Posts in news

Final Cut Update Coming in April, Beta Version for Lion In Testing Stage?

French rumor site Hardmac is reporting that, according to their sources, Apple is testing beta versions of Final Cut for Snow Leopard and the upcoming Lion OS, with an update to the pro suite coming in March or “early April”. In November, Steve Jobs told a customer to “stay tuned and buckle up” for a Final Cut update, while previous rumors suggested a huge update was set to come out in the first months of 2011.

Hardmac reports that the Final Cut beta for Lion sports some exclusive features due to changes Apple is making in QuickTime for 10.7. Spring is usually a great time for new Apple product launches (iPad, MacBooks) and we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Final Cut suite finally being updated and promoted together with some new computers. Read more

Apple Patented Gestures For When You’re Not Looking At The Screen

Multi-touch gestures are great. With natural gestures like pinch, swipe and tap you can flick through your photos, scroll webpages, point items. The obvious downside is that, in order to confirm a gesture has worked properly, you need to look at the screen. And when the screen is not a MacBook’s one but an iPod touch and you’re running for your daily workout session, you can guess looking at the screen can become quite a task. That’s why Apple put buttons back in the Nano, for instance, but the engineers at Cupertino think it’s not enough.

Apple has, in fact, patented a way to perform certain multi-touch gestures and have actions happen on screen without actually looking at it. According to the patent, people could perform gestures similar to the commands on Apple’s own earbuds, or adjust the playback volume with a circular gesture similar to the classic iPod’s click-wheel. Other “special gestures” are mentioned in the patent.

The device used in the patent filing is a sixth generation iPod Nano, something that would suggest Apple is looking forward to a firmware update to enable more features, and gestures, in the device. Or maybe, the Nano being depicted in the patent is simply used to illustrate how Apple may implement “lookaway” gestures in future mobile devices.

Install OS X On Your Chrome Notebook with Luigi

Got an early Cr-48 unit and you’re already tired of the demo nature of Chrome OS? Perhaps you’re simply looking for a way to do more with the Chrome notebook, like install a new OS on it? Two days ago, we saw hackers managed to install Windows and Mac OS X on the Cr-48, but the process required some serious manual tweaking. Luigi, a firmware toolkit developed by well-known Chrome OS “all-star” Hexxeh, can flash the Cr-48 device to install any OS “unmodified”. It’s fairly easy to use, but it still requires you to open the Chrome notebook and activate the developer mode.

However, it does require you to crack open your Cr-48. This is actually a security feature (if you can flash your firmware, so could a malicious program, and that could mean bricked device!), and so to disable it, you simply need to remove the bottom cover of your device. This does, of course, void any warranty you might have with Google and so you do so entirely at your own risk. This could, if it were to go wrong, turn your device into a shiny paperweight. Don’t come crying if it does.

To install Luigi you need to run a few terminal commands. After that, once the device is flashed and the custom firmware installed, you can plug in any USB stick or CD to install your new OS, like Snow Leopard. Sounds like fun if you have a Cr-48.

Demo video below. Read more

Steve Jobs, Not A Good Entrepreneur [Video]

The BBC has this show, called Dragon’s Den, in which entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas trying to get multi-million investments from “Britain’s top brains”, investors looking for the next big thing to believe and spend money in.

Steve Jobs? He’s not good enough for the show. The BBC has created this fake video of Jobs pitching the iPad to the Den, with investors coming up with their reasons to “stay out” of Jobs’ business idea. It’s kind of hilarious, especially when an investors says “I’m out” and Jobs seems to be very sad about it. Check out the video below. [9to5mac via Youtube]

Google Planning Digital Newsstand, Apple To Launch Subscriptions “Early This Year”

According to the sources close to the Wall Street Journal, Google is in talks with major publishers like Time Inc., Condé Nast and Hearst Corp. to discuss the launch of a digital newsstand for magazines and newspapers that would run on the Android mobile operating system. The move, still in its early planning stages, would be Google’s direct answer to Apple, which has long been at the center of digital newsstand rumors and iTunes recurring subscription speculations. Google’s newsstand, either based on the existing Market or a new infrastructure, would allow Android users to read digital content on the go. Rumors point out to Google willing to share subscribers’ data with publishers. Read more

Life Size Designer iPhone Cookie A Huge Success In Japan

While I can bake some mean snickerdoodles when Christmas comes around, I hate to admit than anything even related to frosting is a bit of a sore point in my baking expertise. Which means I probably could never work for the Green Gables bakery in Japan, whose intricate artwork on their iPhone cookie look-a-likes has become a popular hit. Individually packaged as to not damage the cookie, presentation is everything – the creator wishes that you’ll admire this tasty piece of art before indulging yourself to the unique tasty treat. The cookies have been around for a while, and pictures shared on the Internet fueled everyone’s inner geek to buy these one of a kind cookies that Apple Inc. themselves could have baked. I can imagine Johnny Ive in an apron mixing the dough and baking batches of these things.

My request is that Apple themselves import these cookies overseas and sell them at the mothership if possible, but even Cupertino might have trouble since there’s a 2 month waiting period. Just look at this way: that iPhone cookie has a wait time as long as the real iPhone when it first came out!

[Cult of Mac via blog.livedoor.jp (Green Gables)]

The European Commission Has Decided: Universal micro-USB Charger For Smartphones

Back in August, the European Commission formally approved a policy that required all smartphones to adopt a standard, universal micro-USB charger instead of dedicated ones shipped by all major smartphones companies such as Apple, LG, Nokia and Samsung. Today, the European Standards Organization Cen-Cenelec-Etsi officially approved the request from the European Commission (Ansa news agency, italian) and published the standards that smartphones makers will have to adopt in Europe starting January 2011.

The European Commission is now expecting the first generation of standard micro-USB-enabled smartphones to become available “in the first months of 2011”. This includes devices from the 13 companies that signed the agreement in 2009: Apple, Motorola, LG, Nec, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson are among those companies.

Put simply, this change will allow users to charge their smartphones using a single, universal micro-USB connector. According to the European Commission, this will lead to a better user experience and less environmental damages thanks to the lack of multiple and different chargers.

It is unknown whether Apple will introduce a micro-USB charger in the next generation iPhone and iPad 3G (data-enabled devices are included in the new policy, too), although it seems likely at this point. Apple might as well delay the availability of universal chargers in its devices until 2012, but the European Commission seems to believe all major companies will agree to the policy and update their charging systems. If Apple will have to introduced a micro-USB charger in Europe, we speculate that the U.S. market will face a similar change as well.

iPod touch and Arduino Create Remote Etch a Sketch

Engineer Saeki Yoshiyasu created a system that allows him to connect to a server with his iPod touch and draw a design on the web browser using nothing but a Graphics LCD, an Arduino, and a WebSocket server (that he wrote using Python / Tornado). The result: his movements on the iPod touch’s screen are recreated on the LCD. If you want to see his code, or try it yourself, visit his site link below. It’s very nerdy but at the same time very simple and cool!

Video after the break.

Read more

Not The iWork You’d Expect from Apple

Sometimes, some people have terrible ideas. When those ideas involve Apple, trademark infringement and ripped-off logos, the story can quickly become incredibly messed up. Here’s what’s going on: there’s an iWork available on Sears’ website, but it’s not Apple’s digital productivity suite. It’s an actual toolkit Sears is marketing as “PC Toolkit” and selling at $39.99. Here’s the listing on Sears’ website.

See what they did there? They took a fancy registered and trademarked name, they took Apple’s font and even bothered adding a reflection to it. Apple doesn’t even use reflection on iWork’s logo. Sears does. Why? Two iWork logos are better than one, maybe?

Seriously, Steve is not going to approve this. Or perhaps, there’s a remote possibility he will buy hundreds of these toolkits and send them over to the folks working at the data center in North Carolina. Although I doubt Steve Jobs is capable of such jokes. [via Macenstein]