Cult of Mac

If you’re the kind of person who believes that “luxury Range Rover” should be an oxymoron, you’re probably not going to like the latest vehicle unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show.

Among the luxe touches that come standard with the Range Rover Autobiography Ultimate Edition are two iPads for the rear passenger seats.

This clearly isn’t designed for toting around the kiddies, what with the “superyacht-inspired teak loadspace floor,” “semi-aniline leather seating” and a rear console which features a machined aluminium laptop table and drinks chiller.

All of these tony touches, however, “suggest its suitability as a chauffeur vehicle.” Which is always good to know.

Range Rover did not yet release the sticker price for the model, which comes with a choice of LR-TDV8 or  LR-V8 Supercharged engines.

Via Classic Driver

Readability is an excellent bit of Javascript that strips online content down to its barest and most readable elements, and was borrowed wholesale last year by Apple for the new Safari Reader option in Safari 5.

Late last month, it became even more excellent by relaunching itself as a reading platform in its own right. Launching aside a native iOS app powered by Marco Arment’s excellent Instapaper, Readability is now more than a snip of Javascript code but instead a monthly subscription service that pays 70% of its collected fees directly to the writers and publishers being read.

We reached out to Arc90’s Richard Ziade for a quick chat about what Readability’s new change in scope would mean not just for existing users, but for publishers of web content looking to get paid.

Potholes? Now There’s an App for That.

Snow and ice take a heavy toll on roads every year, and this winter has been brutal here in New England. Large potholes have already appeared all over the Boston area, with roads still clogged with snow. Fortunately some high-tech wizards here in my hometown are working on a solution. The Boston Globe reports on an effort to help solve this problem using iPhones and other mobile devices:

A new app, called Street Bump, would automatically report potholes to the city by sensing when a car has hit a bump. The app, in development, would be sensitive enough to identify cracks and divots, alerting the city to pavement problems before they become car-crunching craters.

Police are hoping shoppers will help identify a pair of women who snatched an iPad from a cart in a parking lot,  put it in their car for safekeeping and returned to the store.

The scene of the crime was a Walmart parking lot in Blythewood, North Carolina. The victim was unloading her purchases into her car, with the iPad perched in the front basket, at 8:30 pm. She turned around and the magical device had disappeared.

Police believe a pair of women snagged it, put it in their own car, then went into the store. Video surveillance shows two heavy-set women dressed in black who don’t look to be in any hurry walking through the entrance with a cart.

It’s another instance that shows how the lightweight and portability of the iPad can sometimes work against owners who want to hold on to them. And a good reminder to install the Find My iPhone app.

Via WLTX

The keyboard you see here is something called an Alphasmart Dana – a somewhat niche tech product, but one much loved by a small band of users (myself included). Some professional writers love it for its weeks-long battery life, instant-on, auto-save, and durable shell.

From the bowels of the web where outtakes are never forgotten, a short video surfaced today showing a 23 year-old Steve Jobs making possibly his first appearance on TV. Far from the stage persona we know today, this candid clip shows a young Jobs wrestling with his earpiece, becoming visibly amazed that he could be seen across the country in realtime, and suffering from nausea due to nervousness!

Embarrassing, but in a charming way. Like those old home movies of you as a kid!

[via NYTimes]

Rounding out a triumvirate of new webOS devices, HP just took the wraps off of the third-generation Pre, or Pre³, their new flagship webOS smartphone. Unfortunately, while the HP Veer was a cute pebble of a phone filling a unique niche, and the HP TouchPad is an able iPad competitor that might even hold its own against the iPad 2, the Pre³ just seems generic.

Forget the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab. At their webOS event today, HP just unveiled the HP TouchPad, and judging by first initial blush, it might be the first tablet that can really challenge the iPad in its own game.

Boasting a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a 9.7-inch 2024 x 768 display (just like the iPad), the HP TouchPad comes with either 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage, as well as Flash Player 10.1 support and the newest iteration of HP’s webOS operating system.

Thanks to a front-facing camera, the TouchPad supports FaceTime-style video calling, and to improve sound quality, HP has carried their Beats Audio technology over from their line of notebooks to the TouchPad. And because of the new functionality found in webOS 3.0 as well as HP’s revised Touchstone technology, the TouchPad has its own versions of AirPrint and AirPlay. Like with the Veer and Pre 3, this TouchStone technology will allow you to share information between webOS devices by tapping them together, as well as allow you to charge your TouchPad wirelessly.

To be honest, this looks like a heck of a response to the iPad, and maybe the first tablet that tries to compete with Apple on its own terms. The only problem is that when it’s released this summer for an unreleased price, the TouchPad won’t be taking on the iPad… it’ll be taking on the iPad 2. That puts HP at a huge disadvantage, because not only will the iPad 2 obviate most of the TouchPad’s strengths (video chat and a dual-core processor, most of all) but will also give users access to a much more robust app ecosystem than that afforded by webOS.

When HP purchased Palm last year, it made no secret of the fact that it was doing so to get a hold of Palm’s webOS operating system in order to better compete with Apple in the tablet and smartphone space.

Now, at an official event today, HP is starting to finally reveal what they’ve accomplished with webOS in the last year. First up? The HP Veer, a tiny pebble of a phone meant to bridge the gap between feature phones and smartphones.

We start out with several iPad cases, including a leather item from UrbnFlip, as well as a hard case from Philips. We also check out a number of refurbished iPod touch MP3 players, including an 8GB model for $149.

Along the way, we’ll also take a look at a number of other gadgets and software titles for your Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod. As always, details on these and much more can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

An obstacle blocking some publishers adopting the iPad may be just a minor issue, if a compromise offered by Apple is accepted. The Cupertino, Calif. company is now telling publishers they can send subscribers to a newspaper or magazine web site, so long as customers are given the option to sign-up through iTunes.

“Apple is basically saying, ‘Let the subscriber decide,’ knowing full well they will choose iTunes. After all, it’s simply easier for consumers to subscribe to digital publications from one place,” according to TechCrunch, citing unnamed sources.

Thanks to the massive headache of Antennagate, Consumer Reports famously felt that it could not recommend the iPhone 4 to its readers… an approbation that, as we all know, tanked Apple stock, prompted Cupertino to dump unsold iPhones by the millions into an Arizona landfill and ultimately led to Apple’s enthusiastic embrace of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system.

I kid. As you know, none of that happened, and the iPhone 4 is the best selling iPhone yet. But I’m sure you’re wondering what Consumer Reports thinks of the Verizon iPhone 4, right?

Well, as it turns out, they like it, with Consumer Reports’ Mike Gikas claiming that “key technical differences” separates the Verizon iPhone from the AT&T iPhone.

Color me pretty shocked with this pronouncement, considering the fact that the Verizon iPhone suffers from many of the same attenuation issues as the AT&T iPhone. Charitably, the issue may simply be that Consumer Reports is willing to recommend the Verizon iPhone despite much of the same hardware design thanks to the strength of the Verizon network… but could it also be that, despite their principled stand on the matter earlier, after eight months Consumer Reports has decided that the so-called “death grip” isn’t really a big deal after all the page views have stopped flowing in?

TUAW has just posted a rather interesting theory about what will happen to the original iPad once the iPad 2 is released in the next few months: they suggest that the iPad will be handled more like the iPhone than the Mac, and the previous generation iPad will still be sold for another year as the “budget” model, similar to the way the iPhone 3GS is still sold by AT&T as the sub-$100 iPhone.

Under this theory, the iPad range might start at a $399 price point for the original iPad with WiFi. It’s an intriguing thought, but I tend to doubt it, for one reason: Apple selling the previous gen iPhone as a budget model has more to do with the carriers than Apple itself.

Yet another Wall Street analyst has weighed in with a prediction on sales of Verizon’s iPhone, which becomes available to everyone Thursday. Apple and Verizon will top the 1 million mark during the first week, RBC Capital Markets’ Mike Abramsky told investors Wednesday.

Despite the iPhone 4 being available for 8 months with AT&T, the Verizon launch could threaten Apple’s estimated 1 million to 1.5 million unit initial inventory, the analyst warned. Between 3 million and 4 million iPhone 4 handsets will be sold by Verizon and its partners during the first quarter after the units become available, Abramsky adds.

What better way to bide your time waiting for that institutionally late Amtrak than loitering in an Apple Store? Such seems to be the thinking in Cupertino, as sources now indicate that Apple wants to open a brand new Apple Store right in the heard of New York City’s Grand Cental Terminal.

Microsoft’s long belated response to the iPhone finally arrived in October with the launch of Windows Phone 7, but despite being an admittedly great modern day mobile operating system, it’s not doing so great in retail, so far only selling two million licenses to OEMs, with even less actual phones getting into end user’s hands.

Microsoft thinks it needs to do better to retake the smartphone market from the likes of Google and Apple, and now they’re shuffling around the upper management in the hopes that an internal restructuring will help them take Cupertino on.

[polldaddy poll=”4525402″]

Congressman Markey just wrote a letter to the FTC, asking them to investigate apps where “Smurfs and snowflakes and zoos (act) as online ATMs pulling money from the pockets of unsuspecting parents.”

So: whose responsibility is it?

Apple, who approves the games in the store and takes a 30% cut from the sales — at least those sales where parents don’t complain and get a refund?

Parents, who aren’t vigilant enough about disabling in-app purchases — and checking every time the tot gets their hands on an iDevice to play to make sure that it is, in fact, disabled?

Game devs who created a mechanism for that has been described as “credit card bait?”

Let us know why you think Apple should or should not allow these apps in the comments.

See this iPad? It’s a hit-and-park casualty, gunned down in its prime by the treaded wheels (both front and back) of a Chrysler PT Cruiser, a car so heavy that even the standard Apple case was not enough to prevent it from being smashed nearly to smithereens.

But god bless Gorilla Glass and Apple’s fine craftsmanship, because unbelievably, this iPad still works, from multitouch down right to the marrow of its accelerometers. What a champ.

Of course, how “functional” this is depends a lot on how you feel about dragging your finger across a planar surface comprised of thousands of tightly packed, razor sharp glass shards. Does multitouch still work when you’ve scraped your pointing digit down to just a protruding bit of skeleton?

Free-App Hero is a clever tracker for good quality free games on the iOS App Store. Note the use of the words “good quality” there; Free-App Hero has an editorial team that’s fussy, and cares about the recommendations it makes.

So they won’t recommend rubbish games, or ad-supported games, or games that start good but get worse, or games that claim to be free but turn out to be useless without an in-app purchase.

All they’re interested in is finding the good free stuff, and passing it on to you.

Free-App Hero isn’t free, but neither is it expensive. And if you really don’t want to pay for it, the Cheapskate Edition is just as effective.

As a direct result of downloading Free-App Hero, I’m now completely obsessed with King of Tennis, which is probably the most bonkers game I’ve ever seen. Great fun, though. And that’s what Free-App Hero is all about; delivering fun.

A US congressman wrote to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requesting more information about possible consumer protection issues related to “in-app” purchases — such as kiddy game “Smurf’s Village” we’ve been talking about for months.

Spurred on by a Washington Post article (what, he doesn’t religiously read Cult of Mac?) Congressman Edward J. Markey, a senior member and former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee, fired off a few thoughts on the games that target young children.

An excerpt from Markey’s letter:

“I am disturbed by news that in-app purchases may be taking advantage of children’s lack of understanding when it comes to money and what it means to ‘buy’ an imaginary game piece on the Web.  Companies shouldn’t be able to use Smurfs and snowflakes and zoos as online ATMs pulling money from the pockets of unsuspecting parents.  The use of mobile apps will continue to escalate, which is why it is critical that more is done now to examine these practices. I will continue to closely monitor this issue and look forward to the FTC’s response.”

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Is embattled cell phone pioneer Nokia preparing to join the wave of Android followers? Some see such a move a distinct possibility following a candid memo by Nokia CEO Stephan Elop to employees. In the internal message, Elop admits Apple changed the smartphone landscape and the Finnish mobile phone maker must either join or create smartphone eco-system.

“Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we wither build, catalyze or join an ecosystem,” Elop wrote.

Back in December, Adobe pushed out the first beta of version 10.2 of their notorious Flash Player for Mac… a plugin that is so notoriously demanding on battery life that merely installing it can drain the maximum capacity of a laptop battery by over an hour. now it’s available in a final version.

The big advance in Flash Player 10.2 is functionality called Stage Video that offloads almost all of the rendering of high-performance videos to the GPU, using “just over 0 percent CPU usage.” Stage Video should have a noticeable effect on battery life and snappiness, and if you can’t get along with Flash on your Mac notebook, Stage Video support alone makes this an easy upgrade to recommend.

Well, it will make it one, eventually. Right now, not all content providers have enabled Stage Video APIs in their system, and until they do, Flash Player needs to rely on the CPU to process their video. Also, considering that most of the battery drain attributed to Flash on the likes of a MacBook Air come from advertising and site elements as opposed to a playing YouTube video, it’s unlikely that Stage Video will really make a difference in the short term for many users.

Either way, though, Flash Player 10.2 should bring a significant performance increase to the machines of many users, with Adobe citing their two-year old test Mac Mini being able to run full 1080p content with a CPU load of under 8 percent. That’s pretty good performance for one of software’s most notoriously resource hogs.

The Wall Street Journal says the iPad 2 is now in production, according to “people familiar with the matter.”

According to the Journal, the iPad 2 will be:

• Thinner
• Lighter
• Faster processor
• More memory
• Better graphics processor
• Front-facing camera
• No Retina display: screen will be same resolution as original iPad
• Dual-mode wireless: will be available through both Verizon and AT&T
• No Sprint or T-Mobile

WSJ: Apple’s New iPad In Production

Despite having a brand new antenna, the Verizon iPhone 4 also has antenna issues when held in a “Death Hug,” iLounge has discovered.

The “Death Hug” is when the phone is cupped by both hands and held in landscape orientation — not exactly normal. Still, iLounge found it slows both cellular and WiFi reception when loading web pages. But as Steve Jobs pointed out in response to the original Antennagate controversy, holding any smartphone in your hands degrades the signal to some extent.

This doesn’t look like Antennagate redux. We can’t see the VZW Death Hug turning into another PR headache for Apple.

So how are things going over on the Mac App Store? What are developers noticing when their apps first go on sale there?

Marzban Cooper, one of the team behind zen word processor OmmWriter, spoke to Cult of Mac today with some interesting observations about the transition to the Store, and its effect on sales.

His only wish? That there was a similar store for Windows, so he could do the same with the forthcoming Windows version of the application.