Here’s Devonthink To Go for iPad and iPhone, and it has a lot to offer.
For starters, there’s two-way sync between desktop and mobile databases. Documents that have been edited in other apps can be “opened back” in Devonthink, which will update its database accordingly. And plain text files can be edited inside Devonthink To Go itself.
Halloween, with its legions of black-clad kids running around and darting out into the street, introduces its own variety of driving perils. So in addition to warning other users of speed traps and red-light cameras, Trapster users can now mark two new location types on its map this Halloween: haunted houses and trick-or-treat zones.
The free app works through crowdsourcing, which means any registered user can add markers which then become viewable to other Trapster users; and if users find a marker that’s inaccurate (say, if some user tagged their in-laws place as a haunted house), it can be removed with enough votes against it. Now if only the had a marker for houses with the best candy…
One tech-savvy 12-year-old girl spooked a would-be kidnapper by pretending to make a phone call on her iPod Touch.
Police in Delaware are still trying to track down the creep who tried to lure the girl into his van the other evening as she waited to be picked up outside Stanton Middle School.
She told police that a man in a white van pulled into the school driveway and told her to “get in the van.”
There’s been a lot of hoopla about magazine apps from the likes of Popular Science and Wired, which we reviewed favorably. But these standalone apps are doomed to failure, argues Web designer Khoi Vinh.
Stand-alone magazine apps appeal to publishers and their advertisers, but are totally at odds with the way users are interacting with their iPads, argues Vinh, who is famous for the celebrated redesign of the New York Times‘ site.
Take the recent release of the iPad app version of The New Yorker. Please. I downloaded an issue a few weeks ago and greatly enjoyed every single word of every article that I read (whatever the product experience, the journalism remains a notch above). But I hated everything else about it: it took way too long to download, cost me US$4.99 over and above the annual subscription fee that I already payfor the print edition and, as a content experience, was an impediment to my normal content consumption habits. I couldn’t email, blog, tweet or quote from the app, to say nothing of linking away to other sources — for magazine apps like these, the world outside is just a rumor to be denied. And when I plugged my iPad back into my Mac, the enormous digital heft of these magazines brought the synching process to a crawl.
Instead, Vinh said publishers should be looking to good, entertaining apps like EW’s Must List or Gourmet Live. “Neither of those are perfect,” writes Vinh. “But both actively understand that they must translate their print editions into a utilitarian complement to their users’ content consumption habits.”
What magazine apps have you guys seen that translate well to the iPad? Leave your suggestions in the comments.
Khoi Vinh: My iPad Magazine Stand.
When iOS 4.2 for iPad is released in November, jailbreakers won’t need to wait before they can have their way with their iPads.
iOS jailbreak expert, iH8sn0w, released some images today of a jailbroken iPad running the iOS 4.2 firmware. The image above shows an iPad running the MobileTerminal jailbreak application, that gives users access to the command line.
This is great news for those that like to jailbreak their devices, but it comes as little surprise to many who have expected the jailbreak release for several weeks since its announcement.
If you’ll be jailbreaking your iPad as soon as you’ve updated to the iOS 4.2 firmware, let us know what your reasons for jailbreaking are in the comments.
[via AppAdvice]
[Think Halloween graphic by ~Zefhar]
This Sunday, October 31st is Halloween and if you aren’t thinking about Halloween yet you should be. Since it is almost here.
Do you know what your costume will be this year? Need to add a little zip to your scary get up? Here is a collection of iOS apps that are bound to add some fun to the scariest holiday of the year.
If you download them and get scared don’t blame me about things you hear that go bump in the night afterwards.
We’ve mentioned the IDAPT charging station before, but it has just been updated in a variety of colors in time for the Christmas season.
If, like a lot of us here at the Cult, you have more devices than you know what to do with and not enough time (or power outlets) to charge them all, a single charging station might come in useful.
And if it’s going to be so prominent in your home, you might as well get one that fits in with your decor.
The IDAPT i4 claims to charge over 4000 different gadgets, either via adaptors for the base unit or via USB connection to it. It will charge your iPods, iPhones and iPads quite happily – and all at once. It costs $59.99 including a pack of six mixed adaptors, or you can choose to pick your own selection of four adaptors that precisely match your devices.
As we wrote a couple days ago, the guys over at TechRestore will be happy to take your new MacBook Air and give it a matte display for just $250… but doing the dry run on the operating, they uncovered some of the MacBook Air’s secrets, and according to their CEO, the panels Apple is using in the new Airs are paper thin and absolutely breathtaking.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1FxPtUMeM&feature=player_embedded
If you’ve been keeping around that old, dusty Sega Dreamcast just to occasionally send your ChuChus into battle against the nefarious KapuKapus, great news: Sega has just released their classic Dreamcast multiplayer puzzle game Chu Chu Rocket for iOS in both a $4.99 iPhone/iPod Touch version and a $6.99 HD version suitable for iPad.
I’ve been playing it all morning, and it’s a fantastic port of one of Sega’s best games, with the only real blemish on an otherwise superb title being the omission of online multiplayer. If you have any fond memories of Chu Chu Rocket at all, picking this up for the weekend is a no-brainer.
Below the jump: Chu Chu Rocket’s absolutely unforgettable original television advertisement.
I love the almost Trapper Keeper like aesthetic of the Mophie Workbook Case, which not only protects your iPad but lets you prop it up horizontally at almost any angle, perfect for typing or watching video. Sure, unlike my old Trapper Keeper, it features a synthetic leather veneer, but for some reason, I less want to put my iPad in it than lock in a bunch of cool robot folders magic-markered in block capitals with their dedicated subject.
Also unlike a Trapper Keeper is the price: a Mophie Workbook will cost you $59.95 if you want one.
Six months ago, Steve Jobs wrote his Thoughts on Flash, which argued that Flash was a dying technology and that HTML5 was the future of video on the web.
See those graph numbers up there? They were put together by MeFeedia and show that HTML5 has gone from serving up only 10% of the videos on the web earlier this year to over half of them in October. HTML5 video has, in fact, doubled its share of the web video pie in just five months.
Looks like Steve was right. Not that any of us should be surprised: even if Flash wasn’t a dying technology, Steve flat out calling it one would be enough to almost magically make it so. When Apple’s CEO talks, the tech world sits up and listens.
Cardboard boxes just don’t cut it for John Savio. His latest iPhone Halloween costume, 10 times the size of Apple’s iconic phone, contains a 75-pound 40″ LED LCD panel.
It took him 40 hours — crammed into a three-day maker marathon — to make this fully-functional iPhone. This latest version is an upgrade from his 2007 iPhone costume, which rocked a 37” LCD and projected a looped video of iPhone screens from an iPod.
The Magic Trackpad brings the feel of an Apple notebook trackpad to the desktop, but would you prefer your entire iMac desktop to feel more like typing on your MacBook Pro? Consider the BulletTrain Express, a large aluminum tray with hollows in which can be ensconced in a MacBook-like configuration both the Apple Aluminum Keyboard and Magic Trackpad.
t will cost you $99 and while to our mind the ergonomic problems seem pretty self evident when seated at a desk, we think this is probably an excellent accessory for people who want to type on their laps on their 27-inch iMacs from the more supine position of a pulled up armchair.
It’s unclear whether voters will approve California’s ballot measure to legalize and tax the growing and use of medical marijuana next week, but in light of the growing industry that’s sprouted up around the medical marijuana business, it seems immaterial.
One of the elements of that industry is the proliferation of pot-related iPhone and iPad apps.
Generally speaking, the only type of pies worth bothering with in the United Kingdoms are delicious savory ones, but if you’re jonesing for a pepperoni pizza while on a trip to olde Albion, you now have extra incentive to stop into a Pizza Express location: iPod docks built right into the seats.
Thursday marks the first day Verizon Wireless and AT&T offer the iPad. The two carriers are just the latest outlets for Apple’s extensive push to sell the tablet during the all-important holiday period. Earlier this month, the Cupertino, Calif. company unexpectedly announced Verizon would sell the iPad, alongside its longtime partner AT&T. The move only fuels speculation Verizon will soon also offer customers a CDMA version of the iPhone.
AT&T customers can purchase all three iPad models at the usual price, while Verizon subscribers will get a Wi-Fi iPad bundled with the carrier’s MiFi mobile hotspot. As for data plans, AT&T offers a 250MB per month deal for $14.99 or a $25 per month option with 2GB. Subscribers also receive unlimited access to AT&T’s more than 23,000 U.S. Wi-Fi hotspots.
Earlier this month, Valve finally brought their fantastic team-based cooperative zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 2 to the Mac. It was a much-appreciated port, but it was a bit odd, in that Valve had opted to bring Left 4 Dead 2 to the Mac before the original game in the series, which was built on the same engine.
According to Valve, the delay in bringing Left 4 Dead to the Mac simply had to do with the first game in the series being a bit more complicated to port to OS X than they had anticipated. They promised a release by Halloween, though, and I’m delighted to say that they’ve been as good as their word: load up Steam for Mac and you can now download Left 4 Dead.
The best news is it’s dirt cheap: Left 4 Dead will only cost you $9.99 if you buy it this week. Why not spend an extra 5 bucks, though, and pick up both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 for $14.99? That’s just a steal.
Like Valve’s previous games, Left 4 Dead is Steam Play compatible, which means once you own it on the Mac, you also own it on the PC, and vice versa. If you intend on shooting zombies with some buddies this Halloween, though, make sure you have OS X 10.6.4 installed, as well as a 2GHz dual-core Intel CPU, an ATI Radeon x2400 or NVIDIA 8600M GPU or better.
If you’ve been waiting to buy the white iPhone 4, we hope you’ve caved by now and just gone black instead. It’s hard to think of a more troubled product: not only has the white iPhone 4 undergone a troubled manufacturing history thanks to light leaking into the camera sensor, but Apple’s said that we can’t expect to see one until spring 2011… just three months before they unveil the fifth-generation handset.
To be honest, it doesn’t take a genius to see that the white iPhone 4 is probably never going to arrive: at this point, it makes more sense for Apple to aim to have the white iPhone ready for June for simultaneous launch with the iPhone 5 than try to sell the white iPhone 4 at the tail end of the current generation.
In fact, that’s just what Boy Genius Report is now claiming, saying that the white iPhone 4 has been secretly canceled. Not that Apple will admit as much: BGR says that they will instead just claim there’s another delay in March, and assume everyone will forget about the debacle of the white iPhone 4 by June.
Apple’s probably right: the longer the white iPhone 4 is delayed, the more the returns diminish on actually releasing it. Time for an informal poll: how many of our readers are still holding out for the white iPhone 4? Let us know in the comments.
With T-Mobile losing its iPhone exclusivity in Germany to O2 and Vodafone, the last European iPhone exclusivity deal is dead. That’s good news for German consumers, who now are not only in a position to avail themselves of the spoils of the carrier wars as different mobile providers scramble to attract customers, but who also now have the option to buy an unlocked iPhone directly from Apple.
Yesterday was a big day for Verizon iPhone rumors. Hot on the heels of a rumor that Apple was working to create a reprogrammable SIM Module that might open the door to dual GSM/CDMA compatibility comes a perhaps contradictory report from the always dicey Digitimes that suggests that Cupertino has already awarded the build contracts for a CDMA iPhone to two of the biggest Asian electronics makers.
Say goodbye to your iPhone SIM tray. Apple may be looking to get rid of their phones’ reliance upon SIM cards once and for all, instead replacing it with a custom, writeable module that would enable Cupertino to sell iPhones directly to the user without being locked to a specific carrier.
Publicly-traded companies are obliged to file annual reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision. Most are dry, recitations of a firm’s plans and projections, but sometimes they give insight into an otherwise tight-lipped organization, such as Apple. The Cupertino, Calif. company, riding high from its recent iPhone 4 and iPad successes, has increased its staff by a third, hiked its advertising budget and isn’t expecting any big acquisitions in 2011.
Apple has 26,500 employees, a third more than the 10,000 reported in 2009. The increase may be linked to the company’s retail expansion. The iPad maker has 317 retail stores, up from 273 a year ago. The company told federal regulators it plans to open 50 more retail locations in 2011.
This just in: two security companies who make their money selling anti-malware software and/or consultancy services for the Mac platform say that two new Trojans are in the OS X wild. Luckily, though, you’re only really at risk if you’re not thinking too hard about what you’re doing on your machine.
On Monday, we mentioned the launch of Peel, a new app that uses an algorithm similar to the one used by Netflix to try and figure out what its user should watch. Here’s the second half: A peek under the hood, excerpts from a chat with Peel’s (née Zelfy) VP of marketing, and a look at an accompanying piece of hardware that’s (maybe) coming next.
This might be the ultimate nightmare Halloween mask in Redmond, Wa. Regular Cult visitors will no doubt have seen it alongside ads for CultofMac Editor Leander Kahney’s book, Inside Steve’s Brain. The illustration was crafted by graphic designer Dan Draper, who also rendered the uncannily close image of the new MacBook Air for our scoop on the MBA’s details.
A life-size image suitable for plastering over an actual face can be found at Draper’s flickr page. Heads up! Trick or iPod Shuffle!