Thunderbolt interconnect, a technology jointly developed by Apple and Intel which debuted February 24 on the new MacBook Pros, will become widely available to third-parties this quarter via the official development kit, Intel said yesterday. This is important for Mac users eager to take advantage of this technology.
Even though pundits had initially slammed Intel for limiting Thunderbolt to the new MacBook Pros, even saying this would spell doom for the new technology, the early release of an SDK means we can expect a lot of Thunderbolt-enabled products by the year’s end. In addition to Mac notebooks, Intel is working with other players to embrace Thunderbolt. At NAB 2011 several video and storage companion products from AJA, BlackMagic, Matrox, Sonnet, G-Tech, Promise and La Cie are being demoed. Expand Expanding Close
Does it bother you that you cannot continue playing a game on your iPad right where you left off on an iPhone? It always frustrated me that Game Center, Apple’s social network for games, only keeps record of your achievements and leaderboards but not other game data pertaining to your progress and current state of the game.
Unfortunately, until a system-wide sync of app data across all iOS devices via cloud iTunes takes off – if ever – it’s just a pipe dream. Well, not for Angry Birds developer Rovio Mobile. These guys are aware enough of the issue to come up with a solution of their own. They call it Angry Birds Sync and it’s coming soon to a platform near you…
Just as Microsoft promised last week, the first major service pack for Office for Mac 2011 is now available. Go to any Office application on your Mac and choose Check for Updates from the Help menu or grab a standalone installer from the Office for Mac website. The 246MB download “fixes critical issues and also helps to improve security,” the release notes say.
Also, it includes fixes for “vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.” It will also improve the speed and stability. There are several new features as well…
It’s official, Apple and Foxconn will make iPads in Brazil from November. So says Brazilian minister of Science and Technology Mercadante who just reported about details of a meeting in Beijing between Brazialian’s President Dilma Roussef and Hon Hai Precision’s founder Terry Gou. Reuters gave the report a much-needed credibility by noting that Foxconn is considering investing $12 billion in manufacturing facilities in the country:
iPhone maker Foxconn Technology Group is considering investing $12 billion in Brazil to assemble monitors, Brazil’s president said on Tuesday, in a sign the company may be ready to accelerate its move away from its main China manufacturing base.
The news that Foxconn would set up operations to build Apple products near São Paulo, Brazil broke three weeks ago, although first reports date back to April of last year, when Apple was said to be looking into such a possibility for cost saving reasons.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs explains the pinch zoom gesture to the Macworld audience at the January 2007 iPhone introduction in San Francisco.
PatentlyApple has uncovered a bunch of multitouch related patents from Apple recently published by the US Patent and Trademark Office. First of all, Apple has been awarded key patents related to multitouch gesturing on both mobile devices and desktops. More interesting than that is the news that the company is thinking how to simplify multitouch gestures in order to make them more natural and memorable.
It involves a little help from input devices like the Magic Trackpad and notable gesture modification motions, mid-drag gestures and microgestures within gestures that would make possible new user interface enhancements, such as a Spaces-like feature for iPad envisioned in another Apple patent. The documents describe a bunch of new gestures with excruciating detail. New finger moves come with crazy names, like Ohm and Wiggle (multiple short movements with sharp changes in an arbitrary direction). They involve drawing familiar shapes with your finger, like stars, arrows, circle, crossbar, the infinity sign and other.
In the big picture, Apple states that their newly proposed methods and interfaces will reduce the cognitive burden on a user while saving battery life. If we’re lucky, we may even get to see some of these new gestures playing out in various demo’s at this year’s WWDC keynote.
And because mid-drag gestures allow for faster use of user interfaces, they consequentially conserve power, too. Expand Expanding Close
Cisco is shuttering its Flip camera business and axing 550 jobs, says Reuters:
Cisco Systems Inc will shut down its Flip video camera business in an overhaul of its troubled consumer products business, following chief John Chambers’ recent admission that the company had lost its way.
Ouch! Remember when the previous-generation iPod nano was supposed to kill the Flip with its back-facing camera? That didn’t come to be. Here’s what happened instead…
An aerial view of the new Apple datacenter in Maiden, North Carolina, which doubled in size. More super datacenters are due across the US and Europe, an analyst says.
More and more analysts are calling for an Apple-branded television set that should wow us with a big, beautiful display (Retina, anyone?), built-in Apple TV and DVR capabilities, live programming and television channels via iTunes, 1080p iOS gaming via the App Store and what not. In addition to Piper Jaffray’s resident Apple analyst Gene Munster and Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty, brokerage firm Jefferies & Co. is out with their prediction of a new video gadget from Apple in 2012 or 2013 and a companion cloud service stemming from an alleged array of super datacenters:
Jefferies & Co. believes Apple Inc. is about to launch a new video-focused cloud-based service. The brokerage continues to believe that the assault on the living room likely means the introduction of another Apple appliance or device.
According to analyst Peter Misek, a Netflix-like $10 a month video subscription could boost Apple’s projected fiscal 2012 revenues from $118 billion all the way up to the $150-$171 billion range. He reminded Apple’s North Carolina datacenter (which cannot be seen on Google Maps) doubled in size and speculated that Apple could be building more of these in the US and Europe as we speak. We also know Apple ordered 12 million Gigabytes of storage. The gist? Apple could be building a cloud-based 21st century broadcasting network:
Misek believes Apple will launch a new far reaching cloudbased service that is more than just a music or content locker and focused on video. Misek believes this service will allow Apple to maintain higher than expected average selling prices for longer than he and the Street think. It is also likely to lead more people to buy Apple devices, in Misek’s view.
I’m confused. I thought Apple already has a “video-focused cloud-based service.” Apple’s been doing iTunes movie and television show downloads and rentals for ages. About that so-called iTV…
CutYourSim, a company that makes SIM cutters, is out with a service they claim permanently unlocks your GSM iPhone 4, 3GS and 3G – without the need for jailbreaking. It’s an “official iPhone unlock”, they explain, and will carry on forever. This lets you unlock your device for use with any carrier and update it to the latest iOS firmware and baseband without waiting for an unauthorized unlock to be released:
The unlock will work with any iPhone version, and any baseband version, no need to worry about updating to the latest version anymore.
The iPhone Dev-team seem to be endorsing this solution. It doesn’t come cheap and will set you back $169 per device. Best of all, the company says, the procedure won’t void your warranty. How’s that possible? MacStories.net offers one possible explanation. Read on…
Mac fans needn’t look with envy at their Palm Pre-owning friends who get to charge their phones wirelessly, using the TouchStone inductive charger. Thanks to accessory maker Mobee, it is now possible to wirelessly charge – well, not your iPhone, but an Apple Wireless Keyboard or a Magic Trackpad. Conveniently dubbed the Magic Bar, it works by replacing a pair of AA batteries on your keyboard or a trackpad with a battery cylinder. Read on…
You could say I’m a big fan of digital photography. I’m also old enough to remember the analogue days, having witnessed firsthand the analogue vs. digital battle. Boy, was it an exciting time. Analogue die-hards and naysayers were spelling doom for a short-lived fad digital photography was supposed to be. Geeks and tech-savvy users flocked to the opposing camp, realizing the benefits of the new technology. But how did the digital camera come to be? The awesome video interview with the inventor, right after the break, explains it all. Expand Expanding Close
Someone said that Canada-based BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is Microsoft of a decade ago. If true, then Mike Lazaridis, a RIM co-CEO and founder, has to be their version of Steve Ballmer (even though he wasn’t Microsoft CEO back then). Look no further than Lazaridis’ complaints that the users and media alike aren’t appreciating his company’s dominant position in mobile, in his view.
Despite shipping 52.3 million BlackBerrys in their last fiscal year – a 43 percent annual unit growth – he kinda slipped in that rivals like Apple are racing ahead and stealing the headlines. Changing his anti-Apple tune, he said in a New York Times interview:
No other technology company other than Apple has successfully transitioned their platform. It’s almost never done, and it’s way harder than you realize. This transition is where tech companies go to die.
I guess that’s what happens to RIM unless they successfully transition their platform to a more modern operating system, in their case QNX. The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which will run approved Android apps via a virtual machine, is schedule to land on store shelves next Tuesday after an unwanted delay caused by the Apple-created shortage of touchscreens. Lazaridis also asked rhetorical questions about his company’s public perception: Expand Expanding Close
Hot off the presses, new tidbits hit us following the launch of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 and new iPad apps from Adobe, both announced this morning. TUAW reports that Adobe’s video training resources now support iOS-friendly streaming to iPhones, iPods and iPads. Creative pros can now learn new tricks as they commute on train, go for a lunch break and so forth.
It’s an interesting – and rather telling – departure from Adobe’s stubborn insistence on serving Flash-formatted content only to iOS users. Another tidbit comes from MacRumors which profiles Photoshop Remote, the first third-party iPad app built using the Photoshop Touch SDK. Check it out in action right after the break. Expand Expanding Close
Pictured above: Third=party iPhone 4 metallic back sticker
Research firm Avian Securities issued a note to clients today that will dash hopes of those that have been keeping their fingers crossed for the iPhone 5 this summer. According to the note based on checks with a key supplier , their analysts believe that the handset will go into production in September, which means it won’t land on store shelves before the end of this year, possibly even Q1 2012, reports Business Insider. Here’s what the note reads: Expand Expanding Close
The gaming industry was served when Chair Entertainment launched Infinity Blade as the first iOS game built around the Unreal Engine. A number of iOS games utilizing the engine are now being developed, including Dream:scape that TouchArcade spotted today. The game puts you in the shoes of “a coma patient unlocking his past by exploring the dreamscape of his memories,” the publication explains.
Being developed by an indie developer, Dream:scape looks as a high-profile, big budget release, courtesy of the same Unreal Engine that powers Infinity Blade. It sports over 30 acres of explorable landscape and fully realized interior settings, with a bunch of secrets and new areas to discover throughout the game. More info plus awesome in-game footage right below the fold. Expand Expanding Close
If you can’t beat them, join them. Another great publishing brand has accepted Apple’s in-app subscription terms that require publishers to surrender 30 percent of proceeds from digital magazine subscriptions sold inside apps. The official Bloomberg Businessweek app for iPad app just launched with the unusual $0.77 price point for an introductory print subscription.
Other pricing subscription options include three bucks for four issues which is actually lower than the five bucks price at newsstands. Each week’s issue is available from 10pm on Thursday New York time. Other tidbits and a couple of shiny screenies right after the break. Expand Expanding Close
Adobe today launched Creative Suite 5.5. With it comes the new Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit that facilitates the creation of apps for smartphones and tablets that can talk to desktop Photoshop app. This opens interesting possibilities and Adobe announced three new iPad apps built using the new SDK that showcase several scenarios. Called Adobe Eazel, Adobe Nav and Adobe Color Lava, these programs will land on the App Store next month, priced between two to five bucks. Check out a video demonstration and brief app descriptions right below the fold. Expand Expanding Close
I was just blown away when I saw this new online shopping technology called 3LiveShop from Stockholm-based B-Reel and Hi3G Access. Instead of tirelessly skimming through endless static product lists, 3LiveShop lets you engage in a one-on-one video session with a sales rep. But instead of a dull Skype-like voice chat, the sales representative on the other end converses with the customer augmented-reality style via a multitouch screen.
This is where the fun part begins. The setup allows the sales rep to drag phone images and other useful information across the screen, seen by the shopper as cool Minority Report-like overlays on top of the video feed. It’s just too cool not to mention it here. Imagine this tech put to work at the online Apple store. Wonder how this works? Read on…
Apple’s portable base station called Airport Express is only able to stream music from iTunes, but not to third-party applications. In addition, some rare third-party programs can stream music to Airport Express or AirPlay devices. As noted by MacRumors, developer James Laird has fixed this by reverse-engineering the Airport Express private key to create Shareport, an open-sourced AirPort Express emulator that contains an RAOP server to stream music from iTunes and iPods to third-party software and hardware. Laird explains:
My girlfriend moved house, and her Airport Express no longer made it with her wireless access point. I figured it’d be easy to find an ApEx emulator – there are several open source apps out there to play to them. However, I was disappointed to find that Apple used a public-key crypto scheme, and there’s a private key hiding inside the ApEx. So I took it apart (I still have scars from opening the glued case!), dumped the ROM, and reverse engineered the keys out of it.
True to its new mid-cycle release schedule, Adobe has upgraded the Creative Suite 5 suite to version 5.5. InDesign, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro and After Effects were all upgraded with new interactive features to help create rich HTML5 web apps, stereoscopic video and touch-based apps for smartphones and tablets. A new subscription-based model has debuted alongside the suite that lets you rent individual programs for a monthly or yearly fee.
Photoshop will set you back $35 a month, while the entire Design Premium CS 5.5 costs $95 on a monthly basis. The full CS 5.5 Mater Collection suite costs $129 a month. Additionally, open-source framework Flex 4.5 will land on the Mac in June.
Steve Wozniak, the beloved geek and gadget lover, would consider a return to Apple, the company he co-founded 35 years ago with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, in an active role, if asked. He praised Apple’s string of smash hit products and opined that the company would benefit from being more open. He told Reuters this past Friday:
There’s just an awful lot I know about Apple products and competing products that has some relevance, some meaning. They’re my own feelings, though.
Another quote from the 60-year-old engineer who created the original Apple computers, about why Apple should be more open, right after the break… Expand Expanding Close
The results of the GL Benchmark tests pitting a bunch of GPUs show that Apple’s A5 chip beats Nvidia’s Tegra 2 silicon to the graphics punch. Apple advertises the A5 silicon as being twice as fast than the previous generation with up to ninefold jump in graphics performance. But how was Apple able to beat Nvidia’s graphics wizards at their own game?
Tiernan Ray over at Barron’s has an interesting explanation – Apple’s chip is two and a half times larger than Nvidia’s. More precisely, the A5 measures 122 square millimeters versus 49 square millimeters for the Tegra 2 chip. No matter what people think, size matters. Read on… Expand Expanding Close
Apple has updated its Boot Camp software with support for early 2011 MacBook Pro models. From release notes: “This Boot Camp update addresses issues with shutdown, Japanese and Korean keyboards on early 2011 MacBook Pro”. You can download a standalone Boot Camp 3.2 installer here.
Remember when Valve drummed up the arrival of Steam for Mac by releasing a series of teaser images to the press? They’re doing it again with new teasers that form a puzzle which hints at Portal Alternative Reality Game’s Portal 2. As you know, the game is set to launch simultaneously via Steam for Macs and Windows PCs on April 19.
ValveArg.com has collected all teasers that Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell has been sending to the media. Each individual image forms a part of the Portal 2 teaser puzzle, shown above. Being a fan of the original Portal game, I’m looking forward to playing Portal 2 on my Mac and PC. The game will be also released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well. Expand Expanding Close
Cross-platform media center Plex is one of those programs that you’d expect from Apple. Sure, Mac OS X has FrontRow, but seriously – when was the last time you enjoyed your media in FrontRow? It’s a lousy media center replacement that most people avoid so no wonder it’s lingering in a state of limbo. I’ve been using Plex for years to manage and enjoy my media collections on my desktop. Their awesome iOS app that lets me stream my media effortlessly to iPhones, iPods and iPads was the only missing link.
They just updated the Plex for iOS app with a bunch of new features such as AirPlay and TV out. You can also search your device, media server and online media repositories. This lets you, say, use your iPhone to search your home media server miles away, find a movie in your collection, stream it to your device over 3G while beaming it to a friend’s big screen TV via AirPlay.
It’s a major upgrade with lots of new functionalities so hop over to the App Store and download the new Plex for iOS app version 1.1. You may also want to read a handy guide at MacStories.net or check out the full features list plus some screenies right after the break. Expand Expanding Close
