Macgasm

In case you had any doubt that the brand new 3G iPad that you received today would be un-jailbreakable, the Dev Team has posted a teaser video for you to drool over. The video clearly illustrates an iPad running Cydia.

As you can tell from the video that the DevTeam released a couple weeks back, the firmware is the same, so there’s no surprise the jailbreak works for the 3G iPad. There’s no release date posted for when they’re going to make a jailbreak available, but when they do, it wont just be good for the iPads of the  world, because it’ll work on your iPhones and iPod’s as well.

The DevTeam is planning one tool for all of Apple’s devices — making it much easier for consumers to manage their jailbreaks.

The news from yesterday comes with a typical Dev Team warning stating “Backup your SHSH blobs.” While you dont need to do this to jailbreak, it’ll help if you have them readily available if anything should go wrong, and you have to downgrade at somepoint.

Head over to the post by the Dev Team from yesterday for more info and links on how to do this.

We’re not sure how long this has been present, but it has been brought to our attention that youtube is making some slight changes to it’s web-based viewer. See the images below.

Old toolbar.

New toolbar.

You can clearly see that there are two different toolbars. The top image (the older version) has the playback in the toolbar itself. While the newer styling has the playback progress bar on top of the entire toolbar. This is not the only difference. If you hover your mouse over the video itself you will be presented with a larger progress bar so you can quickly scrub through the video.

There are some more differences that are not necessarily apparent by just looking at the toolbars. The first is the volume changer. Instead of going vertically and super-imposing itself on the video, the volume change is now horizontal and exposes itself upon hovering over the volume icon. As shown below.

Old volume adjustment.

New volume adjustment.

The second is the expansion icon. When you click on this it will use some HTML5 voodoo and move all of the page elements around to put the video across the top part of the page and move the related videos below the newly expanded video. This is a nice feature if you want to show off a video or even just focus strictly on the video without the other extraneous items. As to be expected, if you click the ‘shrink’ button it will re-arrange the page back to it’s initial view. This is present in the ‘old’ toolbar as well, but I never really noticed it before.

The final changes are to the right mouse click. The zooming options have been removed in favor of the zoom on the toolbar. But there is a new option. The ‘Show Video info’ option. If you click on this you can see the video size, volume, bit rate of the video and the bit rate of the current stream. This may not be necessary for every user, but it is there for those who are interested in the particulars of a video.

Old context menu.

New context menu.

New video Information.

There does not seem to be any real way to tell which toolbar you’ll get, although there is a hint that if it includes an ad that over-lays the video you will still get the old toolbar. I don’t know if most will really notice, but it is a way to keep the site fresh and keep people coming back.

Image Source: Foo Fighters – Pretend and Skateboarding Dog on YouTube.

The St. John’s Telegram reports that Apple has rejected an iPhone game based on the Canadian seal hunt due to “objectionable content.”

iSealClub, developed by Matthew Smyth of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, would have let iPhone gamers club cartoon seals, using the iPhone’s accelerometer to control the clubbing action. But Apple rejected the game for inclusion in the App Store.

Seal: to club, or not to club? Photo: Mike Baird

With games such as Real Trophy Hunting (where you hunt other game, such as deer and bears) and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (which permits you to shoot police officers) already available in the App Store, one wonders what Apple considered sufficiently “objectionable” about the clubbing of seals to reject the app.

Oh, right: The seal hunt is an international political issue.

Due to an extensive media campaign by environmental and human-rights groups (like the Sea Shepherds), the Canadian seal hunt has been condemned by foreign governments, to the point where the European Union has banned the import of seal products in protest. Public opinion in Canada is split between those who believe the traditional seal hunt should be protected for cultural reasons, and those who believe it is a barbaric practice that should be stopped for humane reasons.

Smyth acknowledges that he chose to develop his first game based on the seal hunt as it’s of local interest (the seal hunt is a significant part of the Newfoundland economy) and because it would attract attention. He notes that, in the game, the player is penalized for clubbing baby seals (that still have their white coat), just as hunters are in real life.

Apple has neither confirmed nor denied that the political nature of the game was taken into account in its decision. Although the exact process Apple uses to decide which apps make it to the App Store and which don’t is somewhat of a mystery, it’s highly doubtful that Steve Jobs personally has a hand in the process. Still, for a game that, whatever the intention, tackles a sensitive political issue, one wonders if the vegan CEO may have been directly consulted.

PETA seems to think it’s possible, and sent Jobs a box of vegan-friendly seal-shaped chocolates to congratulate him in joining the ranks of world leaders condemning the seal hunt.

So it’s okay to eat chocolates shaped like seals, but not to club their cartoon representations. This is a very fine line, apparently.

In any case, for the time being at least, iPhone gamers will have to content themselves with shooting woodland animals and police officers, and leave clubbing seals to the professionals.

Photo Credit: Mike Baird

So if you thought Apple was the only force driving the HTML5 bandwagon, you may want to check again. Apple’s getting some support from another major player in the market, and it’s coming from an unlikely source–Microsoft.

We’re well aware that we’re an Apple blog, but news of this magnitude needs to be spread into the Apple-sphere. In a blog spot titled HTML5 Video, the General Manager of Internet Explorer weighs in on the fight between Adobe and Apple. Dean Hachmovitch says, “The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design.” Hachmovitch then goes on to explain the importance of HTML5 in playing back videos, as well as the importance of relying on royalty-free codecs such as H.264, so that consumers can be assured that they’ll have access to video without having to rely on other third party plugins.

But, don’t expect Microsoft to throw Adobe under the bus. The article is a measured response to the dicussions surrounding Flash. Hachmovitch concludes by saying, “Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web.” From the sounds of it, Microsoft agrees that video playback needs to be HTML5 compliant, but that putting Flash out to pasture in it’s entirety is a bit premature.

I kind of agree.

Article Via IEBlog

Electronic Arts has officially released FIFA World Cup 10 for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad for $6.99 on the app store. You can choose to play from over 100 different teams, regardless if they actually made it to the World Cup. If you’re a soccer fan, you’ll certainly want to grab this game right now.

Frankly, I’m really pleased to see that big names like Electronic Arts are moving to the iPhone as a platform. We’re clearly a market they want in on, and they are putting their money where their mouth is. EA has consistently been releasing games for us, and there is no end in sight. What are your thoughts on the acceptance of the iPhone by big game developers? Comment on this post or hit me up on Twitter.

Download FIFA World Cup 10 now on the app store!

In the release notes of the latest beta of Virtual Box, the folks over at Sun Microsystems have stated that they have implemented experimental support for Mac OS X as a guest operating system on Apple hardware.

Take a look at the features:

VirtualBox Version 3.2.0 is a major update. The following major new features were added:
• Following the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, the product is now called Oracle VM VirtualBox and all references were changed without impacting compatibility.
• Experimental support for Mac OS X guests
• Memory ballooning to dynamically in- or decrease the amount of RAM used by a VM (64-bit hosts only) (see the manual for more information)
• CPU hot-plugging for Linux (hot-add and hot-remove) and certain Windows guests (hot-add only) (see the manual for more information)
• New Hypervisor features: with both VT-x/AMD-V on 64-bit hosts, using large pages can improve performance (see the manual for more information); also, on VT-x, unrestricted guest execution is now supported (if nested paging is enabled with VT-x, real mode and protected mode without paging code runs faster, which mainly speeds up guest OS booting)
• Support for deleting snapshots while the VM is running
• Support for multi-monitor guest setups in the GUI (see the manual for more information)
• USB tablet/keyboard emulation for improved user experience if no Guest Additions are available
• LsiLogic SAS controller emulation
• RDP video acceleration
• NAT engine configuration via API and VBoxManage
• Guest Additions: added support for executing guest applications from the host system
• OVF: enhanced OVF support with custom namespace to preserve settings that are not part of the base OVF standard

Interestingly, OS X’s terms of use does not allow it to be virtualized legally. The only Apple-approved way of virtualized OS X is with OS X Server. Does this mean a legal fight is coming between Apple and Sun? I’ll go out on a limb, and say “Yes” unless there was some backdoor dealing already between the companies.

What do you think about this chess move from Sun? Comment on this post or hit me up on Twitter

Article Via Slashdot
Photo Credit: Silveira Neto

After the much hated “Valve Time” since we last heard about their Steam client coming to Mac, we finally have a release date. Yesterday, a statement was released informing the public that they can fully expect the Mac version of the gaming client to be released on May 12, 2010.

Originally, we were forced to wait until ‘late April’ for the release of Steam and we got that.. sort of. In April we saw the beta release of Steam. Now hopefully, in May we see its full release. Now that the PC version of Valve’s newly designed Steam client has officially launched out of beta, one can only hope that we have a serious and reachable release date for May 12th. Valve has been known to be a slacker when it comes to hitting release dates, so it won’t be so much of a surprise if May 12 really means July 1st.

As of right now we can expect the core games from Valve to be available for purchase upon its release:

- Left 4 Dead 2
- Team Fortress 2
- Counter-Strike
- Portal
- Half-Life series

It’s currently only speculation as to what other games may be available on Steam for us Mac users. However, this could mean the process of games coming to our Mac’s will speed up a whole hell of a lot. Instead of months and years of waiting, we may see simultaneous releases or just a few week waits. We’ll have to keep each other posted!

Article via Kotaku
Photo Credit: Steam & Professor Bop

Today is D-Day for the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G at the Apple Store.  The lines have probably already formed.  The people in line have pre-ordered their iPad’s back in March; unfortunately, if you pre-ordered in the past month, you will have to wait another week or so.  Apple is going to open the lines at 5:00pm, and start the selling frenzy.  If your lucky they might have extras left over, and you can grab yourself one.

The one thing that separates this iPad from the one that launched on April 3rd is the 3G capability. This will allow you to use the Internet wherever you receive an AT&T 3G signal, and as a bonus you can connect to over 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots for free.  I would like to now delve into AT&T’s pricing and Data Plans for the iPad.

3G Domestic Billing & Data Plans

AT&T is offering two data plans with no contract.  This is a great feature, however, you will need to read the fine print.  Even though you are not required to sign a contract with AT&T, you will be billed every thirty days, if you do not cancel.  So, that means if you sign up for service on April 30th, your thirty days start on that date.  You will have to let AT&T know that your don’t want to renew for another month, if you only wanted one month.  This leads me to my next point about how you will be billed for the service.  You will not receive a statement from AT&T like you would with an iPhone.  Instead you will see a charge on your credit card.  So if you don’t want to pay interest on your monthly bill, I would suggest getting that charge payed every month.

AT&T has two different Data Plans they offer:

• $14.99 per month for 250MB
• $29.99 per month for unlimited data

These are great prices, considering if you got a 3G broadband plan on it’s own you are going to pay $60.00 a month for the service.  On top of that you are capped at 5GB of data usage.  Basically, if you downloaded five 1GB movies from iTunes, you have used up all of your allotted data for the month.  As I mentioned earlier, you will also have access to AT&T’s over 20,000 Wi-Fi Hot Spots.  This is much like the iPhone in regards to service.

Managing your 3G Data Plan for the iPad

You have the ability to manage your Data Plan right on the iPad.  This is a great feature.  I would like to see this ported over to the iPhone.  Below is some verbiage from AT&T’s site regarding managing your 3G Data Plan:

“Once you sign up for iPad 3G data service, you can add to or cancel your domestic plan at any time – no penalty. For domestic plans, if you do not cancel, your service will automatically renew every 30 days to provide a more seamless data experience on an ongoing basis. For example, if you activate service on May 9, your service will automatically renew 30 days later with the same plan. If you do make a change, a new 30-day window begins.”

If you are concerned about going over on your limited Data Plan, worry not, because AT&T and Apple have taken care of this as well.  AT&T explains how you can avoid going over your limit:

“With the on-device management system, you can check your data usage in Settings>Cellular Data on your iPad at anytime. Also, for the $14.99 plan, iPad will even let you know when you’re about to reach your 250 MB data limit. You’ll get three alerts — at 20 percent, 10 percent, and zero. With each alert, you can choose to add more data or wait and do it later.

If you do exceed the amount of data in your plan, your plan will expire, but it’s easy to add another one. Also, with domestic plans, you can wait until the 30th day from your purchase when your plan will automatically renew going forward.”

Now that you have a little more knowledge about the different pricing and Data Plans that are offered for the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G, you can make a smarter buying decision on your chosen plan.  So, if your not in line, you better get going.  I would like to hear how you like your new iPad Wi-Fi + 3G, so leave a message in the comments section, and share your thoughts.

Photo Credit: iPad Wi-Fi+3G

Article Via AT&T’s Site