Best Of Photo Accessories [Best Of]
We have noticed a big crossover between Apple users and camera geeks. And while the iPhone’s own camera continues to get better and better, your old SLR still has some life in it yet. And whatever you shoot with, there are accessories that can perk up your interest or let you catch an otherwise-impossible shot. These are the best of them.
Dungeons of Dredmor is one of my favorite games on Steam, a funny, impish, brutal yet utterly modern entry in my favorite gaming genre, rogue-likes. It only costs $1.50 right now, which rounding down for inflation is essentially free, so you might as well buy it. It’s a great introduction to that most sadistic genre of games, the rogue-like.
But Dungeons of Dredmor’s low, low price isn’t why we’re posting. Nor is the fact that it just got a free new expansion pack full of great new monsters and skills.
No, the reason we’re posting is because of that expansion pack’s new system requirements, which will elicit either a chuckle or an outraged roar from Apple fans.
Those of you using OS X 10.7 Lion (which I hope is all of you) may have missed the ability to adjust the system volume in tiny quarter steps. This feature was available in Snow Leopard and ditched in the Lion "upgrade." Now, in good news for obsessive compulsive Mac users the world over, the option has returned.
Let’s face it, rotating a bunch of images can be a time or a money sink. You either have to open each image one at a time, rotate them manually, and then seave them, one at a time, or you need to purchase an image editing program like Photoshop or Fireworks. And don’t get me started on figuring out how to do this in Gimp, a free, open source image editing program.
Turns out, though, you’ve already got all you need right on your Mac. Batches of image can be rotated all at once with Preview.
Recent rumors surrounding Apple’s next-generation iPhone have been largely focused on whether or not the device will get a bigger display and LTE connectivity, and what it will look like. But according to one analyst, we should also be talking about the handset’s front-facing camera, which is finally expected to become HD-capable for high-quality FaceTime calls.
Apple extended its library of iOS emoji icons in its iOS 5.1 release, and the icons have been present in every firmware build that has landed ever since. However, the Cupertino company is yet to activate the latest set, and so they remain hidden within your device’s software. Fortunately, a new jailbreak tweak called Emoji2 for iOS 5.1+ unlocks them all for you.
We’ve seen a handful of tablet cases — especially for the iPad — that aim to turn your slate into a MacBook Air lookalike. But the ClamBook from ClamCase is the first solution we’ve seen that’s designed for the iPhone and Android smartphones, and it promises to “change the way you view smartphones.”
Built from sleek aluminum, the ClamBook is incredibly thin and light. It comes to life when you hook it up to your smartphone to see its content on the widescreen display, which is accompanied by a full-size QWERTY keyboard and a multitouch trackpad.
This week Sony unveiled a new camera designed to compete as a second camera for people who know about photography and have pro gear as well as for less-serious photographers who just want to take better pictures on a compact. According to Sony, the new DSC-RX100 is the most advanced camera in this line.
My first decision is easy when heading out on an outdoor adventure: Take the iPhone with me? Oh, you betcha. The next one is much more difficult. Since the iPhone requires a boost in both protection and juice when playing Indiana Jones, I’m forced to choose between slipping on a battery case and worrying about my iPhone shattering on a rock, or (painstakingly) wrapping it in a rubber case and hoping it doesn’t run out of power.
But Mophie’s new $130 iPhone 4/S battery pack — sort of a cross between a tank and a tanker — says “COMPROMISE IS FOR THE WEAK.” And also, the poor.
With the MacBook Pro, Air and iMac lineups all expected to see a refresh at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference next week, it looks like the seemingly-abanonded Mac Pro will also be updated. Apple has begun pulling Mac Pro stock from its retail stores and online shipping estimates are also starting to slip. This type of activity is typical right before a new version of an Apple product is announced, as Apple clears out its old inventory to make room for the new.
The Mac Pro saw its last refresh in July of 2010, and many have begun to lose faith that Apple will continue to support its ‘pro’ users as the company transitions to being more consumer-oriented. It would seem that we can all be hopeful for the future of the Mac Pro, as the machine is about to see its first refresh in nearly two years.
Apple today released a very minor update for the second and third-gen Apple TV. iOS 5.0.2 is available now, and the release follows version 5.0.1 released for the Apple TV on May 10th.
No new changes have been provided for 5.0.2 other than, “Addresses an issue which caused content restrictions to be incorrectly applied for the iTunes Store in Australia.” You can download the update now on your Apple TV set-top box.
It’s been rumored that Apple will unveil a totally new Apple TV OS to developers at WWDC. We’ll have to wait and see what Apple announces at Moscone next week.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference is set to kick off next Monday with a media keynote, and signage for the conference is already being put up. We expected the banners to start going up Friday afternoon, but Apple has started decorating earlier than normal.
Thousands of developers will fill the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California all next week, and Apple is expected to unveil iOS 6, new Macs, and some other surprises. It’s going to be a wild week!
Update: We’ve gotten more pics from the Moscone Center for you to check out.
Apple’s tower of power, the Mac Pro, hasn’t been updated in almost two years, but on our latest CultCast, we’ll tell you why that could soon change.
And, did you catch Tim Cook at last week’s All Things D conference? We’ll get you up-to-date quick as we analyze and scrutinize every little thing he said (and didn’t!).
All that and our answers to your questions on our brand new CultCast. Subscribe now in iTunes and read on through for our show notes.
Microsoft may end up facing even steeper competition in the tablet arena than it expected. Seeking to establish a a foothold in the tablet market at a lower price point than full fledged Windows 8 tablets, Microsoft developed Windows RT. Windows RT is a variation of Windows 8 that will run on tablets powered by ARM processors rather than Intel x86/x64 chips,. While the full details about Windows RT tablets aren’t yet available, the information that is out there makes it pretty clear that Windows RT tablets could be a tough sell to business and enterprise markets.
Competing just on business and enterprise features actually gives the iPad a leg up over Windows RT devices. Making the situation look grim for Microsoft, research firm IDC believes that the company may not be able to compete against the iPad on price in either the business or consumer markets.
Whale Trail, one of my favorite iPhone and iPad games to date, just received its biggest update yet today in the App Store. Version 2.0 of the popular side-scroller includes several new features, including a new system for unlocking and upgrading power-ups in the game.
Have you ever been making a phone call and had an email notification chime in your ear? Or how bout a banner notification pop up during a game or video? Sometimes you may just want to get away from alerts and incoming messages. Instead of notification after notification endlessly causing vibrations in your pocket, why not tell your iPhone that you’re out for lunch?
It would be nice for Apple to implement a “Do Not Disturb” feature into the iOS Notification Center, but until that day comes, jailbreakers can tell Notification Center to shut up with a couple of handy Cydia tweaks.
The iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S’s Retina Displays are already ludicrously pixel packed at 326 ppi, but even so, that’s only enough pixels to make it so that the human eye can’t resolve them when the phone is held twelve inches away from your face.
Apple can do better, and maybe someday they will, thanks to Japan Display’s new technology which squeeze 651 pixels per inch into an LCD screen. Their latest display has a resolution of 1280 x 800, the same as the existing 13-inch MacBook Pro, but is only 2.3 inches across.
That’s just one ppi from a true pixel doubling, which Apple has done for iOS devices to maintain backwards compatibility amongst apps and UI elements. If Apple picked this technology up, they’d finally have a display that was “retina” in the truest sense of the term… albeit, at four times the impact on the GPU.
The paperless office is something we’ve been aiming at for at least a decade, if not longer. With the proliferation of affordable yet powerful digital devices like the iPhone and the iPad, the dream may be more in reach that we realize. David Sparks has released an iBook (created with iBooks Author, no less) that will help us all use less and less paper in our lives.
Apple typically score high in brand loyalty and product satisfaction. As a result, it doesn’t come as a huge surprise to hear that the new iPad and iPad 2 are leading tablet satisfaction surveys. Nor is it surprising that the iPads aren’t just scoring better than other tablets, they’re kicking some Android butt.
According to the latest numbers from Changewave, 81% of new iPad owners are very satisfied with their devices and while an additional 15% are somewhat satisfied. That means 96% of users can be called happy with the new iPad.
Imagine that you stood in one place and took a bunch of photos in different directions. Now imagine that you printed these photos onto glass sheets and arranged them in the same planes that they were shot: the picture you took of the sky is horizontal, facing down. The mountain off to the left is upright and facing right.
Now imagine that these pieces of glass magically intersect to make a lattice which you can turn to view, and that those pieces of glass disappear from view when they are edge on.
You just imagined Stilla, a great new iPhone app which does all of this for you, without harming a single sheet of glass.
The Somersault ($90), from iBackFlip Studios, is a sling-style backpack built to give you quick, on-the-go access to the tablet it is also sworn to protect: your iPad.
It works like this. While traversing life’s urban landscapes, you keep the Somersault on your back, iPad stowed safely within. When you want to use your iDevice, you simply swing the bag around to your chest, unzip the iPad storage pocket, and now your iPad sits perpendicular to your stomach, ready and waiting for all your oily finger-poking.
Google has announced its acquisition of leading mobile office solution Quickoffice. Quickoffice has proved to be one of the most powerful mobile office suites available and has shared success across multiple mobile platforms including Android and iOS. It’s tough to tell what Google has planned for the office suite but we’re sure it involves Google Docs, Google Drive, and a host of other productivity apps.
There’s no telling what the future will hold for the Quickoffice suite currently on iOS, as well as platforms other than Android — but one has to wonder: will Google simply kill them off or keep them after they integrate its features into their own apps? Details are bit scarce at this point but we’ll keep you updated.
Looks like Google is on another acquisition kick, as they’ve been scooping up companies left and right over the past month. We certainly welcome this latest addition and look forward to the Quickoffice integration.
Source: Google Blog
Let’s face it: the iPhone is the Hot Rod of smartphones. If Steve McQueen was still alive, he’d own one; Jay Leno probably has a hanger filled with a hundred of them. Nothing seems more appropriate to me, then, but to see a Hot Rod style exhaust snaking out of an iPhone. The iPhone is the most powerful thing you can drive that fits in your pocket.
That’s just what the iXoost dock does. It’s a speaker dock handbuilt by Xoost in Italy that grafts some gorgeous aluminum exhaust pipes onto your iPhone.
Cricket Mobile’s recent announcement that they will be selling the iPhone 4 and 4S to prepaid customers (while offering enormous savings over traditional plans) seems to have started an avalanche, as now Sprint’s Virgin Mobile prepaid brand is reported to be following their lead.
You might have heard that today’s a pretty special day, astronomically speaking. Venus is in transit between Earth and the Sun today, which is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Today only, right before sunset in the United States, if you look up at the sun, you’ll be able to see the silhouetted Venus passing between us and our life-giving star. And due to the differences between Venus’s solar year and our own orbit around the Sun, you’ll have to wait a hundred years until this event happens again.
In other words, if you’re American, you don’t want to miss this if you have any curiosity about the heavens at all. And luckily, there’s an app that will help you make sure you don’t.