The past week’s rumor cycle has consistently pegged early December as the date when Apple would simultaneously introduce iOS 4.3, iTunes in-app subscription support and News Corp’s new iPad-only magazine, The Daily… but according to sources, that date is very likely aggressive, and the actual rollout has been delayed until early 2011.
Apple’s iPhone is more than just sizzle, according to a German survey measuring smartphone loyalty released Monday. Although 75 percent of smartphone owners surveyed said they may switch to another handset when they buy their next phone, 59 percent of iPhone owners said they are sticking with the Apple handset. The figure tops the BlackBerry and Android-based alternatives, leaving Nokia and Microsoft in the dust.
“If a phone doesn’t do what it says it will do or what the owner hopes it will do, the maker will lose loyalty,” GfK analyst Ryan Garner told Reuters. Garner explained that people tend to “buy into experiences at the high-end level.”
A few months ago, it seemed like I switched OS X Twitter clients every other day. A long time Tweetie user, the lack of updates eventually made me ready to switch, but after plowing through client after client in rapid succession — Twitterrific, TweetDeck, twhirl, YoruFukurou — only to keep turning back to Tweetie for the admittedly nebulous reason that none of the competition felt “right” to me.
That all changed when I discovered Kiwi, my new go-to Twitter client. Despite the fact that a change to Twitter’s API meant that Kiwi often alerted me for @replies that hadn’t actually shot down the pipeline, I finally deleted Tweetie from my machine and became a Kiwi user full time.
I’m delighted to see, then, that Kiwi has been updated to its second major release, Kiwi 2. It fixes the aforementioned @reply bug, but also adds a host of new features like account grouping, inline images, gesture support for multitouch trackpads and the extension of its already-excellent themeable interface.
If you’ve been looking to trade in Tweetie for a client with more advanced features while retaining Tweetie’s simplicity and streamlined presentation, I’d recommend Kiwi 2 heartily. The ad supported version will cost you nothing, and removing the ads is a one-time fee of $9.95. Worth twice that, if you ask me.
Although they were once Thor-like with the Mjolnir of the ban hammer, Apple has become much more sparing and reluctant to ban apps outright from the App Store in recent months… a sea change that can probably be leveled more at Cupertino’s belated but common sense clarification of the App Store approval guidelines.
Bans still happen, though: an emulator here, a program tapping private APIs there, but these days, Apple’s bans are a lot less sensational than they once were. That’s what makes Apple’s latest ban so puzzling: they decided to ban a small Danish magazine app about Google’s Android OS from the App Store.
Why? According to the CEO of publisher Mediaprovider, his conversation with Apple about the app went something like this:
“So what’s the problem?” Dixon asked, knowing full well what the problem was.
“You know… your magazine,” replied the Apple rep, who identified himself only as Richard. “It’s just about Android…. we can’t have that in our App Store.”
Although this wouldn’t be a surprising ban a year ago, these days, it seems more like Richard was being a little overzealous than official Apple policy against informational Android apps to us: after all, the App Store has several apps dedicated to competing products, such as Windows 7. Granted, the war between iOS and Android these days is a lot more heated than the one between Windows and OS X — largely because Apple recognizes that mobile is the future of computing, and desktop OSes are the past — but Apple already knows that Android will eventually dominate iOS when it comes to total marketshare. Why ban an app about Android, then? Apple’s not concerned with total domination of the market… just the domination of the slice of the market that matters most.
Microsoft’s attempts out replicate Apple’s successes in the retail space have always seemed… well… rather bereft of imagination and mindlessly emulative. Microsoft Stores almost always are opened in the same malls as Apple Stores, sometimes directly across the way. Instead of a Genius Bar, there’s a Guru Bar. And so on.
Microsoft’s “Me Too”ism in the retail has simply been painful to watch… so painful that it prompted us to write a post entitled “Why Microsoft’s Mall of America Store Will Fail” just last month.
Looks like we were right. According to the LA Times, Microsoft’s retail stores are a complete bust, despite having been designed by George Blankenship, who helped build Apple’s own retail stores.
What will the CPU of your next MacBook look like? Well, it’ll almost definitely be one of Intel’s Sandy Bridge microprocessors, and if you want to see the future, you should peer into the entrails of the latest Windows notebooks.
Apple’s iPad is the first generation of what I hope will be a long line of magical tablets. Unfortunately, it has one minor problem that will be more evident now that iOS 4.2.1 has been released.
That problem will be the made evident by the over zealous use of multitasking on a device that only has 256MB of memory in which to run applications. The iPhone 4 twice that or 512MB. Users won’t be able to help themselves because multitasking is just to valuable to ignore or give up.
So the problem of having less memory to run apps will be frequent warnings that “your device is running low on memory. ” I’ve seen it happen to others and the image above is my own personal encounter with the problem. Apple had given the iPhone 4 pretty liberal amounts of application RAM, so I was a bit taken aback that the iPad didn’t have at least 512MB to 1GB of RAM when it was released.
Fortunately, the work around is easy.
Leaping right out of the “What the heck?!?!” category comes Welcome to the CrApple Store a blog for disgruntled Apple Store employees. A couple of readers pointed it out to me today
The complaints touted on the blog range from the size of repair parts packaging to things like brain-washing and drinking the Apple Kool-Aid. It just goes to show you that you cannot make everyone happy.
Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, apparently reads the Cult. After we published the recent piece on the Cupertinto, Calif. company buying HP’s old campus in the city, Wozniak offered more historical details on Apple’s connection with the acquisition of the 98-acre parcel. “Apple really is returning home,” Woz said in a comment.
“Actually, almost all of the Apple ][ development occurred in the HP calculator division (APD) which was located in the section acquired earlier. When this HP division moved to Corvallis, Oregon, my wife did not want to move so I transferred to HP’s Data Systems Division (HP-3000) across Pruneridge and I worked there for about one month, at first choosing not to start Apple due to my love for HP,” he said, shedding light on Apple’s early connection with the HP site.
The HP location, for which Apple reportedly paid $300 million, also had a connection to Apple’s earliest computer – the Apple I.
“This is also the division of HP that had the PROM burners I used to burn the 256-byte “monitor” program of the Apple I (took 2 PROM chips – not much memory in those days). I had previously learned how to burn these PROMs to display 4-letter words when you missed the ball on a Pong game I’d built for myself,” Wozniak wrote.
Only 11 more days til Christmas! Yikes. If you are still at a loss as to what to get your loved ones, look no further, CultofMac is here to save the Holidays! Keep in mind that most of the cheap or free shipping ends this week.
We get in the Black Friday mood with a number of price cuts and freebies for the iPhone and iPad. First up is the Apple Store’s Black Friday event, with offers such as a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad for $458 – $41 off the usual price. We also have the Sketchbook Pro app for the iPad for just $0.99 – a $7 drop from Thursday. Finally is a new batch of iPhone app price cuts, including “Iron Man 2” for just $0.99 – a $4 reduction.
Along the way, we have price cuts on MacBook Airs and iMacs, as well as iPhone 4s. Plus there are cases, snap-on batteries and much more. As usual, details can be found on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
Apple notebooks continue to meteorically rise in popularity: according to component makers, Apple will soon be shipping over a million units per month, with MacBook Air orders already accounting for almost 25 percent of the volume.
Says Digitimes:
The sources cited IDC’s figures and pointed out that Apple’s combined shipments for the first three quarters of 2010 reached about 6.88 million units, and its global notebook market share rose from 3.7% in the first quarter to 5.2% in the third, while its market share in the US market surged from 6.7% to 12.6%.
The MacBook’s only going to get bigger from here.
[via 9to5Mac]
Apple has become the largest landowner in Cupertino, Calif., the city which headquarters the computer and media giant. Apple recently purchased for a reported $300 million a 98-acre campus which formerly housed Hewlett-Packard. The site adjoins Apple’s 50-acre site it purchased in 2006.
“We now occupy 57 buildings in Cupertino and our campus is bursting at the seams,” Apple PR chief Steve Dowling told the Mercury News. “The offices will give us more room for our employees as we continue to grow,” he added.
Apple’s second-gen iPad 2 is most likely coming down the pipeline in April, and now a Digitimes is reporting what to
FaceTime’s a given, of course. “Better mobility” probably just means a thinner design, which might be a touch trick, given the addition of at least one camera: it could also mean that a 7-inch model is forthcoming, but given how dismissive Steve Jobs was of the form factor, I don’t consider that likely.
The 3-Axis gyroscope is a pretty obvious new addition, given its presence in the iPhone 4. I don’t think a USB port is likely at all. As for a new display, I’m skeptical that Apple can afford a 9.7 inch retina display at the iPad’s current price, but perhaps we’ll be surprised.
For more thoughts on the report, check out Computerworld’s excellent analysis.
If you want to AirPrint and you have a Mac, Printopia will do the job for you on almost any printer out there, Apple’s last minute feature pruning be damned. Windows users, however, have been in the lurch until now.
Enter Activate Printer, which according to a lot of users doesn’t work reliably a lot of the time, but it can’t hurt giving it a go if you just can’t wait.
We don’t have a Windows machine to test it out, but apparently, all you need to do is download and install the executable, share your printer under printer properties in your system preferences, then enable AirPrint.exe in Windows Firewall.
Like we said, we’re seeing a lot of “doesn’t work for me” messages about this, so don’t be surprised if it’s all for nought. Still, we’re rooting for you — yes, you! — to strike gold here.
Better iBooks management is on the horizon, according to 9to5Mac, who say that both folders (similar to the way folders work on the iOS homescreen) and “Collections” will be coming to iBooks soon, as well as printing PDFs via AirPrint.
Does your iPad feel speedier since iOS 4.2.1? Italian site iPadevice put together this handy chart, illustrating how well Apple’s managed to refine the memory requirements of certain applications under the new operating system.
The Black Friday weekend means sales and discounts galore, and iOS developers are offering some crazy reductions on the some of the App Store’s best downloads.
We’ve compiled a list of some of the greatest apps on sale, such as Readdle’s Printer Pro & PDF Expert; the Quickoffice Mobile suites, AutoStitch Panorama, and many, many more.
Check out our extensive list of apps on sale after the break, and grab yourself a bargain for your iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch.
The Black Friday weekend means sales and discounts galore, and iOS developers are offering some crazy reductions on the some of the App Store’s best downloads.
We’ve compiled a list of some of the greatest games on sale, such as EA’s NCAA Football, Need for Speed & Madden NFL; and Gameloft’s Shrek Kart HD, Hero of Sparta 2 & Let’s Golf 2 HD.
Check out our extensive list of games on sale after the break, and grab yourself a bargain for your iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch.
Looks like Apple will be offering offering about 10% off for Black Friday — if Apple Australia’s prices are anything to go by.
Apple has posted sale prices down under, offering 10-15% off many items, including iPad (A$50 off),, iMac and MacBook Pro (A$121 off) 13-inch MacBook Air (A$121.00 off), iPod nano (A$25 off).
The best deal looks like the iPod Touch at about 20% off (up to A$51). Also on sale are the Time Capsule, Magic Trackpad, and a range of iPad accessories. The same savings are likely to carry across to U.S. sales, which are one-day only.
Here’s details of Apple Australia’s other sale items:
In the spirit of the holiday, we here at Cult of Mac have decided to spend the day with our friends and families, but before we do, we thought we’d observe the holiday in the most Apple-centric way we know how… by each writing about the Apple product or related product that we’re most thankful for this year. You can find our choices after the jump, and we hope to hear your choices too.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Irritated as much as we are by Apple changing the orientation lock switch on the iPad to a mute switch in iOS 4.2? Jailbreak your tablet and install NoMute through the BigBoss repository on Cydia and make everything all right again.
Seriously, a mute switch, Apple? The iPad’s not a phone. Jeez.
We have a few hours to go, but it’s already Black Friday in Australia, and with discounts hovering at between 8-9%, it looks like tomorrow will be a very, very good day indeed to buy an Apple product.
President Obama’s becoming an old pro at signing iPads. At the recent Lisbon Summit, a European autograph speaker was able to get the Prez to jot down his a digitally inputed John Hancock on his proferred iPad. As he did so, he quipped: “Hey, ‘Sign my iPad.’ I’ve done this once before.” Right on.
Now here’s something you don’t see every day: Science and Sons have just released the Phonofone III, a ceramic horn-shaped dock for the iPhone which serves as a passive amplification system. Output from the iPhone’s built-in speakers is boosted approximately 60dB by the horn’s acoustical characteristics, rivaling output from many small powered docking systems.
