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Weekend 9to5Toys roundup: App freebies, $34 Kensington iPad Keyboard case, $65 1TB USB 3.0 Portable HD, more

Dan DeSilva

From 9to5Toys.com:

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9to5Toys scours the net each day to bring our US readers the best deals in consumer electronics. Below are the absolute hottest deals going on right now. Most of these promotions are only available for a limited time, so be sure to lock in these savings if you see something you like.  Check back often as we are constantly posting new deals.

Also bookmark 9to5Toys.com/Daily-deals for 35+ of the top daily deals across most of the biggest shopping sites in the US including Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and many more.

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For the first time ever, Gameloft is offering two of its top-rated iOS games, N.O.V.A. 3 and Gangstar Rio, for free.

N.O.V.A 3 – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance its a fast-paced firstperson shooter sporting console-like graphics while Gangstar Rio puts gamers in the shoes of a gangster having to kill and steal their way to the top of the gang world.  After this weekend, both games will go back to their retail prices of $5-6 each.

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Today only, Amazon is chopping up to 60% off Apple iDevice accessories.  Included in today’s deal is a Kensington KeyFolio Pro 2 Bluetooth keyboard case for just $34 shipped and an Apple certified Lightning car charger for $11.

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Today only, Best Buy and Amazon are offering the Toshiba Canvio 1.0 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive for only $65 shipped. Features include super fast USB 3.0 connectivity with support for USB 2.0, 1TB storing capacity and an internal shock sensor to help keep your data safe.

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Moshi, launched some of the nicest Lightning cables we’ve seen yet. Moshi’s new Lightning cable is aluminum-encased and made to match the black and slate and white and silver tones of the iPhone 5. The best part is the fact that Moshi is selling the 3.25ft cable for just about the same price as Apple: $20

Meanwhile, Specials.9to5toys.com has 50% off Slickwraps Apple device covers. We reviewed and loved them for iPhone and MacBooks.

Other great deals on gear we love:

 

Apple’s lax iTunes streaming security gives out a free copy of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories

Jordan Kahn

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Bob Dylan, David Bowie, and Justin Timberlake are just a few of the artists over the past year to offer full-length, high quality streams of their newest albums on iTunes in the days before release. The latest to follow in the trend is award winning electronic music duo Daft Punk with a full length stream of the group’s 74-minute “Random Access Memories” album hitting iTunes earlier this week. While it’s often suggested the streams help to fight piracy of the albums before their release, we’ve discovered Apple is ironically making it easier than ever to grab a high quality version of the stream right from its website.

By using a tool to monitor HTTP requests (like HTTP Scoop), users can easily find the URL where the stream is hosted and save the full, high quality MP4 to their computer. By simply navigating to the URL where the stream is hosted, you can download the whole album for free. The same hole exists for an album from The National that is currently being streamed.

The whole album is available as an easy download and while it does come with Apple’s FairPlay DRM to prevent it being played on other devices, we imagine (hope!) this gets pulled fairly quickly.

Many have called artist’s decision to stream their album in entirety on iTunes a play at combatting piracy in the days up to album’s launch. The idea being, since it’s going to leak anyway, offering a high-quality stream of the album will tempt most into going to iTunes and possibly preorder while they are there. It’s of course possible to rip a slightly lower quality version of the stream using software, but Apple shouldn’t be making it this easy to download the full quality file.

Apple’s streaming security is especially important in light of the upcoming iRadio streaming app that’s coming to iOS 7. We imagine that the labels will want to make sure holes like this are closed. Read more

U.S. Air Force plans to save $50M over 10 years by deploying iPads

Jordan Kahn

Just as the Defense Department granted iOS devices approval for use on military networks, TheStreet reports that the U.S. Air Force plans on saving around $50 million through its purchase of iPads. The savings will mainly be due to the ability to cut weight on flights by replacing traditional flight bags and come over a ten year period:

“We’re saving about 90 pounds of paper per aircraft and limiting the need for each crew member to carry a 30 to 40 pound paper pile [of flight manuals],” said Major Brian Moritz, EFB program manager, in a phone interview. “It adds up to quite a lot of weight in paper.”

Removing the need to print and distribute thousands of flight manuals, however, equates to an even greater cost saving. “It comes out to just over $5 million a year,” noted Moritz. “With fuel savings, it comes out to $5.7 million annually in pure cost. When you look at $5.7 million a year, over 10 years, that’s well over $50 million.”

In February of last year the Air Force revealed plans to purchase up to 18,000 iPads as a replacement to traditional flight bags, although at the time it was considering other tablets and looking for the lowest cost of entry possible.

According to the report, the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command now currently has around 16,000 iPads in use with another 2,000 spread across other Air Force members.  Read more

iOS devices approved for use on U.S. military networks following Samsung and BlackBerry

Jordan Kahn

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Update: Apple provided the following comment to AllThingsD on the approval:

“With iPhone and iPad being tested or deployed in almost every Fortune 500 company, Apple continues to scale across enterprise with nearly 30,000 companies globally developing and distributing iOS apps for corporate use by their employees,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD. “The FIPS 140-2 certification and STIG approval demonstrate our ongoing commitment to deliver a secure platform to our enterprise and government customers around the world who deploy iOS devices on their networks.”

Following reports earlier this month that the Defense Department was in the process of approving iOS 6 for nonclassified communications and widespread use by government agencies, Bloomberg reports today that Apple has officially been granted approval for use on U.S. military networks.

The Pentagon already approved Samsung devices powered by the company’s Knox security software and BB10 ahead of today’s approval of iOS 6.

In February the US Defense Department confirmed plans to open its networks to 100,000 new devices from Apple and Google by February of next year. At that time the Pentagon said its networks had about 470,000 BlackBerrys, 41,000 Apple products, and 8,700 Android devices.

A number of U.S. agencies switched from BlackBerry to iPhones over the last year, while earlier reports indicate Samsung is attempting to attract more government and corporate customers with a new team of security experts and former RIM employees as well as a water and dust proof variant of its flagship S4 dubbed the Galaxy S4 Active. Today’s security approval will increase the number of agencies allowed to deploy iPhone and iPads on government networks for nonclassified communications.

Read more

Tim Cook discusses taxes before Tuesday’s visit to Congress: ‘Apple does not funnel domestic profits overseas’

Zac Hall

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Yesterday Politico reported that Tim Cook will appear before Congress next week to testify in a hearing regarding how the company is handling its overseas finances and domestic taxes, and today Politico has published a brand new interview with the Apple CEO.

Tim Cook and Apple tend to avoid any public discussion aside from comments during quarterly earnings calls, but it seems the company is on a PR offense leading up to next week’s public hearings.

“We don’t have a large presence in Washington, as you probably know, but we care deeply about public policy and believe creative policy can be a huge catalyst for a better society and a stronger economy.”

Cook went on to defend Apple against any accusations that may come its way next week.

“I can tell you unequivocally Apple does not funnel its domestic profits overseas. We don’t do that. We pay taxes on all the products we sell in the U.S., and we pay every dollar that we owe. And so I’d like to be really clear on that.”

The Apple CEO also noted the company’s $100 million project to produce a Mac line in the United States this year, which the company says will add jobs to the economy. Read more

Apple releases iTunes 11.0.3 with new MiniPlayer, an improved Songs View, and multi-disc albums

Jordan Kahn

Apple just released iTunes 11.0.3 with several new features including enhancements to the MiniPlayer, an improved Songs View, and multi-disc albums.

Screen Shot 2013-05-16 at 1.34.20 PMApple’s new MiniPlayer, which it first introduced in iTunes 11, today gets a new “beautiful view that showcases your album artwork” as well as a progress bar viewable right from the MiniPlayer. The new view for MiniPlayer can also be expanded to show an entire playlist (as pictured above).

Other improvements to iTunes in version 11.0.3 include the ability to view multi-disc albums as a single album and “performance improvements when searching and sorting large iTunes libraries.”

The update also includes an updated interface for updating iOS apps (below). Thanks Graham! Read more