The lawsuit Apple filed against HTC last week was just a public ‘warning shot’ across the bow of handset makers in an effort begun early last year to thwart the rise of potential iPhone killers, an analyst told investors Tuesday. Apple’s intimidation seems to be working. Rivals are returning to the drawing board to find work-arounds and a better response to the Apple smartphone.
“Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses,” said Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner. Apple’s warnings “are meaningfully disrupting the development roadmaps for would-be iPhone killers,” he adds.
This iPhone 3Gs video camera stabilizer is probably too extreme a DIY project for anyone to actually carry out, but if you choose to brave Google Translate’s gobbledygooked English translation ofthese Japanese instructions, you should be able to get the jist and make your very own iPhone steadicam… just the thing to make your own backyard Evil Dead remake.
Yesterday, Valve yawned open its PR orifice and finally confirmed the huge Mac gaming development that everyone already knew was coming: they’re bringing the Steam digital delivery service to OS X. Today, from that same orifice, we have more details, including the games we can expect to see released next month.
“Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April,” the company has confirmed.
Even better? As hinted, you’ll be able to use the same product key to download and play both PC and Mac versions of the same title.
“Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge,” says the company.
A small bit, this, but almost totally unprecedented in Mac gaming, where ports of PC titles inevitably require a separate purchase. Also nearly unprecedented: Mac and Windows players will both be part of the same multiplayer universe, which means they’ll be able to play on the same servers.
Even better news? Valve has said that they’re treating the Mac as a “Tier 1” platform, which means that, from now on, the company will release its own games at the same time as on the PC and Xbox 360. Portal 2 will be the first game to be released simultaneously on the Mac, PC and 360.
Of course, there’s a lot up in the air here… Steam’s not just about Valve games, and if other companies don’t start releasing native ports for OS X (as opposed to the cheap and sluggish practice of dropping them in DirectX wrappers and slapping a $50 price tag on the resulting .DMG), Steam for Mac will never get more traction. Let’s hope Valve’s investment into OS X finally convinces game developers to embrace the fastest growing home computing market out there.
After Street Fighter, Tekken’s one of the biggest fighting game franchises around. It’s no surprise, then, that the iconic Namco brawler would be quick to follow Capcom’s Street Fighter IV as an iPhone-specific port.
There’s nothing official yet, but according to Pocket Gamer, an anonymous source has told them that iPhone and iPod Touch owners can expect the Iron Fist Tournament to come to their handhelds soon.
Of course, when “soon” is is still very much up in the air, although it is apparently in the final phases of development. Hopefully, Namco will figure out a less obtrusive control scheme for Tekken than the Street Fighter IV‘s fighter-obscuring overlays.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is today’s Best Thing Ever.
Panic are the people who make fabulous Mac software like FTP client Transmit and web dev box-of-tricks Coda.
Now they’ve made their own status board – it’s a monitor hung on the wall, displaying an internal web page that aggregates stuff from different sources and displays it beautifully.
One of the things on there is tweets sent @panic – so while you’re watching them and saying how amazing their status board is, they’re watching you right back.
Thank you, Panic, for brightening up the internet this morning.
thanks for the photo flickr friend Gareth Courage!
It’s Hanukkah come early! Well, not really, but Canon’s fresh new instant rebate sale may have you itching to light up that menorah!
Most likely a response to Nikon’s recently announced instant rebate sale, Canon’s sale is actually pretty impressive. They’ve definitely got Nikon beat in the sheer variety of lenses that qualify for the instant rebate, and they are even including two flashes in the lineup.
So if you’ve been itching for some new Canon gear, now has just become an excellent time to start scratching. You have until April 3rd to cash in on any of the rebate options below.
Apple has begun cracking down on App Store developers hawking ‘cook-cutter’ applications with little or no advantage over similar Web-based apps, according to a Monday report. The tighter requirements are likely designed to ensure App Store offerings are unique to competitors.
“Last month or so [Apple] has started cracking down on basic applications that are little more than RSS feeds or glorified business cards,” TechCrunch writes.
Along with a glimpse of Apple CEO Steve Jobs attending Sunday’s Oscars, viewers may also have seen the first public shots fired in the ebook pricing wars between the Cupertino, Calif. company and online retail goliath Amazon. The 30-second commercial included several best-sellers appearing on the iPad’s iBookstore and at prices spanning $7.99 to $14.99.
Sen. Edward Kennedy’s “True Compass: A Memoir” had a $14.99 iBookstore price, lower than the $19.25 Amazon charges Kindle e-book readers. However, both the $12.99 price for the iBookstore version of James Patterson’s “I, Alex Cross” and $7.99 iBookstore version of “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World…One Child at a Time” by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin were higher than Amazon: $9.99 and $7.19, respectively.
Well, it looks like it’s official: after accidentally leaking the existence of a Mac client in their latest beta, and teasing the same in a series of hysterical promotional images, Valve has announced that the Steam games delivery service will indeed be coming to OS X… along with the sequel to their nabacularly terrific teleportation puzzler, Portal.
After all, slowed down by 15% and annotated by Neil Curtis, the iPad spot is just as surreal as the Old Spice ad. In fact, it is rife with goofs, most notably multitouch interactions that have little to no bearing to what the model is doing on screen. As for that iPad model, s/he is practically the Orlando of Apple spots, transmutating from female to male to female again over the course of the ad… all the while magically warping in and out of different pairs of pants.
It’s a bit strange to see a company as detail-obsessed as Apple make so many careless little mistakes… but you’d be hard pressed to catch any of these gaffes at regular speed. It just goes to show that as nitpicky as Jobs can be, the collected Internet will always one-up him.
If you are diminutive in stature, the best way to boost your ego is to stand next to an even shorter person. In the world of finance, you compare a not-so bad quarter against a real stinker. Such sleight-of-hand translates into exceeding Wall Street comparisons. That is what’s happening with Mac sales for February 2010 compared to February 2009, when sales dropped 16 percent.
“We expect the strong (year-over-year) growth in NPD data that we saw (in January) to continue in the month of (February),” analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray said Monday.
A few short months ago, the Kindle seemed completely unassailable. While Amazon’s e-reader was hardly a tech revelation, before the iPad, it didn’t need to be: Amazon’s gigantic e-book store engorged with millions of $9.99 titles and free online connectivity through Whispernet was a huge wager that other companies struggled to meet.
In the wake of the iPad, though, the Kindle’s prospects look bleak. Before they’ve even released it, the iPad has managed to slaughter the Kindle in the eyes of the gadget-buying product. Case in point: ChangeWave Research has surveyed 3,171 consumers about their e-readers, and 27% say they’d rather have picked up an iPad… if it had been available at the time they picked up their original e-reader.
It’s a hypothetical exercise, of course: — despite the headlines on some blogs, those surveyed aren’t saying they would have waited for the iPad — but it’s still impressive that Apple has managed to impress so many existing Kindle owners with a device that costs more in both initial expenditure and e-reading upkeep in every way. But it’s also unsurprising: just like the iPod made all other MP3 players on the market look like antediluvian crapgets, the iPad’s done the same to e-readers.
In his emails to Apple customers who take the time to write him and ask him questions, Steve Jobs usually comes across as a really busy guy who, despite his workload, is really trying his best to maintain a human, one-on-one connection to his customers.
On some other occasions, though, Jobs will occasionally comes across as a devastating master of pith, capable of infusing a few matter-of-fact words with a palpably scornful undercurrent, as if — if he wasn’t just so darn busy all the time — he might instead muse for a few hundred words on just what it must be like to be as stupid as the quivering, moronic biomass to which he must deign to pander… and of which his correspondent is just one molecularly small part.
Whether the specific email from Jobs that is the subject of this post comes across as the former type of Jobsian communiqué or the latter is up to you. Either way, it contains at least one new bit of information about the iPad: you won’t be able to tether it to your iPhone.
Design collective Quirky just launched this earbud detangler that looks like a pocket protector for the aughts.
Cute, colorful and just $5, Wrapster is made out of bendable rubber. It keeps your wires uncrossed when you’re wearing an iPod and stores them when you’re not.
Perhaps if nerds start wearing what look like 4-inch safety scissors in their front pockets, those annoying co-workers who waste their time with questions like “How do I clear cookies from Firefox?” will start running for cover.
Have you ever been in this predicament: you’re on the road with your laptop and you want to listen to some tunes, but don’t want to haul out the external speakers that will give justice to your music? Or, maybe you are traveling and all you have is the laptop’s built-in speakers? Why compromise between between good sound and convenience? Logitech has introduced the perfect middle-ground: laptop speakers that easily attach to the screen of your laptop or netbook.
The Laptop Speaker z205 (pictured) is just 1.35 inches thick and 2.5 inches tall. But good things come in small packages. The $39.99 unit includes two high-performance drivers, built-in amp and an acoustically-tuned enclosure for “superior audio quality,” Logitech claims.
Speculation over whether or not Verizon will get a contract to sell the iPhone is pointless. But no matter the outcome, Apple is on track to sell at least 35 million of the iconic handsets in 2011, an analyst told investors Friday.
Merrill Lynch analyst Scott Craig said selling 33 million iPhones this year is “basically achievable” this year, no matter if Verizon becomes the second handset carrier this year or AT&T remains Apple’s exclusive carrier throughout the remainder of 2010.
iPhone Battery charger with flashlight & LED from RichardSolo
Back in the mists of time at the dawn of the Gadget Age, Richard Thalheimer’s Sharper Image was one of the more highly regarded purveyors of well-made, interesting and sometimes even useful products for the discerning gadgeteer. Starting out as a catalog selling jogging watches in 1977, The Sharper Image eventually grew into a heavy hitting company selling high-end consumer gadgetry through dozens of retail stores throughout the US as well as its monthly catalog and website, before imploding in bankruptcy in 2008.
The end for The Sharper Image was drawn out over a couple of years and after being forced from his position as CEO in 2006, Thalheimer founded RichardSolo, an online venture completely unrelated to The Sharper Image, in 2007. Recently RichardSolo debuted its own line of portable charging solutions for iPhone, iPod and other smartphones, proving sometimes it’s smart to dance with the date that brung ya.
The RichardSolo lineup is eerily reminiscent of items that might have been found at The Sharper Image back in the day, updated of course to reflect technology’s advances: in addition to chargers, there are cases, speakers, docks headsets and personal stereo devices, all in the $29 to $199 range and all featuring a design aesthetic positioned to lend the buyer a claim to a certain degree of coolness. Beyond the realm of personal gadgetry the company offers everything from massage chairs to body monitors to travel and Earth Friendly items. And yes, even jogging watches.
Although I generally find a reason to pick them up anyway, I was particularly enamored with MacHeist’s last nanoBundle, which offered some really fantastic Mac apps (including my all-time favorite, distraction-free text editor, WriteRoom) for, well, nothing.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to beat free, which makes MacHeist’s sequel to the nanoBundle a little harder to recommend: it costs $20. Still, complaining about a few fins is just greedy when you’re looking at this amount of cheap quality software, including MacJournal, RipIt, Clips, CoverScout and Flow.
As usual, there’s further incentive to buy: once 50,000 people purchase the bundle, Tales of Monkey Island will be unlocked, with Rapidweaver to be unlocked at an unspecified point thereafter. I don’t believe MacHeist has ever failed to unlock every title in their bundles, regardless of sales, so you can probably consider it a sure-thing that you’ll get these two titles as well.
These are some great apps, each one of which normally costs more than the $20 asking price of the bundle. Even if you’re only interested in one or two of these titles, this is an impulse buy you can feel good about.
Not long ago, up to 30% of App Store downloads belonged to the Games category, which — when the total number of games is counted in the billions — means a lot of games. Dedicated gamers, then, would stand to benefit from some way of organizing, tracking and getting information about all the games in the App Store, right? Hey, as the saying goes: there’s an app for that.
Well, not an app, actually, but a website. AppSpy.com is a nifty clearinghouse of information on all things mobile gaming for the iPhone, with a handy tracking feature that alerts registered users to price drops on their most coveted apps. In addition to being alerted when prices drop, users can read and watch quality reviews of all the hot new games and gather information on the latest iPhone gaming news. “We wanted to design an easy to use site that will improve user experience while shopping for Apps,” says founder Adam McKinnon. “AppSpy.com makes it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for.”
Up to six game reviews are released daily, including full video reviews which demonstrate actual game play. All videos are linked to AppSpy’s popular YouTube channel. Reviews include a list of pros and cons, verdict, screenshots and a 1 to 5 rating system.
Just this week Books overtook Games as the leading App Store category in terms of the number of offerings, perhaps heralding the dawn of the iPad era. But Games are sure to remain popular and may even grow with the introduction of Apple’s new device. Either way AppSpy.com should remain a great way for Apple’s mobile gamers to keep their eyes on the prize.
Word that Apple will ship the iPad April 3 and accept pre-orders Mar. 12 comes on the heels of the second analyst to talk delays. Thursday, an analyst said a ‘minor hiccup’ in production means Apple will need to wait until at least April before manufacturing ramps-up to 1 million iPads a month.
Temporary production issues resulted in just 200,000 to 250,000 iPads produced in March after an unexpected slowdown in February for Taiwanese manufacturers, according to Vijay Rakesh, analyst with Think Equity.
It was perhaps inevitable that Old Spice’s surrealist Manmercial campaign would eventually yield an Apple-specific parody. It’s a simple formula: just take the shirtless, dripping beefcake of the Old Spice ad, replace it with a doughy nerd in a turtleneck and change the can of Old Spice into an Apple product.
Predictable or not, though, neo-fight.tv‘s adaptation is worth an early Friday morning chuckle, especially on a day when we’re all celebrating the iPad’s officially announced release date.
The potential for Apple’s iPad to be wildly successful is a concern for more than direct rivals of the Cupertino, Calif. company. If the iPad becomes yet another hot product, expect flash memory to be even more expensive and don’t hold your breath for solid state drives to replace traditional hard drives on PCs, warns a Friday report.
“With the iPad likely to grab most memory supplies, prices may increase causing higher prices for SSDs,” writes industry publication Digitimes, citing an unnamed source. Apple currently consumes nearly one-third of the total flash (or NAND) memory supplies, the report says.
International roll-out in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK of both the iPad WiFi and iPad 3G will happen in late April.
Hurrah! The end is in sight! So much for those rumored delays: this puts the iPad launch exactly within the 60-90 day launch window Steve Jobs promised on January 27th.
Who else will be compulsively refreshing Apple.com on March 12th along with me?
Apple’s always struggled to keep its laptops both cool and quiet. Steve Jobs is notoriously perturbable in regards to fan noise, which means the fans on Macs, when present, kick in a lot less often than on their PC counterparts. A lot of the true engineering genius of the unibody aluminum MacBooks are in the way they effectively dissipate heat while keeping the fans turned low.
It’s a great solution for now, but laptops are just going to burn hotter in the coming years, not cooler. Forward thinking Apple isn’t going to sit on its haunches when it comes to notebook heat dissipation. They’ve filed for four separate patents related to cooling efficiency in future Macs: one for venting heat through open USB and FireWire ports, two addressing a notebook’s ability to adjust its performance dynamically based upon airflow measurements, and one that outlines a plan to use heat conductive hinge assemblies.
As usual, there’s no telling just when, or even if, we’ll see these patents rolled out into actual Apple products, but it’s good to know Apple’s staying on top of the problem as computers continue to burn hotter. After upgrading to a unibody MacBook, I couldn’t go back to my first-gen’s proclivity for scrotum searing if I tried.
Ahh, bless ’em. The hacks at The Sun aren’t famous for hard-hitting investigative journalism, but at least you’d expect them to know an iPhone app when they see one.
A couple of weeks ago a builder fooled them (and the Daily Mail) into believing that he’d taken a photo of a ghostly boy on a building site in Hull.
But as the internet pointed out shortly afterwards, anyone can make the exact same ghostly figure appear pretty much anywhere they like, thanks to the Ghost Capture app for iPhone.
Even funnier are some of the comments posted under the stories. On the Daily Mail’s version, for example, Mel from Stroud says:
“i am mildly psychic and i snese this boy was evacualted from the war,his father died,his mother died of old age,he lives with an old couple and this used to be his school,hopes this helps everyone”
(To be honest, I don’t think for a minute that the journalists at either paper actually believed that the photo was real, and they probably did instantly work out where it came from. But The Sun’s purpose is to entertain as much as it is to inform – so they wrote it up in all innocent seriousness, knowing that readers with a clue would be in on the joke. And that some readers would fall for it.)
