Panasonic’s GF5, leaked a couple of weeks ago on Instagram, is now officially official. The new Micro Four Thirds camera skips right over the superstitiously suspect name GF4 (which apparently sounds like “death” in Japanese), but does little more than add polish and a new sensor. But what a sensor.
Rumors of a smaller iPad just won’t die. After months and months of speculation followed by debunking, the idea that Apple release a 7-8-inch iPad still persists.
Well-informed and long-time Apple pundit John Gruber recently dished on the possibility of a 7.85-inch iPad being testing in Apple’s super secret Cupertino labs.
I have some great news for users of the popular cloud storage service Dropbox. Earlier today, the Dropbox team announced that they would be doubling the amount of free storage awarded in their referral program. That’s right, from now on, any friend you get to install Dropbox, you’ll both get 500 MB of free space. For those with a free account, you have the ability to invite up to 32 people for a total of 16 GB of extra storage. Those with Pro accounts will now earn 1 GB per referral, for a total of 32 GB of extra space. Now isn’t that just doubletastic!
Apple has released a new version of its iAd Producer application with multiple additions and fixes. Overall speed and stability for version 2.1 has improved, and features like Twitter integration, support for the third-gen iPad, improved ad testing, and more have been added.
Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs famously said that he intended to wage “thermonuclear war” on Android. The rift between Apple and Google has been growing wider over the years, and the two companies have essentially become sworn enemies in most areas of business.
In an interesting profile by Bloomberg Businessweek, current Google CEO Larry Page says that Steve Jobs’ public defamation of Android was “for show” to rally Apple around its obvious enemy. Page also talks about topics like the current state of Google, the Motorola acquisition, and more.
Want to put in perspective just how pixel dense the new iPad’s display is? On the left, an 11-inch MacBook Air, running Safari under OS X Lion. On the right, the new iPad, showing that same Safari window under OS X Lion using Air Display. It’s like a tiny 27-inch iMac!
Check out Matt Gemmell’s Flickr for a full-res version. Beautiful.
Ever spend hours chained to your desktop computer, painstakingly creating the perfect playlist for your workout, a party you’re planning, or that special someone? If so, you know how creative and rewarding the process can be. What if you could do that very same thing while on the go? Without dragging your entire computer along with you? Well, it turns out that you can, and we’re here to help!
Take a look at your cellphone. Now take a look at your camera. Pretty sad, huh? It’s a big chunky old thing, with knobs and dials for navigating menus. It’s also dumb, and disconnected. To edit and share your photos, you need a computer. To get those photos onto your computer, you have to plug the camera in with a cable. Did anybody tell Nikon or Canon that this is 2012 already?
Your cellphone, on the other hand, will let you snap, edit and share your photos in seconds, and even place them on a map so you can find them later. Camera manufacturers are understandably terrified by this, but what can they do? The answer might be Android.
When Apple announced iBooks Author in January, the company positioned the free ebook publishing tool as a way for faculty members of schools and colleges to create their own customized and interactive textbooks. However, since Apple allows the software to be used by anyone, it has become a tool for authors or organizations that want to self-publish either for personal distribution or for sale/download in the iBookstore.
While easy self-publishing tools may bring to mind the image of someone writing their first novel or a memoir, there are any number of ways to use both the publishing features of iBooks Author and the distribution channel of the iBookstore. One of which is as a marketing and informational tool – an approach that takes the concept of a white paper to a new and powerful interactive level.
One of the saddest things about tech is that unlike other fashionable things, the aesthetic trend that might dictate what gadgets look like for a few years never gets a chance to come back into style. The most we ever get is the chance to be nostalgic about the look of an old gadget, not to fall in love with the aesthetic behind its design all over again, as if new.
For example, debatably thanks to AMC’s period drama Mad Men, Danish mid-century design has really come back into style. A whole new generation of people have come to discover and love a design trend that a mere two years ago, all but a few people would have, at best, only known by a couple musty old relics collecting dust and mouldering in their grandparents’ garage. Watching Don Draper slip into an Eames lounge chair, or pour himself a drink from a gorgeous teak sideboard, or turn on a tulip lamp designed by Eero Sarinen, though, rejuvenates these items by allowing us to see them as they were meant to be used and experienced. It removes real, living objects from the obscurity of textbooks and turns them into fresh ideas, ready to be used again.
It’s for this reason that I love seeing wood in a gadget. It takes a trend that was ubiquitous in the 70s and 80s, when home electronics were big and bulky enough to be mostly considered a kind of furniture, and presents it as a refreshing anecdote to a modern trend in tech design that puts the emphasis on more impersonal and space-age materials like plastic and metal, silicon and glass.
For me, wood can imply an intimacy — a device is yours, it was made for you — that makes it a perfect material for a smartphone: a device that is, by definition, the gadget with which most of us have our most personal relationship. And while Apple understandably doesn’t make iPhones out of wood, I’m delighted that a company like Monolith does, by offering a stunning line of natural wood backs for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S that are as practical as they are beautiful.
Tax season is either the happiest or most dreadful season of the year depending on whether or not you owe The Man fat stacks of mad cheddar. If you haven’t started your taxes yet, then you either love the thrill of crunch time, or you’re as bad a procrastinator as my poor Uncle Bernie who hates the IRS more than Ron Paul. When doing taxes this year our reader Chris Barry noticed a Steve Jobs tribute on the loading screen for TurboTax.
The words in the background scroll across the screen at varying speeds and sizes, but the phrase “Thanking Steve Jobs” comes up a few times. Classy touch by Intuit. We’re uncertain who placed the Steve Jobs tribute in TurboBox or why, but we do know Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit, was a big fan of Steve Jobs and has talked about how big an influence Jobs was to him.
Remember the Microsoft Courier? It was a concept tablet device from Microsoft, with two side-by-side digital touchscreens that could fold together like a book. Well, Taposé is a new iPad app inspired by that concept. Sadly, it doesn’t live up to it.
This morning we posted a story wondering why Apple hasn’t posted any billboards for the new iPad yet. Usually Apple posts new billboards almost immediately after a product is announced, but some old iPad 2 billboards are still lingering around the country with nary a glimpse of big sign adage for the new iPad. Well it looks like the new iPad billboards have just started to roll out. We just got the above picture from our Twitter follower that shows the first billboard for the new iPad, spotted in Hollywood CA. The billboard focuses almost completely on the new retina screen of the iPad rather than focusing on the design of the device like the iPad 2 billboards had.
Have you seen any iPad billboards in your city? If so, leave us a link to a picture of your local new iPad billboard and we’ll included it in this post.
With the minimal lifestyle becoming all the rage — and the idea of having something that can be used in both stay-at-home and travel situations, the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer is bound to turn some heads. Not just because of the savings, but because the Sphear speakers we’re offering (albeit only 200 of them, so hurry) cater to both of those ideals. The benefit of these speakers goes beyond your bedroom. Take them anywhere and play them on any of your Mac devices.
But once all 200 of these are gone, this sale is history! So take advantage while you can. For the size, the sound is flawless and for a very limited time we have this speaker set on sale for only $20! And yes, that includes shipping. (Please note this deal is only available to a shipping address in the 48 continental United States.)
What do you get if you rip the back off a cheap plastic Holga camera and gaffer-tape it to the front of a $25,000 Phase One digital camera back? You get the $25,000 Holga aka The Holga-Cam of the Apocalypse, a 22-megapixel beast that shoots exquisitely high-res images through a low-fi plastic lens. I love it.
Whenever Apple launches a major new product, massive billboards usually go up within days. I know this, because my commute along San Francisco’s 101 freeway passes three giant billboards on the way into the city.
Year after year, I’ve seen the ads go up within days of the new product’s launch. Last year, ads for the iPad 2 were posted almost immediately after the device’s introduction by Steve Jobs.
Thing is, those same iPad 2 billboards are still there. Two weeks after the launch of the iPad 3, the billboards along 101 are still advertising the old iPad 2.
It seems to be the same situation across the country. We’ve been talking about this for days, and no one on the Cult of Mac staff has seen a outdoor ad for the new iPad.
What does it mean?
Last week, we stirred up a maelstrom of controversy when we posted about Girls Around Me, an iOS app that allowed you to locate and view publicly available information on women in any area.
Since we posted the story, over half a million people have come to our site to read about the app, over 65,000 people have shared it on Facebook, and leading publications at home and abroad have followed our lead in reporting on the app, which we described as not just as a potential tool for rapists and stalkers that was putting thousands of women at risk without their knowledge, but a wake-up called about privacy.
Girls Around Me has since been pulled from the iTunes App Store, but considering we were the ones who stirred up so much trouble for the app’s Russian-based developer, i-Free, I thought we would reach out and give them the opportunity to set the record straight. What was i-Free thinking when they released this app? What do they make of the controversy surrounding it? Do they have any regrets? And will Girls Around Me come back?
i-Free’s responses to these questions might prove to be just as controversial as the app itself. The company denies having done anything wrong. They say it is “impossible” to stalk or track someone with their app. They say that the point of the app is just as much about avoiding ugly women on a night out as it is about looking for love. And they’re not sorry.
Most news about the iPhone in the U.S. is centered around the major national carriers including those that offer the iPhone (AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint) and T-Mobile, which doesn’t.
Today, however, that news focuses on Virginia-based carrier nTelos, which will become the second smaller carrier in the U.S. to offer the iPhone. Seeking to differentiate its iPhone options from the larger carriers, nTelos is also offering some sweet deals on the purchase of an iPhone 4/4S as well as a bargain price for unlimited data.
Sparrow for iPhone just got its first update since hitting the App Store last month, and it already brings several new features, including a built-in web browser, customizable icon badges, and clever archiving. There’s still no push function, however, Sparrow promises its coming, “with or without Apple.”
The latest iMac refresh is now just three or four months away, according to a “reliable tipster,” and they’ll introduce Intel’s next-generation Core i5 and Core i7 Ivy Bridge processors to Apple’s all-in-one desktop line.
One of the consumerization of IT trends is the use of cloud storage. Most of us already have experience with iCloud and other personal cloud services like Dropbox, Google Docs, and SugarSync. The big advantage to all these solutions is their ubiquity – you can access documents and files in the office, at home, on the road using your iPhone or iPad, and pretty much anyplace else. Though they may raise data security and privacy concerns, personal or public clouds are extremely easy to use and always available.
The popularity of major cloud providers is causing a number of companies to offer easy to configure private cloud options that businesses can physically deploy on their own network or that can be hosted by the developer or a cloud service provider.
This week, ownCloud, which already offers an open source cloud storage and sync, announced new business and enterprise options that offer a great deal of flexibility.
True story: When I was around 14 years old, there was a kid who would come to school sometimes already wearing a condom. His reason? In case he suddenly got lucky. Needless to say, this never happened. If this kid is still around today, I imagine he’ll be the first in line for the Playa Case, an iPhone case which has a slide-open compartment for two condoms. Classy.
Walter Isaacson took to the stage in Amsterdam for the John Adams Institute recently to talk about his biography based on Steve Jobs. During the 90-minute clip, Isaacson talks at length about Steve’s character and his management style, and he recounts a number of his favorite stories about Apple’s co-founder and former CEO.
I’ve always thought of FileMaker as “databases for the rest of us” – the software is easy to understand for even novice users, it has an immense focus on visual design that allows users to create impressive looking solutions quickly and easily, and it packs quite a bit of power. All of those traits get a boost in FileMaker 12, which was released this morning.
My first impression on using FileMaker 12 is that the company took all the things I’ve always like about FileMaker Pro and Server and turned them up to 11 – particularly when it comes to making mobile solutions.
Disk images are the way most software came packaged before the Mac App Store, allowing developers to pack entire folders full of installers and files into a single compressed image, ready to send acros the internet at a moment’s notice (and the payment of a shareware fee, hopefully). DropDMG makes this process super simple.