Macgasm

Ever feel like you’re having a bad day? Want to de-stress? Ant Hill (iTunes link), a $0.99 app from Concrete Software, is here to help you get away with that task — on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The object is to kill as many ants as possible, and you can change the number of black and red ants and more. “Weapons” include magnetism, fire, strawberries (you know, to convince the ants to come out and play), minefields, and rocks (mmm, rocks). You can also get the ants to race each other set up a path (those obedient ants line up and run across the screen) and relocate your anthill if you choose.

The only problem? You’ll never get the anthill to disappear completely. The little critters don’t like going away. Call the exterminator!

Ant Hill was lots of fun for awhile. It’s one of those games that would be most exciting for kids. I’ll have to have my son try it when he’s old enough. This game has great graphics and shows a solid effort. It’s a good option for when you want to kill time and when you don’t have to think too hard about your next move. Anything goes with Ant Hill.

We’ve been looking forward to the day that Apple’s Touch can become a wifi phone to be reckoned with.  It almost puts into question our desire for an iPhone.  If you live in a major city center than there’s an excellent chance you can track down wifi on every single block (legally, or illegally).  Wired is reporting today that an insider deep inside of Apple Inc, has confirmed that the new Touch will have both a camera and a built in mic, and that it’s expected to ship within the next couple of months.  I’m left wondering how much of this is a shot across the bow of the Telco’s.  People have been saying for quite some time now that it’s only a matter of time until we stop paying corporations for our telecommunications, and start relying on open wireless access points to take our calls.  Obviously this comes with a shred of hyperbole, as many iPhone users don’t live in major urban areas where they have access to thousands of connection points, but it is a bit of a step into the future nonetheless.  I likely would have second guessed the purchase of my iPhone had a touch been available, and Skype’s app been on the market when I purchased my 3G phone.  Whether or not it’s applicable in the near future isn’t what this is about, what it’s about is that technology is moving forward and corporations will be struggling to keep up.

[via Wired]

It’s giveaway time yet again. To keep things simple, just click that retweet button you see on the left there, and tweet the message. That’s phase one. Phase Two is to add us on Twitter (we need to be able to get in touch with you if you win. We’ll wait 14 days for a response, then we’ll pick someone else).

First I want to thank Griffin Technology for supplying us with two awesome Giveaways. It is always great to get this kind of support from companies. If you want, you can even thank Griffin yourself by sending them an @reply on twitter

This round, we are giving away the Griffin AirCurve. The AirCurve is designed to work with all current iPhones. This includes the original iPhone, the 3G and the 3GS. What the AirCurve does that is so unique is it enhances the built in speaker of your iPhone to make it louder! That’s right, no wires and no batteries needed. Below is my review.

This giveaway will run until August 10th.

Review:

I purchased the AirCurve by Griffin just a few weeks after it was released. I had no clue what to even think of it. How would it improve my speaker on my iPhone? I have been pleasantly surprised, though. Now this isn’t going to give you amazing sound out of your speaker of your iPhone, but what it does do is amplify your speaker. What you get is a two-piece acrylic block that has a canal through it. The canal starts where your iPhone sits and gradually gets larger, amplifying the sound as it goes. This is one of the few things that I own two of and keep on on my desk at all times. You can run your sync cable into the AirCurve and connect it to your iPhone so you can listen to Podcasts and Audiobooks without draining your power. I have several Macs and only keep my iTunes items on one. I am not always around my iMac, so the AirCurve goes many places with me. Great for travel, and eliminates having to use your earbuds with you are just chilling in your hotel room wanting to listen to music or whatever. But remember, this isn’t going to make your iPhone sound better. If it did, this would be the Jesus product to go with the Jesus phone.

Today Apple announced their 3rd quarter results for fiscal year 2009. As expected, Apple has reported higher than expected earnings.

Apple announced revenue of $8.34 billion, with a net profit of $1.23 billion. The same quarter in 2008 showed revenue of $7.46 billion, and a net profit of $1.07 billion. These figures are an increase of 11.8% in revenue and 14.9% increase in net profit. These compare to the same quarter of 2008.

As for the adjusted (GAAP) accounting practices, Apple reported $9.74 billion in ‘Adjusted Sales’ and $1.94 billion in ‘Adjusted Net income’.

The actual sales figures for each group look quite interesting. Desktop sales, which includes iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro and Xserves saw a decline of 10% to 849,000 units in Q3 2009 from 943,000 in the Q3 of 2008. Revenue amongst desktops was down 18% overall.

Should this really be a big surprise? No, it shouldn’t. The trend within the computing industry is desktops are on their way out as the primary computer device. There are those of us who do like to have both a desktop and a laptop, but many consumers are choosing laptops over desktops entirely.

The portable sales include the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro lines. These resulted in a mixed blessing. While unit shipments were up 13% to 1.75 million units, up from 1.55 Million in Q3 of 2008, revenue dropped by 2%. In Q3 2008, Apple revenue from portables was $2.23 billion while in Q3 of 2009 it is only $2.20 billion.

I’m not entirely sure what this means for Apple’s portable sales. It obviously means that their sales went up, but it looks like their profits per unit dropped quite a bit.

iPod sales were not too terribly surprising, at least to me. Q3 of 2008 showed sales of $11.01 million, and revenue of $1.67 billion. While Q3 of 2009 only showed sales of $10.21 million and revenue of $1.49 billion. This is down 7% in unit sales, as well as 11% down for revenue.

The only thing I can speculate about the iPods is that the economy played a factor in this, as well as cannibalizing some iPod sales in order to favor the iPhone.

The final piece to the whole puzzle, and the biggest whopper of them all is iPhone. iPhone sales in Q3 of 2008 were a mere 717,000 units, while unit sales of the iPhone in Q3 of 2009 were a whopping 5.20 million units. That’s a humongous jump of 626% in just pure sales. Which Q3 o 2008 was the tail end of the original iPhone sales.

Revenue, as one might expect also went up year over year. The revenue generated in Q3 of 2008 for iPhone was $419 million. While Q3 of 2009 showed a revenue of $1.68 billion. A whopping 303% increase in total revenue. This all but makes up for the lacking in desktop and portable sales.

One of the most interesting changes that occurred is actually in the sales figures for Europe and Japan. For Europe, unit sales for Q3 2008 were 576,000 while revenue was $1.64 billion. In Japan, sales were 102,000 with revenue of $365 million. While in Q3 2009, sales in Europe jumped 50,000 units to 626,000 and revenue jumped $358 million to $2.00 billion in revenue. Japan saw somewhat less of an increase, yet still impressive. Sales jumped 6,000 units for a 6% gain, while revenue jumped $51 million to $416 million; or a 14% increase in revenue.

Overall, it was another good quarter for Apple. According to Apple, it was the best non-holiday quarter in their history. Now, it will be interesting to see what Apple manages to do for Q4 2009. If they manage to release a tablet, like many are speculating, I predict a rather stellar quarter. Unless it is released in October, then Q1 of FY2010 will be spectacular.

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, Grant talks about VLC 1.0.

[01.7 MB] [0:03:30] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]

Most of us have been faced with recycling our old Macs at some point.  Some of us keep them in a closet, others give them to friends or family who could make good use out of them.  But, there exists a small portion of the community who make art with them.  Now’s your chance to get in on a one of a kind Apple Clock, made from the side of a G3 computer.  It’ll look pretty sweet next to your desk wouldn’t it?

This is the side panel of a retired Mac G3, and it has been transformed into a working wall clock using a USA made quartz drive movement. The clock measures 16″w x 16″h, and runs on 1 AA battery, included.

[via Etsy]

I keep forgetting that Apple users might prefer a Blackberry. Until recently, they’ve been treated pretty crappily, and there was very little support for syncing your devices. The application, entitled Blackberry Manager, looks like it’s straight out of iTunes’ iPhone section. It gave me a little bit of a chuckle, but I guess there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. The software will be available in September, and allow users to:

BlackBerry Desktop will be able to sync iTunes playlists (assuming they contain non-DRMed songs, of course), calendar info from iCal, contacts, notes, and tasks. It will also allow users to add and remove applications from their devices, perform updates to BlackBerrys when they become available, back up and restore data, and even manage multiple devices. Basically, kind of like what iTunes does for the iPhone, except for the BlackBerry.

If I had a Blackberry and an Apple Laptop I’d be rejoicing right about now.

[via Ars]

Times is one of those great little apps that doesn’t get a lot of coverage. It allows you to give your RSS feeds a more traditional look. With a newspaper like interface, you can browse all your latest feeds in a full rich environment. You can add and delete pages and Feeds. So give it a try.

More Info:

http://www.acrylicapps.com/times/

[download in HD]