Unusual rumors on Monday had Apple negotiating for fabled TV set with Canadian telecom providers Bell and Rogers. The respective satellite and cable TV providers were said by the Globe and Mail to be Apple targets as they had "wireless and broadband capabilities" that could be used for launch partners. The two allegedly even had prototypes in their labs....
Apple has issued a reminder to developers that it will not tolerate use of third party services to manipulate app rankings in the App Store. "When you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts," the reminder states. "Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership."
This reminder could very well be in response to a well-trafficked post in Touch Arcade where an iOS developer revealed that an ad network guaranteed his app placement in the top 25 apps in exchange for $5000. This third-party service allegedly employs bots to automatically download the targeted app multiple times, automatically increasing the app's...
| Read more »FileMaker-based solution developers have often debugged and optimized their products mainly by intuition -- looking at a bit of code and trying out alternative ways to accomplish the same thing until it works better, particularly when they are revising solutions that have been developed for clients over several years. A new product by 24U called FM Bench promises to introduce optimization through code analysis and bottleneck identification, saving time....
Canada’s largest newspaper, the Globe and Mail, today says that Apple has been working with wireless and wireline providers including Rogers and Bell to partner with the AppleTV.
“They’re not closed to doing it with one [company] or doing it with two,” said one source who is familiar with the talks. “They’re looking for a partner. They’re looking for someone with wireless and broadband capabilities.” Another source, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Rogers and Bell already have the product in their labs.
More interestingly, some details of this new AppleTV are provided:
The product reportedly integrates Siri, Apple’s voice-recognition software that acts as a personal assistant on the latest iPhone, into television sets to help viewers make programming choices...
| Read more »A new report claims Canadian telecoms Rogers and Bell Canada have an early version of a much-rumored Apple television set in their labs and are in negotiations with the company to enter into a partnership for the device.
| Read more »Apple Store inside of a Best Buy
Apple and Walmart subsidiary Sam’s Club are in early discussions to widen their already existing partnership. Sam’s Club currently sells Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and iPod lines within their large retail chain, but the two corporate giants are looking to take their business relationship to the next level. According to sources, Apple is considering an expansion of their Apple Store-in-store program to the 47 U.S. state retail warehouse chain.
Sources say that Apple is looking to expand their program beyond Best Buy and Target in the United States, and Sam’s Club is one of the retail chains that Apple is in early discussions with. An Apple-store-in-store typically consists of a mini-Apple Store type setup within a larger store. For example, the store-in-stores in Best Buy consist of Apple like displays and a large table with all of Apple’s products as typically seen in official, standalone Apple Stores.
Sam’s Club and Apple...
| Read more »Apple’s iPhone was the top selling device in both the U.S. and the global smartphone markets during the December quarter, according to new research from NPD and IDC. NPD released a report for the U.S. market that showed Apple was the #1 device maker during the quarter with 43% of the market, while IDC said that Apple outsold Samsung and LG to be the #1 vendor in the broader global smartphone market.
| Read more »If you're looking for coverage of working conditions at Foxconn and other Apple manufacturing partners, there's plenty to go around. The drumbeat of sharply critical stories continued today with CNN's interview of a Foxconn worker; this follows a scathing New York Times story from late January that explores the gulf between electronics companies' best intentions regarding working conditions at contract facilities, and the incessant pressure to innovate and squeeze costs out of the process.
Fairness, though, requires a few reminders. There's social and political argument over the ultimate value of ...
| Read more »Apple stock continues its steady rise in light of its stunning Q1 2012 (calendar Q4 2011) results in all three of its major product categories. AAPL pushed past its previous record closing high of $455.12 on Friday to end Monday at $463.97 and a market capitalization of $432.59 billion, the most highly-valued publicly-traded company in the world. The stock is edging even higher in after-hours trading, currently at $464.55 as of 9pm EST....
Skulking in Apple's Mac OS X 10.7.3 update has raised possibilities that Apple's on-again, off-again high-DPI support may be more established in the final version. Art assets found for mouse pointers by Marc Edwards both look different and scale to large sizes without the usual pixelated look. One claim had a Mac mini using HDMI kick into the normally hidden HiDPI mode after 10.7.3 was installed....
The discovery of newly-upgraded high-DPI UI elements in Mac OS X 10.7.3 has led to some speculation that Apple is continuing to lay the groundwork for high-resolution Mac displays that approach the pixel density of its Retina Displays.
| Read more »Apple has warned App Store developers against using promotional services that seek to increase the visibility of their titles by automating sales to inflate their apps' apparent popularity or by posting phony reviews, threatening to terminate their accounts if they do.
| Read more »The Globe and Mail reports that Apple is actively seeking launch partnerships with Canada's Rogers Communications and BCE Inc. to offer their upcoming Apple TV. “They’re not closed to doing it with one [company] or doing it with two,” said one source who is familiar with the talks. “They’re looking for a partner. They’re looking for someone with wireless and broadband capabilities.”According to the newspaper, these companies already have the Apple iTV in their labs.
Siri voice control is reportedly integrated into Apple's new television to help viewers make programming choices. Viewers can then control the TV with voice or hand gestures. Even an on-screen keyboard can be invoked without any special hardware (emphasis ours):An on-screen keyboard, meanwhile, can also be activated in a similar manner, allowing viewers to surf the web, conduct video chats...
| Read more »Yesterday, a TouchArcade thread was posted that warned about fraudulent App promotion services that guarantee Top 25 rankings for a modest fee. According to the poster, these services utilize automated scripts or bots to artificially boost free app rankings into the Top charts. At least one company denied the claims in the thread.
PocketGamer picked up on the story based on the forum thread:For $5,000, said company will allegedly utilise bots that will download a developer's app over and over again until it has broken into the top 25 charts. At this point, the developer's app will have received sufficient customer exposure to attract downloads from real people.In an apparent response, Apple has just posted a reminder (via...
| Read more »I first saw Monster Wars a little while ago at Macworld as Liv Games was just publishing it, but the title has been out for a little while now and I've had a little longer to play with it. Monster Wars is not only another huge content pack for Legendary Wars, with tons of new stages, modes and units to play with, but it is a nice iteration on the series as a whole, with a lot of subtle but solid improvements to the gameplay.
Unit animations are generally better across the board, and the controls work basically the same. I still sometimes have trouble keeping track of which heroes I'm controlling and which lanes they are supposed to be in. The UI is much improved. The pacing of the game shows that Liv Games has learned quite a bit about how to move players from level to level. The new modes...
| Read more »Apple's Vice President of iPhone and iPod Engineering David Tupman quietly exited the company at the end of 2011, sources say, and a replacement has not yet been named. Tupman, who reported directly to Senior Vice President of Hardware Bob Mansfield, has not updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect the change but is said to be taking up with a new startup operation. Apple is seeking a replacement for Tupman within its own ranks....
Screenshot from FinerThingsIn.com
DaringFireball notes several changes in some of the icons found in OS X 10.7.3. Several of our readers had also noticed the small changes in pointer icons in the latest version. It seems the changes run a bit deeper than on first glance. The new icons apparently come in high DPI versions that allow them to scale at high resolutions. Have you noticed that Safari’s hovering-over-a-link pointing-finger cursor looks a little different in Mac OS X 10.7.3? It’s not just that the finger is at a slightly different angle — it’s a new UI resource that scales gracefully to larger sizes. That’s not the only new high-DPI image resource in 10.7.3: the grabby hand in Mail, the camera cursor for selecting an individual window to take a screenshot of, and a few...
The first app developed for Apple's iOS using the now open-source Enyo 2.0 framework has hit the App Store, while Apple seeks to bar the trademarking of a mobile device case called the "driPhone" in New Zealand.
| Read more »Google looks outside the company to hire some integrity, Best Buy looks outside to consumers for mythical product research, and spammers look to Steve Jobs for inspiration. The remainders for Monday, February 6, 2012 are looking sharp.
...
Motorola Mobility (MMI) is asking for 2.25 percent of Apple’s iPhone sales in order to license MMI’s patents. The figure was uncovered by patent watcher Florian Mueller, who found the figure in documents filed in the U.S. and Germany.
| Read more »Anime News Network did an in-depth comparison of reading manga on an iPad vs. a Nook Color today, after Viz Media sent them both devices so they could do a hands-on look at making the digital jump. After taking a hit from the closing of Borders, Viz decided to turn its popular Shonen Jump publication into a digital-only product. Launched in January, Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha is $25.99 for an annual subscription, with three of its flagship series -- One Piece, Bleach and Naruto -- now running almost concurrent with the Japanese release. Individual issues can be rented for 99 cents for a 4-week period.
The results aren't surprising. By holding up a volume of manga next to an iPad, it shows that the iPad is right about the same size as a manga...
| Read more »A flaw in the iMessage protocol that causes it to continue to route messages to an iPhone even after its SIM has been removed and deactivated has gotten the attention of Apple in a very direct way: a customer demand to be compensated for the problem, which the company has allegedly done. TheNextWeb reports that an unnamed customer who had her iPhone stolen but which continued to receive iMessages has now received an iPod Touch as compensation....
The Nikon D800 has had much of its mystery taken away after a leak of details and photos through Brazil. The full-frame DSLR will shoot at 36.3 megapixels, ZTOP saw, and will take a very different approach than the 16-megapixel D4. In return for more than double the resolution, it would have a smaller normal ISO sensitivity range of ISO 100 to 6,400 and a lower maximum ISO as a result, most likely the 25,600 of the D700....
Stick with us on this one -- it seems unlikely, but this case could have some wider consequences. Last year, Apple filed a lawsuit against a company named Proview Technology Shenzen in China. It was pretty common by Apple's standards: The company was using the name iPad, and Apple was trying to keep them from doing so.
While this was all going on, Proview Taiwan (only loosely affiliated with the Shenzen division) sold the trademark to "iPad" in China to a UK-based company named Application Development, which then sold it right back to Apple. All of this would normally be fine and dandy except for one thing: Apple lost the original lawsuit that was supposed to prevent Proview Shenzen from using the name.
As a result, Proview Shenzen is arguing that it still retains the rights to the "iPad" name on the Chinese mainland, and Apple may be ...
| Read more »While reading ebooks on your iOS devices is fairly pleasant, thanks to Apple's iBooks app, the company has yet to release any such program for the Mac. To fill this void, Tidbits Publishing and Stairways Software have collaborated to create Bookle, a DRM-free ePub reader.
...
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. asked Apple Inc. to pay a potential royalty of 2.25 percent of sales for some iPhones and iPads last year, representing possibly billions of dollars in licensing fees.
In a letter filed in a California court last month, a lawyer said Motorola, which is being acquired by Google Inc., had “demanded” the royalty for a license of its patents.
Read the rest of this post on the original site »
| Read more »Tinderbox is a personal content management assistant. It stores your notes, ideas, and plans. It can help you organize and understand them. And Tinderbox helps you share ideas through Web journals and web logs.
Tinderbox's agents automatically scan your notes, looking for patterns and building relationships. Agents help discover relationships and help make sure important things don't get lost. Agents are easy to make and easy to modify. They're flexible and powerful.
Tinderbox can even gather and update changing information and breaking news from the internet.
When it's time to share your notes, Tinderbox can assemble multiple notes into one page. Updates are a breeze -- even if you update several times a day. Private notes, timestamps, permanent links, archives: everything you want, just the way you want it.
Version 5.10.1: Release notes were unavailable when this listing was updated.
Mac OS X 10.4 or later...
Mariner Write is your Mac OS go-to word processing tool! Professional writer, educator or student, Write has all the functionality you need for that important letter, technical paper or research project. Elegantly efficient and powerful, Mariner Write turns out great looking documents. Create customized headers, footers, endnotes or footnotes. Easily define styles; use keyboard shortcuts for repeated tasks. Use Mail Merge to automate a mailing. Write possesses a powerful Find Dialog, an intuitive Font Panel and much more. Mariner Write empowers you to create your own word processing environment so you can produce documents that are clean, consistent and professional.
Version 3.9.2: Release notes were unavailable when this listing was updated.
Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Download Now
I've talked quite a bit before about the growing "second screen" phenomenon, where iPads and other mobile devices are used as a second screen while either working on another computer or watching television. And with the biggest event on television yesterday, there was likely a lot of "second screen" viewing going around. ZDNet's James Kendrick says his was one of three iPads around the coffee table at his Super Bowl party, and with tens of thousands of tweets per second going out during the most interesting parts of the game, Kendrick's experience was undoubtedly not unique.
Car maker Chevrolet actually participated in the event with the Chevy Game Time app, which not...
| Read more »Apple late last week quietly filed for a US trademark that shows it possibly getting closer to having its own chip architecture. After having slowly filed trademarks in countries outside the US, such as Trinidad and Tobago, the joint USPTO and Hong Kong application caught by Patently Apple suggests that Apple has been continuing development on a project it could be willing to show soon. Mentions of work had started as early as 2004....
Last week, Apple released Airport Utility 6 for OS X Lion. Apple has confirmed that this utility can only configure AirPort devices that use 802.11n.
| Read more »Last year Apple saw the loss of many executives ranging from its OS X chief, iAd chief, and Global Security chief, and 2012 has started off with another leave: the departure Vice President David Tupman. Tupman has been Apple’s Vice President of iPhone and iPod engineering for over a decade, making him a vital component of Apple’s leadership team.
Tupman grew up in the United Kingdom and attended Salford University. While there, Tupman earned a degree in the engineering electronics. Tupman put the degree to good use as a lead engineer at Schlumberger, an oilfield services provider, for seven...
| Read more »Hugh Pickens writes "Anna Leach reports that Siri support has been a contentious issue for owners of earlier iPhones, but a recent filing from Audience shows that Siri won't run on the iPhone 4 because the phone's chip can't handle it. Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group cracked one of the secrets of the new iPhone's A5 chip after working out that it packs some serious audio cleaning power not available on the iPhone 4's A4 chip. Audience has developed technology that removes most or all of the background noise when someone places a cell-phone call from a restaurant, airport, or other noisy location. The iPhone 4S integrates Audience's 'EarSmart' technology directly into the A5 processor, improving its technology to handle 'far-field speech,' which means holding the device at arm's length rather than...
| Read more »
Apple continues to hold the title for some of the top-selling smartphone models, with the iPhone 4S being the best selling handset in the US last quarter, according to a new report by market research firm NPD. But while the iPhone has repeatedly made Apple the top smartphone vendor in the US, Android still appears to be attracting more new users.
Apple had three iPhone models available for sale in the fourth quarter of 2011: the just-released iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4, which Apple continues to sell as a lower-cost entry-level model, and the nearly three-year-old iPhone 3GS, which AT&T still offers as essentially a $0 bargain smartphone. Collectively, all iPhones sold accounted for 43 percent of...
| Read more »RIM's star just sank a bit closer to the horizon. Halliburton, a household name in the energy industry and once a BlackBerry bastion, is dumping RIM's platform and switching to iOS. The company once relied heavily on RIM's platform, but after evaluating RIM, Windows Phone, Android, and iOS, Halliburton has settled on switching to Apple's platform.
"Over the next year, we will begin expanding the use of our mobile technology by transitioning from the BlackBerry (RIM) platform that we currently use to smartphone technology via the iPhone," the company said. Halliburton representatives confirmed to AppleInsider that only 4500 of the company's 70,000 employees still use BlackBerry devices, so the transition probably won't take as long as it might have a few years ago.
According to AppleInsider's sources, Halliburton actively...
| Read more »Technology will only become more integrated into our lives and, most importantly, as an essential part of America's infrastructure.
| Read more »Following a brief injunction in the Motorola patent case forcing Apple to remove products from its German online store, a judge shortly after suspended the injunction and Apple claimed it would appeal the court’s original decision “because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms.” So, what were the terms of Motorola’s license agreement that Apple considered unreasonable?
Foss Patents reported earlier that court documents revealed Motorola was requesting an approximate 2.25-percent royalty from Apple, and today The Wall Street Journal ...
| Read more »Harman has started delivering its DigiTech iStomp programmable effects pedal. Users can program the the guitar stompbox using their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to make potentially any sound, not just distortion or other effects associated with filters. Twenty alternative sound effects are available for download....
Apple leaped past Samsung and LG to become the best-selling U.S. handset brand in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2011. In a quarter that featured the launch of the iPhone 4S and the addition of Sprint, Apple’s three available models combined to capture 43 percent of the U.S. smartphone market in Q4.
[...]
| Read more »Today’s episode has John and Dave talking through flaky trackpads, upgrading laptop RAM, the new AirPort Utility, and emptying the trash. They also discuss tricks that might cause your MacBook’s trackpad to stop working, how to reconfigure your network with multiple routers, and diagnosing shutdown issues related to Lion’s resume functionality. Then, of course, come some tips as well as a fantastic list of Cool Stuff Found. Download today and enjoy!
| Read more »A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors
Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (Grasp) laboratory shows how a massive groups of quadrocopters can work together in large formations. In the video, 20 of the whirring drones fly in unison, transitioning between formations and avoiding collisions.
I, for one, welcome our new nano robotic overlords.
| Read more »ITC staff lawyer Jeff Hsu in a discussion Monday said he would recommend to Administrative Law Judge Theodore Essex that Barnes & Noble hadn't violated the three patents at the heart of a Microsoft lawsuit. The recommendation isn't binding, but could be a strong clue as to the ruling Judge Essex may make on April 27....
Apple has recently filed for international trademark protections of "macroscalar," its name for various patented optimizations for efficiently executing code on a processor, suggesting it plans to begin commercially promoting its differentiating technology.
| Read more »Shares in Apple Inc. (AAPL) continued their record streak with a new closing high on Monday. The stock ended the day at US$ 463.97, a gain of $4.29 (+0.93 percent), on light volume of 8.8 million shares trading hands, giving the company a market capitalization of $432.6 billion, meaning that Apple is still the world’s most valuable company.
| Read more »In December, an apparent bug appeared in Apple's iMessage service that allowed iMessages to be sent to a stolen iPhone. The messages can, apparently, continue to be sent and received from the stolen phone after a remote wipe and a SIM card deactivation. This is obviously an unintended action, and though Apple explains the solution to be "toggle iMessage on and off" in the Settings app, that is an impossible act to perform remotely on a stolen phone.
The Next Web today reports of the case of an anonymous Apple customer who had her iPhone stolen and the lengthy discussions she had with...
| Read more »Siri has been in widespread use for four months, but so far Apple's "personal assistant" is still only available on one device, the iPhone 4S. We speculated that there weren't any technical reasons Siri couldn't work on some of Apple's other devices, and the jailbreak community later proved us right by porting Siri to the iPhone 4.
AppleInsider did some digging and discovered there may be a technological reason Apple's kept Siri an iPhone 4S-only feature: noise reduction. The iPhone 4 incorporates noise reduction circuitry from a third-party vendor called Audience, and that circuitry lies separate from the A4 chip on the iPhone's logic board. The...
| Read more »The leaked images of a Facebook app last summer will not result in a photo-sharing app after all, Business Insider has learned. The photos were simply meant to showcase of what such an app could look like and in fact little development work was done on the app. Also, the source revealed that Facebook is still working on improving the mobile photo-sharing experience, but the team assigned to it is different from the one in the summer....
John Gruber responding to a misguided article by Lance Ulanoff:
Apple doesn’t need to pay for Super Bowl ads to get high-profile attention for major announcements.
Why is it that the PC-focused press continues to pretend they know Apple? Ulanoff’s comments show he doesn’t understand how Apple works and perhaps never will.
Apple doesn’t do what other companies do. They don’t have to.
| Read more »Patently Apple reports that Apple last week filed a curious new trademark application for the term "macroscalar". The company has typically quietly registered trademarks in countries such as Trinidad & Tobago, only to later apply for the marks in the United States and other major markets once the new products and features have been announced. While an application for "macroscalar" was indeed filed in Trinidad & Tobago last August, the new U.S. application and a similar one in Hong Kong are sparking speculation that Apple may have jumped the gun in announcing some new processor technology.Apple's "Macroscalar" isn't just a new marketing line; it's a processor architecture that's been in the works at Apple since 2004. In fact, Apple owns at least four granted patents on the technology that has yet to come to light. We first covered it in...
| Read more »In terms of shipments, Apple was the top smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a new IDC report. The company shipped roughly 37 million phones, giving it a 23.5 percent marketshare. Close behind was Samsung, which took a 22.8 percent share with 36 million phones. Nokia, Research in Motion, and HTC rounded out the top five, but trailing behind with shares of 12.4, 8.2, and 6.5 percent, respectively....
Apple's iPhone lineup dominated smartphone sales during the holiday 2011 quarter, with the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS taking the top three spots, respectively, in total U.S. sales.
| Read more »Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts. Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership. Get helpful tips and resources on marketing your apps the right way from the App Store Resource Center.
| Read more »Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts. Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership. Get helpful tips and resources on marketing your apps the right way from the App Store Resource Center.
| Read more »When it comes to forecasting the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is the iPad 3.
It's been a long, cold winter for TUAW. As days lengthen and Spring becomes less of a dream and more imminent, our thoughts turn to new technology. What do we expect to see in the next generation iPad and when do we expect to see it? Preorders in March, pickup in April?
You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your predictions.
You're the Pundit: iPad 3 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our...
| Read more »Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts. Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership. Get helpful tips and resources on marketing your apps the right way from the App Store Resource Center.
| Read more »Queen Elizabeth II
Huffington Post:
Queen Elizabeth II marked her Diamond Jubilee on Monday with a message thanking all those who had supported her over her 60-year reign and reaffirming her dedication to serving the British people.
The 85-year-old monarch ascended the throne when her father, George VI, died on Feb. 6, 1952. She is the longest-serving monarch after Queen Victoria, who reigned for more than 63 years.
It’s remarkable to be in any job for that long let alone one with as much pressure as this one. Congratulations, Mum!
| Read more »Intel announced today the new 520 Series solid-state storage code-named “Cherryville” and a number of tech websites and blogs already have their reviews up. The Verge has a nice review round up, and MacWorld’s own review provides an extensive overview of the pros and cons of the device. Fabbed on Intel’s 25nm Multi-Level Cell process, the 520 boasts sequential read/write performance of 550/520MBps when using a system with a SATA 3.0 6Gbps interface. The...
| Read more »M5859 Studios has released Inside the World of Dinosaurs, an interactive dinosaur encyclopedia for the iPad. Narrated by Stephen Fry, the app provides a comprehensive multimedia encyclopedia that features the entire catalogue of dinosaurs from Archeopteryx to Zuniceratops, including a library of 60 fully animated and interactive dinosaurs displayed in…
| Read more »Google on Monday lost an appeal trying to keep an incriminating e-mail out of Oracle's lawsuit over Android patents and copyrights. The court rejected Google's view that engineer Tim Lindholm's message, which told top staff that they needed a Java license for Android, was subject to attorney-client privilege. Lindholm had been talking to regular Google employees and not lawyers, the federal appeals court said, making it a valid part of discovery....
Neil Hughes:
By potentially partnering with carriers and cable operators, Apple could enter the market on a level playing field with everyone else for content. With access to a variety of content through existing providers, as well as the content already available on the iTunes Store, Misek believes that Apple could package everything with a “superior user interface and ecosystem” and beat out the competition.
There are a lot of variables to consider, but many have hoped that Apple could bring some type of subscription service to Apple TV.
| Read more »Apple Inc. has moved to block the application for a trademark on the name “driPhone” in New Zealand. The trademark is being pursued by Hayden Crowther, who developed a waterproof case for the iPhone he called driPhone. Apple has protested the trademark on concern that it could cause confusion in the market place with its own iPhone trademark.
| Read more »Apple's A5 processor includes noise-reduction circuitry licensed from a start-up called Audience, and a chip analyst believes that's why the iPhone 4 lacks the Siri voice-control system, reports "CNET."
According to Apple, Siri -- which is currently in beta testing -- isn’t like traditional voice recognition software that requires you to remember keywords and speak specific commands. Siri understands your natural speech, and it asks you questions if it needs more information to complete a task.
| Read more »Inside the World of Dinosaurs for the iPad brings sixty dinosaurs to life in a beautiful and interactive manner. Narrated by Stephen Fry and wonderfully animated. It would be a great app if not for two notable flaws.
| Read more »Siri's exclusivity to the iPhone 4S may be connected to the use of Audience's EarSmart noise cancellation technology, suggests Linley Group analyst Linley Gwennap. While teardowns have shown the presence of a dedicated Audience chip in the iPhone 4, Gwennap points to a January S-1 filing, indicating that EarSmart is built directly into the 4S' A5 processor. "Even after accounting for the dual Cortex-A9 CPUs and the large GPU that provides the A5 with industry-leading 3D graphics performance, the remaining die area seems too large for the usual mundane housekeeping...
If you want to record audio on your Mac, Audio Hijack Pro is there for you. Need a copy of that Skype conversation? Have a radio program you can’t miss? Just need a quick audio note? Audio Hijack Pro can grab it all. It’s fully functional on Mac OS X 10.7 and can even capture audio from sandboxed App Store apps too.
Download our free trial, then purchase in our store. This week only, Daring Fireball readers can save 25% with coupon code DF201202.
| Read more »Apple was the top seller of smartphones worldwide and in the U.S. last quarter, analysts said Monday.
...
Dear Aunt TUAW,
I love Siri. I'm surprised at how much I actually use it beyond the gimmicky stuff. Texting while driving (through my car's Uconnect system) is so handy.
One thing I've noticed is that when I dictate a message, add a smiley face and have her read it back to me, she says, "Have a nice day colon comma." The odd part is that she has written :-), which is colon hyphen right bracket. Is this a glitch or does a hyphen and right bracket together equal a comma? I was never good at grammatical math.
Your doting nephew,
Damien
Dear Damien,
Ah, bless Siri. She's such a changeable creature. Auntie used to love when Siri would read out "Brr, it's cold" as "Bee. Arr. Arr. It's Cold". Thanks to Apple's live data center updates, Siri now responds "Burr" instead of "Bee. Arr. Arr."
The smiley-face being read back as a colon is similar...
| Read more »Analytics firm IDC just released a report covering the top five smartphone vendors by shipments and market share for Q4 2011. Apple not surprisingly takes the top position. According to IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone vendors shipped 157.8 million units in Q4 2011, and 37 million were from Apple—accounting for 23.5-percent market share in the quarter.
As for competitors, the report showed Samsung was not far behind Apple with 36 million units shipped and 22.8-percent of the market worldwide. However, while taking the top position in the market thanks to the iPhone 4S launch, Apple also set a new shipment volume record for the entire industry during the quarter. The report citied the initial delay bringing the launch closer to...
| Read more »Includes latest version of Instant On component for pulling audio from sandboxed application from the Mac App Store. ($32 new, free update, 5.2 MB)
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
| Read more »Sprite Labs has released an update to Paint FX, its photo effects editor for iOS, adding native iPad support and several new filters and effects. Paint FX is a photo effects editor for iOS that provides the ability to apply filters and effects to an entire photo or only specific…
| Read more »RIM has taken one of its largest, more conspicuous blows as a leaked e-mail and subsequent confirmation have revealed on Monday that Halliburton is switching from the BlackBerry to the iPhone. After "significant research," according to an AppleInsider copy of the memo, the controversial energy giant has told staff that it will transition from the BlackBerry to the iPhone, described at first as a one-year transition but now described as two. Apple's platform had superior features, controls, and app development security, Halliburton said....
How Apple plans to provide content to users of its rumored television set remains unknown, but one Wall Street firm sees four potential ways Apple could approach one of its largest hurdles in bringing a connected television to market, with the most likely option seen as a partnership with existing cable providers.
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Siri, Apple's widely advertised voice-activated "intelligent assistant," has so far been limited to the latest iPhone 4S hardware after Apple's acquisition. Though observers have come up with various reasons for the restriction, a newly revealed piece of the puzzle suggests the issue is related to hardware after all. According to recent SEC filings from technology start-up Audience, Apple incorporated an improved version of its background noise filtering technology directly into the A5 processor used in the iPhone 4S—technology that improves Siri's speech...
| Read more »It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.
You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.
No Flash? Click here to listen.
Daily Update for February 6, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| Read more »Future Tap has updated Where To?, its iOS tool that can help find the closest and best rated restaurants, shops, and services, with support for five additional navigation apps. Building upon existing support, version 4.1 adds integration with Sygic, Waze, Navfree, Navmii, and Navigon Urban. Additionally, the update includes multiple images for listings, additional reviews, and landscape support for the homepage viewer. Where To? 4.1 can be purchased in the App Store for $3, with the option to add a 3D Augmented Reality mode through a $1 in app purchase....
Intel today started shipping its fastest solid-state drive to date, the 520 Series SSD.
...
A recent Best Buy customer survey asked how shoppers felt about the features of a new Apple-branded television, raising speculation about whether or not the fabled device really is about to hit store shelves.
| Read more »When you think Microsoft, you think "big." Especially from the perspective of Apple's long-time customers and loyalists -- those who remember the rough times in the 1990s, when Microsoft's US$150 million investment helped keep the company from fiscal ruin -- the idea of corporate behemoth-ness is paired irrevocably with Redmond's mastery of the Windows ecosystem.
It was Microsoft's dominance of the computer industry that led a federal judge to declare that the company had "monopoly power" in 1999. Correspondingly, the revenues and profits generated by the Windows juggernaut equate to the biggest of big money. At least, pretty big money.
In responding to Ed Bott's ZDnet...
| Read more »Amazon may dip into retail stores if rumors prove true. A boutique shop was said by Good E-Reader to be in the works for Seattle before the holidays. Most of the emphasis would appropriately be on the Kindle and Kindle Fire, but the store would also include exclusive paper books as well as accessories....
Apple’s rumored HDTV might be called the iTV, according to a new report from Bloomberg citing Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek. In a note to clients this morning, Misek also claimed Apple might buy licenses for programming through possible partnerships with Verizon and AT&T and could “leverage content into a YouTube-like model” by taking advantage of user created video from iPhone and iPad users. He also noted “Lower margins and higher risks” will most likely keep Apple away from creating original programming. Misek did not comment on a possible timeframe for the product’s launch.
Misek’s scenario of Apple partnering with carriers for content follows a report from Reuters today that confirmed Verizon and Coinstar’s Redbox division have...
| Read more »Apparent’s new Doxie Go scanner is small, lightweight, fast and battery powered. It serves your scans up on a silver platter and asks “what now?”
| Read more »CNET reports on a new research note from analyst Linley Gwennap, who believes that custom circuitry in Apple's A5 system-on-a-chip including "earSmart" noise cancellation technology from Audience is the reason why Siri is currently an iPhone 4S-only feature. Gwennap cites Audience's S-1 filing made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month in advance of the company's initial public offering in backing up his analysis.Audience revealed details of its Apple partnership in January, when it filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. Teardown work from iFixit and Chipworks revealed a dedicated Audience chip in the iPhone 4, but the iPhone 4S integrates Audience's "EarSmart" technology directly into the A5 processor, the company's S-1 filing said...
| Read more »It's not easy to think happy thoughts this time of year. But here are some examples of innovative thinking that remind us it gets better.
| Read more »The Deal Brothers found us a deal on the 11” MacBook Air 1.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 for $1,399. This system was originally released in July of 2011, and it ships for free.
| Read more »Twitter users sent 12,233 tweets per second at the end of last night's big game.
The Super Bowl halftime show featuring Madonna saw 10,245 tweets per second.
Just one month ago, the service s...
| Read more »Exclusive: In yet another blow to troubled Research in Motion, one of the world's largest energy service corporations Halliburton plans to phase out thousands of employee BlackBerrys in favor of advancing its business via the iPhone and Apple's iOS platform, AppleInsider has learned.
...
| Read more »What's worse than one more ridiculous "you might be a terrorist if" list? 25 Communities Against Terrorism flyers designed by the FBI and DOJ to promote suspicious activity reporting. Use Skype, VPN, Tor, or PGP for security and privacy reasons? Buy components at an electronic store? That's right, you guessed it, you potential terrorist you!
| Read more »The Netflix rival is expected to launch this year, but the partners are disclosing few details.
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Microsoft is at work on several mobile app versions of its Dynamics CRM platform, a preview (PDF) reveals. This includes an app for iOS devices, which will require iOS 5, but have access to native iPad and iPhone interfaces. Other apps are planned for Microsoft's own Windows Phone platform, as well as Android and BlackBerry....
To celebrate the introduction of Bookle, our new EPUB reader for Mac OS X, we’re having a 50-percent-off sale on all ebooks in the Take Control catalog through 15 February 2012. It’s a great opportunity to stock up on EPUBs for reading in Bookle.
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
| Read more »Intel picked Monday to bring out its fastest solid-state drive so far. The SSD 520 mixes denser 25-nanometer memory with a specially created SandForce memory controller to get high-end speed. It can peak at 550MB per second for reads and 520MB per second for writes, while mustering as much as 80,000 I/O operations per second at peak and 50,000 in normal use....
Samsung USA has been on the warpath against Apple fans lately with a series of ads that show bored, desperate people standing in line for Apple's next product while happy hipsters show off their Android-powered Sammy devices. During yesterday's Super Bowl, the company took the gloves off with a regionally-focused ad touting the new Samsung Galaxy Note.
The ad, estimated to cost Samsung a whopping US$10.5 million in air time alone, follows the same theme as the others in the campaign. As in the previous ads, what appear to be Apple customers are standing in line waiting for a new device when a happy Galaxy Note user wanders up and the crowd drops everything as the scales fall from their eyes and they see the error of their ways.
According to the book of Samsung, what iPhone users really want is a huge phone that uses a stylus. Yes,...
| Read more »We’ve branched out from ebooks into software with Bookle, a Mac OS X application for reading DRM-free EPUBs that we developed in collaboration with our friend Peter Lewis of Stairways Software. It’s a straightforward EPUB reader that maintains a library of your EPUBs.
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
| Read more »BGR:
42-inch 1080 LED display; Runs iOS; App Store functionality; iCloud for access to all your music, TV shows, movies, photos, and videos; iPhone and iPad as a remote control with AirPlay to push content from your devices to the TV; Built-in FaceTime camera and microphone (we’d imagine Siri, as well); Netflix, YouTube, Flickr support; and $1,499 price.
I have a hard time buying this, unless Apple is a lot further along than we thought it was.
| Read more »We’ve moved our virtual server to a new host, which resulted in it getting a new IP address. That may cause TidBITS issues and other mail from tidbits.com and takecontrolbooks.com to be caught as spam, if our previous IP address was whitelisted by your ISP.
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
| Read more »AT&T has started to throttle—or downgrade the data speeds of—customers on unlimited data plans that go over 2GB in data usage for the month. As AT&T customer John Cozen wrote on his blog, “I received a message during my last billing cycle, warning I was in the top 5%…
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Apple has begun to take action against iPhone app ripoffs that have been crudding up the App Store. Over the weekend, the company removed a number of apps that bear a striking similarity to ones that are already popular among iOS users—the list includes Angry Ninja Birds, Plant vs. Zombie, and Temple Jump, which correlate to the popular titles Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, and Temple Run (hat tip to Gamasutra). The move is encouraging to developers who have been struggling with knockoffs attempting to steal their business on the App Store, but there's plenty left to do if Apple wants to show it's...
| Read more »There's a lot of speculation going around about an Apple HDTV of some sort. The Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs started a lot of the rumors when he quoted Jobs as saying that Apple had "finally cracked" the method of interacting with a television. Now the speculation is bordering on the ridiculous, with screen shots of a customer survey done by Best Buy that describes an Apple HDTV concept product appearing on a number of tech sites.
The survey describes an "all new 42" Apple HDTV" available at Best Buy for US$1499, with a 42" 1080p LED flat panel display, built-in iOS, app and iCloud support, the ability to use an iPad or iPhone as a remote control, and a "built in iSight camera and microphone for Skype."
So, an overpriced HDTV with a built-in Apple TV is all the Cupertino Kids can give us? There are other things that make this alleged story a farce, such as the survey's...
| Read more »A gamer lay dead for several hours before anyone noticed at an Internet cafe in Taiwan.
| Read more »Google sheds a bit of light on mysterious research effort
| Read more »Ever since Google announced a new, controversial privacy policy two weeks ago, interest in online privacy has spiked as more people question how Google and other companies are managing your data.
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Software giant Microsoft will release in the second quarter a high-profile productivity tool for Android-toting business professionals. Accompanying Microsoft’s CRM Dynamics 2012 platform update is a preview guide that specifically mentions Android support, as noted by ZDnet. The document also includes a screenshot depicting Dynamics CRM mobile client for iPad (as seen on the right). In addition to native clients for Android devices and iPads/iPhones running iOS 5.x, Dynamics CRM will also be available on devices powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone software.
As opposed to a web client that comes with significant limitations, the mobile client comes with all the bells and whistles so it should be Godsend for road warriors. Many businesses rely upon Dynamics...
| Read more »New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)'s sweetheart deal for Apple's just-opened Grand Central Terminal retail store seems to be paying dividends for the MTA and neighboring stores. One restaurant is reporting a 7 percent increase in sales since the store opened in December.
Michael Jordan's The Steak House is located across the terminal from the new Apple Store, Grand Central and co-owner Peter Glazier says the restaurant has seen a 7 percent jump in sales in the seven weeks that the Apple Store has been open,...
| Read more »Foxconn treats "men as machines," according to a worker newly interviewed by CNN. The woman is identified an 18-year-old student from a village near the southern city of Chongqing, using the pseudonym "Chen" because she says Foxconn tells workers not to talk to reporters or else "criminal liability shall be investigated according to law." Because she was a college student with no work experience, Chen says she was eager to take a one-month position at Foxconn during the Spring Festival, having been promised things like good benefits and little overtime....
HTC during a call discussing its low forecast and results backtracked from the strategy that dictated 2011. CFO Winston Yung acknowledged a lukewarm reception for fall devices but added that the company's philosophy throughout all of last year, where it was willing to make thick, short-lived devices for the sake of having 4G, was a mistake. The "next product cycle" of devices would fix this, Yung said, hinting at the Ville and Endeavor....
TechCrunch:
Conglomerate Honeywell, which develops thermostats, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nest Labs, the developer of the innovative smart thermostat. The lawsuit, which was filed United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, alleges infringement of seven Honeywell patents related to its thermostat technology.
Nest Labs makes the “learning thermostat.” You may remember them as the brainchild of Tony Fadell, who was formerly
| Read more »Strange Flavour are back with a new spin on their hit slot car racing game SlotZ Racer!
SlotZ Racer Caterham Special is a free special version of the game for fans of Caterham’s legendary sports cars. Compete in single races or in four Caterham championships in one of five versions of the Caterham Seven car, varying from the Caterham 7 Roadsport to the Caterham 7 R500 Superlight.
| Read more »Simon Prakash, an Apple veteran with eight years of service, has left the Cupertino company to join its rival Google. Prakash most recently served as the senior director of product integrity and was responsible for product quality across all Apple product lines.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Prakash was the director of engineering design validation at Cielo Communications and a reliability and FA manager at 3Com before he joined Apple. He will join Google in an unknown capacity working on a "secret project" says Venture Beat.
Prakash will supposedly begin at Google starting Monday. Given his background in hardware and product quality, he will likely work with Motorola Mobility on their future cell phones and tablets. This is based on speculation as neither Google nor Apple...
| Read more »The Guardian:
Tweeting or checking emails may be harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, according to researchers who tried to measure how well people could resist their desires.
They even claim that while sleep and sex may be stronger urges, people are more likely to give in to longings or cravings to use social and other media.
Priorities people.
| Read more »Major update to Web site creation software includes new drag-and-drop Slide Show object, improved sharing to social networks, and support for Mac OS X Lion features such as Resume and Auto Save ($79.99 new, free update, 31.5 MB)
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
| Read more »The new Intel SSD 520 series is outfitted with a SATA III interface with sequential reads and writes speeds in the 550MB/s to 520MB/s range, respectively. Intel has also worked a bit magic with the SSD firmware to improve performance, reliability, and compatibility. The controller has also been paired to selectively-binned 25nm NAND flash memory, which reportedly offers optimal performance and longevity as well. Performance-wise, the benchmarks show Intel's new SSD is one of the fastest currently available on the market.
| Read more »HTC reported weak fourth quarter results and forecast an even tougher first quarter as competition from Apple and Samsung squeezed the Taiwanese smartphone maker. HTC said it was expecting first quarter revenue of between 65 billion and 70 billion Taiwanese dollars, well below analyst expectations.
| Read more »In New Zealand Apple is fighting a trademark application for a smartphone case dubbed the "driPhone" (http://www.driphone.co.nz/), reports the "Sydney Morning Herald" (http://macte.ch/3gwQN).
Hayden Crowther, of Hamilton, New Zealand created the driPhone as a waterproof case for smartphones of all varieties but Apple is opposing his plans to trademark it in New Zealand and has now asked him to switch the "i" in driPhone for a "y," the article adds.
| Read more »We saw the Android-iOS duopoly coming last summer. Now, the effects of this incredibly tight chokehold are becoming painfully evident to virtually every handset maker sans Apple and Samsung. According to a fresh NPD survey from this morning, during the fourth quarter of 2011 Android and Apple together accounted for over 90 percent of smartphone sales in the United States. No wonder RIM is sliding fast. The remaining 10 percent is up for grabs.
Apple, which...
| Read more »The Mac Roundtable podcast team, which includes The Mac Observer’s own Jeff Gamet, Dave Hamilton and John F. Braun, spoke in front of a live audience at Macworld | iWorld in January, and now the video of the event is available online.
| Read more »A new report features a woman who works 60 hours per week assembling iPad components in China, though she has never seen a full iPad in person. In response, Apple said it works to protect "every worker" in its worldwide supply chain.
| Read more »A new Best Buy customer survey is asking for feedback on a potential "Apple HDTV," says The Verge. Mockup promotional text touts that "Apple finally reinvents what a TV can do," and describes the display as a 42-inch, 1080p LED model, running the same version of iOS used in the current Apple TV set-top. Like the set-top, the TV could be controlled via an iPad or iPhone, fetch content from iCloud, and access services like Netflix, YouTube, and Flickr....
A few days ago, I caught a tweet from Paul Haddad (of Tapbots), showing a screen full of obvious copycat apps from one developer. Of course, anyone who has spent appreciable time on the App Store knows there are plenty of copycats out there. Not all of them are small shops, either. But these copycat apps were truly astonishing in their brazen nature -- I mean, Plants v. Zombie? Temple Jump (instead of Temple Run)? Come on.
Luckily Apple finally woke up and rooted out a number of these cloned games from this single offending developer. I'm sure others will pop up again, but hopefully Apple will be...
| Read more »The iPhone is now the top-selling cellphone of any kind in the US, the NPD Group determined on Monday. As of the fall, the iPhone 4S was the bestselling device in the field. Apple also managed a clean sweep of the top three, with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS at second and third places....
With the right app installed, iOS devices can amazing things. Vern Seward looks at one such app, TouchRetouch, an app for removing or adding objects to your photos, in this edition of Just a Peek.
| Read more »The general consensus in the market today is that Apple's upcoming A6 quad core processor is to bring more performance to the 2012 iPad and iPhone. It's said that it will also preserve battery life due to a shift from a 40-nanometer to a 28-nanometer process. Joel Hruska, writing for Extreme Tech, goes one step further with his belief that Apple's upcoming A6 processor could in fact introduce 3D transistors. Yet the one twist that no one even considered as a remote possibility was whether or not Apple's secretive ...
| Read more »Last week, we got to talk a deep roster of old and new media heavy hitters at D: Dive Into Media. Now we’re bringing you the full interviews from that conference, kicking off with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.
Costolo and I started out by talking about Twitter’s recent dustup with Google, but we jumped around a lot, touching on everything from Twitter’s deep integration with Apple to its response to government censorship.
The core of the interview, though, focused on Twitter’s evolution as a business and its relationship with media companies, who use the service to promote their products. (See: Yesterday’s Super Bowl.)
I think it’s quite obvious that...
| Read more »Here's a way to use AppleScript and the 'say' command to have the computer sing happy birthday to you. Enjoy!
set currentUser to long user name of (get system info)
set firstName to first word of currentUser
set lastName to last word of currentUser
set noteValues to {56, 56, 58, 56, 61, 60, 50, 56, 56, 58, 56, 63, 61, 50, 56, 56, 68, 65, 61, 60, 58, 50, 66, 66, 65, 61, 63, 61} -- F
-- set noteValues to {65, 65, 67, 65, 70, 69, 60, 65, 65, 67, 65, 72, 70, 60, 65, 65, 77, 74, 70, 69, 67, 60, 75, 75, 74, 70, 72, 70} -- D
-- set noteValues to {55, 55, 57, 55, 60, 59, 50, 55, 55, 57, 55, 62, 60, 50, 55, 55, 67, 64, 60, 59, 57, 50, 65, 65, 64, 60, 62, 60} -- E
set syllables to {"hap", "p", "birth", "day", "to", "you", "[[slnc 500]]", "hap", "p", "birth", "day", "to", "you", "[[slnc 500]]", "hap", "p", "birth ...
...
If you plan to update your OS X Server to 10.7.2 be sure to restart your machine and stop all server services, especially iCal Server and Address book server before applying the update.
It happened to me yesterday that I applied the OS X 10.7.2 update to my Mac mini server without closing any apps. I just ran it. After the update it turned out, this was a big mistake. All calendar entries of the past three weeks and many contacts were lost.
I was not able to recover anything from time machine. Lion server keeps the CalDAV and CardDAV data in a PostgreSQL database which is apparently not backed up by TimeMachine. Also, the PostgreSQL uses transactions which need to be 'closed' before they end up being permanently written into the DB tables.
What I found from reviewing the postgres log file (/Library/Logs/PostgreSQL.log) is that the 10.7.2 server update will apply a whole bunch of database...
In a note to investors -- as reported by "AppleInsider" (http://www.appleinsider.com) -- Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore says he's expecting the third generation iPad next month that will sport a high-resolution display, a quad-core CPU, graphics performance four to five times faster than the iPad 2, and Siri voice control.
More juice in the iPad 3 will leave competitors further behind and drive Apple market share gains, he adds. Estimates from Deutsche Bank, combined with data from IDC, suggest that Apple currently has a 25% share of the combined notebook and tablet market.
| Read more »"The Verge" (http://macte.ch/HQ4Dk) reports that Best Buy appears to be sending surveys to customers getting feedback on potential new products and services, including the rumored Apple-branded HDTV (the "iTV").
The article says that the the product willcrun iOS, support iCloud, be controllable from an iPhone or iPad, and have access to Netflix, YouTube, and Flickr. Also, it will purportedly offer an "iSight camera" (though Apple's been calling it a FaceTime camera lately). There's no mention of Siri voice support.
| Read more »We've seen lots of photo accessories that let you add filters and lenses to your iPhone, but SkyLight is the first to let you add a full-fledged microscope. It's a platform that attaches to a microscope and aligns the phone's camera with the eyepiece. You can view the microscope image on your phone and take photographs. It's perfect for classroom usage, for researchers who need high-quality images in their published papers and for clinicians who can take a photo and send it off for analysis.
SkyLight started as a Kickstarter project that reached its $15,000 funding goal last month. It was available for a preorder price of US$60 and will ship in March. It includes a generous five for one incentive plan that'll donate one SkyLight to global health or educational purposes for every 5 SkyLights purchased. You can read...
| Read more »Most Super Bowl advertisers' websites fared pretty well, but Coca-Cola's, Acura's and one for the movie Act of Valor crashed Sunday night.
| Read more »RIM’s Blackberry is on the decline, Android OS is going strong, and Windows for mobile devices may have staying power. Today TMO readers are talking about competition for iOS and iPhone, and what the future may hold for the companies hoping to lure customers away from Apple.
| Read more »After The New York Times published a lengthy two-part piece covering the controversial working conditions of Apple’s supply chain within Foxconn factories in China, other publications are doing their own investigative work to find out more informtion. The NYT’s second installment brought us the backstory of Foxconn worker Lai Xiaodong leading up to his death at a factory explosion in Chengdu. Today, CNN published a video of journalist Stan Grant who recently sat down for an interview with a current Foxconn employee and iPad display assembler:
“I can’t bear it anymore. Everyday was like, I get off from work and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I...
| Read more »The Verge reports that Best Buy has been surveying some of its customers on proposed products and services, with the company including a description of a 42-inch "Apple HDTV" priced at $1499. The listing is undoubtedly simply a concept dreamed up by Best Buy to help gauge interest in such an offering, but provides an interesting perspective on what the major electronics retailer might be hoping for and what it thinks its customers would want in an Apple television set.Be one of the first to get the all new 42" Apple HDTV at Best Buy for $1499. Apple finally reinvents what a TV can do:
- 42" 1080p LED flat panel display
- Incorporates Apple's operating system (iOS) found in its current Apple TV set top box which allows you to purchase and stream movies and other entertainment from the Internet
- Download and use apps from the App Store. Can you imagine playing...
Another day, another lawsuit. Apple is being sued by Proview Shenzhen Techonology for selling the iPad in mainland China, reports "iSmashPhone.com."
They may face an US$38 million fine, the article adds. Apple is awaiting hearing by the Pudong district court in Shanghai later this month. You can read more at http://ismashphone.com/2012/02/apple-sued-may-face-fine-for-selling-ipad... .
| Read more »Launched four years ago, the use of Wi-Fi on U.S. airlines has yet to catch on.
...
Sony has teased an update for the PlayStation Vita that should significantly expand its features just a week before the North American launch. The 1.6 firmware patch will add a mapping tool with both driving and walking directions. Likely based on Google Maps, it has the options of satellite and traffic views as well as sending locations out on the Vita's own group messaging for a meetup....
The worldwide smartphone market grew 54.7% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2011 (4Q11), as Apple unleashed its iPhone 4S on an eager marketplace, according to new data from IDC (http://www.idc.om).
Apple climbed back into the market leadership position with the launch of its iPhone 4S worldwide. In the process it reached a new shipment volume record for itself and for the entire industry for a single quarter.
| Read more »The growth of the mobile Web is on a steady rise. While pundits throw around words like "explosive" and "outrageous" the more precise word is probably "consistent." According to analytics firm StatCounter, users accessing the Web through mobile devices has almost doubled every year since 2009. In its latest report, StatCounter says that global Internet usage through mobile devices rose to 8.5%, nearly doubling the 2011 figure of 4.3%. StatCounter's analytics only include cellphones, excluding tablets from the mix. The global leader in mobile Web use is Nokia at nearly 40% of usage.
| Read more »Suitcase Fusion 3 is the creative professional's font manager:
Watch videos of Fusion 3 in action
Version 14.2.0:
Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later.
Download Now
Beginning February 7th, several Mac and Windows games will be become temporarily unplayable, publisher Ubisoft has announced. These include Tom Clancyís HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes VI, and The Settlers 7 for Windows, and the Mac ports of Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and The Settlers. The company is moving servers out of a third-party data center into a new building, and promises that the end result will "improve the maintenance of our infrastructure and deliver better uptime and greatly improved services for our customers."...
Redbox and Verizon started the week with word of creating an all-encompassing movie service. The strategy would see Verizon provide movie downloads and streaming while Redbox supplied new Blu-ray and DVD discs to rent. While details were short, it would have subscriptions "and more," all while making sure viewers had access on the "media and devices they prefer."...
Whether it's inside knowledge of a future product or purely speculation, electronics retailer Best Buy has made mention in a survey of a 42-inch high-definition Apple television set powered by iOS priced at $1,499.
| Read more »It’s when Apple executives begin dropping hints as to upcoming product lines that things get interesting.
Per AppleInsider, after meeting with Apple chief executive Tim Cook and chief financial officer Peter Openheimer, Citi analysts noted a strong iPad outlook leaving little likelihood of an ARM-based MacBook Air.
Citi analyst Richard Gardner reported Cook reiterating his comment, originally made during the quarterly earnings conference call, that the market for tablets would eventually grow larger than the conventional PC market.
Apple doesn’t refer to iPad as a PC, but as a “post-PC device,” leaving the ARM-based tablet distinct from the company’s Intel-based Macs. Gardner further indicated...
| Read more »If you’re over in the far east and hankering for an iPhone 4S, you’ll be able to snag one online without getting into a fistfght in line.
Per China Daily, the handset has returned to the company’s Chinese online store following a brief stoppage of sales due to overwhelming demand that led to scalpers and violence, though wait times for orders can range from overnight to weeks.
The report confirms that the iPhone 4S can now be purchased through the online Apple Store in mainland China, bringing an end to the nearly month-long moratorium on sales that was instituted almost immediately following the smartphone’s Chinese launch.
Apple’s Chinese online store has been taking orders since Wednesday,...
| Read more »Android smartphone maker HTC’s fourth quarter profits dropped 26 percent, and the company is blaming competition from Apple’s iPhone for the decline. The company is also warning that the current quarter’s revenue could dip another 36 percent, too, thanks to Apple’s combination iPod and smartphone.
| Read more »Motorola wants 2.25% of Apple's sales in return for license to standard-essential wireless patents, according to a report at "FOSS Patents" (http://macte.ch/bCw0J).
| Read more »Canadian carrier Rogers set out to win speed claims with a set of upgraded LTE devices. The Sierra Wireless AirCard 330U and AirCard 763S hotspot both add the 2.6GHz frequency to the existing 1.7GHz and 2.1GHz bands, giving the 4G connection more real-world bandwidth. Where the existing LTE tops out at 12-25Mbps, Rogers expects the new hardware to achieve real speeds of as much as 40Mbps....
Google has hired Simon Prakash, a senior director at Apple, for a "secret project," according to "VentureBeat" (http://macte.ch/L2A4h). The project is "presumably run by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the article adds.
Prakash worked at Apple for more than eight years and was most recently the senior director of product integrity at Apple. Before Apple, he was director of engineering design validation at Cielo Communications. He was also a reliability and FA manager at 3Com. (The photo is courtesy of "VentureBeat.")
| Read more »Do you want to share files easily and quickly? Then take a look at Droplr, which has been around for some time and recently hit the Mac App Store in an improved version 2.
Droplr is free and easy way to share images, documents and other files. You can run it from a web browser or the Mac app which lives in your menu bar. To share a file, simply drag it onto the menu bar item and it's uploaded to Droplr's servers. When the upload is complete, it copies a short URL to your Mac's clipboard, which you can give to anyone you like.
There is a 25 MB upload limit for individual files, and storage is free up to 1 GB. There is a paid plan in the works, but no details are being offered yet. The app also supports plug-ins so you can quickly share from apps like iPhoto, Photoshop CS5, Firefox, Safari, Google...
| Read more »HTC on Monday revealed that its handsets are struggling against Apple's iPhone, as well as Android-based smartphones from companies like Samsung, leading to a 26 percent drop in fourth-quarter profits.
| Read more »Participation in last month's protests against the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act was driven by a combination of independent decisions by websites, behind-the-scenes organization by a number of groups, and grassroots response to the blackout and other online efforts.
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Apple ruined one iOS developer’s day by pulling his titles from the App Store over claims that they were knock offs of popular games. Anton Sinelnikov’s long list of apps included titles like Angry Ninja Birds, Temple Jump, Numbers with Friends, and many more with names that are strikingly similar to other popular apps.
| Read more »Glitchsoft's oddly-titled Star Marine: Infinite Ammo (more on why that's weird in a moment) is both good at bad. First, it's good at heart. Star Marine: Infinite Ammo is a Contra-style run-and-gun title that has you controlling a soldier on a spaceship among other environments. Your job is to fight through hordes of aliens and escape. The action is great and fans of the old Contra game will find a lot to enjoy.
However, Star Marine has a few unfortunate issues. First of all, the controls are a little more wonky than they should be. For example, the action often gets fast and furious. When things heated up in Contra, you could duck and jump out of the way reliably. Star Marine's touch controls, by contrast, don't always get you where you need to go. I got hit by several stray bullets and alien flyers because the controls...
| Read more »Apple's third-generation iPad is expected by one market watcher to soon arrive during an advantageous "window of opportunity," in which competitors have nothing significant to offer, that will further increase the company's lead in the mobile computing market.
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As near as I can tell, almost every kid goes through an intense dinosaur phase, and for some adults, the fascination remains for decades. Even years after the movie "Jurassic Park" brought dinos to life, I would still eat up all the dinosaur documentary shows I could find, like "Walking With Dinosaurs." When I saw Inside the World of Dinosaurs as an app made specifically for the iPad, I was interested. When I saw that it was narrated by Stephen Fry, the UK actor, comedian and writer, I bought it.
Graphic Node has updated its Pages Templates collection for Apple's word processing/document creation application. In addition to 712 layouts from the previous version, the updated variety contains 71 new templates.
These include 50 templates for Valentine's day cards. The upgraded package maintains the selection of template types introduced in the earlier versions, such as greeting cards, letters, posters and even playing cards.
| Read more »Taiwanese phone maker HTC on Monday reported a lackluster fourth quarter and predicted a further drop in sales and profit margins amid strong competition.
For the fourth quarter, HTC said it earned 10.94 billion Taiwanese dollars ($369 million), or 13.06 Taiwan dollars per share (44 cents U.S.), on revenue of 101.42 billion Taiwan dollars ($3.42 billion).
That’s a revenue drop of more than 2 percent from a year earlier, for a company that until recently had been seeing sales doubling those of prior periods.
HTC had already warned of the sales drop when it released unaudited results last month. However, its outlook for the current quarter offered a further disappointment.
The company forecast that, for the current quarter, sales will drop to between 65 billion and 70 billion Taiwanese dollars, with gross margins falling to 25 percent from last quarter’s 27 percent. HTC said it...
| Read more »Show your smartphone some love for Valentine’s Day and think pink. Otterbox wants you to trade the traditional chocolate and roses for something that will outlast the holiday. The company is offering protective Commuter Series Strength cases that benefit the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade.
| Read more »Gamasutra:
Apple struck a blow against video game clones today by removing several offending apps from one rather prolific independent developer.
Among the removed games are apps such as Plant vs. Zombie, Angry Ninja Birds, and Temple Jump, each of which (as you might guess from their titles) had more than a little in common with with major titles such as Plants vs. Zombies, Angry Birds, and Temple Run, respectively.
Obviously the problem is from more than one
| Read more »Apple has released iBooks Author 1.0.1 and iBooks 2.01.
iBooks Author 1.0.1 is an update of Apple's free tool for creating interactive ebooks. The new version “provides an updated version of the End User License Agreement.” iBooks Author is a free download at the Mac App Store.
iBooks 2.0.1 for the iPhone and iPad addresses a problem where some iBooks textbooks fail to open. The update is available at the Apple App Store.
| Read more »Apple has released Security Update 2012-001 version 1.1 for Mac OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") users. It's available via the Software Updates component of the Mac OS X Systems Preferences app.
According to Apple, Security Update 2012-001 version 1.1 is “recommended for all users and improves the security of Mac OS X." It's a 1.3GB download.
| Read more »If Apple is indeed planning its own branded HDTV (the rumored "iTV") it needs to think big. The LCD TV market saw a rapid shift toward sizes larger than 40 inches at the end of 2011, as consumers, particularly in North America and China, took advantage of new sizes and more affordable prices.
As larger sizes such as 46 inches, 47 inches 55 inches, 60 inches and 65 inches are being adopted by consumers, panel makers are also developing other new large size TV panels, including 43 inches, 48 inches, 50 inches, 70 inches, and even 75 inches, 80 inches and larger.
| Read more »By Jessica Maldonado
Four different Texture Toolkits are currently offered by Digital Juice (http://www.digitaljuice.com). I reviewed Texture Toolkit 1 “The Essentials” and Texture Toolkit 2 “Different Strokes.”
These are collections of patterns -- all high-resolution and most seamlessly repeating -- ready for use in your print, Web, animation, or video design work.
| Read more »If Apple is indeed planning its own branded HDTV (the rumored "iTV") it needs to think big. The LCD TV market saw a rapid shift toward sizes larger than 40 inches at the end of 2011, as consumers, particularly in North America and China, took advantage of new sizes and more affordable prices.
As larger sizes such as 46 inches, 47 inches 55 inches, 60 inches and 65 inches are being adopted by consumers, panel makers are also developing other new large size TV panels, including 43 inches, 48 inches, 50 inches, 70 inches, and even 75 inches, 80 inches and larger.
| Read more »Sophiestication Software's CoverSutra (http://www.sophiestication.com/coversutra/), an iTunes extender for Mac OS X has been updated to version 3.3. The new version offers better resource management.
CoverSutra lets you control iTunes without having to leave the currently active application. The software does this through the use of global keyboard shortcuts, information bezels and a transparent floating window. In addition, CoverSutra has integrated support for Last.fm, a social music recommendation service.
| Read more »ExactCode has updated its ExactScan Pro (http://www.exactcode.de/site/products/exactscan/) scanning software for Mac OS X (10.4 and higher) to version 2.19. The upgrade offers improved performance of certain color operations.
| Read more »HTC has said that it expects to record lower than forecast revenue
for Q1, according to Reuters. The news follows its revenue dipping last October for the first time after it had experienced spectacular growth over 2010 and most of 2011. At the time, the launch of the iPhone 4S was thought to have had an impact on its performance, however, it is arguable that the rapid rise of Samsung as the leading Android player has damaged HTCís income stream more....
Well, we knew it was coming and now Samsung has predictably used a high-profile Super Bowl ad slot to promote its 5.3-inch Galaxy Note tablet-phone combo while taking another jab at Apple users. Standing out as a culmination of an unsubtle anti-Apple campaign launched nearly three months ago under the ‘The Next Big Thing’ moniker, the commercial once again ridicules people who would wait in the line for a new iPhone.
The airtime for the commercial during the fourth quarter of the game reportedly set Samsung back $10 million, excluding production costs and celebrities. By the way, interesting how Samsung prominently advertises stylus as a differentiating Galaxy Note feature (and we know what Jobs and many Apple fans...
| Read more »MacPhun has updated FX Photo Studio for Mac (http://www.fxphotostudioapp.com), the "supercharged" version of the FX Photo Studio mobile franchise. The upgrade brings integration with Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture plus performance improvements. The app now purportedly runs faster and the image processing is of a better quality.
| Read more »JNSoftware has updated Dialectic (http://www.jonn8.com/dialectic/), a telephony tool for the Mac, to version 1.8.4. The upgrade offers improved Safari integration, Firefox 9 and 10 compatibility, Asterisk AJAM support and more.
Dialetic provides system-wide dialing of phone numbers using Bluetooth mobile phones, landlines, many VoIP services and more. It integrates with contact management applications such as Marketcircle Daylite, Microsoft Entourage, Now Contact, Palm Desktop, FileMaker Pro and other databases, as well as Apple's iCal and Address Book.
| Read more »SubRosaSoft.com has released version 7.5 for the entire Salvage line. FileSalvage, CameraSalvage, and PodSalvage have all been upgraded.
Improved search and recover functions increase the chances of recovering lost files, according to Marko Kostyrko, CEO of SubRosaSoft.com. The new versions also sport updates for the latest operating system and foreign languages,
SubRosaSoft Salvage software requires Mac OS X 10.5 or above. For more information on the Salvage range of products, go to http://www.SubRosaSoft.com/ .
| Read more »As so many recover from Macworld/iWorld 2012, "The MUG Event Calendar" heads into the week with lots of interesting material.
Nik Software’s Kevin La Rue will present their plug-ins and iOS app to a California group, while backing up will be the agenda in Australia, drive failure warning signs will be discussed in Ireland, and favorite apps and tips is scheduled to be presented in Alaska. Other topics set for this week include rumors, iTunes, the art of communication, learning with iPads and much more. And, of course, everyone will be talking about what was shown at Macworld/iWorld 2012.
| Read more »NoteCard (http://www.notecardosx.com/), a visual note-taking app for Mac OS X, has been updated to version 1.0.2. It's a maintenance release. The US$7.99 app was inspired by the OS X Stickies app.
NoteCard lets you: make tabbed cards, stack cards in groups, add pages to cards, store cards in sheets for quick access and a full screen editing environment called Reader. A demo is available for download.
| Read more »Several major Hollywood studios don’t care that LimeWire is all but dead and buried, nor that the service was a pretty poor way to share large files such as movies. After the record companies of the RIAA settled with LimeWire last year for $105 million, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, Disney, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. [...]
| Read more »The latest forms of digital spam include clickjacking, junk apps, bad QR codes, and much more. Here's what you can do to stay safe.
| Read more »Notable software releases this week include Audio Hijack Pro 2.10.1, Sandvox 2.5, Firefox 10.0, and Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3.
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
| Read more »It was an insanely busy week, but we ran across this article about why standardized spelling is important and we just had to share it.
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
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Adobe Flash Player is a lightweight browser plug-in and rich Internet application (RIA) runtime that delivers consistent and engaging user experiences, stunning audio/video playback, and pervasive reach. Flash Player 10 introduces new expressive features, visual performance improvements, and extensibility to unleash the creative potential of designers and developers so they can build richer and more immersive web experiences.
Version 11.2.202.197:
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Audio Hijack Pro drastically changes the way you use audio on your computer, giving you the freedom to listen to audio when you want and how you want. Record and enhance any audio with Audio Hijack Pro - it's the cornerstone of your digital audio experience.
Audio Hijack Pro will allow you to record any application's audio, from internet streams to DVD audio and everywhere in between. If your machine can play it, Audio Hijack Pro can record it. And that's not all - Audio Hijack Pro will also enhance any audio, unsing industry-standard VST and AudioUnit audio effects to make your music sound incredible. Record. Enhance. Enjoy!
Version 2.10.1:
That impulsive duck-face kissy photo you took of yourself and your friend at the Apple store to test out the new iPad's camera may be destin...
| Read more »Several sports streaming sites had their domain names seized by the Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE unit this week. The operation was planned a few days in advance of the Super Bowl to prevent “rogue” sports fans from watching the game through unofficial channels.
| Read more »Sony in its results call Friday was confident that the PlayStation Vita was selling well so far. Having moved slightly more than 535,000 units in its first three weeks, according to Media Create data, company CFO Masaru Kato didn't see "any problems" with results so far. The comment came even after shipments had dipped to just over 18,000 in January and had been mostly steady since....
Facebook first infected our brains in 2004, with what I would call the Facebook virus. Taking over how we communicate and even transforming the English language.
| Read more »Samsung's Galaxy Note mobile device was the star of the company's first costly NFL Super Bowl commercial on Sunday, putting a bow on the somewhat controversial "The Next Big Thing is Already Here" media campaign that has been defined by its abject portrayal of Apple customers.
| Read more »Here's a recap of the top tech stories involving Apple for the fifth week of 2012, including a look at product news, the week's business stories, and upcoming events. It's published as an iBook you can interactively navigate using iPad
| Read more »Samsung aired another of its series of Apple-mocking commercials during the 2012 Super Bowl tonight. In this ad, Samsung is pushing the new Samsung Galaxy Note.
Like the previous ads in the series, Samsung depicts iPhone fans standing in line for the new iPhone, while promoting their own products as the "next big thing".
Samsung's head of marketing has acknowledged she is directly targeting Apple and shooting to reach a more emotional connection with their consumers. “Especially in U.S., people...
| Read more »Samsung's promised Super Bowl spot took an unusual turn on Sunday night. After showing iPhone queue waiters complaining about "missing the big game" and being "in detention," a passer-by shows a Galaxy Note. The giant Android phone's pen -- and an impromptu appearance by rock revival group The Darkness -- has the line kicking down the stanchions and joining the party....
Just as promised, Samsung has released its 90 second Galaxy Note ad during the Super Bowl. Following in the lines of its previous ads for the Galaxy S II (with a bit of a twist), this Galaxy Note ad pokes fun at iPhone users waiting in the long lines Apple loves to see outside its stores and shows them what “freedom” feels like. We think.
| Read more »It's not just any Sunday, this one happens to be Super! If you're over the game, or don't know what game I'm referring to, then join me at 7PM Pacific, 10PM Eastern for a look at the week's news and events.
We'll cover the latest Lion update, warts and all, as well as Siri's sitcom debut. If you want to make sure we talk about your favorite topic, get there early and let me know so we can get it on the list.
Your calls and questions help us make the show the best it can be, otherwise I'm just talking to myself! To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded...
| Read more »Photos that you think you're deleting from Facebook are still remaining on their servers years later. Ars has been following this story for nearly three years now; Facebook says it's still working on fixing the problem, but that a solution should be ready within months.
| Read more »Best Buy as part of a promo has started the run of tech-focused Super Bowl ads with a segment pitching its mobile stores. The ad unites both the inventors of phone technology, such as Philippe Kahn (the camera phone) and Ray Kurzweil (text to voice synthesis) with those making newer hardware and software. Key inventors behind Instagram, Shazam, Square, Words With Friends, and others find their way into the 30-second clip....
Mr. Boisjoly wrote a portentous memo six months before the Space Shuttle Challenger’s explosion, warning that if it was too cold, seals connecting sections of the shuttle’s rocket boosters could fail.
| Read more »Apple's A5 System on a Chip incorporates dedicated noise reduction circuitry by Audience, Inc., which optimizes the performance of Siri voice recognition on iPhone 4S.
| Read more »On average, 100 million people watch the Super Bowl. With connected devices everywhere, we'll be tweeting about it and sharing thoughts on social networks. So will fans at the game. Here are some staggering numbers showing how Super Bowl 46 is ready for such mobility.
| Read more »California's public sector retirement system, Calpers, is hoping to push Apple to give it and other shareholders more control over the company's board of directors. The organization told the FT [reg. required] that it wanted a "governance upgrade" where board members are elected or rejected directly based on majority votes. At present, votes can't actively oppose a member, and only one vote is needed in favor to keep a board member in place if no one is contesting the seat....
Zen Table
The Zen Table:
Imagine a Japanese Zen Garden built into a beautifully-crafted, glass-topped table. The body of the table encapsulates electronics and robotics, that sculpt geometric patterns and images into a field of microscopic silicone beads beneath a glass top. The effect is mesmerizing and magical; it is truly Zen-like to watch ever-changing patterns and images appear in the sand.
Do not watch the video! It will hypnotize you and you’ll find yourself thinking, “Hey – $5,000 isn’t that much to pay for an sand table Etch-A-Sketch.”
| Read more »U.S. viewers can watch Sunday's Super Bowl on either their Macs or their iPad.
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Mobile OS crash analysis firm Crittercism (Really? Who's naming this stuff?) has posted the chart above, which shows that as a percentage of crashes overall, the latest version of iOS claims the highest total. In fact, many versions of iOS show a large percentage of crashes, and clearly iOS overall seems more prone to have an app crash rather than Android.
Of course, there are quite a few qualifiers here. This data has been normalized, so we can presume that this isn't just a quirk of the numbers: There are likely more crashes happening on iOS devices than Android devices, and not just because there's more iOS apps being used (Crittercism says it monitored about 215 million app launches across all platforms, and there were three times as many launched on iOS, but again, this chart shows a percentage of all app launches).
So why more crashing? Crittercism suggests it's because iOS 5.0.1 had just released, while the...
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