Netflix announced an updated version of its iOS app on Thursday for customers in the U.S. and Canada. The update is centered around improving the overall user experience while streaming movies and TV shows to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. One important improvement beyond that, however, is the ability to control mobile data use and avoid expensive overage fees.
MacKeeper is a strange piece of software. There may be no other app as controversial in the Apple world. The application, which performs various janitorial duties on your hard drive, is loathed by a large segment of the Mac community. Check out any blog, site or forum that mentions it, and you’ll find hundreds of furious comments condemning MacKeeper and Zeobit, the company behind it. We discovered this ourselves earlier this month, when we offered a 50%-off deal on MacKeeper. Look at all those furious comments on the post.
The complaints about MacKeeper are all over the shop: It’s a virus. It holds your machine hostage until you pay up. It can’t be completely removed if you decide to delete it. Instead of speeding up your computer, it slows it down. It erases your hard drive, deletes photos, and disappears documents. There are protests about MacKeeper’s annual subscription fees. Zeobit is slammed for seedy marketing tactics. It runs pop-under ads, plants sock-puppet reviews and encourages sleazy affiliate sites, critics say.
But what’s really strange is that MacKeeper has been almost universally praised by professional reviewers. All week I’ve been checking out reviews on the Web and I can’t find a bad one.
We have yet to see a full video of Tim Cook’s interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at last night’s D10, but this 17-minute video contains most of the highlights, including Tim Cook talking about how Apple names products, what Apple has planned for Siri in the coming months, Tim Cook talking about possible future Facebook integration, what’s coming up for the Apple TV, and why Apple thinks patents are a huge pain in the ass.
Update: According to our tipster, Airfoil Speakers Touch wasn’t yanked arbitrarily, but instead because it duplicates functionality in the still unreleased and officially unannounced iOS 6. Our source says that in iOS 6, an Apple TV, for example, can pipe sound from a movie to an iPod touch, iPhone or iPad, and any iOS device will be able to beam audio to another. We’re trying to get more details, and have reached out to Apple and Rogue Amoeba for comment. Original post is below.
Update: 2: We’ve added Rogue Amoeba’s official comment at the bottom of this post.
Rogue Amoeba are some of the good guys. They’ve released some of the Mac’s coolest audio apps, including Airfoil, Audio Hijack Pro, Piezo, Pulsar, Nicecast and Fission, and we’ve long been a fan of their version of Airfoil for iOS. Called Airfoil Speakers Touch, the app allowed you to stream audio over AirPlay from your Mac, PC or iDevice to any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. We’ve been rocking it since 2009.
Now Airfoil Speakers Touch is dead, killed for unspecified reasons by Apple’s App Store review team while the guys at Rogue Amoeba scratch their heads.
Ever notice that Instapaper never seems to switch off your iPad or iPhone’s display while you’re reading, no matter how long you get distracted while reading, nor how slowly you read a page, whereas iBooks and Kindle regularly go dark if you don’t keep up a good pace? No? That’s because you’re not supposed to, even though Instapaper developer Marco Arment spend quite a lot of effort tweaking the app to do it.
Elgato has announced Game Capture HD, a USB device that will record gameplay from a Microsoft Xbox 360 or Sony PlayStation 3 and send it to a Mac or PC. The little dongle requires no power supply, and it uses HDMI to record HD footage from a Xbox 360 and AV to record from a PlayStation 3. Elgato uses H.264 video compression to capture 480i, 576p, 720p or 1080i video. Theoretically, Game Capture HD will also work to capture most signals from other HDMI/component-enabled devices.
When capturing gameplay footage with the new device, you can still keep playing on a regular TV via HDMI. The desktop software allows you to edit and timeshift footage before saving it or sharing the video on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
A host of Hollywood celebrities payed special tribute to late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs tonight at the 2012 Webby Awards. The special segment of Monday night’s show was introduced by the actors from Apple’s famous ‘Mac vs. PC’ TV ads, Justin Long and John Hodgman. Richard Dreyfuss, the actor who narrated the original Apple ‘Think Different’ ad, also took the stage to honor Jobs’ legacy.
Celebrities like Bill Clinton, George Lucas, Adrianna Huffington, Bono, Al Gore, Jimmy Fallon, Steve Colbert and John Stewart payed tribute to Jobs in a short video clip. The mashup ended with President Barack Obama saying, “We only need one word to describe Steve Jobs: amazing.”
Anytime a new jailbreak comes out, there’s a degree of confusion about what devices are supported, whether it’s safe to upgrade your firmware, etc. That’s as true now on the eve of pod2g’s upcoming iOS 5.1.1 Absinthe 2.0 jailbreak as it ever was before. Thankfully, pod2g and fellow jailbreak maestro MuscleNerd have put together a quick info sheet about everything you can expect when the untethered jailbreak drops later this week.
The summary? It’s safe to upgrade your devices to iOS 5.1.1 now, and the only iOS device that Absinth 2.0 won’t crack open is the third-gen Apple TV. As for the release date? Plans are this week, if everything goes to the plan.
I write a ton on my iPad these days, which lets me work wherever I like (usually in bed) and concentrate way better than I can working on my giant-screened iMac. Thanks to our complex blogging back end here at Cult of Mac, it’s still easier to add pictures and other bits and pieces with the Mac, but the writing part is so much better on the iPad that I try to do it as often as I can.
I figured I’d show you a few of the apps I used. Below you’ll find my favorite writing apps for the iPad.
Earlier this month, iOS hacker Pod2g released an FAQ for his upcoming iOS 5.1.1 untethered jailbreak, which stated that the iPhone 3GS and the third-generation iPod touch would not be compatible. He did say, however, that this situation “may change,” and it has.
In a recent tweet, Pod2g confirmed that he has now discovered “a way through for iPod 3G and iPhone 3GS users.”