Eltima Software has graciously given Cult of Mac 10 SyncMate licenses to give away.
We’ll post an official contest tweet on @cultofmac at 11am PST (2pm EST, 7pm GMT). The first 10 non-bot retweets of the official contest tweet will get their very own SyncMate license.
Of course, if you don’t win, you can pick up a copy of SyncMate from Eltima Software for $39.95.
The announcement of the iPad has done a lot of things: it’s stoked up excitement in the Mac using community, it’s got a bunch of developers feverishly coding exciting new stuff, and it’s got retailers and cell phone companies the world over drooling over the money they can make from it.
And it’s also somewhat upset my plans for buying a new Mac.
There aren’t many games on the iPhone platform that can match games on the big 64-bit boxes for production value — but Electronic Arts Mobile‘s Madden NFL 10 can, and does, fantastically. Unfortunately, it also has one gaping hole.
It’s been a month since my review of Google’s “SuperPhone”, the Nexus One. Since that time, we’ve surfed, updated facebook, navigated, called, played endless hands of cribbage and even tried to freeze it to death on a trip to Dayton Ohio. Follow me after the jump to find out does the “SuperPhone” stand the test of time, or is it a phonebooth’d Clark Kent.
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 Pastebot, 007: Top Agent, Jackson Pollock, Rhythm Racer, Judgement Day War, and TweakyBeat.
We close the week featuring two hardware and one software deal. Several MacBooks are being offered, starting at $749 for a 2.13GHz white model. Also, a Mac mini (2.53GHz Core 2) with 4GB of RAM and two 500GB drives for $985. The App Store has a new batch of freebies, including “Paradise Monkeys,” a version of the classic whack-a-mole game.
As always, you can get details on these and many other bargains at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCRijF7lxzI
Steve Wozniak recounts a nice bit of Silicon Valley folk lore in this excerpt from the Discovery Forum interview where he talks about how he got the idea of bringing color to the Mac after staying up four nights in a row to meet a deadline for Atari.
Wish sleepless nights brought me that kind of inspiration…
Apple’s iPhone nearly doubled its shipments in the fourth quarter, earning it 3rd place among smartphone makers. The handset had 14.4 percent of the market, making further inroads on No. 2 Research in Motion, according to researchers at IDC.
The new data show Apple had a nearly 82 percent year-over-year growth rate, jumping to 14.4 percent of the smartphone market in 2009, up from 9.1 percent in 2008.
“Apple’s iconic iPhone added another chapter to its short history by nearly doubling its shipments from the same quarter a year ago,” according to the report entitled “Worldwide Converged Mobile Device Market.”
Silicon Insider posted this interesting graph putting into perspective exactly how large Apple is, compared with the other big three tech companies out there. And it’s all about cash.
Essentially, Apple is the second most cash rich company out there, with a little under $39.8 billion in cash and short and long term securities to call upon. Microsoft’s technically ahead of them, but it’s a comparatively small lead of a paltry $0.6 billion dollars… and while Apple’s cash reserves continue to rise, Microsoft’s have leveled off over the last half year.
Then comes Google, with only $24.6 billion in cash and investments, and finally Intel, with $18.9 billion on hand.
All of these companies have major assets, but Apple is clearly positioned to become more cash rich than Microsoft in the coming months. We’re on the brink of a huge transition in the tech landscape: the day that Apple is bigger than Microsoft. About time.
The Siri iPhone app wants to make getting dinner reservations or concert tickets as easy going to a concierge: all you have to do is open the app, tell it what you want, and it’ll arrange the rest.
For example, say you’re in New York City for an important business trip, and, after an evening of drinks with your colleagues, you all decide — as one sometimes does — that you want to go to a concert… specifically, by an industrial metal band specializing in sadomasochist leitmotifs.
All you’d do in that case is launch the Siri app and say, “Get me tickets for four to the next Genitorturers concert.” And that’s it. Siri will automatically identify your location through GOPS, then search its partners including OpenTable, MovieTickets, StubHub, CitySearch and TaxiMagic for the show.
Neat stuff, but knowing how finicky voice recognition can still be, using Siri might be less like getting your evening sorted through a concierge than screaming into the hearing horn of a shell-shocked veteran. You can grab it for free through the App Store.
Magazine and news publishers are collectively hoping that e-readers and tablet computers will save their businesses, and Apple’s eager to get them on board in developing high-quality animated versions of their publications to help get an iPad into each newspaper and magazine reader’s home, so it’s no surprise that Steve Jobs met with fifty top executives of the New York Times yesterday.
What was surprising, though, was Jobs’ attire: a magical top hat, of the sort championed by Mr. William Wonka and Miss Marlene Dietrich.
According to New York Mag, “When Apple recently booked the cellar dining room at Pranna for a talk with 50 top executives from the New York Times, even restaurant higher-ups didn’t know who their VIP guest would be. But last night, Jobs came strolling in wearing what our source calls “a very funny hat — a big top hat kind of thing.”
Like the hat, most details of the meeting are anecdotal. Jobs apparently admitted he likes to hold the Sunday edition of the New York Times in his hands, ordered a mango lassi and penne for dinner (neither of which were on the menu) and otherwise just showed off Apple’s new device to executives while answering questions.
Overall, it seems like the NYT executives present were interested in the iPad, but unwilling to lock themselves into a single delivery platform. Business as usual, in other words. Still, who knew that the man who hasn’t once been seen in the five years wearing anything besides blue jeans and a black turtleneck was such a secret dandy?
Add Hachette Book Group to the growing list of publishers using Apple’s iPad to drive a wedge between Amazon and its requirement for $9.99 pricing on ebooks. The company joins Macmillan and HarperCollins adopting Apple’s “agency model” pricing and making waves in an area Amazon once dominated.
“There are many advantages to the agency model, for our authors, retailers, consumers, and publishers,” Hachette USA CEO David Young said Thursday night. “Without this investment in our authors, the diversity of books available to consumers will contract, as will the diversity of retailers, and our literary culture will suffer,” he added. The remark about a lack of diversity in ebook retailers was an obvious dig at Amazon, which until the iPad, enjoyed the lion’s share of control over pricing.
Just days after Apple asked an iPhone app developer to remove references to Google’s Android Marketplace, the Cupertino, Calif. company is advising location-aware applications can’t simply help Google’s AdMob serve location-based advertising.
“If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store,” Apple warns.
Now that we all know what the iPad is going to look like, the library of concept designs we used to illustrate the old “Apple Tablet” rumor posts look pretty silly, but they’re occasionally worth examining for ideas just not on what Apple could do with the iPad next… but what accessory makers might do.
This Yanko concept for the “MacView” tablet seemed like a pipe-dream even a few weeks ago, but what I particularly like is the iMac-like display shell it slides into in desktop mode.
Really, there’s no reason an accessory maker couldn’t make that work. Since the iPad can be paired with any Bluetooth keyboard, all this really is is a stand: design a free app that automatically pairs your keyboard with your iPad and you’ve got a pretty decent, touch-controlled iMac Mini.
A lot of people are nonplussed by the iPad because it doesn’t seem so new, or even very useful. It’s just a big iPod touch. So what?
But one of the most interesting things Apple said has about the iPad is how it improves the “experience” of doing everyday computing tasks — email, web browsing, making photo slideshows.
Again, people say so what? We’ve already got laptops for email and watching movies. But improving experiences is exactly what Apple is great at. The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, but the first anybody could enjoy using. The same thing is going to propel the iPad into the mainstream. Everyday tasks like sending email and reading newspapers are going to be so much nicer on the iPad than any other device. (see for example the New York Times screenshot after the jump.)
Software developer Fraser Spiers has been digging through Apple’s iPad videos, pulling screenshots to take a closer look at the details of the iPad’s UI. His conclusion? It’s going to provide a very good experience not just for media consumption, but also media creation.
Look at what’s in here: a full stylesheet engine, multi-column page layout, a complete library of cell formulae and a full set of builds and transitions. You can create a Magic Move transition on the iPad. That’s probably the most advanced technique you can do in Keynote, and it’s there on the iPad.
The New York Times has a fascinating piece by ex-Microsoftie Dick Brass on how interdepartmental fighting is causing the company to fail. Microsoft has turned into an anti-innovation company, he says.
Internecine warfare among Microsoft’s divisions has created a “dysfunctional” corporate culture that thwarts creativity instead of nurturing it. “The company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers,” he writes.
Welcome to the “iPhone photography toy of the week” slot. Today’s toy is: InfiniteScope.
Of course Wired is prepared for Apple’s iPad, says Chris Anderson, the magazine’s editor in chief.
Responding to Tuesday’s piece that Wired‘s digital version won’t work on the iPad, Anderson says the magazine knew all along about Apple’s aversion to Flash and Air, and has a solution.
“Obviously we knew about Apple and Flash from the beginning and there were no surprises there,” he says in an email. “We have a solution and will launch on the iPad according to plan and on schedule, along with Android and Windows — it’s a full cross-platform strategy, which was the idea all along.”
Anderson wouldn’t say what the solution is, but it’s a good one, he claims.
We begin with another deal from Apple on its Mac Pro Xeon workstations, starting at $2,149 for a 2.66GHz model. Next up is Philips docking cradle for the iPod, just $19. We wrap up our top list of deals with the ever-popular streaming-radio Squeezebox radio from Logitech.
Along the way, we check out several software packages, including new App Store price drops, a physics application and Assemble, a mapping and social networking tool.
As always, for details on these and many other items, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page, which starts right after the jump.
The iPad has already launched a thousand jokes, some of which you can wear some on your chest, or your privates, before you can even buy one in March.
See some examples after the jump:
Verizon getting the iPhone later this year is no longer a done deal in the mind of one financial analyst. Indeed, Credit Suisse has downgraded the carrier, expecting AT&T could retain an exclusive iPhone contract until at least mid-2011.
The financial firm downgraded its recommendation for Verizon to Neutral, down from Outperform, and shaved its target price to $30 per share, down from $32.
Although Verizon may “eventually” be awarded an iPhone contract as Apple drops its exclusivity in the U.S., “there is much greater probability that AT&T keeps exclusivity for another 12-18 months than investors realize,” Credit Suisse told investors Thursday.
Prevailing wisdom previously was that AT&T’s exclusive contract would end in June of this year and Verizon was the likely beneficiary. However “we no longer think AT&T will lose iPhone exclusivity in mid-2010,” the financial company writes. The delay could benefit Research in Motion’s RIM in the U.S., it said.
The analysis comes a day after reports Verizon and Apple were “still talking” about an iPhone deal. AT&T may have underbid Verizon and other carriers to win the iPad contract. Although the carrier would only say its iPad data plan “pricing speaks for itself,” AT&T beat out Sprint, T-Mobile and others to connect iPad users.
Apple recently came to AT&T’s defense amid questions about the carrier’s 3G network. Apple’s chief operating officer Tim Cook told reporters he had “very high confidence” AT&T can correct problems that have plagued reception.
[Via Barron’s]
In the wake of widely reported yellowing and flickering display issues on Apple’s line of 27-inch iMacs, rumors have it that Apple has halted production until they get to the bottom with the problem.
Apple’s denied the production halt, but if a UK-based Apple Authorized Service Provider speaking to Gizmodo is to be trusted, the situation’s a lot more dire than Apple is letting on.
Yesterday, we alerted you to blossoming galleries of attractive young women posing in various states of undress with their iPhones.
But, hey, iPhone fetish pics aren’t limited to the fair sex: there are a few galleries dedicated to iPhone Guys, too. Plus the NSFW user-generated Guys with iPhones website.
Amazon obviously has a lot to fear from the iPad, and they seem to know it, if their latest acquisition is anything to go by: they have just purchased Touchco, a small company that makes very cheap multitouch displays. Oh, and they are merging it into their Kindle division. Duh.
Touchco’s touchscreen technology is pretty cool: not only is it cheap, but it’s sensitive to pressure, and can detect an infinite number of simultaneous touches. It’s also totally transparent, which means it won’t mute the full color LCD screens for which it is designed like other touchscreens solution.
It’s pretty clear Amazon’s planning a truly impressive, full-color, multitouch update to the Kindle… but they need it sooner rather than later. The iPad’s not even out yet, and it looks like Apple’s won the battle. Better crack the whips on those Touchco engineers, Amazon.
It is pretty clear Apple has declared a silent war on Google. CEO Steve Jobs allegedly has mocked the Mountain View, Calif. company’s well-known “Do No Evil” mantra and even blames the Internet giant for trying to “kill” Cupertino’s iconic iPhone. However, that animosity appears to have spilled over into Apple’s iPhone App Store approval process. Apple asked a developer to delete mention Google’s Android in an application’s description.
In an email to the developer of “Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab” developer Tim Novikoff, Apple wrote “it would be appropriate to remove ‘Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!’ from the application’s description.
Apple wrote that the edit was required to “avoid an interruption in the availability” of the flash card application.
The note from Apple said the app’s description, which also includes other usual promotional material, “contains inappropriate or irrelevant information.” However, the company is likely not objecting to the developer mentioning inclusions in Newsday or various iPhone design books.
