Details may remain sketchy on the special event T-Mobile has scheduled for sometime in the coming weeks but the #4 carrier in the US wasted no time cranking up a new ad that riffs on the old “upstarts are cool – Big Guys are stodgy” meme that Apple has used for years to poke fun at Microsoft.
The ad should start running on US television networks next week, according to a report at TechCrunch.
Got a PlayStation 3? Sony has just released their official PlayStation app for the whole world — or, at least, America, France, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands — to download.
Don’t expect to use your iPhone as a thin client to play some PlayStation 3 games, though. Instead, the app lets you log into the PlayStation Network, follow your friends, check out the games they own, read their status updates, monitor trophies you’ve earned and check out the official PlayStation blog.
The PlayStation app is a free download. You can get it here
Feeling pinched for space in your new MacBook Air? I know I certainly am, even (or, perhaps, especially) with a 500GB USB hard drive perpetually tethered to my 11-incher.
I’m interested, then, in OWC’s recently unveiled Mercury Auro Pro Express Kits, which are compatible with both the late 2010 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pros. They are available in three sizes: a $499.99 180GB dSSD, a $579.99 240GB SSD, and a $1,179.99 360GB SSD… all of which are not only bigger than Apple’s in-house drives, but faster as well.
Much as I’d like a bigger SSD in my MacBook Air, at those prices, I’m tempted to wait until they come down a bit… but that might not be an option. Apple has already shut down one company selling MacBook Air SSD upgrade kits, and it’s likely they’ll do the same here, so if you’re going to get one, better scrape that $500 together fast.
[via iSource]
iOS 4.3 Beta Build 8F5148B has just been seeded to developers, and there’s some big changes across all devices to get your head around:
• iOS 4.3 officially drops support for the iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod Touch. iOS 4 never ran particularly well on these devices anyway, and it looks like Apple knows it: they’ve now left all support for less-than-third-gen devices at iOS 4.2.1.
• As predicted, iOS 4.3 brings the Verizon iPhone’s “Personal Hotspot” feature allowing WiFi tethering for up to five devices to all iPhones… or, at least, all iPhones that are blessed with their carrier’s approval.
• A new software option to choose what your iPad’s side switch does: lock rotation or mute. This is a pretty big change: Steve Jobs himself basically said the change in iOS 4.2 from a lock switch to mute was permanent, but it seems user complaints eventually made Apple see sense. Mute just doesn’t make any sense on a non-phone device.
• A new FaceTime icon and full-screen iAds.
• New multitouch gestures for iPad users. You can use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen; swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar; and swipe left or right between apps.
Anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.
Sprint and T-Mobile each announced Wednesday special media events set to take place in New York in coming weeks. Neither carrier is expected to announce anything related to Apple or its mobile devices, though the Sprint invitation sent to some tech industry journalists did allude to an “industry first” up its sleeve.
Sprint’s event is scheduled for February 7, while details on the T-Mobile announcement were unavailable at press time.
With the same uncanny knack for odd timing that led to the launch of the much-ballyhooed “iPhone killer” Palm Pre being completely overshadowed by Apple’s release of iPhone 3G in June 2009, Sprint’s event comes both well in the wake of Tuesday’s big Verizon iPhone announcement and just days before its widely-anticipated launch on the #1 carrier in the US.
Speculation as to which bright and shiny things Sprint might use to draw attention away from iPhone and its two largest competitors seems centered on potential new webOS devices such as the Pixi 2 or Topaz tablet, but which “industry first” either of those devices would bring to the table is anyone’s guess.
Perhaps the star of Sprint’s show, illusionist David Blaine will transform the company’s stock chart into something that hasn’t flat-lined after doing a Dive of Death.
We’ll all be videoconferencing like crazy in 2012, predicts Barclay’s analyst Ben Reitzes.
By the end of 2012, Apple’s installed base of FaceTime devices will exceed 200 million, Reitzes predicts.
That’s based on more than 85 million FaceTime-enabled devices by the end of 2011:
In 2012, Apple’s video conferencing platform will only gather momentum, driven by what he’s calling the “FaceTime networking effect.”
“While Android and competitive devices either have or are working toward incorporating a similar feature, we believe this particular feature benefits from Apple’s vertically integrated model,” Reitzes said. “Experiences across disparate hardware platforms tend to vary–with Apple’s one of the most reliable in our trials. Also, this feature allows Apple to mine the millions of iTunes users who have Apple ID’s–and provide an attractive feature across devices that can be put into use immediately. We believe the ‘FaceTime networking effect’ could enhance a halo effect on Macs and iPads as the feature becomes available.”
AllThingsD: 200 Million FaceTime-Enabled Devices in 2012?
The first thing you’ll notice about Twitter v2.0 for the Mac, which is available for free via the Mac App Store, is that it doesn’t look like a regular Mac OS X application. The applications author, Loren Brichter, has completely tossed Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for the Mac aside and Apple not only allowed him to do so, but allowed his application into the Mac App Store — much to the surprise of many developers.
I’m surprised that Apple, which has been so overly anal about iOS apps in the iTunes App Store, would allow this in the first place. I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to wonder about Apple and the future there. It’s probably the forgone merger of the iOS and Mac OS X GUI interfaces. I’m not sure I’m ready for that – I’ve always boasted about the Mac OS X interface and how it improves my work flow.
So outside of the controversy about Twitters unique GUI it isn’t all that bad if you are looking for something simple. Some of it is actually kind of neat, yet that doesn’t overshadow the fact that it falls short of the iPad version that it appears it is trying to emulate.
Steve Jobs introduced iTunes ten years ago this week, on January 10, 2001 at the MacWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, where he proclaimed a belief in the “revolution” of “digital music on computers.”
At the time, Macs still ran on OS 9 and iTunes was all about “ripping audio CDs onto your computer disk;” tens of billions of dollars in digital music sales were yet a glimmer in Jobs’ eye.
At the time, iTunes launched as a competitor to existing products from companies such as Real Networks and Microsoft, and Jobs admitted at MacWorld that his company was “late to the game.”
iTunes, of course, quickly became the only game in town, as Apple soon launched OS X and seamlessly integrated its music software with iPod, the line of portable music players that “changed everything” and helped Apple become the tech industry powerhouse it is today.
Amazon’s Kindle for Mac software is hardly new, but the free e-reading app has just hit the Mac App Store… and quickly soared up the charts, becoming the fifth most popular app in the free section.
Could the Genius Bar be going head to head with the Geek Squad in Best Buy stores around the country?
TUAW certainly thinks so, but that seems pretty fishy to me: why would Best Buy agree to juxtapose their own utterly inept and criminally exhortative customer tech organ with Apple’s far classier and fuller serviced one? The Geek Squad can’t come off well in the comparison.
On Apple’s part, though, the move makes a great deal of sense. Genius Bars around the country are already stuffed to the gills with appointments. Short of opening more retail stores, there’s not a lot Apple can do to eliminate he congestion… short of taking advantage of a retail partner’s surplus of big box space.
Clever! We’re interested in seeing how this works out: bringing the Genius Bar experience to Best Buy would certainly be one way to more easily cover more customers.
