Scoopertino makes up some funny stories, and this one is no different. It’s actually quite hilarious. Steve Jobs wrote down his 2011 New Year’s Resolutions on a napkin and someone in Starbucks has retrieved it. Hmm, sounds like another joke about an iPhone prototype and a bar. Enjoy the fake news of the day. Or is it? Read more
Posts tagged with "apple"
Steve Jobs’ New Year’s Resolutions for 2011
With The 1.4 Update, Dialvetica Aims At Replacing Apple’s Phone App
Dialvetica is a “contact contacter” for the iPhone developed by the same creators of the hugely popular Calvetica calendar application. In his review of the first version of Dialvetica, Chris wrote:
Dialvetica is such a breeze to use, and once you get your contact defaults set up, prepare to move your Contacts.app to a folder and off the home screen. Where else can you email, call and SMS within the same app and keep it clean and simple? It’s also faster than using iOS’s Spotlight too.
Dialvetica is faster than Apple’s contacts app, but most of all it allows you to quickly call, email or text someone with just a few taps. Thanks to a custom “sticky” keyboard that sits at the bottom of the app, you’ll be able to filter out your contacts list and get to the friend you need to email the party invitation to. Dialvetica learns from your habits and will display the most contacted people at the top of the window over time.
With the latest 1.4 update, which is propagating in iTunes now, Dialvetica aims at completely replacing Apple’s Phone app in your dock. With the introduction of a custom dialpad, the app now lets you compose phone numbers, but as you can guess relies on the Phone app to initiate the actual calls. The advantage is that if you’ve been using Calvetica to quickly go through your contacts, you can now use it to make phone calls, too, and put Apple’s phone app in a folder away from your homescreen.
I don’t know if I’m going to replace Favorites on my iPhone with this, but I’m pretty sure thousands of users will find Dialvetica 1.4 the best alternative to the stock phone application. Give it a try.
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.
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
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.
Is Skype The Biggest Threat To Apple’s FaceTime?
Last night, Skype released a major new version of their iPhone and iPod touch client. Version 3.0 of the Skype app, released just in time for New Year’s Eve, adds video calling to all iOS devices with the possibility to run the app in compatibility mode on the iPad and receive video calls on screen. The iPhone app allows you to receive and initiate video calls both on WiFi and 3G, it’s compatible with iPhone 4 / iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 4th gen and, when on 3G, consumes around 3.4 MB of data per minute. Previous tests showed that Apple’s FaceTime technology also consume 3 MB per minute. Skype 3.0 also lets you call desktop users on Mac and PC and check on their computer screens (sounds useful for remote troubleshooting or networking), requires iOS 4 and supports both portrait and landscape modes.
The latest Skype update is, put simply, a huge win for the millions of Skype users out there who have an iOS device always connected to the internet. We could argue on the 24/7 internet availability on devices like the iPod touch and the iPad WiFi, but there’s no doubt the new Skype for iOS is the closest thing Apple ever had to a FaceTime competitor. Forget the 3rd party apps in the App Store that allow video calls: this is Skype. Which leads me to consider Apple’s position in regards to this update: Skype lets you see your friends wherever you are, no matter what kind of connection you’re on. Apple, due to technology limitations or AT&T’s pressure, only lets you FaceTime on WiFi. But looking at the big picture, that’s not really what Apple should fear. 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]
iTunes 12 Days of Christmas: Day 4
Thanks to the iTunes 12 Days of Christmas promotion, every day from December 26th to January 6th users will be able to download a “fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps, books, TV episodes and a film” completely for free on iTunes.
The free app for iPhone and iPad that lets you receive push notifications for daily offers is available here. Today, you can download Gameloft’s Fishing Kings for free on the App Store. Apple is giving away the regular version of the game to iPhone users, and the HD one for the iPad.
Stay tuned for promotions coming every day until January 6.