This Week's Sponsor:

Direct Mail

Professional Email Marketing Built Just for Mac Users

Posts tagged with "apple"

Mailplane 2.2 released

Mailplane, the app that brings Gmail to your Mac’s desktop, has been recently updated with new features and bug fixes. New features: Support for Gmail’s new Priority Inbox; @usemailroom’s TrueView, which enables two counters, one for unread and one for unseen messages; you can now drag a Mailplane URL from the title bar to any application; Rapportive - which replaces the sponsored links on the right-hand side with useful contact information (this is an excellent feature, there’s even free add-ons for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome); Mailplane can now automatically open ‘safe’ attachments after downloading like Safari, just check the preference button; and auto-insert-BCC feature lets you integrate with a CRM, HelpDesk or similar service. Read more

Apple Buys Face Recognition Company Polar Rose

Norwegian website Mac1 is reporting that Apple has bought all the shares of a Swedish company called “Polar Rose”, which specializes in face recognition softwares more advanced than Apple’s implementation in iPhoto.

As you can see in the video embedded below, the “Recognizr” app from Polar Rose can save face information in seconds and link a person to various social profiles on the internet such as Flickr and Youtube. It’s demoed on a Samsung phone, but we wonder (if true) what this acquisition might bring to our devices in the future. A more capable iPhoto? Perhaps that user tracking patent we heard about a few weeks ago? We’ll see. But I’m pretty sure that this is definitely mobile-oriented. [via 9to5mac] Read more

China Gets A Real iPhone 4 on September 25th

After months of speculation, debates with the Chinese government over wifi implementation in the iPhone 3G and a bunch of well-faked ripoffs, China is getting the iPhone 4. The real thing. Starting from September 25th Chinese Apple fans will be able to purchase the new iPhone in retail locations and Unicom stores, with a price tag of CNY4,999 for the 16GB model and CNY5,999 for the GB one. As Engadget reports, that’s about $743 and $892, respectively.

Apple is also opening a new retail location in Beijing on September 25th. Chinese MacStories readers: tips[at]macstories.net is open for you to send pics and videos of your line experience. Check out the full press release after the break. Read more

Apple, The Next Step Is AirFiles

I installed iOS 4.2 beta on my iPad, but haven’t been able to check out the new AirPlay or AirPrint features yet: I don’t have an Apple Airport Express station to configure with my stereo, nor I have a compatible HP printer in the office. Still, I know these two new features pretty well: AirPlay is Apple’s take on how you should be able to consume digital content in the living room, AirPrint allows you to print documents from your iPad and iPhone with a few taps. Both of them are great features. I want to focus on AirPlay, though: as Seth Weintraub puts it, AirPlay is Apple’s “go to market” strategy - in a way that this single feature will let users easily hook their iPhones and iPads to the Apple TV to effortlessly share SD content, and eventually pay for HD versions using Apple’s TV own rental system. Any kind of video content can be streamed using AirPlay, as long as it uses a standard media controller and it’s encoded using the popular H.264 video format.

I haven’t tried it personally, but I already know AirPlay is going to be huge amongst iPad and iPhone owners once the new Apple TV will be available. This kind of one-tap streaming and sharing of content between devices has got me thinking, though: what if Apple shipped “AirFiles”, a built-in system to share any kind of documents across mobile devices and computers? Read more