News - page 2214

Early today in Fring’s 3G Videochat App Is Must-Have for iPhone 4 we reported that the popular Fring app for iPhone was updated to include video chat over 3G (Apple’s FaceTime only works over Wi-Fi).

The immediate popularity of the app and how it interfaces to Skype video and voice calls has resulted in the removal of Skype support from the app. Fring wants to concentrate on Fring-to-Fring video calling so Skype support is being temporarily reduced until some system capacity issues can be addressed.

Fring’s official statement can be found on their website.

If you haven’t updated your Fring app on your iPhone 4 or in iTunes yet you should refrain from doing so. You may still be able to access Skype using the older version. The new version without Skype support is 3.3.0.9. If retaining the old version of Fring  still works with Skype for you please leave us a comment.

I’ve already given you the run down on my experience about being bummed when I found out that some of my iPhone accessories would not work with Apple’s Bumper case. That was Part 1 and now here is Part 2: the Apple Bumper case crash test performed by iFixYouri.com. I’ll let the video speak for itself.

With outstanding 3D visuals and impressive gameplay, Glu’s best-selling Deer Hunter 3D is recognized as the greatest hunting game available for the iPhone & iPod Touch. Now Deer Hunter 3D for iPad has hit the App Store and gives fans the opportunity to enjoy this highly popular game on the iPad’s high-resolution screen.

Popular multi-IM and voice-chat service Fring has just been updated to bring 2-way video calling on iPhone 4 over 3G (Apple’s FaceTime is Wi-Fi only), as well as voice and text chat.

We’ve tested it out; while it has a few minor issues, Fring has freed videochat from Wi-Fi. If you like to videochat on your new iPhone 4, it’s a must-have app.

Here’s a new, strange little app; Gyro Draw lets users draw with the iPhone 4’s gyroscope, by sliding a piece of virtual paper (responding to inputs from the gyroscope) under a stationary virtual pencil. Don’t have a 4? It also works with the older iPhone’s accelerometer, only in this mode it’s the pencil that moves. Also works on the iPad.

Not sure this app’ll produce anything prettier than the etch-a-sketch masterpieces I made when I was five, but it’s free right now for a limited time, so it might be cool for a quick impress-your-gyroscopeless-friends session.

Emboldened by a $612.5 million settlement from Research in Motion, a company claiming to have invented wireless e-mail, Friday sued Apple, Google, Microsoft and three other handset makers. NTP Incorporated alleges the companies are violating eight patents on wireless e-mail.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia, is aimed at getting Apple and others to pay licensing fees. In a news release, NTP said the defendants all make hardware or software to deliver e-mail via wireless communications.

DropCopy is a free (for personal use on three machines) utility for transferring files between computers.

Once installed, it puts an unobtrusive circular “black hole” on your desktop. To move files around, drag them on to the black hole and wait for a list of destinations to appear, then drop on the one you want to send to.

Like magic, your file will instantly be sent to that computer. DropCopy is great for any local network where files get moved around. At home, you might simply be moving music files between your laptop and desktop. In the office, you might want to share stuff with colleagues. Either way, DropCopy provides an easy alternative to shared folders and networked storage drives.

It does some really neat stuff, like allow you to grab the clipboard contents of another computer or device, then save that to your own. There’s also a built-in messaging feature.

These days there’s also a version for iPhone and iPod touch that allows you to do pretty much all the same tricks between mobile devices, no intermediary computer required.

Of course, you can share files and send messages for free using other means; particularly Dropbox. But if you’d rather keep your files away from the internet, DropCopy is a great alternative. It’s useful in all sorts of ways, and at just $25 for the non-personal version, a bargain for small business teams.

(You’re reading the 12th post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications: a list of the great Mac apps the team at Cult of Mac value most. Read more.)

Although there are five names on the list of smartphone makers, most eyes are on just two: Apple and Google. While Apple retains its second-place position with 25.4 percent of the market, the Cupertino, Calif. company’s share fell 1 percent between February and May, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Android-based handsets grew from 9 percent of the smartphone market to 13 percent over the same period, a 45 percent jump, the analysts said.

Most of Android’s growth is coming at the expense of other smartphone brands, such as RIM, Microsoft and Palm, all reporting negative growth. Microsoft’s share slipped as partners await an expected fall introduction of the Windows 7 platform. Palm also fell amid its acquisition by HP.

Apple and Google have battled back and forth with competing product releases. Apple announced selling 1.7 million iPhone 4s in the first three days of availability in June. Meanwhile, Google announced last month 160,000 Droid x handsets were activated daily, compared to 100,000 per day in May.

Although Google hopes to grab a few more RIM users by upcoming Blackberry-like products from Samsung and Motorola, the Mountain View, Calif. company still has a long hill to climb. The market-leading RIM has 41.7 percent of the smartphone market, according to comScore.

[Fortune and comScore]

Apple CEO Steve Jobs was named “Smartest CEO in Tech” by Fortune Magazine. Jobs bested Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos in a list of the 50 smartest people in technology. Jobs was described as a “visionary, micromanager, and a showman who creates such anticipation around new products that there releases are veritable holidays,” according to the publication.

Also named were Dendreon’s Mitch Gold, Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Demand Media’s Richard Rosenblatt.

Globe-trotting IT executive Steve Shantz wrote a short post comparing the battery life of his Windows 7-running Dell XT2 tablet with that of his colleague’s 3G iPad.

Flying from Chicago to Singapore on business, Steve’s Dell battery gives out on him after just 2.5 hours of work. There are many more hours to go. His iPad-toting colleague, meanwhile, lands in Hong Kong and still has plenty of juice left.

Again, in the conference the two of them attend, Steve is left running around looking for power points, while his friend happily cruises through the day without them.

Developer Keven Smith (neither doppelganger nor relation to Silent Bob) has just released a fantastic new text editor for Dropbox users on iOS.

Called Droptext, the app allows users to open, edit and save text files directly within their Dropbox account. It supports standard text files, naturally, but also any file with a text-based mime type, such as HTML, PHP or even C programming code.

If you’re a big Dropbox user like I am, it looks like a great app. It’s available now on the App Store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and costs a mere $0.99.

Trade company Alibaba claims to have a lead on the next-generation iPod Touch that strongly suggests it’ll come with a front-facing camera.

Their lead comes from an LCD assembly unit with digitizer and a stand-alone digitizer, both of which include a hole in the top center which they speculate will form the occulus of a FaceTime-capable iPod Touch.

The only problem with the theory? Sure, Apple probably wants FaceTime on the iPod Touch, but because of the way the iPod Touch is built, putting two back-to-back camera (one forward-facing, the other back-facing) is impossible.

Me, I’m not sure the iPod Touch is going to get a back-facing camera: I think Apple wants FaceTime to gain more ground more than they want the iPod Touch to be able to take snaps. Only the September iPod event will tell, though.

File firmly in the rumor folder, but NewTeeVee is resurrecting the old iOS-driven AppleTV rumor, but with a twist: this time, they say a future $99 AppleTV will feature the ability to stream television shows for just $0.99.

On one hand, such a move would make iTunes television offerings a lot more competitively priced, especially compared to services like Netflix and Hulu Plus… but on the other hand, it seems that this would replace (on the AppleTV, at least) the current purchase scheme of $1.99 – $2.99 per episode, depending on definition.

At the end of the day, though, it all seems a bit expensive to me: $20 bucks to rent a television season is a hard sell when that’s what the DVD will cost. There’s no doubt, though, that a change in the way iTunes currently prices television shows will go a long way to making the AppleTV a lot more popular, though.

As if the antenna and proximity sensor woes weren’t enough now we can add one other issue to the pile of iPhone 4 woes: catching fire. BGR reported today that one unlucky iPhone 4 owner ended up with a “fried iPhone 4” and a “slightly burned” hand.

According to the story the customer attempted to get help with the iPhone 4 by bringing it into a local store, but it was to far gone to be repaired. The incident occurred while the user was plugging the iPhone 4 into their computer using the Apple USB cable that came with it.  The conclusion was that the USB port on the iPhone 4  was probably defective and while the iPhone 4 suffered some damage the cable seems to have been damaged the most.

This isn’t the first time that an iDevice has caught fire, since 2009 there have been a number of reported incidents that included: an iPod Nano recall for faulty batteries (Apple eventually updated the battery warning on that recall) and an iPhone 3G also caught on fire ironically at the same spot as this years iPhone 4 — the USB port. Additionally in 2009 a Mac Laptop went up in flames.

While this could happen based on prior reports about the iPhone 3G and iPod Nano it isn’t likely going to happen to you. However, if you are overly worried about things like this then you might consider keeping a pair of oven mitts and a bucket of water (or chemical extinguisher per the comments) handy just in case.

Apple will be giving away 5,000 of these free commemorative t-shirts this weekend at the grand opening of its flagship store in Shanghai.

Note what is says on the back: “Designed in California, Made for China.”

It’s a subtle but important play on Apple’s traditional credit line, which says: “Designed in California, Made in China.”

Given the controversy at Apple’s supplier Foxconn, I asked our Chinese blogger friend Chris Chang if the statement was appropriate. Some may feel that Apple’s relationship with China is exploitative.

“The statement is appropriate,” says Chang. “It’s actually the most attractive part of the shirt. I can’t say that Apple has an exploitative relationship with China, but according to Ron Johnson’s speech in the Shanghai Apple store, I believe that Apple is trying to build up a relationship with China.”

During the store’s press preview, Johnson — the head of Apple’s stores — said the company is planning a big push in China and will open 25 retail outlets there by 2012.

Check out these awesome pictures of Apple’s new Shanghai store, courtesy of our friend Chris Chang of M.I.C Gadget.

Chris’ pictures clearly show how and why Apple is making a killing right now. While other companies are going out of business, Apple is building great glass and steel monuments to its brand that broadcast its growing influence and power  — and make tons of money at the same time.

The Shanghai store is the biggest and boldest yet. It’s a big statement of the company’s success in glass and steel. What other corporation anywhere in the world is building such huge architectural monuments to itself?

It harkens back to the old days, when powerful companies built huge skyscrapers or endowed concert halls and libraries. Of course, thanks to the economy, no one is doing it these days — except Apple. And these monuments (Upper West Side, Sainte-Catherine, Carrousel du Louvre, Fifth Avenue, Regent Street) make more money than Tiffany, square-foot-for-square-foot.

You’ve got to marvel at Apple’s cojones.

I gawped in disbelief at this picture in the New York Times of Apple’s new store in Shanghai. At fist glance, I thought it was a special effect from a sci-fi movie. The spaceport-looking thing in the background is the Oriental Pearl Tower.

New York Times: Apple Making New Push Into China

A growing number of large US businesses are arming their employees with the iPad,  proving that the tablet computer’s usefulness goes way beyond keeping the kids quiet.

Recent corporate converts to the iPad include Wells Fargo, SAP and Telllabs.

“This iPad thing has taken the world by storm,”  Ted Schadler, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. told Bloomberg.  “It came in as a consumer product and very quickly the people who actually bought them were business people.”

Japan’s third-ranked mobile carrier Softbank reported Wednesday it had 229,500 cell phone subscribers in June, topping the country’s biggest carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc., which recorded 164,000. Second-ranked KDDI Corp. had just 61,300 new subscribers. Softbank is the exclusive iPhone provider in a country where nearly three out of four smartphones are made by Apple.

In April, Softbank’s head, Masayoshi Son, said “the iPhone is selling so well that we are really feeling a boost from it.”Apple sold 1.7 million iPhones in Japan, 72 percent of all smartphones in that country. Indeed, the iPhone is credited with doubling the smartphone segment over 2009, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Predicting sales of a new product based on demand from eager early adopters can be risky. However, one analyst made such a leap. Bernstein Research analyst Tom Sacconaghi told investors Thursday Apple could sell 25 million iPads in 2011. But, then again, it might sell 18 million tablets next year. It kind of depends, you know?

“An analysis based on extrapolating sales trajectories of [the iPhone, iPod and all netbooks] suggests that Apple could sell a staggering 25 million iPads or more in fiscal 2011,” the analyst wrote. This seems to go along with Apple reporting selling three million iPads in the first 80 days.

Apple’s Shaghai China store opens Saturday. With the impending opening comes comparisons with the Cupertino, Calif. company’s New York City flagship. Yep, the same glass cylinder, the same hoopla, the same moat. Moat?

Yes, along with a 40-foot high glass cylinder (with possibly the largest glass panes in the world) is a moat filled with water. While Apple Senior Vice President of Retail Ron Johnson wanted to focus on the “stunning architecture,” the site Shanghaiist wanted to talk about that moat. “There is an inexplicably shallow moat of water surrounding the store, tripping up those who don’t watch their step,” a writer comments. We aren’t sure about that architecture feature, ourselves. Could it be a concession to China’s government leaders, perhaps a way to track potential troublemakers; look for the wet socks?

The iPhone 4 videochat feature FaceTime may not be televising the revolution any time soon, but at least one pair of doctors have used it to consult on a patient who risked amputation.

In what may be the first documented iPhone 4 medical video consultation, University of Arizona surgeon David G. Armstrong, connected via FaceTime to give with Los Angeles Surgeon Lee Rogers’ a look at a patient who had undergone foot reconstruction at the University’s Southern Arizona Limb Salvage Alliance (SALSA). The virtual consult came in handy since Dr. Rogers was attending the American Diabetes Association meeting in Orlando, Florida when he took the “FaceTime” call from Armstrong, who had returned from Orlando to his SALSA clinics a day earlier.

New Apple Friend Bar Gives Customers Someone To Talk At About Mac Products

Another chunk of genius from The Onion, poking fun at those of us who love our Apple products a little too much.

The Apple Friend Bar, it says, is a new service where ordinary Mac fanatics can book appointments with experts who will be happy to just chat about Apple products. All. Day. Long.

My favorite part is when the Friend Bar employee is quoted saying: “Unlike your girlfriend or co-workers, we’re not going to get tired of discussing the wireless networking capabilities of the Snow Leopard operating system.”

Concept designs in general tend to be wishful-thinking affairs, but we can’t help but wish that this smart packaging design by Sverre Wiik Øberg uses the iPod’s own packaging as a charger. The box protects the iPod during shipping, then out pop the prongs to juice your iPod in any wall socket once it arrives.

What a snazzy design. Apple’s been increasingly moving towards minimizing its packaging in the interests of green friendliness over the past fe years. The next obvious step seems to be something just like this: discourage customers from throwing away their packaging to begin with by making it legitimately useful.

For the last few days, numerous iPhone users in major AT&T network hubs have noticed apparent 3G upload throttling. AT&T has just released a statement concerning the problem: its a bug with the Alcatel-Lucent HSUPA hardware, and they are working on it.

“AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect — triggered under certain conditions – that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment. This impacts less than two percent of our wireless customer base. While Alcatel-Lucent develops the appropriate software fix, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected customers with HSUPA-capable devices.

In other words, something went kablooey, and until Alcatel-Lucent gets around to fixing the problem, users with HSUPA-capable devices like the iPhone 4 will be limited to regular 3G UMTS upload speeds.

Wonder if you’re affected? If you’re in NYC, Central Jersey, Boston, Orlando, Seattle, South Jersey/Philly, Columbus, Cleveland, West Houston, Phoenix, Northern Colorado, St. Paul/Minnesota, Suffolk County/Long Island, Quad Cities, South Jersey, Denver, Detroit Metro, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Fairfax and Minneapolis… well, could be.