Steve Jobs’s quest for perfection was pursued down to the smallest details. It made him the father of some of the greatest products and interfaces in computer history.
As Walter Isaacson’s new biography on Steve Jobs makes clear, though, it could also sometimes make him nightmarish to live with… the sort of obsessive who could make even the most mundane seemingly household decisions into maddening, endless debates.
Depending on where you stand, a recent mobile advertising study was good news for Apple or Android. While Apple’s iPad and iPhone were the most connected devices for advertising, Google’s Android was the leading smartphone operating system, according to the report.
Tony Fadell is often referred to as the ‘father of the iPod’. He’s a former Apple engineer who helped develop Apple’s first portable music player along with Jeff Robbin, and he’s just announced a new 100-person startup called Nest Labs.
Having been a former DJ and overseeing 18 iterations of the iPod and the three generations of the iPhone, we’ve been keen to find out what Fadell and his company have been working on. But it isn’t a revolutionary new music player or communication device. It’s a thermostat.
While Apple is yet to open its iOS 5 Notification Center up to third-party widgets, developers have been hard at work creating awesome tweaks that can be installed on jailbroken devices. One of the best is a tweak called WeeSpaces, which makes it easier than ever to multitask on an iOS device.
First a China supplier of MacBook unibody cases was forced to spend millions on pollution cleanup, now an iPhone plant is under scrutiny for noise and gas pollution. Pegatron, just days from an investor conference, announced plans to update equipment and work closely with local residents.
Did you buy an app for your Mac that you later regret having bought? Or did you decide it was so terrible that you don’t want to be reminded about having bought it? Well, you are in luck, because now there is a way to remove purchases now from your Purchased history in the Mac App Store.
One thing you can be sure that Apple will improve with every iteration of its iPhone is the device’s camera. The original iPhone packed a 2-megapixel camera that wasn’t all that great at taking photos; things got significantly better two generations later with the iPhone 3GS. The 5-megapixel camera in the iPhone 4 received a ton of praise, but its 8-megapixel successor in the iPhone 4S is even more terrific.
So terrific, in fact, that the developer behind the hugely successful Camera+ application for the iPhone, Lisa Bettany, says the device “outshines” many of the high-end compact cameras currently on the market.
Apple’s iPhone 4S has been a huge success for Sprint since its launch on October 14, breaking both opening day sales and activation records. For many customers, however, life with the latest iPhone on Sprint isn’t all that fun, with painfully slow data speeds throttling the iPhone’s capabilities when away from a Wi-Fi connection. According to the carrier, however, its data speeds match those offered by its competitors.
Bloomberg reports that the original creator of iTunes, Jeff Robbin, is allegedly working on Apple’s upcoming TV set. Robbin also helped co-launch the original iPod with Tony Fadell.
The report cites “three people with knowledge of the project” and notes that Robbin’s involvement is “a sign of Apple’s commitment to extending its leadership in smartphones and tablets into the living room.”
Apple appears to have resolved the problems where 15-inch Mid-2010 MacBook Pro computers may intermittently free or stop displaying video.
The resolution has appeared in the form of a software update that is available now.
Apple has updated the firmware for Apple TV to version 4.4.2 about a week after pulling and releasing for a second time the earlier 4.4.1 update. The earlier update provided a some bug fixes and if we were to guess this one probably does too.
It looks like Apple is also offering an Apple TV tip for updating which I hope isn’t the normal thing to expect going forward. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting my Apple TV to find and install new updates. I hope that 4.4.2 resolves that problem for good.
Apple introduced High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography along with the iPhone 4 and iOS 4. HDR will automatically produce improved camera shots by combining three camera shots into one image. The HDR setting in the Camera app remains in iOS 5 and the new iPhone 4S.
That isn’t necessarily a good thing if you are prone to using the camera in your iPhone and HDR a lot, because HDR produces two images which are stored on your camera roll: the original and the HDR enhanced one. If your device has limited storage space this could start to be a problem.
If you have an iPhone 4S the images produced by the 8 Megapixel camera are larger than the ones produced on the iPhone 4 or iPhone 3Gs. Luckily there is a way for you to force the Camera app to only save the HDR image.
David Kelley and Steve Jobs have a lot in common. Kelley, the designer of Apple’s original mouse, was diagnosed with throat cancer back in 2007.
In addition to working with Apple on the mouse project, Jobs introduced Kelley to his wife. When Kelley was in the hospital, Jobs came to visit his old friend. And just like any well-wisher, he didn’t come empty handed.
Instead of flowers or candy, Jobs brought Kelley, who went on to found seminal design firm IDEO, the very first iPhone as a “get well” present. There was just one small problem: Jobs couldn’t get the iPhone to work.
Earlier today I got a chance to talk to Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’ authorized biographer. Isaacson’s 620-page book hits bookstands today. He spoke while preparing to check out of his hotel in New York, where he’s conducting a whirlwind media tour for the book, which promises to be one of the biggest hits of the year.
In our interview, Isaacson revealed that Jobs was actually a lot more active in his cancer treatment than previous reports have suggested. He also thinks Apple will be OK without Jobs because he spent a decade building a great team and an institution infused with his DNA. And that the man, like the company he built, was an intriguiging mix of the arts and sciences.
The official Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson went live on the iBookstore and Amazon last night, and the title hit shelves everywhere this morning.
Initial pre-orders of the bio ushered it to the top of the charts on Amazon, and after less than 24 hours of availability, the book is on track to become Amazon’s best-selling title of 2011.
Serial entrepreneur Kevin Rose is known for founding companies like Digg and Revision3. He now works at an app development company he started called “Milk.”
Rose demoed his newest creation at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week. “Oink” is an upcoming app that lets users rank and share things with each other. Taking cues from Digg, the platform will act as an all-encompassing tool for finding the best things out there — whether you’re in need of a good massage or a slice of pizza.
The world’s largest carrier, China Mobile, has over 600 million wireless subscribers. 10 million of these customers have iPhones despite that fact that China Mobile is not an official Apple partner.
What’s even more surprising is that the iPhone isn’t currently compatible with China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA 3G network, meaning that these 10 million unofficial iPhone users are all limited to 2G data speeds.
One of the new features Apple added in the App Store alongside iCloud and iOS 5 is the ability to re-download all of your purchases on any authenticated iOS device. This means that all of your purchased apps are available to see and download in the App Store at any time.
If having a concrete record of all your past app purchases isn’t really your thing, you can actually hide specific App Store purchases.
Steve Jobs was a man who adopted many mentors in his life, but one of his mentors deserves more than a passing look: Robert Friedland, a charismatic, free love wacko who dealt LSD and had his own free love commune on the same apple orchard that inspired Steve for the name of his company. It was also where Steve allegedly got his “reality distortion field” from.
A first-ever drop in smartphone sales could be good news for Apple but portend ‘ominous signs’ for the many companies tied to the Android mobile operating system. Despite launching several Android-based phones, carriers AT&T and Verizon both reported a drop-off in smartphone sales during the September quarter, one analyst noted Monday.
If you received a video file via email or stumbled across a clip in Safari that you wanted to save under iOS 4, it just wasn’t possible. You could watch it, but you couldn’t save it. However, one feature you may not yet have noticed in iOS 5 is that you can now download videos to your camera roll.
Walter Isaacson’s much anticipated biography of Steve Jobs is releasing today, and we’re already busy poring through it, gaining new insight into the life and philosophies of Apple’s volatile, sometimes enigmatic co-founder.
Throughout the morning, we’ll be live updating this post with some of the best revelations, funniest stories, most interesting quotes and most enjoyable tidbits of the biography.
The growing importance of international iPhone sales, along with demand for Apple’s latest smartphone, should remove any Wall Street doubt that the fourth quarter was only a fluke. One analyst Monday announced bullish expectations for the first quarter of 2012, forecasting 42 million iPhones will have sold in December – more than double that of last quarter.
Apple’s MacBook Pro family wasn’t the only product lineup to get an update today. The Cupertino company has also issued a refresh to its iPad 2 Smart Covers, which has seen the orange cover discontinued in favor of a new dark gray model, and interior lining that’s colored to match the exterior.
Apple is set to launch a new pilot program that will allow customers to make orders through its online store and then collect their purchases from their local Apple store, according to a new report. The program has reportedly been given the name “Sherwood” and will cover any product available online, including custom-build computers, third-party accessories, and products which have been gift-wrapped an engraved.