News - page 2189

Tain’t the heat, t’is the humidity… at least when it comes to iPhone moisture sensors in Hong Kong.

According to the South China Morning Post, numerous Hong Kong iPhone users are having a hard time getting their handsets covered under warranty because the moisture sensors — the small little stickers inside every iPhone that discolor when they get wet, indicating user error — max out at 95% humidity.

The problem? Hong Kong and other Asian countries regularly excess 95% humidity, with some areas seeing greater-than-95% humidity for 73 days between June 1st and August 16th. For an iPhone, this is the equivalent of spending two and a half months in a sauna.

For some users like Justin Hayward, this has resulted in it being impossible to get an iPhone fixed under warranty, and instead being dinged a massive charge for a replacement phone.

“I’ve never used it in the bath, gone swimming or anything like that,” Hayward said. “Let’s face it; many people do break the rules. But a significant number of people are making these kind of report. If the limitation is over 95 per cent humidity, they ought not to be selling the product here. I find it quite unbelievable – a real piece of corporate greed or a great oversight.”

I’m not going to blame this on corporate greed, but Hayward has a point: if the mechanism Apple uses to detect moisture in iPhones doesn’t work in real-world locations, they shouldn’t be denying warranty service on those devices when they fail with triggered moisture sensors.

This isn’t even a problem limited to the Far East: a California woman sued Apple earlier this year over the same problem, and faultily triggered moisture sensors is a rampant problem in the tropics. If Apple’s not going to honor service based upon a moisture detection mechanism that verifiably fails in real-world conditions, they should reconsider selling devices where you can cut the air with a knife.

We always like to tell readers when the ‘other shoe falls’ concerning Apple technology. Earlier this week we reported how Apple products are seeing huge growth rates compared to PCs in both government and business. Today, we see why: corporate IT gatekeepers are becoming more comfortable with iOS-based products, particularly the iPad.

Unlike when the iPhone was first introduced in 2007, the Cupertino, Calif. company has devoted time and effort to answering the concerns businesses expressed early on. Such issues included ways to encrypt information and establishing secure methods to connect to corporate networks, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The latest versions of iOS “adds features that make the devices easier for a tech department to manage, including the ability for businesses to distribute internally developed apps without going through Apple’s App Store,” the newspaper writes.

When we posted yesterday about a new Apple patent hinting at future touchscreen Macs, one of the excellent points made in our comments section was that one reason behind Apple’s reluctance to install touchscreen panels in their non-mobile computers is the ergonomics factor: it’s just not comfortable to constantly be leaning forward to poke and prod a screen.

A new patent from Apple shows how future touchscreen Macs might just solve the ergonomic dilemma. The patent describes a touchscreen iMac with a swiveling display that rotates into a more appropriate, horizontal configuration for multitouch. A built-in accelerometer could automatically determine the display’s orientation and trigger the appropriate interface or even operating system: for example, OS X in an upright position, iOS when prone.

At the end of the day, I don’t buy that a swiveling display is how Apple would go about solving desktop touchscreen ergonomic problems. It seems a little too finnicky as a solution. Still, at least Apple’s thinking about the problem, and if Cupertino’s history with multitouch mobile devices is anything to go by… when they finally do an iMac Touch, they’ll do it right.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhgfz0zPmH4&feature=player_embedded

Google Goggles is easily one of the biggest app advantages the Android operating system has over iOS… but Google seems ready to hobble their own advantage by releasing it to for the iPhone later this year.

Goggles itself is incredibly neat, allowing you to use your smartphone’s camera to take a snapshot of anything around you that you might want to search for on the Internet. For example, thwarted by your own swollen-tongued artistic plebeianism while on a date at the museum, you could take a snapshot of a painting you know absolutely nothing about and quickly get a list of talking points back about it. You can also use Goggles to scan text and then manipulate with it your phone, by emailing it to yourself or using a number as a contact.

It often seems weird to see Google obviate their own advantages over the iPhone, but all Google really cares about is getting as many people using their search engine — and therefore, viewing their search-targeted ads — as possible. Android’s just one means to that end; every other smartphone is another.

A dozen individuals have been arrested in the United Kingdom for laundering money through iTunes.

The twelve individuals’ plan was pretty simple, all things considered. Using stolen credit card numbers, they purchased tracks that they themselves had uploaded to Apple’s digital music delivery service. All things considered, they laundered over $300,000 worth of purchases in just four months.

For the record, this isn’t a security vulnerability with iTunes. Transacting digital goods is actually a common way to get money off of a stolen credit card number: I myself had $1500 stolen from me a few years back when someone got a hold of my credit card number and simply lost game after game of online poker against another account that he controlled.

The same thing pretty much went on here, and Apple wasn’t the only company to get hit: Amazon’s MP3 service was also used by the criminals in question.

Should this worry you? Probably not: in most cases of credit card fraud, credit card companies are quick to side with the card holder. In my case, all I had to do was assure Mastercard that neither I nor my girlfriend were secret gambling addicts. If you ever do see a suspicious iTunes charge come through on your credit card statement, give your bank — not Apple — a call, and they will very quickly set things right.

In a bid to prevent another ‘antennagate’ when the iPhone 4 reaches China in mid-September, Apple’s exclusive carrier there will offer free cases, according to a local news report.

“The iPhone 4 is expected to suffer from the same issues related to signal reception in China, but China Unicom will be offering cases to customers as a free gift,” reports Caixin, an English-language online news site. The iPhone 4 will be introduced in China on September 16.

Following numerous reports of dropped calls when the the iPhone 4 was held in a certain position, Apple eventually announced it would provide free cases to affected customers. Apple is eager to introduce its record-selling iPhone 4 in China, a nation where the Cupertino, Calif. company plans to build 25 stores and has seen 144 percent growth.

As temperatures soar to new records here in San Francisco, quench your thirst at tonight’s Ubergizmo’s Digital Summer party, a festival of fashion, photography, tech and fun.

At 8PM, San Francisco’s glamorous people will gather for Digital Summer, an annual fashion show/tech-showcase that attracts throngs of the city’s brightest young things. Last year, there was a line around the block. (Check out the glamorpuss pictures below).

Full disclosure: We’re a media partner.

This year’s event promises a live runway fashion show, studio photo shoots, a future of fashion display from Intel and hands-on demos of Motorola’s Droid X and Verizon’s Wireless MiFi Mobile Hotspot. Verizon is also recycling old cell phones, so bring them along.

Digital Summer is at the Temple nightclub on Howard Street. It’s $5 with a RSVP (get one here), or $10 on the door. Here’s the Facebook event page, and the full itinerary after the pictures:

People who quilt are also nerdy. Or nerdy people also quilt. Either way, there’s some bitchin’ stitchin’ happening — as per this compendium of Dr. Who and Harry Potter blankets — but we especially like these Apple-related sewing projects. Quilt different!

iNerd Mini Quilt

Liz Harvatine made this for her husband as kind of an emblem for the North Hollywood Classic Mac Collectors Club of which he is one of two proud members. It’s a nice banner to be under…

And here’s Percolator, today’s Best Thing Ever for people who love their iPhone photography.

What does it do? It re-renders photos in glorious approximation, creating gorgeous mosaics out of roundels of color.

Two issues are pushing Apple to expand beyond its current one-carrier arrangement for the U.S. iPhone, an analyst told investors Monday. Not only is the iPhone maxxing out the AT&T network, the Cupertino, Calif. company needs to stem the tide of Android phones flowing from Verizon.

This is where we usually write about Verizon’s chances of obtaining the Apple handset. Although such speculation has reached the level of the Easter Bunny or BigFoot as an appealing tale lacking only facts, Kaufman Bros.’ Shaw Wu takes a different tact: if not Verizon, how about a two-for-one deal?

Someone in government must love Macs. How else to explain one analyst’s figures released Monday showing a 200 percent increase during the second-quarter of 2010 – 16 times greater than the overall PC market’s 12.1 percent growth-rate? But, as the late-night pitch-men like to say: Wait, that’s not all.

Macs in business (especially very big businesses) rose nearly 50 percent during the three-month period – three times that of the PC market’s 12.1 percent, according to Needham analyst Charlie Wolf.

Remember back in June when Apple told developers the iBookstore had 22 percent of the eBook market? An author who uses both platforms to market his writing is now telling a vastly-different story. He sells 200 Kindle ebooks each day, compared to 100 a month for the iPad’s iBooks.

Despite the Kindle ebooks not currently supporting color or video, like the ebooks via Apple’s iBookstore, “according to my numbers Apple is a very small part of the ebook market,” blogs author Joe Konrath. “I sell 200 ebooks a day on Kindle. On iPad, I sell 100 a month,” he adds.

The Magic Trackpad is a fantastic addition to a desktop, but it’s insistence on being battery powered is a little strange. For most users, it’ll never leave their desk, yet there’s no USB option, unlike Apple’s own keyboards; additionally, unlike the Magic Mouse, where a cable would limit its effective range, the Magic Trackpad is designed to stay stationary.

For a lot of people, then, the Magic Trackpad’s battery guzzling represents something of a waste, and while Apple’s introduction of their own Battery Charger mitigates a lot of the environmental concerns, its still a shame there isn’t at least an option to plug it into your iMac or MacBook’s USB port directly and never worry about its juicing at all.

That’s why MacRumors modder markbog hacked his Magic Trackpad to hook straight to his Mac’s USB port by taking the batteries out of the device, stripping down an old USB cord and attaching them to a battery sized dowel.

Supposedly, it works great. Let’s not forget, though, that the Magic Trackpad is a pretty great mobile accessory as well: it easily fits into a laptop bag, and I can say from first hand experience that it makes an absolutely fantastic way to control your Mac mini driven HTPC set-up.

After being caught completely unprepared for the iPad’s debut, this Christmas season is looking to be a slugfest between different electronics companies each aiming to out iPad the other.

What’s the outcome going to be? According to Acer chairman JT Wang speaking to the Chinese language paper the Economic Daily News, Wang said that by the time the tablet market “stabilizes” Apple’s share will plummet from almost 100 percent to close to 20-30 percent.

While we’re skeptical that the drop will be quite so profound, this isn’t really news that Apple fans should be discouraged by. Apple barely controls 15% of the smartphone market. Android, in comparison, controls 17%, RIM 18% and Symbian a whopping 41% of the smartphone market. But so what? That hasn’t stopped Apple from making billions off of the iPhone. It hasn’t stopped the iPhone from leading the way in the mobile arena. And even though Apple’s in fourth place, it hasn’t stopped the iPhone from being absolutely synonymous with the very definition of a smartphone. iPhone is in a class by itself.

The same thing’s going to happen here. Everyone is going to release a poorly realized tablet to compete with the iPad, and since they can’t license iOS, they’ll install Android, webOS or Windows on their devices. I have no doubt that, very quickly, those operating systems will be fatter slices on the tablet marketshare pie chart than iOS will be… but so what? There’ll still only be one iPad; all the other tablets will just be competing with each other.

We’ve been hearing rumblings of an iOS-driven AppleTV rebranded as the iTV and priced at $99 for a couple months now, and now it seems that Digg founder Kevin Rose thinks that these rumors have a lot of weight.

Although it’s not clear if Rose has any inside information, he writes: “From what I hear we should expect to see the iTV launch in September.” That would certainly confirm rumors we’ve heard that the new ‘iTV’ will debut alongside a freshly rejiggered iPod Touch at Apple’s iPod event in September, and it makes a lot of sense besides: the AppleTV, after all, has always pretty much been just a big iPod you could hook up to your television.

More to the point, Apple themselves said that their plans for a media-streaming iTunes update would likely be “more limited in scope” than people were anticipating. We all know that the music industry and film industry have been being difficult when it comes to signing licensing agreements with Apple for streaming, but television’s another story… as an institution, they are already quite comfortable with digital streaming. Could that mean that the streaming iTunes rollout will be limited in scope for everything save television at first?

Pretty much every iOS game is played with fingers, but the (i)Pawn app from French studio Volumnique is trying to change that by employing a set of physical token that are each capable of being uniquely identified by the iPhone’s touchscreen. Click through for a video.

It’s a neat demonstration, but I’ll be honest with you: I’m not entirely sure how it works. Looking at the site, each token appears to be glued onto a different sized cell battery. Since the iPhone’s capacitive touchscreen works by using a layer of capacitive material to hold an electrical charge, and senses a touch when the amount of charge under your finger changes. If the bottom-loaded batteries on the tokens predictably change the amount of charge sensed by the touchscreen, this could conceivably work… but I’m not sure the iPhone’s touch software is that nuanced. Any developers out there who might be able to hand us their theories?

Either way, it’s a neat demonstration, an even if (i)Pawn looks like a pretty boring game, it could have some neat practical merits. The iPad’s a great size for a game board, after all: a Monopoly app with mail-away top hats, locomotives, irons and terrier tokens could be a pretty satisfying experience.

Déjà vu. A likeable geek whose job is largely dedicated to testing mobile phones leaves his precious new iPhone in a bar… except this time, that affable geek wasn’t Gray Powell. Instead, it was Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam… the same guy who helped okay the purchase of the lost/stolen iPhone 4 prototype months before its official debut.

According to Lam’s Twitter account, the Gizmodo chief lost his iPhone at a restaurant while having lunch, but a random bystander sitting at a nearby table held onto it for him until he returned. Seemingly without a dose of sarcasm, Lam then tagged his tweet with the Twitter #karma tag.

Perhaps it should have been tagged with #dramatic-irony instead. If anything, the whole misadventure underlines how different things could have gone for Apple and Gizmodo if someone with some scruples had found the iPhone 4 prototype and tried to return it to Powell, as they did for Lam, instead of almost immediately rushing to the highest bidder.

The most surprising detail of this story is that since the tweet, Lam has Brian Lam has locked down his Twitter account so people can’t read his tweets, presumably in response to the Twitter taunts of people on whom the irony was not lost. What a weirdly defensive move, especially from a guy like Lam, who certainly realizes that his job at the largest gadget blog on the Internet makes him a public figure.

Look, Gizmodo, at the end of the day, you landed the biggest tech scoop basically ever, but at the cost of some of your journalist’s ethics. That’s cool, but you’ve got to be ready to take your lumps when people loudly laugh at the irony.

[via Daring Fireball]

I grabbed myself the Alfred Powerpack over the weekend, and so far it’s looking very promising.

Alfred, you may remember, is a fast little app launcher, web searcher and doing-stuffer for OS X. Clearly inspired by the likes of Quicksilver, it offers basic features for free and now, with the Powerpack, adds a few extras for a fee.

Even as Apple has blazed trails in forwarding multitouch as a bonafide interface for mobile devices, they have completely abstained from installing touchscreens on their MacBooks and iMac-lines, despite the fact that numerous competitors have jumped with both feet forward into the multitouch PC arena.

According to a recently discovered patent, though, Apple’s at least thinking about bringing multitouch to their desktop and laptop lines, detailing a touchscreen MacBook boasting iPhone-(and iMac)-like IPS display technology.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcIORhb8NfQ&feature=player_embedded

iOS4’s “multitasking” isn’t really anything of the sort, although it’s a sublimely elegant illusion: a handful of API calls for the most common multitasking functionality like VoIP and background uploading married to a sophisticated, built-in app save state functionality which gives both the effortless appearance and (for most intents and purposes) practical advantages of true iPhone multitasking.

For the most part, I’m pleased, even if I yearn for the ability to update apps like Instapaper and Reeder in the background… but one thing I’ve never really cared for is the new multitasking menu, brought up with a double click and stretched across the home row. For me, that’s where the illusion breaks down: instead of a list of truly running apps, it largely functions as a “most recently used” app list. It also makes accessing the media player controls one swipe further away than they once were.

So I really like MultiFl0w, a new interface for iOS multitasking that represents open apps with fluid, Expose-like elegance. Working in coordination with the free Cydia backgrounder app, MultiFl0w not only allows apps to truly run in the background, instead of simply access a few API calls, but it gives a beautiful and effortlessly Apple-like way of navigating between and closing those apps as well.

Unfortunately, Apple is right at the end of the day: if you have a jailbroken iPhone and run backgrounded apps, your battery life will suffer dramatically. But I can’t help but hope that someday, Apple will figure out a way around this, and something like MultiFl0w will be baked into iOS on the system level.

[via 9to5Mac]

Another glimmer of hope for iPhone 3G owners running (or crawling with) iOS4; MacRumors reports today on another Steve Jobs email, this one sent to a disgruntled iPhone 3G user:

I’ve waited patiently through 4.0.1 and 4.0.2, looking for a fix that will make my phone work again. I’ve read the forums that advise me to jailbreak my phone or use some other method so I can downgrade back to a version of iPhone 3, however I’m not prepared to use a method that is not supported by Apple.

Jobs’ response is typically succinct:

Software update coming soon.

Sent from my iPhone

Presumably this means iOS4.1.  Apple acknowledged last month that it was aware of the performance problems with iOS4 on the iPhone 3G and was “looking into” the issues, which include very sluggish performance and poor battery life.

As an 3G owner myself this fix can’t come soon enough; I’m doing the double hard reset every other week and have disabled spotlight indexing, but this only makes things tolerable at best.  Is this ordeal finally going to end soon?

Take it from me: Germans love their iPods, and they love their hard-boiled eggs. The eiPott, then, is a cute little example of German kitsch: it’s an egg holder shaped like an abstraction of an iPod.

You’d think it’d be hard to get upset about such an innocuous little piece of dishware, but Apple apparently did, bringing a lawsuit against koizol, the manufacturer… and now a German high court says that koizol needs to redesign and rename the product, citing potential confusion.

This is ridiculous. While we certainly understand Apple needs to protect their trademarks and brands, the eiPott only shares the most abstract similarity in form to the iPod, and — needless to say — none of the iPod’s functionality. They’re not trying to confuse consumers: they’re trying to entertain them with a tongue-in-cheek homage to one of the most popular brands on Earth.

[via TUAW]

We’ve all seen what id software has in mind as far as bringing their upcoming Rage to iOS as a 60 frames-per-second FPS, but what about id’s classic games? They’ve already released incredible ports of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D to the App Store, and id’s engine-building maestro John Carmack had promised to bring Quake to iOS devices too, as well as the mobile specific title, Orcs and Elves. What’s the hold up?

TouchArcade got a chance to talk to Carmack, and it doesn’t sound good:

Currently, id is completely focused on Rage, and John isn’t sure when they will get back to the classic games “even though it makes a lot of sense.” He also explained that while both Doom II RPG [$3.99] and Wolfenstein RPG [$1.99] have done well on mobile phones, their performance on the App Store has been less than ideal, leading to the decision to not bring the Orcs & Elves games over to iOS.

That’s disappointing news, because both Doom II RPG and Wolfenstein RPG are great titles. Moreover, when Doom Classic was released, Carmack promised that it would soon be updated to allow in-app purchases of the sequels, Doom 2 and Final Doom. That update still isn’t out.

Rage for iPhone looks incredible, but id’s doing the best FPS ports on the App Store, and their classic library of games is non-pareil. Let’s hope id software figures out a way to get back to the App Store in earnest.

Remember the good ol’ days of sweatshops? People toiled long hours for very little pay, but gosh ‘darn it, they were happy to have a job. These kids today, they aren’t grateful for the $100 they earn each month assembling iPods. That seems to be the message coming from Apple supplier Foxconn about why it is introducing ‘entertainment’ to boost the spirits of otherwise-suicidal workers.

“Unlike the previous generation of workers that regarded work and basic necessities as top priorities in life, post 80s workers don’t just work for money,” a special assistant to the chairman of Hon Hai, which trademarks the Foxconn name, told the Wall Street Journal Friday. About three-quarters of Foxconn’s workers are between 18 and 24 years old.

Earlier this week, we reported that 2010 smartphone shipments rose by more than 50 percent over the previous year, now comprising 20 percent of all cell phone sales. Now comes the second shoe to drop: $2.2 billion in smartphone apps were sold in just the first six months of this year, German researchers say.

Indeed, the Apple iPad App Store alone may generate $1 billion in sales by 2012. In early 2010, Apple announced 3 billion apps were downloaded from its App Store within the first 18 months the marketplace was open.