The world’s a small place, and the chance of any interaction happening between two randomly colliding human beings — a handshake, a hug, a watergun battle, a passionate embrace — are almost infinitesimally small, yet all those things happen billions of times per day. The Situationist is an iPhone app that aims to help along that random, serendipitous chance interaction between two people.
Foxconn Electronics currently assembles a whole host of Apple gear, and apparently persuaded the Cupertino company recently to make it the sole producer of a third iPad expected to launch later this year. It seems that’s not enough for the China-based manufacturer, however. It has no intention of being as loyal to Apple in return. According to industry sources, it will also produce what could be one of the iPad’s biggest rivals: an Amazon Kindle tablet.
It appears Google is learning a lesson from Apple: mobility mean big bucks. The search giant told reporters Thursday Android could become “an accelerator” for the business. There are more than 130 million Android devices now, the company says.
Apple’s App Store is a wonderful thing. When it launched in 2008, it opened up a world now home to 450,000 apps and games available to our iOS devices. There was nothing else like it. Never before had it been so easy for customers to discover and download mobile software, and for developers to distribute and sell it.
Developing for the App Store and the iOS platform isn’t without its flaws, however. As one iOS developer has recently learned, one of the biggest downsides to iOS development is piracy.
The iPod, the goose that laid the golden egg for Apple, is dying, analysts say. As the iPhone and iPad take on many of its features, iPod sales are expected to drop another 7.2 percent during the June quarter just ended.
This is hypnotic. Crowdflow.net tracked the movement of 880 iPhones through Europe in 2011 and then put together this video, showing where they ended up. The results look like stars swirling in a nebula, or bioluminescent plankton mating in the ink black sea.
[via GigaOm]
Whether or not OS X Lion shows up on the Mac App Store late next week, as All Things D believes, or on the 26th, as some Apple Store employees belive, one thing’s for sure: it’s coming before the month is out.
So it’s not totally a surprise that Amazon.com is running low on copies of Snow Leopard, having sold out entirely of retail copies of OS X 10.6 on their UK site and only selling it through third-parties on their US site.
What is surprising, at least to us, is that it’s happening so soon. How are people going to upgrade to Lion if it’s impossible to buy Snow Leopard?
Following its absence during 2010, Apple could be set to launch another round of the developer “Tech Tour World Tour” later this year to coincide with the release of iOS 5 and iCloud.
Yes, that is a Parallels Desktop 6 USB stick jammed into a MacBook Pro’s ethernet port, as seen on the official Apple Store page. I wouldn’t give Apple (or Parallels, who likely supplied the image) too much guff about it, though: I’ve made the same mistake a couple of times myself.
[via OS X Daily]
Though the iPhone is still yet to benefit from Apple’s latest dual-core A5 chip, the company has already begun testing its successor, according to a Reuters report. However, it may not be produced by Samsung like its predecessors.
Usually only a nobody walks in L.A., but the greater Los Angeles will be turned into a wasteland of nobodies when 10-mile stretch of the 405 Freeway closes July 15-17.
The locals are braced for “carmageddon,” the gridlock of all gridlocks as the most traveled freeway in the U.S. shuts down.
Some are predicting that it may also be a test of iPhone apps, mainly those designed to re-route drivers based on traffic conditions.
We apologize if this is getting confusing. At first there were supposed to be updated MacBook Airs coming today with OS X Lion, then it was reported that we’d see new hardware from Apple on July 26th.
Now, it appears that new MacBook Airs with backlit keyboards and more storage could be coming as soon as next week!
Do you remember Apple’s OS X Downloads page? That page used to be a resource for many of the best apps and widgets on the Mac.
We say “used to” because the OS X Downloads page has actually been shut down and replaced with a pretty Mac App Store banner.
Apple has come a long way since the 1970s. While the Mac was seen for years as a niche product that would never appeal to a mass audience, Apple has just been declared the third largest PC vendor in the US.
Apple went from fifth place to third this business quarter with a 10.7% stake in the US PC market.
Lion is just around the corner, and there are already compatible apps showing up in the App Store. Apple asked developers to start submitting apps for Lion a couple of days ago, and Apple has already approved some Lion-compatible apps for the Mac.
The newest speculation is that Lion will drop on July 26th. That’s nearly two weeks for devs to get their apps submitted and ready.
While there’s still hope that OS X Lion will drop today, the chances are slim. Previous speculation was that Apple would announce Lion alongside new Mac hardware today, but that hasn’t seemed to pan out just yet.
So when is it coming? We’ve received a tip that claims a July 26th Lion launch date, seemingly confirming a similar report earlier today… and our tipster received his word straight from an Apple Store Genius’s mouth.
The next-gen Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs will be a lot less skimpy with their storage space and memory, according to supply chain checks. In fact, expect the minimum storage and RAM to double with the next MacBook Airs.
We wouldn’t put a lot of stock in this one yet, but a new internal component has leaked out of Asia, and given certain key differences in item number and color, it’s said to be the dock connector for the upcoming iPad 2 Plus/iPad 3, the rumored Retina Display upgrade for the iPad 2, also rumored to have a release later in this year.
Here’s a really cool new Cydia hack: iUsers, a jailbreak add on that allows you to have multiple user accounts on a single iPad, each with their own separate apps, mailboxes and settings.
On Spotify’s homepage, one of the quotes they prominently use as an advertising blurb was written by my friend and old-Wired colleague, Eliot Van Buskirk, who once famously wrote that Spotify is “like a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world.”
They’re right to use it. It’s a great description. Spotify doesn’t have every song in the world — just 15 million, in fact — but boy does it feel like it. That’s not just because of Spotify’s huge library of licensed songs, though. It’s because Spotify seamlessly integrates into iTunes to supplement itself. It’s a true iTunes in the Cloud.
Songify is storming up the App Store charts. Why? Because it’s a dead-simple instant songifier, that’s why.
All you do is speak into your iPhone, and Songify turns your words into a song in about four seconds flat. You can email your song, share it on Facebook and Twitter, and generally have a laugh. The app is free, and comes with three simple backing tracks – if you want more tracks, you pay for them in bundles for a dollar a time.
iTunes users outside the U.S. will want to consult Apple’s new prices, which Wednesday were changed to be more in align with the American dollar. Some countries came out winners, while some foreign users may end up paying more.
To accompany its upcoming photo sharing service, Google has just launched an official Photovine app for iOS which it dubs “a fun way to learn more about your friends, meet new people, and share your world like never before.”
While many of us dismissed the whole ‘Locationgate’ fiasco as being blown way out of proportion, others saw it as an opportunity to claim back a rebate on their iPhones by suing Apple. One Korean lawyer has become the first person to successfully win a Locationgate lawsuit, but we’re guessing Apple can live with the damages: he’ll receive just $946 in compensation.
Contrary to rumor, OS X Lion did not launch on the Mac App Store last night. I know, I know: trust us, we’re as frustrated by it as you are. You didn’t type your fingers away to pulps of meat and shards of bone trying to get a 7,000 word Lion review done on time!
There’s still hope that Lion could be released today, in which case, the best guess is around 10am PDT. However, a growing number of people like Ars Technica’s John Siracua are saying that Lion’s not coming at all this week.
So when? If you believe Amazon and Best Buy, the tail end of July… along with new white MacBooks an Mac Minis.