While rumors surrounding a 15-inch MacBook Air have been circulating for a number of months now, we had no idea when Apple might be gearing up to launch the new device. Sources “from the upstream supply chain” are now reporting, however, that the 15-inch ultraportable will arrive during the first quarter of 2012 as part of a completely refreshed MacBook Air family.
While Apple chose to stick with the same 3.5-inch display for the iPhone 4S that it had previously employed in older iPhones, the Cupertino company looks certain to increase that for its iPhone 5. According to a source in Apple’s supply chain, both Hitachi and Sony have already begun shipping 4-inch LCD panels for a “new iOS device,” believed to be the sixth-generation iPhone.
Sure, the 32GB iPad has enough storage space for a bunch of apps, some songs and maybe even a movie or two. But for those of us with large media collections, even the mega 64GB version will start to feel a little cramped when stuffed full of music and videos (and I have no idea how those of you with 16GB iPads get by).
So, what if you could just stick a portable external drive into your iPad, like you would with a MacBook? Bam, extra storage! Well, yeah — but you can’t, right? Wrong! Well, sorta — you can’t plug one in physically; but the 500GB Seagate GoFlex Satellite ($200) gets around the whole physical connection thing by supplying its own wifi hotspot that lets you create a wifi link between it and your iPad. Genius.
With the dawn of solid state storage becoming a viable option for computers, many users are presented with the problem of managing disk space, as SSDs are typically much smaller than traditional spinning hard drives. In this video, I’ll show you how to effectively free up disk space on your Mac.
One of the biggest customer complaints about the iPhone 4S is battery life. The battery never manages to last even a whole day and sometimes not even a half of a day. Although the iPhone 4 has always managed to last nearly a whole day, it isn’t much better. Apple is working on an iOS 5 software fix that might eventually take care of the battery draining issues that face iPhone 4S customers. Their first attempt, the release of iOS 5.0.1, wasn’t much help for some users.
If you cannot wait any longer and you own either of these phones one solution could be the MiLi Power Pack 4 ($60) from xengadget.com. The 3000 mAh slider case will give your iPhone 4 or 4S the extra power boost it needs to last until bed time. I tested it on my iPhone 4S and I’d like to share my experience with you.
In the 50s, some futurists predicted food pills instead of meals. It never happened.
The biggest reason futurists fail is that too many predictions are based on the possible, rather than the desirable.
It’s now possible for anyone to take all their nutrition from pills. But people enjoy eating food. That’s why we don’t take pills instead.
If you want to predict the future, you need to deconstruct human nature. You also need to know what will be possible. Where these two things intersect is where accurate predictions can be made.
And that’s why I can already tell you what your iMac will be like in a few years.
Last week we announced another stellar Cult of Mac Deal – 40% off of the $79 Internet Security Barrier X6 suite of Mac Apps. We wrangled two free copies for our loyal Cult of Mac readers which are up for grabs during this weekend’s Deals giveaway! This contest will run from today till Tuesday, November 29th at 9AM PST. The rules for entering are incredibly simple; here’s what you got to do to enter.
Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief strategy and research officer, recently said that Windows Phone 7 beat Siri to the punch. In an interview, Mundie argued that Apple only marketed Siri well, and that Microsoft has had the same technology for more than a year already.
Jason from TechAU has created a video face-off between Microsoft’s voice recognition software, called TellMe, and Siri on the iPhone 4S. We’ll let you guess which one actually works.
Review by Kelly Keltner
Many headsets promise a headset utopia, making smartphone users’ heads fill with visions of commanding their world with a simple voice command.
The Plantronics Marque M155 ($60) and the Motorola HX550 ($60) both make similar promises, with the HX550’s packaging going as far as to promise a “complete hands-free solution.” Both headsets offer liberation from holding the phone, but how do these midrange ‘sets match up to the marketing promises — or the abilities of their more expensive siblings?
Apple’s series of heated lawsuits with Samsung have put the two companies at odds, and Apple has been reportedly looking to other suppliers for hi-res displays. Specifically, Apple now has Sharp on deck to supply screens for the upcoming iPad 3.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is adding Sharp to its roster of screen suppliers for the next-generation iPad. The displays will allegedly be of higher resolution and thinner than the screens found in previous generations.
There’s a new jailbreak app on the block, and it doesn’t place nice. MobileMonitor is perhaps the scariest activity monitoring tool we’ve come across for the iPhone, and it’s available for anyone to download in the jailbreak equivalent to the App Store, Cydia.
Once installed, not only does MobileMonitor become untraceable on the iPhone itself, but it records and uploads all of your personal data to a website that can be accessed by anyone with the correct login information.
Weathermob is new and hip on the App Store this week. It’s a weather app with a twist – it’s social. Think of it as Instagram for clouds. Kinda.
ThinkGeek is celebrating this year’s Black Friday event by slashing the price of its popular iCade arcade cabinet for the iPad. The accessory would make the perfect Christmas gift for iPad owners who love retro gaming, and for a limited time only, it’s down from $99.99 to just $59.99.
1,000 workers at a Jingmo Electronics factory in Shenzhen, China, staged a strike earlier this week over long hours and poor working conditions. The factory supplies keyboards to companies like IBM, LG, and Apple, and China Labor Watch is now calling for these companies to improve the working conditions for the employees at the factory, focusing specifically on Apple.
iOS game developers love nothing more than to celebrate with a sale, so it’s no surprise to use that a plethora of hugely popular titles are available for as little as $0.99 this week. However, we are surprised by the sheer number of games on sale this year, from big-name developers like Gameloft, Sega, Namco Bandai, and more.
So that you don’t need to spend hours searching for these bargains yourself, we’ve compiled a huge list of the best reductions for you, featuring some of the most successful iOS titles, such as Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles, BackStab, Real Golf 2011, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Monkey Ball, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, and lots, lots more.
NOTE: We’ve added new titles from EA, Kairosoft, Konami and more!
Mac OS X ships with a lot of default system preference panes and I have about 30 of these on my MacBook Air running Mac OS X Lion. There are an extra 11 preference panes that I’ve added by installing third-party apps. So out of a total of 41 preference panes there are more than six of these that I don’t really need or even use all that often.
Did you know that you can hide the preference panes that you don’t need? This will clear up your view when you launch System Preferences. You’ll only see what you need to see and I’ll show you how to do this in the tip for today.
“These might be my favorite instructional videos ever. – Ashton Kutcher”
Take it from pretty boy and newly-minted startup investor, Ashton Kutcher…today’s exclusive offer is a BLACK FRIDAY KNOCKOUT punch! If your company doesn’t have a demo video, it’s missing out on the most effective way to convert those visitors into lifetime-long customers – by up to 400%.
To create a professionally made, high-quality video like this would typically run you at least $5,000…but with Cult of Mac Deals, you don’t need $5,000 to compete with the big boys.
Remember the Glif? It’s a cute little kickstand/tripod attachment gizmo for the iPhone 4 and 4S, brought to life by a successful campaign on Kickstarter.
Well now the makers of the Glif have announced some extra add-on gizmos to give the Glif some extra gazoom.
Since its release on the iPhone 4S last month, Siri has received some criticism for not coping well with a number of strong accents. But while the high price of the fifth-generation device may be seen as a major downfall to Indian users, they will be pleased to know that Siri will work just fine with their accent.
We were fortunate enough to get an exclusive look at Foxconn’s new factory in Brazil earlier this week, where the company will join the Foxconn factory in China in co-producing Apple’s iPhone, and soon its iPad. Although the factory is already up and running, we’re yet to see any Brazilian built iPhones on the market.
That was until today, when Brazilian blog MacMagazine published an image of one of the first iPhone 4 units that was assembled outside of China.
We Americans have stuffed our faces with turkey and various assortments of tasty dishes, and now it’s time for Black Friday. That means Apple’s online stores around the world are getting updated with special sales. Many other retails are also offering hot deals on our favorite Apple gadgets and accessories.
Things aren’t looking good for AT&T’s T-Mobile USA acquisition proposal. AT&T withdrew its merger application with the FCC today and agreed to pay a $4 billion pre-tax charge to the affected parties in its next quarterly earnings report.
While AT&T and Deutsche Telekom are still committed to the merger, this action signals that the deal will likely not make it past the courts. The proposed merger is facing opposition from multiple sides, including the FCC’s own chairman.
There seems to be a lot of noise made about the still camera abilities of the iPhone 4S recently, and for good reason; but let’s not forget that it’s also a very competent filmmaker (and the 3Gs and 4 aren’t slouches either). And if you’re even semi-serious about shooting video on your iPhone, you might want something like FiLMiC Pro, a video-production app with real video-production muscle and features.
Once you’re done stuffing your face full of turkey and gravy and recovered from your food coma, you’re going to need some entertainment for the rest of the weekend. How about some new games? Aspyr is currently having an awesome 50% off deal on some of their games biggest games. We’re not talking crappy boring titles either, we’re talking legit amazing games for 50% off. Call of Duty 4, Civilization V, Duke Nukem Forever, Star Wars The Force Unleashed, and many more titles are available between now and Monday, November 28th for download.
If you’re looking for something to do during your long weekend, you should probably head over to their site and get a few games for your Mac.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGrDMVk2isc
Apple has aired a new commercial for the iPod touch called “Share the Fun.” The advert features the white and black 4th gen iPod touch and several of the main features in iOS 5.
In the ad, people tweet from the iPod touch, use Game Center, talk on FaceTime, take pictures, and more. This new iPod touch ad joins Apple’s recent iPhone 4S and iPad 2 commercials.