News - page 1809

When former Apple retail boss Ron Johnson took his leave from Cupertino to become the new CEO of JC Penney late last year, there wasn’t as much “WTF-ing” as you might expect. Sure, there was some incredulity as Johnson left the gleaming stores he had founded for JC Penney’s chain of mouldering clothing outlets, but there was also a lot of optimism: if anyone could turn around a business like JC Penney, it would be Johnson.

Johnson may still succeed, but his first moves at rehabilitating JC Penney have been failures. The stock is tanking and JC Penney posted a $163 million loss last quarter alone. Customers, it seems, are not reacting well to the new JC Penney, which eschews sales, circulars, coupons and fine print for plain, honest pricing… the kind of store where all the .99s are dropped from the price tag.

Why? Honest pricing might work for Apple, but in most of the retail word, it appears to be a sucker’s game. Customers, it turns out, only say they want fair pricing. What the really want to do is treat shopping like a game.

It’s really hard to verify this, and it flies in the face of all of the most recent rumors about the latest MacBook Pro line, but a new photo of what is purported to be the new 13-inch MacBook Pro’s specs, and they are underwhelming to say the least.

There is an 2.5GHz Ivy Bridge chip, and there is a USB 3.0 port, but across the board, pretty much everything else is the same: no Retina Displays, same thickness as before, the optical drive’s still there, same RAm, hard drive and SuperDrive specs.

In short, a speed bump, not a major revolution. Is it possible this is the base model of MBP Apple will unveil to keep people who still need an optical drive happy, or have we all got caught up in a maelstrom of wishful thinking?

Source: Weiphone
Thanks: Chesh!

SnapFocus is a clever camera gadget from Brandon David Cole. It’s a rig made from bike brake levers, cables and cogs, and it allows a single person to both operate a camera to shoot video, and to pull focus at the same time.

Following numerous claims that Apple will abandon Google Maps and release proprietary mapping technology this year, The Wall Street Journal today reports that Apple is indeed throwing out Google Maps once and for all. Apple showed signs of moving away from Google Maps when it used open-source mapping technology in its recently launched iPhoto for iOS app.

Apple has been reportedly “hatching the plan to evict Google Maps from the iPhone for years,” and the company is expected to debut its completely new app “later this year.”

Have you ever wished that iOS would automatically fill in your Apple ID password when making purchases in the App Store? Apple requires the user to confirm the password associated with an Apple ID before purchasing and downloading new apps and updates. Once you enter your password, iOS keeps your account logged in for a short time, but you’ll have to re-enter your password again after a few minutes.

What if you only had to enter your password once and never worry about it again? A new jailbreak tweak called PasswordPilot Pro automatically inserts your Apple ID password for you, making the process of buying and updating apps faster and more efficient.

Gameloft is at it again, teaming up with Marvel to produce yet another hit mobile game. After the success of Spider-Man: Total Mayhem, Marvel knew just who to go to for the creation of an Amazing Spider-Man mobile game that they planned on launching in conjunction with the new film. Gameloft has been working closely with Marvel and Sony Pictures to ensure the game stays as true to the film story as possible.

Wouldn’t it be freaking cool to hangout with a couple thousand other iPad owners and make the world’s biggest interactive billboard? You could create some pretty amazing stuff – like a huge video of that Helicopter Cat thing. We’re always so separated and alone when using our cool new gadgets, but Nate Bolt, Ryan Schude, and Lauren Randolph think it’s time to make something together out of them, so they created a huge jumbotron out of their iPads.

Here’s a video of the iPad Jumboltron in action:

The jailbreak community has fostered incredible iOS innovation and created friendships that span continents, but there’s an unfortunate underbelly associated with jailbreaking that continues to thrive: app piracy. Sadly, millions of people still jailbreak their iOS devices only to download paid apps from the iOS App Store for free.

Installous, the main hub of iOS app piracy, just received a big update that makes the process of downloading cracked apps even easier.

The iPad continued to dominate the tablet space through the first quarter of 2012. That’s the news from ABI Research, which publishes a quarterly report known as the Media Tablet Market Share Tracker. Although most companies with products in the tablet space did see year-on-year growth, none was able to come close to wresting the number one spot away from Apple.  Apple’s commanding lead translated to 10 times the number of shipments by Samsung, which returned to being the second biggest player in the tablet space.

According to the latest report by ABI Research, there is no tablet market… only an iPad market.

Photographer Henry Hargreaves did the unthinkable. He took the world’s most beloved Apple gadgets and submerged them in deep-fried, fattening, greasy goodness. Call it sacrilegious, but the photos turned out pretty well.

We first looked at Mobilisafe a couple of months ago when the company’s signature mobile management suite was still in private beta. The company, which was started by former T-Mobile Android engineers, seeks to offer broad mobile device and data security without requiring the types on-device agents or profiles used by most mobile device and application management suites.

Mobilisafe executives describe their product as a mobile risk management solution rather than as a device or application management tool. The distinction being that Mobilisafe helps IT departments identify specific threats that can then be mitigated rather than simply locking specific apps and restricting access to on-device features like blocking an iPhone user’s ability to snap photos and upload them to iCloud.

Microsoft has officially announced their newest product for the Xbox 360, Xbox Smart Glass, and it will turn your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch into an extension of your favorite console games.

Imagine playing a game of Halo and using your iPhone to show you the mini-map, or your iPad to talk with team mates, and you have the right idea. And while you won’t be able to stream full games from your Xbox 360 to your iPhone or iPad, this still sounds pretty great.

In case you haven’t heard, Instapaper quietly snuck its way into the Google Play Store today. I’m going to tell you a little bit about Instapaper, its significance to Android, and why this Android user won’t be buying it. Instapaper is a popular service for saving web pages for reading later. It not only saves pages for reading later, but also strips them down to a clean text-only format for easy reading.

It’s a nice concept, which when released back in 2008 for iOS, was original and extremely useful. But over the course of the last four years, Instapaper’s developer Marco Arment has spent most of his free time insulting Android and its fans… and now he wants us to give him money? Let’s take a brief look at the Instapaper app and its history to show just how insulting this is.

Cult of Mac’s favorite iPhone case for photographers — the Gizmon Rangefinder Case — has just been improved with new functions, plus a leather strap. And what’s more, it’s actually cheaper than it used to be.

If you’ve had problems jailbreaking your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with the Absinthe 2.0 untethered jailbreak released a couple weeks back, good news: the indefatigable iPhone Dev Team have updated their popular jailbreak tools with iOS 5.1.1 untether compatibility, including redsn0w (for all factory unlocked devices), PwnageTool (for devices reliant on software unlock), Cinject (for already jailbroken but tethered iOS 5.1.1 devices) and Ultrasn0w 1.2.7.

The entertainment industry may be bracing for further disruption by Apple when the company finally unveils its HDTV and related television plans, but at least one major player in the field is refusing to show any sign of fear.

In a move sure to be followed by other industry executives, DirecTV chairman Michael White downplayed the potential for an Apple television during a conference attended by other cable and satellite company leaders late last week. While other executives were fairly noncommittal about an Apple HDTV and what it could mean for the entertainment industry, White was emphatic in deriding the idea that Apple could deliver a better user experience to viewers.

Speaking at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions conference, White specifically called out two of the most anticipated features of an Apple television – a superior user interface and a better selection of content – and described them as unrealistic and unimportant to his company’s customers.

A new rumor suggests that come next week’s WWDC, Siri is finally making its way to the iPad. Or, at least, it will when iOS 6 is finalized in September later in the year.

There’s an old and very accurate adage that says the second you drive a car, it begins losing value the second you drive it out of the showroom. It also immediately becomes an ongoing expense. The biggest sign of that expense is the number of trips to the gas station. Most of us tend to tend to just pay for the gas, regular maintenance, and monthly payments and not think about whether we’re getting the best gas mileage possible.

Tracking fuel economy and other car expense data can ultimately save you a fair amount of money. Tracking gas mileage and common maintenance tasks can help you optimize when to have your oil changed for maximum oil life and fuel economy, encourage you to check your tire pressure, and even plan more fuel-efficient routes for your daily commute and other regular trips. All of that can add up to real savings over the long-term.

I test a lot of gadgets, and so I inevitably have stacks of USB cables left over. I’m pretty sure that a geek like you also has more than his or her fair share of wires. But I’ll be that none of them is as handy as the Twig, a bendable, pose-able iPhone cable that doubles as a tripod.

Owning an iPhone is a great thing, but the plans sure aren’t. Favoring the carriers more than the consumer, up until now, if you wanted to use an iPhone in the United States, you had to sign yourself up to have your bank account drained for nearly $100 a month for the next twenty-four months.

Last week’s announcement that Cricket Wireless was entering the iPhone game radically changes the carrier landscape in the United States, at least as far as we customers are concerned. The prepaid carrier isn’t some regional oddjob: they service $7 million customers in all fifty states. For $55 a month, you get unlimited voice, unlimited data, unlimited texts… and no contract. The only rub? You have to lay out $500 for the iPhone up front.

It’s worth it. I decided to sit down with my calculator and figure out how much users can save if they get their next iPhone through Cricket instead of one of AT&T, Verizon or Sprint. The answer? A LOT. Here’s the data.

Unlimited data plans are becoming scarce options for smartphone and tablet users. Sprint remains the only carrier to offer an unlimited data plans. Most Verizon and AT&T customers, however, need to make do with tiered data plans. Tiered data plans get more cash from customers and deter customers from overloading mobile networks with excessive data use.

As a result, a lot of us try to avoid excessive data use by limiting the types and amount of content that we access when using a device’s 3G or LTE connection. That, in turn, blocks many content companies from capturing ad or subscription revenue from mobile users. That reality is leading major content companies to complain to the carriers and which AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson recently said may lead to “toll free” data plans.

According to pre-WWDC scuttlebutt, iOS 6 won’t be a huge departure from what we’ve got now, at least when it comes to stand out system features. What we will see, however, is a total revision of Apple’s core apps, most noticeable in Apple’s totally overhauled, Google-free Maps app, along with a sexy new silver UI.

What will it all look like in action, though, on the new, possibly elongated iPhone 5, when it ships in September or October? Over on the Apple Core forums, user gizmosachin created some nice mockups of what all the pieces will look like when glued together.

According to the latest data from comScore, Android might have peaked. Meanwhile, iOS is still going strong.

New smartphone users — individuals trading in their own feature phones for their first touchscreen, Android’s core constituency — are at their lowest level since 2010: just 300k new smartphone users a week in the last quarter, compared to 1.5 million in November.

It gets worse for Google. Android added the fewest number of new users than it has since 2009. It’s effectively an all-time low for Android growth, which, as Horace Dediu points out, equals four straight months of decline.

The friendly skies have been cozying up to the iPad for awhile now. First, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration allowed pilots to replace hundreds of pounds of flight manuals and log books for Apple’s tablet, and now a new airline is promising to save fuel, increase profits and make their customers happier by phasing out the in-flight entertainment system in favor of a fleet of iPads.