News - page 2145

Apple has just released another gold master candidate of its long-awaited iOS 4.2 firmware to developers. This version is iOS 4.2.1, and we assume it quashes the Wi-Fi bug that’s recently been affecting the iPad.

MacRumors reports that Apple has instructed developers not to resubmit their applications under the new build, suggesting that only minor fixes are included in this update.

Unfortunately it’s not the iOS 4.2 news many of us have been anticipating, however, it’s nice to see Apple are fixing these bugs before they release the firmware to the public.

Developers can get their hands on iOS 4.2.1 via the iOS Dev Centre.

This new iPhone case from Kalomix is pretty mysterious: it turns the back of your iPhone 4 into a working chalkboard.

I knew I was old the moment I realized that the foundation of my every Sunday’s pleasure was wandering down to the newsstand and picking up the latest issue of the Economist, so I’m both a little sad and a little delighted to note that I’ll no longer have to make that journey: the Economist is coming to the iPhone and iPad.

Apple has just released an incremental point update for Safari 5 on both the Mac and PC, Safari 5.0.3, as well as Safari 4.1.3 for Mac OS X Tiger.

Safari 5.0.3 is largely a security and stability release, although there are some notable improvements including more accurate top hit results in the address field, more accurate results in top sites and more reliably pop-up blocking.

You can download the new version either through Software Update, or directly from Apple’s website.

The best-looking game to ever hit iOS has now arrived on the App Store: id software Mutant Bash TV (based on an engine derived from their forthcoming next-gen shooter Rage, and taking place in the same universe) has just hit the App Store.

Google’s Docs service is meant to make office documents easier, more accessible and more collaborative by bringing them into the cloud. Instead of needing to purchase or download an office software suite, you just go to a URL, load up the web application and you’re good to go.

It’s a fantastic product, but as the desktops and notebooks we used to compute on have gradually been replaced by mobile products like smartphones and tablets, Google Docs has fallen behind.

There’s great news today for users interested in bringing their Google Docs with them on their iPhone, though: Google has just announced that they’ve vastly improved the functionality of Google Docs on iOS, and you can now even edit your documents on your iPhone or iPad.

The secret sauce is Google’s new document editor, which supports editing within Mobile Safari, albeit with a few limitations. They’re in the process of rolling out the new document editor, and it’ll work on iOS 3.0+ devices, as well as Android 2.2 Froyo… now downloads required..

Verizon’s Twitter account might have tipped the forthcoming arrival of the iPhone to America’s biggest CDMA network, but Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is still playing coy about the possibility of a Verizon iPhone.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Seidenberg says that a Verizon iPhone will only arrive “when Apple thinks it’s time.”

Apple’s iAd network has already shaken up the mobile advertising world here in the United States since its July debut, but come December, it’s going to do the same to Europe, Cupertino has just announced.

Steve Wozniak — that wonderful bear of a tech evangelist — may love his iPhone, but he’s not banking on iOS to handily win the smartphone wars: instead, the Apple co-founder says that Google’s Android operating system will be the dominating platform.

If you’ve got a second generation AppleTV and looking to add a couple of o’s to its oomph, Fire Core have just announced that they’ve got you covered: they’re porting their popular aTV Flash software from the first-generation AppleTV to the second, complete with Last.fm and browser support.

If you had twenty seven billion dollars, what would your dream be? I’d probably get myself some of those ab implants I’ve had my eye on, and perhaps pay for an oiled massage or two from Amanda Seyfriend and Anne Hathaway that they would be contractually obliged to apply without using their hands.

Billionaire Eike Batista has a radically dream, though: he wants to steal Apple manufacturing from China and bring it to his home country of Brazil.

Last week’s great disappointment was the discovery that Apple had mostly pulled AirPrint support from OS X 10.6.5, which would allow you to print documents directly from iOS to almost any shared network printer. Native AirPrint support was trimmed only to a small number of AirPrint-compatible HP printers, and while hacks exist to get AirPrint support back via the command line, they’re a little beyond the capability of most users.

Enter FingerPrint, a new application from Collobos Software that enables AirPrint printing over Bonjour for many of the omitted printers. It accomplishes its neat trick by fooling Bonjour into broadcasting your normal printer in such a way that iOS 4.2 can see it.

If you’re looking for something to make those long holiday drives a little more interesting, the DriveGain iPhone App promises to cut your gas bill by about 15% through teaching you to drive more efficiently.

The app gives penny-pinching commuters and cost-conscious city drivers visual and audio feedback on what changes they can make to their driving style to help them save fuel. Developed in the UK and first launched for cars with manual transmissions only, the latest version works on automatics too.

DriveGain costs $6.99 on iTunes. The company also offers a scaled-down gratis version called CarEconomy.

Cult of Mac talked with DriveGain CEO Simon East on the challenges of testing it with his own ride — and why the app is not like having a nagging backseat driver.

It’s Education Week on CultofMac.com. How’s Apple doing in schools these days? What are the best education apps? Is iTunes U worthwhile? Join us as we learn more about Apple in Education.

The iPad is going to be very big in schools, predicts Professor Mark Warschauer, one of the world’s leading experts in technology and learning.

In an exclusive interview, Prof. Warschauer predicted that schools may soon start buying iPads in big numbers to replace not just desktops and laptops, but also textbooks and other reading materials.

“Until a couple of years ago, the majority of book reading — and a lot of magazine and newspaper reading — was done in print,” he said in a phone interview. “I think we’re going to see that change now.”

It’s Education Week on CultofMac.com. How’s Apple doing in schools these days? What are the best education apps? Is iTunes U worthwhile? Join us as we learn more about Apple in Education.

We are a culture on the go. We work, eat, play and study on the move, multitasking all the way. It doesn’t take an advanced degree to understand the appeal of Apple’s new mobile devices, particularly iPads and MacBooks, on college and grad school campuses everywhere.  Many schools are getting in on the act directly, and facilitating mobile computing by providing iPads and MacBooks to their incoming students.

“The trend in higher education computing is this concept of mobility” said Greg Smith, George Fox University’s chief information officer, “and this fits right in.”

[polldaddy poll=”4103500″]

With thousands of courses and resources available for free on iTunes U from some of the top universities around the world, we argued, only semi-facetiously,  that it’s better than brick-and-mortar college.

Have you ever downloaded an iTunes U course?

Let us know why or why not — and what you got out of that lecture on Drinking Games in Ancient Greece — in the comments.

Traditionally Black Friday takes place on the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving — November 26th this year. It is the official start of the holiday season when retailers generally open up very early and offer deep discounts on items geared towards drawing you into their stores. They hope you’ll buy more through impulse buying.

However, in recent years things are changing so start looking for deals – now. The holiday shopping season seems to start earlier every year, but actually practically after Halloween in the US. Best Buy, Target and Walmart are already offering pre-Black Friday deals on their websites and many other retailers are too.

If you are looking for the best Black Friday deals you’re in luck because you have Apple technology to help you find them. You need to use that technology to your advantage so you don’t miss out on some good deals. I will help you get started with this first post — a technology overview for all you avid shoppers out there.

Later this week and next week I’ll follow-up with more specific information on applying these technologies which I’ll summarize here. I hope all this information will turn you into a savvy Black Friday shopper.

You don’t need fancy Bluetooth technology to make a good wireless headset: all you need to do is plug your iPod shuffle into the side-mounted 3.5mm jack on the side of the right can. Ingenious. $50 will get you a pair, in Japan at least, but we’ll have to wait for this set (or a knockoff) to cross the shores.

[via Gadget Lab]

Although Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash was a devastating opening salvo against Adobe’s bloated, buggy and insecure browser plugin, perhaps the most brutal attack in the war between Apple and Flash was Cupertino’s decision to exclude it from the software shipping on the MacBook Air… a move that has notably saved the Air two hours in battery life while simultaneously making Adobe look like a bunch of inept chumps.

Now Adobe CEO Shantau Narayan is commenting on the matter at this week’s Web 2.0 summit. Asked by Engadget about the MacBook Air’s battery life improvement without Flash installed, Narayan responded: “When we have access to hardware acceleration, we’ve proven that Flash has equal or better performance on every platform.”

Which is, of course, a besides-the-point response. Performance isn’t the issue: energy efficiency is.

However, it does seem like Adobe is ready to admit there may actually be an issue they can address, because Narayen followed that comment with an admission that Adobe was working in the labs to optimize a beta for the new Air. Not that you’d catch me dead installing it at this point, but your mileage may well vary.

We were skeptical of yesterday’s purportedly leaked shot of a new CDMA iPhone running on the Verizon network, but perhaps e’re wrong: a recent Tweet coming from Verizon’s own Verizon Careers Twitter account seems to suggest the iPhone is coming to the network soon.

The evidence is admittedly a bit ambiguous. The operator of Verizon Careers’ Twitter account pimped their recent addition of the iPad to their mobile line-up, and was then asked by Twitter user slink317 for an “iPhone hint?”

Verizon Career’s response accompanied a retweet of slinky123’s question: “yes that is the latest scoop.”

The wording’s pretty strange, but we’re not sure how else to read that besides as a quasi-official confirmation that the iPhone is coming to Verizon sometime soon. Lending some veracity to that interpretation, the Verizon Careers tweet in question has since been pulled.

What do you think? Is the Verizon coming to iPhone, or was this just some low-level drone paid to man a Twitter account making a mistake and openly speculating on Verizon’s iPhone future?

Apple has finally filled the board of directors seat vacated when Steve Jobs critic Jerome York died in March. Ron Sugar, a former Northrop Grumman CEO will chair the Audit and Finance Committee. Sugar “has been involved in the development of some very sophisticated technology,” the Cupertino, Calif. company announced Wednesday.

“I have always had enormous admiration for the people of Apple,” Sugar said in a statement. Not so for the late Jerome York, who once said he was “disgusted” by Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ concealment of his previous illness. Jobs hailed Sugar as “an engineer at heart, who then became a very successful business leader.”

One New York teenager was so put out by Apple’s endless delays in delivering the white iPhone 4 that he used gray market sources to build a $130,000 business selling them himself.

17 year old Fei Lam started whiteiPhone4now.com after production problems (namely, light leaking through the casing and onto the camera’s sensor) caused the first of the white iPhone 4’s delays.

Like many similar sites, whiteiPhone4now.com sells aftermarket conversion kits that allow iPhone 4 owners to mod their iPhone 4s to a white model themselves.

Unlike most of those other sites, though, Lam knows a guy who knows a guy who works at Foxconn, and was able to get Apple certified white iPhone 4 components shipped to him straight in Queens.

There’s a reason Amazon’s responding to Apple’s Beatles iTunes coup by slashing pricing on Fab Four CDs instead of undercutting the iTunes price in their own music service, Amazon MP3: Apple’s secured the online exclusive to Beatles tracks until sometime in 2011.

Ever since researchers announced Apple had passed RIM in handset sales, the CEO of the BlackBerry maker has been on the warpath. The latest battleground was the Web 2.0 Summit, where the leader of the Canadian company said the lead was just in Steve Jobs distorted mind.

“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7” tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience,” Jim Balsille said at his blog site. The words were echoed in a Tuesday speech on Web 2.0 technology.

This a is a guest post by Jerry Halstead of Frontier Design Group, a small, independent app development company.

Not everyone’s app is going to be featured in a viral video. Maybe yours will be mentioned by a celebrity, used in an Apple commercial, featured in a blog or news story. Whatever the event, be prepared to act quickly and don’t be reluctant to try to capitalize on it.

Here’s how we capitalized on a viral video featuring our app, iShred.