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Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

Does the New iMac Foretell the Next Apple TV?

Written on October 23, 2009 by Alfredo Padilla and 26 people have commented

Apple’s brand new 27-inch iMacs come with an interesting feature: the ability to act as a display for connected devices via the built-in DisplayPort connection. This means that, with the proper adaptors, you can connect an array of home theatre devices to the iMac, including Blu-Ray players. The screen has also moved to the HDTV [...]

A Patent Nightmares are Made Of: OS X With Ads

Written on October 22, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 25 people have commented

Halloween has come early this year, and I’m not talking about today’s release of Windows 7. Engadget reports (and I find it difficult to share this with you, dear readers, because I know it will cause you discomfort), in April last year, Apple filed a patent application for (shudder) an ad-supported operating system. That’s right. [...]

iTunes Tweets: How Spamtastic!

Written on October 22, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 2 people have commented

Right now, as you read this, there are five iTunes-flavored profiles over on Twitter, providing their followers with SMS-length dispatches on music, podcasts, TV shows and other content on offer in Apple’s titan digital media platform.
They are, it must be said, almost entirely pointless. For some reason this week they’ve received a fair bit of coverage [...]

Microsoft Becoming Apple With First Retail Store, Online PC Sales

Written on October 22, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 21 people have commented

Talk about biting someone else’s style. Not only is Microsoft trying to add some cool factor to its brand using celebrity influence, a game which Apple has long had in the bag, now it’s also opened its first official brick-and-mortar retail store, and it even just began offering PC hardware for sale via its online [...]

It’s Windows 7 Day: Are We the Early Adopters?

Written on October 22, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 24 people have commented

Apple did pretty much everything they could to steal some of Windows 7’s thunder by announcing some pretty major hardware changes earlier in the week, but Thursday is here nonetheless, and that means Microsoft’s latest OS is on store shelves now, ripe for the picking. Question is, will Mac users be helping with the harvest?
I’m [...]

Condé Nast Brings Titles to iPhone, Keeps Eyes On the iTablet

Written on October 21, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 8 people have commented

Newspapers and magazines — the entire news print industry to be honest — have been suffering a long and torturous decline for much of the last decade as more of us turn to the Internet and electronic devices to get (increasingly personalized) news and other content. While publishers have generally been slow to adapt to [...]

Apple Europe VP Talks Macs, iPhones, iPods and Surprises

Written on October 21, 2009 by Charles Jade and No one has commented

Pascal Cagni, Apple vice president and general manager for Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, did in an interview with Katie Allen of the Guardian. Speaking after Apple’s earnings report for the fourth fiscal quarter, Cagni was optimistic on the Mac in Europe, guarded about the iPod, and enigmatic about “surprises” in the future.
Questioned [...]

Snow Leopard Still a Better Ride Than Windows 7, Even for the Not-Rich

Written on October 21, 2009 by Charles Moore and 35 people have commented

ChannelWeb’s Steven Burke says that in the manifold comparisons of Windows 7 with Snow Leopard burning up the Web, what all the reviewers and pundits seem to be forgetting is that it’s not about the operating system, which he maintains is simply the engine that runs the PC. As Burke puts it, you don’t go [...]

Facebook 3.1 Highlights All That’s Wrong With Push Notifications

Written on October 21, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 13 people have commented

In a tweet on Monday, Joe Hewitt, developer of the iPhone Facebook app, announced that the next major update (version 3.1 to be precise) will finally bring Push Notifications to the popular application.
Facebook is easily one of the most popular free apps available in the iTunes App Store. I think you’d be hard pressed to [...]

Apple Unveils the Magic Mouse

Written on October 20, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 25 people have commented

Today Apple revealed the Magic Mouse — the world’s first multi-touch mouse. Inspired by the multi touch technology in the iPhone and trackpad on modern MacBooks, Magic Mouse is the zero-button, gesture-sensing, wireless pointing-device of your dreams.
Its design is quintessentially Apple. The sleek, minimal lines of Magic Mouse definitely look like something straight out of [...]

EyeTV Returns to the App Store, Minus 3G Streaming

Written on October 20, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 1 person has commented

As we reported just yesterday, Apple didn’t take too kindly to El Gato’s “accidental” inclusion of a workaround to enable 3G streaming of live TV on the iPhone using its EyeTV app. The app, combined with an EyeTV USB Mac TV tuner, allows users to stream that content from their computer. I say allows, not [...]

Rumor Has It: Verizon and Apple Testing iPhone LTE

Written on October 20, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 16 people have commented

3G may be the current standard in network data communication, but 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks are just around the corner. Verizon is working on building its own LTE network as we speak, and the latest rumors suggest that Apple is working together with Big Red to develop the next generation of iPhone.
LTE means [...]

Apple Stores Go Down; Rumors of New Hardware Abound

Written on October 20, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 5 people have commented

As I write, online Apple Stores around the world are going down. That yellow post-it is popping up, assuring eager shoppers, “We’ll be back soon.”
Why so eager? For weeks, rumors have leaked through the intertubes like lemonade spilled on a MacBook keyboard — in short, they got everywhere. There isn’t a tech news site that [...]

Rock Band Comes to the App Store

Written on October 19, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 5 people have commented

It had to happen sooner or later. EA Mobile’s Rock Band is now available in the iTunes App Store.
From the EA Mobile web site:
Take your band on the road with 20 legendary songs from great bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Lynyrd Skynyrd & the Beastie Boys, all delivered with the highest, MP3-quality sound.
Rock out solo on [...]

WolframAlpha iPhone: Why the $50 Asking Price?

Written on October 19, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 4 people have commented

When it was first released, WolframAlpha generated a lot of buzz surrounding the impressive computational power the new search engine-type service offered. Specifically for mathematical and statistical queries, it goes quite beyond what Google is able to offer. But does all that power justify a $50 price tag on the site’s iPhone app treatment?
Wolfram Alpha LLC [...]

Apple Acknowledges Battery Overheating in First-Generation iPod Nano

Written on October 19, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and No one has commented

If you have a first-generation iPod nano (the one that looks like a slimmed-down version of the iPod video and comes in only black and white), you may be able to get a replacement or a fix from Apple, depending on what kind of symptoms your device is exhibiting.
Specifically, Apple acknowledged via a knowledge base [...]

Verizon Attacks iPhone With “Droid”

Written on October 18, 2009 by Charles Jade and 65 people have commented

Over the weekend, Verizon launched its second attack against the iPhone, a condescending teaser for an upcoming Android-based phone, Droid. However, unlike the first ad, which rightfully attacked AT&T’s anemic network coverage and dependability, the Droid ad goes after the iPhone.
According to Verizon, the iPhone doesn’t:

have a real keyboard
run simultaneous apps
take 5-megapixel pictures
customize
run widgets
allow open [...]

iPhone Demand Seen Outstripping Supply

Written on October 16, 2009 by Charles Jade and 7 people have commented

At least one analyst thinks Apple may have sold fewer iPhones last quarter than current estimates suggest, but not because no one wants an iPhone 3GS, quite the opposite.

As the numbers from research firm Canalys indicate, there is no customer shortage for the iPhone 3GS. According to senior analyst Pete Cunningham, “Apple has revolutionized the [...]

Layar Augmented Reality Browser Finally Available for iPhone

Written on October 16, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 3 people have commented

Late Wednesday, augmented reality (subscription required) app Layar finally hit the App Store. It received a lot of buzz early on in the days of AR on mobile devices, and was released long ago for devices running Google’s Android OS.
The idea behind the browser is that multiple points of interest (POI) are displayed on top [...]

AT&T Removes All Remaining Doubt: No Tethering This Year

Written on October 15, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 10 people have commented

It seems AT&T is on a quest to cause as much damage as possible to the already flaky reputation it has with its iPhone customers. In an oddly confrontational email to 9to5 Mac, a spokesman for the communications company took issue with one of their recent articles that said AT&T would be delivering tethering services [...]