There are few vintage computing clans who rival Cult of Mac members in zeal and tenacity, but fans of the Commodore Amiga come close. The successor to the widely popular Commodore 64, the Amiga was a 16 bit multitasking computer that found great success in the gaming and video production markets.
Now the Computer-That-Never-Dies is coming to the OS of the future: iAmiga for iOS has been demoed and is (hopefully) coming soon to the App Store.
Whenever the Mac App Store launches, it’s not going to be as full-featured as the iOS equivalent. We already knew that the Mac App Store would launch without promo code support, but according to new information Apple has just sent to developers, it also won’t support Game Center or in-app payments at launch.
The storied Verizon iPhone remains as questionably and rumorous as a cryptozoological specimen: no matter how many times it is reported as a soon-to-be-imminent reality, it never quite seems to come about, no matter how assertive the Wall Street Journal or New York Times seem to be about the matter.
Still, even if it hasn’t come about yet, Apple’s clearly interested in the possibility of bringing the iPhone to Verizon when their exclusivity deal with AT&T ends, as evidenced by this most recent job posting looking to hire a new staff member who is experienced with Verizon’s CDMA network.
OBiON, a free mobile communications app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch now available for download from the iTunes App store, is an exciting — if still evolving — tool that offers more power and flexibility than any similar app available today.
The app is the mobile centerpiece in a new communication paradigm being charted by Obihai Technology, a Cupertino, CA start-up founded by the developers of the first Analog Telephone Adapter, which made “Internet calling” possible without the use of a computer and spawned the growth of Vonage and dozens of other Internet Telephony Service Providers.
Now, in conjunction with the OBiTALK web portal and the company’s Obi110 Voice Services Bridge, OBiON users can leverage the ability to make and receive calls from local or remote landlines, as well as to and from multiple VoIP services on Apple mobile devices.
In its quarterly earnings call today, Costco announced that it has begun the process of “phasing out” Apple products by “mutual agreement.”
The falling out appears to have been caused by a variety of events that highlight fundamental incompatibilities between the two companies:
* Apple may have refused to offer the steep discounts to Costco that most other companies have. As a result, Apple products have never been super cheap at Costco.
* Apple has always refused to allow Costco to sell Apple products online.
* iLounge reported back in October that Apple “snubbed” Costco over iPad shipments, passing over the retailer and showering iPads on competitors like Target, Walmart and Sam’s Club.
It’s very likely that Costco will continue to sell Apple-compatible third-party accessories, however, including in stores and online.
Steven P. Jobs was recently named (again) the awesomest CEO on the planet, but is it possible he could also be cast in the Scrooge role this Holiday Season?
On a day when 26 year-old It Boy Mark Zuckerberg is making headlines for pledging (along with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz) to join the likes of former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in giving the majority of his personal wealth to charity, a New York Times news piece recounts the difficulty non-profit organizations have encountered raising funds through in-app donations using iOS mobile apps.
It all leads one to ask: what does the 2nd largest company in the world have against charitable giving?
Evolution is a wonderful thing (relax, creationists — we’re only talking the electronic kind here), and iPhone app Twitcal‘s transformation today into SnapCal brings big changes along with the name switch — not the least of which is that the cool little app is now free (down from $3) through iAd support.
For those who aren’t familiar with the app, SnapCal lets users broadcast event details through Twitter, which can then be easily imported into the app’s calendar by other SnapCal users. Events can also be auto-updated by following another user’s calendar. And now, the app can also import events from Evernote and sync with Google Calendar.
SnapCal can also be freed of its iAd shackles for a buck through an in-app purchase.
Incase just launched this iPhone 4 battery case called the Snap which it says can extend the juice on your mobile device by 40%.
It’s got a built-in 900 mAh battery, features hardshell construction with a soft-touch coating, a female 30-pin connector for charging and syncing, an LED power indicator and control button, an included 30-pin to USB cable and open access to all ports and controls.
For sure, the Snap gives a little less of that piggy-back-bulk than competitor Mophie Juice Pack Air – and costs about $30 less at $60 than the Juice Pack.
$60 for a charger case isn’t exactly lunch money, but probably worth the back up if you face long commutes or watch a lot of battery-sucking video on your iPhone 4.
Via Incase
Although the service has already made a fairly impressive debut on the Mac, we’ve been waiting to see what gaming thin client OnLive had in store for iOS.
The potential for gamers is pretty great: imagine a graphically intensive PC game running at maximum graphical settings on your iPad or iPhone, thanks to Onlive’s fantastic streaming technology.
The only problem: how do you translate a PC or console game’s controls to a touchscreen without porting it over? Earlier in the year, Onlive demonstrated one solution and showed Gearbox’s fantastic shooter Borderlands being played on an iPad, but the controls looked pretty cumbersome.
It doesn’t look like Onlive’s come up with any better solution in the six months since that demo, though, because they still haven’t delivered a way to play their library of streamed games on iOS devices. Still, it looks like they are at least trying to raise awareness of their company on the App Store, because they’ve just announced that they have enabled game spectating on the iPad.
Sure, it’s better than nothing, but I really want to see a more aggressive move towards iOS on Onlive’s part at this point.
The iPhone 4 is already one of the most luxurious phones you can own, but since everyone already has one, how can you, millionaire Joe Paleontologist, separate yourself from the rest of the hoi polloi?
How about an iPhone 4 forged of meteoric stone and a bloody, flesh-tearing cuspid ripped from the jaw bone of pre-history’s most fearsome thunderlizard?
Much to the annoyance of parents who have to pay the credit card bills, in-app iPhone and iPad buys are popular with kids.
A typical scenario: your tot is playing with a game like “The Smurfs’ Village.” It’s free to download will keep the kid busy building a village where they can play with the famous blue cartoon characters.
The problem? To complete the Smurf village, your kid might want to add an extra, say, a wheelbarrow of Smurfberries.
That in-app purchase comes with a price tag of $59.99. Other extras are slightly cheaper – a bucket of Smurfberries costs $4.99, two bushels go for $11.99.
Intel’s integrated graphic solutions are pretty lame even on Windows machines, but that makes them doubly so when running an operating system as GPU-intensive as Snow Leopard, which is exactly why Apple has embraced NVIDIA’s superior mobile chipsets.
Unfortunately, a lawsuit between Intel and NVIDIA complicated matters from Apple, and ultimately ended up resigning Apple’s current-gen laptops CPU obsolescence, but it was recently suggested that Intel and NVIDIA were soon to settle their differences, allowing Apple to update their MacBook line to more advanced Intel CPUs without having to sacrifice the integrated NVIDIA graphics architecture that helps keep even entry-level Macs running speedily along.
A new rumor, however, suggests the smaller MacBook line (13-inches) might be advanced through a different method: by ditching NVIDIA entirely.
A Danish tabloid is threatening to take Apple to court, and over what? The exposed breasts of the nubile and flax pin-up girls who have graced Ekstra Bladet‘s ninth page for the last thirty five years.
If you are one of the many Apple rumor mongers who expects the Mac App Store to flutter cherubically out of the fertile womb of Software Update later this week, The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple suggests you put your celebratory cigars back in the humidor: it ain’t coming this week, or even this month. Dang.
Are you proud to call yourself a skinflint throwback to the antiquated ideals of Neo-Chaucerian 2009? Best Buy’s got a deal for you: a totally free iPhone 3GS.
A mere half a minute just not enough time to figure out if you actually want to pluck down that hard earned buck on The Pipkins’ classic sonnet, “Gimme Dat Ding”? You now have thrice the time to sample, courtesy of iTunes.
Apple has released another software update for the new 11 and 13-inch MacBook Air models. This update, which is an EFI firmware upgrade, follows the previous update released shortly after the new MacBook Air went on sale and other alleged fixes in Mac OS X 10.6.5.
According to Apple, “This update resolves a rare issue where MacBook Air boots or wakes to a black screen or becomes unresponsive. This update is recommended for all 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air (late 2010) models. ”
It has emerged today that when the Mac App Store launches for Snow Leopard in the coming months, developers will not be given the opportunity to generate promo codes for their applications like iOS developers can.
In the iTunes Connect Developer Guide, Apple states that promo codes are for iOS apps only, and are not available to apps made for Mac OS X.
Until today, App Store promo codes were only redeemable in the U.S. iTunes Store, meaning those of us in other countries and without a U.S. iTunes account were unable to take advantage of promo code distributions and giveaways.
Apple has now made developers aware that promo codes are no longer limited to U.S. customers, and that they can now be redeemed in any App Store.
Your promo code distribution is no longer limited to U.S. customers. Promo codes in iTunes Connect can now be redeemed by all App Store customers worldwide. Your Team Agent can request 50 codes per version of your app in iTunes Connect and your customers can redeem these codes in any App Store. To learn more about requesting promo codes in iTunes Connect, see the iTunes Connect Developer Guide.
Forget drug mules: Chinese officials recently busted a ring of housewives acting as iPad mules.
Customs officials in Shenzhen caught 14 women, described as fashionably-dressed housewives, trying to carry 88 iPads and 340 mobile phones across the border from Hong Kong. The goods were worth an estimated 950,000 yuan, or about $143,000.
The methods sound similar to drug runners: one of them strapped 65 mobile phones around her waist and another 20 stuffed into a handbag, according to newspaper Guangzhou Daily.
Why the smuggle trouble? Even though the iPad is made in China, only the wi-fi version is available currently on the mainland.
Instead of trying to ban iPods and cell phones, one school district is telling kids to bring their own tech to school.
In the Green Bay area of Wisconsin, officials tired of trying to regulate the use of iDevices. Now at the Pulaski School District, for example, kids are encouraged to bring their cell phones, iPods and computers to class.
“Teachers can post questions, and kids can respond using their phones or their own computers,” said Amy Uelmen, instructional technology coordinator for the Pulaski district. “In the old days, we would take students to a computer lab; now you can bring it all into the classroom.”
We’re pretty big on Dropbox here at the Cult, and it’s handiness as a transfer/storage utility for Macs and iDevices alike hasn’t really been challenged. That is, till now.
Spot Documents works with the same basic idea: Its free OS X or iOS apps can be used to upload a user’s e-junk to Spot Document’s cloud — in this case, hosted on Amazon’s S3 servers — where it’ll be stored and made available for download/viewing. The difference is that where Dropbox is pretty slim on options, Spot Documents seems to be substantially more powerful: Spotlight-like search, full previews even on iDevices, and the ability to play around with access options for multiple users. And more.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is ‘CEO of the Decade’, according to MarketWatch, which likens the iPhone, iPod and iPad guru to Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell for his impact on society. The announcement comes just a year after Fortune named Jobs as CEO of the Year.
Jobs held the reigns on what the financial publication termed “a virtual orgy of technological wonderment.”
Earlier this year, analysts suggested if Verizon gained the iPhone, it would hurt the growth of Android as a competitor to Apple’s popular handset. Now comes word from one of the top Apple analysts appearing to confirm that strategy. All talk points to Verizon getting the iPhone in early 2011, a move that will ‘test’ the Google-created operating system in the United States.
“The greatest factor in the success of Android has been Verizon,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors Tuesday. “Customers are loyal to their carrier, and once Verizon gets the iPhone, we believe Android’s success in the U.S. will be tested.”
Chrome started life as a browser, now it’s an OS. Well, sort of an OS. If you’re only running one application, you don’t need much OS.
The Chrome Notebook is Google’s very early foray into the world of hardware – backed, of course, by its extensive existing online software products. Here’s an overview video:
The Chrome Notebook has a full size keyboard, 8 hour battery life, a built-in webcam, and both wifi and 3G connectivity. You log in with your Google Account. The Chrome browser treats webapps the way the iTunes Store treats iOS apps: you can browse them, and “install” them. Each app runs in a separate tab.
Want one? You’ll have to apply like everyone else. Good luck.