I love linux distros. Being fond of the recently released Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (which has replaced Windows XP on my aging Compaq desktop), Unity looks like an excellent Netbook OS for those who still want the Mac “touch and feel” without the mess or performance of Windows 7 Starter or XP editions. For all you netbook toting users who want to run Snow Leopard but can’t, hopefully we’ll start seeing machines soon sporting this nifty, lightweight OS.
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Usually I’m Gung Ho for anything Apple does, but after shafting Mac developers from the Apple Design Awards, I felt that Apple had removed an important element from the community. Ars Technica apparently feels the same, and will host their own Ars Design Awards specifically for those developing for OS X. Apple, if you aren’t going to recognize great developers and designers for their work, somebody else will.
9to5 Mac reported earlier this morning that Android’s market share is surpassing Apple’s iPhone according to the NPD Group. Suggesting that Android holds 28% of the smartphone market compared to the iPhone’s measly 21%, things are looking great for Google and friends right? Well considering the iPhone is only on one carrier in the United States (and produced by a single manufacturer), compared to the four big carriers Android is on and multiple manufacturers, why hasn’t Android captivated more than 30% of the marketplace? Heck, they should be up there with RIM by now if their phones were really that good.
Authors looking to publish their books through Lulu can now get their books in Apple’s iBookstore. Basically, Apple takes 30% from each sale. From whatever’s left, Lulu takes 20% and you get to keep the leftovers. That’s not too bad if you can manage to sell a thousand or so books, and being someone whose considering writing some epic novels of his own, I’d be happy to have Lulu distribute my works.
So we’ve been able to browse the iPad from the Finder, but what about browsing a portable drive from the iPad. Turns out you can connect a USB flash drive using the camera connection kit and browse its content using iFile (from Cydia, must have file browser).
Check out the video after the break. [via iPadevice]
Thanks to AppAdvice, here’s a complete (almost, only Japan is missing) chart of the various iPad Wifi + 3G data plans around the world.
Italy’s 3 wins.
Some hackers are trying to port iPhone OS 4.0 to the original iPhone “2G”, which was released back in 2007 and Apple decided to keep away from the OS 4.0 goodness.
“We are rewriting the 4.0 beta firmware released by Apple to create a custom firmware that can run on devices iPhone 2G which is no longer available. To do this we studied the architecture of the firmware previously released by Apple on the device trying to understand how is it different from the released versions on other devices, in particular that of the iPhone 3G device, which is what most resembles the smartphones.”
You can follow the development here or follow the project on Twitter as @RebuildingGroup.
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People want to be productive with their shiny new iPad, and so they spend on good productivity apps in the App Store. But if a developer has to deal with Apple’s revenue and such, what about Apple’s own paid apps - Pages, Keynote and Numbers?
According to the latest estimate reported by 9to5mac, Apple could make more than $40 million a year with the iWork apps for iPad.
“How did they work it out?
- They estimate the top paid iPad app does about 7,500 unit sales on a Saturday or Sunday, and about 2,500 unit sales on a weekday.
- All the iWork apps have been in the top ten since the iPad launched, with Pages at number one.
- They estimate: “7,500 downloads per app x 2 weekend days, and 2,500 downloads per app x 5 weekdays, = about 27,500 weekly unit downloads per app.”
They estimate Apple’s making $825,000 per week on these sales.”
Impressive, isn’t it?
We’ve seen a lot of tutorials on how to hack the iPad to do stuff like Magic Mouse support or playing a SNES game with a Wiimote. But what about something really useful like download photos from it, print documents and move files using nothing but the Mac OS’ Finder? Wouldn’t it be great to access the iPad directly from the Finder as if it was an external drive and thus performing actions that would require iTunes, iPhoto or 3rd party applications otherwise?
Just follow our simple tutorial and you’ll see how it is indeed possible to do a lot more stuff with a single Cydia tweak called Netatalk.
