Wednesday: August 3, 2011
The per year pricing plans for Apple's iCloud have surfaced online.When iCloud launches in the Fall you'll automatically get five gigabytes free. For those of you who need a bit more space Apple is offering ten gigabytes (really fifteen if you count the included free five gigabytes) for twenty dollars. Paying forty bucks a month will get you 25 gigabytes (again, including the free five) and for a hundred even you'll get fifty gigabytes.
Monday: January 7, 2013
Apple would like you to know that they've had over 40 billion downloads from their app store.That's a lot of downloads. Apparently half of that number was just in 2012 alone.
Wednesday: January 2, 2013
New version of iOS starts appearing in developer logs.Developers have started noticing some curious entries in there log files regarding a new version of Apple's iOS operating system. The current version of iOS is six but references to iOS 7 are being found. Along with the new version of iOS a new iPhone hardware identifier has been unearthed as well. Look forward to iPhone 6 sometime in the near future.
Tuesday: December 18, 2012
Panic takes a look at the magic behind the album art color schemes in iTunes 11.If you've used iTunes 11 you may have noticed the adaptive colors used in some of your favorite albums. Apple could have just displayed a thumbnail and used the same colors for text everywhere but instead chose to theme each album to go along with it's individual art. This kind of little touch is really what has always se Apple apart from the rest. The good folks at Panic delve into the kind of programming and logic that may have gone into this kind of display paradigm. It's a great read even if you aren't a developer but its an even greater read if you because they include sample code.
Thursday: December 13, 2012
Apple selects the Best of 2012 awards from notable iTunes Store apps and games.For the first time in two years, no photography apps made it in to the top listings. 2012 also marks the first year that an Entertainment app was given an editor’s choice award. As always, during the end of the year wrap up Apple highlights games and apps from a wide variety of categories, so it’s well worth skimming the list for hidden gems.
Monday: December 10, 2012
Australian police issue warning about using maps on iOS 6 for driving directions.Local Police have been called to assist distressed motorists who have become stranded within the Murray-Sunset National Park after following directions on their Apple iPhone. Tests on the mapping system by police confirm the mapping systems lists Mildura in the middle of the Murray Sunset National Park, approximately 70km away from the actual location of Mildura. Police are extremely concerned as there is no water supply within the Park and temperatures can reach as high as 46 degrees, making this a potentially life threatening issue.
Sunday: December 9, 2012
Tim Cook appears on NBC's Rock Center for an exclusive interview with Brian Williams.If you happen to be an avid fan of all things Apple (such as myself) then this video will most likely appeal to you. Watch as Tim Cook and Brian Williams take a stroll through some of the Manhattan retail stores and discuss everything from recent battles with Samsung to the long rumored Apple television. Oh, and if you didn't already know - Apple will also start making a Mac line here in the States next year too (belated spoiler alert).
Monday: November 21, 2011
Apple's new store at Grand Central Station may be opening in the very near future.9to5Mac has heard that Apple will officially announce the opening of the Grand Central Apple store this Tuesday and presumably pull the black boards to reveal the announcement. This store garners extra special attention because it will be Apple’s largest in the world by square footage and resides in a building where 750,000 people pass daily and over 1,000,000 people during the holidays.
Monday: November 14, 2011
Apple pulls the curtain back on iTunes 10.5.1 with iTunes Match.Unlike competing cloud storage music services from Amazon and Google, iTunes Match saves a lot of bandwidth and time in your initial synchronization, because Apple can identify which songs in your iTunes library are already available in the iTunes Store. If Apple can positively match a song in your library with any of the 20 million tracks for sale in the iTunes Store, it won’t bother uploading that song; only unmatched songs get uploaded to the cloud.
Best Buy has the current generation Apple TV for $89 with free shipping.Posting this here because I've grown to love this product in the few short weeks I've had it. It's a great implementation for getting your Internet media as close to your television as you would need it. My kids love watching clips on YouTube and Vimeo so having that readily available in the living room is a big plus. Also, having the entire media contents of your Mac is just great as well. Bonus: using the Apple Remote app for any of the iDevices may make you want to chuck the included remote.
Wednesday: November 9, 2011
Bret Victor's not-so-brief rant on the future of interaction design.If you haven't seen Microsoft's video entailing what they think the future of technology holds, you should watch it (readily available on source URL as an embedded clip). So watch that video and then read Victor's thoughts on the matter. That being said, I do have a minor point of contention. I did get some hands-on time with a Kinect-enabled Xbox 360 this past weekend and it was a fun, dare I say, semi-magical experience. I highly reccomend Double Fine's Once Upon a Monster (even the demo is fun).