News - page 2238

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This fantastic proof of concept video by the guys over at Magic Jungle Software demonstrates their forthcoming game, Chopper 2, being output from an iPad to a 42-inch HDTV, with an iPhone or iPod Touch used as the game’s controller.

It looks incredible, but perhaps more interesting is Distorted Loop’s take on the video, which is that this would be a fantastic direction for a relaunched Apple TV to take: an audio-visual, app-running console hooked up to your television that can be controlled by an iPhone, iPod Touch or even a “future low-cost touch sensitive remote control” that would ship in the box.

A product like that would not only finally realize the wasted potential of the Apple TV product line, but put Apple on track to compete with the likes of the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as furiously as the iPhone currently competes with the Nintendo DS.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg isn’t the only politician to use an iPad. Russian President (and Putin-wielded political hand puppet) Dimitry Medvedev was spotted using an iPad during a recent meeting of the State Council, the Council of the Arts and the Council for Science and Technology. Unlike Stoltenberg, though, Medvedev was quick to reveal his own Ludditical tendencies, claiming that he initially found the iPad “impossible to read” (perhaps he prefers e-paper) and only warmed up to it when he downloaded the beautiful Russian novel A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov… which, incidentally, you should definitely read in the Nabokov translation if you can find it.

[via TUAW]

Borrowing design motifs from Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corporation, this hideous, glowing pyramid is the kind of coffee table cum iPhone dock that only a degrading Replicant could love. It’s called the Horus, and if owning a glass topped coffee table is the sort of thing that made you paranoid before, we’re sure you’ll love the addition of a razor sharp, impaling spike on the surface top. You can contact the designer for pricing information, but furniture this garishly tacky doesn’t come cheap when you’re not buying it bulk in a storage auction.

[via Born Rich

Amid speculation of when the iPhone 4G will be officially released and a brewing court battle over its premature disclosure by a gadget blog, manufacturers are already ramping up production of Apple’s upcoming handset, reports suggest. LG Innotek has starting making the 5-megapixel camera and could reach full-tilt by July, according to a Korean publication.

“LG Innotek will supply 5-megapixel cameras for Apple’s next-generation smartphone, the iPhone 4G,” reports the Chosun Ibo. Production began this month with mass-production expected in the second half of 2010.

In part 9 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” Macworld founder David Bunnell tells how he shouted “Steve Jobs is a fucking genius!” in front of a bunch of kids at a Super Bowl party.

John Stewart on The Daily Show rips Apple a new one for going Big Brother on Gizmodo:

“Apple – you guys were the rebels, man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But now, are you becoming the man? Remember back in 1984, you had those awesome ads about overthrowing Big Brother? Look in the mirror, man! …It wasn’t supposed to be this way – Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one! But you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes! What the fuck is going on?!

…I know that it is slightly agitating that a blog dedicated to technology published all that stuff about your new phone. And you didn’t order the police to bust down the doors, right? I’d be pissed too, but you didn’t have to go all Minority Report on his ass! I mean, if you wanna break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There’re no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T’s signal?!

…Come on, Steve. Chill out with the paranoid corporate genius stuff. Don’t go all Howard Hughes on us.”

Via Gawker.

Hewlett-Packard is buying Palm for $1.2 billion, the company has announced. Of all the potential suitors, I don’t think HP was mentioned as a candidate. Looks like HP will be making smartphones running Palm’s WebOS, which it may or may not rebrand. The company currently makes Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. Looks like it wants to manage its own hardware and software, à la Apple.

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is expected to carry on, the HP statement says. Minor note: Rubinstein started his career at HP before working for Steve Jobs at NeXT and then Apple.

Fast Company has written up the iPhonegate saga as a funny Choose Your Own Adventure. The flowchart is spot on and made me laugh out loud.

Here’s the whole thing: Choose Your Own Adventure: The Gizmodo iPhone Saga

I’m happy to report that I was wrong about the iRetroFone Base. The handset works! Good Lord, I need one immediately.

Retail sales of Apple products grew 8 percent during the March quarter, an analyst said Wednesday. What’s even more intriguing was a 21.3 percent jump in Mac sales during a period when no new Apple computers were introduced.

Charlie Wolf, analyst with Needham & Company, told investors the March performance followed 19.8 percent year-over-year growth of same-store sales in December, a traditionally-strong period. Even more dramatic was March’s increase served as a nearly mirror image of a year ago, when Mac retail sales were down almost 22 percent.

Sure you can buy iPhone cookies and cupcakes, but artisan chocolates in the form of iPhone icons are definitely the most delectable knock-offs to date.

The original 20-piece sets of organic chocolates sold out within a week of launch, but there’s a special Mother’s Day edition “created as a tribute to modern mothers.”

The iChocolates box features four flavors of extra-dark, 100% cocoa butter chocolate, a graphic designer was called on to help give the yummy icons a true-to-life look.

That iconic goodness doesn’t come cheap, either, at $46, they cost about as much as a universal charging dock for your actual iPhone.

The Paris-based iChocolate seller says they ship worldwide and promises your iPhone chocs will arrive intact.

Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be June 7 through June 11 in San Francisco, Calif.’s Mascone Center, the Cupertino, Calif. consumer electronics firm announced Wednesday. The event could also serve to introduce the iPhone 4G, Apple’s next-generation handset which Gizmodo unofficially announced earlier this month.

Historically, the WWDC has been used to unveil new Apple products. The iPhone 3GS was introduced at last year’s conference, which ran June 8 through June 12. Some analysts believe the leak of a prototype iPhone 4G would force Apple to introduce a new handset earlier than planned, as Cult of Mac reported Tuesday.

Eye-Fi, pretty much the only company in town doing interesting things with SD cards, have just announced their newest card: the Apple-exclusive Eye-Fi GeoX2.

Like other Eye-Fi cards, the Geo X2 allows you to upload photos directly from your camera’s SD card to your computer over 802.11n WiFi. The Geo X2 will directly interface with iPhoto and MobileMe, as well as Picasa, Facebook and a slew of other online services.

The Geo X2 also boasts previous Eye-Fi cards’ cool Endless Mode, which allows the Eye-Fi to automatically clear space on the card after photos have been uploaded. It will also automatically geotag your photos to make it easier to use with iPhoto’s Places feature.

The Geo X2 will be exclusively available starting in May and cost $69.99 for a 4GB card.

Well, would-be iPad 3G owners. Your long, long wait is finally coming to an end. According to 9to5Mac, pre-orders of the iPad 3G are finally starting to ship, and should be in your hands by Friday. If you didn’t pre-order one, you may be able to snag an iPad 3G at an Apple Store if you swing by after 5PM.

Got your shipping confirmation? Brag about it to us poor suckers in the comments.

Update: Reader Chris Wanja says, “I see you pulled it from the 9to5Mac article. In the mass of the 130+ comments, I added to a lot of them. We… have come to the conclusion that the image is Photoshopped due to NO one else having a shipping confirmation via email or order status. Several people confirm with other blogs and forums that they have not yet shipped, but are “prepared for shipment”.

Seems like a rather pedestrian use of Photoshop, personally. Have any of our readers received shipping confirmation yet?

Accept no imitations! Reader Rob Kearney wrote us to claim ownership of the genius that came up with the original “i Went Drinking With Gray Powell And All I Got Was A Lousy iPhone Prototype” t-shirt. And he can prove it!

With Gizmodo’s leaked fourth-generation prototype confirming both front and back-facing video cameras in the next iPhone, we can now take it as read that video conferencing is coming to iPhone OS, as the 3.2 and Beta 4 SDKs have long hinted.

So what kind of software video features can we expect in the next iPhone? MacRumors has taken a close look at the latest build.

The popular European music streaming service Spotify has gotten a substantial new desktop update in new version 0.43, which brings social networking integration, the ability to import your own MP3 into your Spotify library, an offline storage locker, and a new user inboxes for the sharing of tracks.

Transmit, the popular OS X FTP client by Panic Support, has finally broken its half decade run of version 3.x executables and finally released version 4.0, a significant and shiny upgrade that boasts faster performance, a new user interface and several fantastic new features.

Confirming earlier rumors, the New York Times is reporting that Apple has purchased ARM design firm Intrinsity for an estimated $121 million.

HTC just got a powerful new ally in its patent fight against Apple.

Following Google’s announcement that they would support their frequent manufacturing partner in its defense against complaints made by Apple that HTC handsets infringe upon a number of key iPhone-related patents, Microsoft has issued a press release saying that they have signed a broad patent-sharing agreement with HTC.

According to the agreement, Microsoft will license its patents to HTC across all of their phones. If the phone is a Google Android handset, HTC will pay them a couple bucks in royalties on every handset sold.

In part 8 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” Macworld founder David Bunnell describes how Steve Jobs and IDG publisher Pat McGovern sign a deal to launch Macworld in conjunction with the Mac.

The Blagoblogs are a-buzz with a report that shows Android has overtaken the iPhone in mobile web traffic. This would be concerning were it not for two things:

1. The report only shows Android overtaking iPhone in the U.S. (it’s still dominating globally)
2. The report is created by AdMod, the mobile advertising company owned by Google, and is based on mobile traffic through its network. In other words, it doesn’t count any traffic directed through areas it doesn’t serve, including any by Apple-owned Quattro and many iPhone apps built on other platforms.

Since AdMob is a key part of Google’s mobile strategy at this point and is a key component to any ad-supported Android applications, this is almost exactly the trend we should expect to see. And this trend will only become more dramatic as Apple rolls out iAds in iPhone OS 4.0, which won’t wipe out third-party ad providers in iPhone apps but will likely come to dominate. Don’t be surprised to see a report six months from now showing Apple’s mobile web traffic dropping by half or more.

All of which suggests that a mobile ad network isn’t the best source for reporting the totality of mobile web traffic. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the mobile carriers got together and shared what they knew?

Via Fast Company

Police have identified and interviewed the person who found Apple’s iPhone 4G at a bar, the San Jose Business Journal reports.

Also, it looks like Gray Powell, the engineer who lost the iPhone at the bar, and an Apple lawyer reported it as a theft. However, the District Attorney still hasn’t determined whether the case is a crime.

Investigators said they have identified and interviewed the person who took the phone from the Gourmet Haus Staudt on March 18 after it was left there by Apple engineer Gray Powell following a birthday celebration. Officials were unable to tell the Business Journal whether that person, whose name has not been released, was the same person who eventually sold the phone to tech Web site Gizmodo.com. […]

Wagstaffe said that an outside counsel for Apple, along with Apple engineer Powell, called the District Attorney’s office on Wednesday or Thursday of last week to report a theft had occurred and they wanted it investigated.

San Jose Business Journal: Apple asked for ‘lost’ iPhone criminal probe

So the iPad is a runaway hit and there’s no stopping the iPhone: the Telegraph still finds reason to harrumph at Apple with a “Bottom Ten” of what they consider the Cupertino company’s worst products.

The surprise: iTunes tops the list as Apple’s worst product to date.

If these schadenfreude rankings are evergreens for news outlets, they are usually topped by obvious turkeys like the Lisa and Apple III. Both of these commercial flops are still “less bad” than iTunes, however, ranking six and eight respectively.

Popstress Rihanna poses for the Italian edition of Vanity Fair wearing just a raincoat and an overdose of bling.

Her trusty iPhone is to help avoid pesky wardrobe malfunctions. There must be an app for that.

Via iPhone Savior