Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
AirPlay Speakers
AirPlay enabled audio accessories were big at CES this year. Both Griffin and Altec Lansing announced new products.
Griffin Twenty
Griffin’s Twenty digital audio amplifier makes it possible to play digital audio from iTunes, or any other AirPlay enabled app (e.g. Pandora), to an existing set of non-AirPlay enabled speakers wirelessly using an Airport Express wireless base station paired with Apple’s AirPlay wireless technology.
The Twenty is equipped with a power connect and mount for an Apple AirPort Express. The result is a zero-configuration audio set-up that features a 2.1 channel sound system with 20 watts of output per channel. The Twenty is a great way to wirelessly push audio to those old classic speakers you just don’t want to part with.
inAir5000
Altec Lansing’s new inAir 5000 is an AirPlay enabled speaker that has 110 watts of power, two 1-inch soft-dome neodymium tweeters, two 3-inch Kevlar drivers, one 4-inch subwoofer, and one passive bass radiator. It’s a high-quality speaker. The inAir 5000 combined with Apple’s AirPlay, makes it easy to stream music from your computer, iPhone, or iPad to any room in the house without wires. Most iDevice owner are going to appreciate the stylish teardrop design.
The inAir 5000’s release date hasn’t been released yet, but it should be released before summer 2012. Pricing hasn’t been released yet either.
More was announced, but the Twenty and the inAir 5000 definitely desserve to be highlighted. Looking forward to seeing how both are received in 2012.
iOS Auto-renewable Subscriptions
Marco Arment’s post The limited world of auto-renewable subscriptions is a good read for any iOS developer thinking about using Apple’s auto-renewable subscription system for anything other than traditional-style media publishing apps.
Reading between the lines on my rejection call, and seeing it codified more clearly here, it’s obvious that only traditional-style media publishing apps can use auto-renewable subscriptions. They were created solely for the existing newspaper and magazine industry, not web services.
iOS Multitasking Myth
Frasier Speirs, “Misconceptions About iOS Multitasking“:
There is one iOS “tip” that I keep hearing and it is wrong. Worse, I keep hearing it from supposedly authoritative sources. I have even heard it from the lips of Apple “Geniuses” in stores.
Here is the advice – and remember it is wrong:
All those apps in the multitasking bar on your iOS device are currently active and slowing it down, filling the device’s memory or using up your battery. To maximise performance and battery life, you should kill them all manually.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
iPad 2 vs. Kindle Tablet
Gizmodo Concept Drawing - Amazon Kindle Tablet
Pundits of all types have been predicting the end of the iPad’s dominance since it was launched in April of 2010. Fortunately for Apple, and Apple investors, the enemy hasn’t been able to muster a proper offensive yet. Will Amazon’s Kindle Tablet finally end the iPad’s dominance over the burgeoning tablet computing market?
Store Wars
Enjoyed the Store Wars infographic forged by WebPageFX. Facts that caught my attention incude:
- An estimated total app store revenue of $15.1 billion in 2011, up from $5.2 billion in 2010
- The average number of apps used on an iPhone – 48 – 35 on Android
- Average price of Top 100 paid apps is significantly lower on the iPhone – $2.15 vs. $4.57 on Android
It’s easy to see why Apple, Android, RIM, Amazon, and others are joing the Store Wars. Dig the theme WebPageFX, thanks for putting this together.
Apple Dropping Home Button?
Apple’s support for multi-touch gestures in iOS 4.3 BETA has some speculating that Apple is going to drop the Home button in future versions of the iPad and iPhone. Apparently, Apple employees are already testing devices that don’t have a Home button. BGR broke the story yesterday.
The Home button is fairly useless, it returns you to the Home view, or the multitasking pane. The addition of multi-touch gestures that allow you to access the Home view and the multitasking pane render it useless and redundant. Personally, I think the Home button makes the device feel a bit PLAYSCHOOL and I’d be happy to see it go. Word is that Steve Jobs didn’t want any physical buttons on the original iPhone, so I’m sure he’s been pressing for this from the beginning.
Are you for or against the Home button?
New Multi-Touch Gestures in iOS 4.3
Engadget does a great job of summarizing the new multi-touch gestures available in iOS 4.3 in this short video. You can use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen; swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar; and swipe left or right between apps.
iPad Orientation Lock Option In iOS 4.3
Good news for those of you that miss having the ability to lock the iPad’s screen orientation using the physical switch on the side of the device. The iOS 4.3 beta includes a new setting that let’s you determine how you want the switch to work – you can select between “Mute” or “Lock Rotation.” “Mute,” the current behavior in iOS 4.2, is selected by default. If you choose “Mute,” “Lock Rotation” will appear in the multitasking tray, if you choose “Lock Rotation,” “Mute” will appear in the multitasking tray. Pretty cool.
I’m glad Apple is making the setting available for a couple of reasons. 1) I preferred it when the switch locked screen orientation, so I’ll be taking advantage of this setting. 2) It shows that Apple is willing to backtrack on usability decisions based on feedback from their customers.
iOS WiFi Hotspot
Thinking you might want to switch from the AT&T iPhone to the Verizon iPhone because you want an iPhone that supports the Personal Hotspot feature? Good news for the few of you that aren’t contemplating the switch. Boy Genius Report says they have a source that’s reports this feature will be coming to all iPhones in iOS 4.3. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean AT&T will support the feature. Still, chances are they won’t have much of a choice in the matter.
According to BGR, the OS version will be 8F5148b, the baseband will be 04.08.00, with technical acceptance planned for March.
In the meantime, you can read this guide on how to jailbreak your iPhone to turn it into a personal hotspot. Or, get a phone running the Android OS which has the ability baked into it already.
Making the Glif
The Glif folks are about to ship the first round of their cleverly designed and crowdsource-funded tripod mount for the iPhone 4.
Glif is a simple iPhone 4 accessory that can act as a standard tripod mount for your iPhone 4, or as a kickstand to prop your iPhone up at an angle. Great for hands-free FaceTiming, watching videos, making movies, using your iPhone as an alarm clock, and more. I love the simplicity of the design.
I bumped into this short video – a behind the scenes look at the injection molding manufacturing process used to manufacture the Glif.
Making the Glif from Glif on Vimeo.
From there, intrigued by the Glif story, I ended up on the KICKSTARTER website, where you can read more about their campaign to raise funding and watch their crafty campaign video. Their funding goal for the project was 10k, they’ve already raised $137,417. Congratulations Tom and Dan. Side note, loving the whole crowdsourced funding thing.
New App: The Economist for iOS
Enjoy reading the latest from The Economist over a latte and a biscotti? Well, there’s an app for that.
On Friday, The Economist launched iPhone and iPad apps. Built by TigerSpike, which also built The Times’ Eureka iPad app, the apps contains all the content from the print magazine, in a UI that’s customized for iPhone and iPad.
Full access to The Economist on iPhone and iPad will be free for current print or online subscribers. If you are not a subscriber you can purchase a digital subscription ($110 a year) from within the app or subscribe online. New editions will be available to the digital apps by 4pm (U.S. East Coast) every Thursday. If you like to try things like this on before you buy, an “Editor’s highlights” selection of content is available for each issue.
The apps are fairly reserved, which is appropriate for The Economist. There is one feature that sparkles a bit in the apps – audio is provided for all the articles. A button at the top of the interface provides you with easy access to audio versions (read by professionals) of all the articles. So… instead of putting yourself to sleep reading The Economist, you can let the sweet lullabies of The Economist lull you into a slumber. Kidding.
The interface is clean, and easy to use – you won’t find yourself getting lost in these apps. Pages are flipped through (as opposed to scrolled through) and it’s easy enough to flip your way through a whole issue. Ads are included, but they don’t get in the way of the experience too much. All the illustrations from the print edition are included – unfortunately, you can’t do anything interesting with them – i.e., you can’t zoom in on a photograph.
The Economist is a great publication – one of the few news publications that can boast a growing subscription base – and they’ve produced equally great apps for the iPad and iPhone.
The Beatles – now available on iTunes – Yawn
The Wall Street Journal was right. Apple’s “big” announcement was that a band which broke up in 1970 was finally allowing its music to be sold in the iTunes store. -via appadvice.com
Samsung Galaxy Tab
The SamSung Galaxy Tab, slated for launch in November 2010, has been getting a lot of attention in the press – for good reason – it stacks up nicely feature-for-feature against Apple’s iPad. I’m not going to write a review here, it’s been done over and over again, but I will provide you with a list of the resources I’ve used to research this popular device and the things I like most about it.
Learn more:
- Official Samsung Site
- TmoNews - the Unofficial T-mobile blog – has an obvious interest in the Galaxy Tab, T-mobile will be one on the carriers subsidizing the device here in the U.S. – $399 after rebate and a 2-year contract
- Engadget’s Samsung Galaxy Tab Preview
- YouTube Videos: Official Samsung Galaxy Tab Commercial, intoMobile DEMO, Official SamSung DEMO HD
What I like most about the Galaxy Tab:
- Size – the 7″ screen makes the Galaxy Tab more portable than iPad which has a 9.7″ screen
- Weight – at .82 pounds it weights about 1/2 of what the iPad weighs
- External memory – adds capacity for an additional 32G
- HDMI out – can’t do that with an iPad
- The FF and RF camerera (w/ a flash) is a nice addition
I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a Galaxy Tab. The Galaxy Tab may just be the 1st Android powered device I buy. Most of all, I’m glad to see competition in the tablet space heating up.
Verizon iPhone
The WSJ reports that the long, long-rumored Verizon iPhone will be entering mass production by the end of the year.
AT&T Inc. is about to lose its lock on the iPhone.
Apple Inc. is making a version of its iPhone that Verizon Wireless will sell early next year, according to people familiar with the matter, ending an exclusive deal with AT&T and sharpening the competition with Google Inc.-based phones.
I think it’s unlikely a Verizon iPhone will be confirmed by Apple before the end 2010. I’d put my money on confirmation in early 2011 – after Apple wraps-up the 2010 holiday shopping season.
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iBamboo iPhone Speaker
0 CommentsTuesday • January 17, 2012 • by Cale Bruckner
I ordered an iBamboo iPhone Speaker today – the black limited edition – from New York area Etsy member and maker Anatoliy Omelchenko (@anatoliyart). It was an impulse buy, instigated by Adam Flaherty’s MAKE blog post iBamboo Passive Acoustic Amplifier. Like Adam, I fell in love with the simplicity of the design and the black lacquer finish that’s unique to the limited edition version of the iBamboo Speaker. All of that said, I don’t think I would have clicked the “Add to Cart” button if Anatoliy hadn’t put the time into making sure his product had equally cool packaging.
Looking forward to pushing a playlist or two through the iBamboo. Keep making Anatoliy.
UPDATE: There’s one major flaw with the iBamboo iPhone Speaker. If you look at the bottom of your iPhone, you’ll find what look like two speakers. Unfortunately, only one is a speaker, the other is a microphone. The iBamboo Speaker works pretty well, but the little bit of bamboo the iPhone sits on gets in the way of the acoustics. If sound actually came out of both sides of the bottom of the iPhone, the iBamboo would really rock it. Hard to go wrong for $25+ shipping, but still, I was a little disappointed with this design flaw – I really wanted sound to come out of both sides of the iBamboo Speaker at the same intensity.