Regular visitors to this blog will probably have noticed that we mention Dropbox a lot. I mean, we won’t shut up about it. Why? Because it’s so ridiculously useful.
The way it works is simple: It’s a portal for files from your iPhone to your Dropbox account, a free service that gives you your own 2GB cloud to store files and media, and if you want to, lets you share those files and media.
We close out another week with a deal on a 2.53GHz MacBook Pro bundle. Along with the MacBook Pro, the bundle includes an 8GB memory upgrade and three years of Applecare, all for $1,540. Also up is another chance to grab Apple’s iWork ’09 productivity bundle for just $27. Lastly, if you’ve tired of soccer (for our American readers), or just long for the autumn rites of football, here’s your chance to tune up your kicking foot without leaving the livingroom lounger: “Flick Kick Field Goal” is an iTunes app for your iPhone or iPod touch — and it is free.
As usual, details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
Popular multi-IM and voice-chat service Fring has just been updated to bring 2-way video calling on iPhone 4 over 3G (Apple’s FaceTime is Wi-Fi only), as well as voice and text chat.
We’ve tested it out; while it has a few minor issues, Fring has freed videochat from Wi-Fi. If you like to videochat on your new iPhone 4, it’s a must-have app.
Here’s a new, strange little app; Gyro Draw lets users draw with the iPhone 4’s gyroscope, by sliding a piece of virtual paper (responding to inputs from the gyroscope) under a stationary virtual pencil. Don’t have a 4? It also works with the older iPhone’s accelerometer, only in this mode it’s the pencil that moves. Also works on the iPad.
Not sure this app’ll produce anything prettier than the etch-a-sketch masterpieces I made when I was five, but it’s free right now for a limited time, so it might be cool for a quick impress-your-gyroscopeless-friends session.
Emboldened by a $612.5 million settlement from Research in Motion, a company claiming to have invented wireless e-mail, Friday sued Apple, Google, Microsoft and three other handset makers. NTP Incorporated alleges the companies are violating eight patents on wireless e-mail.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia, is aimed at getting Apple and others to pay licensing fees. In a news release, NTP said the defendants all make hardware or software to deliver e-mail via wireless communications.
DropCopy is a free (for personal use on three machines) utility for transferring files between computers.
Once installed, it puts an unobtrusive circular “black hole” on your desktop. To move files around, drag them on to the black hole and wait for a list of destinations to appear, then drop on the one you want to send to.
Like magic, your file will instantly be sent to that computer. DropCopy is great for any local network where files get moved around. At home, you might simply be moving music files between your laptop and desktop. In the office, you might want to share stuff with colleagues. Either way, DropCopy provides an easy alternative to shared folders and networked storage drives.
It does some really neat stuff, like allow you to grab the clipboard contents of another computer or device, then save that to your own. There’s also a built-in messaging feature.
These days there’s also a version for iPhone and iPod touch that allows you to do pretty much all the same tricks between mobile devices, no intermediary computer required.
Of course, you can share files and send messages for free using other means; particularly Dropbox. But if you’d rather keep your files away from the internet, DropCopy is a great alternative. It’s useful in all sorts of ways, and at just $25 for the non-personal version, a bargain for small business teams.
(You’re reading the 12th post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications: a list of the great Mac apps the team at Cult of Mac value most. Read more.)
Although there are five names on the list of smartphone makers, most eyes are on just two: Apple and Google. While Apple retains its second-place position with 25.4 percent of the market, the Cupertino, Calif. company’s share fell 1 percent between February and May, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Android-based handsets grew from 9 percent of the smartphone market to 13 percent over the same period, a 45 percent jump, the analysts said.
Most of Android’s growth is coming at the expense of other smartphone brands, such as RIM, Microsoft and Palm, all reporting negative growth. Microsoft’s share slipped as partners await an expected fall introduction of the Windows 7 platform. Palm also fell amid its acquisition by HP.
Apple and Google have battled back and forth with competing product releases. Apple announced selling 1.7 million iPhone 4s in the first three days of availability in June. Meanwhile, Google announced last month 160,000 Droid x handsets were activated daily, compared to 100,000 per day in May.
Although Google hopes to grab a few more RIM users by upcoming Blackberry-like products from Samsung and Motorola, the Mountain View, Calif. company still has a long hill to climb. The market-leading RIM has 41.7 percent of the smartphone market, according to comScore.
(Yes, this is tip #18 and it’s appearing out of order – that’s my fault, because I wrote it then forgot to post it. Apologies to all. Now without further ado…)
Spaces is Apple’s implementation of an old idea known as virtual desktops. You might have used virtual desktop software on your PC.
It’s pretty self-explanatory. With Spaces active, your computer suddenly has a bunch of virtual screens hovering in mid-air around your monitor. You can switch between them with a keyboard shortcut or a mouse command, and make it seem like you have much more screen space available than you actually do.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs was named “Smartest CEO in Tech” by Fortune Magazine. Jobs bested Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos in a list of the 50 smartest people in technology. Jobs was described as a “visionary, micromanager, and a showman who creates such anticipation around new products that there releases are veritable holidays,” according to the publication.
Also named were Dendreon’s Mitch Gold, Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Demand Media’s Richard Rosenblatt.
A clone is a bootable backup of your Mac’s hard drive that provides redundancy for both your data and the Macintosh Operating System. Cloning is easy to do and is complementary to other backup methods like Time Machine. The ability to get up and working in minutes after a crash or system update gone awry can be a very useful thing.
Clones provide a way to rollback your Mac OS X installation. You can keep your clone updated using synchronization software to perform incremental updates, and can use your clone to boot another Mac should the need arise.
Globe-trotting IT executive Steve Shantz wrote a short post comparing the battery life of his Windows 7-running Dell XT2 tablet with that of his colleague’s 3G iPad.
Flying from Chicago to Singapore on business, Steve’s Dell battery gives out on him after just 2.5 hours of work. There are many more hours to go. His iPad-toting colleague, meanwhile, lands in Hong Kong and still has plenty of juice left.
Again, in the conference the two of them attend, Steve is left running around looking for power points, while his friend happily cruises through the day without them.
Developer Keven Smith (neither doppelganger nor relation to Silent Bob) has just released a fantastic new text editor for Dropbox users on iOS.
Called Droptext, the app allows users to open, edit and save text files directly within their Dropbox account. It supports standard text files, naturally, but also any file with a text-based mime type, such as HTML, PHP or even C programming code.
If you’re a big Dropbox user like I am, it looks like a great app. It’s available now on the App Store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and costs a mere $0.99.
Trade company Alibaba claims to have a lead on the next-generation iPod Touch that strongly suggests it’ll come with a front-facing camera.
Their lead comes from an LCD assembly unit with digitizer and a stand-alone digitizer, both of which include a hole in the top center which they speculate will form the occulus of a FaceTime-capable iPod Touch.
The only problem with the theory? Sure, Apple probably wants FaceTime on the iPod Touch, but because of the way the iPod Touch is built, putting two back-to-back camera (one forward-facing, the other back-facing) is impossible.
Me, I’m not sure the iPod Touch is going to get a back-facing camera: I think Apple wants FaceTime to gain more ground more than they want the iPod Touch to be able to take snaps. Only the September iPod event will tell, though.
File firmly in the rumor folder, but NewTeeVee is resurrecting the old iOS-driven AppleTV rumor, but with a twist: this time, they say a future $99 AppleTV will feature the ability to stream television shows for just $0.99.
On one hand, such a move would make iTunes television offerings a lot more competitively priced, especially compared to services like Netflix and Hulu Plus… but on the other hand, it seems that this would replace (on the AppleTV, at least) the current purchase scheme of $1.99 – $2.99 per episode, depending on definition.
At the end of the day, though, it all seems a bit expensive to me: $20 bucks to rent a television season is a hard sell when that’s what the DVD will cost. There’s no doubt, though, that a change in the way iTunes currently prices television shows will go a long way to making the AppleTV a lot more popular, though.
As if the antenna and proximity sensor woes weren’t enough now we can add one other issue to the pile of iPhone 4 woes: catching fire. BGR reported today that one unlucky iPhone 4 owner ended up with a “fried iPhone 4” and a “slightly burned” hand.
According to the story the customer attempted to get help with the iPhone 4 by bringing it into a local store, but it was to far gone to be repaired. The incident occurred while the user was plugging the iPhone 4 into their computer using the Apple USB cable that came with it. The conclusion was that the USB port on the iPhone 4 was probably defective and while the iPhone 4 suffered some damage the cable seems to have been damaged the most.
This isn’t the first time that an iDevice has caught fire, since 2009 there have been a number of reported incidents that included: an iPod Nano recall for faulty batteries (Apple eventually updated the battery warning on that recall) and an iPhone 3G also caught on fire ironically at the same spot as this years iPhone 4 — the USB port. Additionally in 2009 a Mac Laptop went up in flames.
While this could happen based on prior reports about the iPhone 3G and iPod Nano it isn’t likely going to happen to you. However, if you are overly worried about things like this then you might consider keeping a pair of oven mitts and a bucket of water (or chemical extinguisher per the comments) handy just in case.
Apple will be giving away 5,000 of these free commemorative t-shirts this weekend at the grand opening of its flagship store in Shanghai.
Note what is says on the back: “Designed in California, Made for China.”
It’s a subtle but important play on Apple’s traditional credit line, which says: “Designed in California, Made in China.”
Given the controversy at Apple’s supplier Foxconn, I asked our Chinese blogger friend Chris Chang if the statement was appropriate. Some may feel that Apple’s relationship with China is exploitative.
“The statement is appropriate,” says Chang. “It’s actually the most attractive part of the shirt. I can’t say that Apple has an exploitative relationship with China, but according to Ron Johnson’s speech in the Shanghai Apple store, I believe that Apple is trying to build up a relationship with China.”
During the store’s press preview, Johnson — the head of Apple’s stores — said the company is planning a big push in China and will open 25 retail outlets there by 2012.
Check out these awesome pictures of Apple’s new Shanghai store, courtesy of our friend Chris Chang of M.I.C Gadget.
Chris’ pictures clearly show how and why Apple is making a killing right now. While other companies are going out of business, Apple is building great glass and steel monuments to its brand that broadcast its growing influence and power — and make tons of money at the same time.
The Shanghai store is the biggest and boldest yet. It’s a big statement of the company’s success in glass and steel. What other corporation anywhere in the world is building such huge architectural monuments to itself?
It harkens back to the old days, when powerful companies built huge skyscrapers or endowed concert halls and libraries. Of course, thanks to the economy, no one is doing it these days — except Apple. And these monuments (Upper West Side, Sainte-Catherine, Carrousel du Louvre, Fifth Avenue, Regent Street) make more money than Tiffany, square-foot-for-square-foot.
You’ve got to marvel at Apple’s cojones.
We start the day off with two hardware and one very soft deal. First up is a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini for $499. Then we take a look at a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro for just $1,540. Finally, we wrap up our highlighted bargains with a leather case for your iPad.
Along the way, we check out many other items for your iPhone, iPod and iPad, including iPad and App Store freebies and price markdowns, as well as cases and software. As usual, details on these and many more products are at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
As unusual as it is to find an electronic gadget manufactured in the U.S. these days, it’s even more unusual for that gadget to hail from New York City — but that’s exactly where Grado’s SR60i is made. Appropriate, because just like the city, these cans have an unpolished-but-genuine persona that’s a little off-putting at first, but incredibly charming once you get past the gritty exterior.
I gawped in disbelief at this picture in the New York Times of Apple’s new store in Shanghai. At fist glance, I thought it was a special effect from a sci-fi movie. The spaceport-looking thing in the background is the Oriental Pearl Tower.
New York Times: Apple Making New Push Into China
A growing number of large US businesses are arming their employees with the iPad, proving that the tablet computer’s usefulness goes way beyond keeping the kids quiet.
Recent corporate converts to the iPad include Wells Fargo, SAP and Telllabs.
“This iPad thing has taken the world by storm,” Ted Schadler, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. told Bloomberg. “It came in as a consumer product and very quickly the people who actually bought them were business people.”
Japan’s third-ranked mobile carrier Softbank reported Wednesday it had 229,500 cell phone subscribers in June, topping the country’s biggest carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc., which recorded 164,000. Second-ranked KDDI Corp. had just 61,300 new subscribers. Softbank is the exclusive iPhone provider in a country where nearly three out of four smartphones are made by Apple.
In April, Softbank’s head, Masayoshi Son, said “the iPhone is selling so well that we are really feeling a boost from it.”Apple sold 1.7 million iPhones in Japan, 72 percent of all smartphones in that country. Indeed, the iPhone is credited with doubling the smartphone segment over 2009, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Predicting sales of a new product based on demand from eager early adopters can be risky. However, one analyst made such a leap. Bernstein Research analyst Tom Sacconaghi told investors Thursday Apple could sell 25 million iPads in 2011. But, then again, it might sell 18 million tablets next year. It kind of depends, you know?
“An analysis based on extrapolating sales trajectories of [the iPhone, iPod and all netbooks] suggests that Apple could sell a staggering 25 million iPads or more in fiscal 2011,” the analyst wrote. This seems to go along with Apple reporting selling three million iPads in the first 80 days.
There’s no shortage of choices available for gabbing with buddies these days, but instant messaging remains a favorite (I’ve actually worked in at least one newsroom where the primary method of communication was IM).
There’s no lack of IM iPhone apps either; but a clean interface, wealth of features, ability to connect with practically every IM service in the galaxy and availability for free makes Meebo the best of these.
Apple’s Shaghai China store opens Saturday. With the impending opening comes comparisons with the Cupertino, Calif. company’s New York City flagship. Yep, the same glass cylinder, the same hoopla, the same moat. Moat?
Yes, along with a 40-foot high glass cylinder (with possibly the largest glass panes in the world) is a moat filled with water. While Apple Senior Vice President of Retail Ron Johnson wanted to focus on the “stunning architecture,” the site Shanghaiist wanted to talk about that moat. “There is an inexplicably shallow moat of water surrounding the store, tripping up those who don’t watch their step,” a writer comments. We aren’t sure about that architecture feature, ourselves. Could it be a concession to China’s government leaders, perhaps a way to track potential troublemakers; look for the wet socks?
