News

Mediadevil has introduced a new stylus called the Magicwand. There are a number of good to excellent stylus’s on the market today, and this one should garner a look from anyone who is serious about getting a lot of use from a stylus.  

The tooth fairy is somewhat passé. As is tying one end of a string to a door knob and the other to a loose tooth and slamming the door. Ah yes, gently readers, that was done when I was a child. Chris Robertson and his book app, The Tooth That’s on the Loose, explains the…

I have been thinking about Apple’s foray into textbooks, announced last week. I note that some authors are outraged that Apple is trying to take 30 percent of textbook revenues and lock authors into their system. Others are suggesting that the market needed some leadership, and this is the price to pay for Apple bring…

Acting as a significant hint to what many U.S. adults received this holiday season, both tablets and e-books rose from 10% ownership in mid-December to 19% by January. There was a corresponding jump in the number of Americans owning at least one of the above devices, from 18% in December to 29% in January.Chart via…

Windows Phone, Microsoft’s most recent mobile operating system, will surpass iOS market share by 2015, market research firm IHS iSuppli predicted last week.  Although currently in last place with 1.9% market share in 2011, Microsoft’s partnership with Finnish-based handset giant Nokia, which will deploy the Windows Phone OS on its current and future smartphones, will…

Over 350,000 textbooks downloaded in 3 daysThe analyst firm doesn’t say how it reached the 350,000 figure, although it claims to have a proprietary system for tracking Apple’s ebook sales, according to AllThingsD.Apple introduced its new interactive textbook format for iBooks 2 and the iPad at a special media event in New York City on…

The struggling Canadian tech company, which once lead the pack of email-enabled mobile devices, will see its two leaders who have guided the company for 20 years reduced to much less active roles. Mr. Lazaridis will become vice chairman of the board and Mr. Balsillie, while retaining his board position, will not have any operational…

Image of philharmonic via Igor Bulgarin / Shutterstock.com “Patron X,” as the offender was referred to by the Philharmonic, described himself as a business executive between 60 and 70 and expressed great regret for his inability to correctly operate his iPhone. “It was just awful to have any role in something like that, that is so…

Let’s face it. Most of us barely remember when we didn’t have the Force Quit option to save us if an application suddenly freezes. In the old days the only choice we had was to restart our computer and hope for the best. Of course, that also meant that any work we may have created…

Patent illustration as edited by Patently Apple. The application’s illustrative figures demonstrate how the proposed design method can produce batteries that are circular, triangular, or even “L”-shaped. The technology could even produce batteries with rounded edges, so that future devices with rounded bezels can maximize battery capacity by having the battery run flush with the outer…

How does Apple follow what is probably the most successful and ground-breaking 15 years in the history of corporations? Does smooth sailing lie ahead, with business proceeding much the same as if Steve were still around? Or will there be changes that indicate troubled waters lie in wait? Might there even be shifts that suggest…

According to the report, the new store will be 13,000 square feet, making it one of the larger Apple Store retail locations. The report also said that it was the mall that decided not to renew its lease with Abercrombie & Fitch in order to bring Apple in. Unnamed sources said that Apple will officially…

Thankfully, this year’s CES brought several new announcements and demonstrations of upcoming Thunderbolt devices and the impending Macworld | iWorld Expo promises to bring even more. For all those excited by Thunderbolt, we take a look at what’s already available and what’s just around the corner. Available Now Little Big Disk (LaCie) Released late last…

Mr. Jobs’s comment (Isaacson, p 830) is taking on the stature of Fermat’s Last Theorem. That is, everyone believes Mr. Jobs (and Fermat) had the solution, but no one could figure out what it was. The TV industry, without vision, research or a demonstrated understanding of first principles seems to be jumping to the conclusion…

ProPublica lists which politicians support or oppose the bills, and can sort by state, age, years served, how much money politicians have accepted from media companies, and more.The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is a House of Representatives bill that would make it surprisingly easy to get court orders to shut down any website…

“To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America’s intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy,” he said.SOPA bill resumes in FebruaryThe Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is a bill that would make it surprisingly easy…

As initially reported by the Associated Press late Tuesday, Mr. Yang’s departure comes just two weeks after Yahoo hired Scott Thompson, the former PayPal President, as CEO. Mr. Yang, who stepped down from his role as CEO in 2008 following a botched takeover bid by Microsoft that ended up damaging Yahoo’s stock price, endorsed Mr.…

The outage, planned only for English-language versions of site, will last for 24 hours beginning at 05:00 UTC (that’s midnight for East Coast and 9:00 PM for the West Coast). The planned outage has Wikipedia joining many other online sites and organizations in their public opposition to the pending congressional bills, which are designed to…

In a statement on the In Icons website, Mr. Cheung said:Unfortunately we have received immense pressure from the lawyers of Apple and Steve Jobs family. Regardless of the pressure, I am still Steve’s fan, I fully respect Steve, and his family, and it is definitely not my wish or intention that they be upset. Though we…

Steve Wozniak Many headlines on the Internet—including The Daily Beast’s own—have spun the interview as one in which Mr. Wozniak said Android is better, but the reality is that he praised both platforms and said that each has advantages over the other. According to him, the iPhone is elegant and beautiful, simple and easy to…

Be that as it may, CES was a great time and we saw some really cool stuff, and one of the coolest isn’t available for any of Apple’s products or platforms—at least not yet. Tobii, a Swedish company, was demonstrating Gaze, eye tracking technology the company is working on positioning as a new paradigm for…

In response to online petitions against the SOPA legislation, the President said even though he sees online piracy from foreign websites as a problem, he won’t support any bill that erodes freedom of speech or expression, or that potentially threatens online security.“Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship…

Editor’s note: The following interview took place during the last week of 2011. The complete, 80-minute audio interview is available in two audio files — Part 1 (43.1 MB) and Part 2 (37.3 MB) — but Mr. Greelish asked The Mac Observer if we would transcribe it for the record, with his full permission. What follows are…