When Apple announced at WWDC that FaceTime would (officially) work over cellular data networks, the company deftly avoided offering up much in the way of details. Now that iOS 6 beta 3 has been released into the wild though, a clearer picture of how Apple and their carrier partners will handle the situation is beginning to emerge.
The folks at 9to5mac discovered last night that attempting to enable FaceTime over 3G on an AT&T iPhone running on the most recent iOS 6 beta would bring up an interesting little message: To enable FaceTime over cellular on this account, contact AT&T at 611 or visit http://www.att.com/wireless. It looks an awful lot like AT&T is planning to charge customers for using FaceTime over 3G, though the revelation isn’t particularly out of character. → Read More
Yesterday, we got a glimpse at a leaked front-casing for what we believe to be the iPhone 5, showing a centered FaceTime camera hole. Today, however, we have but the WSJ’s word for it that Apple is working with supply line manufacturers to implement a thinner, more beautiful display into the next-gen handset.
According to the report, LCD makers such as Sharp and Japan Display (which comprises Toshiba, Hitachi, and Sony as well as LG Display) are mass producing panels that use something called “in-cell technology”, which should make the display itself thinner. → Read More
Another day, another leak.
On Friday we saw what was reported to be an iPhone 5 prototype unit, and today an entirely different version of the “iPhone 5″ casing has found its way on to the interwebs. Oddly enough, this latest leak looks an awful lot like images of iPhone 5 parts published by 9to5mac.
Of course, it’s possible that none of these leaks are the real thing, but it sure does help pass the time until Apple hops on stage in October. → Read More
Trolls, feel free to skip to the bottom of this column and post your comments immediately without reading a word. Actually, who are we kidding — you didn’t make it this far.
Everyone else, brace yourselves. You may want small children to leave the room. I’m about to do something I don’t do often — something I always said I’d do if the product deserved it. Something some people seem to think I’m incapable of: praise a Google product — an Android-based Google product, no less.
Is that enough build up for you? Okay. → Read More
Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield just published a letter on the company’s website announcing that Apple has reversed its decision to remove EPEAT environmental certification from its products.
“We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system,” Mansfield writes. “I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.” → Read More
A little over a week after finally settling its iPad legal case against Proview to the tune of $60 million, Apple today is delivering some more good iPad news in China: it’s going to start selling the new iPad on the mainland starting July 20.
The Retina-display-enhanced model will be priced starting at $499 for the 16GB model ($629 with cellular access) (3,176 yuan), $599 ($729 with cellular access) for the 32GB device and $699 for the 64GB version ($829 with cellular access). At the same time, it has reduced the price of the older iPad 2 to $399. These prices are in line with what Apple is charging for the tablets in the U.S. — although given that the per-capita income in China is significantly lower, that price will feel a lot higher to the average consumer.
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Earlier this week, Josh Constine wrote an epic piece on Facebook, Google and Apple’s impending messaging war. As Constine explains, we have most likely reached “peak SMS,” that is, text messaging is on the decline and another form of messaging will take its place.
But as the major empires wage total war for glorious messaging spoils, there are far smaller, distant tribes that will make their own windfall of riches from the battle. Man I miss playing Age of Empires.
As these tech giants extend their reach even further, it is quite possible that users will seek to regain control over their information and embrace applications that quickly erase or encrypt their messages and pictures. Especially if the companies’ battle reduces their respect for users’ privacy—like Facebook’s aggressive email change last month.
The real gold mine for these impermanent apps is that they aren’t in the war. None of them can come close to these giants and none should try. But while the big three will likely engage in a winner take all battle, one or multiple apps can win side battles. → Read More
One more update on this week’s “app-ocalypse” – Apple says it has resolved the issue which caused iOS and Mac apps to crash upon launch, and it has now pushed out new, untainted updates to fix the previously corrupted apps.
But in developers’ minds, the bigger worry here had been what to do about all those angry, one-star customer reviews related to crashes which were not their fault? It seems Apple is taking care of that, too.
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Just a quick update on the issues plaguing Apple’s iOS and Mac App Stores: Apple has now informed developers that it’s aware of the problem and is working on a resolution. For background, a serious problem has been discovered in the iOS and Mac App Stores which has been causing apps to immediately crash after users update to the most recent version. This is now day three of the problem, and Apple had yet to respond to the situation until this afternoon.
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Developers are frustrated over what appears to be an issue with corrupt app store binaries being served by Apple, which is leading otherwise functional iOS and Mac applications to immediately crash upon launch. The issue was tipped to us by app developers and has also been making the rounds thanks to details shared by high-profile app developer Marco Arment of Instapaper. → Read More
Every morning, my lovely girlfriend walks through Grand Central Station in New York City on her way to work, and every morning, she sees something odd. Such is the nature of living in the Big Apple.
This happened: she saw a man — a regular dude in slacks and a button-down — carrying his iPad in his butt.
Witness the horror. → Read More
Waze, the Israel-based social navigation and traffic service, today announced that it now has 20 million users. That’s quite a milestone for any startup, but what makes this number so impressive is that the company also announced that it added half of its users in the last six month and continues to grow quickly. Just in the last month, the company said, it added 1.8 million new users to its community. All of these users, said Waze, have used the app to drive over 3.2 billion miles so far. → Read More
Six months after its teaser trailer showed up online, Robert X. Cringely’s “lost” interview with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has now available for rent in iTunes for $3.99. In 1995, Cringely interviewed Jobs, who was then running NeXT, and two years out from what would later be his triumphant return to Apple, for a PBS documentary called “Triumph of the Nerds”. However, much of their discussion ended up on the cutting room floor – 70 minutes worth, in fact.
In the un-aired portions, Jobs talked about his approach to product design, team building and product evolution, among other things. At the time, those insights may not have had the impact they do now, as the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad had yet to be invented. → Read More
We’re on the cusp of a global conflict that will see the three most powerful consumer Internet companies fighting to win control of interpersonal communication. The war will pit Facebook’s unified Chat / Messages / Email vs Apple’s cross-device iMessage system vs. Google’s Gmail / GChat / Hangouts. If one emerges as the definitive victor, it could sway the future of digital human interaction.
Read on as we survey the battlefield, review the weaponry of each company, and assess who could win the epic message war and the fortune that comes with it. → Read More
The new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Sure, it stands to fudge up the Internet, but boy is it pretty!
The display boasts 5.1 million pixels, with a bump from 1440×900 (on the 15-incher) to a full 2880×1800 resolution. It brings Apple’s laptops into the display big leagues with the iPhone and iPad, and gets a bit thinner to boot. Plus, you’ll get an HDMI port instead of that optical drive.
But is the lofty price tag enough to replace your current MBP? The question can be answered in two parts: first, do you have the cash, and second, how much do you love the Internet? → Read More
Late Thursday, an extraordinary thing happened: Adobe announced in a blog post that it would not provide Flash Player support for devices running Android 4.1, and that it was pulling the plugin from the Google Play store on August 15. The retreat comes five years after the introduction of the iPhone, the device which led to Flash’s mobile ambitions, almost even before they began.
That Adobe would make such an announcement nearly five years to the day that the first iPhone was sold is kind of funny. I’d like to think that the Flash team has a sense of humor and was well aware of the timing when it posted the blog entry, but I could also see the entry as unintentionally ironic. Either way, it caps off a five-year battle to win the mobile landscape — one which for Adobe ended in defeat. → Read More
Google is launching Chrome for iOS today. Many pundits assumed that Google was holding back Chrome from iOS because it couldn’t use its own rendering engine, however, Google just told us that Chrome will actually use the same rendering engine that Apple makes available to every other third-party developer on iOS. → Read More
There’s no love lost between Android and Apple users, or at least among the fanboys and fangirls. The flamewar between the passionate adopters of the top two mobile operating systems has persisted for awhile now, even in spite of our pleas for a detente. Luckily, one startup is on a mission to bridge the gap between the Open and Walled Gardens, so that we can all join hands and walk off into the sunset.
At Google I/O today, BlueStacks staged a mock wedding between Android and Apple as the backdrop for the launch of its Android App Player for Mac — software that aims to bring 400K+ Android apps to iOS.
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The inimitable Horace Dediu has run the numbers and it’s clear: Apple is great at retail and, over the past five years, the company created 35,852 retail jobs. NYT hit pieces notwithstanding, it’s clear that Apple is getting things right when it comes to retail sales.
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It wasn’t long after the iOS 6 developer beta first started hitting devices that people started noticing something peculiar about its iTunes app — the iTunes U, Audiobooks, and Podcast sections had disappeared.
That prompted quite a bit of speculation that each of those content types would get their own standalone app when the update launched, and now Apple has seemingly confirmed those inklings by releasing a new Podcasts app for iDevices running iOS 5.1 or later. → Read More
