When Apple unveiled the new Retina MacBook Pros, one thing they really highlighted was the fact that, thanks to the new solid-state storage and assymetrical fans, the new MBP is the coolest, quietest MacBook Pro yet. That’s not hard to believe, but given how lap-meltingly hot previous MacBook Pros could get, it doesn’t really tell you how comfortable a new Retina MBP is going to be on your lap during a heavy workload. Heat maps to the rescue!
Yesterday, we reported on a story about the new search algorithms in the iTunes App store. It was speculated that the new search results seen by iOS developers were due to Apple’s acquisition of Chomp, a search company that had found some success in the crowded market.
The developers who noticed the result reported better than average search rankings, with the implication that the new search would filter out the bad apps, only leaving the good ones.
Today, we heard from a developer of an app with a different story.
Apple has put a lot of work into developing its own secure messaging platform. With Mountain Lion and the Messages app that Apple rolled out in iOS 5, Apple is setting up its iMessage platform with a lot potential advantages for consumers and business users alike. For business, the always available and secure messaging is huge. Messages and conversations can be found on an employee’s iPhone, iPad, home iMac, work MacBook Air – that’s taking the concept of RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service to a higher level.
For consumers, the great features are the integration of non-phone devices like the iPad and iPod touch and reduced reliance on carriers for texting, which can translate to cost savings (depending on mobile carrier/plan).
While most of us still use SMS to send text messages, there’s a distinct trend in shifting to using solutions like Apple’s Message platform.
Despite countless rumors suggesting it was on its way, when Microsoft unveiled its new Surface tablet late last week, a lot of people were surprised. It was a strange move by the Redmond-based company, who has traditionally focused solely on software and allowed other companies to worry about the hardware.
So why did Microsoft build its own tablet?
According to one of the company’s former employees, it took hardware matters into its own hands when it realized it couldn’t rely on PC makers to make the same bets Apple was making. You see, Apple has taken some incredible steps to make its iPad the behemoth it is today. And rival companies just weren’t willing to gamble.
Home movies rock, right? What better way to entertain the family than with moving pictures starring the kids at the beach, weird Uncle William putting carrots up his nose, and the four hundredth video walkthrough of your favorite amusement park. In the past, viewers of these home movies had to sit through hours of badly shot footage and horribly raw video and film of all sorts of activities. These days, however, Apple has saved us all with the creation of one of the best darn video editing packages for the average consumer, iMovie. With iMovie ’11, the development team has refined things to a high sheen, helping us all make short work of some fairly professional and complicated video editing activities.
To make things even easier, we’ve put together a list of tips, tricks, and tweaks to help you get the best out of iMovie, the video editing app for the rest of us.
Some iOS developers are noticing a change for the better in their app store search results, and it may in fact be due to Chomp, the app search company that made headlines this past February when it was announced that Apple had acquired it.
Redditor saintt today posted a photo of one of the lowest-rent iPod mods that we’ve ever seen.
Dubbed by his co-workers as an “iHat,” this traffic cone-shaped monstrosity contained one song, and one song only.
When you think of calculator apps, great innovations don’t usually come to mind. Most calculators function the same way, by punching in numbers on little keys. Rechner Calculator (Rechner meaning calculator in German) hopes to change that. This new application, available for $0.99 on the App Store, is the first of its kind to use gestures for operation.
Rumors about a possible Retina display iMac have been floating around almost as long as the Retina display itself. From the time the iPhone 4 was introduced, people began speculating that Apple’s Mac line would eventually receive a display upgrade as well. Now that this rumor has come to fruition in the case of the new MacBook Pro, it would only make sense for these new displays to trickle down to all of Apple’s other computers.
Word is now spreading that this might not be the case, though. We may have to wait a little while longer for an iMac with a Retina display.
Many IT departments are under intense pressure to develop and implement a range of mobility initiatives. Those initiatives often span a range of IT disciplines. There’s the effort to develop internal apps, provide access to new and legacy systems from mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad, the need to manage and support users devices as part of BYOD programs, and the need to develop customer-facing solutions like mobile-oriented sites and native apps.
With so many pressures hitting IT organizations at the same, compromises are being made because of tight deadlines and budgets. According to security expert Jeff Williams, that push to get solutions out as quickly as possible may result in solutions that have major security flaws in them.