note my iPhone 4 rarely drops calls and I really mean rarely). Although the iPhone 4 on Verizon isn’t actually here just yet it won’t hurt to get prepared for when it finally gets here.

So considering all the above — what’s the most important thing to know about a cellular carrier?

Coverage and now there’s an app for that, but unfortunately you might have better luck checking a carriers site for coverage versus using this app.

Hugh Hefner, founder of the Grandaddy of all girlie mags, Playboy, tweeted Tuesday evening that an “uncensored” Playboy is coming to iPad.

Given that the Playboy website’s metadata “description” reads: “Nude girls, hot girls, naked women and sexy pics with nude girls as well as videos of hot girls posing nude or in sexy positions celebrating girls and women …” — Hef’s tweet would appear to be in direct contradiction of Apple’s prohibition against sexually provocative material in apps designed to run on iOS devices.

Maybe Hef knows something we don’t know; perhaps he’s just hoping to take advantage of Steve Jobs being on medical leave. Or maybe Hef is just a little more hip to the buzz generating capabilities of Twitter than an 84 year-old guy ought to be.

This render is supposed to be Hewlett-Packard/Palm’s upcoming web tablet — or rather, two tablets.

According to Engadget, HP/Palm is working on a pair of tablets for launch February 9 and available later this year, likely September.

There’s a 9-inch webOS tablet codenamed Topaz and a 7-inch model named Opal, which will be pitched as an e-reader.

They feature a front-facing camera, micro USB port and a Touchstone back for wireless charging. There may be versions for different carriers: WiFi-only, AT&T 3G, and Verizon LTE in September; AT&T LTE in July 2012.

Most interestingly, the tabs are buttonless. There’s no Home button. The Home button is something that Apple is also interested in doing away with — and Apple has just introduced system-wide multitouch gestures in the latest iOS beta.

Although stock prices were still down 2% upon the news that Steve Jobs was taking another, this time open-ended medical leave of absence from Apple, the Wall Street analysts taking part in Apple’s Q1 2011 earnings call exhibited a remarkable lack of curiosity about the CEO’s health, or the company’s near future without him.

In fact, of nearly a dozen analysts asking twice as many questions during the Q&A section of the call, not a single one made even a passing reference to CEO Steve Jobs and his health.

Apple’s blowout holiday quarter included the sale of more than 16 million iPhones.

That may seem like a lot, but look at the chart above from The Atlantic: it looks like Apple’s just getting started.

In the last two quarters, Apple sold 30 million iPhones — half of what it sold in the previous three years (60 million units). In other words, iPhone sales are starting to seriously kick up.

Some analysts predict 100 million iPhones sold next year. Yeah, that’s right: One. Hundred. Million.

That’s a big frickin’ number.

Asked at today’s earnings call whether or not he feared that the success of the iPad and the rise in popularity of tablets would cannibalize Mac sales, Tim Cook not only said Apple was not afraid of cannibalization and hadn’t seen it occurring, but even if it did happen, they weren’t worried about it. In fact, Apple welcomed it.

“Last quarter, the Mac grew at eight times the PC market rate of growth, so as far as we can see, there’s no cannibalization on Mac sales by the iPad,” said Cook.

“In fact, there’s the opposite: a Halo Effect from Apple product to Apple product.”

“If this is cannibalization, it feels pretty good,” Cook laughed.

What if the tablet market does cannibalize PC sales, though? Cook downplayed the threat.

“One thing to keep in mind if the iPad and tablets do start cannibalizing, the Mac has a relatively low share in the PC market, so we actually have a lot more to win because of that, while our competitors have a lot more to lose.”

During today’s Q1 2011 earnings call, one consistent strain ran throughout: Apple could not be happier with the success of the iPad, and could not be more contemptuous of the competition.

Apple just concluded their Q1 2011 earnings call, and while Steve Jobs may be taking a leave of absence, he’s leaving his company in good shape: Apple has just had their best quarter ever, racking in over $26.7 billion in revenue, a number which blows away even the most optimistic Wall Street projections.

In Q1 2011, Apple managed to sell 16.24 million iPhones, which was a new record for the company. Even more impressively, they sold 7.33 million iPads over the holiday period, which was over 3 million more than the previous quarter.

On the Mac side, Apple sold 4.13 million Macs, a strong growth of 23 percent year-over-year, largely buoyed by the runaway success of the new MacBook Air. iPod sales, on the other hand, were down 7 percent year-over-year, continuing a steady decline.

Steve Jobs did not appear during the conference call, nor was his health referenced. However, he did provide a quote for the press release, saying: ““We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales. We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.”

Apple projects $22 billion in revenue for next quarter, as well as earnings per share of $4.90. Given Apple’s history surprising its shareholders, it’s probably going to be a lot more.

Apple has released another  software update for the late 2010 model MacBook Air.  The update isn’t currently showing up in Software Update, but it can be downloaded directly using this link.

Apple’s comments on what the update does are rather sparse all they say is that:

This update resolves an issue with some MacBook Air (Late 2010) systems that prevents the system from sleeping.

The new MacBook Air has had a few problems with the sleep/wake features of Mac OS X as well as video problems being reported by early adopters (myself included).  However, I have not seen or experienced the problems that people continue to complain about regarding external monitors and video.

Try this update out and let us know by leaving a comment how it works out for you.

Police in Louisville, Kentucky used the “Find My iPhone” app to arrest an iPhone thief — well, more some guy who saw an unattended iPhone and took it.

It’s the latest happy ending story for the app, which debuted in June 2010, and first made the police blotter about a month later when cops recovered stolen iPads and iPhones belonging to an Apple employee.

Police say the iPhone perp is 19-year-old Kyle Just, who walked off with the phone he found on a table outside the Golden Nugget Bar. The owner says he put the phone down while having a cigarette, then turned around to find his iPhone missing.

Two members of the Goatse Security group, who outed an AT&T security breach that exposed over 120,000 iPad 3G customers’ personal data, were hit with criminal charges in federal court.

Prosecuters said that Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer were each charged with a count of fraud and a count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization.

The charges come seven months after vulnerability was discovered by researchers at Goatse security, who wrote a script that harvested iPad 3G owners’ ICC-IDs (or integrated circuit card identifier, used to identify SIM cards to a network) and email addresses through exploiting a hole on AT&T’s website.

The number of accounts compromised — first thought to be about 114,000 — was upped to 120,000, some of them belonging to celebrities or other notable public figures.

The F.B.I announced that it will be holding a press conference later today to discuss charges against the pair.

Reuters reported that neither Goastse nor Apple had any immediate comment, we’ll keep you posted.

Via Reuters

With many expecting Apple to unveil gangbuster numbers for its first quarter of 2011, analysts early today were busy raising earlier predictions. One observer increased both Apple’s expected earnings to above $24 billion, with 16 million iPhone and 7 million iPads sold.

JP Morgan’s Mark Moskowitz writes Apple could “beat our above-consensus revenue and earnings-per-share estimates of $24.778 billion and $5.38.” Many Wall Street experts had predicted the Cupertino, Calif. company would earn $24.226 billion for the first financial quarter of 2011.

Verizon Wireless appears to be preparing for the sudden onslaught of new customers coming to their network for the Verizon iPhone by making it harder and more expensive to upgrade their phones at the end of two years.

Yup. Sadly, Verizon has quietly discontinued their long-running New Every Two promotion, which allowed any customers who successfully completed a two-year contract to either get a free new low-end phone or rack up credit ranging between $30 and $100 to apply to the downpayment of their next phone.

Case makers don’t necessarily know anything more than the rest of us about what the next iOS devices will look like — see, for example, the insistence of second-gen iPod Touch case makers that the next iteration of the PMP would have a camera, which didn’t happen until the FaceTime-capable model came along a year later — but they are always of interest, as they usually come from information leaking out of the factories of Apple’s own Chinese manufacturers.

The latest case designs coming out of China, then, is interesting for showing off two new openings that we haven’t seen before. The slot for the rear camera and speaker are, of course, there in their usual places, but two new holes have been carved out to fit an SD card slot and either a mini DisplayPort or an HDMI port.

Intriguing. Of course, if the iPad 2 does get an SD card slot, don’t expect to be able to use it to expand your device’s storage: it’ll strictly be for offloading photos and videos with an iPad Connector Kit.

A rather questionable new rumor is coming out of Three Guys And A Podcast. They’re claiming that Apple will not only discontinue iTunes this year but they’ll replace it with Safari. What?