iPhone users are twice as likely to be influenced by the Tea Party than voters who carry an Android or Blackberry phone, according to a new online poll by Zogby/463.
In addition, iPhone users are twice as likely to believe that Sarah Palin “speaks for them,” and 60 percent predict a Republican takeover of Congress this year.
Finding a decent set of headphones or earbuds that doesn’t cost the earth has always been a challenge. You either have to sacrifice on quality to fit your budget, or re-mortgage your house to find that ‘perfect’ sound.
With a maximum budget of $300, I set out to see how much sound you can get for your money at this mid- to high-level.
There is a great video of Steve Jobs giving an interview to 60 Minutes in which he states – rather boldly – that the problem with Microsoft is that they “simply have no taste.” He goes on to say that the Windows firm has “no originality” and “no culture infused into products.”
Let’s face it — for a multi-purpose device heavily weighted toward music, the iPhone’s music-player interface is crap. Dealing with those tiny buttons crammed onto the bottom of the screen is bad enough under most conditions, worse for meaty-fingered users and infuriating when the iPhone is docked or when movement is involved.
Enter Quick-Tunes, a $1 app that replaces the iPhones native chintzy soft controls with a big, meaty, attractive buttons. It also adds cool additional functions around the main play/pause button that let the user play more songs from the same artist, genre or album.
in case you missed it, last month saw the debut of Golf Vision Green Analyzer, an app that uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to calculate the perfect putting angle to sink a ball on the green; just measure the slope angle at the hole and at the ball by laying the iPhone on the ground, then set the green speed, and the app does its magic calculations and overlays the premium angle graphically over a still photo of your view to the hole.
Skeptical? That’s ok, the developers have just released a free version to try before considering the $5 full version. Unfortunately, the free version uses a generic photo to overlay the calculations on, and more importantly, only allows for slope measurements at one end, so results may not be as accurate as with the full version.
Cheap Chinese knockoffs of the iPhone 4 are a dime-a-dozen, but this new handset runs Android 2.1, Google’s ever-improving mobile OS.
It’s actually a dual-boot phone. It also runs Windows Mobile 6.5 (yuck!). It has a 3.6-inch capacitive touch-screen with multi-touch controls. It comes with 512MB of RAM and includes a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus.
It costs about $257, which is a bargain. It might be worth looking for one of these on eBay. The ability to run Android is a game-changer for knockoffs. For the first time, the software won’t totally suck.
Foodmatic‘s fun website suggests you might want this app if you’re trying to become “the next top chef,” a suggestion we think can only lead to a rash of contestants staggering off Chef Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen with iPhones lodged in various body cavities.
That’s because the app employs a proprietary algorithm and built-in database with hundreds of ingredients to score the tastiness of ingredients the user wants to combine. The app will even suggest ingredients that compliment any already input. The app includes info on ingredients in the database and the ability to save successful (or not) concoctions.
Foodmatic is currently $1, but the app’s Store page says that’s not likely to last.
Tweet Library by Manton Reece is something special, and I think one of a very tiny handful of Twitter clients – not just on the iPad, but on all manner of platforms – that add something genuinely new.
We close out another week with three highlighted deals. The first up is Yahtzee HD for the iPad. This classic board game comes to Apple’s best-selling tablet for just $1.99 – a $3 price drop. Next up is a leather case for your iPad from Zoogue. The item includes a suede interior, adjustable stand and an elastic car headrest attachment. We end the features with the latest crop of price drops from the App Store, including “Wheel of Fortune” for just $1.
Along the way, we also check out other apps for your iPhone or iPod, hardware such as a hands-free headset and other items. As usual, details on everything is available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Writing for The Economist, Glenn Fleishman has a fascinating look at the design and prototyping process of Glif, an iPhone 4 tripod adapter that just raised $70,000 in two days on Kickstarter:
They started with a computer model of the adapter, created with Rhinoceros 3D design software. The software is $995 for Windows, but they used the beta test version for Mac OS X, which is free. They tested their designs through rapid prototyping, uploading files to Shapeways in the Netherlands. It took about ten days for Shapeways to “print” each prototype in 3D, and a day later it would be in the designers’ hands in New York. Shapeway charges by material volume, so each each Glif test cost about $10. They would try out a few variants each time just to meet a $25 minimum.
The Economist: An atom-based product, developed in bits
It took Athens, Greece-based artist Charis Tsevis about a week of 16-hour days to create this trippy mosaic portrait of Steve Jobs for Brazilian magazine ALFA.
Tsevis is an old hand at innovative Apple collages, whose work has appeared in Fortune and inspired a send-up of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
This one is something of a departure, taking us back to the colorful early days of Apple history. More on the inspiration behind it and close-ups after the jump.
My external hard drive doesn’t get much use, except for one thing: archiving massive libraries of RAW images. The only problem with this solution is accessing the images once they’re off my computer requires finding the drive, plugging it in and trying to search through thousands of images for the one I want to show to someone.
Phooey. What a hassle. That’s what I like about Western Digital’s free new photo viewing application for iOS devices that works with its line of external hard drive like My Book World Edition, My Book Live and WD ShareSpace, which allows users to access and stream up to 285,000 images placed in a shared folder.
The app will slurp up your photos wherever you have an Internet connection. Certainly beats trying to load ten years of photos onto your iPhone through iTunes.
It’s becoming a familiar storyline: exclusive agreements to sell Apple’s popular iPhone are being threatened as more carriers want in on a good thing. In the U.S., the question has been who will join AT&T to offer the iPhone. In Asia, China Telecom is the latest name mentioned to join Apple’s current exclusive carrier, China Unicom. A report now cites a Deutsche Bank analyst claiming China Unicom’s exclusive iPhone arrangement could “likely come to an end early next year.”
Although China Telecom execs refused to confirm they’d begin selling a CDMA iPhone, “our own channel checks suggest that the company has been in intensive talks with chipset supplier Qualcomm and Apple,” according to the analyst’s report. China is often mentioned as a potential recipient of any CDMA iPhone. Additionally, China Telecom and Verizon both use the CDMA and EV-DO standard.
Although I’ve always been absolutely terrible at them, I love Sid Meier’s Civilization games, and the fourth game (and its expansions) is probably the most commonly launched app on my iMac after Mail and Chrome. I’ve been eager to here tell, then, of an OS X port of the newest game, Civilization V.
Good news for me and my fellow Civ junkies then, as Mac Rumors reports that an OS X compatible port of Civilization V will be heading to Valve’s gaming digital delivery service Steam within the next few weeks.
Universities across the U.S. are arming students with iPads, so it only makes sense that one school would teach them how best to use it.
Central Michigan University created a pilot course on iPad literacy to make sure they’re getting the most out of it.
What’s in the iPad course curriculum? Business uses for social networking, using the GPS device, making presentations with the Blackboard app — and a presentation from a lawyer about software and music copyright.
Are you on iOS 4.1? Eager to jailbreak? Better set an alarm now to remind yourself to check the Internet on October 10th at 10:10:10AM. That’s the cheeky time when hackers will release the first working jailbreak hack.
An Apple repair company called Mission Repair is arching eyebrows this morning with the claim that they have gotten their hands on the next iPad’s aluminum case, which they say has a port on the side for landscape docking.
Although we’ve seen a patent for an iPad with the ability to dock in both landscape and portrait modes before, this is the first time we’ve seen physical indication that Cupertino might be considering two dock connectors on the next iPad.
Here we go again: Apple’s plans for an Tunes subscription service is making headlines once more.
According to sources, Apple’s Vice President of iTunes Eddy Cue has been having talks with major record labels for a monthly all-you-can-stream subscription plan, similar to those offered by services like Napster or Spotify.
When you think of Apple’s string of successful product launches, the word “underperform” doesn’t immediately enter your vocabulary. However, one Wall Street analyst believes the Cupertino, Calif. company has plenty of room for growth. The iPhone maker’s stock has risen 37 percent in 2010, but is a far cry from the 75 percent earnings consensus from consumers. In fact, the Oppenheimer analyst expects Apple will report Oct. 18 a “blowout” quarter and sales of at least 12 million iPhones.
“The prime factor behind the underperformance of the stock relative to the fundamentals seem to be investor concern about Apple’s size,” Yair Reiner told investors Friday. “Bottom line, as big as Apple is today, it seems destined to get much bigger,” he adds. On that note, Oppenheimer raised its 12-to-18-month price target for Apple stock to $345 on expectations of $19.9 billion in revenue – up from previously forecast $18.5 billion.
Mention Nokia and the discussion turns to courtroom battles and two-way animosity between the Finnish cell phone giant and Apple. However, in a bit of refreshing candor, a French Nokia executive recently told an audience: “Apple is a must-have in US and EU.”
Nokia’s Cedric Thomas told the gathering of media content developers at MIPCOM that while Nokia is still a key player in Asia and Europe, Apple dominates the app landscape in the United States and the EU. Indeed, a recent survey found the share of iOS-based devices in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain grew 5.3 percent compared to a year ago, while Nokia’s Symbian platform dropped 14.4 percent over the same period. While Thomas, who heads Nokia’s Ovi marketplace in France, touted news that the company’s store now has 2.5 million downloads per day, the number pales in comparison to the 16.6 million apps downloaded each day from Apple’s App Store.
Macs are solid machines, but (like many of us) they have a tendency to slow down and get more lethargic over time. Launching and switching programs takes longer, the dreaded Spinning Beach Ball appears more often, and soon even simple tasks become arduous. What’s going on?
Many things can decrease performance, but several culprits are common: not enough disk space, not enough RAM, and running too many apps at once. I see these in my consulting business regularly.
Who says old computers are worthless? The (former) Mac Museum of Franklin Park NJ, which we reported up for sale on eBay last week, has found a buyer. Closing price after 20 bids: $10,000!
The Museum’s models include the Lisa, Mac 128k, Plus, SE/30, Color Classic, Mac Portable, TAM, Newtons, etc., along with lots of posters, peripherals and paraphernalia. It’s a very respectable price for a longtime labor of love, hopefully the buyer will be able to fulfill curator Gil Poulsen’s goal of making the collection more publicly available.
In related news, Vintage Mac collectors worldwide are now updating their own inventory valuations…
Slide-on cases may be causing big problems for the iPhone 4, GDGT reports. It seems grit and other particles can become trapped between the case and the iPhone 4’s glass back, causing scratches, cracks and even shattering the glass. According to sources inside and outside the company, Apple has locked-down a team of engineers to investigate the problem before it turns into another PR disaster like Antennagate.
It’s unclear, however, how widespread this problem is. Or even if it is a problem. I have an iPhone 4 and have used several slide-on cases. I haven’t had issues with scratching or trapped dirt.
So, please help us, is this problem? Don’t forget, this is specifically about scratches caused by slide-on cases — not scratches in general.
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Seems the iPhone’s become a superb diagnostic tool through sound analysis — not only can it evaluate watermelon ripeness, but now it can also be used to measure the tension of tennis or squash racquet strings with the racquetTune app.
The $1 app sports a slick, clean interface that displays a string’s tension after a few taps; there’s also a swingweight calculator thrown in for good measure.
The Swedish developers say racquetTune has been tested at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to good result — who knows, perhaps even by Bjorn Borg himself.
Today’s your day if you are looking for a jacket or case for your mobile Mac. We have deals on real (and fake) leather jackets for your iPad and iPhone, as well as a transparent stand for your iPhone 4. Along the way, we also have chargers, cables and screen protectors.
As always, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
