Magic Launch is an OS X application that attempts to solve the creator codes problem that was introduced with Snow Leopard (see our original coverage here.
The issue didn’t affect everyone, only people who work with certain files in a variety of different applications.
Paul Riegler at the Executive Road Warrior blog wrote an interesting piece about what made him switch from an iPad to a new MacBook Air.
In short: the iPad was a nice portable computer, but the Air is better. It offers more flexibility and freedom. The iPad was a good solution but bulky (because Riegler was toting a keyboard for it too), and sometimes – not often – he found himself wishing for a plain old USB port, or the chance to see something in Flash.
Because Apple is already using the brand name iPad, two companies have tried to name their competitive tablets something completely different: The nPad.
Not recommended. Here’s why.
The much-anticipated Skyfire Browser finally came to iOS today albeit briefly before vanishing from the App store. If you haven’t heard about it Skyfire is a new app that would allow users to watch Flash video on their iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch by converting it to HTML5.
It was an unexpected surprise to find out that Apple didn’t pull the app — the vendor did. The vendor advised me that Skyfire’s launch was actually very successful or should we say overly so – not like that hasn’t happened before right?
According to Kevin Jordan, a spokesperson for Skyfire Labs, Inc., “The app is actually SOLD OUT while Skyfire increases server capacity. They’ll open up a new batch for download very soon. Skyfire is working to increase server capacity as we speak and in the end, this will result in the best possible user experience once they hit the store again. ”
In any event the app, which has initially sold out in only five hours, will make a reappearance in the App Store soon.
Read the complete Skyfire Labs, Inc. press release here.
NY-based DJ Rana Sobhany is fully committed to Apple’s mobile hardware — iPads and iPhones — as the technology that will be used to create the next generation of mobile music production. Her website Destroy the Silence chronicles her iPad Music Experiment and is filled with audio and video clips showing how the author and former instrumental musician is warping the boundaries of nightclub and dancefloor music production.
Sobhany notes in a recent interview that the strong emotional connection usually present between audiences and traditional live music performers can be lost in the transition to computer-based performance. She feels the touch-screen UI of Apple’s flagship mobile device may be able to help bridge that divide. “The iPad creates complete audio and visual engagement with the audience because I’m not just clicking a mouse,” she says, adding “I’m actively using these apps and mixing beats.”
This link points to a 10 minute clip of music Sobhany created during a recent set at the House of Blues in LA. It was mixed live on two iPads with one additional synth/drum machine controller powered by an iPhone.
We start with a 160GB Apple TV for $129. Also on tap: an iPad compatible back panel for $69 and a series of reduced-price iPhone applications, including “Nightstand Control,” a time, weather and alarm app.
Along the way, we check out more iPhone applications, new cases for your iPhone 4 and software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Belkin’s a big name in accessories, and you’ve probably got at least a few of their iPod or iPhone cases floating around your house. Today they’re expanding their line-up for the iPad with two new offerings: the Grip 360 + Stand and the FlipBlade.
The Grip 360 is an all-in-one accessory that can be used in three configurations: as a carrying case, a handheld case and as a stand. On the back is a flexible hand strap that makes the iPad easier to hold one-handed; the strap titularly rotates 360 degrees depending on which configuration you want to hold your iPad in, or removed entirely. It sells for $69.99.
The FlipBlade is a bit different: it’s a compact support for the iPad that allows you to prop your tablet up in either of its orientations, and which folds up for easy traveling. The design’s nice, but at $29.99, seems a bit overpriced for something a cheap plastic business card holder will do with more portability for less than a buck.
Eager to get the full iTunes experience on your AppleTV? It’s one step closer to reality: Apple will introduce support for iTunes LP and iTunes Extras on the new AppleTV sometime soon, according to a letter from Steve Jobs.
Back in 1993, Trilobyte and Virgin Interactive released The 7th Guest… one of the games to be done mostly in full-motion video, and the first game to ship exclusively on CD-ROM. Now it’s got another laurel to add to its belt: Trilobyte says that it’ll be coming to iOS sometime in December.
It’s not the only FMV Trilobyte title planned for the App Store. Shortly after The 7th Guest launches for the iPhone, Trilobyte says they will re-engineer the sequel — The 11th Hour — for iOS as well.
When The 7th Hour hits the App Store, it’ll cost $4.
To be completely honest with you, the thing that amazes me most is that The 7th Guest can even fit on an iPhone. I remember when the game first came out and I was amazed at the seemingly dozens of CDs it shipped on: I remember being astonished that a single title could possibly encompass that many discs.
Of course, in retrospect, most of those discs were taken up by badly compressed full motion video… and compression’s come a long, long way since then. Still, I’m staggered: has technology really come so far? Obviously, but it’s still sometimes hard to deprogram my expectations.
Just a couple weeks ago, Apple updated their iLife suite up to the year 2011… but despite the fact that iLife ’11 requires Snow Leopard to run, Cupertino did not see fit to upgrade the executables to 64-bit…. even though programs like iMovie ’11 would certainly have benefited from the support.
What about Final Cut Studio, then? Last updated in July of 2009, Final Cut Studio is one of the top movie-editing software packages around… and it too could desperately benefit from some 64-bit support.
Evan Agee recently emailed Steve Jobs to see about Final Cut Studio, expressing his hopes of a 64-bit update to the package. As he’s sometimes wont to do, Apple’s CEO fired back a reply: “Stay tuned and buckle up.”
You might consider yourself at home with your Apple computer, but Johannes P. Osterhoff went so far as to build himself this little abode mimicking the OSX Home icon.
It’s the latest project from the eclectic Osterhoff — Cult of Mac last caught up with him for his iPhone William Tell 2.0 project — who built the mini-home, complete with door, shutters, and chimney then wore it around over the summer.
He shares with us the blueprints for making this Apple icon come to life and how carrying a house on your back can be the ultimate ice breaker.
Before the iPad debuted, the tablet market was basically limited to niche convertible laptops with stylus-driven displays largely marketed to digital artists. The iPad changed everything: it placed the tablet as a bridge device between a phone and a laptop and made it less about the creation of a few specific types of digital media than a gadget aimed at the consumption of digital media.
It was a genius redefinition of a product class, and Apple’s basically dominated the tablet market ever since it was released. You might be surprised by how utterly complete the iPad’s domination of the tablet market is, though: according to statistics released by Strategy Analytics, the iPad accounts for 95.5% of all tablet sales.
That number’s going to go down, of course. The iPad basically caught gadget makers with their pants down, and we’re only just staring to see devices like the Galaxy Tab and the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook creep out of electronic makers’ design factories to challenge the iPad’s crown. Apple’s percentage of the tablet market is largely due to the fact that there just aren’t any good tablets out there besides the iPad.
So that number’s going to go down, but by guess, with that sort of head start? Apple’s still going to sell more than half of all tablets made for at least the next couple of years.
[via TUAW
Apple’s patent battle with Nokia might not be going to plan for Cupertino’s lawyers: staff of the International Trade Commission have reportedly told the judge in the case that Apple’s patent allegations are “unfounded.”
The case is being heard for the first time before Judge Charles Bullock today, but as Bloomberg reports, the third-party of the ITC does not feel Apple’s patents have merit.
November 7th’s turning out to be an important date for big box retail. It’s not just the day that Target’s slated to get the iPhone for the first time, but also the day that all 158 Best Buy Mobile stores will finally get the iPad.
Best Buy’s Mobile store locations are more Lilliputian Best Buys that focus on mbile electronics and are most often found in shopping malls or in congested downtown city locales.
There’s some obvious advantages for Apple pushing the iPad through as many outlets as it can this holiday season. Cupertino clearly does not want anyone to be able to fall upon the excuse of merely not being able to find an iPad or iPhone to buy a loved on this Christmas, and by selling iPads at Best Buy Mobile, Apple is able to expand its retail presence even to malls that don’t have an Apple Store.
Pretty soon, about the only excuse anyone’s going to have not to own an iOS device is sheer obstinance.
Apple reportedly has hired a former Warner Music Group executive with intimate knowledge of negotiations between the music publisher and retailers, which presumably included the Cupertino, Calif. digital music giant. Elliot Peters, Warner’s senior vice president and head of its digital legal department next month will become the head of corporate legal affairs for iTunes based in Luxembourg.
In a memo, Warner told employees Elliot “had a hand in almost every major WMG digital deal.” Among the parties with which Elliot has negotiated: Columbia House Music and Video Clubs, Word Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Publications. Apple is the largest U.S. music retailer and digital music sales are expected to overshadow CD sales in 2011.
Former vice president Al Gore recently spoke about another kind of inconvenient truth: his role as the last Mac standing in what became a PC White House during the Clinton administration.
Nowadays, Macs and PCs coexist in the inner sanctums of power — iPads abound for playing Pac Man or catching up on email — but back in the day it was much more an either/or proposition.
Mac Directory recently published an interview with Gore, where he touches on being the last Apple holdout in the West Wing, as well as the importance of Apple’s commitment to open source and how it may influence and help grow the Cupertino company.
An analyst Tuesday issued a very bullish prediction for iPhone and iPad sales next year, double that of other onlookers and following lower-than-expected fourth-quarter sales. Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair believes the Cupertino, Calif. company will sell 100 million iPhones and up to 48 million iPads in 2011.
While Blair admits the sales estimate is a “staggering number any way you look at it,” he insists Apple is prepping for a “nearly 100 percent year-over-year growth for iPhone” next year. By comparison, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner believes Apple will sell 52 million iPhones and 23 million iPads during 2011. On the low end, following lower than expected fourth-quarter numbers, Needham & Company analyst Charlie Wolf predicts Apple will sell only 18 million iPads, but cautioned even that figure may be too high if tablet distribution doesn’t increase.
Early MacBook Air adopters have been reporting problems with their new notebooks that include video problems and frequent kernel panics. Now some of these users have released pictures and video evidence demonstrating the flickering video and computer freezing issue that appears to be happening on nearly all 11-inch and 13-inch models of the new MacBook Air.
We were the first to report this issue last week-end and since then there are more reports of other MacBook Air users encountering the same problem. Users in Germany are reporting problems and the folks at MacWorld have reported seeing the problem happen on of their new MacBook Airs.
It’s doubtful as to whether any online apps will be able to match the gadgetry the pundits have on television to interpret election results, but one elegant graphic on the New York Times’ web site has been optimized for the iPad, and looks worthy of a bookmark.
SocialPhone is a brand new app for iOS that combines an impressive, full-featured address book with access to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in one handy application.
At 9 AM ET on Thursday, November 4, the Skyfire Browser will be coming to iOS and will allow users to watch Flash video on their iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch by converting it to HTML5.
Priced at $2.99, Skyfire Browser has been available on Android devices since May 2010, and has been incredibly popular with 1.5 million downloads. Now, after a “rather rigorous review,” Apple has finally approved the app for iOS devices, and it will soon be available in the App Store.
We begin with several refurbished MacBook Air laptops, starting at $849 for a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo 13.3-inch model. Also on tap is a two-year iPad warranty from SqaureTrade. The warranty covers drops and spills. The spotlight is also on a new batch of free App Store titles for the iPhone and iPod touch, including “Finger Traffic Navigator”, a line drawing puzzle.
Along the way, we’ll also check out storage options, ways to keep your iPhone 4 in power, as well as software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other bargains can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8-nKo2hqlg&feature=player_embedded
Apple’s advertising team has thrown a lot of hyperbolic adjectives at the iPad like “legendary”, “amazing” and “magical,” but their latest advertisement might be pressing it. “Cinematic,” sure. “Elementary”…. uh, okay. But by the time we’re at “full size” and “electric,” I think maybe we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T073m83CQk&feature=player_embedded
Evil Dead — Sam Raimi’s story of five horny college kids who go to an abandoned cabin in the woods to do their rutting and accidentally unleash an ancient, murderous evil — isn’t as well known as its sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. It’s a more serious and frightening film, and Bruce Campbell’s Ash (known in the first movie as “Ashley”) has yet to become the chainsaw-handed, catchphrase-spitting zombie killer we’d all come to know and love later in the franchise.
It also seems like a bad fit for an App Store game, but I’ve got to tell you, this trailer for the upcoming Evil Dead game has won me over. You’d think using Mii-like bobblehead avatars to tell the story that prominently features melting zombies, ankle-stabbing and tree rape would just fall apart, but instead, the trailer’s just incredibly funny and well done… not to mention loyal to the spirit of the (NSFW) original trailer, which I’ve embedded below.
At first, Chris Pollock‘s hack to connect his iPhone to a computer’s serial port seems like a “because I can” sort of project, but in reality, it appears that it’s actually incredibly useful.
Why? Chris apparently works in IT, and as it turns out, a jailbroken iPhone armed with a serial port connector and many of Cydia’s console packages is a godsend for an IT worker: it’s an entire computer that you can just whip out of your pocket in a pinch to do some mainframe troubleshooting.
Fantastic. Now if only your could use this serial port hack to sync through iTunes.
