News - page 2239

One wouldn’t ordinarily mention “scalpers” and “Apple developers” in the same sentence, but this time it seems appropriate. The World Wide Developers Conference has sold out the 5,000-seat San Francisco, Calif. venue in just eight days. This, despite a series of limitations Apple imposed on this year’s event.

First, the Cupertino, Calif. company hiked the ticket price from $1295 to $1599. Then the June 7-11 dates were announced a month later than usual. Apple also froze out the Mac, focusing on the iPhone OS 4 and awarding only designers of iPhone and iPad apps.

It can be difficult getting your hands on an iPad. Apple admits it. Analysts announce it. Now the mainstream media are reporting it. Following up on online stories stretching back into mid-April, an investigation now finds Apple retail stores in 13 cities across the country have no iPad inventory.

New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Boston, Seattle, Denver and five other areas told Bloomberg Thursday they were out of iPads with no indication when a new supply would arrive.

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The iPad Camera Connection Kit has always been an intriguing accessory, not just because it allows the iPad to directly interface with cameras and SD cards, but because it seemed like a ripe target for hackers to add third-party support for other USB accessories once the jailbreaks were in. In fact, when it was first announced, I wondered how long it would take someone to figure out how to get their iPad reading data off a USB hard drive.

Not very long, it turns out. Max Shay has just posted an in depth walkthrough on how to hook up an external hard drive to your jailbroken iPad.

It’s not simple: you need a split USB cable to supply enough juice to the hard drive and an external computer with a terminal application to fool the iPad into mounting the external storage. But as a proof of concept, it’s pretty interesting stuff: I wonder how long its going to take hackers to figure out how to use the SD dongle in the iPad Camera Connection Kit to give the iPad expandable storage.

iHome’s pantheon of docks, clocks, and speakers for the iPhone and iPod are pretty hard to keep straight, but their flagship iP90 alarm clock docking station has always been one of their more visible products… and now they’ve updated it with a host of new features that make the iP90 a better buy than before.

Like its previous incarnation, the iP90 will charge and play music from the iPhone and iPod, and functions as a speaker dock, a dual alarm clock and an AM/FM radio. The new iP90’s most immediately obvious improvement, though, is a larger and more clear display, as well as improved sound quality thanks to Reson8 stereo speaker chambers as well as adjustable bass and treble.

In addition, the iP90 now has a Time Sync feature that automatically sets the time on your clock to the more trustworthy time on your iPhone or iPod. A switch for changing the clock to daylight savings time is also there, although if your phone is setting the time for you, I don’t really see the point.

Like the earlier model, the iP90 looks like a good addition to any iPhone owners bedside table. It will cost $99.

In a post on Yahoo’s Mobile Blog, the big purple Y! seems pretty gobsmacked that 10% of iPad traffic is coming from outside of the US, despite the fact that there has yet to be an international roll out of the tablet.

Ostensibly for keeping track of your kids, employees or your child labor’s iPad surfing, Mobile Spy’s iPad Spy is probably really meant for the jealous paramour, the sleazy private dick or the professional identity thief: it allows you to record the email and website visits of anyone using the iPad on which it is installed.

iPad Spy runs as a background process, so it requires a jailbroken iPad to work. When it’s installed, there’s no hint that anything is running, but the software will record all of your emails and website visits and silently upload the data to a website to be perused by the (probably malicious) installer.

Sure, this technically could be used as another level of iPad parental controls, or to make sure your employees aren’t looking at porn on their company iPads, but let’s face it: this is really just for creeps. If you’re paranoid about such things, the best advice is to just not trust any iPad with a Cydia icon on the homescreen.

[via Gizmodo]

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Now that Spirit is out, emulation on your iPad is finally possible for everyone who can click a “Jailbreak” button and launch Cydia.

Even better: the iPad’s larger screen real estate finally makes an iDevice into a satisfying emulation console when paired through Bluetooth with a standard Nintedo Wiimote. All you need to do is jailbreak your iPad, download the latest version of snes4iPhone through Cydia ($5.99) and pair your Wiimote with your iPad to set Samus spin jumping with perfectly analogue precision.

Couple this with a $0.69 business card holder and you’ve got yourself a fantastic portable SNES you can be proud of.

[via Touch Arcade]

Taking their cue from start-ups like Square, Visa is planning to get in on the iPhone payment act, with a line of special iPhone cases that will allow you to make credit card purchases at retail just by waving your handset in front of a cash register.

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber pointed out this excellent alt-universe mock-up of what icons for non-universal iPhone apps should look like on the iPad home screen.

Earlier this week when we ran down a handful of options for mounting an iPad in a car, we missed this gem from blogger Jacky Yuen of alohaeveryone.com. Watch in the clip above as he demonstrates how he affixes his iPad to the dash of his car by running some thin cord through the vent ducts and hanging the iPad — sheathed in an Apple iPad case — on it like boxers on a clothesline (also notice the demo of Air Video, a great little video-streaming app we’ll review soon).

The viewing angle isn’t customizable, it requires cooperative ducts and the official Apple iPad case ($39), and it sure isn’t pretty. But it looks like it works; and unlike the other solutions, it’s cheap and it’s available right now. Or at least as soon as you’ve got the case and liberated that ball of string from your cat.

If you’ve ever wanted a full subscription to Car and Driver or Maxim on your iDevice, now’s probably a good time to take the plunge: Zinio, the biggest electronic magazine rack on the web, has slashed subscriptions today for five of its titles to $5 — a pretty good deal, as a year-long subscription to one of these titles is now what one issue — in either the electronic or print edition — usually goes for.

The remaining sale titles are Spin, PC Magazine and Nylon. The subscriptions are for a full year, and the titles can be read on a Mac or PC, or on the iPhone, iPt or iPad through Zinio’s free app (we’ll review Zinio on the iPad soon).

Sale ends today at 4 p.m. PDT though.

The iPad has always been seen as Apple’s answer to the growing demand for low-cost netbooks. Now comes more evidence that the iPad is hurting sales of netbooks. Since the iPad’s introduction in January, demand for the low-cost notebook computers has steadily fallen, one analyst said Thursday.

It’s hard to envision the “magical” tablet (as Apple CEO Steve Jobs often describes the iPad) being a cannibal, but that’s what Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty indicates. Sales of notebooks and netbook computers are the leading candidates for cannibalization by the iPad, Huberty told investors Thursday.

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Macs do bundles better than anyone, but if you’re a Mac gamer, the Humble Indie Bundle might be the best one yet. Not only do you get to name your price for five amazing Mac indie games worth $80 — World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra Overture and Aquaria — but you get too choose if you want your money to go to support Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or line the developers’ pockets with filthy lucre.

Right now, the average contribution for the pack is just $7.87, with the total money raised over $360,000. I’m sure Cult of Mac readers can push that average contribution number up a few sense: these games, these developers and these charities are all worth your money.

Apple’s always experimenting with new ways to interact with their devices, and their latest patent takes that experiment one step further into turning your iPhone into a programmable heart rate monitor.

The patent describes a design in which a series of electrodes are seamlessly embedded into the iPhone’s shell in such a way that they are not “visibly or haptically distinguishable on the device.”

You may not be able to see or feel these electrodes, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do anything: instead, they’ll constantly measure your heart rate, with the data used to do anything from measure burned calories to change your music depending on your mood to automatically discharge the battery as a “paddle shock” when your heart suddenly explodes. Win!

More than half of Verizon Wireless customers surveyed are interested in buying the iPhone when it becomes available, a new report indicates. There is “an unprecedented demand for the iPhone among Verizon subscribers,” one analyst firm says.

Changewave surveyed 4,000 Verizon subscribers and found 19 percent are “very likely” to buy the Apple handset with another 34 percent saying they are “somewhat likely” to purchase an iPhone. Another analyst believes a Verizon iPhone could appear in 2011 and sell a minimum of 11 million handsets the first year.

With the FTC trying to decide whether or not it will pursue Apple for antitrust violations in relation to its newly announced iAd network, this leak from Apple-owned Quattro Wireless detailing iAd’s competitive advantage over other mobile advertising networks has some interesting timing.

The leak describes iAd’s VIP, or Verification of iTunes Purchase, program. Essentially, the program is aimed at developers who want to use iPhone ads to promote downloads and purchases of their own apps. Because VIP ties directly into iTunes sales data, developers who use iAd to promote their apps can get exact numbers on their ads’ conversion rates… no code, SDKs or APIs required.

The Apple Store topped consumer satisfaction for online retailers in the computer/electronics category, ranking No. 4 overall, behind Netflix, Amazon and Avon. The survey of more than 23,000 consumers also found the Cupertino, Calif. company’s online flagship also garnered the most-improved ranking, reaching a score of 83 out of 100 points, or an 8 percent increase over 2009.

The survey by ForeSee Results noted Apple’s impressive showing came during a tough economic period. “Since so much of the financial downturn was out of their control, companies turned to those things they could improve, and now they are reaping the benefits,” Larry Freed, ForeSee CEO, said in a statement. Every point of increased consumer satisfaction equates to $89 million in higher sales, according to the company.

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This promotional video for the Clamcase may seem like it was helmed by a directorial alum from the CSi: Miami school of film making, but don’t let the swooping camera angles and the blaring AC/DC fool you: the Clamcase looks like a must have accessory for the iPad. It’s a laptop-like shell for the iPad that combines a case, a stand and a Bluetooth keyboard in one slim form factor.

The video and product images are pretty clearly just product renders, but none the less, if the Clamcase ever becomes a real product — and it certainly looks like it will — this is going to be an easy buy to recommend for iPad road warriors.

[via Mac Rumors

Over the past few days, the latest beta of the iPhone OS has afforded a treasure trove of revelations about upcoming software improvements, but few previously unknown details about the hardware of the upcoming 4G iPhone and iPod Touch.

This is news, though: two new presets in the underlying architecture of iPhone OS 4.0 tease the possibility that the next iPhone, and possibly the next iPod Touch, will gain the ability to shoot 720p video.

These are the video presets in question:

AVCaptureSessionPreset640×480
AVCaptureSessionPreset1280×720

That’s about what we expected: phones are more than capable of recording HD videos these days. Still, it’s nice to get further confirmation that the iPhone’s wimpy camera modules are about to get an industry-best upgrade.

In this highly-entertaining final installment of his series about Steve Jobs, Macworld founder David Bunnell is taken by Jobs to his favorite lunch spot (you’ll never guess where it is). And for once, Jobs changes his parking habits.

If you don’t want to go out with a PC, there’s a new start-up determined to help you meet other Apples: Cupidtino.

The reasoning behind it?

Diehard Mac & Apple fans often have a lot in common – personalities, creative professions, a similar sense of style and aesthetics, taste, and of course a love for technology. We believe these are enough reasons for two people to meet and fall in love, and so we created the first Mac-inspired dating site to help you find other Machearts around you.

Right now, Cupidtino consists of a skeleton staff of three based in San Francisco, who say that the MacMatchmaking site should launch in June.

They also say the site will be gay-friendly, as long as you don’t bring a “Vista laptop, Windows Phone & Zune.”

We think the idea is clever — and plan to corral Cult of Mac singleton staffers to act as lab rats for the beta. In the meantime, if time you sign up, let us know!

UPDATE: CoM writers Lonnie and Eli have agreed to check it out. More to come…

Update: the original version of this piece failed to identify Clintprints.com as the website for poster artist Clint Wilson. We regret any confusion the omission may have caused.

Rock Show, the music poster marketplace developed especially for Apple’s iPad by Neutrinos, received an update in the iTunes App Store Wednesday that should help the Portland-based startup gain recognition for its innovative business model as well as for the creative designers behind the posters in its inventory.

Rock Show leverages the iPad’s screen real estate to deliver high resolution views of limited edition fine art print concert posters from artists and designers such as Darren Grealish (The Killers, Stevie Wonder, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Lee Scratch Perry) and Lil Tuffy (Dead Weather, Sonic Youth), which makes it a nice vehicle for showing off the iPad’s graphics chops.

Users can also buy posters from within the app, a model Neutrinos founder Rob Banagale hopes will make Rock Show the best digital marketplace for art prints in history.

“Nailing this idea has meant discussions with designers and careful design for users,” Banagale said. On the designer side those discussions led to the creation of a dealer backend for the app that allows designers to upload and maintain which of their posters are made available while also tracking their sales and inventory. “The posters are made by individual artists and design studios from the United States, Canada and the UK,” Banagale explained, saying, “Some of these folks do their own printing and many of them handle shipping posters personally.”

As the old saying goes, statistics can be made to say anything. Particularly when it comes to the increasingly-heated rivalry between Apple and Google. Half of all visits to mobile websites are done via the iPhone, ad network Chitika just announced.

The numbers come just days after Admob released figures in late April indicating smartphones running Google’s Android operating system outpacing iPhone OS-based phones. Does that fact Admob is owned by Google make any difference? Possibly, say some observers.

Add Google to the list of companies planning an ebook service. The Internet giant’s Google Editions service could be up and running as early as June, the Mountain View, Calif. company told publishers Tuesday. Google would compete with Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble for the growing audience of electronic readers.

Unlike its competitors, Google Editions would be available from any Web browser. Apple ties its iBook library to the iPad and iPhone while Amazon has its Kindle reader.

It’s a bad time to invest in a portable USB hard drive as a Mac fan. Apple’s dropped Firewire support on many of their notebooks, but have yet to adopt the USB 3.0 standard, leaving Apple customers stuck using aging and slow USB 2.0 hardware.

If you’re looking for a new hard drive, then, it’s easy to recommend Seagate’s new FreeAgent GoFlex line which can connect to most interfaces, including USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and eSATA.