There’s no other way of saying this: Camera Camouflage is sneaky.
It’s a camera app that goes out of its way to avoid looking like a camera. It disguises itself as an incoming phone call. You can even instruct it to activate your phone’s ringtone, so you can pretend to take the call and hold the phone to your ear.
At which point, things get even sneakier.
Within weeks, you should be able to walk into most AT&T and Verizon stores and walk out with an iPad. The two carriers announced Thursday they will begin selling the Apple tablet October 28. The announcement should fuel speculation Apple is preparing to soon sell the iPhone through Verizon.
AT&T said it will sell the iPad 3G version with its pre-paid 3G plans, while Verizon will bundle the iPad Wi-Fi with its MiFi mobile hotspot device. Earlier this year, a leaked Verizon memo mentioned the iPad was an “opportunity for VZW” to sell the MiFi. Verizon will also sell the iPad 3G.
Two monthly plans will be offered by AT&T, ranging between $14.99 for 250MB and $25 for 2GB with no term contract. Both provide iPad owners unlimited Wi-Fi access at AT&T’s more than 23,000 national hotspots. The 16GB iPad will cost $629, with $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB.
Verizon will offer a $20 plan for up to 1GB of data. Verizon will offer the iPad Wi-Fi bundled with their MiFi. A 16GB iPad Wi-Fi bundle will cost $629.99, with $729.99 for a 32GB bundle and $829.99 for the 64GB iPad Wi-Fi package. The price of a Wi-Fi 3G will match that of AT&T.
Both the carriers and Apple made pointed-references to the all-important upcoming holiday buying season. “As we approach the holiday season, we are very happy that customers will now be able to buy iPad Wi-Fi + 3G at AT&T Stores,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “This is the perfect pairing for holiday travels,” Verizon Wireless CEO CEO John Stratton added.
[via AppleInsider]
Foxconn, the main manufacturer of Apple’s iPhone, Thursday confirmed an earlier report suggesting it will charge clients more for making mobile handsets. However, the company says competitors likely will not use the move to entice clients. “Most clients have already agreed to the new quotes,” a Foxconn representative told reporters.
Foxconn noted not all clients have yet to sign-up for the new pricing arrangement. Unknown is to which camp Apple belongs. Wednesday, a Taiwan-based publication reported a Citibank analyst believe Hon Hai, Foxconn’s parent, would raise manufacturing costs for October.
If you recently used Limera1n or GreenPois0n to jailbreak your iOS device, and want to make sure that iTunes doesn’t automatically update your device’s firmware whenever the next update is released by Apple, then here is a quick fix to prevent you from accidentally updating your iPhone/iPod/iPad.
In 1983, Steve Jobs wooed Pepsi executive John Sculley to Apple with one of the most famous lines in business: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
Jobs and Sculley ran Apple together as co-CEOs, blending cutting edge technology (the first Mac) with cutting edge advertising (the famous 1984 ad) and world-class design. But it soon soured, and Sculley is best known today for forcing Jobs’ resignation after a boardroom battle for control of the company.
Now, for the first time, Sculley talks publicly about Steve Jobs and the secrets of his success. It’s the first interview Sculley has given on the subject of Steve Jobs since he was forced out of the company in 1993.
“There are many product development and marketing lessons I learned working with Steve in the early days,” says Sculley. “It’s impressive how he still sticks to his same first principles years later.”
He adds, “I don’t see any change in Steve’s first principles — except he’s gotten better and better at it.”
Here’s a full transcript of my interview with John Sculley on the subject of Steve Jobs.
It’s long but worth reading because there are some awesome insights into how Jobs does things.
It’s also one of the frankest CEO interviews you’ll ever read. Sculley talks openly about Jobs and Apple, admits it was a mistake to hire him to run the company and that he knows little about computers. It’s rare for anyone, never mind a big-time CEO, to make such frank assessment of their career in public.
UPDATE: Here’s an audio version of the entire interview made by reader Rick Mansfield using OS X’s text-to-speech system. It’s a bit robotic (Rick used the “Alex” voice, which he says is “more than tolerable to listen to”) but you might enjoy it while commuting or at the gym. The audio is 52 minutes long and it’s a 45MB download. It’s in .m4a format, which will play on any iPod/iPhone, etc. Download it here (Option-Click the link; or right-click and choose “Save Linked File…”).
It seems a little nutty, but Steve Jobs deemed that the team developing the original Macintosh couldn’t exceed more than 100 people. Here’s why.
What did Steve Jobs do when Sony founder Akio Morito do gave him one of the first Sony Walkmans off the production line?
It’s commonly believed that Apple wouldn’t have nearly gone out of business if it had only licensed the Mac operting system to other computer makers, like Microsoft did. But John Sculley explains why that was impossible:
With the invention of the Macintosh in 1984, Steve Jobs commercialized modern graphical computing. But he oversaw another invention from that era that was just as brilliant but no one mentions these days.
There’s a great scene at the end of Bridge on the River Kwai when Alec Guinness’ character assess his career in the British Army and admits it’s been a disappointment. Ex-Apple CEO John Sculley takes a similar look at his stint at the top of Apple, and says the company made a big mistake when it hired him as CEO. It’s the most surprisingly frank admission I’ve ever heard anyone make about their career.
Here’s what he said:
One of the first things Steve Jobs did on his return to Apple was kill the Newton, the brick-sized messagepad that some blame for dragging the company towards bankruptcy. But John Sculley argues that the Newton actually prevented Apple from going out of business.
Here’s why:
When Steve Jobs went to visit Dr. Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, the two inventors agreed that products aren’t invented — they are discovered.
Back in the 80s, Apple was modeled not on other PC companies, but Italina auto makers.
John Sculley:
Engineers are far more important than managers at Apple — and designers are at the top of the hierarchy. Even when you look at software, the best designers like Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, Steve Capps, were called software designers, not software engineers because they were designing in software. It wasn’t just that their code worked. It had to be beautiful code. People would go in and admire it. It’s like a writer. People would look at someone’s style. They would look at their code writing style and they were considered just beautiful geniuses at the way they wrote code or the way they designed hardware.
Apple has a reputation for sweating the details. Even its packaging is beautiful and carefully designed. This all came from Japan, says John Sculley.
We’ve posted before about Karas Kustom’s line of iPhone 4 cases, which are sort of metallic girder structures to reinforce your iPhone 4’s fragile front and back plates while keeping your skin from directly contacting the antenna.
We liked them, but some of you gagpuked in the comments about their look, in which case… maybe Karas Kustom’s new range of colors will help sway you? Their iPhone 4 cases now come in silver, black, nlue, red, green, violet, orange, gold and pink anodize… and if you’re willing to pay a little more (well, more than twice as much, really) you can get your Karas case in copper, brass and phenolic, which Karas brags is “three times heavier than the original aluminum cases and will form a natural patina from normal use.”
“Heavier” and “patina” are two words I never thought a company making iPhone cases would be using braggingly in their press release, but there you go. The aluminum cases are the same price as they ever were at $39, but if you want one of the copper or brass cases, expect to pay $89 for your trouble.
Valve Software is a company which has been heaping much love on Mac gamers over the last few months, and whose much anticipated physics-based first person puzzler Portal 2 will be debuting early next year on both PC and Mac simultaneously. It’s about to get even better: they’ve just announced their next game, Dawn of the Ancients 2, coming sometime in 2011. Even better? It’s coming to the Mac.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wP-t_XZ5As
If you ever had an Amiga, prepare to squeal: the Bitmap Brothers have just announced that, in association with Tower Studios and Vivid Games, they will be bringing their famous Amiga game Speedball 2 to iOS.
JBL continues to solidly plug away at the take of making affordable, decent sounding iPhone and iPod portable speaker docks with their latest, the On Stage Micro IV and On Stage Micro III, both boasting a new and eyebrow arching design the company affectionately refers to as “the Weave.”
Compact and easily slung about, the new OnStage units feature aluminum-domed transducers to deliver accurate high-frequency response, as well as a slipstream port design that is meant to optimize bass output while doing away with distortion. The On Stage IV comes with four Odyssey transducers, which will pump out vibrant, deep and limpid sound perfect for most environments, while the On Stage Micro III only comes with two.
If you’re on a Mac, you’ve probably noticed that the connectors needed to hook up an external monitor have changed quite a bit in the last couple of years… especially if you’ve got an older Mac and are trying to hook it up to a new monitor.
Kanex to the rescue, who have just released three new adapters to make it easier to hook any Mac you please up to your sexy new display.
Tuesday’s news that San Francisco-based iPhone game creator ngmoco had been snatched up for a rumored $400 million by Japanese game developer DeNA raised eyebrows for the sheer massiveness of the sum involved, but Stuart Dredge of Mobile Entertainment has broken down the numbers.
As it turns out, the rumors were true, to a point: The actual payment for ngmoco is $303 million, a payment made up of $146 million in common stocks, $27 million in DeNA investments and $128 million cash, which is actually a third of DeNA’s total savings. They’re betting hard on this being a good deal.
Additionally, a $100 million bonus will be paid to ngmoco if they keep their sales numbers up to a certain standard, and as part of his analysis, Dredge has given us a look at the App Store numbers of one of the biggest app publishers out there: ngmoco has seen 50 million downloads on the App Store and has twelve million users on their Plus+ gaming network across 119 games.
Ultimately, though, is this a smart acquisition? DeNA seems to think so based on the amount they were willing to spend, but ngmoco only brought in $3.16MM last year against a $10.89MM loss, and their 2008 numbers were even worse. Either ngmoco’s doing gangbusters this year or DeNA’s gambling hard on this deal.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g73GfmTtUM
Speaking of jailbreaks, check out this trailer for Unlocked, a mock biopic in the style of The Social Network incorporating footage from his various media appearances as well as a movie starring The Wire’s Ziggy that I’d be pleased if you guys would identify for me in the comments.
Brilliant, though I can’t tell if it’s been done by geohot’s fans or people pissed off at his jailbreaking queue-hopping on Sunday.
We’ve only had the iOS 4.1 jailbreak for a few days, but the most publicly vocal (and, let’s face it, beefcakiest) member of the Dev Team, MuscleNerd, has just hit his Twitter feed, letting people know that a new version of the Limera1n and greenp0ison jailbreaks will be coming on Sunday and support iOS 4.2.
Ever since the iPhone was first released, there’s been at least one mouth-breathing dweeb nasally whining that the lack of physical controls completely castrates the device as a serious gaming console. Well, dweeb, three years later and the iPhone’s only the biggest handheld gaming platform ever, but you do raise an interesting point: why hasn’t someone managed to graft a D-Pad onto an iPhone after all this time?
It’s not like people aren’t working on it, of course: the guys doing the iControlPad have been plugging away at the project for years, only to be set back on the eve of release by fears of Apple’s legal team. That appears to have been the last straw for Benjamin Morisse, who has just launched the Controller or Bust project to try to quickly crowdsource the design, production, funding and manufacturing of an iPhone controller.
