The winner of the Apple’s 10 billionth App download sweepstakes nearly made a horrible mistake: she hung up the phone when Apple called to say she’d won.
“I thought it was a prank call,” says Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK. “I said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m not interested’ and I hung up.”
This week’s must-have iOS games features a frantic side-scrolling platform game that’s unlike anything else we’ve seen. CrazyControl 2 starts with two characters running side-by-side, and you must control them both at the same time to ensure neither character stops running. However, just as you get used to controlling two characters, another is introduced until you finally have control of 6 characters all at once. This intense running game is action-packed, energetic, and a great load of fun.
Treasure Seekers 2: The Enchanted Canvases is the second instalment of the popular hidden object game Treasure Seekers, and this follow-up offers a captivating storyline about a young girl who must save her brother from a mysterious Romanian castle, where he has been imprisoned by an evil being. If you’re a fan of hidden object games, Treasure Seekers 2 is sure to please.
Warp back in time and join our forefathers in an addictive game of Cave Bowling in this physics-based pick-up-and-play game. Take aim of your bowling ball to send it flying through the rocky landscapes which are littered with crazy obstacles and prehistoric animals. See if you can take out all of the pins and collect all of the bones without knocking down your cheerful audience.
Find out more about the games above and check out this week’s other must-have game, Tiki Towers 2, after the break!
Apple has just announced the winner of the App Store’s 10 billionth download sweepstakes.
The 10 billionth app was downloaded by Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK.
Gail downloaded the free Paper Glider app, netting her a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card.
Congrats Gail!
BTW: Looks like reader @Jack predicted the correct time frame in an earlier post trying to predict when the 10 billionth app would be downloaded.
NOTE: This is a guest post by ex-PC user Mike Wilson. It was originally published at Gears of Biz.
I have a MacBook at home and a Mac Mini at work. I absolutely love my Macs. I can’t live with out them. However, there are still things I hate about my Macs that I wished weren’t a part of my life. So don’t hate me for taking a couple shots at my machines… It’s all in good fun.
Below are those Top 5 things I hate about the Mac.
Apple’s countdown to the App Store’s 10 billionth download is now over, and the lucky downloader of that 10 billionth app will soon be receiving a $10,000 iTunes gift card.
It’s taken just over two and a half years for the App Store to reach this landmark since its launch in 2008, which is quite remarkable considering it took almost seven years for the iTunes Store to reach the same milestone for music downloads. App downloads have been growing exponentially in the last year. In just January 2010, Apple had sold 3 billion apps. There are more than 300,000 apps available in the App Store; and Apple has sold 160 million iOS devices.
Apple has promised that the lucky winner of that whopping iTunes gift card will soon be announced, and if you think it could be you, keep your eye on the promotional page of Apple’s website.
Before I sing the praises of Alfred, allow me a moment to pay homage to its ancestors: LaunchBar and Quicksilver.
Did you promise yourself that 2011 would be the year that you would find yourself a job? Are you having trouble sticking to your new year’s resolution? Well maybe there’s an iOS app that will make things a little easier for you. Here’s our list of the best iOS apps that may help you succeed on your mission to kickstart your career.
So that you don’t just forget about your resolution by the end of January, we’ve compiled a great list of apps that will help you stick to your targets and achieve your goals. We’ve divided them up in to the most popular resolutions, and in this post we’ll look at the best iOS apps to help you get a job. We’ve chosen apps that will help you find vacancies in your home town, that will help you create a great resume, and apps that will help you prepare for those dreaded interviews.
Check them out after the break and get help to get work!
This is pretty mystifying. 9to5Mac has done some more digging around in the latest iOS 4.3 SDK and found some references to the type of camera sensor the iPad 2 will have. Surprisingly, though, it’s not the 5MP sensor found in the iPhone 4, but instead a much lower resolution camera, most similar to the one in the iPod Touch.
Found in the AVCaptureSession.plist file within the K94 directory is mention of a “Back Facing 1MP Photo” string. K94 is rumored to be the iPad 2’s internal codename.
It’s curious that Apple would chose to go with so few megapixels for the iPad 2. In the latest iPod Touch’s case, the decision to go with a smaller megapixel camera had everything to do with the thinness of the device: the iPod Touch is simply two svelte to fit the iPhone 4’s camera modules into, but with a 0.7MP camera module, they just fit. The iPad 2 is a far thicker device than the iPod Touch, though.
Is Apple just trying to save some money here? Do they not think people will use the iPad 2’s rear camera very much because of the unwieldiness of the tablet form factor? Or, like the iPod Touch, is this an issue of physical footprint?
Images of cheap Chinese iPhone knock-offs leaking out of Asia are one of the most fun things to write about as an Apple blogger. Who is actually stupid enough to buy an iPhome 5G from Orange when what they really want is an iPhone from Apple? Who are these laughably crappy clones aimed at?
According to Nokia, the answer to that question is twenty percent of the global phone buying population.
Referred to as KIRFs, these fake phones are a huge problem for traditional handset makers. In fact, at least one out of every five cellphones sold around the world — primarily in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe — is an illegal or unlicensed clone of a more popular prestige phone… and the actual number may be quite a bit higher.
So next time you see a funny post about the latest iFauxn to come out of Shenzhen, remember: that ridiculous little knock-off and its ilk is probably in just as many pockets around the world as the real iPhone itself.
As it turns out, turning your iPhone 4 transparent is as easy as grabbing yourself a pentalobe Torx screwdriver, opening up your iPhone 4’s chassis and applying paint thinner to the inside of the Gorilla Glass to strip off the black undercoat.
What a great looking mod! Too bad it’s going to wreak havok with your iPhone’s photographs. As you might remember, the white iPhone 4 was delayed because the white inner coating underneath the Gorilla Glass caused light to leak onto the camera sensor, washing out your snapshots… and that all happened with a layer of paint. Imagine how unusable your iPhone 4’s camera will be if the case is totally transparent.
We wrap up another week of Apple deals and bargains by highlighting iPhone applications – both discounted and free. Also on tap is a look at a deal on Apple’s 27-inch LED Cinema Display bundled with the Apple TV.
Along the way, we also check out 10 iMacs from the Apple Store, starting at $929 for a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo machine with a 22-inch screen. As usual, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
Instagram has become an iPhone photography phenomenon (although not everyone likes it), but like any online community with that many participants, it can be hard to find the really good stuff.
So English developer Elliott Kember has put together Instagre.at, a site that slurps up popular photos from Instagram HQ and spits them out in a very desktop browser friendly way that lets you navigate with your arrow keys.
You can flit left and right through the popular images, but try hitting the down arrow too: it lets you drill into further lists of images using a particular Instagram filter, or by a particular user. Use the up arrow, or the Escape key, to go back to the popular list. Neat stuff.
Gossip rag Valleywag claims Tim Cook is gay. The evidence:
1. He appears to be single, a “lifelong bachelor.”
2. It’s the subject of gossip inside Apple.
2. Two “well-placed sources” say so.
If Cook steps into the CEO role, Apple’s other executives will encourage him to come out, Valleywag says. This would be a good thing for Silicon Valley and for gay rights.
Being gay is certainly no problem here in the San Francisco Bay Area. No one bats an eyelid. But Apple’s other execs are concerned about public perception, Valleywag says. Could it spell trouble for the Apple brand?
Apple’s longtime partner in China may get an iPad 3G, according to a Friday report. Apple in late December 2010 received government certification for a device identified only as “model A1337.” Although the parties refused to comment on the report, the news may point to the iPad.
“Specifications are consistent with the tablet device and because all existing commercial versions of the iPhone — Apple’s only other device that uses cellular networks — are already being sold in China,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
In preparation for the Verizon iPhone, Apple has quietly altered their existing iPhone 4 Bumper Case design to fit both GSM and CDMA versions alike.
US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot through the head twelve days ago during a Tucson, Arizona rampage that left six dead and thirteen wounded, is now able to stand with assistance… and is using an iPad.
A hacked together media center originally meant to run on the first Microsoft Xbox, XBMC runs pretty much on every platform under the sun these days, including the original Mac OS X-based, Intel x86 AppleTV… so it was probably only a matter of time that it was ported to the second-gen, A4 based model. That time is now!
Steve Jobs has very clearly spelled out his feelings about multitouch on a desktop or laptop environment. Multitouch, in Apple’s view, is meant to be horizontal, not vertical, which is why you will never see a touchscreen iMac or MacBook. The Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad are Apple’s answer to the problem posed by desktop multitouch.
Makes sense to me. That said, the problem with even the Magic Trackpad is that it’s not real multitouch, in the sense that you are not directly interacting with a display with your fingers. Instead, you’re phoning what your fingers are doing to a connected display, the same as any mouse.
That’s clearly not as elegant a solution as Apple would like, so it’s no surprise to me that a new patent application spells out the possibility of a Magic Mouse with either an “OLED or specialized display surface made of collimated optical glass that contains a unique magnifying capability.”
Some insight is emerging as to what Apple product (hardware, software, or media) is earning the most bucks. Turns out, at the core of success for the Cupertino, Calif. company might be software. Earlier this week, Apple announced its iOS-powered triumvirate — iPhone, iPad and iPod touch — comprised 65 percent of the $17.3 billion in the last-quarter revenue.
Additionally, sale of Mac OSX products accounted for 20 percent of all sales. Combine those two with sales of the Mac OSX software and the various App Store products and 90 percent of Apple revenue is coming from software, according to analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTBV11Dk5yo
Small, sleek and fast: this video shows what a great cash register an iPad can make for a high-traffic small business. Here it is getting the java going for the crowds at Joe in Grand Central Terminal in New York.
ShopKeep.com is behind the point-of-sale app designed for small businesses that can also print out receipts and even makes a satisfying ka-ching when the sale rings up. The iPad register also transmits sales to its web-based BackOffice so that managers using ShopKeep’s BackOffice can track sales in real time and can manage inventory, run reports and export the data.
We’ve been seeing a lot of iPads in small businesses like restaurants, but this may be the first cash register to face a similar commuter onslaught.
The folks at ShopKeep tell us that they’re also ringing up tabs in New York with iPad cash registers at Steve’s Ice Cream on 42nd Street and 5th ave. and at Joe in the Northwest Corner of the Columbia University building.
Sure, iPad tills aren’t quite taking over Manhattan, but soon they may be a common sight in small businesses.
Master storyteller Mike Daisey takes to the stage in a one-man show about Apple founder Steve Jobs debuting in Berkeley.
Titled “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” the monologue will likely have a new resonance since Jobs announced his medical leave from the Cupertino company January 17.
“It is almost impossible to imagine Apple without him, and there’s a palpable sense of loss and change as the tech industry struggles to know what this will mean for its future,” Daisey wrote on his blog after the announcement.
In addition to being “obsessed” with Apple, Daisey is his known for talking intelligently about tech on stage, from his monologue on Nikola Tesla called “Monopoly!” to recounting his own stint in the customer service trenches at Amazon.com in “21 Dog Years.”
The show launches Sunday, January 23 and runs through February 27 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
We’ll be talking with Daisey and attending the show, so look for that interview and a review in the next few days.
From BBC One and The One Ronnie Show comes this delightful spoof poking fun at the challenges of all those fruit themed devices in our lives these days. A lighthearted dose in true Python’esque fashion – lest we take our tech too seriously!
It’s not bad. Don’t miss the YouTube comments. Here’s a typical sample:
I can’t wait!!!!!! Finally!!!! iPhone on Verizon!!!!!
I get to dump my crapass Android piece of poop for a real smartphone!
yay
The senseless attack on a Tucson, Ariz. political rally for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords two weeks ago has had many secondary effects: a million accusations from both sides of the political aisle accusing the other side of bearing some culpability or seeking some advantage; calls for some measure of weapons control from both the right and left (including by Dick Cheney); and, most signifcantly, eloquent and sincere memorials from across the country.
And, though this is a small thing in the larger scheme of things, I find downright moving the fact that part of Rep. Giffords’s remarkable recovery has been flipping through family photos on an iPad with her husband.That’s a heart-rending scene if I’ve ever heard of one.
It might be sappy to say, but I genuinely feel it’s an endorsement of the view of technology that Apple has been championing from the start. Why should computing be made as simple and intuitive as humanly possible? To let the maximum number of people possible use them.
And that means a public official and wife brutally cut down in broad daylight can touch a magic window and see her family. Technology can’t aspire to higher aims. Our best wishes to Rep. Giffords and the other survivors of the Tucson attack for their continued speedy recoveries.
USA Today: Gabrielle Giffords stands with help for first time
Your vintage Macintosh Plus might not get a lot of playtime anymore now that you’ve got an iMac and a new MacBook Air, but there’s no reason it can’t still be a valuable part of your home Mac office… as long as you’re willing to do a little bit of hacking.
Over at Macenstein, hacker Dean Gray talks about how he took his old 1986 Macintosh Plus 1MB and turned it into a working Time Machine server… about as pitch perfect a use for an old Mac as I can think of.
According to Dean, the hack was pretty easy: he just ripped out the innards and filled it with six different hard drives equaling 2.3TB of space total. An Intel Atom motherboard ties those drives together, and since he couldn’t find a display that fit, Dean decided to install a 10.4-inch digital picture frame instead.
Too bad: if Dean had found a display of the right size, he could have had a vintage Macintosh Plus emulator running full-screen all the time, while the Time Machine server quietly backed up his data in the background. Maybe this would work, Dean?
