August 11, 2011
Eurogamer:
Cloud gaming service OnLive has announced that it is set to launch its UK service on 22nd September at Eurogamer Expo 2011.It goes live with over 100 “top-tier” games available to try, rent or buy over a broadband internet connection.
OnLive, which is already available in the US, works on Macs and PCs, and also on special micro-consoles through a TV connection. It lets you play popular PC games without having to download them – essentially, you stream them to your device. OnLive has even demonstrated the service working on an iPad.
August 10, 2011
Market research firm Forrester predicts that Apple will dominate the European tablet market, despite strong competition. (more…)
Walmart announced Wednesday support for the iPad with its VUDU streaming movie service. What’s intriguing is that it’s doing this through a Web app rather than a native app that runs on iOS. (more…)
Macworld:
Quark, developer of the desktop publishing software QuarkXPress, has been acquired by Platinum Equity, a Los Angeles merger and acquisition company, for an undisclosed sum.
Quark dominated the desktop publishing market for years until Adobe ate its lunch with InDesign. Quark has tried to come back and has reshaped its products and the way it does business. Here’s to hoping that Platinum Equity can help move the company in a direction that the Ebrahimi family was either unable or unwilling to.
Gizmodo:
The District Attorney of San Mateo County is moving forward in the case of the iPhone 4 prototype we posted about last year. Fortunately, nobody from our team is being charged.Here’s our parent company, Gawker Media’s official statement on the matter:We are pleased that the District Attorney of San Mateo County, Steven Wagstaffe, has decided, upon review of all of the evidence, that no crime was committed by the Gizmodo team in relation to its reporting on the iPhone 4 prototype last year. While we have always believed that we were acting fully within the law, it has inevitably been stressful for the editor concerned, Jason Chen, and we are glad that we can finally put this matter behind us.
Background for those with short memories: Gizmodo came into possession of an iPhone 4 long before its release. They made hay about it, and they also went so far as to ridicule the Apple engineer who allegedly lost the phone. It was tacky. Even if the D.A.’s office doesn’t take action against them, Gizmodo still acted like jerks.
GameFly is best known as the video game industry’s alternative to Netflix – it’s a service that lets you rent games for your video game console, mailing them back once you’re done, in return for a monthly subscription fee. Now the company has announced plans to offer Mac and PC games for sale, via download. (more…)
Amazon has introduced an HTML5-based Kindle Cloud Reader. The software lets you read Kindle e-books online or offline. It works with Mac or PC paired with Chrome or Safari browsers, and the iPad using the Safari browser. (more…)
August 9, 2011
AllThingsD:
“When we launch Windows Phones we will essentially be out of the Symbian business, the S40 business, etc., ” Nokia Inc. President Chris Weber said in an interview. “It will be Windows Phone and the accessories around that. The reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesn’t matter what we do (elsewhere).”
Nokia is in partnership with Microsoft to develop and market Windows Phone 7-based devices. The question is whether anyone will care, and that’s still a mighty big “if.” The company is planning a resurgency in the US once Windows phones are ready to go. What’s more, Nokia has a big reach in parts of the world that still aren’t able to buy Android or iPhone devices.
FOSS Patents:
The leading German news agency, dpa, just reported that Apple has been granted a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy Tab 10.1, barring distribution of the product in the entire European Union except for the Netherlands on the grounds of an alleged infringement of Apple’s iPad-related [European] Community design no. 000181607-0001. I can confirm that Apple has a separate lawsuit underway in the Netherlands as well, asserting the same Community design.
Apple’s complaint involves the design of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, according to FOSS Patents. Apple and Samsung – which Apple uses as a parts supplier – have been at odds for months, with each company filing suits and counter suits in countries around the world.
Hat tip: Daring Fireball
Wall Street Journal:
Customs officials discovered people sending iPhones and iPads from Hong Kong to Shenzhen by placing the devices in tote bags and hooking them to a pulley that reached across the border, according to the Chinese news report over the weekend, which was also posted on Youtube. The smugglers, who allegedly did the exchanges overnight, were caught with more than 50 iPhones and 50 iPad 2s, worth some 300,000 yuan ($47,000).
Apparently the smugglers used a cable and pulley stretched over the Shatoujiao River, between a Hong Kong high-rise building and a building in nearby Shenzhen. The ruse was done to avoid stiff border taxes.
AllThingsD:
Among the top six notebook vendors — Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Samsung — Apple ranked last in global market share in the second quarter of 2011, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore.But that’s without the iPad.With it, Apple was the single largest notebook vendor during the period, with a 20 percent market share — greater than the 15 percent held by PC giant Hewlett-Packard.
That’s a mighty big leap. Steve Jobs is the first person to trump the iPad as the harbinger of a “Post-PC” era, so I’m not sure adding the iPad into that mix is a meaningful statistic. But it does go to show that the iPad is an incredibly important product for Apple right now.
August 8, 2011
Apple Support Web site:
The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant lets you create Lion Recovery on an external drive that has all of the same capabilities as the built-in Lion Recovery: reinstall Lion, repair the disk using Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup, or browse the web with Safari. This drive can be used in the event you cannot start your computer with the built-in Recovery HD, or you have replaced the hard drive with a new one that does not have Mac OS X installed.
QNAP Systems on Monday announced the release of version 3.5 of its Network Attached Storage (NAS) management software for its Turbo NAS series. The new release makes QNAP Turbo NAS devices compatible with OS X Lion. The firmware update is available for download from QNAP’s Web site. (more…)
Skype for Mac, the popular video and audio conferencing software, has been updated to 5.3. The new version is available for free download from the Skype Web site. (more…)
Game maker Blizzard recently caused a stir in the gaming community when it revealed that its forthcoming dungeon crawl game Diablo III would require a persistent online connection, even though the game touts a single-player mode. A Blizzard executive says they’re doing this to reduce the likelihood of cheaters exploiting the system, not because of Digital Rights Management (DRM). (more…)
Comcast has announced plans to offer $10 per month Internet access to low-income families. The “Internet Essentials” plan also nets families who meet the qualifications with a $150 voucher to help them buy a free computer. (more…)
Apple on Monday began to offer a 21.5-inch iMac computer tailored specifically for educational institutions. The model cuts a bunch of features available in the base model iMac, which is priced $200 more at $1199 ($150 more with the education discount). (more…)
August 5, 2011
Dan Frommer:
Jumptap, a mobile ad network, just published its latest monthly metrics dump, including this map, which highlights the dominant smartphone platform in each state. In particular, it seems that the south and west are Google Android country, while the north and midwest favor Apple’s iPhone.
9to5Mac:
We’ve gotten word from some readers that AT&T is moving forward and removing unlimited plans for users who jailbreak iPhones to tether or hotspot off of AT&T’s unlimited data plans (for those grandfathered).
Brian S. Hall:
If you have a monopoly business and generate monopoly profits and take those monopoly profits to another industry and *gave away* what your competitors (must) charge for, which led you to quickly capture the *dominant* maret share, would you……whine like a bitch?
What he said.
Cult of Mac yesterday afternoon:
We’ve gotten word from a previously reliable source that Apple is discontinuing the Magic Mouse in favor of the Magic Trackpad.
Cult of Mac last night:
Our source in Apple inventory has followed up with us, and it appears that Apple has instead discontinued the Magic Mouse’s old part number in favor for a new one.
Cult of Mac talking about its mistake:
I’m sure we’re not alone in saying we’re glad the rumors of the Magic Mouse’s demise have proven to be an exaggeration.
There were no rumors besides the ones you started, so the exaggeration comes from your own story.
PCalc is ideal for scientists, engineers, students, programmers, or indeed anybody looking for a feature rich calculator. It includes an optional RPN mode and multi-line display, a choice of button layouts, an extensive set of unit conversions, a paper tape, multiple undo and redo, engineering and scientific notation, as well as support for hexadecimal, octal, and binary calculations.
The latest update also adds support for external Bluetooth keyboards. PCalc and PCalc Lite are available from the App Store.
DigiTimes:
Acer founder Stan Shih has commented that the fads for ultrabooks and tablet PCs are both short-term phenomena and urged companies in the notebook supply chain to come out with more value-added products through innovation.
You keep telling yourself that.
Some more perspective from Jon Fingas at Electronista.
August 4, 2011
Harry Marks talking about Steve Jobs’ ability to say no:
RIM needs to take the same approaches to their products – learn to say “No” and focus resources where they’re needed. The PlayBook was a disaster, but it didn’t have to be had upper management actually thought like a consumer for 10 seconds.
Remember when Steve came back to Apple? He cut many products and focused the company on several things that would drive Apple forward.
AppleInsider:
After a number of fake Apple retail stores in China gained publicity online, Apple appears to have taken legal action, undoubtedly looking to shut down the counterfeit locations designed to look like its own operations.Apple has gone on the offensive against a number of defendants, including 50 John Does and unnamed businesses, in a new trademark infringement suit. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York remains under a court seal, so the specifics of the complaint are not known.
They had to see this coming.
Square Enix announced Thursday that, at long last, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is now available for iPhone and iPod touch. The game costs $15.99. Square Enix indicates that an iPad version is coming later this month. (more…)
Market research firm IDC on Thursday released its worldwide smartphone market numbers for the second quarter of 2011 and Apple is in the lead. (more…)
My good friend Matthew Panzarino at TNW sent this to me today. Pretty much sums up what I’ve been trying to say. Apple innovated; everyone else followed; RIM stayed the same. (more…)
Take a look at these photos. The 8700c was released in 2004 (I have one of these) and the 9900 was released this week. RIM had seven years to change the design or do something, but they look pretty much the same. I suppose RIM has a dozen other models to choose from, but it seems amazing that the company is still selling something with the exact same design. (more…)
A forum user at CrackBerry.com made a suggestion to fellow PlayBook owners to help save the device. (more…)
