The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both agree that a CDMA iPhone is coming to Verizon in January, and their agreement on the matter has one of Apple’s strategic leaks written all over it. But when the iPhone comes to Verizon, will it be boasting 4G mobile internet speeds?
Don’t count on it, says Steve Cheney of Techcrunch, who reports that the Verizon iPhone to debut in January will be unable to access Verizon’s LTE network.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHlN21ebeak
This is the first TV advert from Microsoft for its new Windows Phone 7 — and it’s actually pretty good.
Well, it’s not embarrassingly strange and meaningless like Microsoft’s recent advertising.
Even if the ad has little to do with Windows Phone 7 per se, and more about mobile culture in general, it’s still eye-catching and engaging, which is more than can be said for the Vista ads.
What’s going on? The phones look pretty good and the advertising does too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3pHac6Otqk
Here are a selection of videos from Microsoft introducing the Windows 7 phone software and some of the different handsets. Above: New Windows Phone 7 devices available from Dell, HTC, LG and Samsung.
It’s worth watching a couple of these videos to get an idea of how the competition for mobile is heating up. If the videos present a true picture of the Windows Phone 7 experience, it looks like a credible competitor to the iPhone.
The easy customization of the Windows Phone 7 home screen — “pinning,” in Microsoft’s parlance — looks like a compelling feature. Home screen customization isn’t something you about from iPhone users — but it is a feature you hear Android users talk about a lot.
Pogoplug has updated their free app over the weekend, and it now sports the ability to stream and play music in the background over either a wifi or 3G connection from a network-attached storage device running the Pogoplug engine — which currently means either a Pogoplug unit or one from Seagate.
The big advantage the Pogoplug app’s new function has over, say, the free Zumocast app (which debuted last month and does the same thing), is that the Pogoplug version doesn’t require a computer running from which to stream music. Downside? You’ll need to pop for a Pogoplug-equipped NAS unit, if you don’t already have one. The app also gains background photo uploading and fast app-switching.
Next, hopefully Pogoplug will improve the app’s movie-streaming capability, which sorely lacks the ability to convert videos on the fly to a streaming-freindly format, like Zumocast does.
It’s taken them over three years to respond to the revolutionary shift in the mobile operating system landscape posed by iOS, but Microsoft has finally done it and released a properly modern, properly app-laden and properly multi-touchable successor to the Windows Mobile series: Windows Phone 7. But what differentiates Windows Phone 7 from Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Mobile 6 and a host of even crappier mobile operating systems squirted out by Microsoft?
Quite a bit, actually, and it’s quite a bit better… but it’s still two years behind the curve of iOS.
While we all wait for the final version of iOS 4.2 to arrive, the iPad’s inability to multitask is growing increasingly obnoxious — especially when our iPhones are humming along in 4.1. Worse still, an iPad running 4.2 is obviously using a multitasking scheme well-suited to an iPhone, not a tablet. In spite of increased screen real estate, there’s no way to keep a video window popped open in an unused portion of the screen in Safari, or to keep a Skype dialer overlaid on other tasks. No one wants a full desktop experience, but an iPhone-sized widget that can be moved around the screen would make the iPad truly special.
Julian Horsey of Geeky Gadgets has created a hack that shows what the future could hold, if Apple loses all sense of design and taste in the near future, with a clever clip to attach an iPhone to an iPad. With this two-headed monstrosity, you can multitask exactly as you would want to. This isn’t for the faint of heart — not because the hack is particularly difficult, but because you would actually have to be seen with it in public.
Via Geeky Gadgets
No matter how much you might dislike Microsoft and all its creations, you have to admire their pluck for calling in none other than Stephen Fry for today’s Windows Phone 7 launch event.
Fry is well known as an ardent supporter of all things Apple, but that reputation is to some degrees a creation of Fry’s own fans.
The thing is, he doesn’t just support Apple and OS X; he loves all technology, and like most of us prefers to use the best stuff he can get his hands on. “I’m all for biodiversity in the smartphone market,” he says.
People who have been desperate to turn friends into badgers – your prayers have finally, finally been answered.
Because for you, Badger Face is likely to be the best dollar you’ve ever spent on an iPhone/iPod touch application with turning-people-into-badgers functionality.
For the rest of us? Well, for the rest of us, Badger Face will make us momentarily double-take as we browse the App Store for amazing stuff. It will make us choke on our badger burgers as we read the app description. Badger Face is simultaneously the weirdest thing we have seen this week, and it is this week’s Best (Badger-Related) Thing Ever.
Who knows what will come next? The user comments suggest Dinosaur Face, but why stop there? What about Panda Face? Squirrel Face? Unicorn Face? And for A-Team fans, Face Face?
The hardware inside the old Apple PowerMac G4 Cube might not be good for much anymore, but the gorgeous plastic case is still one of the most notable triumphs of Apple’s well-honed sense of design. Why not humiliate it, then, by shaking out all the electronic guts, cutting a hole in the top and turning it into a tissue dispenser? Instructables has the instructions.
I can think of more ignominious ends for a G4 Cube… toilet brush holder comes immediately to mind.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9BETZOfwo8
Aralon: Sword and the Shadow by Galoobeth Games is an upcoming open-world role-playing game for iOS devices, and as you can see from the the trailer above, it looks about as close to Oblivion for the iPad as we’re going to get. But for a laugh, check out the original trailer for the game below the cut. Amazing what a bit of spit and polish can do in six months, isn’t it?
Last week, we all saw a fantastic flow chart showing off who was suing whom for patent infringement in the mobile landscape. Then we saw the same chart as re-imagined by a competent infographic designer.
The only problem? Both charts were based off of the bad data of a New York Times post back in March, which included numerous lawsuits that never actually occurred. That prompted Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick to try his hand at his own version of a “who’s suing whom” chart… which ends up revealing that even more companies are suing each other over mobile patents than anyone had initially thought.
The timing of Scosche’s new sneakPEEK II accessory seems curiously timed.
You can’t fault it’s functionality, really. The sneakPEEK II allows you to pump content from your iPad or iPhone to your television easily by just connecting it to your device via their umbilical. On one end is the standard Apple docking connector and, on the other, composite and component inputs for plugging into pretty much any television out there. It’ll even charge your iPad while you watch a movie or play a game, thanks to an integrated micro USB connector and AC adapter.
That’s not bad functionality, but when iOS 4.2 rolls around, isn’t the point of a cable like this going to be pretty much obviated when AirPlay allows you to stream video or audio from any app to any AirPlay-compatible device… including Apple’s own $99 AppleTV?
The sneakPEEK II, of course, is cheaper than an AppleTV, but at $59.99, the price discrepancy is so minimal that we can’t help but feel there aren’t a lot of people who will opt for Scosche’s solution over Apple’s sexy black box. In fact, about the only thing to recommend it over an AppleTV is if you want to pump video from a classic iPod up to your television, or if your television lacks an HDMI port.
Love your MacBook’s MagSafe adapter? Good news: it might be coming to the next iPhone or iPad.
Foxconn, the largest tech manufacturer in the world, is under fire yet again for alleged worker abuse… this time as part of a survey commissioned by the iPod maker itself.
As reported to China’s state-run Global Times, several universities working on Foxconn’s behalf in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have surveyed 1,736 workers. The results when compiled into the final report are shocking, to say the least.
The iPhone jailbreaking community likes to maintain solidarity within its ranks. After all, while hackers love being the first to discover a new technique or exploit, the jailbreaking community has an enemy — Apple — who would like nothing more than to shut them down for the count.
That threat, in turn, has made the jailbreaking community a pretty tight-knit bunch: at any given time, there are a few working exploits that hackers are sitting on, waiting for Apple to invalidate a currently working jailbreak technique through a software patch before they release the next one. Why? Because the world doesn’t need more than one jailbreak at a time, and if all the known exploits are all in the wild at the same time, Apple can fix them all at once, leaving jailbreakers with nothing up their sleeves.
That’s why the jailbreaking community is so steamed up about the surprise Limera1n jailbreak geohot released over the weekend… the day before the Dev Team released their own highly publicized 4.1 jailbreak that used a totally different exploit. Geohot essentially barged ahead in line by releasing his jailbreak exploit unannounced, which risked alerting Apple to the methodology used in the Dev Team’s exploit.
If you’ve still got your old photos or videos hosted on Apple’s dusty .Mac service, the progenitor of MobileMe, it’s time to get ready to make a change, as Apple is now telling its .Mac homepage users that starting November 8th, their content will no longer by viewable through the world wide web.
It’s not quite as bad as it sounds, though. Essentially, if you’ve got media hosted on .Mac, that content will simply be retired into the Movies, Pictures or Public folders of your MobileMe iDisk, and you can sling them back online if you’d like using MobileMe Gallery. Web pages published with iWeb won’t be affected, so it seems like your homepages are safe.
Today marks the official debut of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s three-years-too-late response to the smartphone revolution headed by Apple with the release of the original iPhone. By most accounts, WIndows Phone 7’s software is far more advanced than its predecessor, Windows Mobile 6.5, and might even be pretty good… but it’s going to take more than a decent smartphone operating system these days to compete with iOS and Android: namely, a sizable, content-rich App Store with some showcase software for users to download out of the gate.
Early rumors tip the Windows Phone Marketplace to launch with a respectable 2,000 apps… but if news hitting the feeds this morning is anything to go by, those numbers might very well be inflated dishonestly. Microsoft has been prominently advertising several apps as being available on the Windows Phone Marketplace when it launches, including Rovio Mobile’s hit game, Angry Birds. The only problem? Rovio hasn’t even decided on doing a port yet.
The most notorious iPhone knock-off at all is the Meizu M8, a cheeky doppelganger that looks virtually identical to the iPhone before you dive below the surface into the excremental ocean of its software: a custom-shelled version of Microsoft Windows CE 6. Meizu CEO Jack Wong has been cheekily shining Apple on about the Meizu M8’s more-than-subtle likeness to the iPhone for a while now, having laughed as recently as last month that the new iPod Touch looks just like their upcoming Meizu M9II Android smartphone.
Wong’s probably wishing he’d kept his mouth shut now. According to Wong, Meizu is now being forced by Cupertino’s lawyers to stop selling the M8… and it might be enough to put the company under.
Halloween is Big Business in historic Salem, Massachusetts. It’s now High Tech too. For the 29th Haunted Happenings Celebration, the annual festival of witches, ghosts, and fall in New England, the town has created a new Haunted Happenings App for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
The app features info about the Festival Calendar of Events, local attractions and museums, restaurant and retail listings, and directions on how to get to Salem (tip: plan ahead and leave time). Users also have an opportunity to purchase tickets for some events and attractions directly from the app.
Let the Frightful Fun Commence! [via boston.com]
Here’s a tip for the next time you’re stuck in traffic: Turn your car windshield into a heads-up display for watching movies on an iPad.
Geohot has released another jailbreak. This jailbreak doesn’t require tethering an iOS device to a computer every time you turn it on. The following iOS devices running iOS 4.0, 4.01 or higher (excluding beta versions of iOS) are supported: iPod touch 3rd and 4th generation, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad.
The jailbreak is fairly new and considered to be a beta. It’s not as easy to use as jailbreaks in the past since this version doesn’t include one-click jailbreaking. You have to work a little harder to get this one to work for you.
There isn’t a Mac OS version yet — it only runs on Windows for the time being. So if you have access to a Windows computer and need this jailbreak now then go download it.
This jailbreak is said to be a bit unstable so you might consider waiting for Chronic’s greenpois0n. It’s due out tomorrow.
As I hope you noticed, the site has a new look.
It’s thanks to the efforts of our indefatigable designer, Craig Grannell of Snub Communications. It’s cleaner and simpler and clears the deck for a very important upgrade: BuddyPress.
BuddyPress is a WordPress plugin that adds a ton of social networking features, including extended profiles, activity streams, friend connections and groups.
Described as “Facebook in a box,” Buddypress is a like a 21-st century version of a forum. It brings a lot of the same interactivity, but cuts down on the noise and spam.
Buddypress will allow us to implement one of the longest-held ambitions of the site — making it a proper community endeavor. Among other things, it will allow you, the readers, to contribute much more to the site. You’ll be able to write about your own projects, post troubleshooting tips and advice, and recommend the products you use every day. It’ll also make it easier to find and follow the activity of your friends, follow others whose opinion you value, and share the best stories with other readers. We’ll be launching it soon.
Meanwhile, please leave any feedback about the new look (and any problems you find) in the comments. Many thanks.
Slide-on iPhone 4 do cause scratches and cracks on the device’s glass back, the vast majority of readers reported in a poll we ran on Friday.
Almost 75 percent of repondents said their iPhone 4 has been scratched, cracked or otherwise damaged by a slide-on case. Only 26 percent said they’d had no problems.
The poll was prompted by a report Ryan Block in GDGT that Apple is actively investigating slide-on cases before it turns into a PR disaster like Antennagate.
The results are at total surprise to me. I’d not heard of the issue before Friday, and I’ve used several slide-on cases with my iPhone 4 without problems.
Of course, online polls are far from scientific surveys. In fact, most commenters on the post report that they’ve had no problems. If you read the comments and ignore the poll, you’d get the impression that there isn’t an issue, or that trapped dirt affects all cases and all phones — not just the iPhone 4.
The results are interesting because it was unclear how widespread the issue was — it certainly didn’t seem mainstream. But as Block pointed out this morning, Apple is trying to preempt the issue before it becomes a public relations nightmare. More here: Following up on yesterday’s “Glassgate” story.
This week’s must-have iOS games features Sega’s latest Sonic the Hedgehog 4 that many of us have been eagerly awaiting. It’s been described as the best Sonic for iOS yet, with improved controls, smoother gameplay and a genuine Sonic feel.
Another of our favorites is Chillingo’s Cut the Rope – the addictive puzzle game that knocked Angry Birds off the top of the paid charts this week. It combines realistic physics with simple, precise touch controls to create a wonderfully challenging puzzler.
Black Pegasus is the latest Modern Combat 2 game from Gameloft, and also features in our favorites this week. Its console quality graphics together and excellent production make it one of the most impressive first-person shooters to arrive on the iPhone.
We also have some classic ZX Spectrum gaming!
iPhone users are twice as likely to be influenced by the Tea Party than voters who carry an Android or Blackberry phone, according to a new online poll by Zogby/463.
In addition, iPhone users are twice as likely to believe that Sarah Palin “speaks for them,” and 60 percent predict a Republican takeover of Congress this year.
