We cap the week with a trio of top deals. First is Apple’s 802.11n Airport Extreme wireless base station for $129 from the Apple Store. Next up: Mac Pro Xeon Workstations starting at $2,549 for a 2.93GHz quad-core. Finally, a new batch of App Store freebies, including AmAze, a GPS worldwide turn-by-turn app.
Along the way, we’ll look at other bargain gadgets, such as the 4 Door Media Road Mouse and Low Grav Racer 2. As always, details on these and many other deals are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
It’s just so charming when programmers forget about the App Store and universal binaries for a second, blow the dust off that old Apple IIc+ in the basement and code up something new… like this awesome wavetable synth, programmed, compiled and sold by chiptune musicians 8 Bit Weapon.
Called the Digital Music Synthesizer, the application isperhaps the only wavetable synth for Apple’s 8 bit machines, and runs on the Apple IIe, IIc and IIc+, with support for up to eight voices including acousting piano, vibraphone, acoustic guitar, electric bass, trumpet, clarinet, square wave, sawtooth wave, sine wave, and the banjo. You can listen to a sample of what the Digitial Music Synthesizer can do here.
The best part? You can order a 5.25-inch floppy of DMS from 8 Bit Weapon for only $19.95.
True, it’s probably only of real interest to chiptune artists interested in generating the most accurate retro-bleeping sounds possible, but it’s still wonderful to listen to songs performed on software freshly programmed for Apple computers that may be dead, but not forgotten.
Facebook Chat is a wonderful little service opening you up to the incessant, sub-literate, real-time blatherings of the wide array of superficial acquaintances you’ve coalesced over the many years: the dim-witted teenage cousins, the sociopathic ex-boyfriends, the senile but sweet grannies, the LOLing old high school friends.
Or at least that’s what it is like for me, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve already turned Facebook Chat off. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, to find out you’ve got a more articulate gaggle of Facebook friends. So good news! Facebook has just posted instructions on how to access Facebook Chat through iChat, even when you’re not signed in to Facebook proper.
The set-up is pretty easy. All you do is go to the iChat’s “Preferences”, menu, click “Accounts” add a new account, select “Jabber” from the pull-down menu and then type in your screen name ([email protected]) and password. You then edit your “Server Options” to point to chat.facebook.com at port 5222, unticking SSL as you go. Click OK and you’re all set to harass and be harassed by Facebook friends through iChat at any time. You’ll be being brow-beaten for never responding to their chats in no time.
Although the iPad’s introduction was greeted by some with a ho-hum attitude, Apple’s new tablet device has sparkeddeveloper interest, in January nearly tripling the number of applications created, researchers said Friday.
As iPad frenzy reached a crescendo, development for the App Store nearly tripled, with more than 1,600 applications created in January compared to under 600 in December, said Flurry Analytics. The company’s “Smartphone Industry Pulse” for January 2010 tracked more than 20,000 mobile applications.
iPhone users quickly tire of applications, according to a new study. The number of iPhone owners that use an app at least once a week fell from 40 percent after the first month to 5 percent by the sixth month, researchers said.
The study by Flurry Analytics also found the rate of user retention nearly identical for both Apple’s iPhone and phones running Google’s Android software. “We believe underlying reasons include the fact that Android handsets are capturing a more mainstream audience similar to the iPhone and that Android handsets have improved relative to the iPhone handset,” the analytics firm said.
The mysterious Mac Pro error that caused Apple’s highest-end desktops to start glowing, vibrating and rip fillings from users’ teeth every time an MP3 was played has spurred Apple to release the Mac Pro Audio Update 1.0.
Unfortunately, it’s only available for Mac Pro (Early 2009) computers running Mac OS X 10.6.2. That leaves out a swathe of other Mac Pro owners who are also reportedly suffering problems, but hopefully, Apple will solve their audio-related CPU overheating issues soon, before their Mac Pros turn into miniature fusion reactors.
Anyone having CPU overheating issues on their Mac Pro tried the fix? How’d it work out for you?
Tech writer Leo Laporte didn’t quite buy the story that South Korean iPhone owners adopt snack-sausage stylus sticks to use their devices with gloves on in winter.
In the time-honored tradition of investigative journalism, he decided to check it out for himself. He didn’t happen to have a meat stick handy, so he tried an appropriately stylus-shaped cheese stick instead. (For the record, it was “chilly” and string cheese).
Although reports have appeared suggesting Apple is developing a “skunk works” focused on developing its own search engine, the Cupertiono, Calif. company has 100 million reasons to stand pat. The company receives $100 million each year from Google as part of a revenue-sharing agreement placing the Mountain View, Calif. firm’s search engine on iPhones, according to an anonymous source.
Apple is “getting over $100 million a year from Google in its revenue share deal, according to our source,” writes Silicon Alley Insider. Earlier this year, BusinessWeek reported Apple might throw Google overboard, using Microsoft’s Bing for the iPhone.
The revenue, while not significant in terms of its $15.6 billion reported in January, is still enough for the company not to expend resources to compete in what the source termed a market already with “too many options.”
As Apple and Google compete on more and more fronts, agreement is becoming ever more difficult. When Apple first introduced the iPhone, a pact to offer Google Maps took just two weeks to hammer out. But the same deal for the later iPhone 3G and 3GS required six months. Those talks were “full of acrimony” as Apple kept rebuffing Google attempts to gain more access to the map data, according to the anonymous source.
Amazon isn’t standing still in the new rivalry with Apple’s iPad for ebook consumers. Just a week after the Seattle-based maker of the Kindle announced it would buy a multitouch screen manufacturer and design a color e-book reader comes word Amazon will give free Kindles to its best “Amazon Prime” customers.
“A reliable source tells us Amazon wants to give a free Kindle to every Amazon Prime subscriber,” Tech Crunch’s Michael Arrington writes Friday. Amazon Prime is a $79 per year subscription program providing free two-day shipping on items purchased from the online retailer. Subscribers are frequent Amazon customers, including ebooks for the Kindle.
Remember the old ‘Lucy’ show where she steps up to the grocery store checkout and wins a prize for being the millionth customer? Fast-forward a half-century and you have Apple preparing to commemorate its 10 billionth iTunes sale since its 2003 inauguration. Instead of free groceries for life, the Cupertino, Calif. company plans to mark the event with a $10,000 iTunes card for the lucky customer.
“iTunes changed the way you buy music, making songs and albums available for download, day or night. Seven years later, we’re about to celebrate our biggest milestone for music, yet — 10 billion songs download,” Apple announced at its “10 Billion Song Countdown” website.
Mobile Safari is a lovely browser but lacks a few features, and one of those is Find-in-page. If you want to find a specific piece of text on a very long web page, you have to resort to third-party fixes.
There are a variety of bookmarklets, alternative browsers and add-ons around, but this latest one is a bit different. Although it’s basically just a bookmarklet, it’s being distributed as an app on the App Store, for a fee of 99 cents.
It’s called Find in Page, and just from the title you know what it does. Here’s a simple demo video:
What separates this from other bookmarklets is the extra interface controls that appear above Safari’s built-in navigation controls when you’re using it. They let you flick between instances of your search term, or start a new search, without having to start all over again.
The app itself simply adds the bookmarklet to Mobile Safari’s bookmarks folder; in theory, you need only run it once to do this, then you can delete it from your device. But you might want to keep it around in case your bookmarks get edited or lost and you need to add it again.
When the default iPhone/iPod Touch calculator just won’t cut it for your computational needs, PCalc is there to help. PCalc is great, because you won’t need to carry around the TI-83 anymore, and chicks won’t know that you’re solving a complex math equation your iPhone. They’ll just assume you’re updating your Facebook Status.
Step Two: Tell us why you want the PCalc and what you’ll use it for
Step Three: Monitor our Facebook page between 12:00pm PST (3:00 EST) and 12:15pm (3:15pm)
Step Four: We post the codes within the above timeframe, and you try to grab one before they are taken! We’ve got 10 codes, and they expire in a few days, so make sure you redeem them IMMEDIATELY.
Who knows — soon, having to watch your cell minutes might just be a thing of the past, as more communication apps embrace VoIP over 3G after Apple nixed its no-Internet-calls-over-3G policy. The latest to do so is Fring, announcing today that calls — and video calls — can now be made over the 3G network (in addition to the already available wifi call/videocall function).
FastMac principal Michael Lowdermilk shows off the iV Light prototype iPhone cover/battery pack/flash attachment.
SAN FRANCISCO MACWORLD 2010 — It’s hard to miss the FastMac booth at Macworld. Just to the right of the Expo floor’s main entrance, the growing gadget and peripherals company has a prime space on the first aisle that was chock-a-block with visitors clogging the walkway to peer in at product demos and snap up the company’s awesome Apple-oriented t-shirts on the conference’s opening day Thursday.
We received an exclusive demo of a product FastMac is rightfully excited about — an updated version of its iV extended battery and portable charger that could soon mute some of the widespread criticism of the iPhone’s anemic battery life.
Many products in the extended battery class are clumsy and brickish. Despite their utility they often fall into disuse because they fundamentally alter the sleek and sexy feel of the so-called Jesus Phone. The new iV, which will apparently come in two flavors, the iV Light and an as-yet unnamed version, could make many power hungry iPhone users rethink the proposition.
With a new, super light-weight construction and supple rubber-like feel, the next-gen iVs will come with a full enclosure for 100% protection of the phone in a form factor that barely increases the weight and dimensions of the naked phone.
With a built-in LED light that calibrates with the iPhone’s camera, still and video captures in low-light situations should help elevate iPhone photography to new levels of quality and creativity.
The still-unnamed product, which should be available “soon,” according to FastMac principal Michael Lowdermilk, will incorporate a red LED which, in combination with a free remote control app, will turn an iPhone into a universal remote that can be used to change TV channels, stereo settings and a host of other useful and disruptive functions.
With no looking back, Macworld is clearly moving on in the post-Apple era and companies such as FastMac stand to gain increased attention with innovative products such as the iV — this is definitely a company to watch.
Prepress manager Graham Clarke is trying to bring offshore jobs back onshore by investing in easy-to-use masking software.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Graham Clarke, prepress manager at TravelSmith, a travel clothing website, is wandering Macworld in search of software to help him bring offshore jobs back onshore.
Clarke is looking for easy-to-use masking software, which will allow his company to bring a lot of image processing work — currently performed in China at rock-bottom rates — back to the U.S.
Travelsmith processes about 6,000 product images a year. Each has 10 or 15 masks, which are currently processed in China for $10 per image. “It’s very long, boring and labor intensive,” explains Clarke.
“Now it’s like painting,” Clarke says. “It’s so quick and easy, why pay for the labor? If we’re paying someone $10 to do something that takes 10 minutes then it’s time to bring it back in-house. It’s ironic. What work went offshore is now coming back because it’s so easy to do.”
Liana Lehua of the Fittorrent website "bumping" her contact details at Macworld.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Years ago at Palm conferences everyone used to get out their Palm Pilots and beam contact information at each other via infrared.
The tradition is alive and well at Macworld, except people are using the popular Bump iPhone app. The free app transfers contact info wirelessly via Wi-Fi or 3G when two iPhones are bumped together.
Wandering the show floor, you can see people bumping their iPhones together. I saw one group of about six people standing in a circle bumping each other.
“I made them all do it,” explained Liana Lehua of the Fittorrent website, nodding at the rest of the group. “I don’t carry business cards, so everyone downloaded the app.”
Much to my surprise and delight, the crowds are showing up in droves for Macworld. Though the gates opened just 30 minutes ago, the show floor is already crowded with attendees.
“It’s a zoo up there,” said one paserby who queued up to get an entrance badge.
True, the show is restricted to the Moscone Center’s smaller North Hall (instead of both South and North halls), and it’s not as jammed as some previous opening days, but it’s still a very healthy crowd.
To be honest, I’ve always hated the Macworld show floor. The throngs get old really quick, with people shuffling along in a Magadon dream, bumping you with rucksacks full of crap, or interrupting a briefing with dumb questions.
But still, I’d be sorry to see it go. So best of luck to Paul Kent and co. Long live Macworld!
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Helped perhaps by low expectations, David Pogue’s opening keynote here was a surprising success, playing to a packed, standing-room-only audience and bringing in a steady stream of laughs at Apple’s expense.
Pogue’s keynote was a variety show, with interviews, skits, singing and dancing — and a one-act play starring LeVar Burton as Steve Jobs.
We start off with a deal on Apple’s 24-inch iMac desktop computers. The unit is available for $1,380 from Small Dog Electonics, and includes a 2.93GHz Core 2 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 640GB drive and three years of AppleCare. Next up is a 1TB Time Capsule. The802.11n base station and storage device is offered at $270. (There’s also a deal on a 500GB version for $160). Finally, we check out the latest batch of marked-down iPhone and iPod touch apps, including “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.”
For details on these and many other bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — New York Times tech columnist David Pogue just kicked off Macworld Expo with an impression of Steve — Steve Ballmer, that is, not Jobs.
Pogue stormed the stage grunting and whooping in an exuberant impersonation of the Microsoft CEO, who is famous for his Monkey Boy stage appearances.
“Steve Jobs would have been too obvious,” Pogue said.
It wasn’t a bad start to the Expo. Except for the obligatory song, Pogue is bringing the house down with a string of good jokes at the expense of Apple, AT&T and Twitter.
I’m one of the few avowed fans of Google’s Chrome browser here at Cult of Mac, but it’s definitely got its problems. As Craig eloquently pointed out, it’s a browser utterly dismissive of Apple’s own UI design principles, and the Chrome for Mac beta has a number of shocking holes in its feature set…. biggest among them the lack of a bookmark manager, a cookie manager, a task manager, bookmark sync and extension support.
Guess what features were just added to the Chrome for Mac beta? Hint: Craig’s not going to be any happier.
You should at least check it out: it’s a fuller featured browser than Safari, and the new beta not only brings Chrome for Mac up to spec compared to Chrome on other platforms, but the addition of extensions, managers and sync finally makes Chrome for Mac a serious competitor to Firefox.
If you’re interested in trying it out or upgrading your copy of Chrome, you can download the newest beta here.
This waterproof case for the iPad will probably provide more consumer protection against unnecessary purchases than traditional spending prophylactics.
When the iPad was unveiled, many of us at Cult of Mac who are bag/case junkies wondered just how you’d best carry the device around.
With enough time, cool cases are sure to come. But the iPad is a somewhat oddball size to protect and serve — swaddled in cloth cases it’ll probably look, well, even more pad-like and hard to use on the go, with rubber or plastic border protection like a cell phone it’ll be an awkward size.
This clear envelope style with blue or purple border costs $19.99 from the ironically-monikered TrendyDigital Design. It can also be worn around your neck or shoulder with adjustable strap and was originally designed for the Kindle or Sony e-readers.
The iPhone already plays Doom better than just about any smartphone out there thanks to iD Mobile’s continuing interest in porting their older titles and releasing iPhone-specific spin-off games of their more popular franchises to the App Store… but years before the iPhone’s debut, I was playing Doom RPG on my little Motorola RAZR.
Doom RPG was a great little game that did the impossible: it translated the frenetic first-person action of Doom into a wonderful, story-rich, turn-based RPG perfect for playing on a cell phone’s numeric keypad.
Ever since I got my iPhone, I’ve wished that iD Mobile would port it on over to the App Store… and while they still haven’t done so, they’ve done one better, releasing a sequel for the iPhone and iPod Touch called Doom II RPG. It’s available on the App Store now for $4.
My only question: who is that egghead shooting the demon in the screenshot? That’s not the bloodied, Schwarzenegger-esque marine I remember from Doom days gone by.
