Posts Tagged ‘ipod’

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Apple’s next iPhone: a rumor roundup

The New York Times is reporting today that Apple has begun developing an iOS-based smartwatch. Sources familiar with the company’s plans tell the Times that the watch will be made from curved glass, setting it apart from competitors such as Pebble’s smartwatch . At the moment, however, it seems the watch is still in a nascent stage of development. Sources said Apple is currently experimenting with wearable form factors, but gave no details of the device’s design, or whether it will be released to the market anytime soon

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Apple is ‘experimenting’ with curved glass smartwatch, say NYT and WSJ

In 2010, tiny UK-based studio Hello Games released its first game, Joe Danger , as a downloadable title for the PlayStation 3. The game was well received — and went on to spawn a sequel and a special edition on Xbox Live Arcade — but its success also left managing director Sean Murray “feeling really down.” The studio was expanding from its scrappy, four-man origins, and this meant that Murray didn’t have much time to do what he really wanted: make games. “Then I started playing around with iOS development in my spare time,” he says, “and it put a smile back on my face.” The result of that “playing around” is Joe Danger Touch for iPhone and iPad . After spending some time as a hobby project, relegated to weekend work with help from… Continue reading…

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‘Joe Danger Touch’ was born on PlayStation, but thrives on iPhone

First, the bad news: CES is ending. All the cool stuff on the show floor is being packed into crates, loaded into tractor trailers and shipped home. The television walls are coming down and the demos are being dismantled. By Tuesday, all this stuff will be somewhere else. And by now, it should be painfully clear that there’s a lot of stuff at CES.

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Heading home: here’s what it takes to leave CES

Former Safari engineer Don Melton has already told us what it was like to keep the browser project a secret , as well as revealing that it was once known as “Freedom.” But in his latest post, Melton details what it was like when Safari was finally revealed at Macworld 2003. He recounts concerns over technical problems and watching Steve Jobs rehearse his keynote, as well as sitting in the crowd seeing the presentation along with everyone else. “For the entire six minutes and 32 seconds that Steve used Safari on stage,” he says, “I don’t remember taking a single breath.” But he says the most satisfying moment of all was when Jobs revealed what the team used to build Safari. ” KHTML may have been a bigger surprise than Apple doing a browser… Continue reading…

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How Apple ‘punk’d the entire crowd’ when announcing Safari

Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old who helped build internet institutions like Reddit and Creative Commons, committed suicide in New York yesterday. The news was confirmed by MIT newspaper The Tech , which received word from both Swartz’s uncle and attorney. In addition to his work with Reddit, Swartz also co-authored the very first RSS specification and was involved as an activist through his work as founder of Demand Progress . In 2011 he was charged with stealing 4.8 million documents from the online digital library JSTOR, which just a few days ago announced that it would be offering limited free access to its library

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Hacker and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz dies

Compared to the rumored iPhone 5 , Apple’s done a far better job keeping a lid on plans for its iPod lineup ahead of next week’s media event . We’ve got an idea of what the company’s latest handset may look (and feel) like thanks to purported component leaks in recent months, but know very little about what to expect from the next-generation iPod touch, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle — all of which are due for their annual fall refresh. As the big reveal draws near, however, new details are coming to light. Rene Ritchie at iMore reports that the upcoming iPod touch will feature a 4-inch, 16:9 display similar to the one Apple is expected to use in the iPhone 5. Say goodbye to 3.5-inch displays What’s not clear is whether the company plans to..

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Rumor: new iPod touch with 4-inch display to debut alongside iPhone 5

Demonoid, a popular BitTorrent tracker currently hosted in Ukraine, is offline after reportedly being audited and shut down by local law enforcement. Kommersant reports that an anti-cybercrime police division investigated ColoCall — the company that provided hosting space for Demonoid — and copied all information from the servers before sealing them. An anonymous ColoCall manager says that the equipment was not seized, but that it is not operational and that ColoCall was required to end its agreement with Demonoid.

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Demonoid torrent tracker shut down by Ukrainian police

We knew they were coming, but AT&T just formally announced that its “Mobile Share” data plans will be available as of August 23rd. Just as we heard earlier , customers start by picking a data bucket starting at $40 for 1GB all the way up to $200 for 20GB. After that, devices attached to the plan come with requisite feeds between $30 and $45 per smartphone, with the price decreasing as you purchase bigger data plans. A 1GB plan carries a $45 per smartphone charge, 4GB plans carry a $40 smartphone charge, 6GB plans carry a $35 charge, and users who pick 10GB (or more) of data per month can add smartphones for $30 each

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AT&T launching ‘Mobile Share’ data plans on August 23rd

We’ve seen a number of early iPhone prototypes come out as evidence in the Apple / Samsung trial, but today we got our first glimpse at the very beginning of the iPhone process in 2005, when Apple was considering grafting a phone onto the existing iPod line. We now know that’s literally true — early discussions involved putting a ring of number keys around the iPod click wheel. “This may be our answer,” said Steve Jobs in an email to Jony Ive. As it happens, in 2005 Samsung and Bang & Olufsen had just released the SGH-E910 “fashion phone” with a similar arrangement, and iPod head Tony Fadell sent an Engadget blog post about the phone to Jobs and other Apple execs. “Weird way to hold the cellphone,” said Fadell, but using the round…

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Early iPhone design talks sparked by a Samsung ‘fashionphone’

If you’re switching on your Apple TV this morning you might be in for a pleasant surprise — Hulu Plus has been added to the growing list of services Apple’s “hobby” hooks in to. Just like the Netflix app on Apple TV, you can sign up for a Hulu Plus subscription and pay with your iTunes account. Surprisingly, neither Hulu nor Apple have made an official announcement yet, but we’ve seen it on a number of Apple TV devices and also received reports from a number of tipsters. We’ve reached out to find out more about this new partnership and will update with any new information right here. Thanks, Rune! Continue reading…

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Hulu Plus quietly comes to Apple TV

Mae Anderson, on trademarks lost when products become so successful they overwhelm generic English terms: It doesn’t happen often. In fact, it’s estimated that fewer than 5 percent of U.S. brand names become generic. Those that do typically are inventions or products that improve on what’s already on the market

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AP: iPad the only tablet people know

Dusty and darkened by his 1,700-mile journey on horseback from the heart of Texas, Gonzo Journalist 3.0 Nilay Patel rolls his Retina Crystal Ball from its repurposed velveteen Crown Royal satchel onto the Vergecast studio conference coffee table. His abilities enhanced by a half a vodka-soda, Media Theoritician Joshua Topolsky gazes deep into its almost-too-real surface, failing to notice it’s sticky with day-old margarita juice and unsavory bits of dried salsa. As he swipes, pinches, and zooms nimbly in the airspace around the orb, JT communicates a fantastical vision of the present from deep within the darkest corner of its fourth core: an era free of the feudal shackles of FM frequencies, the print edition of the New York Post, and… Continue reading…

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The Vergecast 022 – 03.16.2012

We just caught up with Spotify’s chief content officer Ken Parks outside of his “Future of Music” panel here at SXSW, and he told us that Spotify family plans are “definitely coming.” That would fulfill a longstanding request from Spotify users and provide an alternative to Rdio’s family plan offering, but Ken wouldn’t say when it would happen or talk pricing details. He did say that he’s currently paying for three accounts in his own house, and that the broader goal is to “get more people to spend in a household,” so he’s got both personal and professional reasons to make it happen soon. For comparison’s sake, Rdio’s family plan is $17.99 per month for two users and $22.99 for three, with additional sub-accounts billed at full price….

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Exclusive: Spotify family plans ‘definitely coming’

Even pirates need rules, and a number of groups responsible for releasing pirated TV shows have joined together to set some new quality standards— but some of their “customers” aren’t too happy with the change. The groups recently released a document called ” The SD x264 TV Releasing Standards 2012 ,” which went into practice on February 22nd, and saw them move from the Xvid standard to x264, an open-source encoder for H.264 that’s often used for HD releases. And while some users are happy with the increased video quality, a vocal minority is also quite upset because the new format isn’t compatible with many DVD players and other devices.

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Torrent users freak out over shift from Xvid to x264, threaten to pirate elsewhere

Manufacturers at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona may be generally upbeat about their succeses, but at least one executive from Samsung has a more sobering perspective on his company’s situation: as CNET reports , Samsung executive Hankil Yoon admitted earlier today that “honestly, we’re not doing very well in the tablet market.” It’s not fully clear what Yoon meant by the comment as no specific sales benchmarks were mentioned, but it might have something to do with the fact that even HP sold more tablets than Samsung in 2011. The comment also highlights Android’s general struggles in the tablet market; earlier today Google’s Andy Rubin told us that Samsung’s Galaxy products were the best-selling Android tablets excluding the Amazon… Continue reading…

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Samsung: ‘we’re not doing very well in the tablet market’

Tim Cook is speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference today, and he was pretty candid when asked about the living room and Apple TV: he said that the Apple TV is a “hobby” because the company knows the business isn’t as big as the Mac or iOS devices, but that “Apple doesn’t do hobbies as a general rule.” Cook followed up by saying he “can’t live without” his Apple TV, and that he’s “always thought there was something there, and that if we kept following our intuition and kept pulling that string, we might find something larger.” Continue reading…

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Tim Cook on Apple TV: ‘Apple doesn’t do hobbies as a general rule’

Sony’s soon-to-be President and CEO, Kazuo Hirai, has hinted that the company is investigating porting the Vita OS to other mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Japanese site AV Watch reported on Friday that Hirai told reporters at a Q&A session that the company doesn’t want us to forget Vita OS as a mobile (i.e. not just gaming) platform . The report goes on to quote SCE’s Senior Vice President Yoshio Matsumoto as saying, “if you’re asking if we’ve made it in a way that’s expandable, so that it’s possible to apply to smartphones and tablets on top of achieving the high responsiveness we need for gaming devices — it is possible,” hedging his comment with, “that doesn’t mean that we’re applying it to smartphones…

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Sony exploring Vita OS smartphones and tablets, says AV Watch

It’s rare to see a discount on Apple goods, but today Newegg is offering 10 percent off all iPads and iPods with one of its coupon codes. The code is good until 11:59 PST tonight or until funds for the sale run out, and can be used on anything from an iPod Shuffle to an iPad 2. You can apply it to multiple items in an order, although there’s a maximum discount of $500 — which shouldn’t be an issue unless you were planning to buy ten iPads. The code is below, but you can go ahead and click through to the source link for some other Newegg coupons

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Good Deal: 10 percent off all iPads and iPods on Newegg

Apple’s going to host a launch event for the iPad 3 in the first week of March, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans, as reported by All Things D . San Francisco is the location of the event, but there’s no date yet for when the upgraded tablet will be available to buy. This information meshes with the intel that we’ve been receiving about the iPad 3′s launch, placing it around the beginning of next month.

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iPad 3 launch event coming in first week of March, according to All Things D

Despite the profusion of Android tablets we saw at CES, Chris Whitmore from Deutsche Bank doesn’t think Apple has anything to worry about in terms of iPad competition. In his note to clients today, he said that Android tablets had failed to perform as expect, and that “this year, tablets had a much smaller presence as vendors appear to be placing greater emphasis on Windows 8.” Because of the development time required, Whitmore expects “the move away from Android tablet investment and a slow ramp of Win 8 tablets to create a favorable competitive backdrop for Apple’s forthcoming iPad 3.” To emphasize the importance of the iPad to computing, Whitmore created the chart above, which takes market share reports for the computer market,… Continue reading…

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Apple almost 25 percent of computer market, if iPads are counted

Capcom has released Mega Man X for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but unfortunately not the iPad. It’s a remake of the original Mega Man X on SNES, but the retro feel you were hoping for isn’t entirely here as the graphics have been completely overhauled and the company has added an “Easy” mode for those who aren’t used to having their right arm replaced by a blaster. Capcom has also added in-app purchases for nearly every upgrade you’d normally have to claw your ways towards in the game, including a “Complete Set” option for $3.99. There’s also several “cheat” modes like auto-fire.

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Mega Man X available on iPhone and iPod Touch, includes in-app purchase upgrades

There are plenty of gaming accessories for the iPhone, but the PowerSkin Gaming Case encloses an  external battery, speakers, and a rumbler into its body — the only glaring omission is a set of physical buttons, but those are often incompatible with many iOS games. The protective case, which works with almost any iPhone or iPod touch, also has a power button and LED lights to indicate battery status, and you can charge or sync without removing the device.  Mophie’s Pulse  case is nearly the same thing, but doesn’t charge the device and only works with the 4th generation iPod touch. iOS gaming still lacks a universal solution for adding buttons, but this seems to be moving in the right direction. PowerSkin currently has the case  o… Continue reading…

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PowerSkin Gaming Case for iPhone adds speakers and battery for $89.99

The FBI is set to test an iPhone-powered fingerprint scanner to use in the fight against crime, according to a report by Cult of Mac . Using a $599 peripheral known as the FbF mobileOne, law enforcement agents can scan a suspect’s fingerprints and check against the FBI’s national database for quick identification. Built by Fulcrum Biometrics, the mobileOne itself was released in late May, and features a 256-bit, 508dpi fingerprint scanner built by Authentec that attaches to an iPhone or iPod touch through the iPod 30-pin connector. Fulcrum claims that it can process 10 fingerprints plus a set of five facial images in under one minute. Cult of Mac notes that the mobileOne is “among” the devices undergoing a trial in 2012, but given the..

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FBI reportedly testing iPhone fingerprint scanner to ID suspects

Images of Meizu’s upcoming MX smartphone surfaced last month , but price and availability were still a mystery. Now the company has officially taken the wraps off the device, announcing that the 1.4GHz dual-core version will be available in China on January 1st for ¥2,999 (around $471). The pentaband phone supports HSPA+, with theoretical download speeds of up to 21.6Mbps, and will come with 1GB of RAM, a 4-inch, 960 x 640 ASV display, and a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. The 8-megapixel rear-facing shooter features a backside-illuminated sensor, and will be capable of 1080p video at 30 frames per second. 16GB of storage will be on board for your music and media needs, with the Micro USB connector also serving as a S/PDIF output, and…

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Meizu MX to launch January 1st in China with dual-core processor, quad-core version to follow