This Week's Sponsor:

HomeSnap

A Private, Read-Only Window Into Your HomeKit Home

Posts in news

You Too Can Have Steve Jobs’ Poker Face with Official Apple Cards

Are you a die-hard Apple fan that wants to get some rare memorabilia? Well you had better check out this listing on eBay where an official Apple-branded pack of cards is on auction!

The pack of cards feature OS 7 icons of bombs, clocks, Mac face and trash cans instead of the traditional clubs, hearts, diamonds and spades as you can see above. The pack was purchased at the Apple campus store in 1997 which was one piece of merchandise that was Apple branded and sold only to Apple employees. In other words, these cards are rare and will be undoubtedly worth quite a bit!

The listing is open for another six days and as of writing was at a bid of £28.00, but that’s likely to rocket as Apple fans across the world discover this quirky gem and bid to get their hands on it.

[Via The Next Web]

Apple Awarded Patent for a ‘Safe Deposit Box’ Feature

Apple was recently awarded an interesting new patent regarding a possible feature in OS X in which users could secure vital files in a ‘safe deposit box’ which would encrypt and hide the files from access as well as potentially uploading them to the cloud.

The patent describes a simple process in which users would be able to drag a particular file to a safe deposit icon that would then secure the file and also upload the secured file to the cloud. Users could then access any secured files that are in the safe deposit box by verifying their identity. Patently Apple suggests that it could either be included in Lion’s Time Machine as an added feature or perhaps as a small ‘pro’ utility for those who want some extra security for their vital files and data.

Read more

Apple Implementing Light Peak Technology In The Near Future?

CNet yesterday reported that Apple is expected to be one of the first adopters of Intel’s Light Peak technology, possibly starting with next week’s rumored MacBook upgrades. The technology is touted by Intel as a way to eliminate the many different cables that computers use such as USB, HDMI and FireWire, creating an all-in-one connectivity solution and Intel has detailed that a first half of 2011 launch is expected.

A source told CNet that Apple intends to adopt the technology in the near future but will supposedly brand the connection under a different name to Light Peak. Whilst CNet couldn’t deduce whether or not the rumoured MacBook update on February 24 would include a Light Peak announcement or inclusion, there has been rumors of more than just a spec-bump in the next update of the MacBooks, possibly suggesting the inclusion of Light Peak.

Read more

Fruit Ninja Sells 6 Million Copies, Slices 150 Billion Fruit and Decides to Fund a Fruit Orchard!

Less than a year since launching, Fruit Ninja has been purchased a whopping 6 million times on the iPhone and over 150 billion fruit have been sliced and slaughtered! In an odd twist of events, Halfbrick has decided to in their words, “make amends for fruit death worldwide” by working together with the ‘Fruit Tree Planting Foundation’ to establish and fully fund a fruit orchard.

Halfbrick has chosen to fund an orchard in a low-income Native American community to not only provide fresh fruit as sustenance to the community but also allow the community to have some long-term income. The project is part of the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation’s Reservation Restoration program and will be fully run by them at the cost of Halfbrick and you will be able to receive updates from the Halfbrick blog and the FTPF website.

[Via Joystiq]

iPad and iPhone Beats Kindle In The UK, But Not In The US

Market research firm Book Marketing Ltd has revealed to GigaOM that in the UK both the iPad and iPhone are beating the Kindle as an eBook reader most used by consumers based on data from last September. The story however is very different in the US however with the Kindle far ahead after stellar growth throughout 2010 as the graph below the break demonstrates.

Read more

New MacBook Pros: February 24th

According to two separate reports from Italian websites SlideToMac and iSpazio posted this morning, the next generation of MacBook Pros – due an update – is going to be released next week, with shipments to Italian resellers starting in the next few days to ensure a late February launch. MacRumors has now independently confirmed that the new MacBook Pros will be released on Thursday, February 24th.

We’ve since heard reliable confirmation that this information is accurate and that the expected release date is next Thursday, February 24th. The move would be a bit unusual for Apple to launch new machines on a Thursday. So, if you are about to buy a new MacBook Pro, wait until next week.

This morning, iSpazio also posted the rumored model numbers of the new units (MC720, MC721, MC723, MC724, and MC725) which will likely sport a new design inspired by the MacBook Airs (dubbed by Apple on its website as the “next generation of MacBooks”) and the new powerful Sandy Bridge chips.

In the past weeks, rumors of stock running low suggested the MacBook Pro line was going to be updated relatively soon. At this point, it looks like next week we’ll be able to get our hands on the new generation of MacBook Pros.

Google Docs Can Now Preview Apple Pages Files

Good news for Mac users who rely on Google Docs for their document management needs: the popular online service added support today for 12 more file types – most notably including Apple’s Pages and Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop. The full list of supported files below:

  • Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
  • Apple Pages (.PAGES)
  • Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
  • Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
  • Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
  • Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
  • PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
  • TrueType (.TTF)
  • XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

The Docs online viewer has thus become a full-featured solution to preview the most popular file formats. In December, Google brought desktop document editing to the iPad.

Apple’s Retail Plans: Open The Biggest Chinese Store in Shanghai

Apple may be planning to open the world’s largest Apple Store in Grand Central, but it looks like the company has some big plans for China, too. The Wall Street Journal reports Apple will open the biggest store in China in Shanghai – in Nanjing Road precisely – as the news has been confirmed by an Apple spokeswoman after an initial report from Beijing Youth Daily.

The Chinese newspaper reported Apple’s Vice President of Retail Ron Johnson said the company is looking for new locations to handle the traffic of Chinese Apple Stores – which apparently are visited by 40,000 people on average every day, four times the U.S. average traffic. Indeed, at the latest earnings call in January Apple confirmed four stores in China reported the highest revenue and highest traffic. Apple is clearly investing a lot of resources in China retail development with a new distributor set to open more than 500 retail stores.

Joining two stores each in Beijing and Shanghai, the Nanjing Road store will be Apple’s fifth in China, where the company has recently ramped up its retail presence. China is the world’s largest mobile market by number of subscribers and the second largest PC market, with more Internet users than any other nation.

Apple has previously said it plans to open 25 stores in China this year, but Mr. Johnson said the plan to open bigger stores may set this schedule back.

The new store is rumored to follow the other location in Shanghai to feature a unique design and experience, and we have no doubts Apple will put their designers and architects to hard work to build another impressive store to accomodate Shanghai’s heavy traffic.

New Chrome Beta Is Faster, Includes Revamped Settings UI

Today Google released a major update to Chrome beta for Mac and Windows, which includes features that have been available in the developer channel for a few weeks. Namely, Chrome beta now comes with encrypted sync for passwords (sync happens through your Google account and can handle passwords, bookmarks, extensions, history and settings on every machine running Chrome), improvements in Javascript speeds and a completely redesigned settings UI.

The new settings sport a much cleaner design organized in three different tabs sitting in a vertical panel on the left. Most of all, the Settings now open as a new Chrome tab and not as a standalone popup window. Buttons have been redesigned as well and now look more in line with other Google products. You can search through settings items with a search field on the left, copy a direct URL to a specific settings page without having to re-navigate manually through menus and tabs.

As for Javascript improvements, the official Google Chrome blog reports:

In our new beta release, JavaScript is as quick as a bunny. With a new speed boost that we previewed in December, Chrome’s JavaScript engine V8 runs compute-intensive JavaScript applications even more quickly than before. In fact, this beta release sports a whopping 66% improvement on the V8 benchmark suite over our current stable release.

The new beta also introduces preliminary support for GPU-accelerated video; Google claims content in full-screen mode should see a decrease of CPU usage “by as much as 80%”. Of course you’d have to be running compatible graphics hardware to see the benefits of GPU acceleration.

You can go download the Chrome beta for Mac here. Check out the demo video of the new settings UI below. Read more