A Private, Read-Only Window Into Your HomeKit Home
Following the rather controversial “If you don’t have an iPhone” ads Apple posted a few days ago, a new one has been uploaded to Youtube: this time, it’s about Game Center.
The usual Infinity Blade is featured, alongside the capabilities of Game Center (friends requests) and the App Store with all its Angry Birds and Real Racing. Check out the video below. [thanks, Benjamin]
Read more
Your Mac can be kind of a jerk sometimes ya know? I mean, it’s totally not your fault that you accidentally dropped that school report in the bucket then emptied the trash the day before it was due. But not to fear: Disk Drill for the Mac knows right where’s it been marked for deletion, and yanks it right from our hard drive (without boring any holes). And if you’re just buying Disk Drill, a deep scan should uncover just what you’re looking for. You need Disk Drill as assurance against unfortunate mishaps, lost files, and damaging deletions. Not only will Disk Drill protect your home folder, but it’ll keep an eye on your hard drive’s health so you’ll never have to worry about a dying disk. And if all goes haywire: just back up your documents to a disk image! It’s that simple, and Disk Drill comes in free and pro versions so you can decide what’s right for you. Super easy to use, we’re giving away two licenses to a couple lucky readers.
Founder of Forrester Research George Colony thinks Apple will outgrow IBM and HP, keeping its steady 50% sales growth rate year after year:
HP is coming out with a tablet this summer (following the Palm acquisition), whilst IBM has become more of a research giant rather than a consumer electronic company. Apple may be bigger than both companies from a user’s perspective, but it’ll be interesting to see whether the HP TouchPad will be able to change the current tablet market landscape.
Despite the perception of Microsoft being bitter enemies with Apple it sure seems as if this rivalry is cooling off lately with Microsoft working to provide several services and products to iOS users in particular. From their iPhone apps to additional features in Bing (that won’t even make it to Windows Phone 7 till late 2011), Microsoft is making a concerted effort to be relevant in the increasingly iOS (and Android too) mobile market.
Its latest foray is an enterprise and corporate focused piece of software that will allow IT departments to more easily manage a workplace of iOS, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone 7 mobile devices. Named, in typically superfluous Microsoft fashion, System Center Configuration Manager 2012, it will let those IT departments enforce password complexity and security, remote wipe devices amongst other key functions.
As Microsoft describes it, SCCM can “Streamline operations with a unified infrastructure that integrates client management and protection across mobile, physical, and virtual environments.” The Beta 2 of System Center Configuration Manager 2012 is available for download but it does require registration and only runs on Windows Server 2008.
[Via TUAW]
Thanks to Italian blog Setteb.it you can easily check how much the iPad 2 price varies across most of the 25 countries launching the iPad 2 tomorrow. As is always the case for internationally sold products, and for a variety of reasons, the price varies quite substantially from country to country - even when currency and tax discrepancies are removed. The iPad 2 is no exception and some countries are paying a little more than their US counterparts, whilst some are paying far more.
The site tried to take the key variables of currency and tax out of the comparison by converting the local prices into the Euro and adding a rough sales tax average of 9.2% to the US prices. What was revealed was that the US had the cheapest prices for the iPad 2 but Australia was not far behind, only 14 Euros more expensive on the base 16GB WiFi only model and had the next cheapest prices for every other model except the 64GB WiFi + 3G which New Zealand had for the second cheapest price at only 18 Euros more than the US.
Comparatively the iPad 2 had the highest markup in Sweden and Norway at 100 Euros more for the 16GB WiFi model in Sweden and more than a 200 Euro markup in Norway for the 64GB WiFi + 3G. Click here for the full table of prices.
[Via TUAW]
Ten years ago today, on March 24th 2001, Apple released Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah. Now ten years on, OS X has evolved into what we know and love as being Snow Leopard, that latest major update to OS X.
Between the original, and rather buggy version of OS X, Cheetah and Snow Leopard now, we had 10.1 Puma (September 2001), 10.2 Jaguar (August 2002), 10.3 Panther (October 2003), 10.4 Tiger (April 2005) and 10.5 Leopard (October 2007). With just a few short months before the summer, we don’t have much longer to wait until OS X 10.7 Lion arrives and brings a convergence of traditional desktop OS design and iOS design together into one great operating system.
So Happy Birthday OS X! If you’re feeling nostalgic you might want to have a read of the Wikipedia page on OS X which gives a nice synopsis of the major feature additions each release brought and jump the break to watch Steve Jobs introduce OS X at the 2000 MacWorld.
Amidst news about the departure of Bertrand Serlet, this morning has seen some outstanding opinions about what Apple will do with their data-center in Maiden, North Carolina. Combined with the unrelated rumors that Apple could license AirPlay to consumer-electronics makers, and we have various pieces of the puzzle that when brought together give pundits food-for-thought.
It’s stupid at this point to speculate whether Apple’s data-center is being built for delivering iTunes content and MobileMe: that answer was satisfied by COO Tim Cook at their shareholder meeting last month. Yet that’s a non-answer, because if Apple’s model for consuming iTunes content doesn’t change then why bother with a bigger facility? Scale is one thing, but you don’t invest a billion dollars in something without a game-plan. The question isn’t what the data-center will be used for, but how. Certainly MobileMe needs some help in the reliability department, but iTunes’ current model for consuming content (with a focus on downloading vs. streaming) has been well handled. Has anything recently consistently stuttered or ground to a halt on iTunes? Downloads have always been generally seamless. To instigate such an expenditure, the iTunes model would obviously move from primarily downloading content to streaming it. They’re not building a data-center because Apple can’t handle the iTunes load – they’re building it to prepare for what’s next. When you match this to today’s AirPlay rumors, I think Apple will make a huge play for the television market this year.
Following this morning’s news that senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet is leaving Apple after 22 years of collaboration with Steve Jobs, John Paczkowski at All Things Digital puts the pieces together and says this is a planned transition that’s been in the works for months:
Serlet says he wants to focus on science now. People speculated this morning that Serlet might have left because of the iOS-like approach Apple is taking with Lion, but that sounds like a really stupid theory. I bet Serlet himself saw the evolution of OS X into something like Lion years ago.
It’s happened to everyone, you’ve received a text message and quickly read it but for any number of reasons decided you would respond to it later but then realize two days later that the message is still sitting unanswered in the Messages app on your iPhone.
Apple does a good enough job of alerting you to any unread text messages, but once read, you won’t get any more alerts about that text message. A new tweak to hit the Cydia store, iReply, aims to enhance that iOS SMS alert function by also reminding you of any text messages that you haven’t replied to and avoiding that awkward moment when your friend or boss asks why you ignored their text message. Jump the break for a short review of the app.
