iCade expands with more cool stuff..

Posted on January 9, 2012 by SimonPhillips

You may or may not have seen the awesome iCade product – Basically its a cabinet you pop your iPad or iPad 2 into and link via Bluetooth to make it work. Download some Atari classics (free for the small pack and only £6.99 for all of it) and hey presto.. one mini classic arcade machine. If you have never seen this device, check it out.. awesome and really well supported.

icade

 

ION Audio who make the device shown above have just released a couple more gadgets for the arcade fan. The iCade Core (a cut down version of the above) and the iCade mobile – somewhat PSP styled. If they are as good as the iCade – these will be fantastic toys.

icadecore

Apple Television?

Posted on January 5, 2012 by SimonPhillips

The rumour mill has once again gone into overdrive as it does each year around the time of CES in Las Vegas. This time its Apple TV that’s doing the rounds.. its been a whisper on the tech circuit for some time now. Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying that they have ‘cracked TV’ and have a ‘simple user interface’. Nothing less from Apple would do..

Recent rumours suggest that Jonathan Ive (Apples top design engineer) has a 50” prototype model in his secure lab. The unit is reported to have WIFI and is rather slick looking. It makes sense that Apple will indeed try to enter the TV market.. why not, it links in with all their other devices and as families become more and more iOS hooked with their iPads, iPhones and Macbooks.. TV just seems to follow.

Nobody has a solid image of the reported device as yet.. but it might just look something like this..

apple television

Got a spare 5 seconds, then you can bypass iPad2 security!

Posted on October 26, 2011 by SimonPhillips

The password protection on Apples iPad 1 and 2 is done through the use of a pin code. Not a bad idea really, we all use pin codes everyday so why not stick with a familiar format. Sadly if you have an IPad 2 running the latest IOS 5 version your iPad isn’t secure.

Bypassing the unlock screen on an iPad 2 can be done by simply pressing the power button until the power off screen is displayed. Then all you need to do is close and then reopen the smart cover before pressing cancel – hey presto its unlocked! Terrible news for corporate users.

Is this poor coding or poor testing? – possibly both I imagine. But it is a clear indication that these devices, as impressive as they are, are fairly and squarely domestic devices and aren’t quite there yet in terms of their all round use.

Watch this space for more updates – I bet there is a revision update on its way to IOS 5 any day soon! 

Goodbye Steve Jobs – Coolest IT dude ever?! A Sad Loss

Posted on October 7, 2011 by SimonPhillips

The world is awash with news of the passing of Steve Jobs. A very sad day indeed, thoughts go out to his family and friends. The IT community has lost a great visionary and a man of Hero/Cult status.. and let me say in IT.. there aren’t many of those. I won’t go on about Steve Jobs and Apple in this post.. its all over the internet. Just a post to say how sad a loss it is really.. check out this reworked logo by Jonathan Mak – Very fitting.

apple_steve_jobs

New iPhones any day now..

Posted on October 2, 2011 by SimonPhillips

Ok, its basically 48 hours until Apple ‘might’ be announcing its new iPhone models. Obviously the hype is centred much around the iPhone 5 but there is much more solid evidence of new iPhone 4 models. The talk is that there will be a new lower end iPhone 4, perhaps this is essentially the current iPhone 4 but with a limited 8GB capacity designed to replace the 3GS as the base iPhone model at the lower end of the range. The new iPhone 4S will be a souped up version of todays iPhone 4, perhaps with a faster CPU  (most likely the A5 CPU) and up to 64GB capacity. The current iPhone 4 is marked as a model number N90 and the 4S is expected to be marked with the model number N94 (this all but confirmed by various component leaks from foxconn who make the devices.

iPhone 5 coming soon…

Posted on September 17, 2011 by SimonPhillips

As ever the grapevine is busy rustling with news of Apples latest ‘i’ device – the iPhone 5 (or whatever they call it). If we are honest, the new device will only be an evolution of the old phone. Think IPad 2 and shrink it down and maybe make the screen a little larger than the existing iPhone 4 and i think you’ll be about there. Maybe a better camera, maybe even a whizzy A5 dual core CPU.. who knows. Inevitably iOS 5.0 and an Ariel that’s not utter rubbish (or at least a phone that doesn’t drop calls like mine did all the time).

Case-Mate inadvertently published some images of its new iPhone cases with one can only assume iPhone 5’s in them! Or at least an accurate representation or they wouldn’t be making the things right?

case_mate_iphone_5_cases

If you look at the shape of the case and the back of the device in it you’ll notice a more curved edge just like the iPad 2. I like this, my iPhone 4 was too square.. i always worried that when i dropped it it would definitely be landing on one of its edges. This seems like an improvement, it will certainly be better in your pocket than the 4.

Having read all the junk online and dismissed most of it as utter rubbish this is what i think the iPhone 5 will look like when we finally see it…

iphone 5

 

Watch this space,.,. if it does look like this when it released (we think this month or next month at the latest – after all Christmas is coming) My HTC sensation will be getting thrown on the roof and I’ll be back with an iPhone.

Apple chooses Microsoft and Amazon as the backend for iCloud

Posted on September 2, 2011 by administrator

In a very hush hush deal, Apple have selected Microsoft Azure and Amazon as partners in it’s iCloud platform.

The data from iCloud will be striped between the 2 providers – for the moment at least.

Apple have been struggling with outages in it’s MobileMe service and Mr Jobs himself has stated that Apple have to learn more about internet services.

This could just be a stop gap as Apple are building a huge datacentre in North Carolina which has the capacity to house iCloud.

Steve Jobs resigns from Apple..

Posted on August 26, 2011 by SimonPhillips

Its been a long time coming but the man we credit for the bigger part of Apples success Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO. If you are an Apple fan or not its hard to ignore some of the great products and frankly one of the biggest turnarounds in a technology company ever.

I’ll be posting a list of Apples biggest and best.. along with a few of the less popular Apple products soon. Watch this space for more news about Apple.

Apple’s new Head Office?! Awesome or the beginning of the end?

Posted on August 14, 2011 by SimonPhillips

Quite aptly dubbed the spaceship campus – Apple has posted more renderings of its planned new ‘offices’ in Cupertino. Its quite an ambitious project but very fitting for Apple, although where they will find all that brushed aluminium I’ll never know.

apple HQ 1

The facility is said to include office space including research and development space totalling 2.8 million square feet, A 1000 seat corporate auditorium, A gym and fitness centre and a central plant… possibly for prototyping and development. It looks like it will be up and running circa 2015.

Whilst this is clearly great news for a company like Apple and a sure sign of their success and intentions to continue growing. Will a building like this offer a marker for the future? – Will this be the Apple equivalent of the Houses of Parliament? – Apple already have more cash on hand than the US government and some seem to think a higher credit rating. Expect to see more of the big companies doing this.. and wonder.. how much power do these guys have really? Food for thought.

Black Macbook Air anyone?

Posted on June 27, 2011 by SimonPhillips

Rumours have suggested that Apple are working on a new prototype Macbook Air in anodized black. very nice! Its been a while since Apple did something like this – I hark back to the days of the terrible plastic Mac notebooks.

black_macbook_air

This isn’t just a rumour – Apple have confirmed that there are a number of test units on Campus that they have been testing. Sadly at this moment the finish seems to soak up body oils from being used and handled and this ruined the look of the machine. Its said that Steve Jobs has halted the project as it was too easy to make the machine look bad. Who would have thought image was so important huh.