Look at that big ugly thing. It’s not pretty, it’s boring, and it’s not even all that protective — leaving the top and bottom ends of your iPhone exposed to the elements. But despite these insufficiencies, its manufacturers will charge you $10,000 for the thing simply because it’s made from solid gold.
Hey kids, NASA needs your help. And your iPhone.
Just how important is the iPhone to U.S. carriers? Verizon’s financial chief provided some insight Wednesday, announcing the provider sold 4.2 million Apple smartphones during the holiday fourth quarter. While the October launch of the iPhone 4S likely spurred many of those purchases, the cost is a smaller profit in exchange for hefty data contracts and a piece of the Apple halo.
Here’s a neat and simple trick that lets you forward several emails at once if you use the OS X Mail application.
As Apple pulls us all forward into the Next Great Thing, some widely-used Previously Cool Things get left behind. It’s happened with HyperCard, PageMill, and all PowerPC-only applications. Today one reader ponders the uncertain future of his favorite program, iWeb:
I bought my first Mac in ’85… Being an Old’nAging Geezer I saw that an encroaching Class of ’61’s 50-year Reunion deserved a website so I volunteered, commandeering iWeb for the very first time (successfully aided by FileZilla and my generous wonky Mac-pal Greg) to ultimately be rewarded by several of my classmates and a few fanboys’ sporadic kudos–AND proving once again that old, time-proven saw of Macintosh’s unassailable user friendly superiority.
All that to bring me to this QUESTION: Will iWeb live?
Paul
A large proportion of iPhone 4S adopters have been hit by an issue on the new device that randomly mutes their audio when they make a call. Their recipient appears to pickup — or the call goes to voicemail — but they do not hear anything.
If you’re one of these users and you’re hoping for a fix in Apple’s upcoming iOS 5.1 software update, then you may be disappointed. According to developers already testing the release, it does not address this particular issue.
Logitech isn’t waiting for CES next week; instead, the gadget giant is releasing two new products today — one of which raised eyebrows here.
I love Apple’s Smart Cover for the iPad 2, and I’ve had one stuck to my device since the day I bought it. It looks good, it protects my display, and it’s useful. I often wonder whether the same kind of concept could work for the iPhone, and it seems TidyTilt has an answer.
TidyTilt is like a Smart Cover for your iPhone 4 or 4S, only much smarter. Not only does it act as a kickstand for your device when you want to type, watch movies, or play games; it provides tidy storage for your earbuds, and a whole lot more.
Google has updated its popular Google Translate app for iOS today, introducing native support for the iPad. Instead of running in a small window in the center of screen, the app will now take advantage of your iPad’s large display to make text translation easier on the go.
Here’s a fun idea from Kickstarter: hip headphones with built-in housing for your iPod shuffle.
Apple is now giving refunds to customers that purchased the bizarre GameStore app that surfaced over the past weekend in the App Store. GameStore offered in-app purchases for non-existent racing games.
In an email to customers that purchased GameStore during the brief time it was on the App Store, Apple has noted that the app was made available for sale “prematurely.”
The area where the fitness tech companies congregate at CES seems to get larger and louder every year — and based on the preview emails or stuff we’ve chatted about on the phone, fitness at CES 2012 looks like it’ll be bigger than ever.
What’s this? Android news on Cult of Mac?! Who the hell cares?! Maybe you don’t, maybe you do. Point is: these are a few of the popular topics going on in the Android world today. Maybe you’d like to know what the competition is up to, or perhaps your aunt received a Kindle Fire she needs to update. Regardless of the reason, having a resource such as Cult of Android allows you to learn more about what’s going on in the ecosystem powered by the world’s leading mobile OS.
Yesterday we showed you how to conserve iCloud storage space by removing old backups from your iOS device. But what if you don’t have old backups eating up your storage, and you’re still going over your limit?
Today’s tip will show you how to manage your iCloud storage by disabling backups for selected iOS apps that you don’t necessarily need to backup with iCloud, quickly providing you with more storage for your important data.
Who rides around in an armored Cadillac and likes to take retro-filtered photos? The President of the United States, of course! That’s right, President Barack Obama is now Instagram.
As the campaign season starts to ramp up, Obama’s staff is covering all the bases. Fellow Instagram addicts can follow the president’s staff from his official account for plenty of hipster filter goodness and behind-the-scenes peeks along the campaign trail.
Verizon has announced record-breaking results for its 2011 fourth quarter sales. The nation’s largest carrier sold 4.2 million iPhones during the holiday season, effectively doubling sales from the previous quarter.
The iPhone 4S was launched during Q4 of 2011, and holiday sales have surely helped Verizon rise to such impressive results.
It would seem that popular music streaming service Spotify is cooking something especially juicy in the voice department. Forbes is reporting that Spotify’s CEO has shown off a “hack” that involved telling the service’s iOS app to play some tunes.
You don’t need to know anything more about the state of the mobile industry than the fact that the worst mainstream smartphone OS, Android, is the number one smartphone platform by numbers, while one of the best — Windows Phone 7 — justy can’t get any momentum.
That’s a real shame, because short of iOS, WP7 is the best mobile OS out there: it’s got an innovative tile-based interface, slick hardware, and a cogent design philosophy. But not only is Windows Phone 7 not getting any traction in the market, but Microsoft is going so far now as to reportedly bribe retail store employees to recommend WP7 over Android or iPhones. Yikes.
Owners of Apple’s iPad quickly adopted the App Store as their home, downloading three billion apps in 2010 and virtually obliterating Android alternatives. The iPad accounted for nearly one out over every five Apple apps downloaded, according to new research.
Apple has finally tapped someone to run its suffering mobile ads division. Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has poached Adobe exec Todd Teresi to run iAds. Andy Miller stepped down from the mobile ad division last August.
Teresi is listed as the VP and GM of Media Solutions at Adobe. He has also served as the Senior Vice President of Yahoo before resigning in 2008. He has a history of working with interactive advertising.
More proof that the iPhone is the 21st century analogue to the venerable Swiss Army Knife: a hiker lost in the woods on New Year’s Eve was able to alert and flag down rescuers using his iPhone’s flashlight app.
There are few things on Earth as annoying or punchable as a little brother. Sure, deep down in the recesses of his subconscious, your younger brother is just trying to impress you with his antics. From that perspective, his insistence on constantly nudging you while you’re trying to beat your Angry Birds high score on your iPad is in, reality, an act of love and admiration.
Likewise, it must be remembered that an older brother’s responsibility from time immemorial is to firmly take his younger siblings in hand and instruct them upon the ways of the world: the rules, the social decorums, the hidden pitfalls, the unspoken expectations. From that perspective, then, isn’t knocking your younger brother unconscious by hitting him in the face with your iPad also a supreme act of love?
Probably not. But like giving your younger brother an Indian burn, purple nurple or atomic noogie, it is pretty funny.
[via Macgasm]
In late 2010, after years of abstaining from entering the netbook market, Apple finally succeeded in transforming the MacBook Air from a disappointing promise of laptops to come into a machine that revolutionized ultraportables the same way the iPhone revolutionized smartphones and the iPad revolutionzed tablets. Not only was the MacBook Air as thin as a samurai sword and about as small as a 12-inch netbook, it had the performance of a beefier laptop thanks to the inclusion of a proper CPU, dedicated GPU and ubiquitous flash storage… all at a sub-$1000 price point.
Overnight, the MacBook Air finished what the iPad had started and almost completely killed off netbook demand once and for all. Now all of the gadget makers who had previously been counting on netbook sales to boost their bottom lines are trying to catch up with Apple. But as usual, they’re about a year late.
What does this mean for CES 2012? Expect to see ultrabooks, ultrabooks and more ultrabooks.
The Android Market saw staggering growth in 2011 and thanks to some tracking done by Distimo, we have a better look at how the numbers play out in comparison to Android’s top competitor Apple. According to Distimo, the Android Market has now reached over 400,000 apps, which is still 100K shy of Apple’s 500K+ active apps available according to 148apps metrics. While Android still trails in overall apps, it’s really the rate at which it’s growing that is impressive.
Following our report about Martin Reisch earlier today — the Canadian who was reportedly allowed into the United States with a photograph of his passport on his iPad — U.S. customs have contacted us to clarify the situation.
Jenny L. Burke, a Field Branch Chief with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, says that the claim Reisch was admitted into the U.S. using solely an image of his passport on his iPad is “categorically false,” and that Reisch had to provide more than just a photo to get into the country.