Holly Golightly probably wouldn’t wear her iPad in a front pocket pouch, but in a pinch it may be better than a toting a bulky bag.
As much as we’re crazy about the iPad, carrying it around is still kinda awkward — remember the condom case? — but an Australian company has come up with an intriguing solution.
The iDress positions itself as kind of a chic, kangaroo iPad pouch, a cute to-the-knee number in black cotton sateen, perfect for when it comes time to put down your mouse and pick up a glass of prosecco, if their marketing speak is to be believed.
With Apple’s factory leak in China seemingly spurting iPhones by the palletful into Vietnam and other south-east Asian countries, it’s looking less and less likely that, hardware-wise, Jobs will have anything to surprise us with when he officially unveils the fourth-generation iPhone in four weeks. We know what it looks like, we know its hardware, we know its operating system… heck, we even know what colors it comes in, black and white.
But just in case you weren’t quite convinced by the white faceplate that leaked last week comes these better shots of a fully assembled white iPhone. It could still be fake, of course, but it takes a special kind of incredulity to disbelieve that Apple, after all these leaks, just wouldn’t release the next iPhone in white, of all colors. Either way, guess we’ll know for sure at WWDC.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs will deliver the keynote address at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference June 7 in San Francisco. The announcement by the Cupertino, Calif. company unleashed further speculation Jobs will unveil a new version of Apple’s iPhone. At the 2009 WWDC, Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS.
The consumer electronics giant noted the 2010 WWDC sold out just eight days after tickets became available. The conference, running through June 11, will focus on Application Frameworks, Internet & Web, Graphics & Media, Developer Tools and Core OS. But many onlookers instead are looking to a potential dust-up between Jobs and his well-known ire for Google’s Android and Adobe Flash.
“Watch out Android, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is preparing Apple’s response, and we suspect things could get pretty personal,” predicted 9to5Mac.
Dismayed enough by AT&T’s woeful service that you’re considering hiring a shyster? The Worstphoneever website offers up a helpful class-action lawsuit generator against AT&T that uses your actual call drop data to tell just such a shyster just how bad (and actionable) your service actually is, and help him sue Ma Bell on everyone’s behalf.
The site works by searching for baseband crashes as recorded by your iPhone’s log files, automatically uploading them to the service, saves them to a database and tabulates them. Once Worstphonever has enough data, the site makers claim that they will file a class action lawsuit on behalf of their users, “running Apple and AT&T through the ringer” while giving users a “slice of the action.”
Not that we’d recommend this. There’s obvious privacy concerns associated with uploading your iPhone logs to a third-party, and while AT&T’s service can be atrocious, suing Apple over it just seems sleazy.
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty Monday morning raised her target price on Apple to $310 a share, up from $275, and also increased her prediction for iPhone sales in 2011 to 61.5 million device, a 25 percent premium on Wall Street consensus.
Huberty told investors her more bullish predictions are based on the following insights: The iPhone continues to gain market share, while the Cupertino, Calif. company continues to experience greater-that-expected demand for its new iPad. Also contributing factors: there is still room to grow in China and the once reluctant corporate market is beginning to open up to the iPhone.
Having long hated Apple’s Get a Mac campaign, I was surprised to find myself getting sentimental as I watched this three-minute tribute to the whole Mac vs. PC saga, as put together by OneMoreThing. Minimize Justin Long’s lugubrious smarm and what you’re left with is the core strength of the campaign anyway: John Hodgman’s consistently winsome and hysterical performance as the PC. That core strength, though, always seemed directly opposed to the message: PCs suck. It’s just so hard to hate PCs when their avatar is this awesome. Either way, it’s nice to see Hodgman get one last hurrah: this is a man who earned his paycheck for the last five years. Hurrah!
As you might recall, I reviewed Cadence for iPhone several months ago. I found it a useful app and a fun way to browse your music collection by tempo, not title. It did, however, have a near-killer flaw: a setup process that consumed hours as it added (with lots of errors) tempo data to the entire iTunes library.
The creators of Cadence have released a new version that resolves these problems by connecting the app to EchoNest to just grab tempo information over the air. You simply go into the settings on iPhone, ask it to grab info, and after a few minutes, you’re good to go. Having used Cadence for more than six months, I can say with some confidence that it’s most useful in a party setting, when you’re not sure what you want to hear, but you know the mood you want to bring about. Bear that scenario in mind when contemplating the new, elevated $4.99 price tag.
I have been enamored with Urban Tool ever since I stumbled upon their booth at Macworld. The Austrian company sells a range of super-hip gadget bags, slings and holsters that are as unique as they are hip. Their bags have a modern and sleek look to them.
The company recently released a pair of carriers just for the iPad, the PocketBar and the SlotBar. They are not to be missed. Go ahead, release your inner hipster.
Raise your hand if, like me, you think iPad apps like Netflix are far too blithe about letting users indulge their every movie-viewing whim, allowing access to videos whenever they damn-well please.
Put your hands down. You’re not like me at all. But I know there are movie purists out there for whom cinema is an experience, rather than just two hours spent killing time while waiting for a significant other’s root canal to finish.
For the purists, then: Cinema for iPad, a $3 app that screens movies on its own schedule, with a virtual “theatre lobby” that lets users discuss the movie they’ve just experienced. Once the app is purchased, the movies are free, but we’ve no clue what the developer‘s tastes are like, or how frequently the movies are rotated.
We’ve raved about Hippo Remote Pro so enthusiastically, one would think it were made of gold-pressed latinum; that’s because it’s probably one of the (if not the) best soft-remote app currently available for the iPhone.
And now it’s better: Its developers have added a heavily customizable gamepad function — cool for watching the life being sucked from that annoying Blood Elf rogue on a 52-inch HDTV while laying about on the couch with a mojito (or a rootbeer float, if you’re so inclined/underaged). Of course, that’s in additon to the trackpad function and oodles of application-specific profiles for Hulu, Plex, Chrome, and the rest it already comes with.
Hippo Remote Pro is $5; there’re also Basic ($2) and free versions, but neither of those include the gamepad.
We close out the week with a trio of software deals. A new crop of App Store freebies were released, including “Message in a Bottle Pro,” a random messaging application. Also on tap is the iPhone/iPod touch game “JetBall,” a brick breaker. Finally, whether you want to work or just handle life’s daily tasks, there is a deal on the appropriate Apple application package. Either iWorks ’09 or iLife ’09 are $41.
As always, details on these and many other items (such as an iPhone/iPod dock extender) are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
It looks like the final curtain has closed on Apple’s award-winning “Get a Mac” campaign launched in 2006.
Apple has pulled the ads from the company site, the page now redirects visitors to “Why You’ll Love a Mac.” (Nostalgics can still find them on YouTube, though.)
The last ones, released in October 2009, were surprisingly clever but Mac man Justin Long speculated in an interview last month that the ads had run their course:
What’s the status on those Apple commercials?
JL: You know, I think they might be done. In fact, I heard from John, I think they’re going to move on. I can’t say definitively, which is sad, because not only am I going to miss doing them, but also working with John. I’ve become very close with him, and he’s one of my dearest, greatest friends. It was so much fun to go do that job, because there’s not a lot to it for me. A lot of it is just keeping myself entertained between takes, and there’s no one I’d rather do it with than John.
Are you sad or glad to see them go? Which one was your favorite?
Is Apple the IBM of 1984? That seems to be the implication Google wants mobile consumers to draw through a new ad and comments made at the Internet giant’s I/O conference. In a slap at Apple and the iPhone, a Google executive said his company saved consumers from a ‘Draconian future.’
“If Google did not act, we faced a Draconian future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice,” Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra told the crowd. The words were eerily like another anti-Apple message made last week by Adobe’s founders.
The drumbeat continues as Google takes on Apple in yet another realm Cupertino once thought secure. The Internet giant plans to take on iTunes, adding music downloads to its Android Marketplace.
At first, owners of Android devices will need to visit Google’s Web shop to purchase and download tunes to their cell phones (and later tablets, potentially). Unclear is when the music download service will become directly available through Android-based handsets, according to TechCrunch.
Two new surveys released bear good news for both Apple and the beleaguered publishing industry: More than 90 percent of consumers love their iPad. The surveys by ChangeWave found demand for the tablet device is increasing after the product’s introduction and that iPad owners are three-times as likely to read newspapers and magazines compared to owners of other e-readers.
In a survey conducted this month, 7 percent of people said they would “very likely” purchase an iPad with 13 percent saying they were “somewhat likely.” What’s intriguing is that a similar survey, conducted in February prior to the iPad’s release, found 4 percent “very likely” would buy the Apple device and another 9 percent saying they were “somewhat likely” to purchase the highly-hyped gadget. The numbers indicate a positive word-of-mouth for the iPad, even after the device moved from rumor to reality.
Got an iPhone 3G and looking for a project to occupy yourself this weekend? The binaries of hacker David Wang’s Android port for the iPhone 3G has now been released.
Android on the iPhone is still more of a “because you can” proposition than recommended for day-to-day use, but follow Wang’s somewhat complicated guide and you’ll soon have an iPhone that dual-boots into Android.
There’s some drawbacks, of course: Wang has yet to implement any sort of power management into Android for iPhone, so your fully-charged handset will only last about an hour before it shuts off. Also, if you want to switch back to the iPhone OS, you need to do a reboot.
Still, if you’re interested in what the mobile space looks like from the other side, Android for iPhone looks like a worthwhile little hack.
There’s plenty of tower defense games available for the iPhone, pitting players against wave after wave of enemies as varied as robots, zombies and monsters, but Fluffylogic’s foray into the genre is sure to pique the interests of any geek who has ever watched The Empire Strikes Back.
Star Wars: The Battle For Hoth puts iPhone gamers in charge of repelling the Imperial advance with heavy weapon soldier, 1.4 FD P-Tower Laser Cannons and X-Wing Control Towers, while the Empire is provisioned with Viper Probe Droids, Snowtroopers, 74-Z Speeder Bikes, AT-ST Walkers, TIE Fighters, and hulking At-AT Walkers.
Brilliant. The Battle for Hoth is the scenario the tower defense genre was practically invented to simulate. There’s no explicit word on release date or price right now, but Fluffylogic says Star Wars: Battle for Hoth’s release is “imminent,” so keep refreshing the App Store.
At yesterday’s I/O event, Google officially unveiled their long rumored GoogleTV platform, a software platform that will be baked into new televisions and set-top boxes that merges cable and online video in a single service.
Essentially, Google TV takes advantage of Google’s search business by making it easier for you to find the television you want to watch, whether its pumped out by your cable provider or available on the Internet. Once you find the show you want to watch, you can choose what to do with it, whether that’s watch it, schedule an alarm or record it to your DVR.
Google TV also incorporates a Boxee like home screen, with some special functionality: integration with Android Apps. The service can even augment the television you’re watching: one particularly neat function demonstrated was the ability to automatically translate a television show’s closed caption subtitles into another language in real time.
It looks fantastic… and also makes Apple’s own “hobby” of a television platform look more anemic than ever. If Google can’t prod Apple into taking the home theater market seriously, we might as well just give up on AppleTV for good.
Even the iPhone isn’t powerful enough yet to run Blizzard’s fanatically popular World of Warcraft MMORPG, but thanks to the World of WarcraftArmory App has long given the mobile night elf or orc alike the ability to access their characters’ stats, check the leaderboards, browse items or calculate their talents.
A forthcoming update to the Armory App finally adds in a long-requested killer feature: the ability to use the auction house out of game. The feature is called Remote Auction House, and it allows you to browse the auction house for free out of game, or to pay an extra subscription price of $3 per month to buy, create or re-list items without ever logging into your Mac.
The subscription fee is a bold move, but Blizzard has proved time and time again that the die-hards raiders will keep ponying up. I’ve known more than a few gamers in my time who spend hours a day in the Auction House: a few bucks a month to allow them to do their auction grinding on the subway or at the park would, to them, be a small price to pay for a little more sunshine in their lives.
The updated app is now out, but the Remote Auction House functionality hasn’t yet been pushed live. Expect it soon.
User ratings on iTunes alone can be misleading when you’re trying to decide which movie to buy or rent. A perfectly execrable movie might have a four or five star rating thanks to the efforts of a small pool of fans to bump its rating up.
The latest addition to iTunes seems particularly useful, then, in avoiding buying or renting a dud film: as of now, the iTunes movie store features the reviews of Top Critics and the Tomatometer rating score from the Rotten Tomatoes movie review aggregation site to let you see, at a glance, what critics thought of the movie you’re about to buy.
I hope this is just the first step towards Apple bringing more outside review data into iTunes as a whole. Being able to see at a glance if a movie is worth my time is great, but it would be fantastic to see the same sort of aggregation happen when I want to buy a new album, or even an App Store game.
Are you ready to get vooked? You know you want to. And a little company called Vook, with offices in Alameda and New York, is more than happy to show you how.
Vook began with a mission to unite the disparate worlds of books and videos into one complete, blended story. With an innovative platform where all forms of media come together to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts, vooks weave together content from talented writers with professionally shot and edited video to give readers/viewers/users a whole new way of experiencing creative output.
And what better vehicle to deliver the experience of this new medium than Apple’s iPad?
It’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.
This time, we review Amazing Animals: Savanna, Battle Bears: Zombies!, Creepy Caverns, Easy Checklist, Find in Page, Flaboo!, Truckers Delight, Tune Runner, and War Chess (iPad).
WiFi operates in unregulated portions of the radio spectrum. These frequencies are shared with things like microwave ovens, cordless phones, garage door openers and an increasing plethora of other WiFi devices. What many WiFi networks face these days is like trying to tune in to a weak radio station in a busy city market.
This week a few tips and suggestions to try when things aren’t working.
Mail Act-On is a unique plug-in for Apple’s own Mail application. It won’t appeal to everyone, but it is an excellent tool for managing lots of email and keeping it all organized.
It serves the needs of two distinct sorts of person: those who live most of their working hours inside Mail, and those who want to minimize the time they spend in it. Either way, Mail Act-On is a godsend.
