Sennheiser is a stalwart brand in consumer headphones, but their latest range will be of specific interest to iPhone or iPod Touch users looking for excellent audio quality coupled with hands-free or Voice Control functionality.
In a headphone range spread across the Sennheiser MM 70i, IE 8i, PX 100-IIi, PX 200-IIi, HD 218i and HD 238i models, each pair of Sennheiser’s latest cans comes with an in-line microphone and remote control.
If you’ve been one of the many people who has expected Apple to drop Google as the default search engine in iOS due to the escalating rivalry between the iPhone and Android handsets, think again. According to Business Insider, Apple and Google have just agreed to extend the deal that makes Google search reign supreme on iOS devices.
The news comes from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who revealed the extension in a recent interview with Charlie Rose.
This week’s Apple patent news comes out of China, where a couple of new iPad designs have been discovered in line drawing, describing an iPad with dual dock connectors and an iPad with a smart bezel button.
Usually when we write about jailbreaking iPods here at Cult of Mac, we’re specifically talking about hacking your iPhone or iPod Touch to be able to run unsigned code… not iPods that are actually able to perform jailbreaks on other devices. That makes this story somewhat unique, because if you have an iPod Classic and a PlayStation 3, you can now use the former to perform a jailbreak on the latter.
The first PlayStation 3 jailbreaking solution was discovered earlier this month, and allows devices that can connect to a PS3 through the console’s USB port to permanently hack the device to run unsigned code. What’s so interesting about this jailbreak solution is that a wide range of devices can perform the hack, from a USB stick to an official controller to a Ti-84 calculator.
The latest variation of this jailbreak uses the iPod Classic family combined with the Rockbox open source media firmware. Right now, the jailbreak only works using select generations of the iPod Nano and iPod Classic, but given Rockbox’s expandable nature, we wouldn’t be surprised to see support creep to other clickwheel iPods — and media players support by Rockbox — sooner rather than later.
About a month ahead of America and Europe, New Zealand clocks fall an hour back when they switch to Daylight Savings Time on the last Sunday of September. Apparently, though, New Zealand iPads and iPhones are proving a tad overzealous when it comes to falling back this year: numerous iOS users are reporting that since yesterday’s switch, their alarms are going off an hour early. Given that Kiwis were already having to wake up an hour earlier than they were used to, that’s quite a rude awakening.
China wasn’t the only country to get the iPhone 4 this weekend. Denizens of both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also got their hands on Cupertino’s latest handset, packed with all the features separating it from its predecessor the 3GS save one: FaceTime.
According to The National, iPhone 4s sold through UAE carriers Etisalat and du as well as those sold by Vodafone in Qatar are missing the FaceTime software, although the forward-facing camera is obviously still there. According to the carriers, they’ve had no hand in stripping the video chat feature out, and they are petitioning Apple to reinstate Facetime soon.
Although Apple’s mobile advertising platform iAd debuted in June with 0 percent of the market, the interactive ads found in apps for the iOS platform may soon have 21 percent marketshare, tied with Google’s mobile efforts. Apple’s gains are coming at the expense of Google and other more well-established online advertisers, suggests a new report.
According to IDC estimates published by Bloomberg Businessweek, Google’s share of mobile advertising will fall to 21 percent in December, down from 27 percent in December 2009. Yahoo will also take a hit, dropping to 9 percent, down from 12 percent. (Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz recently predicted Apple’s advertising platform would ‘fall apart.) Likewise, Microsoft’s market numbers will be trimmed to 7 percent, down from 10 percent. As for Nokia, its mobile ad share almost disappears from the radar screen to 2 percent.
Although Adobe said Apple’s recent decision to relax rules on developers using Flash in IOS applications had little effect, the change was enough to get EU regulators to drop an antitrust investigation into the Cupertino, Calif. company’s practices. European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia Saturday “welcomed” Apple’s change of heart.
Earlier in September, Apple announced it would permit developers to use third-party tools to create applications for the iOS platform. The restriction was seen as aimed at Adobe, which had released a tool permitting developers to use Flash in applications for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. As a result, Adobe restarted development of a Flash tool in Flash Professional aimed at the iPhone.
Last week, the internet was buzzing with reports that Apple would be delaying the new Apple TV from its original September release to some time in mid-October. The hypothesis behind these reports was based on users receiving e-mails about expedited shipping being refunded. This hasn’t stopped the Apple TV from shipping in September since mine has already shipped although it won’t arrive until October 1st.
If you haven’t checked your Apple TV order status yet then head over to https://www.apple.com/orderstatus and check now. Let us know in the comments if yours is on the way or not yet.
The Observer’s John Naughton wrote an interesting piece for this weekend’s paper arguing a point that many of us would raise our hands and agree with: iTunes is bloated beyond belief, and Apple needs to do something about it.
Naughton points out that iTunes is at the center of the new Apple empire. Apple’s success depends largely on iDevices, and iDevices tend to get plugged into computers. And when that happens, they need iTunes to hold their hand.
The problem is that iTunes has become less than the sum of its parts. Weighed down by the multitude of tasks it has been assigned, iTunes has become slow, unwieldy, and confusing.
If you’ve updated iTunes to 10.0.1 in the last day or so, you might have noticed that Ping is pushing itself in your face rather more forcefully than before.
One thing: there’s the Ping sidebar on the right. Another: there’s a new Ping drop-down menu that appears in your music library, alongside any song you have selected.
They’re fine if you use Ping, but if you don’t, you might want to get rid of them. The sidebar is easy to deal with, you can hide it with a click. But the drop-down menu requires a little more tinkering to get rid of.
After a disappointing Wi-Fi-less iPhone debut last year, more than 1000 people lined up to be among the first to buy an iPhone 4 at the Xidan Joy City Apple Store in Beijing on Saturday.
A number of Apple fans camped out for the release, according to a report covering the launch, with the coveted first place in line going to Yu Zhong Hui, who lined up in the early morning hours Thursday. “Physically, it’s been painful. But mentally, I’m very happy,” Yu said.
“It’s like waiting in line to see a movie star,” said 26-year-old systems engineer Sun Jian Kuan. “No phone can best the iPhone.”
China Unicom, the mobile carrier for the device, has reported 50,000 users signed up for an iPhone 4 on the first day of pre-orders. China’s pricing for iPhone 4 without a contract is 4,999 yuan ($744) for the 16GB model and 5,999 yuan ($893) for the 32GB model.
Comment Of the Week comes from reader Dayne Jones.
Earlier this week we published the following headline about Steve Jobs ranking in Forbes’ annual rich list:
Steve Jobs Ranked 42rd Richest American In Forbes Annual List
“What’s 42rd?” asked one reader, to which Jones replied:
“It’s pronounced “Forty Terd”
Made me laugh. Here’s the thread.
While it’s nice to use FaceTime to “show junior to your senile father-in-law” or “try to force a smile out of your spoiled brat,” wouldn’t you rather use your iPhone 4 to look at live naked girls?
The first porn service to target iPhone 4′s video chat feature FaceTime is betting that you do. iP4Play is promoting itself with a kiss between adult stars Kagney Linn Carter and Natalia Romero in this video.
In the video, after mocking the current wholesome, family-oriented iPhone ads, the pair bra-and-pantie clad blondes are induced to smooch for a client, a dude in a polo shirt — Morgan Grimes’ older brother? who declares: “Oh my god, this is so awesome!”
Way back before the iPad, there was the HTC Shift, a 7-inch UMPC with a 1024 x 600 touchscreen, a full QWERTY keyboard, EVDO data functionality and an 800MHz Intel A110 CPU. For mobility buffs, it was then what today’s tablets are to them now, but it cost an arm and a leg at $1,500. Even worse? It ran Windows. Vista. That alone was enough to drop the ‘f’ from the product’s name.
These days, you can probably pick up an HTC Shift pretty cheap on eBay, and while there’s still little to recommend it over an iPad (or, heck, even the Galaxy Tab) it turns out that the diminutive little UMPC is Hackintoshable, with OS X Leopard running pretty much flawlessly on it, with the exceptions of WiFi and the fingerprint reader.
If for whatever reason you’ve got a Shift around, or find yourself morbidly curious enough to pick one up cheap on eBay to make yourself one of the tiniest Hackintoshes around, you can find the instructions over on the XNA Developers forum.
New reports Friday added to growing speculation a CDMA version of Apple’s popular iPhone 4 may appear in early 2011. Industry publication Digitimes, citing “industry sources”, claims supplier Pegatron will begin building the handset in November. The new iPhone version will hit 3 million to 4 million units in the first three months, and 10 million by mid-2011.
The 10 million figure may suggest the phone is targeted at Verizon, often-cited as the first U.S. carrier to sell the device once AT&T’s exclusivity expires. Many believe Verizon could get a CDMA iPhone as early as January. The 10 million initial shipment would not be enough to also support a CDMA iPhone 4 going to a second carrier, such as China Telecom or Sprint, reasons the web site.
After a long period of scuttlebutt, the Associate Press is now reporting that Target will start selling Apple’s iPad.
Starting October 3rd, Target stores around the country will stock all three versions of the WiFi-only iPad, and apparently (as well as mysteriously) a single flavor of the 3G model, at least according to numerous media reports.
When Apple first unveiled the iPad earlier this year, my dirty secret was that I was less excited about the tablet itself — which innerly I dismissed as just a big iPod Touch — than I was about finally having a use for the gorgeously vintage leather brown courier bag I had picked up at the local flea market months previous for a song, and agonized ever since over something to do with.
Over time, my allegiances have shifted: I love everything about my iPad with a complete passion, where as my bag has become a hated symbol of love crippled by broken promises, like a woman you wait until your wedding night for whose legs fall off mid-coitus. That metaphor isn’t actually as utterly insane as you might think, because my once treasured courier bag’s clasps continuously rip off under the weight of the bag’s contents, and no matter how I might reaffix them, they just won’t stay on.
Meet the iPad courier bag that is going to get me to chuck my old one in the garbage: the Cobra Courier XS, a sleek and sultry bag crafted from black 1680 dernier ballistic nylon and trimmed with the most supple of Nappa leather. Gentlement, this is the kind of bag you buy an iPad for, and I’m even happy with its price… a respectable $145.
Garry’s Mod started out as a simple modification for Valve Software’s Half-Life 2 that allowed players to goof around with the physics, models and other assets inside the game files.
Over the last six years, however, Garry’s Mod has taken on a life of its own, supporting every Source engine game under the sun, including Half-Life 2, its episodic expansions, Portal, Counter-Strike: Source, Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, as well as blossoming into a full retail title.
Now it’s on the Mac, having been released by Valve through their popular Steam for Mac digital delivery service. Steam is having a 50% off sale on the title right now, so it costs only $4.99… although you should be aware that to actually use Garry’s Mod to make elaborate Rube Goldberg machines or — as in the videos embedded above and below — absolutely hysterical internet videos, you’ll need to own at least one Source engine game.
Check out some of the more classic products of Garry’s Mod after the jump.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAWqUtR9QIM
Are you the owner of an iPhone 3G who is disappointed that you can’t run deathmatch with friends through Apple’s new match making service, Game Center? A jailbreak and some hacking could get you up and running, if you’re feeling bold.
Over at Redmond Pie, Taimur Asad goes through the process of getting jailbreak running on an iPhone 3G… which is (coincidentally for this experiment) the only iPhone that can currently be jailbroken under iOS 4.1 right now.
File this one under ‘seeing is believing.’ A rumor is spreading Friday morning from China that a speculated 7-inch iPad is “a finished product.” While Shanzai.com cites only talkative suppliers, the web site claims the supposed device looks more like an iPhone 4 than an iPad.
In order to prevent another iPhone 4-like prototype disaster, Apple has five different designs floating around to prevent anyone blabbing, according to the site. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a planed smaller iPad. In August, the Chinese-based Economic Daily News reported a smaller and lighter iPad was being considered by the Cupertino, Calif. consumer electronics maker. The most recent report, however, by Digitimes, suggested a second-generation iPad could appear the second-quarter of 2011. The new tablet device would retain the original 9.7-inch screen, but add a front-facing camera already used by the iPhone 4. The report claimed this iPad model was in “advanced testing stages.”
Look at any of Apple’s newest iPods — the new Shuffle, the touchscreen nano, the iPod Touch — and you will find three devices as tiny, svelte or both as Cupertino can possibly make them. In fact, all of these devices are scarcely thicker at this point than the width of their widest single element —the 3.5mm audio jack — which means that if they are ever going to lose any more chunk, that audio jack is going to need to get even smaller.
It turns out that is exactly what Apple is currently working on, according to a recently filed patent. The new audio jacks uses deflectable “pogo pins”, instead of the usual cantilever beams which extend into a jack cavity and are pushed out of the way when your headphone plug is inserted, allowing audio and electricity to be transmitted.
The iPad is already having an effect – real or perceived – on the netbook market. Although one retailer has backtracked on statements that the iPad is cutting into netbook demand, now comes word from manufacturers that they’d rather churn out more profitable tablets.
“The launch of Apple’s iPad has dampened the sales of netbooks, and with prices of netbooks dropping below costs amid decreasing shipments, panel makers would rather transfer their capacities to produce tablet PC panels as producing netbook panels means losing money,” industry publication Digitimes writes Friday.
I like this photo gallery that Apple has put together to plug the power of the iPad as used by archaeologists at Pompeii.
You’d think, looking at the shiny iPads on their smart wooden desks in the Apple Store, that using one inside a muddy pit would be a terrible idea.
But it seems that as long as they’re wrapped in a decent case, they serve as excellent outdoor computers. The lack of moving parts means fewer chances for dirt to get inside, and the lack of keyboard means you can use the muckiest of fingers and still get your data entered without a problem.
Also of interest is the selection of applications used by real archaeologists in the field. FM Touch for mobile Filemaker databases, iDraw and OmniGraffle for sketching out discoveries and charts.
The guy in charge of the dig believes he’s already saved a year’s worth of data entry time. And this quote says it all: “A generation ago computers made it possible for scholars to move away from just looking at pretty pictures on walls and work with massive amounts of information and data. It was a huge leap forward. Using iPad to conduct our excavations is the next one.”
Never letting a good opportunity go to waste, Scoopertino reveals that Steve Jobs’ recent incident at Japan’s Kansai International Airport was actually a field test of Apple’s newest product:
“iPod ninja fits into that sweet spot between the iPod touch and a small handgun,” says Apple spokesperson Ted Wetmore. “It gives you peace of mind. You can either enjoy your music on the device — or you can fling it at anyone who looks at you funny. With a little practice, you can take down a foe at 50 feet.”
However, there is a dark side to the new iPod. As iPod ninja sales boom, some blogs are already reporting a “death grip” problem even worse than the one that plagued iPhone 4. If you hold iPod ninja in a certain way, you may require immediate medical care.
“There is a learning curve,” admits Mr. Berry, “and Apple does recommend the use of a protective case.” [Scoopertino]
Credit card, photo ID and criminal background check required for purchase. This could have the potential to be a real killer product….
[via iPhoneSavior]
