While Jawbone attempts to fix the handful of substantial issues plaguing its new Up fitness band, it’s now announced that it will begin giving free refunds to dissatisfied customers — and you can even keep hold of the band afterwards.
Jawbone made a big splash with the Up: the band, worn on the wrist, tracks both activity and rest, helping you get a better sense of your fitness level (in conjunction with free smartphone software). Unfortunately, the Up has been plagued with well-publicized reliability problems, which is causing Jawbone to retool. The company deserves plaudits for offering the no-questions-asked refund – hopefully it’ll get it right the next time. I still think the idea of wearing this thing all time to track your activity like a human Lojack is a bit creepy, though.
In a setback for AT&T Inc., a Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge Friday the agency wants to postpone its antitrust case seeking to block the acquisition of T-Mobile USA. The request, if approved by the judge, would delay a trial slated for February and drag out the regulatory review of the $39 billion deal. AT&T and T-Mobile have said quick resolution of the court case is essential or the proposed merger will fall apart.
It’s a bit of chicken and egg here. The Department of Justice is asking the judge to postpone the trial because AT&T and T-Mobile have withdrawn their application for merger approval with the FCC, but the companies say they’ve done so to focus their attention on DoJ’s antitrust case.
Redesign. The word itself can send shudders down the spines of any Web designer and developer. For many designers and website owners, the imminent onslaught of endless review cycles, coupled with an infinite number of “stakeholders” and their inevitable “opinions,” would drive them to shave their heads with a cheese grater if given a choice between the two. Despite these realities, redesigns are a fact of any online property’s life cycle. Here are five key indications that it’s time to redesign your website and of how extensive that redesign needs to be.
Apple on Thursday released versions of its professional-level Mac music apps to the Mac App Store. The release of Logic Pro 9.1.6 and MainStage 2.2 marks the last of Apple’s apps to be released on the Mac App Store.
Apple priced Logic Pro at $199 and MainStage at $29.99. Users that purchase either app will also be authorized to download Apple’s sound library, consisting of six Jam Packs, sound effects and other media. There is about 25GB of media in the sound library. You can also download the sound library content later from within the app itself.
Both apps released on the Mac App Store have been updated to new versions — Logic Pro received some minor bug fixes, but no new features.
MainStage 2.2 now takes full advantage of Macs with four or more processor cores and has added support for more MIDI devices. The interface has also been rebuilt make some elements a bit larger.
Apple will release Logic Pro 9.1.6 as a software update, allowing current users of Logic Studio to run the update. However, MainStage 2.2 is a new application and will not be released as an update for existing users. If you want the update, you will have to buy it from the Mac App Store for $29.99.
Apple said that Logic Studio would continue to be available from its online store, but the company will no longer be sending boxed versions to any retail locations.
As part of the move that brings Logic Pro to the Mac App Store, Apple discontinued Logic Express. Losing Express isn’t a big surprise considering you can buy Pro for the same price.
Most of the other apps that make up Logic Studio are also going away. The functionality of Soundtrack Pro has been built into Final Cut Pro X, so it will not be available on the Mac App Store. Compressor is already available on the Mac App Store as a separate purchase and you won’t be able to download WaveBurner. The functionality of the Apple Loops Utility has been built into Logic Pro for some time, so that app won’t be missed.
Of course, you can get all of those apps if you purchase the boxed version of Logic Studio from the online store.
While Apple had nothing new to say about Logic 10, the move to the Mac App Store is definitely a good sign for users. Clearly if the company planned to stop development of Logic, it wouldn’t move it to the Mac App Store.
Archrival, a research group that focuses on youth marketing, surveyed 500 students at 24 colleges and universities across the United States. They found that although about 80% of students owned a smartphone and had previously seen a QR code, only about 20% were able to successfully scan the example QR code they were shown.
QR codes certainly solve a problem – entering URLs on mobile devices can be a pain, and the idea of quickly scanning something using your phone’s camera seems to make sense. But until the kinks are worked out, especially when it comes to security, they’re destined to remain little more than a curiosity.
If you’re looking for something akin to Red Dead Redemption for your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, check out Gameloft’s new “freemium” release, Six-Guns.
The game combines “Wild West”-era action with vampires, werewolves and witches. It’s a wide-open “sandbox” style game in whcih you must face off against a supernatural force. Features include eight hourses, 20 weapons, customizable clothes and other items, 40 varied missions and a variety of foes to shoot and combat.
Worms Crazy Golf is a hilarious mixture of the explosive action of Worms and the puzzle-based challenges of crazy golf! All of the trademark Worms humour, comic violence, and cartoon visuals are present, combined with addictive yet accessible golf gameplay. With extensive and replayable single-player options, and hot-seat multi-player for up to 4 players, this is not just a load of balls!
Apple on Thursday posted iTunes Rewind 2011 and App Store Rewind 2011, which lists the best and top downloaded music, apps, TV shows, books, movies and podcasts of 2011.
Apple’s top iPhone app of the year goes to Instagram, with Snapseed taking the honor for the iPad app of the year. The top game for the iPad is Dead Space, while Tiny Tower is on top for the iPhone.
For the first time an artist has swept three major music milestones for the iTunes Rewind 2011 year-end roundup: Adele has been named for Top-Selling Song (Rolling in the Deep), Top-Selling Album (21) and iTunes Artist of the Year for 2011 (photo attached, credit: Andrew Yee).
Apple’s top artist on iTunes is Adele and Album of the Year honors goes to the Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light.
Apple gave the Best Blockbuster movie award to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 and the Best Comedy to Bridesmaids.
You can see all of Apple’s top rated lists on iTunes Rewind 2011 and App Store Rewind 2011.
In an interesting move, Microsoft has released its My Xbox Live app on Apple’s App Store for iOS devices. The free app will allow players to access their Xbox Live profile on-the-go, much like the Xbox Live hub on Windows Phone 7.
Microsoft will be the first to tell you that their Xbox Live integration is much more complete if you’re using a Windows Phone 7 device, but it’s a nice gesture to see the app available for iOS as well. It’ll also give you a taste of Microsoft’s lauded “Metro” interface, which graces Windows Phone 7 devices.
This was particularly true of BlackBerry users. More than half (53%) of survey respondents who identified themselves as BlackBerry users said they would like an iPad if they were to buy a tablet. A much smaller percentage of BlackBerry owners opted for the other two most popular choices in the study: Amazon’s Kindle Fire (12%) or Samsung’s Galaxy Tab (11%).Only 8.5% of BlackBerry users expressed preference for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.
So we now know that there are 8.5 percent of BlackBerry users that don’t use email.
If you have a Pokemon fan in the house, you might be interested in MinoMonsters — a new iPhone and iPod touch game that’s now available for download for 99 cents.
It’s a turn-based monster battling game in which you pit your pet monsters against an opponent, trading blows until a victor emerges. There’s a backstory involving a legendary kingdom and a remote island archipelago that serves as home to these magical beasts.
MinoMonsters features the ability to gain skills, get bonuses, finding hidden loot, and capture new monsters. You must also take care of your stable of monsters by feeding them, petting them and taking care of them. Some monsters feature special abilities, and as they gain experience in battle they’ll level up, become stronger and learn new skills.
Chronos Inc. has released Lumio, a new wallpaper utility for Mac OS X. It costs $4.99 (an introductory price), and a free version is available for download.
The new app includes more than 250 professional-quality wallpapers in various popular screen resolutions, presented in an “art gallery”-style interface with a resizable window and support for multiple screens. Lumio works with Mac OS X 10.7 or later and 350MB hard disk space.
Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is ready! No, not really.
Google is done with Ice Cream Sandwich, but the process of getting it to customers is far from over. Having Google release the source code is just the first step in the process — now the real work for handset makers begins.
Motorola and Sony have outlined the process still left before it hits customer’s phones. As Motorola says, “Once source code is released from Google, it doesn’t automatically update to your device.”
So what are these steps?
Merge and adapt the new release for different device hardware architecture(s) and carrier customizations.
Stabilize and ‘bake’ the result to drive out bugs.
Submit the upgrade to the carriers for certification.
Perform a Customer pre-release.
Release the upgrade
Interesting, I don’t see anything about protecting phones from the massive amount of malware on the Android Market. Maybe that comes later.
Can you imagine if Apple did something like this? People would lose their minds.
They work with artists to create quality High Definition live videos of band performing in the company’s state of the art San Francisco studio, which includes a sound stage, engineer, set designers, lighting engineers, a full-recording studio and videographers. The final videos I saw of bands like the Stone Foxes, Kill Rock Star’s Thao and Mirah and the rapper Wallpaper looked and sounded great.The best part: BAMM.tv doesn’t charge the artist a single penny for the videos or the production — It’s completely free.
This is an article I did for Billboard after visiting with BAMM.tv in October. I expect these guys are going to change the way musicians think about videos.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes takes a look at six glaring problems with the Andorid ecosystem in a new ZDNet article entitled Six Android issues that Google doesn’t want to address. Among the problems he lists are how most Android handsets now in use can’t and won’t run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich); staggering failure and return rates on Android phones; malware issues; bloatware installed by handset makers and carriers; and more.
Apple could face disruption to its iPad sales in China after a court rejected its claim to own the iPad trademark in the country and a rival sought to halt sales of the tablet device in two Chinese cities.The developments are the latest in a long-running dispute between Apple and Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a struggling Taiwanese-owned company that registered trademarks for the name IPAD in many countries long before Apple conceived its smash hit tablet computer.
Eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini were part of a 14-car crash in Japan yesterday that wrecked more than $1 million of vehicles.“The accident occurred when the driver of a red Ferrari was switching from the right lane to the left and skidded,” said Mitsuyoshi Isejima, executive officer for Yamaguchi Prefecture’s Expressway Traffic Police unit. “It was a gathering of narcissists.” The drivers were aged between 37 and 60 years old, he said.
It sounds – and looks – like a joke, but audio equipment maker Behringer is serious about its iNuke Boom, a 10,000 watt speaker system for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
Yes, that tiny little dot on the top of the speaker dock in the image above is an iPhone or iPod touch, just to give you a sense of scale.
The speaker system measures eight feet wide and four feet tall and weighs over 700 pounds, pumping out 10,000 watts. Behringer plans to unveil the new iPod dock at CES 2012, and it’ll carry a $30,000 price tag. We shudder to think at what shipping will cost on top of that.
Just the thing to really feel the wobble bass in that dubstep playlist on your iPod touch.
Today’s updated Apple Headquarters Spaceship campus plans include a roof made almost entirely out of solar cells, according to plans released today. With a building as large as Apple’s, that puts it in the top corporate solar installations in the world and the biggest in the US. The current title holder is the 4.26 MW system in Edison New Jersey.
This is pretty incredible. Seems like one of those details that is totally Apple.
“Developers will finally start focusing on Android first instead of iOS in the next half a year, Google chairman Eric Schmidt said in his presentation at the Le Web conference Friday.”
Mac software developer Rogue Amoeba has announced the release of Piezo, a new audio app for the Mac. It’s available for free download from the Rogue Amoeba Web site and can be purchased either from there or from the Mac App Store for $10.
Piezo is a lightweight, simple-to-use audio application that can record sound from any Mac app or from an audio input source, such as a connected microphone. It sports a retro-style interface with a pair of input level needles and a red record button.
Rogue Amoeba founder Paul Kafasis noted that this app marks the company’s debut in the Mac App Store. Apple places restrictions on the operation of apps that has heretofore prevented Rogue Amoeba’s other apps like Audio Hijack Pro from being released through the Mac App Store, but Piezo was engineered to comply with Apple’s guidelines.
System requirements call for Mac OS X 10.6 or later.
Research In Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets, has been prevented from using “BBX” to describe its next-generation BlackBerry operating system.
The word comes from a press release posted by BASIS International, a business software developer which filed a request for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against RIM in U.S. Federal Court in Albuquerque, NM. BASIS sells products for multiple operating systems (including Mac OS X and iOS) under the “BBx” moniker, and it says “BBX” is too close for comfort. The judge granted the TRO, stipulating that “all factors weigh in favor of BASIS.”
BASIS announced plans to defend its trademark shortly after RIM unveiled its new operating system in October.
RIM appeared to be prepared for the change in direction. The company announced at a developers’ conference in Singapore this week that the new operating system will be called “BlackBerry 10” instead. BlackBerry 10 is a unified OS for smartphones, tablets and other devices.
“We did so many difficult things this year that we got overconfident,” Hastings said. “Our big obsession for the year was streaming, the idea that ‘let’s not die with DVDs.'”
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ comments came during his appearance at a UBS Media conference in New York on Tuesday. He was referring to his company’s missteps in 2011, including separating and rebranding its DVD delivery and streaming services (which Netflix ultimately didn’t do). Some interesting insights about the present and future of Netflix’s business from Hastings, who by any measure has had a pretty tough year.
