According to Apple, the new A4-powered AppleTV has been a modest success, selling over 250,000 units by mid-October, but despite this, it’s not listed in Amazon.com’s list of the top 100 electronics…. and some people smell a conspiracy.
Macworld may not have an official Apple presence anymore, but Macworld 2011 is shaping up to be one of the biggest years yet for the show when it hits January 26th in San Francisco: according to IDG General Manager Paul Kent, it’ll be over thirty percent bigger than ever before.
Earlier in the week, it was reported that Apple might have acquired Wi-Gear, a company that makes the iMuff line of wireless Bluetooth headphones.
The evidence seemed pretty good for a secret buyout. Not only did Wi-Gear’s home page feature a somewhat unceremonious message about the company ceasing operations and being unable to respond to any press inquiries, but Wi-Gear co-founder moved to Apple as an iOS Bluetooth Engineer.
Unfortunately, like many good rumors, the evidence didn’t add up to the truth of things. Asked about a buyout by Macworld, Wi-Gear CEO Mark Pundsack said: “I wish!”
Right now, if you have Mac OS X 10.6.5 and an iPad running iOS 4.2 GM, AirPrint’s a bit of a mess: some people are reporting that it is working, but many are not having any luck.
We suspected that it was just this sort of compatibility problems that caused Apple to scale AirPrint support back to AirPrint-compatible printers at the last minute, but developer Steven Troughton-Smith has some instructions on how to bring it to your Mac under OS X 10.6.5 and iOS 4.2 GM.
Yesterday, reports suggested that support for Apple’s AirPrint feature had been plucked from iOS 4.2 for shared printers connected to Macs and PCs, leaving only a subset of AirPrint-compatible HP printers mentioned in the official developer documentation.
Has Apple just had last minute compatibility problems they’re not willing to delay their iOS 4.2 update for, or has the AirPrint feature been canceled? Not according to Steve Jobs, but unfortunately, his comments on the matter aren’t particularly illuminating.
I have an embarrassing confession to make: I wear out headphones the way most people wear out socks. Whether from Shure, Ultimate Ears, Sony, Koss, or 99-cent Chinatown bootleg, one of the ears won’t be playing sound within the first three months I own them. Fraying cables, rusty headphone jacks from rain, shorted audio drivers from running-induced ear sweat (?!), and many more have kept me from my music collection. I can’t help it; I wear my headphones everywhere. Consequently, I’m increasingly interested in durability as a key design consideration beyond just audio quality and a comfortable fit.
And I might have finally found the ideal iPhone headset for the active, occasionally irresponsible urbanite: V-Moda’s Vibrato headphones.
If you’ve ever opened your AT&T bill and puzzled for a moment over the “Internet Taxes” heading charge before shrugging and just paying it anyway, good news: you might be eligible to get back a few beans thanks to the palliative magic of class action lawsuits.
TextWrangler is a well-named application. It’s there to do a particular job, and that job is wrangling text.
It’s natural to assume that iTunes is a monolithic one-window application, because there’s no obvious way to view your vast database of music, videos and apps in anything other than just that one window.
No obvious way, but it is there.
UPDATE: I go to dinner and all hell breaks loose. Sorry for the bogus info. My bad. I should have checked this out first. Apparently, this combo update is not good — it causes kernel panics. Here’s a legit link to the 10.6.5 combo update on Apple’s site: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324
Here’s the hidden URL where you can download the Mac OS X 10.6.5 Combo update. This combo update is not visible on Apple.com
Some folks think it’s usually better for your OS to install the combo update. From what we understand, the combo update does a more complete update than incremental updates applied through OS X’s Software Update. For example, system glitches caused by earier updates may be fixed because the combo update reinstalls everything that was included in previous updates (in this case, everything in 10.6.1 through 10.6.5).
It can also help avoid update headaches, we’re told.
Thanks Roman Zavřel of Letem Světem Applem.
Here’s the link to the Apple Support document describing the update and how to get it.
10.6.5 promises increased performance in playing well with Microsoft Exchange, better image processing with iPhoto and Aperture, adds SSL support for transferring files with iDisk, resolves an issue syncing Address Book with Google, allows systems with a Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009) to be put to sleep, and adds RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras — among other things.
See the full support document for details.
NBC’s Jimmy Fallon is the first American late night TV host out of the gate with a dedicated app for Apple’s mobile device users, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (iTunes link), available free as of Wednesday in the App Store.
Fallon, arguably the most tech-savvy of all the late night talk show hosts in the US, regularly spotlights tech and social media in his show’s skits and jokes and in the past showcased “fantasy” apps such as “Axl Rose Relaxation” and “Moldova Y/N” that actually made it into the production release.
The mobile app — compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch — will also showcase video clips and photos from the TV show along with behind-the-scenes blog posts from the Late Night site.
City councils across the country are adopting the iPad, in the hopes that the magical device can help them go paperless and save money, but taxpayers are skeptical of the savings.
The just-proposed scheme in Aurora, east of Denver, is pretty typical: the city council there wants to try out iPads to see if it can save printing out the information packets for meetings. The city currently spends about $900 per member every year to print, assemble and deliver the info packets to the 10 council members and the mayor for a total of around $9,900.
They’ve budgeted $729 for the iPads plus $180 per year for data plans, so by using iPads they would break even in about a year.
Residents, however, don’t appear to buy it. Some 62% responded “You’re kidding me. What a scam. Like they read all that stuff anyway” to a poll in the Aurora Sentinal, just 36% responded “Why not? Saves trees, saves money. Go for it.”
We know that all kids want for Christmas is an Apple device, it turns out adults do too.
According to a survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, people old enough to vote did put one thing first, though.
First, adults would like the holidays to bring happiness or peace. Then comes material desire: a laptop. And third, an iPad.
Bringing family together, health and money trailed behind, though they did make it into the top ten at seven, eight and 10 respectively. (CEA didn’t disclose info on sample size or makeup. Pet peeve alert!)
Homade’s Boom Dock is a decidedly goofy tribute to the days when a portable music player was a huge tape deck turned up to 11 carried on a shoulder and crammed right up against your ear drum. It’s unpowered, so the sound is lousy, but it’s yours for just $25… the perfect accessory for a Lilliputian electric boogaloo.
[via Technabob]
To this day, Space Miner: Space Ore Bust is one of my favorite games for the iOS, and while I’ve been anxiously waiting for a sequel, I think I can make do with this: Venan Arcade has just announced the free-to-play spin-off title, Space Miner Blast, which strips out the former game’s story and RPG elements to deliver a frenetic arcade shooter.
It’s a freemium title, so to unlock all four ships (as well as Retina Display support), you’ll need to drop $1.99 on the Blast Pack in-app purchase, but if you’ve ever been curious about Space Miner, this is an excellent intro… and to tempt you even further into the franchise, Venan has also dropped the price of the original game to just $1.99.
The Washington Post has chosen to advertise their new iPad app by portraying legendary journalist Bob Woodward as a decrepit moron completely befuddled by technology so easy to use that even 99 year olds can quickly master it.
We laughed, although we’re not sure if it’s at the Washington Post’s self-deprecation or just the stupidity of it all. Probably a bit of both.
Leaving aside why you would want to run Android when you have access to iOS, we were absolutely amazed when hacker David Wong figured out how to install and dual boot Android alongside iOS on the original iPhone earlier this year. Even so, we were reluctant to try the hack ourselves: the process was convoluted, to say the very least.
It’s amazing, though, how far the instructions have come in a little over half a year, though: you can now install Android 2.1 Froyo on your first generation iPhone or iPhone 3G so simply that you don’t even need to have a computer handy to do it.
That’s right: as long as your iPhone or iPhone 3G is already jailbroken and running at least iOS 3.1.2, you can now install Android on your handset entirely through Cydia.
There’s a small but real segment of the iOS accessory market that thrives because of the iPhone’s inability to be used while wearing coverings over your hands. Little capacitive stickers you sew onto the finger pads of your gloves so you can use your iPhone’s touchscreen, or gloves with capacitive thread sewn right into the fingers.
As winter fast approaches, you might even be thinking of buying yourself one of these accessories… but a recent development in the technology of touchscreens might obviate the need for these accessories entirely if Apple brings them to future devices.
Other than Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy Tab, Research In Motion’s upcoming BlackBerry Playbook seems like it will be the first real competition to the iPad’s dominance over the tablet market when it is released in early 2011.
Featuring a 7-inch display, a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and both front and back-facing cameras, as well as an entirely new operating system based on Adobe Air, the BlackBerry Playbook certainly has the specs to make a splash… but a lot will depend on whether or not the price is competitive with the iPad.
According to RIM CEO Jim Balsillie, the BlackBerry PlayBook will at least match the entry-level iPad’s price when it drops. In an interview with Business Week, Balsillie said:
“The product will be very competitively priced,” and when asked whether it will be about $500, Balsillie said “no, it will be under that.”
Good news so far, but my guess is that he’s referring to a subsidized price. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has roughly the same specs as the PlayBook and it doesn’t cost under $500 without a subsidy. Given that RIM exclusively makes phones and 3G-connected devices, I’d speculate that the PlayBook will end up being cheaper than an iPad… but only as long as you’re willing to sign a two-year contract for the “savings.”
Along with AirPlay, AirPrint was a fiercely promoted new feature in iOS 4.2, promising a powerful new printing architecture that allows iOS devices to easily and wirelessly print to any networked printer.
Don’t be surprised, though, if AirPrint is nowhere to be seen when iOS 4.2 is released on Friday: according to a report on MacStories, Apple has pulled support for AirPrint from iOS 4.2 at the last minute.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably been checking Software Update a few times every day this week, waiting for Apple to finally dislodge some of its bigger releases from its development pipe: namely, Mac OS X 10.6.5, iTunes 10.1 and iOS 4.2. No luck yet, but according to , all three are imminent… and two of those updates will go live today.
A few days ago, computer company Sophos released a free anti-virus application for OS X.
According to the experts at Sophos, your Mac is vulnerable to malware – it’s just that there isn’t very much of it around. Yet.
But as Macs and OS X get more popular, that might change. So Sophos thinks it’s time you protected your computer.
So what does Sophos Anti-Virus for OS X do, exactly?
The new MacBook Air has the highest number of liquid contact indicators, or LCIs, of any Apple product yet… little stickers that tell a Genius if it’s okay to deny you service on your broken gadget because you dropped it in the drink.
LCIs have always been troubling, since they tend to trigger by humidity alone, making Apple gadgets a risky investment for those who live in the tropics. Apple’s actually been sued about false LCI reports, so the fact that the new Air had so many of them was particularly worrisome: it seemed like Apple was just chomping at the bit to deny you service on the notoriously hard-to-service Air.
However, things may not be as clearly conspiratorial as that.
So you’ve got your iPhone 4 and you know it has not one, but two cameras inside it.
“How I wish it could take pictures with both of them at once,” you cry.
Well, your plea is answered in the form of 2Side Cam, a $1 app for iPhone 4. In “2Side” mode, it takes two photos – first one with the outward-facing camera on the back of the phone, then a second later another with the user-facing camera.