The new 11.6-inch MacBook Air is extremely netbook-like in dimensions, if not in specs or price, but if that $999 tag doesn’t do it for you, the gadget sweatshops of China would be happy to sell you a Hackintoshable MacBook Air clone for just $260, right down to the official Apple logo.
Apple’s official line of headphones and earbuds have always been pretty lackluster in my eyes, but a secret acquisition might mean that Cupertino is planning on changing all of that: according to reports, Apple might have quietly purchased a small Bluetooth wireless headphone designer a couple of months ago, and are hard at work in their labs on a new pair of totally wireless cans.
I don’t many people who have disputed Adobe Flash Player’s impact on battery life — especially since Ars Technica discovered that merely having Flash installed on the new MacBook Air took two hours off the battery life — but nonetheless, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch thinks it’s somehow indicative of a coordinated Apple plot to put them out of the business of interactive web content.
Lately, updates to Apple’s official Mac software suites have tended to be first rumored by the strange source of pages for the idiot’s guides seeded on foreign Amazon dot whatever bookstore pages… and sure enough, that oh-so-reputable source is already touting iWork ’11 as coming out sometime in the near future.
But when exactly? Probably shot down the tube along with the splintered iLife ’11 apps when the Mac App Store launches, according to reports.
Toy manufacturer Hasbro is set to unveil a pair of $30 goggles called ‘My3D’ that will attach to an iPhone or iPod Touch and allow users to enjoy 3D content, according to a report from the Associated Press on Monday.
It promises three-dimensional content that offers a 360-degree experience in gaming, virtual travel experiences and entertainment content. It’s aimed at both children and adults.
The device, which resembles a pair of binoculars with a slot in which users insert their iPod or iPhone, will be priced at $30. It will be available starting next spring at stores where Apple’s iPhones and iPod Touches are available.
Hasbro, which is the nation’s second-largest toy maker, has teamed up with Dreamworks Animations, Discovery, Sony, and IMAX to provide 3D content which will be delivered through specialized apps for the devices. The A.P. report also claims Hasbro worked closely with Apple to develop the My3D device.
I’ve been looking forward to 3D content on iOS for a long while now, and Hasbro’s My3D looks set to be incredibly popular. With a list of reputable companies helping to develop content to accompany the device, it should certainly be top-notch, and that price-tag isn’t too bad either.
[via Associated Press]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzsMSijofvc
Verizon has released its first iPad ad: “All the magic of iPad. All the nationwide power and reliability of Verizon.”
[polldaddy poll=”4054982″]
Friday we wrote about how to avoid getting your alarms messed up by the iPhone daylight savings bug when daylight savings changed over the weekend.
If you were affected by the bug, let us know what happened in the comments.
Late for work? Early to the gym? Missed your flight?
Remember the ApplePeel 520? It was basically an iPod Touch case that contained a cellular radio: plug it into your jailbroken iPod Touch and you could transform it into an iPhone… or at least make or receive phone calls and text messages with it. Right.
Well, Yosion — the company who made the device — is now preparing a version of the ApplePeel 520 for the iPad. They don’t seem to want to turn the iPad into a big phone with it, though, but rather to bring 3G capabilities to WiFi-only iPads.
iOS 4.2 is likely to be released sometime this week, unifying the iPhone and iPad into one operating system while simultaneously bringing AirPrint, AirPlay and more to all devices. For iPad owners, it’s a particularly exciting update, since it brings many of the features (most obviously multitasking) that iPhone owners have been taking for granted since iOS 4.0.
The Gold Master Seed has gone out to developers, so it’s imminent, but when exactly is iOS 4.2 coming to us regular joes and janes? It’s unknown, but there’s a couple of good guesses: either November 9th or November 12th.
The November 9th date comes via Inside-Handy, which says that Apple told Deutsche Telekom (aka T-Mobile in Germany) of the release date.
On the other hand, the November 12th release comes from reports that Apple will be pushing some carrier updates in Europe on November 12th.
In all honesty, both these dates are pretty suspect, but considering the fact that Apple is probably going to release iOS 4.2 and iTunes 10.1 this week, there’s a good chance one of them will be right… at least as a fluke.
Last week, the Skyfire browser made headlines for two separate “firsts” on the iOS platform.
First up, Skyfire finally did what Adobe couldn’t and brought Flash to iOS, albeit non-natively. Instead, the Skyfire browser converts Flash videos to HTML5 on their own servers, then pumps the HTML5 to your iPhone or iPad instead.
Pretty neat, but I actually like Skyfire’s second accomplishment more: they managed to be the first iOS app to ever “sell out.”
Quite a trick with an infinitely copyable, digital good, but the Skyfire team had a good excuse: their app was selling like such gangbusters that the servers used to convert Flash to HTML5 on the fly couldn’t cope with demand. They’d sold out of bandwidth, not copies of the app itself.
Skyfire has spent the weekend beefing up its servers. The good news is that if you’re lucky, you should be able to buy Skyfire again soon. The bad? Skyfire’s selling the app in batches to make sure they servers don’t get overwhelmed: they’ll put the app back up on the App Store for a little while, pull it, then put it back up a few hours later.
An interesting approach to say the least. If you’re interested in giving Skyfire a spin, check out their Twitter feed for word when the next batch will go live.
Speculation and squatting on app names has been a going on in the App Store for a while. It eventually became so problematic that Apple initiated some serious new guidelines aimed at cracking down on App Store squatters who were sitting atop popular app names without any app to show for it. That policy change seems to have worked in cutting down on name squatting in the iOS app store…. but if early indications are to be believed, it appears that Apple’s forthcoming Mac App Store might have an even bigger squatting problem on its hands, and that problem could keep some of the Mac’s best loved software frozen out of the Mac App Store indefinitely.
Without a front facing camera, there’s not much an iPhone 3GS can do with FaceTime, even if it could be be enabled… but when has the mere logistics of a hack gotten in the way of the jailbreak community? Here it is: FaceTime on the iPhone 3GS, courtesy of iPhoneIslam.
How much is a good iPad app worth? According to a new report, quite a bit more than a decent iPhone app… and the margin between the two is growing every day.
How far in advance would Apple film a commercial for the second-generation iPad? Depending on the answer to that question, Apple might be readying the iPad 2 for release, getting an ad in the can for next April… or, well, not filming an ad for the iPad 2 at all.
The Solid State Drive, or SSD, appears to be the future of Apple devices, including the recently updated MacBook Air. Toshiba, the maker of the SSD in the razor-thin MBA is making the Blade X-gale series more widely available. The drives – just around 2.2mm thick – are available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB configurations to resellers and bulk purchasers.
“Delivering a product that enables superior user experience in a smaller footprint is the ultimate goal,” said Scott Nelson, vice president, Memory Business Unit, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. A denser memory module permits the smaller size, Nelson explained.
Over the weekend, Apple CEO Steve Jobs provided a few (very few) reasons why the Cupertino, Calif. was shelving the Xserve: it wasn’t selling well. “Hardly anyone was buying them,” Jobs explained in an email to a French website.
In a related mini-mystery, an Apple executive publicly affirmed Apple will still support its server customers, but then mysteriously deleted the message.
This just in: RetromacCast reports on another variation of iPhone art, this time a large framed replica of an iPhone. Created from individual iPhone app coasters, RMC co-host James initially suspected a force of iEvolution at work but was pleased to learn this was a 40th birthday gift from his wife. Famed Banana Jr creator (and RMC co-host) John assisted with framing details like the home button and speaker.
Wisely, they didn’t attempt to create a white model. Full photoset on Flickr, coasters from Meninos.
Small, portable, expensive and hard to trace. A young police officer in Samoa must have been thinking the same things most that most iPod thieves think when he devised a plan to get his hands on Apple’s portable music player.
And evidently that “gotta-have-it” impulse was strong enough not only to push him to cross the line between law enforcer and law breaker — but to plan a break-in to get the iPod from the office of the head of state.
23-year-old police officer Aumua Marcus Hunt first pleaded not guilty to one charge of theft, but then copped to stealing the iPod from the government office.
Cult of Mac joined the mobile vanguard Friday with a dedicated mobile version of the site’s content at https://m.cultofmac.com/. An automatic redirect should take mobile users to the leaner, cleaner version optimized for mobile devices but if Internet caching prevents that at present for particular users, simply point your device’s browser to the mobile URL.
Once you’re there, follow the easy steps below to place a Cult of Mac site icon in the next empty space on your (in this illustrated case) iPhone’s home screen, from which you’ll be able to easily access all the great news and information posted here daily.
This is a huge hack: a plucky modder has resurrected a Macintosh SE/30 using a Seagate Dockstar, a small Linux server running a 1.2GHz ARM processor, a few USB 2.0 ports and 128MB of RAM. Not only does it work as a server, but in runs a Mac emulator, and even the floppy drive works… but it reads SD cards mounted on a floppy-shaped protoboard instead of ancient 5.25 discs! He even restored the Mac to pristine condition by bathing it in chemicals to return it to its vintage, unyellowed color. Amazing!
Remember Epic’s stunning display of the Unreal Engine 3 running on the iPhone with Epic Citadel? That was more of a technology demonstration than anything else, but the first proper game running Unreal Engine 3 is coming to the App Store soon in Chair’s Project Sword, a swipe-controlled fighter with an RPG level-up and equipment mechanic…. and as you can see from the trailer above, it looks breathtaking.
As a gamer, I’ve slowly gotten used to the virtual D-pads and buttons in iOS games, but in all honesty, I still miss the tactility of real buttons underneath my thumb pads.
That said, I can’t imagine who would go in for this: the Tactile+Plus is a transparent overlay you put over your iPhone or iPod Touch’s screen to lend tactile feedback to a virtual D-pad.
Comment of the week comes from reader Flash Man regarding the story that Adobe’s Flash kills battery life. Writes Flash Mac:
A new study also indicates that using web and desktop applications will significantly decrease battery life. In fact, in a stunning series of tests soon to be released, scientists have determined that simply running the computer would decrease the battery by up to 50X compared to keeping it in the ‘off’ or ‘standby’ mode. Scientists are looking for solutions to this problem. One five year old girl suggested plugging in some kind of ‘charging device’ to combat this threat. Fanboys quickly dismissed the idea as too simple and instead suggested purchasing multiple Macbooks and having an elaborate series of spares available at all times. Additionally, Apple suggests purchasing an AppleTV and an iPhone to make end users feel better.
If you liked the idea of an iMac G3 coffee maker but held off spending a few hundred dollars because it only made coffee: listen up. Now you can make your morning cappuccino with it.
It’s the handiwork of Klaus Diebel at Kiwidee, who, not content to have made an subwoofer-amped stereo system with an iMac as well as the coffee maker, kept on DIYing.
The result? The iMac Coffee Edition was fitted with an injector system and a milk frother was added, so now it can make cappuccino.
The iPhone is undeniably huge in Japan, where the device accounts for over sixty percent of all smartphones sold. The iPhone 4 alone has been the number one selling handset in Japan for the last 18 weeks.
That’s not to say its dominance is unassailable though. Call it a spin, call it a blip, but this week saw the iPhone fall out of the number one spot in Japan for the first time in over four months, as Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy S smartphone careened into the standings at number one.
