Source: Joy Of Tech

Google chairman Eric Schmidt is currently on a tour of Asia, where he announced the company’s $199 Nexus 7 tablet in Tokyo on Monday. During his announcement, Schmidt found some time to talk about Apple and its patent wars against other companies. Schmidt revealed that while Apple is a “very good partner,” he doesn’t agree with patent wars, and feels they “prevent choice” and innovation.

It can be easy to forget in the crush of the launch of an entirely new product like the iPhone 5, but Apple’s quality control process is one of the most stringent in the world. While we gnash our teeth at pre-scratched units, yellow screens and purplish lens flares, it’s worth keeping everything in perspective: minor aberrations in a pursuit of perfection wrought upon such a collossal scale of mass-production that the mind literally reels to think of it.

Apple doesn’t often lift the curtain, so we haven’t really known what quality control processes it actually uses to get iPhones to our door in as perfect condition as possible. As it turns out, though, the process Apple uses is incredibly thorough and elegant, just what you’d expect.

OS X has really good text to speech functionality for users with a visual or other learning disability, but it’s something that I think we all would benefit from at certain times. How about listening to a webpage when you’re folding clothes, or having your Mac your Twitter stream out loud while you do some sort of two-handed crafting project, like knitting?

Turns out, you can make this happen super easily with OS X Mountain Lion, invoking a keystroke to read highlighted text anywhere on your computer. Want to have your Mac read that Word doc your boss just sent over? This little tip will make it happen.

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Google is currently working on a native Google Maps app for iOS, which is expected to make its debut before the end of the year. But in the meantime, it will be bringing Street View to its web app so that you can enjoy the much-loved feature in mobile Safari.

It seems Apple’s new Maps app isn’t the only thing frustrating iOS 6 users right now. A 91-page thread on Apple’s Support Communities forum is full of users who are also complaining about Wi-Fi connectivity issues, which are said to be plaguing the iPhone 4S and the new iPad after upgrading. It’s not just that Wi-Fi performance is poor; some users can’t enable it at all.

Amazon has gone to a federal judge to have Apple’s claim of false advertising in a lawsuit against the Seattle-based online retailer. Amazon claims that the trademark lawsuit brought by Apple in March of last year around the term, “app store” is reasonable enough, given the current climate of selling apps on mobile devices.

The iPhone 5 runs on an Apple-designed A6 chip, which has been widely reported as running at 1.0GHz. The software that performed that analysis, Geekbench, was recently updated to an iOS 6-enabled version, and the iPhone 5 was tested again. Turns out that the A6 CPU dual-cores are actually running at 1.3GHz, which is a bit faster than previously thought.

Last quarter, courts around the world had filed judgements that showed Android infringing 11 mostly Apple patents, with a couple of Microsoft patents thrown in for good measure. As of today, according to Florian Meuller of FOSS Patents, there are 17 patent judgements against the Android operating system, four in favor of Microsoft, and a staggering 13 favoring Apple.

These judicial decisions only include final judgements, and do not include those where a judgement was made, but the injunction lifted by another court or judge. They include both courts and the International Trade Commission, a body with quasi-judicial authority in world trade agreements.

It’s been nine months since Madfinger Games teased a multiplayer version of its hit title ShadowGun. An early build of the game was demoed at CES back in January along with a YouTube video showing off some in-game footage. A few lucky CES attendees received some hands-on with the game and MadFinger Games claimed a Q1 launch. Well, Q1 has long since passed with no sign or word on the future of ShadowGun Deadzone. That was until today.

Verizon sells the iPhone 5 unlocked out of the box, but what about AT&T? If you buy into a two-year contract for the subsidized starting price of $200, you’re usually not able to get an unlock until you’ve fulfilled your contract.

Buying off-contract for the full starting price of $649 is another story, however. AT&T customers in good standing should be able to get a fully priced iPhone 5 unlocked for free, but the process requires filling out a web form, sending a fax, and possibly waiting more than a week.

As it turns out, unlocking an unsubsidized iPhone 5 is as simple as restoring the device in iTunes.

Some of the most amazing moments of my life happened underwater at Hanaunama Bay in Hawaii. I can remember the serenity I felt swimming with sea turtles and simply losing myself in this underwater paradise. I’ve often told my wife about these adventures and now, thanks to the amazing Google Maps, I can relive them via the remarkable new underwater Street View imagery.

Following reports that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is planning to move to Australia —  a county which, as everybody knows, is located on the underbelly of the Earth and consequently has had its gravity reversed, resulting in a native race which walks around upside down — we’ve discovered that he’s already fitting in by using a topsy turvy icon and name text in his emails.

With the iPhone 5, Apple abandoned the existing aspect ratio of the iPhone (3:2) and embraced a true widescreen aspect display (16:9) instead. Now an analyst is saying that multiple people “close to Apple” have told him the iPad is going widescreen as well.

Apple’s new Maps application in iOS 6 has come under quite a lot of fire since its public release last week. Directions are wrong. Locations are incorrect. Apple has begged its customers to give the new Maps app time, but complaints still run rampant. The mapping data has definitely changed, and that’s because Apple abandoned Google Maps.

Besides the obvious Android vs. iPhone rivalry, why exactly did Apple and Google part ways in iOS 6? According to a new report today, Apple wanted Google’s turn-by-turn navigation service in Maps.

In a single magnified image, photographer and Retinal neuroscience Bryan Jones perfectly captures the incredible increase in display quality from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 5.

Jones put the iPhone 5 display under a stereomicroscope and photographed the pixels of the display with a Canon 1D MKIII, then compared the photo one made under the same conditions of the iPhone 4’s display.

The difference is incredibly obvious even to an untrained eye. Yeah, sure, they’re both Retina displays… but the pixels of one of them look murky and blurred, while the pixels on the other look like bright, colorful Christmas lights photographed in a vacuum. Incredible.

Source: Jonesblog
Via: iSmashphone

There’s a common misconception about jailbreaking. Many believe that people jailbreak just to pirate apps. While many do undoubtedly jailbreak for the sole purchase of stealing, the reason jailbreaking exists is definitely not piracy.

At its heart, jailbreaking is about staying ahead of the curve. In this case, the curve is Apple itself. Innovation is key. Jailbreak developers create hacks, tweaks, and extensions for iOS that go beyond the boundaries of what Apple allows. Jailbreaking exists for the same reason Apple exists: to challenge the status quo.

The world’s first jailbreak convention, JailbreakCon, is happening this weekend in San Francisco, and Cult of Mac will be there reporting from the show floor. We sat down with a couple jailbreak designers who will be attending JailbreakCon to get their thoughts on jailbreak innovation, good design, and why iOS is the best mobile platform on earth.

Want to know where your friend, Scott, is? How about where your girlfriend is? What’s your grandmother’s address again? Siri can answer these questions (and a bunch more), but you’ll need to set things up a bit on your iPhone, first. Here’s how

The Belkin Grip Sheer, provided by the fine folks at MobileFun, is an iPhone 5 case manufactured from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) that promises to be “super durable, yet thin enough to slip easily into your pocket.”

Priced at just $21 (£16), the Grip Sheer comes in a range of fancy colors, and boasts a high-gloss transparent finish that’s designed to look good and feel great. It also provides you with access to all your buttons and ports, and leaves a nice big cutout for your iPhone 5’s camera and flash.

So, is the Grip Sheer a case you should be picking up with your new iPhone 5?

Ready for take off? Maybe fly a little radio controlled helicopter around the office? Buzz over marketing. Hover by the coffee area. Take a break in the parking lot or a park. Yep, these little RC copters are very cool.

Last Christmas we had these in an Apple retailer I was working at (different brand and packaging, but pretty much identical copters) and with a little practice, these are really fun to fly around. In fact so fun that I’ve thought about picking up one for myelf just to mess around with. Well maybe here’s my chance—Fly High With The Robocopter GST Special Edition: Have Fun Flying a Powerful Toy Helicopter Around Your Office

Samsung is hell bent on telling iPhone users that they are all a bunch of hipster sheep that missed the cool wave, by showing them that Samsung Galaxy S3 users are a bunch of hipster sheep that switched their loyalties from Apple to Samsung.

It’s probably not going to work, but they just made two more commercials to try to convert us. What do you think of Samsung’s marketing strategy? Will it ever work or influence you? Let us know in the comments.

The iPhone 5 is a cutting-edge device with a lot of impressive new technology, from Apple’s incredibly fast new A6 chip to impressive new in-cell touch display technology and a brand new Lightning dock connector. It’s a certainty that Apple will use some of this technology in the fourth-generation iPad, which is likely due in March of next year. Here’s what the iPhone 5 tells us about what the iPad 4 will be.

Last night Dropbox announced the release of their new beta, Dropbox 1.5 for Mac. The update will bring a few new features and UI changes to the popular cloud storage service. Users of the desktop client will discover a redesigned menu system  that combines all the functionality of the older tray menu with a new view of Dropbox’s event stream that allows you to see your latest changes.

The iPhone 5’s new camera is supposed to be incredibly amazing with improved low-light performance and a fancy crystal sapphire lens that is less prone to scratching, but for many users though, the new camera is having a weird issue where a purple halo or flare splashes across a photo when a bright light source is just outside the frame, and there’s no way to get rid of it.

Lens flair is a common occurrence with all camera lenses, but it’s generally not purple and this issue never happened with the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4s which is why many iPhone 5 users have been upset by the purple halo discovery.

Steve Wozniak was lucky enough to get his hands on the iPhone 5 long before the vast majority of us; not because he co-founded Apple, but because he was in Australia where Apple retail stores open a good 14 hours earlier than those on the East Coast of the United States.

Woz has been in Australia a lot recent, and he’s just revealed that he is planning to wave goodbye to his California home and move there. He has already applied for an Australian citizenship, and proclaimed he’s going to “live and die as an Australian.”