A brand new update from Spotify adds a couple of great new features. The Mac and Windows versions of the subscription music service both now support gapless playback and crossfading of songs. There is also a scattering of other tweaks and improvements.
Zagg’s new Boost speaker, sold under the iFrogz brand, appears to amplify music using nothing but magic. Just place your iPhone (or any other device with a speaker) on top and it will boost the sound. No wires, no Bluetooth, no nothing. The music just issues forth from a pair of 2-watt speakers.
We all love a good fight around here and we even have a recurring Friday Night Fights where we pit features of iOS vs Android, but this latest video by Samsung is just so asinine that not even us Android fans will defend it. To further promote their Galaxy Note, Samsung has decided to embarrass themselves by “going to the streets” to try and convince people how awesome the S-pen functionality is by challenging an obviously clueless iPhone user to perform the same mundane tasks as a seasoned (trained & scripted) Note user.
Booq’s latest range of bags know that your camera and your MacBook or iPad are intimately related. The Python camera bags not only carry your camera and lenses in safety and comfort, they also have space for your computer or tablet.
Why does a camera look like a camera? Specifically, why do our cameras all resemble a box with a lens on the front? The answer is film. Film cameras needed a dark, light-tight place to store a roll or cartridge of film, and it needed to put a viewfinder close to that lens to avoid parallax problems.
Now, though, with film long consigned to the novelty closet, the only restriction is that the sensor sit behind the lens. And that’s where the D-CAN comes in, with its telescope-shaped body.
Users of Google’s Flight Search will now be able to receive the same great desktop features on their mobile devices. Flight Search is now available for both Android and iOS users who search for a flight via their mobile browser. Just search for a flight departing from the US and watch as Google provides you with a table that shows available flights, including duration and prices. Benefits of Google’s Flight Search include:
Wouldn’t it be great if there was some kind of iPhone accessory that let you toss your $650+ device around, abusing it by bouncing it off walls and floors? If you answered a sensible “no” to that question, then congratulations. You are a responsible adult with a sense of perspective. If you answered “yes,” then you might be interested in The O, a foam ball with — you guessed it — custom apps.
Get ready to save Springfield from a horrific nuclear explosion caused by none other than the bumbling Homer Simpson in what Electronics Arts expects to be one of the biggest freemium hits of the year. Expected to be released in the coming weeks on iOS (and then later on Android – D’oh!), The Simpsons: Tapped Out will be a free download for users but will follow the success of other freemium apps by offering optional in-app purchases. This virtual currency will of course come in the form of doughnuts and while not necessary to complete the game, will give impatient users a way to speed things up.
The Quad Lock case is a universal mount and case for the iPhone 4/S. Wait. Where are you going? This case is actually very cool. I promise, especially if you have a home, a car or a bike.
ABC aired an episode of Nightline last night showing exclusive video from inside “Apple’s Chinese factories.” In the video, presenter Bob Weir explores the production lines at Foxconn. Two things really stand out. First, the place is clean. And I mean really clean. Second, the iPhone is essentially hand made, with 141 human steps needed to assemble it.
Twitter has pushed out an update for both the Android and iOS mobile apps which brings back a few popular features as well as adding a couple new ones. Also, owners of the Kindle Fire will be happy to know that the Twitter app is now available via the Amazon App Store, and if you happen to own a Barnes & Noble NOOK Color or NOOK Tablet, you can expect to receive the app on February 23rd. So what’s new? According to the Twitter Blog, here’s what you can expect:
The big new feature in Mountain Lion’s Mail app isn’t really a Mail feature at all: Notification Center will now flash up an alert for every new e-mail you receive. But this can get old fast, especially if you get a lot of e-mail. Thankfully, you can tweak these setting to be finer-grained, and a lot more useful. And you can do this by making your friends VIPs.
Next month, students at the Kensington and Chelsea College in West London will be able to sign up for a course on iPhoneography. Anyone can do the course: all you need is an iPhone, £115 ($182) for the course and all your Thursday nights free throughout March.
The SmartGuard iPhone case might guard you, but it definitely isn’t smart. The iPhone 4/S compatible case will deliver a dose of pepper spray to U.C Davis students or violent attackers alike.
If you went ahead and loaded the developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion onto your Mac, you likely already played around with the new Notification Center. Until you got bored and fired up Growl once again so you could enjoy notifications from all your apps, not just Mail and Calendar. Wouldn’t it be great, though, if all those Growl-capable apps could talk to Notification Center instead? With Hiss, they can.
With just weeks to go before the iPad 3 launch, the drip of hardware leaks is turning into a torrent. The latest — and probably best — photos of the new iPad’s case come from MIC Gadget, and show the new tablet to be a little thicker, and sporting a larger camera lens.
One of the big new Mountain Lion features is AirPlay Mirroring. This will let you beam your Mac’s desktop, videos and Keynote presentations to any screen connected to the Apple TV. This feature alone will probably sell zillions of Apple TVs into conference rooms the world over. But who wants to wait until OS X 10.8’s summer launch? With a couple of apps, you can use AirPlay on your Mac right now.
It’s light, it’s tough and it’s beautiful to both look at and touch. Is there anything better than bamboo for making an iPad case? Maybe not. And Silva’s bamboo case for the iPad 2 is finally, finally available to buy.
It’s amazing what you see when you look closely at numbers, and super-analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco looks closer than most. Parsing some of Tim Cook’s keynote speech at Goldman Sachs earlier this week, he did some digging came up with the incredible graph you see above.
Today a German court ruled that most of Motorola’s products infringe on Apple’s slide-to-unlock image patent with the only exception being the slide-the-circle gesture used in the Motorola XOOM. This ruling allows Apple to enforce a permanent injunction against the Motorola products found in violation. Motorola can still appeal the decision therefore Apple would be taking a very big risk enforcing such an injunction at this time. Should the ruling be overturned, Apple would have to reimburse Motorola for any lost sales due to the injunction. Regardless of Apple’s decision, one thing is for sure: Motorola will now have to make changes to their UI.
With Mountain Lion, Apple has finally tied iCloud to the Mac desktop. While iCloud has worked seamlessly on iOS since launch, moving documents between iCould and your Mac was embarrassingly awkward, involving web browsers, dragging and dropping.
Now, it has been shoved deep into the heart of the OS, in the form of a kind of alternate Finder.
Have you ever wondered how Apple gets such beautifully clean, crisp product shots for its various devices? Are they real photos at all? Or are they just computer-generated images? The truth is somewhere in between, and shows that Apple’s obsessive attention to detail carries over to everything.
Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Doctor.
Doctor who?
Doctor who owns an iPad, along with 26 percent of my peers.
A good pun it’s not, but the facts are worth my terrible setup: Fully one quarter of European doctors own an iPad, according to a survey of “1,207 practicing physicians in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the UK.”
Just when you thought there was nothing more that could be squeezed into a pocket-sized multitool, Gerber comes along with the Steady, and proves our imagination to be pathetically limited. What does this many-bladed wonder bring to the transforming tool party? A camera tripod.
Gerber’s Steady Tool is aimed at real everyday use, with a slew of practical, non-specialized tools. There’s a pair of needle-nose pliers, flat and serrated blades, a bottle opener (essential), screwdrivers, wire cutters and of course a tripod and cellphone/camera mount.
The body of the tool forms one leg, while the other two stick out like a sea lion’s flippers. You can either screw a standard thread into the bottom of a camera or tripod-compatible phone cases, or you can use the suction cup to stick the sleek, smooth glass back of your iPhone 4 to the 5.8-ounce tool.
The Steady will cost you $64. Not cheap, but you do get Gerber quality, plus everything you need to conduct a booze-filled picnic.
[Via Uncrate]
Apple’s designs constantly prove that beauty and practicality can exist in the same place, but that’s clearly not the only way to do things. Take a look at the AQUA TEK S, which manages to be possibly the most practical and the most ugly iPhone case ever. It bills itself as “the first ever battery powered, solar charged, rugged under water iPhone 4/4S case on Kickstarter.”
