Macgasm

WINGStand Montage from The WINGStand on Vimeo.

If you want a multi-touch laptop, your best option may actually be a WINGStand and an iPad in the upcoming months. Seriously. Thanks to a tip from Mat Smith, we’ve just been given a heads up about what looks to be one of the best ways to connect your iPad to a full-size, wireless Apple keyboard. The WINGStand also lets you use it alone, without a keyboard, should you find yourself needing a stand more than you do keyboard.

That’s the real genius of it. Why would you get a case with a keyboard, and a separate iPad stand when you can get a WINGStand that works with products you may already own?

The stand isn’t available yet, but it is currently receiving funding on Kickstarter. If you want to be one of the first to get your hands on it, head on over there and make a donation.

Source: Kickstarter
HatTip: Mat Smith

We may have on our hands the most legitimate, not-a-complete-shot-in-the-dark tip about the iPhone 5 on our hands, and guess who it comes from?

Apple themselves. Photo Stream, a new iCloud service that will be made available with the release of iOS 5, has been creeping into the new versions of Apple’s applications as we grow closer to the phantom known as the release date. Keeping in mind that Apple loves to be ridiculously detailed with their icons, we are given a screenshot from what is presumably an intro tutorial to Photo Stream.

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1Password extension versions 3.8.2 beta 5 and later come bundled with a pretty bad ass feature. You can now use Go & Fill directly from Chrome’s Omnibox.

The procedure is pretty simple, requiring you only to type 1p into the Omnibox then press tab.  Once you do this, your “1p” changes to 1Password Beta: and highlights.

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In a move to reduce the amount of paperwork garbage collectors have to file and in-turn ruin, Bury council in the UK is planning to roll out iPads to its fleet.

The iPads are going to be installed inside the garbage trucks, mounted to the dashboard. They will be used to document homes that refuse to recycle as well as keep track of residences that have not been setting their bins out at the curb. These tasks are currently all logged via pen and paper, a task, due to the nature of the job, which ends up with a lot of illegible paperwork and I’d have to imagine, smelly file cabinets.

Bury council has been getting the third degree from the public about this plan, as they were forced to cut £18 million from their budget. Many simply feel this is extravagant and that a pen and paper should suffice.

The iPads will also serve a more utilitarian purpose, though, that simply can’t be replaced. The route info for each truck can be programmed in to them, which will help the truck drivers avoid traffic jams by adjusting their paths on the fly. If executed properly, this could actually end up saving the council money in the long run.

Source: The Sun
Via: TiPb
Image Credit: TabletTutor 

It seems that Apple has lost track of yet another iPhone prototype. We can only assume that the Apple employee (or perhaps now former Apple employee) was just tipsy enough to allow a total stranger to slip the phone out of their hands during a late night at San Fran’s Cava 22 lounge. I wonder who owns the movie rights to this one, ’cause it’s gonna be a blockbuster.

CNET tells us that “A day or two after the phone was lost… Apple representatives contacted San Francisco police, saying the device was priceless and the company was desperate to secure its safe return…”

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There seems to be some mixed reports circulating the Internet. Either Apple pulled the Financial Times from the App Store, or the Financial Times pulled their app. Either way, the Financial Times is now relying heavily on an HTML 5 edition of their application, and they’re hoping readers will place the web app on their home screens.

It’s no secret that the Financial Times was less than happy about Apple’s in-app subscription policy that forces developers to pay Apple 30 percent of all in-app income. Apple originally put a June 30th deadline in place for legacy applications to update their apps to include the new payment model and comply with the rules. June 30th came and went, and some companies still refused to update their applications. Today the other shoe finally fell for the Financial Times. The current wording of the App Store Review guidelines clearly states in section 11.14 that:

Applications can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app,” provided there is no link to purchase that content elsewhere at a lower price. “Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app.”

It seems that the Financial Times couldn’t live with the terms, and decided to move to an HTML 5 application instead. From a compatibility standpoint, native HTML 5 applications have a huge upside that a native iPhone or iPad app does not: cross-platform compatibility. The same app can be run on any web-standard browser, across any operating system.

There’s no doubt that an HTML 5 application is more useful on a large, platform-agnostic scale, but a question remains: will users actually place the website on their home screens using the built in Safari features? The last time I moved an application to my home screen was before Apple actually gave us an App Store. I’d be willing to bet that very few people outside of the tech community actually know the functionality even exists at this point.

Source: paidContent
Via: AppleInsider and The Loop

Pretty soon Apple will be able to tell just how badly your device is broken over the web, without having to ask you to go make a Genius appointment. A rumor has popped up online, and the gents over at HardMac have it on good authority that Apple will be able to diagnose both hardware and software problems over the web.  It is reportedly as simple as connecting your phone to your computer, then visiting a link in your email, from Apple Support, in Safari.

According to the rumor, Apple will only collect the UUID, device name, and time of the call. It’s also unknown if Apple will be tracking if a device is jailbroken or not, but we suspect that they will.

HardMac is reporting that Apple’s new diagnostic system, expected to be launched in the coming months, will diagnose the following:

• Health of the battery, and duration since the last full charge,
• Current battery charge,
• iOS version (and likely jailbreak)
• The last time the device was restarted,
• And finally, if the device normally restarted or crashed on its last boot.

Source: HardMac

Mobee handed me one of my favorite Mac accessories to date with their Magic Charger, and now they’ve really induced  a “why didn’t I think of that” moment with their new product, the Magic Numpad.

The Magic Numpad is basically three transparent sheets that you lay on top of your Magic Trackpad. The sheets have different Numpad key configurations printed on them and allow touch pass through.

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