Jake Smith

Lake Minneloa, a school in Central Florida, is outfitting its students with over half a million dollars worth of iPads. Every student will be able to use their iPad at school and take it home with them for ‘homework’ at night (KIDS THESE DAYS!*shakes fist*)..

The school says this is an effort to save money on text books and bring a new type of learning to students.

The final cost was $700,000 dollars, which brought the school 1,750 iPads (which means they are getting a healthy discount at $400 each). Why isn’t every school doing this? (Schools in El Paso are as well)

“Students learn differently now because of the technology,” said Kathy Halbig, innovative learning manager for the Lake school district who is overseeing the project. “Students are used to having multiple sources and being able to have more social collaboration in their learning process rather than just doing it sitting quietly and reading.”

via Orlando Sentinel
Expand
Expanding
Close

According to a report (via MR) from The China Times, the iPhone 5 will launch the second week of September (6-15), and the iPad 3 launch will be delayed until Thanksgiving due to component issues. This iPhone 5 report lines up nicely with reports from Reuters regarding a September launch and an earlier report saying right after Labor day (Sept 5th).

If a September launch were to be the case, we assume the iPhone 5 would be announced at Apple’s annual music event in September. Obviously, iOS 5 would accompany it. The China Times’ report regarding a fall launch for the iPad 3 trails behind with what we’ve already heard.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has released an update to their Shopper app conveniently giving users information on daily deals, including Google Offers. The update adds a “Offers” and “My Offers” tab at the bottom, along with the Shop tab you know and love. The Offers tab displays deals in map view that are available in your city. The deals you find can be saved in the My Offers tab for later use.

Businesses, on the other hand, can publish deals through Google Places. If Google Offers is available in your city you can redeem your purchased offers in the My Offers tab. Check out the update in the App Store.

Cross posted from 9to5Google.
Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_vaZl0H56o]

TldToday has discovered in the recently released Macbook Airs speed is not consistent among SSDs. While running tests, TldToday found that the 128GB Samsung SSD in the 11-inch MacBookAir scored 246 MB/s write and 264 MB/s read speeds, but when he switched to the 13-inch model speeds dropped to 156 MB/s and 208 MB/s using a 128GB Toshiba SSD. Engadget ran similar tests and confirmed Tld’s findings. In the video above you can find how to check if your MBA has the faster Samsung, or the slower Toshiba. Let us know if you see speed differences in normal usage.

Expand
Expanding
Close

For reasons yet undefined, Google Books has been removed from the iTunes App Store.  We noticed the App was gone earlier this week but thought it might have been just a blip.  Now it has been awhile.

Google Books was just updated in April with new 3D page turning, landscape mode and search so it is unlikely that Google decided to orphan it.  Google launched its Books initiative in December of this year as a competitor to Amazon and Apple’s eBookstores.

So why is it gone now?  The timing with Apple’s new, controversial Terms of Service would seem like the most obvious explanation.

Was Google in violation of Apple’s new in-app purchase terms of service? Or, is this because Harry Potter is coming out on Google Books?

We’ve reached out to Google and Apple for answers.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has issued a recall for a “small number” of 1TB Seagate hard drives in the 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs. Apple’s announcement doesn’t go into specifics, but says the systems were sold between May 2011 and July 2011. If you’re are experiencing issues you can take your iMac to an Apple retail store or Apple service provider, or you can contact Apple technical support. Apple will replace the hard drive free of charge. (via MacRumors)

Expand
Expanding
Close

CNet has discovered that OS X Lion users lose support for Time Machine backups with third-party NAS hard drives. Time Machine in OS X Lion is now only compatible with Netatalk 2.0. This means that third-party NAS (network attached storage) drives will need a software upgrade from their respective manufactures in order to work with Apple’s next-generation Mac operating system. Users of cable-connected external hard drives will not be affected. Drobo, the company behind popular network attached storage devices has noted the issues on their website:

DroboFS, B800fs and DroboPro FS users running Mac OS X Lion (OS X 10.7) will experience problems with Time Machine.

The next official firmware release for all “FS” products will ensure full compatibility with the released version of Mac OS X Lion,  including use of Time Machine.

Another popular NAS drive maker, Synology, has already released a fix in beta form. Other NAS drive makers will likely follow up with their own OS X Lion compatibility updates.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8DTFdw7Q7Qe”]

Lifehacker has conducted a series of tests to see which is faster: Lion or Snow Leopard. As you can see in the video above, the two operating systems do about the same in almost every category tested, but Snow Leopard weasels out the win almost every time. To be fair, most categories were won by a very small margin. Lifehacker summarizes:

Boot	1:32	1:25
Compress a ~900MB File	0:51	0:59
Decompress a ~900MB File	0:10	0:09
Duplicate a ~900MB File	0:09	0:09
Encoder a Movie for iPhone in Quicktime X	0:56	0:53
Launch 9 Applications	0:59	0:37
Open 10 Tabs in Safari	0:15	0:17
Total Time	4:43+	4:29

Snow Leopard was built for speed and Lion was built to add functionality. It’s great to see Lion isn’t exactly slipping away on the speed end of things. How’s the speed on your end?

Expand
Expanding
Close

.

A new report from Cnet.co.uk seems to imply that Apple could launch a new iPhone on August 16th.  Their source?  A job posting for temporary workers who would work the last two weeks in August.

The job listing, posted by Gekko Ltd., says Apple is looking for a “full-time iPhone Sales Staff for an exciting project to work 5 days a week (Tuesday-Saturday) for the period 16th August – 29th October within key retail stores”. Oddly enough, Apple didn’t post the listing on their own, rather hiring out Gekko Ltd. to find their new Apple Store talent. Gekko appears to have worked with Apple before:

The awards page on Gekko’s website indicates that it has worked with Apple in the past on shops within shops — the specific Apple-branded sections within larger outlets. We’d wager that Gekko is hiring to fill these sections, as one of the responsibilities of the advertised role is to “ensure the Apple area within the store is effectively merchandised”.

Rumors pointing to a September or early October  launch for the new iPhone have been prevalent so far with Apple’s traditional  early September music announcement, but we’re happy to line up early.  Full listing below:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Image via Techcrunch

AOL has launched PLAY for iPhone, a new social experience for music as something perhaps a bit more rewarding than Apple’s Ping. The app taps right into your music hosted on the iPhone, accesses radio stations, shares music with friends and followers, and much more. PLAY has been available on Android for a couple of months, but now hits iPhone. Think Instagram — for music.

The PLAY music player is pretty straight-forward, and doesn’t veer much from Apple’s Music app. While listening to a song in the player you can click the share button, allowing you to post the song recommendation to the PLAY feed, Twitter, and Facebook. In the Feed users can play music that their friends have shared and then quickly buy it on iTunes. Lastly, the PLAY section of the app offers song recommendations, or what they call “MP3 of the Day”. We don’t see users switching to this app just to play music, but we can see the sharing features being a draw.

The app seems pretty cool overall, but who knows if there will be a community behind it. Go download the app to find out.

via TechCrunch
Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op4t3h10vMU]

iPhone Download Blog posts a nice video of Swype on Jailbroken iOS

Swype is a keyboard system for touch mobile devices that enables users to type faster in some instances because it doesn’t require as much ‘tapping’. Apple has shown little interest in putting Swype on iOS devices however.

That’s where the jailbreaking community comes in.  Andrew Liu (@WyndWarrior) is working on porting Swype to iOS. With the recent Jailbreakme.com, making it incredibly easy to jailbreak your phone, many others will try it (remember it is in beta).

If you are the adventurous type:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Reuters is reporting that the second hacker has been indicted in the case of personal data being copied from AT&T iPad infrastructure. Earlier this year, the two hackers breached AT&T’s servers and received 120,000 iPad users’ personal data.  They then reported that data to a media outlet who embarrassed AT&T.  Two weeks ago, the first hacker, Daniel Spitler, plead guilty last week and could wind up testifying against his accomplice to reduce his sentence.

The hacker indicted today, Andrew Auernheimer, is being charged with one count of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers and one count of identity theft.

Andrew Auernheimer was charged by a Newark, New Jersey grand jury with one count of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers and one count of identity theft, the office of U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey said.

Auernheimer is free on bail, while his partner Spitler is waiting sentencing September 28th. Spitler could face 12 to 18 months in prison. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Today, President Obama made history by hosting the first ever Twitter Townhall, with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. During the event, President Obama made the first live presidential tweet ever…on a MacBook Pro.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe-rIymyxys&start=470]

Besides using a Mac, President Obama shared his praise for Apple, but mentioned that he would love to see device parts manufactured in the United States.

via CNN

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufdXy_NZjXc]

Apple packages an elegant little USB key with its MacBook Airs that allows you to restore Snow Leopard if your machine goes south.  But with many people upgrading to Lion, few will want to go through the process of downgrading to Snow Leopard and again to Lion if the machine goes bad.

Here is a way to upgrade your USB Key to Lion as well as your MacBook Air.

MacBenTosh has posted (thanks, Danny!) a video guide showing how to format the restore key into a drive that works like a normal 8GB rewritable Flash drive. To follow along with the instructions in the video you’ll need an instance of Windows running in a virtual machine, Boot Camp or a separate PC.  After restoring, the key will be shown as a 8GB drive.

From that point, Egg Freckles has posted a guide on how to create a Lion disc. Of course Lion will only be available from the App Store (or Dev site), but it’s nice to have a local, external installer.

Expand
Expanding
Close

A new report by Global Equities Research says Apple’s iTunes will hit $13 billion in revenue in fiscal 2013. To reach that point, GER says iTunes will grow at a rate of 39%, or 13% a year. This report cites all parts of the Apple store ecosystem including music, apps, and books, will contribute to the growth. GER believes the iBookstore will have a major role.

Our research with students indicates that they would rather have books on iPad vs. Kindle.

The analyst also believe the rising number of iPad apps will contribute to the growth. Six months ago the average iPhone and iPad user only had 15 apps, and now they have 45. Who knows, maybe with the announcement of the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 these numbers could shoot even higher.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Have you ever wanted to get your hands on an iPhone that Apple engineers have used for testing? If you’ve got 5 figures to blow on a non working phone, now’s your chance because an iPhone 4 prototype has shown up on Ebay. The listing comes from a user by the name of jtmaxo, who lists the device as ‘Apple iPhone 4 black APPLE GENUINE PROTOTYPE, GENUINE’. In the description the users states the device as a GSM iPhone labeled with the model number XXXXX FCC ID: BCGAXXXXX IC ID: 579C-AXXXXX.

Just like Gizmodo’s iPhone 4 prototype, the volume buttons are missing ‘+’ and ‘-‘ labels and storage information (XXGB) on the back of the device. Also, the seller says the device won’t activate through an AT&T SIM card plugged in through iTunes. Lastly, on the front of the device a ‘DF1692’ label is shown, which is thought of as a tracking code used by Apple. When the seller searched the serial number on Apple.com, it returned no results. So, where did the seller get this device?

(update: the prices keep fluctuating.  It was over $100,000 last night but somehow is down to $7K this morning.  Apple will likely pull this auction anyway.)

via This is my next

Expand
Expanding
Close

In April, Apple originally filed a lawsuit against Samsung saying Samsung’s Galaxy Tab copied the iPhone and iPad. Soon after, Samsung filed a counter-patent suit against Apple and asked to see the iPhone 5 and iPad 3. Seeing the unreleased devices was denied by a judge earlier this year. This week Samsung has dropped their counter-patent suit.

The suit was dropped on June 30th, but Samsung will continue to fight patents with an earlier counter-patent suit.  While Samsung dropped the suit in the U.S., it won’t affect other patent suits they have. Besides the U.S., Samsung has lawsuits against Apple in South Korea, Japan, Germany, and the U.K.

Samsung’s spokesperson Nam Ki Yung told Bloomberg the counter-suit was dropped “to streamline the legal proceedings”. Nam also told Bloomberg, “Samsung will continue to actively defend and protect our intellectual property”.

When updating the MacOS, bugs are usually a part of the ordeal. After upgrading to 10.6.8, 9to5Mac readers have had printers connected via their networks drop, optical audio out stop working, and some Parallels bugs. Never fear, there are fixes for all of these problems:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Using Apple’s set of APIs, the New York Times has opened up in-app subscriptions in their iPhone and iPad app reports Macstories. After setting a paywall not too long ago the New York Times has been looking for ways to get their users to sign up for the subscription. It appears the Times has found their way, through the app store, offering subscriptions for website, iPhone, and iPad access. The Times is charging users $15 for access to the website plus iPhone, $20 for website plus iPad, and a combo of all three for $35. If you’re interested download the apps here and here.

In this digital age, do you agree with the New York Time’s subscription model?

As with just about any new Apple product release, iFixit has torn apart the Thunderbolt cable. Why a boring cable?  iFixit has revealed that the new Thunderbolt cable actually has active chips inside, making transfers  faster.

We found two Gennum GN2033 chips in the connector, one on each side. They were flanked by other, much smaller chips that surely added to the cable’s cost: two chips labeled S6A 1JG on one side, and chips labeled 1102F SS8370 and 131 3S on the other. Of course, there were tons of little resistors (providing impedance as needed) all around the larger chips.

Thunderbolt’s release on MacBook Pros and iMacs should be followed by new Macs coming soon. Inside the cable chip housing below
Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBISzVRmYIM]

Cross-posted from 9to5Google.

So why does Google+ look so good? It’s simple; it was designed by one of the creators of the original Macintosh. Wired’s Steven Levy is reporting that Andy Hertzfeld, one of the designers from Steve Jobs’ band of pirates, played an essential role in the design of Google+.

With colorful animations, drag-and-drop magic, and whimsical interface touches, Circles looks more like a classic Apple program than the typically bland Google app. That’s no surprise since the key interface designer was legendary software artist Andy Hertzfeld.

Google+ design really is excellent, especially for Google. It is invite-only at the moment.  We’re taking notes in the mean time.
Expand
Expanding
Close