News tagged ‘fun’

Famous anchorwoman Ellen DeGeneres had to apologize to Apple after airing a fake iPhone commercial that scoffed at the device's finical touchscreen.

Ellen said Apple just didn't find it funny - and it's a common thing for a company with reputation of being extremely protective of its brand.

"I just want to say that I'm sorry if I made it look like the iPhone is hard to use. It's not hard to use. I have an iPhone. Portia has an iPhone. I just learned how to text on an iPhone. It’s the only phone I can text on. I love it. I love my iPad. I love my iPod. I love iHop. So everybody at Apple - Steve Jobs, Mr. Macintosh. I apologize. I'm sorry. I love this stuff."

Lately Apple has released a third beta of the iPhone OS 4. It is specified as build 10M2247 and available for registered developers. Previous beta release was issued two weeks ago. The situation looks familiar as last year iPhone OS 3 had also gone through 5 beta cycles before it was publicly announced.

Currently the new update is unavailable due to installation problems, but those of the developers who successfully downloaded and installed it have already revealed what's new in the release.

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Few days ago John Batelle from the Searchblog wrote an interesting post about his thoughts on Siri, an app that was recently acquired by Apple. His says with devices like iPhone or iPad we starting to use apps more than browse the Internet. Apple understands that and looks forward to increase its share on a market of apps. And Siri is a wonderful choice - its perspective, functional, unusual enough for nowadays. With cash that Apple has, it doesn't need strong and focused reasons to make such a deal.

Batelle's another thought is that with Siri Apple may become a rival to Google. Just imagine yourself saying to the app "Chicago rental car» and after that it answers:

"...You don't need to rent a car. You can use the Chicago Transit. Here's an app for it. You can get from the airport to everywhere you want to go without having to rent a car. Plus, you'll save $150 which we know is a goal of yours because you've been interacting with the Mint application..."

The idea of searching the information will also be implemented in applications we will use. And if we'll get used to it, it will seem to be much more convenient than launching a browser and typing something into the search pole.

This week Apple announced that it will shut down its previously acquired music service Lala on May 31. If you'll try to register there as a new user, you'll see a message box:

"Lala is shutting down. The Lala Service will be shut down May 31, 2010. Unfortunately, we are no longer accepting new members."

If you're an existing member of Lala, you'll be able to use the service until May 31. But since today you'll have no access to Web songs, gift cards (any unredeemed must be utilized) and wallets, and your credits will be automatically passed to iTunes. It is also announced by Lala if customer will request a check by May 31 they will write it.

Apple purchased Lala last year for $85 million. It was announced that this service will play a significant role in iTunes strategy. Lala's difference was that user was allowed to upload music from their hard drives and then listen to it from the service. Maybe now this function will be implemented in iTunes.

According to the report revealed by Chosun resource 5MP camera sensors for iPhone 4G will be supplied by LG Innotek.

"The electronics component maker began producing the sophisticated cameras at its plant in Gumi this month and will mass produce them starting in the second half of this year."

So the rumors about OmniVision going to supply cameras for a new generation of iPhones that appeared in December 2009 are incorrect.

iPhone 4G is expected to have not only 5.0-megapixels capera, but also a camera flash (probably based on Philips' LUXEON LED techonogy). The functions for flash are already implemented in iPhone OS 4.0.

Yesterday Apple released a minor update for its media player suite iTunes. Now the version of the app is 9.1.1 and here is a list of issues that were fixed:

• Addressing some issues that improve stability and performance.
• Addressing a usability issue with VoiceOver and Genius Mixes;
• Addressing several stability issues with VoiceOver;
• Addressing issues with converting songs to 128 kbps AAC while syncing (this function was previously available only for iPod shuffle)

More information about security updates can be found on Apple's support page here.

You can update your iTunes via software update utility or download it directly from Apple.

Monte Vista Christian School in California has purchased sixty Apple iPads for use in its classrooms. The devices were introduces last Thursday to those of the students who will participate in an experimental project. If the results will be successful, Monte Vista's headmaster Stephen Sharp will replace textbooks with interactive e-versions.

“There are many academic advantages. They provide new access to photos, videos, daily newspapers and resource material that enhance the curriculum.”

Marcus Scwager, who is an English teacher, is excited about the function of pop-up word definitions while reading Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Science teacher Cynthia Armstrong used an iPad to show a cutaway of female body with a zoom function for closer look.

As the iPads are used only for classroom use, students e-mail their notes to a previously created account that they can access later at home. They can use a special app for copying graphs from the board, SoundPaper app to record lectures for listening it later where they want.

Alyssa Villanueva, who is a 15-year-old student, also enjoys the iPad:

“It’s a little easier to use. You can really focus on where you’re studying."

Apple provides a $50 school discount for its tablets. The company has also developed a special program for teachers to train them to use the new technology.

Few days ago Lang Lang, who is a famous Chinese pianist, had a concert at San Francisco's Davies' Symphony Hall. At one moment he amazed audience with playing The Flight of the Bumblebee on an Apple's iPad! He made this possible with Magic Piano iPad app that is available for download here.

It is amazing how apps can make a device so functional. But some people say it is impossible to play like this on an iPad because its touch screen is not sensitive enough for such a fast play. You can even notice the moment when Lang Lang gives a device to conductor without skipping a beat. So probably it's just a record that was made before.

The same guy who two years ago ported Linux 2.6 kernel to the iPhone has yesterday posted a video of Adroid OS running on iPhone. He is a member of iPhone Dev-team and his nickname is Planetbeing.

What is more important, Android has been ported to iPhone with ability to choose what OS you'd like to work with on a boot. This was achieved by OpeniBoot bootloader, which is also developed by Planetbeing.

As it can be understood from the video, this is the alpha-version of Android for iPhone though most of the functions (such as playing music, making calls, browsing Internet) are working fine. The volume buttons serve as the "home" and "call" buttons.

Planetbeing has also posted image that can be downloaded here, but he also states this version works fine only with iPhone 2G. Porting to iPhone 3G must be simple, but there may be problems with delivering Android to iPhone 3GS.

Video above can be described as a humorous quintessence of Steve Jobs' keynote when he presented iPhone OS 4.0. It is made by Neil Curtis who is known for his another 180-sec videoclip about iPad. Looks pretty funny!

A few hours ago iH8sn0w posted a tweet that he is able to run jailbreak on the new firmware 4.0 beta 1. DarkMalloc, another developer who worked on the project, has just released new video that shows firmware 4.0 jailbreak on iPhone 3G:

The interesting thing, besides the presence of Cydia and MobileTerminal, is the possibility to have multiple applications open at once. That means that multitasking on iPhone 3G can be enabled. Officially Apple doesn't want to activate this functionality on iPhone 3G, just iPhone 3GS and later devices.

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Twitter-user named @cdevwill claims multi-tasking can be enabled on the iPhone 3G (and that means it can be used for every device with iPhone OS 3) just by setting a TRUE-flag in the capabilities list.

Some people are not surprised of this, because obviously Apple turned this function off to increase the battery line. But the way of turning multi-tasking on looks way too simple, don't you think?

As you know the sales of Apple iPad are announced to start at the 9am on April, 3rd. A few hours left before this moment will come so here is a bunch of photos from the iPad waiting lines we found on the Internet so far (CultOfMac, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, iJustine, Mashable and other sources) .

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New forecast published by iSuppli on Friday revealed that approximately 14.4 million iPads will be sold in 2011 and 20.1 million - in 2012. This year won't make a sales record because most of the consumers will buy it for its unique touch-screen. By 2011-2012 the device will become more popular with the increasing number of App Store applications, declining prices and improved functionality, so people will more clearly understand its possible purposes.

But iSuppli claims the research to be "conservative", because it doesn't take into account unforeseen features that Apple can quickly add to iPad to boost sales (for example, integrating Adobe Flash support). However the numbers rely on a patented multi-touch technology that will mainly define the popularity of a new device.

iSuppli director of monitor research Rhoda Alexander admires iPad:

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This morning Digg released their official iPhone app. It allows you to browse and interact with the popular news aggregator. You can view the top, recent and upcoming stories in any category; clicking a headline will lead to a built-in browser that will display a requested page. At the bottom of the screen you'll find a buttons to Digg or Bury (like or dislike) the story, Save The Story button (for this you need to be logged in with your Digg account), and an option of sharing the link. The latter is pretty convenient, as you can send the story to the Email, Twitter, Facebook or to the iPhone's clipboard.

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