9to5 Staff

Instead of using your iPhone and a specialized DJ app like Algoriddim’s djay for iPhone, clever minds have come up with a novel idea based on sensing a performer’s movement to alter the playback of digital audio in real-time. They call it Mopho DJ and it doesn’t require dedicated hardware or time-coded vinyl, explains Nick Brian, a researcher with the Center for Computer Research, Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. How does it work?

Expand
Expanding
Close

You may have heard of BareFeats, right? You know, the mad scientists types that agonize over clock frequencies, fill rates and hardware stats so you don’t have to. They’re out with a comprehensive gaming shootout pitting the latest iMac family against Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros and current-gen Mac Pros. They specifically focused on graphics performance in games by measuring Portal 2 frame rates at various quality settings and resolutions. Their take?

The new 2011 iMacs run latest games very well despite their mobile AMD graphics being actually slower than Nvidia’s flagship mobile chip. The 2011 iMac family is a “best buy” for gamers, the site concluded. Read on for additional explanation and another chart proving their point.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Samsung will next week demo a new LCD display technology that will put future tablets in the Retina Display realm. Developed by Samsung’s subsidiary Nouvoyance, the new WQXGA 10.1-inch display stuns with a whopping 2560-by-1600 pixel resolution. Take a deep breath – that’s more pixels than on your 27-inch iMac and double the pixel count on full HD displays.

It uses PenTile RGBW technology that consumes 40 percent less power, a statement claims. Samsung will show off this tech at the SID Display Week 2011 International Symposium next week. The company expects to have commercial availability of this technology for tablet applications later this year.

At screen size and resolution this large the display features a pixel density of 300 pixels per inch – enough to file as a Retina Display. Apple says that 300 pixels-per-inch is the limit of the human retina where the eye is unable to distinguish between the individual pixels, meaning curves appear smooth and continuous rather than jagged and pixelated. It’s widely accepted that the next iPad will sport Retina Display technology which was first inaugurated ten months ago on iPhone 4.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Adobe has updated its Flash Player to version 10.3, squashing a bunch of bugs and introducing a brand new control panel. It’s a welcome addition that lets you better manage the many Flash Player settings, including camera, microphone and Local Shared Objects settings. More importantly, one can now set how Flash tracking cookies are being handled and fine-tune other privacy, security and storage settings.

Also important, Flash Player 10.3 now supports auto-update notification for Mac OS X. The new aplet is a native addition to the system-wide control panel on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, Adobe said. The team wrote in a blog post that Flash Player 10.3 also includes support for Android 3.1 devices.

Expand
Expanding
Close

After a decade-long absence from the world of Apple, developer Bungie Studios is believed to be gearing up for a big comeback. The word on the street is that the studio is developing a brand new mobile game called Crimson, presumably for the hottest mobile platform out there, Apple’s iOS. If true, it’ll probably file as one of the most important iOS game releases yet. TouchArcade discovered that Bungie Aerospace, a Delaware-incorporated Bungie property, filed a trademark for “Crimson”, describing it as “computer game software for use on mobile and cellular phones”. The publication explains:

My gut says Bungie Aerospace and “Crimson” are connected to the studio’s next project, an original IP set to be published by Activision. Word on the street is that this game is a shooter MMO — an MMO that might just offer increased connectivity via mobile apps.

Crimson has potential to become a big boon for iOS gaming, especially considering Bungie’s penchant for the creation of so-called system sellers, exclusive games so good that gamers cannot resist but go out and buy a certain system just to be able to play them.

Expand
Expanding
Close

A new patent application published by the US Patent and Trademark Office gives us another thought-provoking insight into Apple’s thinking behind sci-fi keyboard designs. Granted, only a fraction of their patents see the light of day. Moreover, those that don’t often file is vague, too broad conceptual ideas. Nevertheless, this one’s interesting on several levels.

Apple wants you to feel the keys before you hit them. The document entitled “Input Devices and Methods of Operation” proposes the use of air vents on keys (you read that right) coupled with a bunch of proximity sensors like the one inside your iPhone that prevents spray input from your face.

In some systems, feedback is provided before actual contact with the key expelling air from the input device proximate the key when user selection is imminent. In other examples, the tactile sensation results from automatic movement of the key in response to detected user selection of the key.

Another embodiment calls for a pneumatic system designed to pull the key away from you by “advancing the selected key in a direction of actuation in response to detecting user selection”. What do you make of this?

Expand
Expanding
Close

Popular micro-blogging service Twitter has unveiled a revamped HTML5 web app that mimics the look and feel of its native iOS counterpart. The new rich interface works in mobile Safari and other mobile browsers, Twitter said. New features include the ability to quickly scroll through your timeline, move between tabs, compose tweets, access your timeline, @mentions, messages that you can read in conversation view, search, trending topics, lists and more.

There’s no need to install anything and it gets updated more frequently, being a cloud-based app. Check it out by pointing your iPhone, iPod touch or Android device at twitter.com. Bear in mind Twitter is gradually releasing the web app so don’t panic if it’s not yet available to you. If you use Twitter’s official Mac client, good stuff happening on that front, too…

Expand
Expanding
Close

After more than a decade of constant decline, music industry executives finally have reasons to celebrate. According to the latest Nielsen Soundscan survey, US music sales are up 1.6 percent due to strong digital sales. More precisely, sales of digital tracks rose a notable 16.8 percent while sales of individual tracks upped a healthy 9.6 percent.

Physical albums, however, remain on a downward spiral with an 8.3 percent decline while CD sales declined 8.8 percent overall. Interestingly, the research firm cited the arrival of Beatles on iTunes for the rebound in digital music sales.

Catalog album sales are up 5.4 percent in 2011, thanks in part to a long-awaited 2010 deal allowing digital distribution of The Beatles’ albums for the first time.

This is a pretty important change considering that the music industry has been on a downhill ride for more than ten years now. It also proves that online stores like Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 store continue to lead the charge in the digital music revolution.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Four years since the iPhone’s debut Apple still favors the sealed battery design over the removable one that some folks have been clamoring for. Third Rail System has you covered with their new smart protective case. It would have been yet another everyday protective case with a soft-touch feel to it if it weren’t for an optional 1.4-ounce 1250 mAh lithium-­ion battery that slides on on the back, providing your phone with additional power if you run out of juice mid-day. And due to the included micro-USB port, the case essentially doubles as a stand-alone, universal charger for most mobile gadgets (USB adapted included).

Expand
Expanding
Close

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=23554190&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

If all the brouhaha about iPhone location tracking fell on deaf ear with you, why not plot your logged location history on a world map, just for the kicks? Sure, you can do that with Pete Warden’s simple and lightweight iPhone Tracker tool for your Mac, but it won’t preserve your location data in the cloud. And while you’re at it, how about making this data actually useful by contributing your personal database of nearby WiFi hotspots and cellular towers (so says Apple) to good causes, from surveys into movement patterns of the human species to epidemiology? That’s exactly what OpenPaths does for you.

With openpaths, you can preserve your iPhone or iPad’s location information as well as visualize where you’ve been. You can even download your data in CSV and JSON format so you can remix it and use it in your own projects. What’s more, openpaths allows you to securely and anonymously donate your data to researchers who could use it to study mobility, transportation, land use, epidemiology, and overall make the world a better place.

It only takes a minute to plot your location data in a variety of ways…

Expand
Expanding
Close

All checks indicate they have, which would be a first for the puritan California-based gadget maker that likes to keep things under control in the App Store. ZDNet has a story about SugarSugar Dating App somehow making it through Apple’s stringent review process and launching on the iPhone on June 1. The app is a mobile client to SugarSugar.com, which advertises itself as the “leading sugar dating website”.

They also say the app helps one seek “mutually beneficial” arrangements with other users, a telling tongue-in-cheek definition treading the fine line between dating and escorting, if not worse. Maybe Apple censors weren’t paying attention… So, how’s this going to work?

Expand
Expanding
Close

Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes relayed this morning whispers from the supply chain asserting that Apple might experience problems with shipments of iPad 2 and iPhone 4 in the second quarter amid “a shortage of both labor and materials” for smartphones and tablet PCs at Foxconn’s Chengdu, China plants. Foxconn, a long-time manufacturing partner of Apple’s, declined to comment on the rumored shipments delay. Most iPad 2 supplies still originate from Foxconn’s Shenzen plants, however.

Most market watchers have estimated that total iPad 2 shipments in the second quarter will reach as high as seven million units, but since Apple is trying to reach its shipment goal of 35-40 million units for 2011, the company has been pushing its upstream partners to aim at supplying 10-10.5 million units in the second quarter, the sources added.

Another report from the same publication re-iterated previous supply chain suspicious, citing the Japan earthquake and the power brownout policy as principal reasons. Players like Motorola, Acer, Apple, HTC and others have reportedly started “acting aggressively in securing supplies”. The real challenge will be fulfilling orders in June. Perhaps these ongoing supply woes are why Apple allegedly pushed back iPhone 5 to September or later?

Expand
Expanding
Close

In a ‘told you so’ moment, record labels are turning their attention to Apple and the June 6 developer conference for a music-related announcement. As reported by Greg Sandoval of CNET, music executives hope that an Apple-branded service will legitimize cloud lockers that are popping up everywhere. The labels hope to leverage the Apple locker against Amazon and Google which both launched their respective cloud offerings on a free of charge basis. Apple’s cloud storage for music is rumored to carry a $20 a year price tag. Apple apparently cut a licensing deal with at least one major music publisher, Warner Music.

The hope in the music industry is that Apple’s music service will make the competing offerings look shabby by comparison and force Amazon and Google to pay the licensing rates the labels are asking.

The report goes on to note that Google could be in trouble with the labels over transcoding music files at upload, which could be viewed by some as creating a new copy without a permission of content owners. Apple is thought to be developing a new suite of online services under the iCloud moniker. However, this could as well be a new name for the existing $99 a year MobileMe online suite. Apple has registered the iCloud.com domain name so it’s a safe bet they’ll be using it at some point down the road.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Angry Birds theme song cover by Pomplamoose (Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn)
(Cross-posted on our sister site 9to5Google.com)

Here at San Francisco’s Moscone West, the Google I/O 2011 keynote has just wrapped up. Being their most important annual pilgrimage for developers, the show is a launchpad for important new products and announcements. For some people, the biggest news is that popular Angry Birds franchise is now available for the most popular platform of all – the web. Joining Google’s senior vice president of Chrome Sundar Pichai on stage was Peter Vesterbacka, the CEO of Espoo, Finland-based multi-million dollar Angry Birds developer Rovio Mobile. Wearing a red Angry Birds sweatshirt, Vesterbacka announced that the Angry Birds web app is now available on the Chrome Web Store. More information and three screenies right after the break.

Expand
Expanding
Close

(Cross-posted on our sister site 9to5Google.com)

Just sayin’…

Check out the sticker: “My other computer is a data center”. Touche.

It’s a familiar scene. MacBook-toting journalists, bloggers and guests providing Apple with omnipresence and free advertising at rivals’ events, thanks in large part to the glowing Apple logo on the well-designed notebook family. Who knows, this time next year some of these folks might carry around machines with the Google logo on them if there’s any substance to the whispers of subscription-based Chrome OS notebooks. Check out seven additional Apple sightings below the fold and meet us in comments.

<
This guy’s comparing his slate to a friend’s iPad.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Sad news for fans of e-reading. BeamItDown Software announced they are closing down the shop and ceasing development of iFlow Reader, an e-book reader for iOS, due to Apple’s 30 percent cut and new rules that require all content sales to go through the iOS in-app purchasing mechanism. As a result, publishers like iFlow Reader are increasingly finding that Apple’s 30 percent cut is eating into their margins, leaving them with little or no revenue.

BeamItDown Software and the iFlow Reader will cease operations as of May 31, 2011.  We absolutely do not want to do this, but Apple has made it completely impossible for anyone but Apple to make a profit selling contemporary ebooks on any iOS device. We cannot survive selling books at a loss and so we are forced to go out of business. We bet everything on Apple and iOS and then Apple killed us by changing the rules in the middle of the game. This is a very sad day for innovation on iOS in this important application category. We are a small company that thought we could build a better product. We think that we did but we are powerless against Apple’s absolute control of the iOS platform.

“They [Apple] screwed us”, BeamItDown Software’s Philip Huber told Fortune.

Expand
Expanding
Close

(Cross-posted on 9to5Google.com)

Bud Tribble, Apple’s long-time vice president of software engineering, testified before a US Senate subcommittee yesterday alongside Google’s US director of public policy Alan Davidson. The two executives fielded questions from Senators related to privacy issues and the practice of location data gathering via mobile devices running iOS and Android software.

Senator Charles Schumer said he was having issues with apps like Buzz’d and Fuzz Alert and expressed his disappointment that neither Apple nor Google pulled down those programs yet, even though RIM did. He suggested Google looks “narrowly” at third-party programs which help avoid police DUI checkpoints.

You agree that it is a terrible thing, and it probably causes death.

Challenged by Senator Schumer, Apple’s Tribble said his company is “looking into” the legality of DUI apps.

We’re in the process of looking into it — we have a policy that we don’t allow apps that encourage illegal activity. If the apps intent is to encourage people to break the law, then we will pull it. I will take that back.

Both Apple and Google have been asked to provide more detailed answers within 30 days, This is my next reported. Makes you wonder what’s next – going after benign programs that assess your driving skills?

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has temporarily ceased filling ad slots in iPad apps for children with adverts from advertisers that participate in Apple’s advertising network dubbed iAd. MacStories pointed at an email message developer Mike Zornek received from the iAds team. Zornek, who is behind Dex, a free Pokèmon browser app for iPhone, published contents of the message on his blog. Emailing Apple over iAd fill rates in his app which dropped to a single-digit territory, he got this response:

Hello Michael,

We periodically review the apps in the iAd Network to ensure that all apps receiving ads are aligned with the needs of our advertisers. Currently, our advertisers prefer that their advertising not appear in applications that are targeted for users that are young children, since their products are not targeted at that audience.

We appreciate your understanding.

Best Regards,

iAd Network Support Apple, Inc. 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino, CA 95014

Expand
Expanding
Close

IM+ Pro, one of the best multi-client chat programs for iOS devices, has been updated with a location-based feature that makes it easy to find random chat participants nearby your current location. Developer Shape Services says Neighbors provides users “the opportunity to find new real life connections and friends with common interests”. This is interesting as we haven’t seen a beneficial integration of location, which is the latest fad, with chat services.

The Neighbors feature works pretty straightforward. You locate people on the map to engage in chat sessions with nearby friends. Others discover you based on your location information that can be as accurate as house, street or city – your choice.

Expand
Expanding
Close

If you’ve been on the edge of your seat since Microsoft’s surprising announcement of the $8.5 billion Skype acquisition yesterday, don’t sweat over it – the Redmond company has no plans to drop Skype support for the iPhone and other competing platforms, as some feared. This comes from the mouth of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Computerworld reports:

We will continue to invest in Skype on non-Microsoft client platforms.

When asked by a reporter to clarify his position, Ballmer responded:

A, I said it and I meant it. B, we’re one of the few companies with a track record of doing this.

It’s all good, but what if Microsoft at some point decides to leverage Skype to bring new features to Windows Phone first, rolling them out at a snail’s pace to other non-Microsoft platforms? Here’s a quick survival guide to the Skype acquisition.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Bud Tribble, an old time Jobs confidant and Apple’s vice president of software technology, testified today before members of the US Congress on the company’s privacy and location gathering practices. Tribble, an engineer that helped design the Mac operating system and user interface (also a Sun an NeXT veteran), appeared for a hearing led by Senator Al Franken who took the matter public in the first place. Barron’s reports that Tribble re-iterated Apple’s official stance on the issue, which is that the company doesn’t track its users and has no plans to ever do so in the future.

We do not share customer information with third parties without our customers’ explicit consent. Apple does not track users’ locations. Apple has never done so and has no plans to do so. An Apple device does not send to Apple any specific device information associated with a user. The purpose of the cache is to allow the device to more quickly and reliably respond to location requests. Apple was never tracking an individual user’s location. The data seen on the iphone was not the location past or present of the iPhone, but the location of cell towers surrounding the phone. Although the cache was not encrypted, it was protected from other apps on the phone.

Expand
Expanding
Close