Macgasm

Flickr Find Friday: Start them early!

By Marilyn Halpin Fri, Jan 27, 2012 @ 8:37 AM

Look at her in her little car already adorned with an Apple sticker! To top things off she’s got daddy’s old iPhone 3G that she loves to pretend to talk on. Say it with me “Ahhhhhhhhh”. Charles Edwards, thanks so much for uploading your adorable pic to our Macgasm Flickr Group. Now excuse me while I go bug the husband about having more kids.

Do you want to be a photographer or just play one on the web? Here’s your chance! Join Macgasm’s Flickr group and upload all your beauty shots of your Apple gear. Each week we select one lucky participant to be featured on Flickr Find Friday. Go join our Flickr Group now. Get creative. Upload up to 7 pics a day. Tune in on Fridays (like you ever miss a post, right?) and see if you have what it takes to be featured. Good luck and happy snapping.

Tim Cook addresses the Apple troops, comments on human rights problems at Foxconn

By Joshua Schnell Fri, Jan 27, 2012 @ 7:34 AM

Foxconn, and its employees, have been on a lot of people’s minds these days. It started with the This American Life episode about life in the Shenzhen factory. The episode seems to have been a tipping point for the media. After that episode went pubic, Jon Stewart did a segment on The Daily Show about the situation. Yesterday, the New York Times ran an in-depth article about the situation titled In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad. The coverage has resulted in Tim Cook sending out a lengthy letter to his employees that directly addresses the statements made in the last couple of weeks in the media about Apple’s commitment to rectifying the human rights problems in its supply chain.

iOS needs better language/keyboard controls

By Alexander Hoffmann Fri, Jan 27, 2012 @ 6:35 AM

For those of us who speak more than one language, writing in iOS can be somewhat annoying. To make use of features like the built-in autocorrect functionality, we need to switch between languages on the iOS keyboard (1).

On the Mac this “problem” has been solved — at least partly — for languages with Latin writing systems present in Germanic, Italic and most Balto-Slavic languages: The OS determines the language currently in use and automatically offers spell checking for this language. However, once the user switches to a non-alphabetic language (2), this functionality is gone, because the input system changes.

Despite record sales, Apple TV remains a “hobby”

By Meg Murray Thu, Jan 26, 2012 @ 7:23 PM

As part of its quarterly earning announcement earlier this week, Apple revealed that 1.4 million Apple TVs were sold in the past quarter. However, while a record for the device, CEO Tim Cook admitted that the product remains a “hobby” for the company.

In his own words:

Our Apple TV product is doing quite well… but in the scheme of things, we still classify Apple TV as a hobby. We continue to add things to it. If you’re using the latest one — I don’t know about you, but I can’t live without it. Other than that, no comment.

While Cook did say that Apple will “continue to pull strings and see where we can take it,” he made no hint towards the highly speculated Apple HDTV. However, while we here at Macgasm aren’t the biggest fans of the rumour mill, I can’t say I’m not secretly hoping all these HDTV rumours are true.

Source: Tech Crunch, SlashGear

Steam Mobile now available for iOS

By Grant Brünner Thu, Jan 26, 2012 @ 1:50 PM

Good news, gamers! Steam Mobile is available on your iPhone and iPod touch right now. While of course it will work on your iPad, it sadly isn’t optimized.

With this free app you can see which of your Steam friends are online, chat with your buddies, and shop for Mac and Windows games. If you’re a heavy Steam user, this will make your social interactions a lot easier. Just because you’re on the train doesn’t mean you can’t be messaging your bro-hams (that’s the lingo the kids these days are using, right?).

This is great, but don’t start thinking you’re going to see Steam selling games on the iPhone. We saw Apple drop the axe on an in-app gaming platform before, so this isn’t a likely first step for Steam to enter the mobile space. At least on iOS, that is.

It does bring up an interesting question, though. Maybe Valve, maker of hits like Half-Life and Portal as well as the owners of Steam, is interested in making games for mobile platforms. It’s certainly possible. We’ve seen that great first-person shooters can be made for iOS thanks to Rage HD. This probably isn’t Steam’s beginning for the mobile space, but it could signal Valve’s.

Hat tip to Joystiq

Watch Macgasm videos anywhere with Frequency

By Grant Brünner Thu, Jan 26, 2012 @ 12:25 PM

Frequency, an online video hub service, is a fantastic place to find a ton of great content. As of today, that includes us here at Macgasm. Our channel will automatically update with any video we post anywhere on the net. You don’t need to go to YouTube and Vimeo to find our content. Whatever we post, you’ll be able to find it right here.

If you want to subscribe to our Frequency channel, just head over directly to our page and click the follow button. Of course, you can get to it any time by going to Frequency and searching for Macgasm.

Adobe demo highlights Thunderbolt in editing RED footage on MacBook Air

By Eugene Huo Thu, Jan 26, 2012 @ 11:19 AM

It’s time to get excited about Thunderbolt, people. Dave Helmly from Adobe posted a video demo last week showing how he was able to edit full resolution RED video footage (i.e. footage that would bring most laptops to their knees, begging for mercy) using a MacBook Air. How did he accomplish this amazing feat?

Using a MacBook Air with a Thunderbolt port, Helmly hooked up a Sonnet Echo Express Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis, inside of which was a RED ROCKET card. That was in turn connected to a Promise RAID, where the video files were stored. And then he used Adobe Premiere, naturally, running on (cough) Windows 7 using Boot Camp. (Did a small part of you just die inside? I know, I felt it too.)

AT&T activated 7.6 million iPhones in Q4 2011

By Grant Brünner Thu, Jan 26, 2012 @ 11:15 AM

AT&T has announced a handful of interesting things about their business in Q4 2011. Two things in particular are very interesting to Apple and its fans:

9.4 million smartphone sales, best-ever quarter and 50 percent more than previous quarterly record and nearly double 3Q11 sales; 82 percent of postpaid sales were smartphones … Best-ever quarter for Android and Apple smartphones, including 7.6 million iPhone activations

Just to be clear, sales and activations are two different but related things. AT&T sold over nine million smartphones while activating over seven million iPhones. Activations can include more cases than just new phones, but it is safe to assume the vast majority of activations are from new sales.

Hot off of the heels of Verizon’s announcement that over half of their smartphones sold in Q4 2011 were iPhones as well as Apple’s record-setting quarter, these numbers are very good for the US’s second largest carrier. We can’t wait to hear Sprint, the third largest carrier, talk about how many iPhones it sold. Meanwhile, T-Mobile weeps mournfully in the corner.

What do you think of all of these numbers? Is the Android market finally hitting its saturation point? Sound off in the comment section, and let’s talk it out. Financial reports have never been this fun!

Source: AT&T

Flickr Find Friday: Start them early!

Tim Cook addresses the Apple troops, comments on human rights problems at Foxconn

iOS needs better language/keyboard controls

Despite record sales, Apple TV remains a “hobby”

Steam Mobile now available for iOS

Watch Macgasm videos anywhere with Frequency

Adobe demo highlights Thunderbolt in editing RED footage on MacBook Air

AT&T activated 7.6 million iPhones in Q4 2011

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