Apple has spoken out regarding the rumor that French designer Philippe Starck is working with the company on a “revolutionary” product to be released in the next 8 months. Starck and Apple are working on no such thing, according to a spokesperson from Cupertino. In the interview that caused the original rumor, Strack was instead referring to a yacht he was working on with the late Steve Jobs.
We’ve long been in love with Italian design house Ciccarese Design’s incredible renders of upcoming Apple products, and the images they just sent us of what they envision a 7.85-inch iPad mini would look like in the flesh are no exception. No implausible whimsy here: these could just as well be product shots pushed up on Apple’s site the day after the iPad mini is officially announced by Tim Cook later this summer, and really puts the totally usable size of such a device in perspective. Check out some more after the jump.
Apple has been dreaming big since like forever. Even when they knew current technology couldn’t support their crazy dreams, they’d still throw wacky but brilliant ideas around. The iPhone didn’t change the world until it was launched in 2007, but Apple had been dreaming up “iPhone” concepts 24 years earlier.
This particular Apple Phone concept was created back in 1983 by Hartmut Esslinger from Apple’s design firm Frogdesigns. It features a touch-screen, apps, touch-screen keyboard, and even one of those pesky stylus things that Steve Jobs hated so much.
Maybe it couldn’t have mass produced these suckers back in 1983, but take a look at what could have been a phenomenal Apple product:
This is just totally sick. The guys over at Germany’s Hardwrk have taken 16GB of DDR3 RAM and a 1TB Samsung 830 SATA III SSD bundled up in an SSD-RAID-0, slapped it into a 13-inch MacBook Pr running an Intel Core i7-2640M 2.8GHz chip.
The result? A three-thousand euro behemoth of a machine — custom-engraved and covered in a beautiful matte black covering — that they say is the world’s fastest MacBook Pro, and with a 1.7 second PhotoShop boot-up time, we’re inclined to believe them.
Best of all? They’re giving this bad boy away to one lucky winner. All you have to do is leave a comment on their post.
Apple CEO Tim Cook will announce the company’s second-quarter earnings on April 24, and according to one analyst, it will report sales of 33 million iPhone, 12 million iPads, and 4.3 million Macs. Sounds like another great quarter, but those predictions are, on the whole, a little less than Wall Street is anticipating.
Apple has lost an appeal against a court ruling in Germany to have its iCloud push services restored. The service was disabled back in February after it was ruled that Apple had infringed on patents owned by Motorola Mobility. While iCloud is still available, users now have to open up their Mail app and fetch new email manually, or set their device to fetch email at certain intervals.
Apple has been forced to pay a couple in Tokyo, Japan, ¥600,000 (approx. $7,400) for medical fees and pain and suffering after their first-generation iPod nano spontaneously burst into flames, causing burns to the hand that took more than a month to completely heal.
Disclaimer: Some of you may find this material offensive — you’ve been warned.
Jon Stewart gives us his take on last week’s most talked about tech news: Google’s glasses and Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for 1 billion dollars. It’s classic Daily News humor that includes ball-licking dogs, time-travelling cock-blockers and illicit drug innuendo. If that sounds like your kind of humor, head on past the break to watch the video. Cheers!
Apple has just released an update to Java for OS X that effectively removes any traces of the notorious Flashback trojan from an infected system. The update can be downloaded now in Software Update on all Macs running Snow Leopard through Mountain Lion.
Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge update are scheduled to be officially announced and made available on April 23rd, and they will most likely be immediately used to build updated, Air-like MacBook Pros including second-gen Thunderbolt controllers.
But could the next MacBook Pros also have HiDPI, Retina-ready displays? It’s conjecture at this point, but we know Apple has been interested in moving to Retina quality displays in its Mac line for quite some time, and now a recent comment from Intel VP Kirk Skaugen confirms that Ivy Bridge makes it possible for PC makers to make retina display laptops and computers, “if OEMs choose to use it.”
In other words? The next MacBook Pros might not just have slimmer footprints and ditch the optical drives, but pack four times the pixels. Swoon.
[via 9to5Mac]
With its iBooks Author software, Apple has made it incredibly easy for almost anyone to write and publish their own e-book. And it hopes to make it just as easy to create iOS apps. One patent application shows the Cupertino company has been working on a tool that would allow users without any programming knowledge at all to build their own iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch software.
In an effort to increase security for your Apple ID, Apple is forcing users to set a number of security questions and answers that will help “verify your identity in the future.” If you forget your password or your account is compromised, you will be asked to answer these questions to prove who you are.
LogMeIn has launched a new cloud-based storage, syncing, and sharing service that hopes to compete with services like Dropbox, Box.net, and the upcoming Google Drive. Called ‘Cubby’, the service offers 5GB of free storage which is protected by LogMeIn’s 128-bit SSL encryption, and it can be accessed from a web browser or using the official Cubby apps for Android and iOS.
Intel has reportedly shifted the announcement of its next-generation Ivy Bridge processor from April 29 to April 23 as PC makers gear up to release their second-generation of ultrabooks in May. But you could see it powering Mac OS X before then, with the new chip expected to replace its predecessor, the Sandy Bridge processor, in Apple’s next MacBook Pro and iMac.
Apple has always been considered the underdog of the PC industry, although Mac sales have been on an upwards trend for the last few years while the rest of the industry continues to take a nosedive. The iPad is cannibalizing PC sales, and PC manufacturers are starting to concentrate on the smartphone and tablet space. The “PC” sales numbers are still not quite matching up with reality: the iPad is a personal computer, and Apple is crushing the competition.
With that in mind, research firm Gartner has released its PC shipments report for the first quarter of 2012. According to the report, Apple sits as the third largest PC maker in the U.S.. And the iPad? Well, no one can touch the iPad.
Apple’s App Store approval process is a mysterious thing. Sometimes the Cupertino overlords can be incredibly stringent about the guidelines an app has to adhere to in order to be approved for sale onthe App Store, and other times we’re all left scratching our heads wondering how on earth an app like this made it through.
Siri knockoffs are nothing new, of course. In fact, they’ve been a pretty common occurrence in the iOS App Store ever since Apple unveiled the digital assistant alongside the iPhone 4S last October. We’ve seen apps like Evi that piggyback off Siri’s success, but a relatively new app has seen incredible success by riding Siri’s coattails all the way to the top of the App Store charts.
The best part? Not only does it look heavily — ahem — inspired by Siri, even the developer doesn’t know how it got approved.
Looks like Big Red is out for blood after tremendous consumer backlash put the kibosh on their plans to charge customers a $2 “convenience fee” to pay their bill. We would have been better off surrendering our $2 because now Verizon is pulling the ol’ “upgrade fee out of a hat” trick. That’s right, starting April 22, Verizon customers can expect to pay $30 for the privilege of purchasing a new device while signing over their souls for the next two years.
Apple’s new iPad is still selling like hot cakes, and new customers continue to face a 1-2-week shipping delay when purchasing through the Apple online store. But the company is reportedly struggling to meet demand with production constrained by Retina display supply and the recent cuts to factory worker overtime at Foxconn.
Apple retail stores in London have begun stocking international parts ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games as the company prepares for an “onslaught” of international journalists seeking repairs. Many of the journalists covering the event, which kicks off on July 27, are expected to be carrying Apple notebooks, so international keyboards are expected to be high in demand.
A Mac trojan called Flashback resurfaced in the news over the last week or so after it was revealed that 600,000+ Macs were infected by the nefarious botnet. We’ve showed you how to see if you’re infected by Flashback, and Apple has released two updates already to patch the malware.
Apple is about to get into the antivirus business, as the company has said that it is working its own tool for you to detect and remove Flashback once and for all. The folks in Cupertino will also be working with ISPs around the globe to hunt down the source of this botnet and kill it at the root.
Whispers have been circulating for months about Apple releasing a larger iPhone later this year. Since the original iPhone launch, Apple has kept the iPhone’s essential dimensions intact, and we still have the same 3.5-inch display size Steve Jobs demoed at Macworld in 2007. While the rest of the smartphone industry has been experimenting with all kinds of crazy screen sizes and aspect ratios, Apple has stuck with a simple 3:2 aspect ratio and 3.5 inches.
There have been plenty of arguments made for why Apple will release a 4-inch iPhone in the future, but one smart forum user has put together an argument that trumps the rest.
Have you been following all the rumors and saving up your pennies for a new MacBook Pro or iMac the second Apple releases them? Well, looks like you might not have to wait, as two reports this morning suggest new models will be dropped imminently.
Following in the footsteps of his former boss and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Tim Cook will be speaking at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference next month in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. This is the first time Cook has appeared at D. He is officially the headlining speaker for the opening-night of D10.
Apple has been accused of avoiding paying a proper amount of taxes in the U.K. after making an incredible £6 billion in the last financial year, but paying only £10 million in tax. The Cupertino company runs what is described as a “significant operation” in Cork, Ireland, where tax rates are almost half those paid in the U.K.
An SEC filing from computer security specialists Symantec reveals its former Chief Accounting Officer Phillip Bullock has joined Apple to head up the Cupertino company’s tax department.