News - page 1510

Ever wonder what your iPhone might look like if Apple decided to add a zoom lens? Then take a look at Thanko’s Appollo 2, a crapware camera with a massive 30x schnozz on the front.

Despite their slim and delicate appearance, Apple’s iDevices are pretty tough. I have dropped my iPad mini from the top of the fridge onto a tiled floor with no real damage – just a dented corner. In fact, in the five years that I have owned iDevices, I have broken one screen, and that was an iPod touch in a front jeans pocket which got completely wrecked in a drunken bike crash (I think that’s what happened, anyway – I don’t really remember).

Which is to say, the majority of mollycoddling we bestow on our iPhones and iPads is unnecessary. The only thing which really needs protection is the screen.

Back at the end of May I wrote about a great Kickstarter project which updated the Camera Lucida. The Neo Lucida is a prism on a bendy stick that you can use to superimpose the scene in front of you onto a sheet of paper so you can “trace” around real objects.

In the post I wondered if there was an app that would use your iPhone’s camera to do the same thing, but then – as usual – I didn’t read any comments. Reader Golan pointed out that the app is called Camera Lucida, and as of this weekend it has updated to v7.0.

Wunderlist v2.2 adds two big new features to the rather beautiful cross-platform todo app; one great improvement and a slew of fixes. And it might even change how you use the app.

Veteran Apple executive Bob Mansfield is no longer a member of the company’s executive team. But that doesn’t mean he has left altogether. Mansfield is still working in an unknown capacity on “special projects” for Tim Cook. He was previously responsible for leading the new Technologies group that was formed during the big executive shakeup last year.

The above photo shows what is allegedly Apple packaging for an unreleased “iPhone 5C.” The packaging comes from the supply chain overseas and was first posted on the Chinese forum WeiPhone. It’s important to note up front that there is no way of confirming the packaging’s authenticity, but if it’s real, it has most likely revealed the name for the rumored budget iPhone.

This week on the ‘ol CultCast: why Google’s new Chromecast is great for us Apple fans; the 5S might be the biggest S-upgrade ever; Apple’s earnings make a low-cost iPhone look likely; how to best connect your iDevice to your car stereo; the Dev Center gets hacked; and then, Tim Cook sings Barbie Girl!

Have a few laughs and get caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.

Thanks to Bitcasa for sponsoring this episode. Show notes up next.

After being offline since last Thursday, Apple’s Developer Center is back and operational. Certain parts of the portal are still coming back online, but Apple’s system status page reveals that several services are accessible again, including the centers where developers can download iOS and OS X betas.

Supermechanical, the startup behind Twine, has a new Kickstarter campaign for a smart kitchen thermometer called Range. The device plugs into the iPhone’s headphone jack and helps you cook by telling the temperature and creating recipe graphs. It looks like a cool product, and it has 34 more days to reach its $90,000 goal.

Buying a $35 dongle to magically stream all the video of the internet to your TV sounds pretty awesome, and based on early impressions Chromecast does a decent job, but how does its content stack up against the Apple TV and Roku?

Danny Sullivan created the chart above to break down the content you’ll find on Chromecast, Apple TV and Roku. If you only care about streaming video off Netflix and YouTube, then Chromecast is the best bang for your buck. But if you want to watch HBO Go, Hulu, or pull content from iTunes or Amazon, Apple TV or Roku have more content options.

Source: Marketingland

Via: Twitter

Just in time for beach season, Griffin’s ruggedized, waterproof iPhone case – the Survivor+Catalyst – arrived at CoM’s Spanish HQ (aka my apartment). And after a month or so of using it and abusing it, I can say its the best rugged case I have used. For the iPhone anyway.

Let’s see why.

Apple has opened a new office in Boston that is working on beefing up Siri… and probably means that Cupertino wants to move away from relying on Nuance to provide Siri’s voice-recognition technology.

We’ve seen tons of leaked photos claiming to be the rear shell of the budget iPhone, and here’s the latest one we can add to the pile. The photo was posted on Weibo and looks pretty similar to images we posted two days ago.

Why does Apple put all kinds of weird screws on your Mac and iPhone that take an Apple Genius to unlock?

Because a little guy lives inside there doing all the work! HaaHAa! *rimshot*

Microsoft commissioned Eldon Dedini to make the comic above and a couple others back in 1985 to poke fun at the Macintosh. The comics were made for Microsoft’s marketing team, but weren’t distributed. To Microsoft’s credit, opening the original Mac was difficult as hell, and it took more tools than just a screw driver – and Apple certainly hasn’t made it any easier since then.

Source: Reddit

It’s no secret that Microsoft’s would-be iPad-killer has been a complete disappointment, but now Steve Ballmer, the company’s ever-optimistic CEO, is admitting to employees that the Surface is a flop.

Ballmer held a “rally the troops” event on the Microsoft campus yesterday to go over the company’s quarterly earnings and boost morale, but according to people at the event, Ballmer dove into how disappointing it has been trying to make Surface a success.

Apple’s next-generation Retina MacBook Pros, which will be equipped with Intel’s latest Haswell processor, may not arrive until October, according to a new report from China Times. The machines were expected to make their debut in September, but due to yield issues affecting its high-resolution Retina display, Apple has had to delay the launch.

The iPhone 5S and the new low-cost iPhone are expected to launch on Friday, September 6, according to a “very credible” source. That’s roughly two weeks earlier than the iPhone 5 went on sale last year, and it suggests Apple will announce the devices in late August.

The Los Angeles School Board of Education has announced a new program that will see 640,000 school kids given free iPads. 31,000 of those will be given out this year, while the other 609,000 will be issued by the end of 2014. The program comes after a $31 million deal with Apple.

Ever wish you could get a tourist photo that looks exactly the same as everyone else’s photo, only it has you standing in front of the monument/mountain/[insert cliché here]? No, of course not. But apparently there are plenty of people in Japan who do, and they can now use special camera stands, located at popular tourist spots, to do it.

You know those trackers you see in movies, the ones that beep and point to wherever you should be going? Heroes and villains alike use them to track bags of stolen money, and space marines use them to avoid aliens.

Now you can use one to get, well, to get wherever it is you want to go. The app is called Crowsflight, and it is just about as simple as navigation apps can get.

Everpix – already the best slightly-confusing service for keeping all your photos ever in one place – has updated to add support for Mosaic. And lest you – like me at 2AM this morning – go searching through the app’s settings to find some cool new grid view, let me tell you now that Mosaic is a separate service for printing photo books.

At some point in the recent past, Lomo went from being the resurrector of crappy Soviet-era plastic cameras to a niche manufacturer of some very interesting lo-fi photography kit. Today’s surprise is that Lomo will be making the Petzval lens, a lens invented in 1840 in – yes – Russia.

As apparent through the company’s tagline “musicians first,” IK Multimedia generally makes stuff for musicians; but their new iKlip iPad stand should also fit a ton of scenarios that have absolutely nothing to do with music.

The stand combines a wide-stance, stable, metal-reinforced base with a tall neck that ends in a frame that an iPad slides into. There are two adjustable points, both of which lock: an elbow in the middle of the neck, and a ball pivot where the neck meets the iPad frame.

This is absolutely one of the most striking cases we’ve seen. Adopted have taken their distinct embedded-leather-in-metal Leather Wrap case and tweaked it, substituting the leather for a soft, puffy silicone material; the result is the Cushion Wrap case, which looks like a tiny upholstered bed.

Out today, TurtleStrike brings iOS and Android gamers a new, turn-based strategy game with over 80,000 combinations of weaponized, armored turtle warfare. You’ll get Tesla coils and kamikaze turtles, a missile named Big Bertha, and the chance to compete in tournaments that have real monetary rewards.

Sound like fun? You bet your shell it does.