Macgasm

When everyone was looking for new Macbook Pros, Apple decided to slip in an Aperture update. Those sneaky people at Apple managed to trick us all. It’s nice having a little surprise like that. The rumour mill is so ramped up these days that it’s hard to sneak anything by us. I’m not a photographer, so I can’t really speak to the innovation in this bundle, but Apple does claim that there’s over 200 new features and tweaks, and some of them seem pretty substantial. They now let you manage video, audio, and photos from the application, and you can now create sideshows with video and stills side by side.

The release couldn’t have come soon enough for some photographers. I know a couple who were starting to get a little ancy and paranoid that Apple could possibly axe the photography application all together. Some even went so far as moving their entire photo catalog to Adobe’s Lightroom.

We’re gonna take the trial for a test drive, and let you know our thoughts once we’ve collected them.

Some of my favourite games for the iPhone are ones that let me get in, get my gaming on, and then get out. If I plan to spend some prolonged time gaming, I’ll probably sit down at my computer or my Xbox 360.

Fall Down is one of the simpler games on my iPhone, and it’s super fun, especially if you like challenging friends to a game of “Get the best score.” The concept of the game is super simple. Tilt the screen to make the ball roll from left to right, while trying to make sure you don’t get squished between the top of the screen and one of the neon rows. The faster you are at getting down the screen the better off you are, and it’s not too long until you find yourself in panic mode. I’ve had a hard time getting passed the blue stage (level three), and the difficulty ramps up pretty quick.

The game is currently free on the App Store, so get to gettin’!

Have you ever noticed that your battery is acting little funky, but you have no idea what you can do about it? There’s a couple of applications and tricks available to you to determine whether or not your batteries starting to fail on you. If you’re on a highway to the danger zone you’re going to want to figure out just how much time you have left before you’re flying solo, sans laptop.

Option+Click your battery icon

The first step is making use of a hidden feature in OS X Snow Leopard. Apple’s introduced a whole slew of handy hidden options, by holding down the option key, and clicking on your battery icon in the menu bar, you’ll be met with some information that’s usually hidden out of sight.

You’ll be met with one of the following options: Normal, Replace Soon, Replace Now, or Service Battery right next to the word Condition. If you click on the condition you’ll be taking to an Apple help entry that explains all the different conditions.

If you see Replace Now or Service battery, you should probably head straight to the Apple Store to book and appointment with a Genius.

If you’re confident with your leet computer skills you might want two try both of the following options before you hand over your trusty machine to a Genius.

coconutBattery helps you lock down your mAh

coconutBattery will not solve any of your problems, but it will serve up some handy information about your battery. The application petitions your batteries “brain” and determines what the original Ampere-hour of the battery was as well as what the rating is currently. For instance, my Macbook Pro batter was originally 4600 mAh when it was purchased, and it’s now sitting at 4443 mAh. It’s normal to lose some of the capacity over time, so if it’s down a little bit from when you purchased it don’t freak out. But, if you’re down a whole lot relatively soon after you purchased it you might have a faulty battery.

Calibrate your battery

If both of these things reveal little about your problem, you might want to consider calibrating your battery.  On second thought, you should probably do this no matter what you decide to do.  There’s a good chance that this might fix your problem.   Apple states that,

“The battery has an internal microprocessor that provides an estimate of the amount of energy in the battery as it charges and discharges. The battery needs to be recalibrated from time to time to keep the onscreen battery time and percent display accurate and to keep the battery operating at maximum efficiency.”

If you have a laptop that doesn’t have the name G4 in it, Apple recommends the steps below.

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
3. Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.
4. At this point, save your work.  Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.
5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

A lot of people criticized the iPad for the lack of an SD card reader, despite Apple releasing the iPad Camera kit. I’m still not sure where I fall on that argument yet, but it appears like someone else has heard the cries from photographers around the world.

The fine folks at Zoomit have created an SD card reader for the iPhone and iPod touch lineup. The device pairs up with the companies free  iPhone / Touch application to give users access to SD cards on their mobile devices. There’s no mention of them releasing an iPad version, but I feel fairly confident in my guess that they’ll release an iPad compatible option once they get their hands on an iPad.

The device will let users access any file type that an iPhone and iPod Touch can handle natively. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until the jail breaking community turns around and does something pretty cool with this add-on.

The ZoomMediaPlus will ship for $60.00, and for a limited time (250 orders) Zoomit is letting people pre-order the device, with a 4GB SD card for a steal of a price of $50.00.

[via MacNN]

How many of us were surprised when we heard that the iPad was starting at $499?  I for one was most certainly surprised, along with the many netbook makers that were planning on undercutting the price of the iPad.  They were planning on dropping the price on the already low cost netbooks; however, this all changed when Steve Jobs announced the iPad at a whopping $499.  Which leads me to my next point.  Can the iPad be sold for less?

Well, according to a piece from the Wall Street Journal’s MarketBeat, this is exactly what Apple plans on doing.  Now don’t get overly excited.  There is no word that this will happen when the iPad launches at the end of March.  This tactic will be employed if they see that the iPad isn’t selling well.  It’s to soon to say if Apple is going to hit one out of the park with the iPad.  I only say this because of how everyone is so split down the middle about Apple’s new device.  Either you like it, or you don’t.  It appears that right now there is no grey area.

According to an article by Cult of Mac the bill of materials breakdown for the 16GB iPad is $270 per unit.  So Apple is making $229 per unit, and obviously there’s more profit in the higher storage capacity models.  There is definitely wiggle room here for Apple to lower the price by $50 or even $100.  They will definitely make it up in volume.  I can also see Apple lowering the high end iPad’s by $125.

Apple is no stranger to price adjustments on their portable devices.  The last time they did something like this was four years ago with the original iPhone.  Back then it wasn’t because the iPhone wasn’t selling well.  Just the opposite, the iPhone was selling like gangbusters, and Apple saw that they would sell more if they lowered the price by $200.  This did cause a backlash in the early adopter community, but it soon was smoothed over when Steve Jobs said that anyone who purchased an iPhone in the first two months of its release would be receiving a $100 Apple gift card.  Let’s hope if they decide to make a price adjustment it won’t be two months after the iPad has been released.

Photo Credit: iPad

[via @WSJ MarketBeat, @Cult of Mac]

Evidence has begun to suggest that we’re on the verge of a MacBook Pro refresh. Some of the most telling evidence has come from retailers with missing or deleted SKUs for current MacBook Pro models. When SKUs go missing people tend to notice.

There have been screenshot from a Best Buy employee circulating the internet, and they show that the current 13.3″ MacBook Pro with a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo has been deleted. When this is paired up with the GeekBench results for a MacBookPro 6,1 (which currently doesn’t’ exist)  it’s starting to become apparent the Apple’s up to something fishy.  Oh, but we’re not done yet.

The biggest indicator could be that Amazon has reduced prices on their current MacBook Pros. These are advertised below the minimum advertised price, and typically these type of reductions point towards a refresh.

There was another tidbit of information that suggests that a refresh is imminent, Intel slipped with an advertisement that rewarded the winner with a shiny new MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i5 processor.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we all know that this is an eventuality. Apple’s current offering is exclusively with the Core 2 Duo chips, and those newly minted iMacs that were released in October probably would prefer some portable cousins that can keep up.

Sources: TUAW, 9 to 5 Mac, Amazon, iHackintosh

The iPhone Dev team has been hard at work since iPhone OS 3.1.3 has been out, and today they’ve released PwnageTool version 3.1.5.

If you’re adventurous and don’t mind the possibility of losing your current jailbreak, then feel free to head on over to the iPhone Dev Team’s blog and take a look at what you need to do.  When updating to a new official firmware and then re-jailbreaking your  phone there’s always the possibility that something could go wrong.  You might lose your “jailbroken” status, and find yourself having to live with a non-jailbroken phone for a while.  That being said, the iPhone dev team has issued a warning about this particular PwnageTool version.

The iPhone Dev team warns that if you do not have any battery issues with your iPhone 3GS, then you should not update to iPhone OS 3.1.3.

The team also states,

“iPhone 3GS users (regardless of unlock) should stay away from this and all 3.1.3 jailbreak tools unless you know you have your “SHSH hashes” backed up via Cydia.”

Since I’m not part of the Jailbreak community I am not 100% sure what the ‘SHSH hashes’ are, however I am positive that it has to do with the hashes for the previous versions in case something does go awry.

If you’re really willing to get started, head over to the dev team’s blog and read all the details and then get started.

Source: iPhone Dev Team.

Tubbypaws is back with more papercraft, and this time it’s Apple related.
So, if you have the patience and the need/want to recreate your own Steve Note on your desk, you can download this handy template, get your favourite scissors and glue out, and get cutting and sticking.

This isn’t the first ‘create your own’ iPad which we’ve seen, the other day macrumors posted about a full sized one that Jess Silverstone, the lead artist for Revolutionary Concepts had put together for her team, and they are now coming in useful they say ‘btw we now have six ipaperpads and they are actually helping us with the scale of graphics and UI placement for our upcoming iPad apps’.

So, you can make that one too if you like.

Scared of glue? Love Legos? How about you make one out of Legos instead then like jmenomeno on Flickr.
There are probably a whole host more papercraft and other iPad mockups out there, I saw one made of foam the other day, and they were up for sale on eBay, but I can’t find that one to link to anymore, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Let us know in the comments if you have any sucess making this. I tried my hand at making the Portal one a few years ago, needed thicker card, but it turned out all right.
Good luck!