Apple today announced the Wi-Fi versions of iPad® mini and fourth generation iPad with Retina display will be available in China on Friday, December 7, and iPhone 5 will be available on Friday, December 14.
This is huge for Apple.
Jon Brodkin for Ars Technica:
Each year, Consumer Reports surveys some 60,000 cell phone subscribers to find out which service providers are the best and worst. AT&T is on a real hot streak in these rankings—a hot streak of finishing dead last in customer satisfaction.
Well, AT&T has one thing going for them anyway: Consistency.
There was a bright spot: AT&T’s LTE service scored well amongst customers using it. But in terms of voice quality, value, text, data and support, AT&T scored last or tied for worst.
You can now buy the unlocked iPhone directly from Apple, although it will cost more.
This is just terrible. Not Apple’s fault, but there definitely has to be a way to track this.
Top Gear:
In a special edition of Top Gear, Richard Hammond celebrates 50 years of James Bond films with a look back at 007’s legendary cars. He also talks to Daniel Craig and Sir Roger Moore, gets exclusive access behind the scenes of Bond’s latest adventure, Skyfall, and pays special tribute to 007 by attempting to turn a Lotus in a fully working submarine car.
This is the 50th anniversary of James Bond and of all the people jumping on the bandwagon, I’m most looking forward to the Top Gear take on some of the iconic Bond cars. Sadly, this show, while available on the iTunes Store, doesn’t include the full Top Gear complement – it’s just The Hamster.
Give a gift that gives back this holiday season with Starbucks iTunes (RED)™ eGift basket. You can send loved ones a thoughtful gift of two digital eGifts—$15 eGift to Starbucks and $15 eGift to iTunes—for $30. Plus, for every gift sold, Starbucks and iTunes will together contribute 5% of the purchase price to the Global Fund to help deliver an AIDS free generation by 2015. With the convenience of a Starbucks Card, Starbucks Card eGifts can be used for purchases in-store at participating company-owned and licensed stores in the U.S. and online. This unique and meaningful eGift basket can be purchased online
Since launching our partnership with (RED) in December 2008, Starbucks has contributed more than $11 million to the Global Fund to help those living with HIV/AIDS. Starbucks continues to support and drive contributions to the Global Fund while raising awareness toward an AIDS Free Generation by 2015.
I test quite a few iPhone, iPad and Mac apps. Some I like, others I don’t really care about and a very limited number, I love. Fantastical for iPhone is an app I love.
I’ve been testing the app before its release today and it has become an app that I’ll use for all of my calendaring needs. Just like the Mac app, the iPhone version is well designed and works exactly the way you think it should.
Using natural language, Fantastical lets you enter events like “Meeting with Michael Simmons next Tuesday at 2 pm.” That’s exactly the date, time and title that’s entered into Calendars.
The feature I like the most is DayTicker1. It’s a quick and easy way to scroll through the dates to see what events you have. Very slick.
If you use a calendar, you need Fantastical. Simple as that.
I couldn’t find DayTicker at first. Just swipe down on the calendar and you’ll enter DayTicker mode. ↩
A San Francisco judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order compelling Twitter to continue providing access to its “Firehose” – the full daily stream of some 400 million tweets – to PeopleBrowsr Inc, a data analytics firm that sifts through Twitter and resells that information to clients ranging from technology blogs to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Inspired by the ultimate collection of legendary and boutique amps and effect pedals, GuitarTone offers a vast array of high quality tones. Sonoma passionately created tonal interpretations of essential vintage and custom amps, pedals and microphones, and assembled them into GuitarTone.
You can do dual amps with this too. Looks great.
Apple on Thursday released the much anticipated iTunes 11. First introduced in September, iTunes 11 features a simplified design and some new features.
iTunes is both an application and a service – a storefront for buying music, movies, TV shows and books, and Apple has redesigned iTunes Store, App Store and iBookstore to make it easier to find and buy content than before. Featured content is showcased at the top and shelves expose music, movies and TV shows.
A “preview history” shows you all the content you’ve already looked at, and iCloud keeps track of your preview history across different devices. You’ll also be able to fire up 90-second music clips while browsing (previously, clicking away from the tracks you’re previewing causes them to stop playing).
New features like a full-window interface and a new library view to make it easier to see what’s in your library and click on content categories.
Another new feature called “Up Next” lets you queue up the next song or album you want to hear and iCloud remembers where you left off when watching movies or TV shows.
You can download iTunes 11 on Apple’s Web site or by choosing “Check for Updates” in iTunes.
Philip Berne:
I stopped downloading any pirated content about 5 years ago, when I was caught and sent a nastygram by my cable company. But it wasn’t really the cable company who caught me. It was HBO. I was trying to download The Wire. The warning I received said they were not pressing charges immediately, but they wanted me to stop and destroy my copies. They also reserved the right to sue me at any point in the future. I’m probably in the clear, but hopefully this screed will go some way to convincing HBO that I’m completely on their side. I have seen the error in my ways.
I bet that would be enough to make anyone stop illegal downloading.
This argument is both ludicrous, and wrong. Ludicrous, because if piracy is actually wrong, it doesn’t get less wrong simply because you can’t have the product exactly when and where you want it at a price you wish to pay. You are not entitled to shoplift Birkin bags on the grounds that they are ludicrously overpriced, and you cannot say you had no alternative but to break into an the local ice cream parlor at 2 am because you are really craving some Rocky Road and the insensitive bastards refused to stay open 24/7 so that you could have your favorite sweet treat whenever you want. You are not forced into piracy because you can’t get a television show at the exact moment when you want to see it; you are choosing piracy.
If that’s not wrong, then hey, no need to write long articles about how they’ve really backed you into a corner. If you think it is wrong, then act like a grownup and wait until you can buy it legally. And really, if you wouldn’t write an op-ed urging storeowners to stay open 24/7 lest they drive their customers to a little light B&E, then please don’t write essentially the same thing about cable networks.
What a great article.
This is the best prank ever.
Leo Kelion for the BBC:
“Scott got what he deserved,” Mr Fadell told the BBC.
When pressed, he adds: “I think what happened just a few weeks back was deserved and justified and it happened.”
I guess there’s no love lost between Tony Fadell and Scott Forstall then.
Ingrid Lunden for TechCrunch:
Microsoft earlier this week made a point of noting that there have been 40 million downloads of Windows 8 since it launched a month ago, putting it ahead of where Windows 7 was at the same point in its sales cycle. But according to figures out today from NPD, in the midst of an overall slowdown in PC sales, this is not translating into robust hardware sales in the influential U.S. market.
I wonder if all the shit that gets pre-installed on PCs these days has anything to do with why consumers hate buying them.
The Wall Street Journal did a nice profile on Apple Senior Vice President, Eddy Cue.
Separately, Universal Audio will be releasing a public beta of 64-bit Mac plug-ins (UAD Powered Plug-Ins v6.4.1 software) in December, ensuring that 64-bit UAD plug-in support will be available on both PC and Mac platforms in 2012.
Great to see them bringing support next month.
One of the classics.
MG Siegler describing Microsoft’s nightmare.
Printers manufactured by Samsung have a backdoor administrator account hard coded in their firmware that could enable attackers to change their configuration, read their network information or stored credentials and access sensitive information passed to them by users.
This is hilarious. The best is Nokia.
This is just great. Let the demo play through — it doesn’t take long. You can read more about it in a story Om Malik wrote last Friday.
Jim and Dan discuss different approaches of growing a business, taking advertising, and building audience. They also chat about past and future logos, the history of iTunes, the Diamond Rio, lame Apple rumors, the Apogee Jam, Amplitube, AmpKit, and more.
“We’re innovating on the seam between software and hardware,” said Ballmer, asked why his company had fallen behind rival Apple. “Maybe we should have done that earlier.”
You think?
“I feel pretty good about our level of innovation,” he added.
And there is the problem.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer:
We literally are moving the company from BlackBerrys to smartphones. One of the really important things for Yahoo’s strategy moving forward is mobile.
Sweet Jesus, what else can happen to RIM. Seriously.
Adblock Plus blocks all annoying ads on your Android device. NO ROOT REQUIRED! It blocks all online advertising when browsing, and when using your favorite apps like Angry Birds. It is 100% free and makes your Android device much more enjoyable. Adblock Plus blocks: mobile ads, video advertising, banners, push notifications, display advertising, HTML5 advertising, and much more.
Doesn’t Google make its revenue from ads? Sucks when even your own users hate you.
This looks like a lot of fun for the whole family. Talk about taking advantage of multiple Apple devices, this is it.
Now this is a great campaign from Microsoft. They’re going straight for Google’s heart.
Realmac Software’s Rob Jarman discusses the company’s strategy behind the pricing for Clear for Mac. Personally, I hate the race to the bottom with pricing and am willing to pay a developer a reasonable price for their work. “Reasonable” is often the point of contention with many people though.
A Dutch court ruled on Wednesday that some of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy smartphones and tablets infringe an Apple patent in the latest round of the two firms’ worldwide battle.
The court ordered Samsung Electronics to pay Apple damages, determined by how much profit it has made from the sales.
The patent dispute concerns the Android operating system versions 2.2.1 to 3.0 used on Samsung’s Galaxy tablets and smartphones, the court said.
Smart people those Dutch.