News - page 2310

Microsoft’s “Pink” phones, a Zune-like response to Apple’s iPhone, is on the verge of collapse, as the company ignores advice coming from the increasingly disgruntled team of Danger employees. The key mistake, according to leaks is the software giant’s demanding a firewall between the Pink program (also known as the Zune Phone) and Windows Mobile and Zune projects.

According to AppleInsider, Microsoft’s isolation of the Danger team prevented the engineers and others to pass along lessons learned while developing Danger’s Sidekick. Since acquiring the smartphone maker in 2008, Microsoft has seen most of the Danger team either be fired or walk.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ircH4hwjx60

If you’ve ever wondered what the point of those flashlight apps are, wonder no more: they are kick-butt investigation tools.

The next time you need to crawl down a 150-foot electrical conduit and don’t have a flashlight —  your iPhone can light the way, a recent episode of CSI reminds us.

In a cheesy bit of iProduct placement, the actor hands his iPhone-cum-flashlight over to the guy who will have to brave the crawl space saying “There’s an app for that.”

There are a bunch of these apps on iTunes, most are free, ranging from Funny Flashlight to myLite (also has strobe effects), with jokey descriptions like “Are you scared of the dark?”

Has anyone found the flashlight app handy — aside from helping solve heinous crimes?

Via Art of the iPhone

It seems everywhere you look – on the street, on television and online – another iPod or iPhone is being produced or sold. Supply of flash memory has hit a 1.3 percent shortfall and is expected to drop to 3.3 percent below demand during the important Christmas period. Once again the blame is being laid at Apple’s doorstep.

“NAND flash supply has reportedly become tighter as major chip producers Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Micron and Hynix Semiconductor favor demand for Apple devices,” DigiTimes writes on a report from DRAMeXchange.

This isn’t the first time Apple has been blamed for a shortage in NAND memory. In September a “serious shortage” of flash memory was reported, causing makers to curtail production to everyone but Apple. At the same time, Apple unveiled new flash-based iPods, including a 64GB iPod touch and an updated iPod nano with video ability.

If you’re still not convinced about the need for regular backups, maybe talking with some Snow Leopard users will. The Apple support boards are buzzing with reports of Leopard users finding data zapped.

“Users start their Macs up as normal only to find they’ve logged in as ‘Guests’ on their machine – with all the files and data held on their Mac in their own user account seemingly deleted,” according to 9to5.

About 18 percent of Mac users have upgraded to Snow Leopard since its release August 28, we reported earlier this month.

So, a month ago, I wrote a post proclaiming iTunes LP to be the first digital album good enough to criticize. I would like to revise that assessment. It is, instead, the first major content misstep in the history of the iTunes Store.

At launch, Apple had six albums available in the format, which basically marries lyrics, album artwork, ad video content to your collection of AAC files. Scratch that, there were five albums and one musical comic book. It seemed like too little, but it was a launch — there were hardly any apps on the App Store when it came out, too. A month later, however, things have scarcely improved. We’ve gone from six offerings in iTunes LP to 13.

So what could be the problem? As it turns out, it’s the business model. According to Gizmodo, an indie record label owner asked Apple what it would take to get some of his albums available in the LP format. Apple’s reported answer? Be a major label. Seriously. Read on.

Apple has just released a new firmware update, version 3.1.2 for the existing iPhone and iPod Touch range, which contains no new features but fixes an important issue with cellular network reception. The new software fixes dropped cell connections until the iPhone is restarted, according to Apple.

However, it looks like the update does contain a new baseband version in order to fix the issue, therefore if you have an unlocked iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, do not update until there is confirmation from a trusted source, like the iPhone DevTeam. If you’re planning to jailbreak, you should wait as this firmware version is currently incompatible with the latest jailbreak tools. But updates will soon be released to resolve the compatibility problem, according to the iPhone DevTeam.

The complete-ish list of changes, according to Apple’s cryptic update notes, is as documented below:

• Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep.
• Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart.
• Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming.

Clearly, it indicates no new features, unless there are some hidden ones. ;)

To download the new firmware for your iPhone, select the model below to download it directly from Apple’s server or open iTunes and click iTunes –> Check for Updates in the menu bar.

• iPhone
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS

A negative review of the Archos 5 Internet tablet by gadget blog T3 may provide an opening for Apple’s rumored tablet. Unlike the Apple tablet, expected to launch in January using the iPhone operating system, the Archos 5 tablet is powered by Google’s Android – a concept that “just doesn’t add up.”

“This is essentially the Archos 5 media tablet with an OS reskin. Think the Toshiba TG01 and its reskin of Windows Mobile,” T3 wrote.

There are no big announcements from Apple today. No new products, nothing special happening. But it’s a special day nonetheless.

Because today, the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg has finally declared Windows a match for OS X.

Many of you will know that Walt’s opinions are widely read, and are likely to sway a lot of people in their computer-purchasing decisions.

In recent years, he has consistently said that Mac OS X is a better choice than Windows, either XP or Vista. But with the imminent release of Windows 7 (on October 22nd), that comes to an end.

The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) gave the green light to Station Stops, an app with handy time tables, after having it yanked from iTunes for intellectual property claims against the developer.

Station Stops, which costs $2.99, is back in the Apple store this week.
It’s a major victory for the developer/blogger/commuter Chris Schoenfeld, who saw his work pulled from iTunes in August and on the receiving end of a nastygram from MTA lawyers.

The app provides a timetable for the Metro-North Railroad for regularly-scheduled trains departing and arriving from Grand Central Station.
Schoenfeld ran into trouble with the MTA because although they provide schedules to Google Transit, they do not release the data publicly. To build his app, Schoenfeld did it the old way — by entering data manually from the published public schedule.

More on how the MTA saw the light after the jump.

If you were around when Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda made American cultural history in 1969 with “Easy Rider,” you may have noticed the announcement about the iBike Rider, an iPhone case and more for motorcycle riders. While quite a stir was made about helmet-mounted GPS, or the handlebar iPhone case and even the iPod bike charger, the iBike Rider is for hog-owners.

The iBike is a weather-proof case for $42 but also offers the option of piping iPhone conversations directly into your helmet for an added $85. The one drawback: the iBike currently ships from France.

[Via Gizmodo and iBike Rider]

Remember when E-Ink was introduced in the late 1990s? Speculation on its uses mostly centered on how the technology would change publishing. Although e-book readers from Sony and Amazon employ e-ink for their displays, we haven’t seen applications for everyday electronics such as hard drives – until now. Western Digital announced its My Book Elite and My Book Studio USB will offer e-ink displays.

The displays – part of a 12-character screen – help label the hard drives’ contents. What is intriguing and turns a ho-hum story of hard drives into a gadget phenom is that the e-ink displays can be read even when the HD’s power is off. This makes the Western Digital hard drives different than the boatload of other storage devices using LEDs that go blank when no juice is flowing.

With all the warnings about your TV’s “ready” light and other so-called ‘electricity vampires,’ E-Ink may have stumbled into a profitable area. But you may want to hurry if you want one of the hard drives. “Everyone is going to want this,” according to CrunchGear.

The E-Ink Western Digital drives come in two flavors: a Firewire and USB My Book Studio ($300 for up to 2T) for Mac users and a $280 USB My Book Elite.

[Via CrunchGear, Gadget Lab and Western Digital]

Mid-week Mac deals come from the Apple Store, that is offering refurbished Mac Pro Xeon 2.93 GHz and 3.2 GHz workstations. Also on tap: more 8GB iPod nanos (the previous version), plus continued sales on iPod and iPhone case, including the ChiTek Metallic Slim Fit Case.

For details on these and more items (such as new App Store freebies), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Earlier this year, we ran several articles about Mobigame‘s excellent iPod game Edge getting a legal smackdown from Tim Langdell, owner of Edge Games. Over time, his claims to the Edge marks have, according to commentators, become increasingly dubious and troll-like, to the point where internet sleuths have clubbed together as ChaosEdge to provide a legal fund for Mobigame and information repository that built on the investigative work of TIG Source.

Recently, EA filed suit against Langdell about an entirely different Edge trademark spat, but, to aid indie devs, EA aims via the suit to obliterate all Langdell’s Edge marks, making the world safe for people to use the word ‘Edge’ in the title of a videogame without someone who had a company that was marginally famous in the 1980s popping up and having a major hissy fit.

Possible upshot? Edge is back in the App Store ($4.99 US/£2.99 UK). Somewhat like what you’d get if Marble Madness was built from cubes, and then a load of other cracking gameplay components were added, Edge is a top game for iPod touch and iPhone. And while we hope it’s around for good this time, we strongly recommend you go and buy it right now, just in case it vanishes again.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNUcD-FXgDI

GymFu has carved itself a niche on Apple handhelds, coming across like an affordable Nike+ for crunches, push-ups, pull-ups or squats. CrunchFu was also an app of the week on this site recently.

A criticism of the suite of apps has been the built-in ‘Fubot’ robot, which counts your reps and barks instructions, sounding like an angry, dispassionate Dalek with a sore throat. As of today, GymFu reports that you can switch out the voice for one of the alternatives from the ‘Sarge and Missy’ voice pack. Of those voices, one sounds like an angry drill instructor and the other resembles a schoolmarm. (Cult of Mac leaves it to you to decide which one is which.)

Initially, GymFu users can grab the voices for the princely sum of ‘nothing at all’ by sending a message to Twitter of Facebook via a GymFu app. “We’d originally intended it as an in-app payment but then we came up with a better idea; why not reward users for tweeting about us from within the app?” says Jof Arnold of GymFu, noting that other companies have tried rewarding uses for inviting friends, but GymFu’s enabling users to write whatever they want. He adds: “There’s nothing quite like getting shouted at in aggressive pseudo-army tones to inspire you to squeeze out some more reps,” and Cult of Mac agrees this is certainly better than being yelled at by a Dalek.

GymFu’s apps are available on the App Store, and are currently a buck cheaper than usual at $2.99 each (or £1.19 in Brit-o-land, and €1.59 in the Euro zone).

If you read the crime logs, you’ll know the best place to snag an iPod at a five-finger discount is from a parked car. (Often an unlocked one).

Teen Tyler J. Peglow in Bay City Michigan is charged with picking off iPods from a parking lot. He got caught with four in hand by police who tased him and brought the 18-year-old before a judge.

Peglow, however, also managed to pick his spot poorly: proximity to the courthouse meant that he ended up in front of the judge whose iPod he nicked.

“I told him, ‘You might want to ask another judge to review your status because I think you stole my iPod,’” Circuit Judge Joseph K. Sheeran told local papers.

The teen will go before another judge Oct. 12.

“The lesson here for people is to lock your cars,” Sheeran said. “The overall lesson for people who engage in this activity is that they will be caught eventually. In this case, justice was swift.”

Color me unsurprised, but the Mac vs. PC mentality doesn’t always hold true at home.

The fascinatingly-named 2009 Household Penetration Study from NPD finds that Apple computers are in 12% of US households, up from 9% in 2008.

Ad campaigns aside, the study found that these Mac people don’t mind a little fraternizing with the “enemy:” 85% also have a Windows-based PC at home.

The study also found that Apple owners have more computers (and more laptops) than strictly PC owners, plus they also tend to have more gadget-happy households in general.

We’ve written about a number of incidents where a waterproof iPhone would come in handy, including accidental pool dunking and a few protective devices. But do you really need a USB hard drive that’ll pass military water-proof and shock-proof tests? That’s seems to be the selling point of A-Data’s SH93.

The SH93 (no price yet) claims to withstand water for 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter. Additionally, the hard drive, which is available in 250GB, 320 GB, 500GB and 640GB capacity, has passed the military’s drop test. Although the unit has passed the military’s tests, A-Data notes there is no guarantee that the hard drive or data won’t be lost – and urges consumers not to splash water on the drive, just to verify that waterproof claim.

The claims of shock and water protection for hard drives is akin to the car commercials illustrating automobiles climbing mountains, running rings of fire and other hazards unlikely to be encountered while driving to the corner grocer.

As for useful features, the hard drive is equipped with rugged rubber outer protection, a USB cord that can be wrapped around the case and a cold blue LED.

[Via Gadget Lab]

From the start, the Mac mini was seen as the perfect way to serve up video and audio to your home television. Trouble was, with the advent of high-definition pictures, your mini and HD sets had a bit of a failure to communicate. When Apple created the mini, it would interface with the world using the Mini DisplayPort standard – which was great if you had an Apple monitor, but for the rest of the planet, it was a bit like speaking only Klingon.

Kanex has introduced a bridge of sorts, an adapter which sits between your Mini DisplayPort output and your high-def television’s HDMI video and audio input. The upshot? The adapter will “turn a DisplayPort video signal into a 1080p signal over HDMI, and will even integrate either digital or analog audio into the mix,” Engadget writes.

The $70 unit grabs power from the USB port, eliminating the need for yet another power brick and associated cables for your HD entertainment setup.

Earlier this year Monoprice.com announced it would offer MacBook owners a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter for $14.25.

Kanex said its adapter works with Unibody MacBooks, MacBook Pros, the MacBook Air and iMac, along with the Mac Mini.

[Via iClarified, Engadget and Kanex]

The latest corporate apple to be taken to court by Apple is Woolworths, an Australian supermarket chain.

They 80-year-old company restyled their “W” to look like an apple, meant to symbolize fresh produce.

Apple’s lawyers are seeing red, just as they did with the Canadian school, and hope to convince IP Australia, the federal agency that governs trademarks down under, to repeal Woolworths’ application, made last August, to trademark its new logo, according to The Age.

Swedish design firm Ocean Observations has created this interesting mock-up of an Exposé-like feature for the iPhone.

The rare Apple I we noted was going to go on the block about a month ago has sold on eBay for nearly $18,000, a couple of grand over what guesstimates had it valued at $14,000 – $16,000.

And that’s without knowing whether it actually works: in the eBay description, seller Monroe Postman notes:

“I do not know if it is functional and I do not intend to power it up. If a trace on the board were to burn up due to a shorted component, it would radically decrease its value as an historical artifact and as, in my mind, a work of art (signed by the artist!). A few of the chips were missing when I purchased it and they have been replaced with the proper ones, although dated a year or two later, in some cases.”

If the buyer wants to come forward and talk about the purchase, CoM is all ears.

Thanks to eagle-eyed reader Bob who alerted us in the comments.

You’ll have to read through and decipher if this update applies to you but the Dev-Team has released Pwanage Tool 3.1 for the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 2G.

Using Pwnage Tool 3.1 you can upgrade your iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch 2G to firmware 3.1 as long as your device is currently running a custom (jailbreak)  3.0 or 3.0.1 firmware.

Those of us who are not able to jailbreak because our phones shipped with 3.1 or hastily ran the update to 3.1 and can’t go back will have to wait a while longer for freedom.

On Monday, Cult of Mac release a handy and complete guide to jailbreaking your device, which can help you use this newly released Pwnage Tool to update your device.

Roger Åberg of MacFeber.se has posted a quick unboxing video and first look at the highly-anticipated TomTom Car Kit for iPhone. The $120 accessory looks pretty solid, well-designed and sticks easily to the windshield. See the video above.

Link.

Almost everyone has a love-hate relationship with their bathroom scales. We worry about that extra slice of cake adding on the pounds, but dread the confirmation coming from the hulking scales with the dial which spins like some one-arm bandit. If only there was a kinder way to keep tabs on our weight; a more iPhone-like method. Well, Withings’ Wi-Fi Body scale comes pretty close.

Let’s start with the design. At just 0.9 inches high and with that brushed metal and sleek glass look, the Wi-Fi Body Scale complements your iPhone. Along with 802.11g connectivity, the scale includes a free iPhone app allowing you to track your weight and BMI.

Two music companies representing rapper Eminem have settled out of court with Apple over a download dispute.

Eminem’s publisher, Eight Mile Style, and his record company, Aftermath Records, sued Apple for allegedly making the rappers music available for download without permission.The rapper was not involved in the case.

The details of the settlement are confidential, the Associated Press reports.

Remember the great Eminem iTunes commercial based on “Lose Yourself?” Here it is again: