Apple confirmed at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month that its next major update to Mac OS X, dubbed Mountain Lion, would be released to the public sometime during July. The Cupertino company is yet to make that release date more specific, but according to one report, we can expect Mountain Lion to pop up in the Mac App Store on July 19.
Thanks to Apple, every manufacturer now feels like they need their own voice assistant and so begins the borderline mental illness campaign of conversing with your phone. Samsung announced their own version S-Voice, which is launching with the new Samsung Galaxy S III in a couple of days. Now, LG has decided to jump on the voice wagon by announcing their own voice assistant service Quick Voice.
If, like me, you’re patiently awaiting the delivery of your new MacBook Pro and you’re wondering how well it’s going to play some of your games, check out its performance while running Skyrim at a resolution of 1920 x 1200 on “ultra settings,” with 8x anti-aliasing, and 8x anisotropic filtering.
I think you’ll agree it looks absolutely incredible.
BBC has added “Live Restart” to its iPlayer app. This will let Brits hit a button to rewind live TV up to two hours. Thus, if you miss the beginning of a live show you can just skip back to the beginning.
This handily closes the gap between live streaming and the watch-later service that lets you go back and catch TV shows aired in the past two weeks.
Sure, iMovie is now available on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, but nothing beats a big old screen to edit your video on. You no longer have to export the video from your iOS device to your iTunes or iPhoto, then import into iMovie. With iMovie ’11, you can bring it right into the app with no middle steps. How refreshingly simple! Here’s how.
If you decided not to purchase a new MacBook Pro with Retina display simply because almost nothing inside it can be repaired or upgraded at home, then you’ll be pleased to know that the other new MacBook Pro (the one without a Retina display) is just as repairable as its predecessor, earning a 7/10 repair score from iFixit.
Here’s how it compares to the next-generation model on the inside.
Some of you may already be familiar with Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, not just because it has the longest name the App Store has ever seen, but also because it was one of the most impressive iPad titles that was shown off at E3 earlier this month.
It’s now available to download — completely free — and it looks incredible on the new iPad’s Retina display. Whether or not you’re a fan of the Magic franchise, this is certainly a title you should check out.
The New York Post introduced a paywall last year that meant iPad users accessing its website with mobile Safari would be redirected to its official iPad app, and would then have to pay a monthly subscription fee to access its content. However, it has now performed a complete u-turn and scrapped that paywall completely.
With all tickets for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference sold in a matter of hours, there’s a good chance the vast majority of you didn’t get to attend. However, if you’re a register developer, you can now access each and every WWDC 2012 session video — all 113 of them — online.
Blog GM Authority posted today that General Motors cars, the Chevrolet Spark and Sonic, would be among the first to integrate with Apple’s promised eyes-free feature announced at WWDC this past week.
Macbook Pros with Retina displays; Mountain Lion’s best new features; the secrets of iOS 6; Apple announced a glut of new software and hardware at last week’s World Wide Developers Conference, and if you’d like to relive the glory, or need help making sense of it all, don’ miss the second part of our special-edition WWDC CultCast.
Subscribe now on iTunes to catch both of our special WWDC episodes, and peep the full show notes after the jump!
iPhone users on the go will now have access to the same great Google offers as Android users thanks to the new Google Offers app for iOS. The app allows users to browse and redeem hundreds of local offers as well as deals from the dozens of participating deal sites. With Google Offers for the iPhone you’ll enjoy:
One of Steve Jobs’s favorite quotes was by Wayne Gretzky, a famous hockey player: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” From the beginning, Apple has been all about looking ahead to the next greatest thing, not concerning itself with aligning with other companies.
It might be Google’s turn to take a lesson from Apple and do the same, or they may miss out on an opportunity of monumental proportion. What is the opportunity you ask? AirPlay.
The MacBook Air has never been a slouch in terms of performance, but with the 2012 model, SSD performance is scoring a whopping 217% higher than ever before.
In tests run by OSXDaily, read speeds reached a maximum of 461MB/s, and write speeds hit 364MB/s, a dramatic increase over the 2011 model, which scored just a modest 145MB/s read speed and a 152MB/s write speed.
Maybe you were exploring the nether reaches of a Venezuelan jungle yesterday and missed the news that Microsoft announced that they’re making a cool looking tablet called the Microsoft Surface for Windows RT.
Despite some huge holes in the announcement, some people like Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz have gone on to claim that Microsoft’s Surface just made the iPad and MacBook Air obsolete.
We’re actually kind of excited about the Surface and think it looks like an intriguing product, but saying that it’s better than the iPad and MacBook Air at this point is absolutely absurd.
When the iPhone was first launched in 2007, it was designed to support one screen resolution, and nothing more. Later, with the launch of the iPad and the Retina display on the iPhone 4, Apple had to optimize its concrete user interface elements for larger, higher resolution displays. Today, we have not only a Retina display on the iPad, but a rumored 4-inch iPhone as well, likely debuting in the fall.
With all of these different screen resolutions to handle, Apple has stealthily implemented a feature into iOS 6, one which will allow developers to intelligently scale their apps to fit nearly any screen resolution.
Planning, sheesh, who needs it? Maybe you’re young, fancy free, and willing to take a risk on things like hotels and fuel being available when you get there? Maybe you’re just taking a zen-like trip in your car, and planning really messes with your mojo. Either way, there are apps for that, as you’ll quickly see.
Most all DSLRs come with built-in top-side brackets you can use to attach your camera strap. But what you might not know, is that it’s far more comfortable to attach your camera strap to the bottom of your DSLR, especially while you’re walking. And wearing your camera while it’s slung down near your hip also helps prevent your lens from bumping and grinding into the nearest person, place, or thing — something you’ll appreciate in a crowded room.
But how do you connect a strap to your DSLR’s bottom? An adapter that screws into your camera’s tripod mount will do the trick. And the C-Loop ($40), from Custom SLR, is exactly that. But the C-Loop also has an inconspicuous talent that all other tripod mount adapters lack.
DVDs haven’t, contrary to popular belief, gone the way of the dinosaur or the dodo—people still want video on DVD to watch and share with others. Even if you don’t want (or need) to burn the movie to a physical disc, the format is still pretty handy.
As much as iDVD wasn’t the greatest thing about iLife it worked, but we all know that iDVD has been rather neglected by Apple of late. So, what are you going to do if you need to make a great DVD and iDVD just isn’t cutting it for you? How about today’s deal—Wondershare DVD Creator.
They’re not for everyone, but if you like ensconcing your Apple devices in sumptuous leather bound hides as if they were dusty and mysterious tomes just pulled off an ancient library shelf, no one does it better than TwelveSouth with their BookBook series.
TwelveSouth has had a BookBook case for iPad for awhile, but they just gave it an overhaul, slimming it down by 33% and featuring an all-new interior frame that allows you to position the iPad at an angle for typing or watching movies.
The new BookBook for iPad is available now in brown, black and red and costs $80. We’ve got one, and we’ll be posting a review in the coming days.
Source: TwelveSouth
Quick! If you have any need for an iOS screen-recording app, and you don’t mind wasting $2, then go download Display Recorder right now. Don’t worry – I’ll wait.
Yesterday, we reported that according to the speculation of display expert Dr. Raymond Soneira, the new Retina MacBook Pro could conceivably use Sharp IGZO display technology originally meant for the new iPad.
At the time, we were a little skeptical of the claim. Turns out we were right, as the new displays don’t use IGZO at all.
Mobile advertising as an industry has been slow to evolve since the introduction of the iPad. A study that we reported earlier this year found that many advertising companies fail to take advantage of the mobile ad capabilities offered the iPad even though iPad users are significantly more likely to interact with ad content.
A more recent study shows that companies hesitant to develop iPad and tablet-optimized ad content are passing up major opportunities to engage customers. It turns out that, in addition to being more likely to interact withs ads, iPad users are more likely to make purchasing decisions based on iPad or tablet-optimized ads.
The Motive Stylus solves one of the most annoying problems of carrying a stylus for your iPad: Where do you put it? We have seen magnetic styluses which snap onto the Smart Cover before, but none does it quite so securely and unobtrusively as the Motive, which actually folds flat.
The iPhone’s camera app is pretty good for shooting stills, and I consistently get sharper pictures with better white balance than I do in any other apps. But for shooting video, it just plain sucks: the crop factor (which lets image stabilization do its stuff) makes indoor shooting hard, and you have almost no control over anything but focus.
So do yourself a favor and go spend a buck on CinePro, a video-shooting app that gives you all the control you need.