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Posts tagged with "apple"

App Store Gets Official Twitter Account

It looks like Apple has just started sharing status updates with an official @AppStore account on Twitter. The account isn’t verified yet but its first tweet has been retweeted by the already verified @iTunesMusic. So why is the App Store on Twitter? Well, according to the first public message:

Welcome to App Store on Twitter! Follow us to discover new apps, get exclusive offers, and share with friends.

It will be interesting to follow the tweets from this account closely and see if they mirror the apps Apple features every Friday on the App Store homepage. This new account expands the set of official Apple services and personalities on Twitter.com: @iTunesMusic and @iTunesTrailers tweet new material from the iTunes Store on a daily basis and @pschiller has been busy sharing Instagram pictures lately. Apple is also active on Facebook and Youtube, where all the commercials and keynotes end up in HD.

On a side note, Scott Forstall hasn’t tweeted yet.

Update: the account is verified now. [Thanks, Florian]

Black iPhone 4 Being Converted to White by Third Party

With still no official word on when exactly the white version of the iPhone 4 will hit shelves, some people are no doubt becoming impatient. To fill the void ‘The SmartPhone Clinic’ is now taking pre-orders for a new service that will allow any iPhone 4 user to convert their black model to any colour they wish, including the elusive white.

The iColors service from The SmartPhone Clinic comes after Fei Lam, a 17 year old kid started selling white iPhone 4 parts which he acquired from Foxconn which supplies Apple.

One of the company representatives of The SmartPhone Clinic said they are not using a case or sticker but actual colored glass that comes from the same OEMs that Apple works with. The company can also repair any cracked or water damaged iPhones, replace the original glass enclosure with a variety of materials including carbon fiber or metal and will offer the iColors conversion process for $229.99 or a DIY kit for $189.99.

[Via Softpedia]

Apple Awarded Patent for Keyboard with Motion Gesture Recognition

Apple is awarded many fascinating patents each year and a lot of those give potential insights into future technologies in Apple’s ‘next big thing’. One of the recurring themes in some of Apple’s patents for the past few years has been relating to various innovations surrounding input devices such as the recent multi-touch display on a Magic Mouse.

A new Apple patent uncovered by MacRumors that is authored by John Elias (co-founder of FingerWorks, a company Apple acquired in 2005) covers the technology and ideas surrounding a physical keyboard that also has motion-sensitive input. Prior to being acquired the FingerWorks, the multi-touch technology company, produced several touch sensitive keyboards, which although receiving praise were unsuccessful, likely due to the lack of tactile response.

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Sending Emails From @mac.com Accounts Will Soon Be Impossible

According to a recent thread on Apple’s Discussion boards and a support document on Apple’s website, users of @mac.com email addresses who upgraded to iOS 4.2 are no longer able to send email messages through a @mac.com account unless it was setup prior to updating to iOS 4.2. Alternatively, the @mac.com account details can be synced through iTunes on the desktop, but this won’t enable push for emails.

A user on Apple Discussions explains:

Because of this unannounced development, I had a sneaking suspicion that Apple may be planning to do the same in the future for sending email from @mac.com addresses via www.me.com and a desktop email client.

It appears my suspicion was true. Here are the relevant sections from a Chat Session I’ve just finished with a very nice MobileMe Support agent.

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The iPad Screen Resolution Rumor Merry-Go-Round

Well in the past 24 hours we’ve had another two rumors regarding the iPad 2’s screen resolution. First there was DigiTimes that reported Apple would up the iPad’s screen resolution to that oft-reported figure of 2048 x 1536. Then Kevin Rose who had previously stated the iPad 2 would have a Retina Display reversed his position with a picture of text messages from his supposed source who said “no change in resolution” which he posted on Instagram.

Then there was also the suggestion that floated across various blogs and publications that Moore’s law suggested the iPad 2 wouldn’t have a retina display. Both DigiTimes and Kevin Rose have dubious accuracy regarding Apple rumors and this vicious back and forth contradictions of rumors regarding the display are certainly odd.

UPDATE: Oddly, Kevin Rose seems to have removed the Instagram photo which is now unaccessible and does not appear in his Instagram feed.

So readers, what are your thoughts on this whole high resolution/retina display on the iPad 2 rumor merry-go-round?

[Via Cult of Mac, DigiTimes]

XBMC Comes to the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 2

XBMC, a popular media center originally made for the first Xbox has become fairly widespread has been available for a variety of platforms, today that platform base extended to include the new Apple TV, iPhone and iPad.

The client on these new platforms is not stripped down to simply just view streams but is fully fledged with all the features you would come to expect it to have on a Windows PC. Because of this it is being distributed for the iOS devices through a Cydia repository and for the Apple TV through an apt-get install.

Scott Davilla one of the XBMC developers talked to TUAW and he revealed that development for the Apple TV 2 started only on November 1st last year and the iOS versions a few weeks later. He notes that the built in web server is currently disabled and the skin isn’t optimized but says improvements will be made including the possibility of implementing AirPlay into all the Apple related releases.

Perhaps one of the most interesting developments that occurred whilst XBMC was ported was the discovery of an API called VideoToolBox that allows hardware video decoding, encoding and scaling of the video size to match the final display size. So powerful is this API that Davilla and others that developed XBMC for iPad are able to stream full 1080p video with no transcoding to the iPad and it plays nearly perfectly, only dropping a few frames. Davilla’s confident however that the A4 processor can handle 1080p and will be working to ensure fully smooth playback.

TUAW put together some video’s demonstrating it running on all three of the new platforms, check it out here.

[Via XBMC, TUAW]

Apple Employees Average $46k a Year

The New Yorker’ John Cassidy looked over the balance sheets of Apple and Goldman Sachs to decide which company offers the best return on its capital. Cassidy used the latest earnings reports from the two American companies, then calculated that the two had similar profit margins but very different economic returns. Each company’s return on assets was examined, determining that Apple is twenty times more profitable than Goldman Sachs.

Apple is more profitable for a few a few reasons - it makes highly desirable products that people spend their hard-earned money on. There’s always a huge demand all Apple products so they can decide their margins (usually high ones) which are well over the cost of manufacturing; thus giving them a nice profit on every iDevice or Mac sold. Read more

#pastblast - The Potential of MobileMe→

#pastblast - The Potential of MobileMe

We think Shawn Blanc’s “Blast from the Past Link Day” initiative is a great idea: today only, get to share and discover again great & interesting articles from months or years ago. I thought I might link back to an article from Shawn himself, from October of last year. The article is about the potential of MobileMe, and I think it’s still particularly relevant to Apple fans and iOS users as it provides exquisite insight into features we’re still waiting for Apple to implement:

In many ways Dropbox and Google are driving the iOS / OS X relationship more than MobileMe is. While MobileMe is syncing my contacts and calendars, Dropbox is syncing my most-dear files: the projects, articles, and notes I’m interacting with every day. What are iWork.com and MobileMe for if not for the sharing and syncing of everything between our Macintoshes, iPhones, and iPads in sync?

Imagine if you will what a merging of Dropbox and MobileMe might look like. Something simple and completely expected, I suppose. It would be free, it would sync and share info and files, and it would let other apps use it for syncing. Imagine setting up your iPhone with your Apple ID once, and then any app that has a Mac and/or iPad counterpart would sync. Sounds like mobile bliss.

To keep some bit of a revenue stream, there could easily be a paid version of MobileMe as well. The free version could offer syncing and come a small yet reasonable 2GB of data storage. Paying for an upgrade might buy you increased cloud storage, an @me.com email address, Find my iPhone support, and that photo gallery thing which nobody uses.

Sounds like the perfect solution for geeks, or those OS X users who know what app-to-app OTA sync is. I don’t know if the average iOS user – your friend who bought the iPhone for Angry Birds – would be excited about a Dropbox-like feature in iOS, though. And that’s why Apple is working on two features that can be easily explained to anyone: Photo Stream and Media Stream.

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New Apple Patents: Multitouch Display On Mouse, Heart Monitor for Music

A new day, new Apple patents surface on the Internet. Unlike most days when we get to know the latest inventions the teams at Cupertino have been awarded, today’s design embodiments and ideas are fairly interesting and not so much projected in the future like a touch-based iMac could be. As reported by Patently Apple, a new patent shows two new possible touch input systems that might soon replace our usual mice and physical keyboards.

The patent applications reveal a mouse equipped with a multitouch display capable of visualizing information and virtual keys such as a numeric pad on the device’s surface. The mouse would still come with standard features like soft left / right buttons, but in the middle there would be place for a display carrying an additional interface for users. Read more