Apple’s App Store next year will reach the 300,000 mark, tripling the number of applications available for the iPhone and iPod touch, according to one analyst’s preview of 2010. The continued growth of the App Store is at the leading-edge of what analyst firm IDC sees as a ‘platform shift’ to mobile devices and away from the PC.
“We predict at least 300,000 iPhone applications by the end of 2010,” wrote analyst Frank Gens. Many of the new apps will come from businesses as consumers and companies pick the iPhone for their most commonly-used applications.
First Verizon snubbed AT&T’s 3G coverage in a snarky “There’s A Map for That” advertisement. Then they called the iPhone a Misfit Toy thanks to AT&T’s spotty 3G network. AT&T got hysterical about it, going to court to get the “false and misleading” ads removed from the air. Verizon’s breezy response: “The Truth Hurts.”
Now it looks like the little purse fight between the nation’s two largest cell providers is at an end: both Verizon and AT&T filed for an official dismissal of the case in an Atlanta federal court yesterday. Verizon also asked for their counter-suit against AT&T to be dismissed.
PCalc: one of many early but regularly updated apps that's now harder to find on the App Store.
James Thomson of PCalc fame noted late yesterday on Twitter that the App Store’s again updated the way it deals with app sorting: “Looks like sort by release date in [the] App Store only sorts by original release date now, not update date. Say hello to page 342 of Utilities…”
Thomson’s referring here to PCalc now being housed on the penultimate page in the massive utilities section, because it was one of the earliest apps on the store, released on July 11 2008. However, the app was last updated on October 18.
Although release date sorting was open to ‘abuse’, dodgy developers regularly updating apps to move them to the top of the list, it strikes me as a bad decision to list apps by their original release dates, regardless of how often they’re updated. What impetus does a developer have to update a major app released in 2008, if no-one’s going to see the update unless Apple deigns to include it in ‘new & noteworthy’ or ‘what’s hot’? This decision could start a spate of app removals and ‘updates’ via entirely new products, reducing the likelihood of free updates for long-time users.
A simple workaround would be for Apple to provide an alternate sort option of ‘recently updated’, which would, presumably, make everyone happy. In the meantime, some of the earliest developers for the platform who care about updating their apps just got another kick in the crotch.
For the last year or so, I’ve had an old indigo blue iMac G3, throbbing its orange oculus silently on my computer desk. I inherited it from the previous inhabitant of my apartment, and while I was at first enthusiastic about it, I’ve never quite been able to decide what I want to do with it.
While my budgerigar, Humbert J. Humbird, likes it well enough, converting it into a bird cage doesn’t really seem like a good idea: a gloomy demesne indeed for a parakeet already morbidly inclined. Another idea I had was to install Writeroom and put it in the front hallway of my palatial blogger’s luxury apartment, as a sort of guest book, but the only nook suitable is already the napping post of my senescent man servant, Beasley.
The other day, though, inspiration struck: I would Hackintosh it. I’d just rip out that iMac’s guts — the bulbous CRT, the 450MHz Power PC architecture, the 10GB hard drive and the 350MB RAM — and install a homemade mini-PC, hacked to run Snow Leopard. A perfect New Year’s project, and an excellent way to make that gorgeous, old and obsolete piece of plastic junk into a modern Mac.
I haven’t started yet — I expect the real challenges to be the installation of an LCD screen and getting the slot-loading DVD drive to play nice — but I was curious if anyone had tried to Hackintosh an old iMac G3. Sure enough, someone had, as demonstrated this gorgeous picture guide of some maker who gutted his own, tray-loading Tangerine iMac G3 and installed a Hackintosh.
Unfortunately, there’s no text instructions, but the process seems simple enough. I plan to start sometime in January, and I’ll update here about it as I do. Any of our Cultists done something similar and want to warn me away from potential pitfalls? Pipe up in the comments.
It’s hard to think of a more forward thinking bunch of visionaries than the true pioneers of the fastly changing frontiers of technology: hard core pornographers.
Time after time — Betamax, VHS, Laser Discs, DVD, Blu-Ray and the Internet — pornographers are the first to embrace new technology, hoping to add yet another sales channel to their already rich smut peddling arrays. Compare pornographers to industries like the RIAA or MPAA, who are hopeless to embrace new technology that might threaten their old, stagnating business models, and it’s really hard not to think pornographers are one of the few media entities out there who really get tech.
Needless to say, porn would like a piece of the App Store, but Apple’s prudish policies aren’t having any of that. But pornographers are nothing if not ingenious, and a group of them have now launched the Sex App Shop, which the press release heralds as “the world’s first legal alternative to [the App Store],” featuring a wide range of adult content from major labels like Playboy, Vivid, VCA, Wicked Pictures and New Sensation. Apps costs $0.99, and yearly memberships with unlimited downloads is available for $99.
If you’ve ever wanted to transform yourself into a hydrocephalic Italian plumber sucked into a strange toilet dimension in order to battle a legion of evil, anthropomorphic mushrooms… well, amazingly, there’s an app for that.
Cleverly named after the phonetic transcription of one of the character’s hallmark stereotypical ejaculations, iRwego is more than just a sound board of noises plucked from the games of Super Mario Bros.… although it’s that too. What’s really cool about the app is that it uses the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer to automatically accompany your life with appropriate Mario sound effects.
Through a glass viewed darkly, if not even muculently: the iPhone camera stinks.
To be fair, that’s not entirely Apple’s fault. While there are certainly better camera sensors out there than the one Apple chose to install as the retina in their little iBall, there’s a clear correlation between sensor size and image quality when it comes to digital cameras, and you can only make a cell phone’s sensor so big.
Nothing to be done about the sensor then. But like a fly hovering over hamburger, gadget tinkerer Bhautik Joshi had a seemingly stupid question buzzing around in his brain meats: can you improve the quality of the images the iPhone takes by attaching an old Canon SLR lens?
Magazine publishers are drooling at the upcoming Apple tablet because it will allow them to repurpose their content for the digital age with minimal changes — and possibly charge for it.
Wired magazine, for example, has for a long time been trying to find a way to republish the mag digitally — but preserve the layout, especially the splashy ad spreads for advertisers. So the tablet is perfect for them. It’s the mag — on a screen.
Sports Illustrated is the latest magazine to join the fray with a slick-looking demo you can watch above.
It actually looks pretty cool. It’s an interactive magazine that preserves the best of the format — the big pictures, the slick ads — with digital-age multimedia and interactivity. Maybe the tablet will save the mag industry after all?
The Apple Store offers the factory-refurbished Apple Mac mini Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz Desktop, model no. MB463LL/A, for $429 with free shipping. That’s a $70 drop since our October mention and one of the best deals we’ve ever seen for a Mac mini. It features an Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 120GB hard drive, two video interfaces (Mini DisplayPort and mini-DVI), five USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, Gigabit Ethernet, AirPort Extreme wireless and Bluetooth, and dual layer SuperDrive. A 1-year Apple warranty applies.
Well, a reader of Day Lyon’s Fake Steve blog created this portrait of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer from snaps of Microsoft’s most memorable product — the blue screen of death. Check out the detail of Ballmer’s tongue:
This is actually quite astounding. Dear Reader Fraser has created a mosaic using 80 random Windows crash shots to portray Uncle Fester. Below is a detail of the tongue. Click on both to see them in greater detail. The full file is really amazing — we hope to make it available as a download soon so that you can print it out, frame it, give to people you don’t like as a winter solstice holiday present — you get the idea.
For what it’s worth, Fraser says he’ll create a poorly drawn portrait of anyone — just check out his site, PoorlyDrawnPortraits.com. Much love, Fraser. You sick bastard.
Whether you’re looking for a MacBook Pro laptop or an iPod touch, there’s a deal for you. PC Connection is selling 2.26GHz 13-inch Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro laptops for $850. A 64GB version of Apple’s popular iPod touch is $340 from Mac Connection. Whether you have an iPhone or an iPod, an 80 percent-off discount sale on iPhone cases from HandheldItems.com might prove interesting. Along the way, we check out other Mac-related hardware, including Altec Lansing’s inMotion MIX iMT800 boombox for iPod or iPhone.
As always, for details on these bargains or many others, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
I’m more of a dog person, but the “Cats Love Macs” photo stream on Flickr is one of my guilty pleasures. (Yeah, I know).
Love this recycled iMac now in use as a cat basket that British Macintosh support/dev user nicknamed Mikmac created for pussy Pixel, who snuggles up in it quite nicely thanks to a soft pillow where the computer’s hardware once was.
Courting disaster? London cab with built-in charger. CC-licensed, thanks to Lars Plougmann on flickr.
So you’re shopping, or going ice skating, or heading to some place where hot mulled wine makes the holiday cheer flow.
You take a cab — the parking! — and when grappling with scarf, gloves, maybe a kid or two and some packages, leave your iPhone or iPod on the taxi seat. This is the grim scenario taxi drivers in London paint of the holidays — your favorite device left to the seasonal altruism of the driver or next passenger.
Some 10,000 mobile phones are left behind by customers every single month in London alone, plus another 1,000 iPods and memory sticks. December is the worst month — or best if you’re of the finders-keepers mentality — for expensive gadgets left behind, according to a survey by Credant Technologies.
Steve McMenara, from TAXI magazine, said: “This is the worst time of year for forgetting property at the back of cabs, especially mobile phones and laptops. More people travel into London to buy their Christmas presents during this period who are not regular cab users, they hop a cab to get back to their train stations – and it’s always about an hour later we get a panicked call on their mobile phones asking for them to be returned.”
London taxi drivers say they manage to return 80% of devices left behind; in New York just 66% of cabbies handed lost devices over.
“Back in the good old days when a Window was something you looked out of, and a Mac was something you wore in the rain, it used to be small items like brollies and briefcases stuffed full of boring office papers. Now it’s laptops, smartphones and thumb drives, all chock-full of valuable information to an identity thief,” said Sean Glynn, vice president of Credant Technologies.
Mirror's Edge for iPhone. Image credit: Touch Arcade.
Touch Arcade reports that EA’s action adventure game Mirror’s Edge is coming to iPhone in January. Although originally boasting a first-person perspective viewpoint, with your character sliding under barriers, jumping across ledges, and doing all manner of death-defying leaps and bounds, it’s likely the iPhone version will be closer in character to Mirror’s Edge 2D.
When Mirror’s Edge appears on the App Store, Langdell will have no option but to challenge it, under the precedent he’s already set. And Apple will have no option but to pull the game, based on what it’s already done regarding Killer Edge Racing and Edge (now, temporarily, Edgy in the US and UK). It’s one thing when Apple stamps on an indie’s head, but it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when an EA game gets yanked unceremoniously from the store, due to spurious rights-infringement claims. Popcorn at the ready!
The festive season is so close you can almost taste it. The kids are pestering to put up Christmas decorations; so why not give them something fun to do this year?
SymmetriSketch is a great free vector drawing application (also available for Windows and Linux users) that lets you play around with symmetry across a 2D plane.
At least it’s now quantifiable: AT&T provides the worst cellphone service in the country, according to a recent customer satisfaction poll.
Consumer Reports hit the streets and asked 50,000 readers across 26 cities to rank cell phone service according to voice service, messaging, internet access and customer support. Verizon came out on top, achieving the top two ranks in customer satisfaction in every category. Then came T-Mobile and Sprint.
AT&T? Dead last. Their highest average rating in any service category was total ambivalence, with most categories rated as poor or terrible.
In many ways, Pointy Head’s Knocking Live Video is exactly the sort of app Apple likes to march out in parade. The app allows any iPhone user to rap with figurative knuckles on the iPhone of anyone else with the app installed. Once notified via push that someone’s knocking on their handset, Knocking Live Video opens up, streaming live video between both iPhones.
It’s a neat idea: exactly the sort of simple, social and fun communication tool Apple and AT&T like to highlight in their “There’s an app for that” ads… whether or not — in practice — it is just likely to be used as a spontaneous pornographic transmission tool amongst frat bros out birddogging as to transmit video of your kids at the pool to a traveling spouse.
The only problem? Knocking Live Video uses Apple’s private APIs to achieve its live video streaming.
For those unfamiliar with the ebb and wane of Apple’s actually pretty dependable product upgrade cycle, MacRumors‘ Apple Buyer’s Guide is a must–check resource for those looking to buy a new Mac, iPod or iPhone. With a glance, you can see how close any Apple product is to being refreshed, and if you check it now, you’ll see see that the MacBook Pro is only about a month away from getting an update.
So what will change in the next MacBook Pro? The new unibodies are only a year old, so it’s probably nothing much more drastic than a processor update, and not so coincidentally, Intel is planning to launch three new Arrandale-based, 32nm Core i5 and Core i7 mobile processors on January 3rd… just around the time MacBook Pros are historically refreshed.
We posted yesterday that Apple and Psystar had reached a partial settlement in their age-old legal conflict over Psystar’s manufacturing and marketing of PCs with OS X pre-installed. The only thing up in the air was exactly how much those Hackintoshing upstarts from Florida would end up having to pay.
Now the number’s out, and it’s not pretty: Psystar has agreed to pay Apple $2.67 million dollars in damages.
Like an iPhone for Titans: a hypothetical lozenge in ebony, aluminum and glass!
We never quite see the end of Tablet Mac rumors on the Internet, and it’s easy to get swept up in the madness of crowds over the skintiest of them. Let’s not let too much foam collect in the saucer of our collected under lips over the latest headline to hit the feeds, though: “Apple takes control of TabletMac trademark” looks pretty exciting at first blush, but it’s probably just business as usual for a large company protecting its trademark.
The development comes by way of Axiotron, that neat company that will take your MacBook and $699, rip out its display, replace it with a pen-based screen, break its spine at the coccyx and flip it around one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees to give you a Tablet Mac. In fact, they went as far as to register a trademark for TabletMac with the Trademark Office.
Sometime in the last year, though, Axiotron transferred the TabletMac trademark to Apple. It’s easy to take that trademark transfer as significant (bolded), a sign that Apple is soon to send a hoary Jobs down from Mount Silicon with a divine, multitouch tablet of its own.
In reality, though, if Apple is working on a Tablet Mac, it’s unlikely to be called any such thing. I suspect the real source of this is just standard protection of Apple’s “Mac” trademark, and the whole thing was settled as easily as an email rattled off to Axiotron: “Hey, you guys are doing cool work. Transfer the TabletMac trademark to us before we have to rearrange your face.”
Edit: As several readers have pointed out, the film is also available on Hulu. Check it out.
MacHeads, the documentary on, well, the Cult of Mac, is now available to view for free online courtesy of SnagFilms, a documentary library. As Lonnie reported way back in January, the film premiered at MacWorld 2009 before an audience of more than 1,000 before seeing release on Amazon Unbox and iTunes.
To check it out, just click Play on the marquee above. Enjoy!
The iPhone can already be used to buy coffee; now it can sell it too. Square, a new venture from Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey, lets retailers swipe credit cards using a tiny reader that plugs in to the audio jack on an iPhone.
Using an iPhone to collect money is nothing new, and apps like Credit Card Terminal and iSwipe Pro have been around for awhile. But Square marks the first time a card can be physically swiped — and, says a post in Wired’s Epicenter, that also means the ability to accept gift cards.
Square’s website says that card swiping can begin immediately after account setup, with “no contracts, monthly fees or hidden costs.” Square also says it will do cool little things like email customer receipts and keep track of how many lattes to go till that free tenth one.
If it works as advertised, the system might spread quickly among retailers and consumer alike simply because of its elegance and ease-of-use. And as you may have noticed with Dorsey’s previous project, sometimes that’s all it takes to change the game.
Yup, it’s just that easy — Kentucky-based MHA’s new Airlock app turns your Mac into a proximity sensor that un/locks the computer’s screen when your iPhone enters a user-defined range; it can also do nifty things like run apps when it senses your iPhone enter or exit the area. And there’s nothing to install on your iPhone, it just sits there and looks pretty (and broadcasts a Bluetooth signal, of course).
Yeah. Well, that’s the theory. Unfortunately, Airlock would have nothing to do with my iPhone — repeated attempts failed to get my 3GS to even show up on the pairing screen. MHA says they’re aware of the problem, that it seems to affect newer iPhones, and that they’re working to fix it.
Until that happens, I’ll just have to laugh at the clever writing on MHA’s website and marvel at technology’s potential.
Airlock is downloadable for a limitlessly renewable three-hour trial; $7.77 will let you use Airlock without having to ask to try it every three hours.
We start December off with a couple deals on MacBook Pro laptops, including an Apple Store offer from $999. Next we have some price drops on a number of App Store applications for your iPhone or iPod touch. We round out our top trio of deals with Apple iWork ’09 for $55. Along the way, we take a look at Belkin’s iPod start kit and several software deals.
For details on these and many other Apple-related bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the break.
As a blogger, it’s hard to know quite from just what angle I should tackle modder Will Urbina’s utterly wonderful but certainly unholy amalgamation of a Xbox and a Hackintosh.
Should I describe it as a hideous, pupal cocoon that has been secreted by Microsoft to encase the imago of the Macintosh struggling to free its wings within? Or is OS X just the magic employed a soul-devouring hag, who — once bedded — lets the charm drop and reveals herself as the uggo she is?
Either way, Urbina’s creation is probably a psychoanalytically diagnosable incubus in the mind of Steve.
Called the OS Xbox Pro, Urbina’s project takes a translucent Microsoft Xbox chassis and crams it with Hackintoshable guts, including a pair of 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550s, an NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT GPU, 8GB of RAM, a 16GB solid state drive, and four additional hard drives. One drive boots Windows 7, the other OS X Snow Leopard (retail bought, Urbina assures), with two other hard drives for video editing. The end cost was $1500 for component from New Egg, which is just a little bit less than the cost of a 27 inch iMac.
The impetus to Urbina’s profane cross-breed case mod? Although he prefers Windows, Urbina needed a work machine to use Final Cut Pro.
The end result is sure to have Cupertino weaving a circle around it thrice and shutting its eyes in holy dread, but personally, I just can’t think of a better use for an old Xbox than to make it into a Mac.
