The iPad’s launch could be delayed a month due to an unspecified bottleneck slowing the device’s production. The slowdown could push initial sales into April and trim the hoped 1 million units in March to just 300,000, an analyst told investors Monday.
“The upcoming iPad launch may be somewhat limited as a manufacturing bottleneck has impacted production of Apple’s newest device,” writes Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek. The problems with iPad manufacturer Hon Hai Precision, could limit initial shipments to the US.
It’s Monday and that can only mean one thing: Cult of Mac is bringing you yet another sweet Facebook giveaway.
This week we’re giving away 10 iDevice covers from iWrap. Their covers protect everything from iPhones to Nintendo DSes so we’ll give the first 10 to tag us with “Drink the Kool-Aid, Become a Fan of Cult of Mac” in their Facebook status $19.95 in the iWrap store. Make sure your privacy settings are set to “Everyone” so that your tag shows up on our wall.
Even if you missed out on the first 10 tags, head over to our Facebook Headquarters and you can get a coupon code for 25% off any item in the store valid today only.
Nuance, the company behind Dragon Mobile for iPhone and the Naturally Speaking range of software products, has bought MacSpeech, makers of the jaw-droppingly amazing MacSpeech Dictate and its recent new sibling, MacSpeech Scribe.
Although relatively few insiders have touched an iPad, accessory makers – the people that make the cases, skins and add-ons for iPhones and iPods – are chomping at the bit to start selling iPad products one Apple starts shipping in March. Why are the companies so anxious? In 2009, $3.7 billion worth of iPod and iPhone accessories were sold, according to one estimate. Makers of add-ons say the iPad could be an even more lucrative market.
According to new data from Gartner, Apple’s iPhone operating system is the third most dominant smartphone platform in the world, with a 14.4% market share.
The iPhone still trails Nokia’s Symbian operating system and RIM’s BlackBerry OS. The discrepancy between RIM and Apple is only by five percent… but RIM has only grown their market share by about 13% in the last year, where as Apple has nearly doubled theirs.
On the other hand, there’s still a wide, wide discrepancy between Symbian and iPhone OS. Nokia’s smartphones account for 46.9% of the global 2009 smartphone market, but that’s down from 54.2% the year before… and more and more users continue to abandon the platform in favor of other OSes, like the iPhone’s.
In fact, looking at Gartner’s numbers, it’s easy to spot a trend: the only smartphone OSes that are growing in market share are the iPhone OS, Android and the BlackBerry OS… and the iPhone is outgrowing all of them.
Give it another couple of years: by 2011, the iPhone OS will be the most widely used smartphone OS in the world.
iTunes finally sold its ten billionth song, and as promised, Apple has given the lucky downloader a $10,000 iTunes gift card (or one ten thousandth of a cent for every iTunes song ever sold).
But sorry, guys! It wasn’t you… well, unless your name is Mr. Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia, in which case, congratulations. Sulcer’s magic download was “Guess That’s The Way Things Happen” as sung by Johnny Cash.
I guess that is the way that happens. That lucky bastard!
The iPhone 3GS. Creative Commons-licensed photo by Fr3d: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fr3d/2660915827/
Apple could unveil a lower-cost iPhone in June, a handset designed to address the two major barriers to adoption: cost of hardware and cost of the service plan, one analyst said Friday. The cost of iPhone hardware stops 85 percent of people, while the service plan is a barrier for 66 percent.
“We expect Apple to launch new iPhones in June that offer both a lower total cost of ownership and new functionality, potentially including gesture-based technology,” Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty told investors.
Police and fire officials were called when an iPod spontaneously exploded on the desk of a high school student in West Newbury, Massachusetts.
The iPod was sitting on the girl’s desk in science class when it exploded. No one was hurt and fire chief Scott Berkenbush said the situation proved to be minor.
“iPod is the new Toyota,” Berkenbush remarked to the Daily News Online. “I think the problem is with the battery itself. If any moisture gets on it or it falls in a puddle, it can spark.”
Unfortunately, the report doesn’t mention what iPod model — one of the older iPod nanos that have had battery problems — was or whether it was a school-issued iPod Touch that more and more schools are adopting for classroom work.
It’s been years since I’ve used the Opera browser, but the latest beta version offers at least one tempting reason to switch: it’s fast. Really fast. So fast that it just smokes every other browser on the OS X platform.
It’s all thanks to Opera’s new JavaScript rendering engine, Carkan, and a new vector graphics library called Vega that handles all the graphics rendering. Seth Weintraub runs the math over at Computerworld, but the bottom line is that Opera 10.5 beta is about 10 percent faster at rendering pages than the previous champ, Safari 4.
After January 27th’s unveiling of the iPad, it became abundantly clear that Apple has meaningful plans for iPhone OS outside of the smartphone arena. In fact, given the App Store’s runaway success, it’s just good business sense for Apple to try to get iPhone apps on as many devices as possible: not just phones, portable media players and tablets, but more traditional laptop and desktop machines as well.
The question is, then, when will OS X and iPhone OS begin to converge? When will OS X become compatible with iPhone OS?
In a recent New York Times blog post, Nick Bilton examines this very question, and talks to a former senior Apple Engineer to get to the bottom of whether or not iPhone apps could run natively on OS X one day.
I’m a long-time fan of territory games. Civilization sucked me in on the Amiga and its sequel appealed on the Mac. For quicker games in a similar vein, various Risk clones for the Mac (such as iConquer) once took up numerous tiny chunks of my day. But when I discovered Galcon for iPhone, the others vanished. Here was a crazy real-time Risk/stripped-down Civ, with brutally fast gameplay and land-grabbing. In single-player mode, it was compelling, and against online opposition, a joy.
Humorously pitting herbology against zombology, Popcap’s superb tower defense game Plants vs. Zombies was a long time coming to the iPhone… but once it the excellent port finally hit, it was destined to be a success.
I doubt even Popcap, though, realized exactly how much of a runaway hit they had on their hands, though. They’ve just issued a press release, announcing (with just a hint of stupefaction) that Plants vs. Zombies sold over 300,000 copies in its first nine days.
Costing just $2.99 on the App Store, that means that they’ve brought in just a little under a million dollars on the game since its release. Popcap’s a big name in casual indie gaming, sure, but even so: that’s real walking around money.
They deserve the success. Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone is such an excellent port that it’s actually easy to forget it hits desktop machines first: playing it on an iPhone just feels like how it was always meant to be played.
I only hope the success of Plants vs. Zombies galvanizes Popcap to continue to add some of the desktop version’s excellent minigames, puzzles and survival modes to the iPhone version, perhaps as in-app purchases. Once you hit a certain skill level in Plants vs. Zombies, Endless Survival is just the only way to play, and I’d easily drop another $5 on PvZ if Popcap gave me the option to do so.
Every couple of years, Square-Enix dusts off the first couple of games of the Final Fantasy series, gives them a vigorous spit polish and then throws them on the gaming handheld du jour. So if you haven’t played Final Fantasy I or II on the original NES, PSP, PlayStation, GBA, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, ad infinitim… good news! You can now pick up both Final Fantasy I and FInal Fantasy II are now available over on the App Store.
The original Final Fantasy game includes five bonus dungeons, as well as the Soul of Chaos and Labyrinth of Time extras added to some of the more recent ports of the game. As for Final Fantasy II, you also get five bonus dungeons, as well as the Soul of Rebirth and Arcane Labyrinth packs.
These classic RPGs will keep you busy for dozens of hours, so from that perspective, $9 is a steal… but I’ve never personally felt that the first couple of Final Fantasy games aged particularly well, and while the new sprite work is undeniably attractive, the gameplay and story in the games seem more like an archeological curiosity of modern gaming than anything I’d want to revisit. So I’ll hold on to my $18 for now… but wake me up when Square-Enix gets around to porting Final Fantasy VI to iPhone OS, would you?
Apple has settled claims with state regulators who allege the company mishandled electronic waste. Photo: Thomas Dohmke
Two main news items came from Apple’s annual shareholder meeting held Thursday: CEO Steve Jobs wants to hang onto the company’s $25 billion in cash for “big and bold” future investments and the firm borne of the desktop computer now considers itself a “mobile devices company.”
“This is not something we’re ordaining from the top. This is something our customers are saying with their dollars,” Jobs said, according to Reuters. Apple could get half of its revenue from the iPhone by 2011, an analyst said Thursday. However, Jobs stressed there are no plans to scuttle Apple’s line of desktop computers.
Steve Wozniak hasn’t given up his desire to appear in the spotlight: after hamming it up on “Dancing with the Stars,” he’s going to show his adorable mug at a Roller Derby event on March 6 in San Francisco.
Woz will be on hand when the Bay City Bombers Roller Derby team takes on Thunder at the Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. Tickets for the “family friendly evening” are $5-$10, organizers expect a sell out.
“Steve Woniak has been a Bomber fan for a few decades,” said team owner Tim Patten. “He will be the official game starter at the event.”
(Too bad they spelled his name wrong on the flyer.)
No idea whether the “official game starter” means he’ll be taking an initial spin on the banked track, but we really, really hope so.
Boxee is Apple TV done right. It’s a great, Net-connected, “social” media player that allows you to play video from all over the Web as well as files from file-sharing networks. It streams content from sites like Netflix, Pandora and Last.fm, and makes it easy to get entertainment recommendations from friends. It transforms the Apple TV into a truly-useful internet video device.
The beta adds a much-improved that’s easier to navigate. Boxee on Apple TV was previously available only as an early alpha version. The latest beta was released in January but was unavailable for Apple TV users — until now.
A group of Boxee users have updated the ATV-Usb creator to install the Boxee Beta.
Users who already have Boxee Alpha installed on their AppleTV can simply update Launcher and then update Boxee to install the beta, no patchstick needed.
The iTunes store is pulling off and putting on sexy apps faster than you can stuff a dollar bill in a g-string.
Case in point: the Hooter’s girls are back in bikinis to “clean” your iPhone screen. Hooters Calendar Screen Wash was quietly reinstated Feb. 24 and is now back on sale. The $0.99 app is for a +17 audience, though it doesn’t seem to be any more prurient or wholesome than some of the babes-in-bikini apps that were yanked over sexual content. Another five Hooters-related apps, from several different app makers, also appear to have been reinstated.
No one seems more surprised than the creators, On the Go Girls, who remarked on the company blog:
“Wow! Surprising! We are shocked! Our Hooters Calendar Sexy Screen Wash was restored to the App Store last night 2am PST.”
No-name bikini apps still seem to be AWOL from the iTunes store, which makes me wonder whether it’s more a question of brand-name franchises like Playboy and Sports Illustrated flaunting their stuff than one of women complaining about them.
Ever wondered what your mouse pointer actually does all day? Ever wanted to have a way of tracking where it goes while you work, and exporting that information as a map of your daily mousings?
It’s simple, it’s free, it’s fun, and it’s brilliant: it watches your mouse movements for as long as you want it to, tracking the times when the pointer is moving rapidly and the times it spends standing still in one place.
It plots all this on a view of your computer’s desktop, showing the movements as fine lines and the stationary periods as enlarged blobs.
Remember the cool 3D effects in ‘Avatar’ and wishing you could see more? Well, maybe you can with a pair of sunglasses the maker touts as similar to walking around with a 67-inch screen resting on your nose. Add the ability to pipe in video from your iPhone and you’ve got the Vuzix Wrap 920.
The $350 sunglasses work with 2D and 3D video formats, are NTSC and PAL compatible, and work for six hours on two AA alkaline batteries. The glasses, which weigh less than three ounces, include two high-resolution 640 x 480 LCD displays with a 60Hz progressive scan update rate.
At least with this iPhone you don’t have to worry about managing or forgetting its cookies. A Japanese bakery called Green Gables whips up these handmade smart cookies — the “camera” on the back is an especially nice touch — but fortunately they spared us the glossy black frosting and made them out of what looks like gingerbread instead.
If you’re looking for a more slavish copy to sink your teeth into, there are other options.
Since its inception, Google’s Android operating system seemed aimed at guys. Now we have more proof in the form of an AdMob survey showing Android men outnumber iPhone women 73 percent to 53 percent.
Some 43 percent of iPhone users are female, compared to just 27 percent of Android-based phone owners, AdMob said Thursday. The survey found not only a gender split, but also an age gap between the two smartphone platforms.
When or if Apple will unveil a refreshed MacBook Pro line is the latest parlor game among Apple owners. Along with watching for unreleased Intel procesors and checking Best Buy’s inventory, fans may have to wait until March or April for a new MacBook Pro, one analyst is suggesting.
A new MacBook Pro could be unveiled in late March, the end of the current quarter, or in April, when the next quarter begins, says Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu. Wu bases his claim on low inventories of the MacBook.
Apple appears to be investigating ways to do away with the iMac’s keyboard, replacing it with a touchscreen that should detect shapes, such as a key. Harkening back to the days when letters were sealed with insignias to prove the sender’s identity, the Cupertino, Calif. company would use “signets” for security-related tasks.
The shape-detecting technology, first outlined in a 2004 patent, then updated Oct. 30, 2009, permits “improved techniques to allow different authorization levels” on computer networks.
When researching a recent article for TechRadar, about great iPhone games that should be ported to iPad, I asked a few devs about their plans for the platform. Most remained tight-lipped, but Reto Senn was happy to spill a few beans regarding Orbital, an absurdly addictive one-thumb orb-destruction game that’s currently my favourite iPhone app, and which was seen demoed on iPad at Apple’s recent press event.
“It was a surprise for us that Orbital appeared on the iPad and was playable at the press event. We didn’t know about this beforehand,” says Reto. “We’ve looked into the possibilities [for iPad] and we’ve decided to create an iPad-specific release, dubbed Orbital HD. The new version will have pin-sharp textures so the game takes advantage of the higher resolution screen. We’re also re-designing the user interface, because the bezel, larger screen and weight of the device will have users hold the iPad in a different position to iPhone, in order to play Orbital.”
In terms of gameplay, Reto reveals that although gameplay will stay the same “so highscores will be comparable with the iPhone version,” there are plans in the works to add some unique features to Orbital HD: “We’re designing a two-player mode so it can be played like a table-top arcade game. Multiplayer is one of our favourite features of Orbital and the iPad is the perfect device for that kind of gameplay—with its large screen it’s like a portable table-top arcade game.”
The iPhone 3GS. Creative Commons-licensed photo by Fr3d: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fr3d/2660915827/
The iPhone, initially a sideline to Apple’s main Mac sales, could account for up to half of the Cupertino, Calif. firm’s revenue by 2011, according to an analyst. The company is on track to sell 45 to 50 million handsets next year, more than double the 20.7 million iPhones sold in fiscal 2009.
Toni Sacconaghi, analyst with Bernstein Research, in a note to investors, said the iPhone could become 45 percent to 50 percent of Apple’s revenue, up from 30 percent in 2009. The analyst forecasts iPhone sales will reach 40 million to 50 million units in fiscal 2011, a dramatic increase from 20.7 million sold in 2009. The company should report sales of 8.7 million for the first fiscal quarter of 2010, he adds.
