GIGAOM ROADMAP, SAN FRANCISCO — Nest Lab’s smart and sexy thermostat is becoming the iPhone of home heating, says its designer, Tony “the Podfather” Fadell.
Speaking at the GigaOM Roadmap conference, Fadell described how a Texas utility called Reliant is using the Nest Learning Thermostat to attract customers.
“Nest is to Reliant what the iPhone was to AT&T,” said Fadell. It’s a killer piece of hardware that’s attracting customers to the utility in droves.
For years, the rumor mill has been saying that Apple is looking to ditch Intel’s processors in the Mac lineup. Since the rise of iOS, Apple’s own “A” series chips have powered products like the iPhone and the iPad. Apple is a company known for wanting complete control over every facet of product design, including the innards of its iPhones and Macs.
Apple has partnered with Intel on the Mac for the past seven years, but internal changes within the Cupertino company could see the Mac move to ARM-based processors in the near future.
As part of the recent executive shakeup within Apple, industrial design guru Jony Ive has been put in charge of a new department that oversees the design of all hardware and software made by Apple. In essence, Ive is the quintessential tastemaker at Apple, a role formerly filled by the late Steve Jobs.
By now you’ve probably heard that Ive isn’t a fan of skeuomorphism, the make-it-look-retro-to-feel-familar design style that has been implemented in iOS under the guidance of Scott Forstall. That’s why Apple’s apps have so much Corinthian leather and stitching, or why the Compass app is designed to look like a literal compass.
Now that Ive is in charge of the overall look and feel of iOS, expect skeuomorphism to start fading away. Concept designer and Cult of Mac reader Adrian Maciburko sent us his take on a new iOS interface design that relies less on the analog aesthetic and more on the digital.
I don’t take a lot of video with my iPhone, so I didn’t know about this tip until today. When looking to upload video to YouTube, I figured you’d have to transfer the video to your Mac, open up a web browser like Safari or Chrome, and use the YouTube website to upload it.
Not so, apparently, as there’s an easy Share to YouTube button in the Photos app that lets you send it directly from your iOS device. Here’s how to use it.
Instagram has started rolling out new web profiles for its 100+ million users today. Like a Facebook account page, you can view all of the photos and info from a specific Instagram user at a dedicated web URL, i.e., instagram.com/username.
Instead of only being able to view an account in its entirety in the native Instagram app, you can now browse and follow other users on the desktop by clicking shared photo links you see on Twitter and Facebook.
Although the iPad mini is well-reviewed and seems to be something of a hint with early adopters, there is at least one complaint: the display isn’t Retina. In fact, not only is it not Retina, it’s actually decidedly lower resolution than even competing 7-inch tablets like the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD 7.
How does the display of the iPad mini stack up against the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD in objective terms, though? Not well, although there’s something Apple could do to make things better.
Gizmon’s remote shutter release for the iPhone is simple, effective and cheap. But its novelty styling in the shape of a roll of film is likely to baffle much of its potential audience.
For a brief period of time, iOS dominated Android in terms of marketshare in the U.S. But now that Android is available on many more cheap smartphones, Apple has watched as Android’s share has explode.
Over the last two years, Android has captured 70% of the smartphone growth while iOS has captured 30% of the growth. However, when you look at just the last twelve months of growth, Android’s growth has slowed while Apple’s has accelerated, opening the door for iOS to overtake Android in terms of marketshare in the future.
The Unmonday 4.3L is a $700 ceramic AirPlay speaker which comes with its own leather carrying case. It is gorgeous, and if you want to use it to its full potential, you’re going to have to buy another four of them.
Liquid is a productivity helper for OS X. It comes in two flavors – free and paid. The idea is to speed up your information seeking workflow. You find something you need to research, and a few key presses later you’ve got some data. Or a unit conversion. Or, in the paid version, a language translation. It’s got a lot of features.
Rovio has released the official gameplay trailer for Angry Birds Star Wars, and while it blends all the familiar Angry Birds’ physics we’ve come to love, it looks to be the most feature-rich one yet. you’ll find a slew of new abilities, powers, and even a cameo by the Millennium Falcon. An array of Star Wars themed Angry Birds characters are present and ready to take down the Ham-Empire and any Porkside treachery it has to throw at them.
Every time a company makes a Steve Jobs doll action figure Apple rains down a savage legal attack on their heads and gets the company to stop production immediately. So if you’re really dying for a Steve Jobs action figure, you better hurry and buy this one, because not only is it a Steve Jobs action figure, it’s a freakishly crazy realistic Steve Jobs action figure.
Legendary Toys went made sure everything about this Steve Jobs miniature doll look great. Its skin has great texture. The jeans are perfect. Hell they even tried to sculpt its derrière to be just like Steve’s – which, I guess is important too, right? The only thing they messed up were the hands, but not everyone can achieve perfection.
Check out the pictures below to see the doll close up:
Microsoft may have the numbers, but one thing Apple is really good about is getting people to shift their Macs over to the latest and greatest version of OS X in a timely manner.
For example, even though OS X Mountain Lion was only released in July, over 25% of all Macs ran it by October. OS X 10.5 Leopard hovers at a little less than 10%, while OS X Lion is on about 30% of all Macs.
What’s most surprising, though, is what operating system ties OS X Lion for the most popular version of OS X: OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard.
SAN FRANCISCO, GIGAOM ROADMAP CONFERENCE — Hurricane Sandy was the largest event ever documented by cell phones, said Kevin Systrom, co-founder and CEO of the photosharing app Instagram.
Speaking at the GigaOM Roadmap conference, Systrom said there were nearly one million photos on Instagram with the #Sandy hastag, making it the largest event documented by ordinary people using their cellphones.
“Sandy was a really interesting event for us,” said Systrom, who grew up on the east coast. “Sandy was the single largest event captured on Instagram — and the largest event captured on cell phones ever.”
If you’ve had a horrible experience with Apple’s new Maps app, you’re probably anxious for Google to hurry up and get Google Maps back onto your iPhone. The Google Maps app is reportedly in development and should be ready for launch by the end of 2012, but some people at Google say they’re not optimistic that Apple will approve the app.
According to a new report, Google employees think that Apple will reject the app once Google submits it for approval because Apple will want to “keep moving forward in an effort to make its obviously inferior product better.”
During the fiscal year of 2012, Apple made more money than ever before and became the world’s most valuable company. But they also managed to pay only 1.9% of income tax on earnings outside of the U.S. Of the $36.8 billion Apple earned outside the U.S. Apple only paid $713 million in taxes.
Some may see those numbers and cry foul, but Apple hasn’t done anything illegal. Like a lot of other Fortune 500 companies, Apple keeps their international profits stashed somewhere outside the U.S. rather than having to pay a heavy tax rate for bring that cash back to America. The strategy saves Apple billions on their tax bill, but it also limits what they can do with those profits.
Sony has become the latest company to bring its digital book service to iOS with the new Reader app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Available to download for free from the App Store, the app offers access to all the books you have stored in your Reader library, and allows you to sync your bookmarks between other Reader devices.
IShredder is a curious app. It claims to securely erase the files on your iOS device using better-than-military grade algorithms. The idea is that you can then sell your device without leaving sensitive data behind.
The problem is that this is already built in to iOS.
The MagSafe 2 power plug is so intent on escaping from its socket that it doesn’t seem a great idea to hook it up to a portable battery, but if you need the extra power, you need the extra power. And right now pretty much the only way to get it is to grab one of QuickerTek’s MacBook Air batteries.
Finding the right kind of earbuds for your ears – and provide great sound to boot – can be a real chore. Even when you do wade through all of the options out there, they often only fit one of those criteria and in that rare instance that they do sound and feel good, the price would give anyone pause. Yes, the reason they are more money is because they’ll also last for years – but wouldn’t it be great if you could get all of those features (looks great, feels great, will last a long time) at a cost that won’t put a serious dent in your wallet?
Well, this Cult of Mac Deals offer – which is winding down – “fits” the bill because we’re offering some great earbuds for only $45!
Quick Route is my new favorite routing app, not least because it’s so bike and pedestrian friendly (regular readers will know how I feel about those death boxes they call “cars.”) It’s optimized for the iPhone 5, it exhibits the level of design and polish you’d expect from a developer who also works for Panic, and it has a unique and neat way to pick your origin and destination.
Belkin has become the first accessory maker to get authorization from Apple to build third-party accessories for the Cupertino company’s new Lightning connector. It just announced a new lineup of Lightning accessories, which are compatible with Apple’s latest lineup of iOS devices, including the iPhone 5, the new iPod touch and iPod nano, the fourth-generation iPad, and the iPad mini.
Desktop pictures, or wallpaper, are one way to make your Mac truly your own. Choosing from one of the beautifully rendered images that are provided along with OS X is one way to be sure to impress any passers-by, as well and give you something beautiful to look at as you go about your daily Mac business.
Now, however, Mountain Lion lets you easily use any of your own images from iPhoto (or Aperture) as a Desktop Picture, right within the Desktop & Screensaver preference pane. Here’s how.
Apple’s much-anticipated iPad mini went on sale last Friday alongside the new fourth-generation iPad, and the Cupertino company just announced 3 million units were sold during the launch weekend alone — breaking its previous iPad launch record.
The iPad mini is Apple’s answer to smaller Android tablets from the likes of Amazon and Google. But there’s a good reason why it doesn’t come with the same $200 price tag. A teardown has revealed that the new iOS device costs at least $188 to build, and that price rises when you add bigger storage options and 4G connectivity.