If you’re as addicted to Chair and Epic’s Infinity Blade, as I am, today’s a banner day: an update to the elegiac swordfight action game has just dropped, and it adds a slew of new content.
Although Adobe itself is hardly on the ropes, having just scored their first billion dollar year in revenue, Apple continues to pummel Flash into the ground, like a berserker rabbit punching the occipital lobe of a downed enemy.
The latest blow? Apple has just launched iAd Producer, a new tool for online advertisers that allows them to create interactive iAd content in an easy, streamlined manner that would have previously required Adobe’s Flash developer tools.
A couple weeks ago, one of my friends brought me a new MacBook Air from the States, and as he delivered it to me, he — a die-hard Windows user — eloquently endorsed Apple’s sexy new, razor thin ultraportable by noting that as far as was concerned, “using this laptop is what living in the future feels like” and that “I’ll definitely buy one, because this computer will get you laid.”
He’s not an exception: I’ve turned more Windows-loving heads with the new MacBook Air than any other laptop I’ve ever owned. It looks like makers of Windows PCs have noticed the same thing, because Acer, Asus and Lenovo are all set to ape the MacBook Air’s incredible design.
There’s already a few hacks out there to allow you to extend the admittedly rather limited AirPlay functionality of iOS 4.2 to run on non-iOS devices: last week, for example, TUAW’s Erica Sadun released AirPlayer, an app that tricks AirPlayer into think your Mac’s an AppleTV.
Now, though, plucky and ingenious hackers are figuring out how to do the same thing on non-Apple hardware, and the first fruit of those labors has now been released for Linux.
An Apple press release has observers scratching their head. The usually tight-lipped Cupertino, Calif. company projected it will sell more than 1 million Apple TV units by the end of the week. Normally, the company run by Steve Jobs only speaks about milestones it has already passed. However, the announcement could be more a way to stick a finger in Google’s eye than pre-tooting any corporate horns.
The backstory: Monday, Roku said it will sell its millionth TV set-top box in the next two weeks. Also, the curious announcement likely has a tie-in with Google’s TV.
Google TV reportedly is having trouble, warning partners of a possible delay in supplying the software for televisions. In its announcement, Apple pointedly noted it is selling 400,000 television episodes and 150,000 movies every day.
Behold! An iPhone fit for a Brobdingnagian! This is the world’s biggest iPhone, located in the heart of London’s famous St. Pancras International Train Station. But while it is impressively enormous, a Bunyan-sized handset for the on-the-go colossus, it’s something of a cheat: it’s made up of 56 interconnected iPads.
Ever since the Wikileaks dumped hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables up on their site for everyone to see, traditional companies have been trying to disassociate themselves from the whistle-blowing wiki. In rapid order, Wikileaks lost the support of its host, Amazon, their DNS provider, PayPal, and MasterCard.
Now Apple’s App Store Review Team has . But is it censorship?
Although the second generation AppleTV is certainly sexy, it’s not quite as “magical” a device as we’ve come to expect from the wizards at Cupertino. Not only are the media offerings a bit limited compared to the competition, but the new AppleTV is prone to some technical problems… most notably reports of bog slow downloads.
It looks like a potential cause for those tortoising downloads on the Apple TV has been identified, though, and it’s not Apple’s fault: it’s Google’s.
An increasing number of families love their iPad so much, they buy a second Apple tablet, rather than share. That’s the conclusion of a survey finding 17 percent of iPad owners have more than one of the popular Apple tablets in their home.
“The main reason for owning more than one tablet in the household is due to other family members using the tablet,” according to YouGov. While more than a third (37 percent) of tablet owners responding to the survey say their partner uses an iPad, 14 percent say they purchased another iPad because their kids are using one.
Trying to thumb type a search query into your iPhone on the run sucks, and it’s sow to boot. Google knows it, which is why they have the Google Search app, allowing you to just dictate your search query when typing is otherwise inconvenient.
But it looks like Apple might have noticed it too. New job postings indicate Apple is looking to improve the native voice recognition capabilities of iOS.
After all the eggnog is consumed and the gifts unwrapped, your new and old Macs may need a bit of holiday cheer themselves. Whether you’re trying to setup a new system or infuse energy into an old favorite, a few MacRx columns on such matters resonated with our readers this year.
Read on for refreshers about Fixing Startup Problems, Speeding up Slow Macs, Troubleshooting WiFi Issues, Making Hard Drive Clones, and Managing Your Safari Bookmarks. Some things to do over the holiday break!
We start the week before Christmas with a number of bargains suitable for under the tree. First up is several unibody MacBook Pro laptops, starting at $1,019 for a 2.4GHz unit with a 13.3-inch screen. Next, a new crop of price cuts on iPhone apps from the App Store, including the adventure game “Where’s Waldo?” We wrap up our spotlight deals with a bargain on a 8GB iPod touch for just $195.
Along the way, we’ll also take a look at luxury cases for your iPad, an 83 percent-off offer on iPod touch cases, and deals on iPod classics, as well as iTunes gift cards. As usual, details on all of these items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
One of the reasons why modern Mac laptops are able to attain such great graphics performance while maintaining excellent battery life is because Apple switched over to NVIDIA chipsets that marry their own superior mobile GPUs with Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors.
Unfortunately, Apple’s reliance on NVIDIA chipsets is also the reason why Mac laptops didn’t jump to the new Core i series of Intel CPUs last year, as Intel has been fighting it out with NVIDIA in court, trying to push the graphics maker out of the Intel-compatible chipset business.
Looks like they were successful. NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says that his company will be permanently exiting the chipset business to focus on SoCs (or systems on a chip).
Proving that home electronics are driving that gift-laden 2010 sleigh, the iPad is credited with a sales spike this holiday season.
Comscore reports that computer hardware is the top growing category for the 2010 holiday season to date with a 25-percent increase over last year. Shoppers snapping up handheld devices (such as Apple iPads and e-readers) and laptop computers account for much of the growth.
The one-size-fits-all ease of electronic gifts were also behind the record numbers for e-spending: $27.46 billion was spent online, a 12-percent increase over the same days last year. Free Shipping Day also proved appealing, merchants throwing that in increased sales by 61-percent over the same day last year.
The other day, as I was stuffing my new 11.6-inch MacBook Air in my tote, I once again felt that bubble of warm gratitude that after twenty odd years of waiting, someone had finally come along and given me the perfect writer’s laptop that I’ve always wanted: the perfect amalgam of extreme portability married to great battery life and a sturdy, pleasant-to-use keyboard.
I’d had such pleasant reveries before, but this time, it was punctuated with a bit of sadness, as I remembered the many journals I’d carried around over the years — a rather absurd addiction of mine, given that I rarely wrote anything of worth in them — and realized that the new MacBook Air was effectively more convenient to carry around than even the composition notebooks I used to lug with me when I wanted to travel light but still be able to do some quick writing if the inspiration struck.
It’s weird that I’m sad that the MacBook Air obviated a kind of notebook that I never really used anyway, but I liked having all sorts of notebooks around, and now there’s no point in buying any new ones. I guess I’ll have to content myself in the future with the likes of this composition notebook skin for MacBook Air, which takes its attention to detail right down to the simulation of the note page’s fuzzy, blue lined rule.
If you can’t get anyone to watch your ho-hum videos, a new iPhone app can pixelate or bleep that turkey carving moment to make it look like something out of “Sh*t My Dad Says.”
It’s the latest from Darren Murtha and partner Chris Lott, who created the Shape Builder app to keep his four-year-old amused. Murtha tells us he was inspired to make this $1.99 app by a Sesame Street video that was unnecessarily censored.
“Even before the iPhone had video editing capabilities, I wanted to develop the app. After Apple released API to help code video editing, then it became a reality.”
The basic idea: even if your video recordings are strictly PG-13, you can still have some good fun (preferably at someone else’s expense) with the app.
The old saying about a rising tide lifts all boats seems pertinent even to smartphones. A dramatic rise in demand for smartphones has allowed Android to enter the market yet hasn’t caused Apple to cut its price for the iPhone, writes one analyst Monday.
With demand for smartphones growing at 90 percent per year, the question isn’t how Android will hurt Apple. “The more smartphones you build, the more price you can charge. This is regardless of platform,” according to Asymco’s Horace Dediu.
With the holidays now only days away, we are all starting to think about the true meaning of the holidays – food and drink, and copious amounts of the stuff! Whether you are in charge of the full roast on Christmas day, or just the cranberries, having a helping hand is always appreciated.
Being the lovely people we are, we have put together a list of the best apps and accessories for both iPhone and iPad that can help your holiday season be as full flavoured and stress free as possible!
The run up to the festive holiday is great news for the App Store – closing for submissions over Christmas means developers are working hard to ensure that their applications are approved and ready for purchase before Apple closes the doors. As a result, a torrent of applications have been surging in to the App Store over the past week, and to help you separate the good from the bad, here’s our list of must-have apps released over the past week.
The fascinating Guinness World Records book is now available as an interactive iPad application. Records come to life with full-screen video and full-color photography, and you can even attempt to beat exclusive world records on your device.
Friends is a new social networking application for the iPhone that lets you keep up with your friends, family, and colleagues from 4 social networks. With support for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, it’s easy to stay in touch without the need to open up different applications – it’s all here, in one place.
Screens is a VNC client for all of your iOS devices that makes accessing your computer from anywhere incredibly easy. It’s simple to set up and is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux computers, through both Wi-Fi and 3G.
Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have iOS apps – including Type It!, Puffin, and more – after the break!
The run up to the festive holiday is great news for iOS gamers – with the App Store closed for submissions over Christmas, developers are working hard to ensure that their applications are approved and ready for purchase before Apple closes the doors. This means that a torrent of games have been surging in to the App Store over the past week, and to help you separate the good from the bad, here’s our list of must-have games released over the past week.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has been a huge hit on games consoles for many months now, and thanks to EA, first-person shooter fans can now enjoy this awesome title on their iPhones. It features classic Battlefield warfare with intense single-player missions and online multiplayer that’s guaranteed to keep you entertained this Christmas.
Teaser trailers and screenshots for Real Racing 2 have been popping up all over the place in the past few weeks, and Real Racing fans have been very much looking forward to the game’s release. Firemint’s second Real Racing title features officially licensed cars for the first time, multiple exciting game modes, and claims to be the most exhilarating racing experience on a handheld device.
N.O.V.A. 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to one of Gameloft’s most exciting games for iOS. The ultimate sci-fi first-person shooter returns, boasting improved A.I., better online multiplayer, a larger range of weapons, and a whole lot more. If you’re a fan of the first N.O.V.A., you won’t be disappointed.
Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have iOS games – including Sega’s Altered Beast and EA’s Ultimate Mortal Kombat – after the break!
Apple’s passing out Christmas gifts early for Mac and iOS developers. The company is offering six development books covering Mac OS X and iOS development — for free.
The new eBooks aren’t really new, but they haven’t been available in the iBookstore until today. Previously developers could either read them online or download PDF versions to read later via developer.apple.com.
The six titles include: Cocoa Fundamental’s Guide, The Objective-C Programming Language, iOS Application Programming Guide, Object Oriented Programming With Objective-C, iOS Technology Overview, and iOS Human Interface Guidelines.
You can download these books to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad from the iBookstore.
Another rare item from Cupertino, an Apple Lisa 1, hit the auction block this week. The successor to the Apple II and the predecessor to the Macintosh, the Lisa originally shipped back in 1983. Born of the pioneering work done at Xerox PARC and refined by Apple, it was the world’s first commercially available computer with a Graphical User Interface.
The first Lisa used two proprietary 5.25″ floppy disk drives known as “Twiggy” drives. These were problematic and unreliable, and were replaced in 1984 with the Lisa 2 and a 400k 3.5″ floppy drive. Most original Lisas were updated to the 3.5″ disk package, so very few Lisa 1 systems survive today.
As of this writing, current price on eBay is $15,000 after 4 bids, with 4 days left to go. Check back late next Tuesday for the results. Following the recent Apple 1 sale, looks like another possible record in the making!
We wrap up another week with a variety of both hardware and software deals. First up is a 13-inch MacBook Air, powered by the Core 2 Duo running at 2.13GHz for $1,125. (We have a number of other hardware deals for other MacBooks, as well as iMacs.) Also on tap are a number of apps for your iPhone and iPad. EA has various well-known games, such as “Scrabble” for the Apple tablet. The iPhone App Store releases a new crop of freebies, including “Battle Bears -1.”
As usual, details on these and many other items, can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
We all love Dropbox, right? For two years, it’s allowed us to keep our most important files synced across multiple computers and devices, complete with a generous 2GB freebie limit (easily expandable by recommendations and promotions).
It’s hard to believe that such an awesome service wasn’t even version 1.0, but apparently not: last night, Dropbox rolled out their first whole point release, bringing along a huge slew of improvements including — most importantly — selective folder sync.
Selective Sync allows you to select which folders and files within your Dropbox get shot down to your other computers, which can be determined in each computer’s control panel. This allows you, for example, to save some of your poor MacBook Air’s paltry 64GBs from the sheer bloat of your Dropboxed media collection. Lovely.
There’s more improvements than that, naturally. The 1.0 updates includes hundreds of bug fixes, reduced resource usage (50 percent in memory alone) and some user-friendly interface tweaks.
You can grab the 1.0 update here.
In the immortal spirit of Nigel Tufnel, our 2010 Year in Review of the best in Audio gear and apps for Mac and iOS devices goes to 11.
If you missed any of these or didn’t get a chance to check them out for some reason or another, don’t fret — they each should be around to help you discover dulcet tones and make sound memories for a long time to come.
11. iDJ – iPad Music App ($9.99)
iDJ’s music management system is a simple, streamlined way to quickly build club-quality playlists using the music in your iTunes library. With patented BPM detection technology, iDJ fuses your music together with the finesse of a professional mixmaster. As you add songs, iDJ analyzes their sonic-waveforms, calculates tempos, and then automatically performs optimal transitions throughout the playlist. Playlists can contain an unlimited number of songs and iDJ supports audio in WAV, MP3, and AAC formats. Plus, your iDJ library can be managed through iTunes. iDJ is the first true music-mixing application for iPad that both beginners and professionals can enjoy.
