Apple’s iPhone and iPad docks suck. They look great, but they also grab onto your phone and won’t let go, they don’t fit if you use a case and they don’t do anything but charge the phone (yes, you can plug it into a stereo, but who does that?) The LIL KIKR, on the other hand, looks awesome, sounds awesome, and is made from tough, long-lasting aluminum.
Looks like Big Red is out for blood after tremendous consumer backlash put the kibosh on their plans to charge customers a $2 “convenience fee” to pay their bill. We would have been better off surrendering our $2 because now Verizon is pulling the ol’ “upgrade fee out of a hat” trick. That’s right, starting April 22, Verizon customers can expect to pay $30 for the privilege of purchasing a new device while signing over their souls for the next two years.
Quickoffice Pro HD is one of the App Store’s best third-party office suites, and until Microsoft Office hits the iPad, it’s the best way to view and edit Word and Excel documents on the go. Its latest update adds Powerpoint editing to that, in addition to native email support, an enhanced visual interface, and more.
Last week I took a brief look at how managing a handful of Macs differs from managing dozens or hundreds or even thousands of Macs. Some readers asked how big companies like Apple, Google, Viacom, or IBM actually go about managing large numbers of Macs – both in terms of the tools they use and in terms of how their IT processes differ from supporting Macs in small businesses.
I can’t speak for how Apple manages the Macs of its thousands of employees, but I have worked with several large companies as a Mac IT professional – along with a number of schools and colleges, government agencies, and small businesses. Here’s a look at the tools and processes that they use to configure, deploy, and manage Macs on a grand scale.
Brazil’s Jundiai city council has paid tribute to Apple’s late co-founder and former CEO by naming one of its streets Steve Jobs Avenue. The council actually announced that it would commemorate Steve with a street a day after his passing last year, but city officials only confirmed the name this week.
Unreal. This phony iPhone 4S found in Turkey looks and feels exactly like the real thing up until you turn it on… and even then, if you weren’t already familiar with what an iPhone’s low battery warning looks like, you might mistake it for the real thing. This is why you should either buy your gadgets from an Apple Store, or test them extensively before buying.
It’s long been rumored that the Department of Justice would file an antitrust suit against Apple for e-book price fixing, but now it’s happening, as the United States DoJ just filed such a suit against Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Penguin.
At issue here is Apple’s attempt to overthrow Amazon’s hegemony on e-book selling by collaborating with publishers ahead of the iBookstore launch to standardize how much is charged for e-books, not just through Apple, but through Amazon as well.
Thomas Fulton’s Don’t Panic iPad case started life last year as a Kickstarter project. Now, after sending out cases to all his happy backers, the case is available for you and me to buy.
The case is made from floppy felt and leather, and is designed as much for using as it is for carrying and protecting. When closed, the felt closes up just like any other folio case. Open it up, though, and the fun starts.
Apple’s new iPad is still selling like hot cakes, and new customers continue to face a 1-2-week shipping delay when purchasing through the Apple online store. But the company is reportedly struggling to meet demand with production constrained by Retina display supply and the recent cuts to factory worker overtime at Foxconn.
Renowned developer Steven Troughton-Smith has released the iPad version of his popular Speed iPhone app. Thanks to the iPad’s larger 9.7-inch display and Retina resolution, Speed for iPad is the perfect GPS for your automobile. Not only does Speed track your location on a map, but the app tells you how fast you’re going and the distance you’ve traveled.
This tip comes via OS X Daily, one of Cult of Mac’s favorite tips sites. Check them out for more great tips!
Ever wish your dull, boring first/last name combination username was just a bit more awesome? Yeah, so do we. Here’s a quick tip on how to change it, Captain Awesomepants.
Stolen phones could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a collaboration between the U.S government and the four biggest mobile carriers. The new scheme will use a central database of stolen handsets, and the carriers will use this to block their reactivation.
The idea is that it will reduce cellphone theft by making stolen phones virtually useless.
Apple retail stores in London have begun stocking international parts ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games as the company prepares for an “onslaught” of international journalists seeking repairs. Many of the journalists covering the event, which kicks off on July 27, are expected to be carrying Apple notebooks, so international keyboards are expected to be high in demand.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA810ce4eLM
After teasing the game way back in October, Criterion will finally release Burnout Crash! for iOS tomorrow, April 12. The top-down racer will be Criterion’s first mobile game, and it’s already shaping up to be a huge hit. Even David Hasselhoff loves it, as you can see from the clip above.
Procreate, the already excellent iPad drawing app, has been updated to play nice with the iPad 3’s Retina Display. But to dwell on that would be to ignore the massive changes that have gone into this version. Make no mistake: This might be labelled v1.6, but it is much more like a v2.0.
OpenDNS, the DNS provider of choice to the discerning and paranoid, is blocking the Flashback Trojan. Once it has infected your Mac, Flashback attempts to “call home” to a server to receive further instructions.
Open DNS will now block that connection.
Scanner Pro is my new favorite scanning app for the iPad. It doesn’t do OCR, it doesn’t grab phone numbers from business cards. It just scans, stores, shares and searches your paper documents, and it does it with a beautifully simple interface.
The app is actually an update to the old iPhone version, but this new version (4.0) is completely redesigned and is now a universal app. And just in time, too, as the new iPad’s 5MP autofocus camera makes it a pretty great scanner.
Apple’s online store just went down, and it looks like the Cupertino company has switched out the yellow sticky note of old for a cleaner, fresher look. It’s very simplistic and contains plenty of linen, like the rest of Apple’s recent UI designs.
We’re fans of the new “We’ll be back” design. What do you think?
(The store is probably just down for maintenance, but we’ll let you know if anything interesting pops up.)
Looks like Instagram’s billion dollar deal with the devil didn’t land it in hot enough water after all. Following widespread concerns regarding Instagram’s future from what was apparently a vocal minority, the popular photography app has soared to the top of the App Store.
For the first time in the app’s 16 months on the App Store, Instagram reigns as the most popular free app for the iPhone. Take that, haters.
Ah, the wondrous findings of random polls. This one appears to favor my personal favorite company and therefore I won’t argue against it. The rest of you are free to sound off in the comments after reading the favorable findings of this ABC News/Washington Post poll. A random national sample of 1,007 adults were asked whether or not they had a favorable or unfavorable impression of the following four tech companies: Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter.
Apple has said that its working on a tool to end the notorious Flashback botnet once and for all, but there’s still the remotest chance you could get infected. Keep in mind that only around 600,000 Macs have fallen prey to Flashback, and that number is a tiny fraction of the millions of Mac users around the world. Most of the machines that have been infected already are centralized in North America.
Your Mac is completely up to date and you’ve already checked to see if you’re infected by the Flashback trojan. If everything is squared away and you’re not infected already, here’s how to ensure there is zero chance you’ll get infected while you wait for Apple to save the day.
While you may be used to Siri’s familiar female voice, people around the world hear something different on a daily basis. Siri has many voices in different countries, ranging from foreign accents to even male voices. Here’s a compilation we put together of Siri’s many voices all across the globe.
Rumors have been relatively quiet on the iTunes front for awhile. We’ve had reports pop up here and there over the past couple years, but nothing that exciting has happened to Apple’s desktop music app for a long time.
iTunes is due for a refresh, and it looks like we’ll be seeing an iCloud-centric iTunes 11 alongside the release of iOS 6.
A Mac trojan called Flashback resurfaced in the news over the last week or so after it was revealed that 600,000+ Macs were infected by the nefarious botnet. We’ve showed you how to see if you’re infected by Flashback, and Apple has released two updates already to patch the malware.
Apple is about to get into the antivirus business, as the company has said that it is working its own tool for you to detect and remove Flashback once and for all. The folks in Cupertino will also be working with ISPs around the globe to hunt down the source of this botnet and kill it at the root.
Apple has released updates for three of its production apps, Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Compressor. Verizon 10.0.4 of Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5.0.3, and Compressor 4.0.3 are all available now as updates in the Mac App Store. Overall stability improvements and multiple bug fixes have been included across the board.