It’s looking more and more likely that the iPad 3 won’t just be getting a Retina Display tomorrow, it’ll be getting LTE. The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky is now reporting that their sources indicate LTE iPad 3s will ship in two flavors for both AT&T and Verizon’s network.
Fans of Monty Python, gather your dead parrots and your stuffed John Cleese plushies: today is your day to celebrate the official launch of Monty Python: The Holy Book of Days for iPad, an app that gives faithful Python followers everything they could ever wish for on a plate, with strawberries on top. The rest of us might be left wondering what the fuss is about, though.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess or soothsayer to divine that Apple’s been holding back the iOS 5.1 update to debut it alongside the iPad 3, and so it appears, with reports now indicating that iOS 5.1 has just gone Gold Master.
Calvin And Hobbes — Bill Watterson’s beautiful elegy to imagination, impishness and inquisitiveness — is still a comic strip that is unmatched in my affections over fifteen years after the final strip ran. In fact, it’s always been interesting to me to imagine what Calvin might be doing now if he’d aged in real-time. He’d be around 32, and really, what company better for him to explore his imagination and his inquisitiveness than Apple?
Since such musings tend to pop around my head, I was delighted to stumble upon this great Reddit thread, in which Redditor ClassicWinger merged Calvin And Hobbes with OS X Lion’s default wallpaper to come up with an all new wallpaper, in which Calvin and his tiger look up at a densely packed universe in the hushed awe it deserves. You can download it in full-resolution here.
Love the wallpaper above, but wishing for something more appropriate to Mountain Lion? We’ve got it after the jump, alone withan even better wallpaper, featuring my favorite Calvin alter-ego, Spaceman Spiff!
Did you know that the Calculator app built into iOS has a hidden swipe gesture that allows you to delete those digits that you tap accidentally? No, neither did I until this morning, when I discovered this nifty little backspace trick by accident.
With the number of MIDI controllers on the market, the search for a great portable controller can be daunting.
Let me introduce you to the Korg microKEY, my favorite mobile MIDI controller.
Although bloggers and analysts refer to Apple’s rumored upcoming HDTV as the iTV just out of simplicity, there’s no actual indication that Apple would call it that. None. No one knows for sure if Apple’s even working on an HDTV, let alone what they’re going to call it.
The only evidence that Apple might call an HDTV the iTV is US Patent Patent No. 2011/0154394 A1, which has a solitary image indicating that Apple might, at least, be using the name iTV internally. But that’s not stopping the usual cadre of doofuses from trying to eke some payouts (or, at least, some free publicity) out of the whole thing. In this case, it’s American-based iTV Entertainment, who are threatening to crash tomorrow’s iPad 3 event to prevent Apple from releasing an HDTV with the same name.
The patent saga continues with U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago ruling that Motorola and Google must provide Apple with information regarding Android development as well as information about the impending merger. It’s unclear exactly what specific “information” must be provided and while everyone goes ahead and assumes it’s some sort of top secret documentation, I’m betting it’s nothing of the sort and Apple won’t be gaining any trade secrets out of this. It’s all ridiculous and will only end as all of these patent suits have ended, with nothing more than a software update.
I picked up my first iPhone around three months after the device launched way back in 2007, and I’ve been an iPhone user ever since. I’ve dabbled with Android devices throughout the years, and I even tried webOS on the HP Pre, but I didn’t like either operating system as much as I like iOS on the iPhone.
When Microsoft first introduced Windows Phone, I was instantly attracted to it. I liked the look of the user interface, I liked the way the system worked, and I actually liked the fact that Microsoft was in control of the Windows Phone Marketplace. (One of the things that I dislike most about Android is that the Android Market has no approval process.) I’m not a fan of the Windows desktop operating system, and I’ve stayed as far away from it as possible after purchasing my first Mac. But I felt compelled to try Windows Phone.
So I did. I swapped my iPhone for a HTC TITAN running Windows Phone Mango for one month. Here’s how I got on.
Valletta is yet another Markdown editor for the Mac, but one with a crucial difference. Instead of using a separate window to preview your document, it converts only the current line you’re editing, leaving the rest as clean and beautiful preview. It’s a clever idea, but we’ll have to see how well it works in practice.
Apple officials have reportedly confirmed that the company will not be taking its pop-up retail store to this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival, which kicks off on Friday, March 9. The decision suggests Apple’s iPad 3 will not be ready for shipping next week.
Cult of Mac’s reviews editor Charlie Sorrel and I have a bet going on whether or not the iPad 3 will have LTE.
I figure Apple’s got to see the impact of LTE on their iOS devices sometime, and the iPad is the perfect launch platform for it: they can sell the functionality as optional and at a premium, as they do 3G, making sure a minimum number of people get burned by a lack of LTE deployment in their area (and falling back on HSPA+ when LTE isn’t around)…. all the while the iPad 3’s biggery battery mitigates 4G power management issues.
Charlie thinks that argument’s stupid, and LTE’s far too immature to deploy. At stake is a solid buck, or half Charlie’s monthly salary, so tensions are high as the iPad 3 announcement lurches closer and closer on the calendar.
The latest report suggest that buck could very well be mine.
Take apart one of Apple’s latest iMacs and inside you’ll find plenty of space for mounting an additional hard drive. Of course, it’s useless if you don’t have the tools for the job, but that’s where iFixit comes in. The teardown specialists have released a new kit that provides you with everything you need for installing an additional hard drive in your new iMac.
IOS runs HTML5 games a crazy three times faster than Android, according to a study by Spaceport.io. The tests were run on various hardware and software combinations, both for Android and iOS, and the results are pretty startling. And there’s an even more amusing data point: The Blackberry Playbook beat every Android device.
If you go to Verizon Wireless‘s front page right now, they are hyping the imminent launch of something, which we can only assume is iPad 3 related.
But what is it? An iPad 3 with LTE is obviously a big contender, but I wonder if it could be something less splashy but just as important overall, like shared data plans.
What’s your guess? Let us know in the comments!
If you want to know what we really think the next iPad is going to be like, you need to give episode 2 of The CultCast a listen. The Cultcast is the new Cult of Mac podcast and also happens to be the best 30 minute conversation you’ll hear about Apple all week long.
You likey? Subscribe to The CultCast right now in iTunes and hear us apply our keen senses of reason and logic to all the iPad 3 rumors you’re still not tired of hearing.
One of the big things missing from Lightroom — Adobe’s excellent photo processing app — was printing. Not boring old printing where you have a big, expensive box in the corner of your office spit out endless sheets of paper until one of them is right. No, we mean remote printing, where you choose some images, hit a button and, a short while later, a gorgeous book appears on your doorstep.
Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture have had this for a while. Now, thanks to Blurb, the brand-new Lightroom 4 has it too.
Android and iOS users will now be able to quickly access the places they have searched for on Google thanks to Google’s new “Recent” icon on their mobile search page. Any user who has Web History enabled and is logged into Google when searching for a place will have that search saved and accessible via the “Recent” icon. Searches will be saved for approximately 24-hours and will give users the convenience of starting searches from their desktop and later pulling up that information while mobile.
Yet another new feature in Mac OS X Lion, Mission Control transitions with an animated shrinking and growing of the current Space, showing all the other Spaces and open app windows for easy control over all the display options. If you feel like this transition could use a bit of a speed boost, try this easy tip.
Nerds who use Omni Group’s kick-ass task manager Omnifocus have a little bit of good news today. No, you still can’t export due tasks to a Google calendar shared with coworkers. You can, however, rely on the new non-beta status of the Omni Sync Server, which gets its official launch today. That’s not all: Sync is coming to all Omni’s apps.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Futulele. It’s a crazy electric ukelele made of iPads and stuff.
A little over a week after pulling Battlefield 3: Aftershock from the App Store for connection issues and a truly disappointing gameplay experience, EA has pulled The Simpsons: Tapped Out, for much the same reasons.
Stock of the Apple TV has been quickly dwindling across Apple retail stores in the U.S. in recent months, fueling speculation that the device will soon be replaced by a new model with the “J33” codename that recently popped up in the company’s iOS 5.1 beta software.
One report claims that 98% of Apple retail stores in the U.S. now have no Apple TV stock at all.
Mass Effect 3 lands on consoles in the U.S. today, but if you prefer to do your gaming on an iOS device, then you should definitely dedicate your evening to Mass Effect Infiltrator. From the makers of Dead Space for iOS, this title is an all-new and original Mass Effect storyline made exclusively for mobile devices, and it promises to “boost your Galactic Readiness Rating within Mass Effect 3.”
Were you awakened this morning by the sounds of enthusiastic golf claps? It was photographers everywhere applauding Adobe’s release of Lightroom 4 for only $149 — half the price of Lightroom 3. Upgrading will run you less at $79, but price is only part of what’s new and noteworthy.
