The Just Mobile UpStand iPad stand is simply perfect. The form factor the stand assumes and the material it is made of coupled with how much it weighs makes it the perfect place to perch my iPad on. The stand sits just right upon my desk and holds my iPad horizontally or vertically leaving complete access to all buttons, switches, and ports — especially the docking connector.
Click the read link for more information about this product and a gallery of photos of it in use.
Even if you’re hardy enough to carry Apple’s LiquidMetal-crafted SIM Ejector Tool on a chain around your neck, it’s not exactly an easy chore switching between networks with your iPhone 4.
This remarkably hideous iPhone 4 case, though, could make changing between SIMs a lot easier for road warriors or users with both a work and private cell phone contract. An interface ribbon connects a micro-sim adapter installed in your iPhone 4 to a pair of regularly sized SIM cards installed in the case, which can be switched from the SIM Applications menu… although we would think a jailbreak would be required.
Not exactly the most elegant solution, and it would certainly look a hell of a lot better if the case wasn’t transparent, but if you find yourself doing a lot of traveling abroad, or simply want to be able to use your iPhone 4 with two separate contracts on the same network, this might be $29 well spent.
The iPhone 4’s incredible retina display boasts pixels so small and tightly packed that they are almost indistinguishable to the human eye…. but if a new technology created by University of Michigan researchers ever hits the market, the Retina Display might end up looking as antediluvian as VGA.
Using nano-thin sheets of metal with precisely spaced slits that act as resonators, the team of researchers built a tiny high-definition display with pixels eight times smaller than those on the iPhone 4. These nano-resonating displays are incredibly green-friendly, since they don’t require the chemicals needed to make an LCD; better, they’re far more energy-efficient to boot.
Need proof? The above image of the University of Michigan logo might look blurry, but that’s only because it’s magnified up from its original size, which is just nine microns wide. Six of these logos would fit in the width of a human hair.
If this technology ever hits the market, a fully high-definition 1080p display could be fit in the area of a postage stamp. Don’t be surprised if half-a-decade down the line, a grizzled and hunched Steve Jobs holds aloft the iPhone 9 and introduces the world to their hot new marketing buzz term: Nanoresonators.
Ever since the first rumors creeped out that Apple intended on reinventing its “hobby” AppleTV platform to a $99, iOS-driven streaming media device, people have been assuming that the device would have to support multitouch through some sort of Magic Trackpad-esque remote. Now Dan Wiseman has come along and mocked up what he expects the new iTV remote to look like.
It’s an attractive render, but I’m going to say, “No way.” There are numerous problems with this approach, the least of which is knowing where your fingers are resting on the displayless remote in relation to the elements on the television half a room way. The only way that could work is if the iTV overlay mice-like pointers on your display to show where your fingers were in relation to the trackpad… a clumsy and decidedly un-Apple-like solution.
Then there’s the cost: if the iTV costs $99, and the Magic Trackpad costs $69, how could Apple afford to give one of these away for free with every iTV sold? They can’t. End of story.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the iTV, even if it is iOS-driven, will eschew multitouch as an input method in favor of the tried and true Apple remote. The only possibility I see is the possible ability to pair an iTV to your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to directly interact with the iTV display elements… but surely we would have seen an inkling of that functionality in the iOS betas by now if that was planned, and we haven’t. The iTV may be iOS-driven, but I wouldn’t bet on multitouch.
[via Daring Fireball]
July’s leak of a tiny 1.18-inch touchscreen being mass produced for Apple seemed so tiny that it had to be destined for the iPod Shuffle, but now Apple Insider is dropping a doozy of a rumor on us. It’s not for the Shuffle at all. It’s for the Nano.
The more we think about it, the more this makes sense, because it shows that Apple is bringing multitouch down — methodically and progressively — through its iPod line-up. It wouldn’t make sense to give the Shuffle a touchscreen and not the Nano. Apple Insider supports its theory with evidence from overseas manufacturers that the new touchscreen iPod will have a 30 pin dock connector, just like the Nano, making it capable of being easily plugged into existing iPod docks.
This theory might seem contradicted by the iPod Classic, which isn’t pegged to get a touchscreen, but at this point, the Classic’s going to be a ghost the second Apple finally manages to upgrade the Touch to 128GB. It’s sole purpose at this point is to accommodate the niche number of consumers with huge media collections — a constabulary to which I happily subscribe — who want to carry every song and movie they own around with them. If and when the Touch doubles its capacity this generation or the next, you can kiss the Classic goodbye.
Not quite sure what you’re looking at? These seven Escher-esque airplane propellors were captured by iPhone photographer Soren Ragsdale, and while the resulting image is a bit mind-bending, no genius would find anything wrong with his iPhone’s camera sensor. Instead, the photo is just a trippy (but terribly neat) demonstration of the iPhone’s rolling shutter.
Here’s how it works. Unlike a film camera — which quickly opens its shutter and burns the resulting image into the ensconced film strip all at once — most digital cameras have a rolling shutter. An iPhone doesn’t take the picture all at once; instead, it works more like a scanner, starting from one side and — line by line — moving to the far end of the photograph.
Usually, this all happens so fast that you can’t tell the difference, but when you start adding in photographic subjects that spin faster than your iPhone’s camera can scan them, you get the weird reality bending of the image above.
The iPhone’s not alone in exhibiting this behavior: you’ll see this sort of sampling on pretty much every CMOS sensor camera on the market. A nightmare for professionals, surely, but for a consumer interested in Dali-fying his iPhone photos without downloading an app, it’s a pretty cool side effect.
[via Gizmodo]
My dad was a magician at sniffing out great places to eat. We’d drive by some hole-in-the-wall we’d never seen before, and he’d point and say, “that’s where we’ll eat, it’s good.” Then I’d scramble to check out the hole-in-the-wall’s rating using the Yelp app on my iPhone, to see if he was right. The result was always the same: me shaking my head in disbelief as Yelp’s vast community of raters would invariably agree with him.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t have a magic nose. But that’s ok — we’ve got Yelp.
This week’s must-have iOS games features plenty of zombies, addictive games galore and some fantastic bargains guaranteed to keep you entertained this weekend. There’s also two retro classics thrown in for good measure. Check out Cult of Mac’s favorite games from the past week after the break!
This week’s must-haves include applications to view and manage your CloudApp account, keep track of your to-dos in style and translate tweets from your foreign friends. Check out Cult of Mac’s favorites from the past week after the break!
Dealing with overheating engines by running cold air over them is fine for old Volkswagen Beetles with almost the horsepower of an electric toothbrush and weird French cars (I know, the word “weird” there is redundant). As engines have become more powerful though, air-cooling has become less attractive — at least, in the automotive world. Computers still lag behind though. Mostly.
Zack Fanning, who handles (surprise) marketing for computer cooling system expert Asetek, asked the outfit’s engineers to mod his Mac Pro with a liquid cooling system. The results are pretty interesting: He’s able to overclock his 2.8 ghz Mac Pro to 3.18 while reducing noise — due to the fan not having to work as hard — by 13 decibels over a strictly air-cooled Mac Pro running at the same speed. Pretty cool.
Want one? While Zack’s is a one-off, lovingly handcrafted custom job, Corsair’s H50 liquid cooling system (actually made for them by Asetek) can be had for about $80; just make sure to check first about compatibility, because the H50’ll only work with later-model Mac Pros.
When we reviewed ID8-Mobile’s sneaky little MoGo Talk XD a month ago, we mentioned that it was only available for the 3G/s, but ID8-Mobile said they had an iPhone 4 version in the works. Turns out they weren’t kidding.
The iPhone 4 MoGo Talk — which hides a thin Bluetooth headset in a sleek case — is a little lumpier than its predecessor due to the fact that they’ve dropped the problematic flip-up charging port in favor of a port completely housed within the case; on the other hand, the case is still better-looking than a bumper.
At $99, the iPhone 4 MoGo Talk XD is $30 less than the older version; current owners of the older case can upgrade to the iPhone 4 case for $20 through the company’s website.
We wrap up another week with two deals for the macBook fan and the latest crop of iPhone freebies from the App Store. First up is a MacBook Pro powered by an i5 dual processor running at 2.4GHz. The unit with a 15-inch screen also comes with 8GB of memory for $1,988. We also take a look at a MacBook Core 2 Duo laptop running at 1.83GHz for $525. Finally, we also have the latest batch of free iPhone applications, including “Rhythm Spirit,” a rhythm fighting game for the iPhone.
We’ll also check out accessories for your iPad and iPhone along with software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
For those who like to work when they travel – and can afford a chauffeured Mercedes – news today of the iPad Car! High end tuning shop Brabus has created iBusiness, a mobile office on wheels.
Based on the Mercedes-Benz S600, the Brabus iBusiness four-seater luxury sedan packs in a range of multimedia features, including two iPads in the rear seats with Bluetooth keyboards and mouse, an ultra-small Mac minicomputer under the rear shelf and a 64GB Apple iPod Touch. The German super tuners have fitted the Mercedes S600 iBusiness with a 15.2-inch TFT display with 16:9 aspect ratio and USB 2.0 ports in the rear compartment to hook up peripherals to the Mac. You can connect to the internet via UMTS and HSDPA. The two iPads control the complete BRABUS multimedia system and the car’s standard S-Class COMAND system with all functions such as radio, navigation system and telephone. [Born Rich]
With this setup, I don’t know that I’d want to get out of the car when I arrived at my destination.
Apple’s long history of design consolidation is obvious at every level, from the no-button Magic Mouse and Trackpad, to the adoption of MiniDisplayPort, to the iPhone’s iconic home button.
But Cupertino doesn’t want to stop there: a new patent filing, Apple is now exploring ways to combine the headphone jack with the microphone on their iPhone and iPod Touch.
The patent says that “”in addition to using housing real estate, sound input apertures and electrical connectors introduce openings in the housing and breach the barrier that protects components inside the housing.”
In other words, drop a hole from an iPhone and you have less risk of dust and moisture making its way in. The advantages don’t seem to lie just in hardware reliability either: apparently, the two-in-one design would also enhance voice quality through a noise-cancelling technology Apple’s calling “audio beamforming.”
We’d say this one’s a lock: it’s not a pie-in-the-sky patent, but a natural extension of Apple’s predilection for the utmost in simplicity.
[via Gizmodo]
Another promising sign for e-books. The electronic version of a recently-released mystery novel outsold the hardcover version, according to the publisher, HarperCollins.
The thriller by Laura Lippman, “I’d Know You Anywhere,” which hit bookstands Aug. 17 sold 4,739 e-books versus 4,000 hardcover versions during the first five days the title was available. However, there’s no mystery why e-book sales are edging out physical book purchases.
Steve Jobs on the $100 Bill? Why not, shrugs Raffael Hannemann, a German college student contributing to the Dollar ReDe$ign Project.
My intention? There has to be a full-colored US flag on every bank note, and there have to be faces of some of the latest idols on them. Let’s stop looking backwards and focus on the future. This is the time where we live. I’ve chosen Steve Jobs, but why not Zuckerberg, Larry Page or Michael Jackson?
Unfortunately, I doubt that Hannemann’s new design would pass Jobs’ own rigid sense of aesthetics. And really? Steve Jobs on the hundred dollar bill? That’s not even walking around money for the billionaire CEO. Put His Steveness on a benjamin and he’s going to be blowing his nose all over his likeness five times a day.
If the main reason you’re hoping for Apple to announce the new, iOS-driven iTV is for the promise of some app gaming on your 50-inch plasma, you don’t have to bank on Cupertino. Accessory maker Griffin has a new dock in the works that allows you to hook your iPhone or iPod Touch up to your television and then use it to play multiplayer games with up to four players at once.
Don’t expect it to work with just any game: the Griffin PartyDock will only work with select Griffin games, which have yet to be announced and are of unknown quality, with no word yet if Griffin will open the PartyDock up to third-parties.
Download a supported game, though, and you can play an iOS game multiplayer without having to awkwardly hot seat it by passing your iPhone around. Instead, four included remotes allow you to control the action from across the room.
Obviously, a lot of this device’s niche could be filled by a $99 iTV, but if that doesn’t materialize next month — or doesn’t support apps — the Griffin PartyDock might be the only solution in town to treat your iOS device like a game console.
On the wild, anonymous Internet, you just can’t always trust a glowing review… but at least the iTunes App Store has gotten a little more trustworthy, after the Federal Trade Commission slapped down a California marketing company that was employing people to write positive App Store reviews without full disclosure.
In a statement on Thursday, the FTC said that they had reached an agreement with Reverb to remove the offending reviews from iTunes, as well as barring them from doing any more fraudulent reviews in the future and forcing them to to fully disclose their relationship with their clients, which includes Digital Leisure, Harmonix and MTV Games. A monetary fine was not disclosed.
On Reverb’s part, they seem pretty petulant and unrepentant about the whole thing, casting themselves as the victims.
“It became apparent that we would never agree on the facts of the situation,” she said. “Rather than continuing to spend time and money arguing, and laying off employees to fight what we believed was a frivolous matter, we settled this case and ended the discussion.”
A FaceTime-capable iPod Touch with a Retina Display is pretty much a lock in at this point, but what about the Touches distinctive case design: will it be going the way of the iPhone 4, or will it continue to have the smooth, curved metal back that we love (and hate to scratch) so well?
According to a source speaking to iLounge, expect a new back, but not the iPhone 4’s. Instead…
Familiar. Think of the top of a MacBook Pro, only smaller, which is to say flat rather than curved at the center—closer to the look of the first-generation iPod touch’s back, only with modifications. The rear camera is there, but there is still some question as to whether what’s next to it will be a LED flash like the one in the iPhone 4, or a microphone like the one next to the video camera of the iPod nano. We’ve been told to expect a microphone rather than a flash, with a continuation of the bottom-mounted headphone port and Dock Connector port.
In other words, it sounds like brushed aluminum, similar to the iPad’s back. The advantages here are something that isn’t quite as unsightly when scratched, and while the level of excitement this rumor garners has a lot to do with whether you plan on going bareback with your fourth-generation Touch, the picture I have in my mind certainly seems like a move in the right aesthetic direction.
Come September 1st, everyone expects Apple to announce at least some sort of streaming iTunes functionality… but what if that’s all a red herring? According to All Things D, that might just be the case: they are saying that the next version of iTunes won’t stream media from the cloud, but will instead by heavily integrated with social networking features.
The idea is this: future versions of iTunes would basically be little social networks, in which you’d be able to share recommendations of apps, movies or songs with other people. There’d be no actual media sharing ability at first, but this is clearly an evolutionary move, laying the groundwork for a more feature rich streaming iTunes to come.
It’s a very interesting rumor. Apple executives have said that the streaming iTunes capability we should expect in the near future is more modest than the pie-in-the-sky dreams of internet opiners. Combined with the rumored streaming television ability of the new iTV, this would seem to be a more realistic rollout of a future cloud-based iTunes for Apple to take.
Got a current gen MacBook Pro that just won’t play nice with your external display, or has a tendency to freeze at starting line at the sound of the OS X boot chime? Apple has just updated the MacBook Pro EFI firmware to version 1.9.
The new firmware resolves issues where a mid 2010 15- or 17-inch MacBook Pro might freeze during startup or sometimes stall during day-to-day use. In addition, the update clears up some issues hooking your MBP up to certain external displays.
Anyone out there have one of the afflicted models who can give us a first-hand report on whether or not the latest update solves the problem? Hit us up in the comments.
[via 9to5Mac]
Back in June, SurfaceInk made a splash for themselves by demonstrating a 12.1-inch Ubuntu-powered tablet, clearly positioned as a possible competitor against the iPad. Seems like that might have been a mistake: as it turns out, Apple was a SurfaceInk client, and let’s just say Cupertino wasn’t too peachy on the idea of doing business with a company in bed with the enemy.
According to SurfaceInk CEO Eric Bauswell, the two companies decided to part waysbecause of “Apple’s growing awareness of our turnkey capabilities.” SurfaceInk won’t say just what they did for Apple, but given the company’s engineering work for companies like Palm and HP, it’s easy to guess that they had some sort of hand in the iPad.
What really irked Apple, though, was SurfaceInk’s 12.1-inch prototype that used a Freescale i.MX51 800MHz Cortex A8 chipset, ready to sell the reference design to any company that wanted their own would-be iPad killer and claiming they could ship such a device out by Q1 2011.
Of course, what might seem like a mistake on SurfaceInk’s part in alienating a lucrative client may very well end up proving extraordinarily lucrative: there are a lot of electronics makers out there who are scrambling to get their pants back up after the iPad proverbially dropped them, unawares. There’s a lot of lucre to be made selling as many of those guys tablets to rebrand as possible.
Take this with a pinch of salt, but we’ve been tipped that Apple’s rumored $1 TV subscription service, due to be unveiled next week, is technically correct but missing an important detail.
Apple has today released version 9.0.4 of its iWork productivity suite. With it comes several bug fixes for Keynote, Pages and Numbers, and a new feature which allows for the exporting of Pages documents in the ePub format for use on their own iBooks iOS application.
The full list of changes, as detailed in the support document includes:
Keynote 5.0.4
- Addresses an issue when printing handouts with rule lines.
- Fixes an issue with the slide switcher.
- Resolves an issue when automatically resizing some images while changing slide size.
- Fixes an issue with tables.
Pages 4.0.4
- Fixes an issue with tables.
- Includes compatibility with the standard ePub file format (for use with iBooks) when exporting.
Numbers 2.0.4
- Fixes an issue with tables.
This update is for users with iWork 9.0, 9.0.1, 9.0.2, and 9.0.3. You can download the update through Software Update on your Mac, or directly from the Apple website here.
