httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmgKDvWdi6o
Over the weekend, Seth Myers’ made a joke about the iPhone’s inability to actually place a call thanks to AT&T’s shoddy service during “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live. The joke was terrible, but as terrible as it was, the entire audience immediately burst into hysterical laughter: they all knew what he was talking about.
The image of Apple’s marketplace being only within the shores of the United States appears as valid as Microsoft’s claims about Vista. The United States was tenth in the countries experiencing the most growth in demand for Apple’s handset, a new survey found Friday. Instead, Japan, France and Australia are Apple’s top three markets for its iPhone and iPod touch.
The Mobile Metrics report from AdMob said sales to Japan in 2009 grew 350 percent, while France saw a 300 percent jump with Australia close behind. The U.S. and Canadian markets showed more than 100 percent growth this year. Although U.S. growth lagged far behind the leaders, 50 percent of all iPhone and iPod touch users make the U.S. home, according to AdMob.
Fanboys we. Ever since Paramount released the first official Iron Man 2 trailer, we’ve been looking for a reason to post a link to it. After all, Robert Downey Jr’s sublime cockiness and his high regard for the fusion between technology and design is pansexual geek porn for all.
Still, the grim-knuckled assertion that Tony Stark uses a Mac seems like a tenuous reason at best to direct readers of an Apple blog to watch Scarlett Johannson sultrily pose in a leather cat suit, or a shirtless Mickey Rourke to flail a couple of electric whips about.
Luckily, though, Apple accompanies the roll-out of the new Iron Man 2 trailer with a refresh of the Apple trailers page design, which brings it more in line with the way the iTunes Store now displays information. It’s an incremental roll-out, and the only other trailer to get the treatment so far is Shrek Forever After… but I don’t think that’s any reason to link you to a fourth installment of sassy donkeys and fairy tale fart jokes.
Anyway, enjoy the trailer, comforted by the fact that you are edifying yourself in the constantly evolving world of Apple interface design. Then join me in the comments to talk about all the robot smashing going on: is it just me, or does this trailer just sort of run out of steam halfway through?
Just came across Apple Rush, an organic apple juice and beverage company that turned up in an RSS feed for news on Apple Computers.
This one looks a lot more like the Apple logo than some of the logos with apples that have been taken to court by Apple over trademark issues.
Apple Rush, based in Dolton Illinois, sells apple juice and sparkling beverages in bottles and cans through a network of 40 distributors in the U.S. and abroad.
Granted, since confusion is one of the cornerstones of trademark infringement, unless consumers are likely to mistake a sparkling beverage with an iPod — though an Apple energy drink, to make your computing breezier would be pretty nifty — this one may end up in the copycat hall of shame instead of the courts.
Thoughts?
With USB 3.0 finally agreed upon, which allows for potential throughput of up to 4 gigabits per second, peripheral makers are slowly but surely dipping their toes into the waters of the new spec. Yesterday, LaCie announced that they were joining the fray with the world’s first USB 3.0 Dual-Drive RAID storage solution.
LaCie’s 2Big USB 3.0 is a dual-disc RAID 0/1 storage solution powered by Symwave’s dual SATA and RAID bridge controller. LaCite boasts that the 2Big will be capable of the highest throughput ever achieved in a USB 3.0 external storage product: it will even allow users to transfer high-definition uncompressed video at speeds up to 275MB per second, or prefer real time streaming and editing of multiple high-definition files at once.
That sounds like a great match for the Mac platform’s plethora of video professionals, but here’s the catch: there’s no support for USB 3.0 on any current Macs. Still, it’s pretty much a lock that you can expect at least one USB 3.0 port on Apple’s next Mac Pro refresh: USB 3.0 is exactly the sort of transfer standard that would appeal to the Mac Pro’s core audience of video professionals, especially considering Apple’s long-term effort to distance itself from Firewire.
If you’re interested in the LaCie 2Big RAID, you can luckily wait around for Apple to catch up with the USB 3.0 spec: both the 2Big and the Mac Pro refresh are due in the first quarter of 2010.
I’ve never been such a big fan of using voice search on my phone. Take Google’s own voice search app for the iPhone. As far as translating my own search terms, it does pretty well, but it has an issue with ambient noise. For example, I may need Google’s help to spell the longest town name in Scotland, but I’m pretty sure the correct spelling isn’t “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogery BEEP HONK SCREECH CRASH chwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.”
Still, voice search enthusiasts who own iPhones now have another program to loudly and emphatically yell at. Following up on last week’s Dragon Diction app, Nuance has released Dragon Search
It works very similarly to the Google Mobile app: you simply tap a button, clearly say your search term, and then beam your search query up to Nuance’s servers, which promptly spits back the applicable results. Where Dragon Search differs from Google’s efforts is it can easily extend its search beyond just Google results: it will also search iTunes, Twitter, Wikipedia, Youtube, Yahoo and Bing.
If you’re interested, the app is free for now, although you should move soon on that free download: the free introductory offer ends soon.
If Apple is preparing for a New Year’s bash, it may be with some nervousness. Android, the Google software powering Verizon’s Droid and other smartphones, may be a party-crasher, a new report says. Internet measurement firm comScore announced 17 percent of people intend to buy an Android phone within the next three months compared to 20 percent for Apple’s iPhone.
“While iPhone continues to set the bar with its App Store and passionate user base, and RIM remains the leader among the business set, Android is clearly gaining momentum among developers and consumers,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile.
If 80 percent of success in life is showing up, the Apple board of directors have it made.
Reuters released a list of the best-paid US corporate boards, Apple ranks number three. In 2008, the seven-member board of directors pulled $633,000 each for attending five board meetings.
That works out to $127,000 per meeting for board members to sit in a conference room and — according to some, do nothing but graze on the pastries provided — while Steve Jobs calls the shots from the head of the table.
That’s the median price of a house in Greer, South Carolina or Pensacola, Florida. (Sure, neither places are likely to see Apple board member Al Gore plunk down his meeting money on a property, but just to give it a little context.)
The top two spots are held by Nabors, a global oil and drilling company, and Intuitive Surgical Ltd. a robotic health care equipment maker that paid its seven non-employee directors an average of $697,000 last year or about $139,000 per meeting.
Reuters notes that both Shares of both Intuitive Surgical and Apple have more than doubled in 2009. Both companies pay directors largely with stock options, which have become especially valuable in light of their recent performance.
A spokeswoman for Apple declined to comment.
Via Reuters
We’ve lamented the iPhone’s unsuitability to be used as a weapon before. An iPhone wielded in the sock makes a satisfying nunchuku, don’t get us wrong, but in the viscera-choked inferno of the modern battlefield, you’re just never going to be able to close the projectile-perforated distance between you and your enemy enough to give him a really meaty thwack upside the head with one.
But while the iPhone’s physical design has inferior potential to cause mutilative harm to your fellow man, the App Store presents marvelous opportunities for the art of warfare. At least, that’s what U.S. military contractor Raytheon thinks, having just announced a range of military-oriented apps for the iPhone that will help soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan use their handsets for war.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZWC0kk77GI
Six iPhones daisy-chained together to simulacrum the full ivory-and-ebony array of a piano’s 88 keys, progressing upwards through five octaves from a low C. Upon them, Mario Raimondi of the El Desafio foundation turns in a note-perfect rendition of Yann Tiersen’s “Comptine D’un Autre Été: L’après Midi,” which you might recognize from the Amelie soundtrack. A beautiful song, and we can only marvel at the dexterity required to tickle such small keys without relying on any haptic feedback whatsoever.
The only question is: what app is Raimondi using? It looks a bit like Mini Piano. Anyone know for sure?
[via TUAW]
The iPhone now has more than 46 percent of Japan’s smartphone market, unseating the previous most-popular smartphone in under six months, according to a report. The iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS now are the No. 1 and No. 2 smartphones in the country.
The iPhone 3G has 24.6 percent of the market while the iPhone 3GS owns 21.5 percent of the smartphone market, Japan analyst firm Impress said Friday.
It’s that time of year again folks.
Last December, we asked you to nominate your favorite new desktop apps of 2008. Popular choices back then included Evernote, Dropbox, 1Password and Things.
But what new stuff has grabbed your attention during 2009?
There’s probably nothing so dissimilar to an iPhone as a fresh, greasy donut covered in powdered sugar; and Homer would probably be the last person on Earth to ever have one (an iPhone, not a donut, dufus). So pairing Homer Simpson with an iPhone might just be crazy enough to be brilliant (this is Homer logic, it doesn’t necessarily have to make sense).
The Simpson’s Arcade features a hungry Homer in a quest for — you guessed it — donuts, with mini-games that include using “touch and accelerometer controls to ‘Slap Homer’ back to life,” says game publisher Electronic Arts.
EA says the the game — which it says is due out sometime this December — is voiced “by the real, live actors” from The Simpsons; with any luck this means the incontestably brilliant Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer will be channeling Chief Wiggum and Mr. Smithers from iPhones everywhere, soon.
Lou Reed’s a strange one, but then again, you’d pretty much expect him to be: as a teenager, the Velvet Underground founder was institutionalized by his parents and underwent a course of electro-convulsive treatment in order to cure his “homosexual feelings”… a traumatic event that I’ve always felt directly inspired Reed’s 1975 double album of recorded audio feedback, Metal Machine Music, which certainly sounded like brain synapses wildly misfiring. Reed’s latest accomplishment? A surprising foray into iPhone App development called Lou Zoom, which may be just as much of a waste of money as Metal Machine Music ever was.
As you can see, Lou Zoom basically just strips down your contact list to its barest essentials and explodes the text with a large point Helvetica Neue font, although it does include some improved search functionality as well. Frankly, it’s not much of an app: it looks pretty terrible, and only seems like it might be even marginally useful to the visually impaired. Still, Lou Reed “designed” it, so you can expect to pay $2.50 for it.
Lou, you know I love you.You are one of the greatest guitar players of the 20th century. You have single-handedly changed the course of rock and/or roll. But you can’t be all things to all men. It’s okay if you’re just a rock god: you don’t need to be an iPhone app developer too.
[via Daring Fireball]
Although their App Store approval procedure has recently been modified to automatically reject apps that use them, Apple’s stance prohibiting developers from using private API calls has been looking a bit wobbly lately. First, Steve Jobs personally approved an app that used a private API to enable video streaming, and now comes word that Apple will officially allow developers to use the UIGetScreenImage() private API call in their applications.
According to the Apple forum moderator who outlined the change over in the official developer forums: “After carefully considering the issue, Apple is now allowing applications to use the function UIGetScreenImage() to programmatically capture the current screen contents.”
Developers should expect, however, to update their applications if a “future release of iPhone OS… provide[s] a public API equivalent of this functionality,” at which point, “all applications using UIGetScreenImage() will be required to adopt the public API.”
That’s an interesting development for a couple of reasons. For one, it actually allows streaming video from the iPhone camera on even older model iPhones, just by pasting enough UIGetScreenImage()s together. More interestingly, it implies that Apple is working to create public API equivalents of a lot of their most in-demand private API calls, which should expand app development possibilities dramatically by the time iPhone OS 4.0 rolls around.
[via TUAW, image via Aral Balkan]
Apple has always benefitted from the iPod’s “halo,” which also spurred purchases of other devices, including the iPhone and the Cupertino, Calif. company’s line of Mac computers. Can Internet bookseller Amazon do the same for ebooks? “The Kindle has definitely established itself as the iPod of the book world,” a Citigroup analyst told investors Thursday.
The Kindle, an e-book reader drawing the most attention beside Apple’s rumored tablet, could earn Amazon $1.6 billion in 2010, according to analyst Mark Mahoney. The analyst said the Kindle is having “greater than expected traction” and expects the company to sell 2 million Kindles in 2009 – up from 1.5 million previously forecast.
Although they’re certainly not head turners like the 3D head tracking patent Ed wrote about earlier today, Apple’s latest two patents describing improvements to the iPod interface are at least more likely to hit a device you own sometime soon.
The first patent suggests on how an iPod or iPhone might track an individual user’s preferences in order to improve the overall user experience. For example, if you skip the first 22 seconds of a particular song consistently, your iPod would automatically skip it for you next time you tried to play it. The same approach could be used for volume, equalizer settings, etc, as well as dimming songs in the track listings that are continuously skipped in favor of bolding ones that a user prefers.
Apple’s other patent application is pretty simple, but it’s a great, common sense idea: when a user tries to play a video on their iPod or iPhone, the operating system does a quick check against the battery life to determine if there’s enough juice left to play the whole thing, and, if not, warns the user.
Both patents seem like pretty useful additions to the iPod’s already robust user interface, and fairly easy to implement to boot. Don’t be surprised to see these features creep into an update sometime soon.
This was supposed to be my Nook review. I ordered two way back in early November. I was supposed to be telling you all about the Nook’s awesome-touchiness, fast page turning, loaning books to friends and even giving a short primer on how you can check out books from your local library and read them on your Nook, something Amazon’s Kindle could never do with its proprietary formats.
But I’m not, because it ain’t here.
It isn’t here, despite being assured it would arrive by Dec 12th, then reassured it would get here by the 18th–and then further assured when it didn’t ship Monday, that BN.com was gonna ship it super-expedited-over-night-air to make it on time.
It isn’t here and it isn’t gonna be on Friday.
Of course they did ship yesterday, if you call strapping it to the back of a turtle and pointing him in the direction of my house shipping it.
I am assured by BN customer service it will get here Monday, just one business day after their revised, revised again, and yes we really mean it this time, promised date –unfortunately that will be one day too long; since me and my little ones will be heading off to Grandmas house Sunday.
Barnes & Noble, you totally Grinched my Christmas, and I wrote this just for you:
(sung to Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie”)
It came into this world as a prospect
Look into its screen
You can see the covers of your books
Loan ‘em to your friends
Read ‘em in the store
Every page you turn makes you want it even more
But Hey I think about the day
Barnes & Noble ran away with my pay
When it came delivery day
Now it’s stuck in transit in that truck
And I’m just a sucker with a lump of coalHey, like a chump… Hey, like a chump… Hey, like a chump
[Chorus]
I did it all for the Nookie
C’mon
The Nookie
C’mon
So you can take that bookie
And stick it up your, yeah!!
Stick it up your, yeah!!
Stick it up your, yeah!!
Why did it take so long?
Why did I wait so long, huh?
To ship it out? but you didn’t
And I’m not the only one underneath the sun who didn’t get it
Macupdate, the other big name in Mac software bundling after MacHeist, have just released their latest Holiday Bundle, comprising over eleven full-featured applications for just a tenth of their usual combined retail price.
If you’re thinking of a flash drive for a nice stocking stuffer, you might want to pre-load it with some cool Apple-oriented ebooks. Take Control, which publishes many technology titles, is having a 50 percent off sale on its ebooks through Dec. 31, 2009.
Some of the titles include: iPhone ’09 Visual Quick Start Guide ($15), Macworld iPhone & iPod touch Superguide, Third Ed. ($12.95), and Macworld Total Snow Leopard Superguide ($12.95). All ebooks are DRM-free.
Here’s the link, which includes the coupon code for the 50 percent discount.
The App Store approval process might be editorially cryptic, but it is, at least, pretty straightforward: you submit your app to Apple, wait a few weeks, and then get back your yea or nay. Apparently, though, this timely process does not accurately reflect the pressing urgency of millions of translucent-skinned and lanugo-haired Scandinavians, waiting for Apple to approve SVT Play, an app that would allow them to stream Swedish public television to their iPhones and iPod Touches.
Instead, the Swedes have stormed the Apple campus at One Infinite Loop and are threatening to camp out until Steve Jobs personally approves their app.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YkKmuQRayQ
Apple’s latest iPhone ad revisits that old holiday chestnut “The 12 Days of Christmas” with a lucky smartphone owner breezing through the rigors of the season with a few effortless finger scrolls.
The coolest one, the last, turns on your Christmas tree. Though Apple has added a page on iTunes of apps featured in ads, this one’s not on it. We have it on good authority that it’s Schlage LiNK, a free app (requires extra hardware, though) designed as a remote control for home door locks.
Here’s the complete holiday app line up from the ad:
– 12 cookies cooking: The Betty Crocker Mobile Cookbook [gratis]
– 11 cards a’ sending: Postman [ $2.99]
– 10 gifts for giving: My Christmas Gift List [ $0.99]
– 9 songs for singing: TabToolkit [$9.99]
– 8 bells for ringing: Holiday Bells [ $0.99]
– 7 slopes a’ skiing: Snow Reports $1.99]
– 6 games for playing: Christmas Fever [ $0.99]
– 5 gold rings: Anna Sheffield Jewelry [ gratis]
– 4 hot lattes: myStarbucks [gratis]
– 3 flights home: Flight Search [gratis]
– 2 feet of snow: Weather Pro [$3.99]
– Tree-lighting app : Schlage LiNK [gratis]
Apple has filed a patent application that might replace today’s mouse and keyboard with a 3D display created through tracking your head movements. The technology could permit more realistic interaction with a computer’s data or map your image onto an object.
The technology would hinge on a camera or “sensing mechanism,” according to the Apple patent recently filed.
The iPhone now has more U.S. users than Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, new research shows. Apple’s iconic handset had an average of 8.97 million users in October, compared to Microsoft’s 7.13 million. This is the first time the iPhone has led Windows Mobile cell phones in actual user numbers.
Microsoft has admitted Apple’s iPhone “caught us all napping.” Windows Mobile 7 is not expected until the end of 2010. Morgan Stanley recently said Apple has a two- to three-year lead on its competitors.
Let’s assume, just for a moment, that the rumors of an Apple tablet device are true.
And let’s also assume, just for the length of this post, that Apple wants to use this tablet to do the same to publishing that it did to music: turn everything upside down.