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There are now over 100,000 iPad apps available

App Store 100,000

Apple has what is clearly the top tablet on the market with the iPad, and now it has an another achievement to celebrate. As of Tuesday, there are more than 100,000 iPad-specific apps on sale in the App Store.

The milestone comes a little over a year after Apple unveiled the original iPad. According to MacStories, it took Apple 452 days to surpass the 100,000 iPad app mark to land at 100,161 dedicated iPad apps. At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the company announced that it had 90,000 iPad apps, but it appears that number has grown in less than a month's time.

Click to continue reading There are now over 100,000 iPad apps available


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MacBook Air out of stock at Best Buy, refresh coming!

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: PC / Laptop,

MacBook Air refresh

On Monday, Best Buy's online store listed the Apple MacBook Air as "not available," fueling rumors that Apple will launch a next-generation MacBook Air any day now.

9to5 Mac first noticed the change at BestBuy.com and believes this is "indicative of a product refresh." Best Buy now only offers the MacBook Air in a limited number of stores, apart from the 13.3-inch version, which is only available online.

A Best Buy salesperson said the MacBook Air's SKU was still active but that Apple had stopped shipping the notebooks to its online stores.

Click to continue reading MacBook Air out of stock at Best Buy, refresh coming!


E-readers are beating tablets in US adoption

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds,

Nook ereader

The increase in U.S. adults who own e-readers is outpacing the growth of tablet owners, according to a new phone survey by the Pew Internet Project.

Adults who owned ereaders like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook doubled from 6 percent of the U.S. adult population in November 2010 to 12 percent in May 2011, according to the survey of 2,277 respondents aged 18 and over. The survey was conducted in both English and Spanish.

Over the same period, the share of adults who said they owned a tablet such as Apple's iPad grew as well, but by just 3 percentage points. About 5 percent of respondents in an earlier Pew survey from November of last year said they owned a tablet, while 8 percent said they did in the most recent one, conducted between April 26 and May 22.

Click to continue reading E-readers are beating tablets in US adoption


Apple makes jailbreaking and downgrading tougher in iOS 5

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Handhelds, Software,

iOS 5 jailbreak shshApple has reportedly changed a part of iOS 5 to make it impossible for iPhone users to downgrade their phone's firmware, even if they'd rather run an earlier version.

The iPhone Dev Team, a well-known group of iPhone hackers, first discovered the change in an unlocked developer's version of iOS 5, which is expected to be released this fall.

Normally, to restore your iPhone to an earlier version, you'd save "SHSH blobs" (which are like digital signatures to authenticate software) at a specific timestamp and use a third-party app to restore your firmware back to that time. The SHSH blobs are static and can be used as often as you like.

But the team found that in iOS 5, Apple has prevented people from being able to save these blobs for a specific timestamp. Instead, Apple will re-assign your phone a new SHSH blob each time your reboot your device in jailbreak mode, making saved blobs irrelevant since Apple can just reject ones that were saved.

Click to continue reading Apple makes jailbreaking and downgrading tougher in iOS 5


Apple Final Cut Pro X review

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Product Reviews, Software,

Final Cut Pro X review

Apple's completely revamped Final Cut Pro X makes serious leaps and bounds past its predecessor in terms of usability and performance. The upgrade is a complete from-the-ground-up-rewrite that takes advantage of modern 64-bit multicore CPUs, and is a radical departure for the increasingly popular software suite.

In fact, it's changed so much that it may throw some professional users for a temporary loop; more on this later. But for the pro-sumer enthusiasts that make up the bulk of PCMag's readership—people moving up from iMovie or another consumer-level app, Final Cut Pro X is a huge leap forward in terms of usability and raw power. While its interface looks a lot more like iMovie's, with a free-form trackless "Magnetic Timeline" view, the program still packs vastly more editing power than the iLife video editor.

Read on for our thoughts!

Click to continue reading Apple Final Cut Pro X review


Will Apple replace Google Maps in iOS 5?

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Google, Rumors,

Apple could be ditching Google Maps in favor of its own navigation software in iOS 5.

MacRumors uncovered a new section in the legal disclaimers section of iOS 5 called "Map Data" that references several different third-party mapping and naviation companies such as CoreLogic, Getchee, Localeze, and TomTom, among others.

It wouldn't be much of a shock if Apple ditched Google Maps and launched its own mapping service. In recent years, Apple has snapped up a couple of mapping companies, Placebase and Poly9. Apple has also been hiring engineers with mapping and navigation experience to join the iOS team. On top of that, when Apple responded to the outpouring of media scrutiny about iPhone location tracking in April, the company revealed it was creating its own traffic database.

Click to continue reading Will Apple replace Google Maps in iOS 5?


Apple secures iPhone patent that could be huge blow to rivals

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Editorial,

iPhone patents apple

Apple has been awarded its long sought-after patent on the iPhone. Intellectual property experts say it's so broad and far-reaching that the iPhone maker may be able to bully other smart phone manufacturers out of the U.S. market entirely.

Some three-and-a-half years after filing for a patent on the iPhone, Apple on Tuesday was awarded U.S. patent number 7,966,578 for "[a] computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display, [that] comprises displaying a portion of page content, including a frame displaying a portion of frame content and also including other content of the page, on the touch screen display."

That's just the beginning of the abstract for Apple's iPhone patent, which the company filed back in December 2007. It gets quite a bit more technical in its full form, but there's one thing patent experts consulted by PCMag agree on—Apple has been awarded an incredibly broad patent that could prove to be hugely problematic for other makers of capacitive touch-screen smartphones.

Apple's patent essentially gives it ownership of the capacitive multitouch interface the company pioneered with its iPhone, said one source who has been involved in intellectual property litigation on similar matters. That's likely to produce a new round of lawsuits over the now-ubiquitous multitouch interfaces used in smartphones made by the likes of HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Research in Motion, Nokia, and others that run operating systems similar in nature to Apple's iOS, like Google's Android, said the source, who asked not to be named.

Click to continue reading Apple secures iPhone patent that could be huge blow to rivals


Apple releases 3 TB Time Capsule, slashes price on new 2 TB model

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, PC / Laptop, Wireless / WiFi,

Apple 3TB Time Capsule

Aside from today's release of Final Cut Pro X, Apple has also finally upgraded their Time Capsule backup routers. New Time Capsules have been expected for a couple of weeks now, as supplies in stores started to dwindle. There is now a new 3 TB model, which Apple is selling for $499, which is the price that the 2 TB model was selling for. The updated 2 TB Time Capsule now sells for $299, which is a great deal to have the kind of peace of mind that a device like this can offer. You can get them now at the Apple Store online.

Read More | Time Capsule product page

Here’s what happens when you use up your iCloud storage

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, Storage,

iCloud full

When Apple introduced iCloud at WWDC 2011, the big news was that the service would be free. Of course, Steve Jobs did make sure to mention that the 5 GB of storage included with iCloud would be more than enough "for most users," and we believe him. However, there are others out there (like us) who fall outside of that category. For example, I am only currently able to have iCloud back up just my iPhone 4. When I try to also add my iPad 2 to the backup, it errors out, telling me that I don't have enough space available, and that I need to buy ore storage space. Of course, since iCloud is still in beta, I'm unable to do that. Another iCloud user has come very close to hitting his 5 GB quota, and received the email above from Apple. Surprisingly to us, it  says that once he reaches 5 GB stored, he won't even be able to receive any new email messages. Sounds like people are gonna have to really keep an eye on how much storage they are using, especially if they have more than one iOS device backing up to the cloud.

Read More | MacRumors

Apple releases Final Cut Pro X, now on Mac App Store

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Software,

Final Cut Pro X

Apple released Final Cut Pro X this morning, bringing a new redesign to the company's flagship video editing program. The app is now 64-bit and support multi-core processing, alongside a new editing timeline. taking design elements from iMovie, the new layout is supposed to allow both novices and seasoned video editors to work at much faster speeds. You can insert clips, move them around, and place everything just how you want, without worry of audio losing sync, for example. Final Cut Pro X also includes much improved audio and color handling, eliminating the need (and existence) of the Color and Soundtrack Pro apps. You can get Final Cut Pro X now for $299.99 in the Mac App Store. New versions of Motion 5 and Compressor 4 are also available at $49.99 each.


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