Well, crud. I knew the day was coming when my beloved 11-inch MacBook Air would become obsolete, but I hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. It appears those hopes are dashed: Apple will reportedly refresh the MacBook Air line in June, replacing the current Mini DisplayPort with their new 10Gbps bi-directional Thunderbolt I/O port.
I like to imagine that Bulletproof started out as a pitch by Mobigame to develop an official, first-person game based upon the Matrix trilogy.
“Okay, dudes, get this: here you are, and you’re Neo, and there’s like five agents in front of you, shooting at point blank range, and then you stop time, and then you start punching the bullets right out of the air, and OH MY GOD IT’LL BE AWESOME.”
“Pass,” says Warner Bros. But no problem: you just change the background, slap some vaguely Soviet guard hats on the agents, and sell the whole game to Amnesty International, pitching it as a way to raise awareness of human rights violations around the world.
Now that’s business savvy.
When Valve Software released their much anticipated physics-based shooter Portal 2 earlier this week, they did so on pretty much every platform that could handle it, including the Mac, PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, despite its beefy A5 processor, the iPad 2 wasn’t on that list… but if you just can’t get enough Portal 2, you can at least download a new app for an exclusive, multimedia behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Valve’s new classic.
Called The Final Hours of Portal 2, the app is primairly a 15,000 word essay on the making of Valve’s much anticipated new game, documented with videos, lots of behind-the-scene pictures and interviews. It’s written by Geoff Keighley, an excellent video game journalist who wrote “The Final Hours of Half-Life,” “The Final Hours of Half-Life 2” and “Knee Deep In A Dream: The Story of Daikatana”. Collectively, these are some of the best example of long-form video games journalism ever, and I anticipate “The Final Hours of Portal 2” will be good company for them.
[via MacStories]
Although Verizon gained much of the attention over the iPhone 4, AT&T apparently added more subscribers enticed by a previous-generation Apple handset. Verizon gained less than 500,000 new customers during most of the second quarter while AT&T signed-up more than 800,000 new iPhone users, according to a Friday report.
In the two months of the three-month period the iPhone 4 was available throught Verizon, the carrier attracted 2.2 million iPhone devices. AT&T, however, experienced a record 3.6 million iPhone activation during the quarter — a 33 percent increase over the same period in 2010. The lack of any run-away success for Verizon runs counter to previous polls suggesting the carrier could siphon-off 26 percent of AT&T customers.
Why does AT&T need to gobble up T-Mobile? It’s all about dropped calls on the iPhone and the sick amount of data the iPad is slurping up, AT&T argues in their latest filing with the FCC.
This variation on the book safe for iPad is aimed at keeping the device in your possession when it’s out of your hands.
If you’re reaction is: “Hey, I can do that!” Here’s an are some DIY instructions.
The guy who made the DIY version reckons the project will cost you about $10, including the book, plus you’ll need rubber cement, an Exacto knife tape – and “quite a bit” of patience.
If you improve on the project – add magnets or a strap for a more secure hold – let us know.
Via Etsy
Apple’s iPad sales for Q2 were significantly lower than some analysts were expecting, especially given the 7MM+ iPads Cupertino was able to push over Q1.
What the heck happened? Did demand slacken because of the imminent arrival of the iPad 2? Could Apple not produce enough iPad 2s to satisfy demand because of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan?
According to comments made by research firm iSuppli, Apple’s low sales number for the quarter were primarily due to production issues that led to extreme shortages of display and speaker parts.
Apple does a pretty good job at being an environmentally conscious company. It seems like towards the end of every keynote, Steve Jobs expounds on what Apple is doing to lower the carbon foot print of their products. To celebrate Earth Day the guys over at Geekaphone created a really great info graphic to show just how eco-friendly the iPhone is. Packed with neat little facts, like how the iPhone 4 reduced emissions by 18% where as the iPhone 3G increased emissions by 22%, the big graphic is worth a look for anyone who wants to grasp the picture of their cellphones impact on the environment.
So, after all the bad reviews and the tear-down, how are consumers reacting to RIM’s PlayBook tablet as an iPad alternative? The device sold between 45,000 and 50,000 on its first day, two analyst have publicly stated. However other observers (which preferred to remain unnamed) see the figures as too high, especially given its limited availability and exposure.
Jeffries analyst Peter Misek earlier this week said Research in Motion sold 45,000 PlayBooks — 25,000 of which were pre-orders — Tuesday. RBC analyst Mike Abramsky views the PlayBook launch as “stronger than the launch of Motorola’s Xoom Tablet, or the Samsung Galaxy Tab, although it’s too early to judge sustainability.” Ah, that pesky little question of sustainability. That’s where it gets interesting.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaNALBJ39LA&feature=player_embedded
BMW’s Connected Drive program has been all about increasing communication in your car, now you can control your iPod Touch or iPhone and some of its applications using the same Apple interface on the car’s console screen.
Watching the video above where the driver uses Pandora is like a jaunty little requiem for commercial radio. Once your device is in the cradle, you can access your music library or the apps and control the volume using either the radio, the steering wheel or the iDrive Controller.
Other apps you can control from the car include what one reviewer called a “minimalist” integration of Twitter and Facebook. It may not look great, but it sounds like it may come in handy while on the road, since the app can pull your location and destination from the navigation system then post an update telling all and sundry you’ll be there in 15 minutes.
They’ve been talking about it for at least a year, the BMW Apps are available on cars made from March 2011 on and SUVs rolling off factory lines from April 2011.
What’s next? BMW say they are in talks with other app makers, so you’ll be able to do stuff like make restaurant reservations and buy movie tickets from your car.
Via Autoblog
A unique service offering to unlock any GSM iPhone, no jailbreaks required, has suddenly shut down, leaving many customers awaiting refunds. Increased scrutiny from Apple may very well be responsible… and curiously, even the providers of the service had no idea how it worked, or why it’s all stopped.
An Apple executive reportedly will be in New York to obtain agreements with the recording labels yet to sign-on to a cloud-based iTunes deal. Thursday, multiple reports suggested the Cupertino, Calif. company is preparing to launch a service enabling iTunes users to store and listen to songs over the Internet.
Although Amazon launched a cloud-based music locker service in March, Apple reportedly may offer a service with “better user interfaces, sound quality, and other features” with the help of the licensing pacts. Among the features could be the ability for Apple to store a single copy of a song that is then streamed to multiple users.
It’s not everyday you see a case like Silva Limited’s bamboo Macbook Pro case. Hand assembled, hand finished, made from sustainable bamboo — it’s obvious these handsome cases have been crafted with love and a ton of attention to detail.
The program is a win-win for customers, like myself, that are interested in recycling electronics (an effort to save the Earth), upgrading to a new iPod, iPhone, Mac, or iPad, and saving some money at the same time.
To celebrate the Easter weekend, EA mobile has launched its ‘Sweet 99¢ Deals’ sale with up to 86% off some of its most recent and most successful titles – such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12, Fifa 2011, and Dead Space.
Here’s the full list of games included in the sale – all of which are now just 99¢:
iPhone/iPod touch
iPad
In the lighter side of news, Apple today has updated iBooks to version 1.2.2. With it comes the following changes:
iBooks 1.2.2 adds a number of important stability and performance improvements, including:
- Addresses issues playing video included with enhanced books from the iBookstore.
- Resolves a problem where some books open with a different font than expected.
- Makes iBooks more responsive when navigating books with many items in their table of contents.
Fire up iTunes or the App Store app, and get updating!
Samsung Electronics says it has filed lawsuits against Apple claiming patent infringement. The suit comes just one week after Apple sued Samsung, accusing the company of copying iOS products and packaging. Samsung filed its suits in South Korea, where the company is based, as well as in Japan and Germany. Samsung claims Apple infringed at least 5 of its patents.
“Samsung is responding actively to the legal action taken against us in order to protect our intellectual property and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communications business,” said a Samsung spokesperson. Translation: “It’s on, bitches!”
Finally, Apple is dragging one of the many copycat hardware makers into court for copying Apple’s brilliant ideas.
Or…
Apple joins in on the lawsuit frenzy to win in the courts instead of competing on features, price and user friendliness.
What are we to make of Apple’s recent lawsuit against Samsung? Is Apple right? Did Samsung “slavishly copy Apple’s innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design”?
What’s the likely outcome? Why Samsung? Why now?
The legal mumbo jumbo surrounding cases like these make them boring as hell. But the impact of this turn of events could be far reaching, and affect the future of computing and mobility.
What you need to know is that while this lawsuit seems narrow and specific — targeting a handful of Samsung devices for copying the iPad and iPhone — it’s really a warning for industry at large, and about the entire iOS family of products, from wristwatches today to desktops tomorrow and everything in between.
This is not about the iPad vs. the Tab. It’s about Apple’s very unique approach to everything vs. everyone else’s business-as-usual — and it’s about the future of computing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS1iXdqOVC8&feature=player_embedded
With the Flock browser going the way of the dodo, there’s really only one social-media-enhanced browser left: RockMelt. And yesterday, they released an iPhone version of the browser.
RockMelt is pretty handy for those of us who like to post news and blog posts straight to our Facebook and Twitter feeds from the web on our iPhones. It also functions as a basic newsreader, and It’ll sync with the browser’s Mac version so you can access bookmarks and posts that have been tagged with its “View Later” feature. Best of all, it’s free.
News.me is a social news experience from bit.ly unlike any other currently in the App Store. Not only does it provide you with a list of content your friends are sharing like applications such as Flipboard and Zite, but it also allows you to view the content they are reading. It claims to offer a “seamless interface for immersive reading” that uses “science to find the most relevant content in every user’s stream.”
The News.me iPad app just hit the App Store, but made news before its release thanks to its backing from the New York Times, and the publishers and websites that are also on board; such as AOL, Forbes, Gawker, Business Insider, Gigaom, Mashable, Venturebeat and the Associated Press.
We start the day with deals for your iPod touch, your iPhone 4 and your Mac. HandHeldItems.com is offering an 83 percent discount on select iPod touch cases. Next, you can get a frosted iPhone 4 screen protector for just 89 cents. Finally, MacUpdate.com offers a deal on “Decompose for Mac,” software described as an “image extraction tool.”
We’ll also check-out other items of interest to Apple fans. Details on these and many other products can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
Depending upon how much you spent on your MacBook, you’ve probably noticed that when viewing the screen from more extreme angles to the left or the right, the picture looks pretty terrible. Some new LED technology that Apple is perfecting might help that, though, improving color accuracy and allowing wider view angles for an array of future Apple devices, including new MacBooks and iPads.
When the Verizon iPhone was launched, Apple went on record saying that they did not think LTE or 4G was a good fit right now, in that the first-gen chips were still too big and power efficient to make sense.
Will we see an iPhone 4G in September, though? It doesn’t seem likely. Forbes is reporting that the chips required to produce well-designed LTE iPhones simply won’t be around until late in the year at the earliest… and possibly not until 2012.
San Francisco is launching a pay-by-iPhone scheme for parking.
Called SFpark, the pilot program starts in early May. The SFPark app, free to download, helps you find parking and pricing information from your iPhone. Users pay $0.45 for every transaction and the system charges different rates depending on demand in the area with prices ranging from $2.00 to over $4.00 an hour.
Beginning in early May, parking prices will be incrementally raised or lowered in SFpark pilot areas based on demand. Rates change no more than once a month and only in small increments.
The pilot includes 6,000 of San Francisco’s 25,000 metered spaces and 12,250 spaces in 15 of 20 city- owned parking garages. It will cover eight neighborhoods including Civic Center, Hayes Valley, the Financial District, SoMa, the Mission, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Fillmore and the Marina.
Are you willing to pay extra for the ease of paying by iPhone?
Via ABC
In a post this morning, Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber says that the tracking data stored by your iPhone and 3G iPad is a bug that will likely soon be fixed.
Citing a “little birdie” (friend inside Apple), Gruber says the consolidated.db file is a supposed to be temporary cache of location data (As we reported yesterday).However, because of a bug — or more likely, a programming mistake — the file isn’t purged of historical data.
I don’t have a definitive answer, but my little-birdie-informed understanding is that consolidated.db acts as a cache for location data, and that historical data should be getting culled but isn’t, either due to a bug or, more likely, an oversight. I.e. someone wrote the code to cache location data but never wrote code to cull non-recent entries from the cache, so that a database that’s meant to serve as a cache of your recent location data is instead a persistent log of your location history.
Gruber bets the oversight will be fixed in the next iOS update. Apple still hasn’t officially commented on the issue, which is a big story in the mainstream press today.
