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Posts tagged with "apple"

Help Fund A New Q&A Video Series With Startup and Solo iOS Developers

A few weeks ago Anthony Agius ran the ‘One More Thing’ conference in Melbourne, Australia. It was a conference in which a number of Australia’s top iOS developers came and gave speeches about their paths to App Store success to an audience of around 160 people. Some of the developers that appeared at the conference included Matt Comi of Big Bucket Software (The Incident, TV Forecast), Thomas Killen of Voxel Agents (Train Conductor), James Cuda of Savage Interactive (Procreate) and a number of others. Those speeches have now been posted online in full and for free, so if you’re a developer looking for inspiration or just interested be sure to check them out.

Agius hasn’t stopped there though, and has now decided to embark on a new project to make a 5-episode online TV series that features Q&A sessions with the speakers from the One More Thing conference. It is all inspired from a 60 minute Q&A session from the actual conference in which over 100 questions were submitted but time only allowed for 12 questions to be answered.

We want to develop an online TV show to support new startups and solo iOS developers. We will interview some amazing iOS developers about what it takes to do well in this industry, and some of the unexpected challenges that come up.

To make this a reality, Agius is appealing for donations to fund the project. To do it (as he says) to “the quality the community deserves” he is looking for $25,000 to cover all the costs from video editing, web design, motion graphics, flights, equipment hire and various other costs which he has roughly calculated. He is attempting to fund the project through ‘Pozible’, which if you are unfamiliar with is very similar to Kickstarter, and is offering various ‘rewards’ for funding the project which increase as the size of the donation increases - everything from a “twitter hug” to a name on the credits to a free Blu-Ray copy to adverts within the episodes.

So as you can see, it gets expensive to put on a high quality production! I don’t plan to make a profit off the show. Unless the project exceeds the funding target, I won’t make a cent. All raised funds will be put into the development of the show and promoting it. I just want to cover the costs to get it made, enjoy the experience, produce a show I can be proud of and create a valuable information source for those wanting to be indie iOS developers.

Below the break is a video of Agius explaining the project and you can read even more about the project on the Pozible project page, which is where you can also go to help contribute to the project. Video of the speeches from the ‘One More Thing’ conference can be found on Vimeo and you can follow Anthony Agius who co-founded MacTalk Australia on Twitter.

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Turn A Magic Trackpad Into A Numpad With The Mobee Magic Numpad

A new accessory from Mobee, which makes some inductive charging accessories for the Magic Mouse and Apple Keyboard, aims to use the Magic Trackpad as a Numpad replacement. The accessory is simply 3 plastic films that are applied onto a Magic Trackpad and a piece of software that translates a tap into a key command from a Numpad.

When purchasing the Mobee Magic Numpad you receive 3 different films to use on the Magic Trackpad, each of which have a different layout. You can see the three layouts below, the last of which includes six customizable keys. The films are claimed to be durable and re-usable in case you wish to change between layouts.

Mobee claims that with their product you will “instantaneously get both a Trackpad and a Numpad built into one single device” - although how exactly one switches between the Trackpad and Numpad ‘mode’ is not exactly explained. The Mobee Magic Numpad is available to order now for $29.90 but shipments won’t begin until October. So whilst this is certainly a niche product, it’s quite clever and fairly unobtrusive - although the real question would be how well it works and feels through some use.

[Via This is my next]

“Shrine of Apple” Wants To Photograph Every Apple Product Ever Made

Brought to my attention this morning by The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, Shrine of Apple is a new website that launched last night with a very ambitious goal: to photograph every Apple product ever made. Not just the ones from 2007 up until today – all of them. From the About page:

Our mission is to showcase the entire spectrum of products that Apple have sold to the public since 1976 – every product Apple Inc has ever produced, in the highest quality and definition possible. Every desktop, every laptop, every notebook, monitor, iPod, iPad, iPhone, mouse, keyboard, modem, cable, port, adapter, docking station, memory expansion card….and that’s just their hardware. Operating systems, productivity suites and all the great software titles that Apple have published will make an appearance too!

The website launched with a relatively small collection of products, with many more queued up for the next weeks. Shrine of Apple’s database consists of detailed high-res photos of products complete with original packaging when available, manuals, and cables. The website’s categories include Desktops, Displays, iPads, iPhones, iPods, Laptops, Peripherals, PDAs, Servers and Software, with more to come. The current selection includes old gems like the Apple IIe Numeric Keypad, Lisa 7/7 Office software, and the Macintosh PowerBook 150.

With high-res photography, descriptions, related links and a true passion for Apple products, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Shrine of Apple becoming a de-facto standard for Apple fans looking up information on old computers and devices, provided by someone who really “knows” and cares about these products, not a faceless online database. Shrine of Apple is, in fact, the creation of Jonathan Zufi, “leading expert in the field of mobility and wireless devices by day – vivid Apple collector by night”.

Make sure to check out Shrine of Apple, and follow the website on Twitter for updates on new products and photos.

Giveaway: Foliozo, The Stunning Digital Portfolio App For iPads

Last Friday we reviewed Foliozo, a new digital portfolio app that had hit the iPad App Store earlier in the week. This week we’ve been given ten promotional codes for Foliozo from the app developers and we’re running a giveaway. In our review we noted how Foliozo kept things simple unlike many of their competitors - something we thought was an advantage for a digital portfolio app.

You can read our full review of Foliozo but if you really like the sound of Foliozo don’t be afraid to help the developers and purchase the app which is available on the iPad App Store for $4.99. Jump the break for all the Foliozo giveaway details but don’t forget about our Saver giveaway which we started yesterday and look out for yet another giveaway this week!

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Saver For iPhone Giveaway: 10 Copies Of The Delightful Expense Tracker

After a big bug-squashing and feature-adding update last week to Saver, the developers have decided to run another giveaway of their excellent expense-tracking app. I reviewed Saver for iPhone about two months ago where I raved about its excellent and loving design which made the usually dull task of expense tracking a more exciting and vibrant experience. The genius of Saver though is that unlike many other apps on the market, its design keeps things simple whilst still being powerful enough for what most users will need out of an expense-tracker.

The developers are running their own giveaway of Saver where they are giving away 3 copies of the app everyday from today till next Monday, but MacStories readers have another chance to win the app because they have been kind enough to give us 10 copies to give away! Make sure to read our full review of Saver, but jump the break for all the details on how to enter our giveaway of 10 copies of Saver.

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Use Your iPad As A Digital Portfolio With The Excellent Foliozo

One of the iPad’s biggest strengths is the ease to which you can show various pictures, videos or websites to the people around you - its sleek form factor and large display makes it feel much more natural and personal than a laptop or desktop would. It is that inherit trait of the iPad that Apple is taking further advantage of with iOS 5 and its Photo Stream feature that lets you take pictures with your friends and family at the beach on your iPhone and then show those pictures on your iPad after a family dinner because Photo Stream effortlessly syncs photos between the two devices. Our own Federico recently wrote about how it removed the effort of manually syncing photos after he used the feature extensively on a recent summer holiday.

So we know the iPad is great (and will get better with Photo Stream in iOS 5) for sharing pictures and videos with our families and friends, but surely this experience could also translate into the professional realm. The true fact is that it does, with many firms already using the iPad as a portfolio to show concepts, photos and designs to clients and there are already a number of apps in the App Store that make this process easier. Today, however, I’m reviewing Foliozo which is a new entrant to the ‘digital portfolio’ app market, and one I think that stands above the pack.

Jump the break for the full review, screenshots and their promo video.

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Apple “Discussing” TV Subscription Service with “New Technology To Deliver Video”

As reported by The Wall Street Journal in an article detailing some of the challenges Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook will have to face in the post-Jobs era and many of the achievements of the company’s former chief executive, Apple is allegedly working on a new technology to deliver video to televisions:

An immediate challenge for Mr. Cook will be to advance Apple’s plans in what is expected to be a key market for growth: digital video. Apple is working on new technology to deliver video to televisions, and has been discussing whether to try to launch a subscription TV service, according to people familiar with the matter. Unlike the iPod and music, where Apple has a commanding position, the battle to rule online video remains wide open and the company faces fierce competition.

No additional details are provided in the report, although speculation of new TV products from Apple has increasingly suggested in the past months that, just like with the iPod, iPhone and iPad before, the company is now aiming to disrupt another market that’s long been dominated by services, corporations and standards that don’t make it easy for consumers to have an optimal user experience. Specifically, rumors of an HDTV from Apple have been circulating for years, pinpointing what turned out to be incorrect release dates, tech specs, and prices. However, these rumors have a reason to exist, as they’ve been subtly backed by Steve Jobs’ public criticism towards the current TV business model and cable companies, described as clumsy, complicated, and ultimately bad for consumers. At the D8 conference last year, when asked about whether Apple could get into the television business, Jobs replied:

The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everybody a set-top box for free, or for $10 a month, and that pretty much squashes any opportunity for innovation, because nobody’s willing to buy a set-top box. Ask TiVo, ask ReplayTV, ask Roku, ask Vudu, ask Google in a few months. So all you can do is add a box onto the TV system. […] The only way that’s ever going to change is if you can really go back to square one and tear up the set-top box, and redesign it from scratch with a consistent UI, across all these different functions, and get it to the consumer in a way that they’re willing to pay for it. Right now there’s no way to do that. So that’s the problem with the TV market.

The Wall Street Journal’s report doesn’t mention any new hardware from Apple, focusing on subscription services and technologies to stream video to televisions. However, as Apple is known for driving innovation by integrating software with their own hardware, it’s likely that when the company will find it “viable” to get into the TV market, they’ll do so by releasing their own hardware tightly integrated with a “new technology” and “subscription TV service”. Apple currently sells the Apple TV 2nd-gen – described multiple times by Jobs and Cook as a “hobby” – that runs a modified version of iOS and comes with a native Netflix app for instant movie streaming; recently the company added the possibility to stream any previously purchased content from the iTunes Store to the Apple Tv through their new iCloud platform. It was reported back in April that Apple added 12 petabytes of storage to their server farms for serving iTunes Store video, and a separate report mentioned Apple could soon launch a service similar to Netflix to stream movies and TV shows for a monthly fee.

iPhone 5, iPhone 4S - A Rumor Roundup and Retrospective

According to new shots showing alleged leaked parts for the upcoming iPhone 5, website MacPost.net (via MacRumors) shows a white back cover from an Apple internal prototype iPhone dated June 7, 2011, labeled N94 and EVT (Engineering Verification Test). In Apple’s prototype design cycle, the EVT monicker is one step ahead of DVT, which stands for Design Verification Test. As you can see from the purported leaked part, the design of the back cover is largely similar (if not the same) to the current-gen iPhone 4, adding more speculation to the rumors suggesting the next-generation iPhone, dubbed iPhone 5, will share the same design of the existing iPhone, only adding a new processor, better camera, and other minor speed bumps.

There’s been a bit of confusion in the past months regarding rumors floating around Apple’s next iPhone. Whereas the N94 and N93 codenames found in the iOS 5.0 SDK (actually, N94 showed up in iOS 4.3) clearly referred to a device running the same A5 processor of the iPad 2 (the iPhone 4 has an A4 processor), multiple sources couldn’t agree on whether Apple was on track to deliver one iPhone this Fall – the iPhone 5 – with a major redesign, a new iPhone with the same design but better specs, or two iPhones aimed at different markets and users.

For this reason, in the most recent weeks a differentiation in rumors has arisen to separate the iPhone 5 from an alleged “iPhone 4S”. The “4S” name, used as an unofficial monicker for the first time by 9to5mac in April, was initially used in regards to a prototype iPhone 4 with an A5 chip reportedly sent to developers for testing – thus not necessarily representing a final product – but has evolved with time into a widely-accepted rumor indicating a second product from Apple that could also refer to a cheaper iPhone the company is working on for pre-paid markets.

Again, there is a lot of confusion around the terms “iPhone 5”, “next-generation iPhone”, and “iPhone 4S”. However, sticking to SDK findings and reliable photographs of unreleased models – not just rumors without evidence – might be the best chance to guess what’s coming in October.

First off, N94 refers to an iPhone carrying the A5 processor, an obvious choice for Apple. With increased performances, low-power consumption and a huge leap forward in terms of graphics rendering, the A5 has been a success on the iPad and there’s no reason why Apple wouldn’t use it in a future iPhone. For reference, the current-gen iPhone 4 was codenamed N90 and N92 for its GSM and CDMA variations, respectively. N93 and N94 might be related to carrier variations of the same iPhone model or two new entirely different products – this can’t confirmed. However, N94 isn’t only present in the iOS 5 SDK: aside from today’s MacPost pictures, BGR showed photos of an unreleased iPhone model running on T-Mobile’s 3G bands back in April. The iPhone was white, like today’s back cover shots, and it was codenamed N94, running a test version of iOS with several Apple-only apps and utilities. Furthermore, MacRumors is now associating those photos from April to a new part leak that seems to depict a redesigned antenna for the iPhone 4-like new iPhone, whatever it may be. The iPhone 4 antenna design was behind the so-called Antennagate media debacle last year, so it would make sense for Apple to redesign it only to avoid further discussion.

Rounding up the evidence about N94 – again, one of the two unreleased iPhone models mentioned by the iOS SDK – it appears that this model will have an iPhone 4-like design, a slightly redesigned antenna, an A5 processor, and it’s been tested on T-Mobile.

However, it’s still not clear whether what we call “iPhone 5” is actually a tweaked iPhone 4 (thus N94), or an all-new model that hasn’t surfaced in the SDK and leaked parts just yet. For as much as new cables and connectors suggest Apple is tweaking the internal specs of an iPhone, they don’t offer confirmation of the device’s design and external look.

To bring some clarity to this whole iPhone 4S/iPhone 5/two iPhones debate we’ve collected the most notable rumors from the past months, in order to see, now that a possible release date is nearing, how speculation evolved and changed over time. Read more

From JailbreakMe To An Internship at Apple

Through a series of tweets posted last night on his personal account, jailbreak hacker and developer comex, best known for his work on JailbreakMe, has announced that he will be joining Apple as an intern in two weeks. Whilst it’s common practice for Apple to hire interns for a limited period of time – this happens to both designers and developers all the time – this internship is worth noting as comex has been for years the brain behind various jailbreak tools that allowed users to install Cydia, the alternative App Store, on their devices, updating these tools multiple tools in a “cat & mouse” game against Apple’s patches and software updates.

Less than a month ago, Forbes profiled comex as 19-year old Nicholas Allegra on a leave from Brown University, who’s been interested in hacking and coding since the age of nine. Among comex’s most notable accomplishments in the jailbreak community, the latest version of JailbreakMe gained popularity thanks to a simple web-based interface to install Cydia on iOS 4.3 devices including the iPad 2. JailbreakMe 3.0 has been used over a million times, becoming the most successful jailbreak tool every released to the public. The hack used a vulnerability in Apple’s PDF library to run JailbreakMe’s code and install Cydia, a security hole that Apple fixed after 9 days.

In their article, Forbes concluded:

But at least in the case of JailbreakMe 3, Allegra also created a patch for the PDF vulnerability he exploited, allowing users to cover their tracks so that other hackers couldn’t exploit the same bug. In the period before Apple released an official patch, users who had jailbroken their iPads and iPhones were in some sense more secure than those who hadn’t.

A postscript to Apple: Perhaps your security team could use another intern.

It’s not clear whether the security team actually hired comex, but it sure looks like his jailbreak skills attracted Apple’s attention.