Though you may not have heard of Kim Dotcom, you’ve mostly likely know about his large file sharing service Megaupload, which was shut down by the United States Department Of Justice in January, under copyright infringement charges. Dotcom is now back online for the time being, and has posted the above photo on Instagram showing a meeting with him and Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak.
This looks like a simple trick, but the result is just hypnotic. It looks like Redditor eharp1126 just set up a screen sharing loop between two machines on his MacBook Pro, but the result is positively Escher-like… a long mirrored hallways of Mac infinity.
Source: Reddit
On average, iOS is the most expensive mobile platform for developers. It’s the second most profitable mobile platform overall behind RIM’s BlackBerry. One in three mobile developers can’t earn enough money to living from the apps that they produce.
Those are some of the details contained in a new report from mobile analyst and strategy company VisionMobile. The report delves into the heart of the so-called app economy and provides a range of information and statistics about app development, its costs, and the income potential that comes from being an iOS, Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone developer. If you’re considering a career as a mobile developer, this is must-read report. For the rest of us, it’s a fascinating sneak peek into the experience of app developers around the world.
Gone are the days of folding and unfolding huge maps that you get from the gas station or the Automobile Club, what with GPS, Maps apps, and the like. Using the built-in Maps app is a great way to get where you need to go, but what if you want to take your navigation to the next level? What if you need to make sure you don’t get a speeding ticket? What if you want to get your kids excited about the National Park you’re all going to see? Maps app won’t do any of that justice. Here are three apps that will, though.
Yesterday we brought you news of Tweetbot for Mac, officially confirmed by Tapbot’s own Paul Haddad via tweets sent out from the application. Today, Mark Jardine, Tweetbot’s graphic designer, has posted this picture of Tweetbot for Mac running on the new, Retina display MacBook Pro.
I’ve waited over two decades to own a real robot. It was one of those silly childhood dreams to own something straight out of Terminator that obeys commands, spies on people, and rains down havoc if need be. Even though we’re in the year 2012, we still haven’t managed to create affordable robots, which is a pretty big letdown if you ask me. Thankfully, we’re getting closer, and playing with the new Parrot AR. Drone 2.0 has given me hope that the toys of the future are going to kick some major ass.
This is your last chance to get the ultimate Slidevana package for PowerPoint and Keynote. Tired of the same old template and layouts? How do 150 PowerPoint layout plus 150 Keynote layouts strike you? That should be plenty to get you inspired and rocking your presentations.
You have to act fast though…this deal only lasts another 12 hours and then it’s gone.
This week’s TIME Magazine cover story is called “The Cult of Apple in China.” On newsstands tomorrow, it’s an in-depth look at how Apple thrives in China.
The article’s author, Hannah Beech, writes: “The American company is thriving in China, even as other Western tech firms struggle with local competition and communications restrictions imposed by the authoritarian state. Apple products now serve as the ultimate totem of upward mobility in a country with a fast-growing middle class.”
That all sounds rosy, but as Beech makes clear, the future is far for certain as Apple, as the government of China increasingly becomes nationalistic. How long will they allow Apple to profit so handsomely within China without starting to try to take a bigger piece of the pie?
If you had any doubts that the world of iPhone accessories could grow any stranger or more diverse, then throw them out now. The Shaka Wind Meter proves that there are still plenty of depths yet to plumb.
The Shaka is a simple little gadget: a fan that plugs into the headphone socket of your iPhone and tells you the wind speed. It’s made for surfers, but has many more uses than that.
Who doesn’t love the Drobo? People who like to lose their data, that’s who. For the rest of us, today brings good news: New Thunderbolt-equipped Drobos, one for the desktop and one for taking on the road.
Alphyn Industries’ DELTA415 Wearcom jeans may as well have been called the Dork-O-Tron 3000, for they are nerdy in the extreme. They are also flat-out awesome, and if I was the kind of person who spent $160 on a pair of jeans, then I’d be al over them. Or all in them, I guess.
The Wearcoms are simple: the front right pocket has been replaced by a see-through phone pouch, complete with a protective flap to cover it.
If you were asked to name a company who would finally solve all of your password woes, who would it be? Apple? Google? 1Password? Lastpass?
Good guesses, but no. The company who’s going to end all of your password juggling problems is Detroit carmaker Ford. And they’re going to do it with an iOS app and a Chrome extension that means that just sitting down in front of your Mac with your iPhone in your pocket will be enough to unlock all of your accounts and profiles on the web, instantaneously.
TextExpander from Smile Software is a wonderful tool that turns text strings and images into tiny little shortcuts, saving you time and effort every time you type. It’s a little like the Shortcuts feature Apple built into iOS 5, but a million times better. You can currently find it in the Mac App Store, but we’d advise you not to buy it there.
Why? Because the Mac App Store version is the older version 3.4.2 release, and Smile Software has chosen to depart Apple’s marketplace for version 4.0. It turns out that the Cupertino company’s strict sandboxing rules, which went into effect on June 1, don’t allow some of TextExpander’s core features.
CloudOn is one of the more interesting options for working with Office documents on the iPad. The company offers a cloud-based version of the core Microsoft Office apps plus Adobe Reader. Unlike a virtual desktop solution, CloudOn provides just the applications and not a full Windows desktop. When it comes to creating and editing documents, CloudOn’s app relies on popular cloud storage options: Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
As a startup, CloudOn has seen strong growth since it launched its service earlier this year. The company announced a new round of funding this week ($16 million) and used the opportunity to tease users with details of its upcoming plans, most notably support for group editing and collaboration as well as expansion beyond the iPad and Android tablets.
Laptop bags are all well and good, but sometimes, they just can’t fit what you need to carry: groceries on the way home from work, a change of clothes for the gym, a picnic lunch on a nice day or a bag of books you picked up on the way home. And while a well-made laptop bag might be very fashionable on a man, on a lady, it might not be nearly as chic.
One of our favorite bag companies, Waterfield Designs, has just outed a new bag that address both issues: the Outback Tote. And it’s a beauty.
Satechi’s Portable Energy Station is the backup battery you need if you have a new iPad aka iPad 3. Why? Because its 10,000 mAH battery is almost as capacious as the 12,000 mAH (45 watt-hour) battery in the iPad 3 itself.
The downside to buying a new Mac with a 2880 x 1800 display is that it’s not easy to find content that matches such a high resolution. All of your old Charlize Theron wallpapers you found on Google Images are going to look blurry and pixelated and just awful.
Fortunately for you, we’ve put together a gallery of high-resolution NASA images that look terrific on the new MacBook Pro’s Retina display.
One of the ironic twists about the anti-trust lawsuits against Apple and the major publishing companies is that Apple’s entrance into the ebook market actually broke Amazon’s virtual monopoly on the ebook business. In the process, publishers gained the ability to control ebook pricing, which can be seen as actually encouraging competition in the industry.
While the U.S. Department of Justice and attorneys general from many states are pursuing lawsuits around the matter, not every country would see the situation in the same terms as the U.S. government. In France, for example, publishers can legally control pricing and are protected from booksellers undercutting their business as Amazon had been doing with its power over the ebook market. It’s even possible that France’s laws protecting publishers may have served as inspiration for the agency model that Apple used in building the iBookstore.
Magnets. Even if we’ll probably never know how they work, you gotta love them. They let us pin notes to fridges, they lock and unlock your iPad’s screen and now they can even stick your your iPhone to any metal surface. If only they didn’t do that pesky trick of wiping your bak cards, magnets would be pretty much perfect.
Ever since it first debuted in January 2006, Apple has jealously guarded its MagSafe technology from being poached by the competition. Patented up the wazoo, Apple doesn’t allow knock-offs and goes after companies that try to rip it off, even going so far as to sue companies that make MagSafe compatible accessories that use official recycled MagSafe connectors.
It’s through being so aggressive about its MagSafe IP that, to this day, none of the competition has anything like it. That’s about to change, though: the new Microsoft Surface tablet has a MagSafe-like connector. Prepare for a legal showdown.
Do you find you spend too much time hunting around inside your apps for specific actions? With Launch Center Pro for iPhone, you can skip this process by launching the action instead of just launching the app. For example, instead of loading up Twitter and then tapping the new tweet button, you can just setup a shortcut within Launch Center Pro that takes you straight to that new tweet window.
You can also add shortcuts to new text messages to specific people, Instagram’s camera, Google searches in Safari, and lots more. The idea is to make a fast dial for all the actions you might use on your phone.
Apple is generally known not just for the minimal design of its products, but also for the minimal design of its packaging. But when it comes to the new MagSafe to MagSafe 2 adapter, the box is not only huge in comparison to its payload, it also consists of a frankly ridiculous number of individual parts. And Paul Kafasis, boss of Rogue Amoeba software, has the photos to prove it.
There are two main reasons to move your iMovie files to an external storage drive. One is that video files take up a LOT of space, and the non-destructive editing that iMovie does can also add to the file load on your main hard drive (or SSD, in the case of a MacBook Air). The other is organizational – you might want to put all your stuff in one, easily accessed place for later retrieval and further editing.
Lucky for you, then, iMovie makes this pretty easy. Here’s how.
Gameloft’s Asphalt series has been one of the most successful racing titles on iOS, and its latest addition promises to the “newest, fastest, most visually stunning” edition yet. It’s called Asphalt 7: Heat and it’s available today on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for just $0.99.
For that you get the chance to race over 60 cars — including a DeLorean! — over 15 tracks, in both single and multiplayer game modes.
Remember SlideWriter, the innovative iPad text editor that turned one impressive keyboard concept into a real app, which we told you about back in May? Today it’s finally available to download from the App Store for just $0.99 for a limited time.