Macgasm

According to Kara Swisher at All Things D, Apple is set to unveil its next-generation tablet device on Wednesday, March 2.

Swisher’s report doesn’t have much detail past the date, but with just over a week to go until the 2nd, if her information is accurate, expect invitations to start popping up soon.

Apple has historically used Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for such events.

Photo by marctiedemann, via iDesk

The more I play video games these days the more I wish that games were as challenging as they were during the 80s and 90s.  During that time video games made you pay for dying, video games required time and effort, video games were frustratingly awesome. Unfortunately, Radiant isn’t much of that at all, which is a huge disappointment for me, and by the look of the comments in the Mac App Store, I’m not alone.

Radiant takes a pretty decent stab at recreating the original feel of Astroids and Space Invaders, all while providing a modern look upgrade to the games, but the aesthetics aren’t the problem—the game looks great—it’s the game play that’s lacking.

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According to an article on CNN, Apple and other online music retailers are in talks with record labels to improve the quality of the tracks they are selling. Citing industry executives who are involved in the talks, the move would offer higher fidelity tracks, perhaps at a higher premium price.

Jimmy Iovine, longtime music executive at Universal Music Group, is quoted as saying, “We’ve gone back now at Universal, and we’re changing our pipes to 24 bit. And Apple has been great. We’re working with them and other download services to change to 24 bit.” Somewhat ironically, his remarks were made during the HP news conference unveiling the TouchPad.

But what advantages would a move to 24 bit recordings have?

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A new report from DigiTimes in Taiwan seems to indicate that not only will there be new MacBook Pro models introduced this week, but a possible new iMac with revised screens as well. Citing supply chain sources, Apple “may also make some changes over the screen size to allow panel cutting to reach its optimization.”

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If a customer walked into the Apple Store with questions about iPhones, what are the odds that an Apple Store employee might bust out their iPhone? Or, if asked questions about carriers, what would an Apple store employee say? There’s a good chance that people want to know that the fine folks at the Apple Store use on a daily basis, and having their phones on the Verizon network could influence a sale for Verizon. Influence the influencers, and you have yourself a great deal of power.

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Putting aside the argument that a product can’t be delayed if it hasn’t been announced for a moment, there has been some news that there might be a bottleneck in factories that are producing the iPad 2.

According to Bussinessweek, Apple made several changes to the iPad 2 at the last minute, thereby forcing them to push the release date back to June, instead of the rumoured April. There’s no mention of what was introduced to the iPad 2, or what will be changed. Also, keep in mind that they say the release date will be delayed and not the announcement date.  We could still hear about the iPad 2 in the near future at a product announcement.

“Our checks suggest new issues are being encountered with the new production and it is taking time to resolve them,” said Chen in the report. “As a number of Android 3.0 tablets are being launched in April and May, the delay in iPad 2 shipments may give the Android camp a brief window of opportunity.”

If true, it could be a sad day for Apple fans. Personally, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, a small part of me was hoping for an iPhone 5/iPad 2 / MacBook Pro announcement extravaganza.

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Ever feel a need to take Twitter with a grain of salt? Simple and elegant, Trickle displays your tweets and automatically updates at set intervals. The main screen allows you to retweet and favorite the currently shown tweet, that’s it, that’s all. Trickle is the perfect minimal Twitter application.

Caleb Thorson, the developer of the application, states that ‘Trickle is designed to do one thing—display tweets.” Although it won’t replace your main Twitter client because of it’s lack of posting options, it’s a perfect sidekick for your docking station. It displays your timeline in beautiful Helvetica (because who doesn’t like Helvetica?) on a black background. It’s outright gorgeous.

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With all of the subscription hubbub over the last two weeks, it was only a matter of time until someone tried taking up their case with the CEO himself, via email. We’ve heard time-and-time again that Apple’s subscription model is currently aimed at publishers, and not at Software as a Service (SaaS) type applications. Applications like Netflix still exist on the App Store, but others, like Readability, have started to have some submission problems. Readability was rejected because of the subscription terms specifically, so of course the SaaS crowd are a little paranoid.

Is Readability considered a SaaS by Apple? It’s starting to look like they aren’t.

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