Macgasm

Remember Circle, that nice looking app that lets you know when your friends are near by while you’re out on the town? While it’s taken some heat for its lack of utility over the last couple of months, there’s no denying that the application looks great.

The company has released a nifty little sneak peak of what it took to get the app designed and looking like it does today. If you’re interested in what it takes to develop a quality looking application, you’re gonna want to check the video out, as well as the design page over at discovercircle.com. It’s worth a look.

The Malkovich gets his very own Siri advertisements. They’re pretty hilarious in a Malkovich kind of way. And no, the title isn’t a typo.

Check out the videos

We all knew that Tim Cook, the unfortunate dude who has to follow Steve Jobs’ legendary tenure as CEO of Apple, would not necessarily walk in his predecessor’s footsteps. One of the ways that Cook has distinguished himself is by being more affable and personable, and even sitting down for lunch with random employees in the Apple cafeteria. Fortune magazine’s Adam Lashinsky describes how Cook comes across so easy going and down to earth that Apple staff love his company (as opposed to feeling like they’ve just been thrown into an episode of Fear Factor). Contrast this to Jobs, who had a ritual of stopping employees in the hallway or the elevator and demanding they explain to him on the spot what they do here, knowing full well that a bungled answer could potentially cost them a job.

Cook differentiates himself from Jobs in more ways than just his lunch company; He’s also responsible for calling for independent audits of Apple’s overseas factory conditions and pushing Apple into a greener and more environmentally-conscious mode of thinking. Shareholders are particularly pleased with Cook allocating $45 billion over three years to stock dividends and share repurchasing.

Despite his untimely and tragic passing, the era of Steve Jobs is not quite over yet. While Cook has been at the wheel for the launch of the iPhone 4S and the iPad 3 (aka The New iPad), these products are still echoes of Jobs’ brilliant mind (the 4S was even released while he was still alive). Cook has certainly asserted himself as a CEO who can relate to people a little more easily and, at the same time, make some very positive quarterly financial reports. Time has yet to tell if, once the momentum of Jobs’ influence has faded, he can imagine the products which will keep Apple on top of the tech world.

Source: AppleInsider

Traditional means of communicating on mobile devices and computers have often followed very distinctive paths historically. Until recently, the mobile phone was based around text messages and voice chats; however, on the computer it’s been video chats and instant messaging for quite some time now. Now that we have personal computers as our telephones, why hasn’t anyone come along and merged all of these communication methods into an easy to use application, one mobile communications app to rule them all?

I’ve been saying for over a year now that Messages and FaceTime needed to be integrated, then technologies like iMessage/SMS need to find their way into iChat as well. We don’t need one application for each communication medium. What we need is one communication medium that wraps all of the other mediums into one all powerful communicating application. We’re almost there, with iMessages heading to OS X, and FaceTime getting integrated into the Contacts app in iOS. It’s time we merge these beasts entirely, once and for all.

John Herman over at Buzzfeed has put together an interesting concept that places text messages, FaceTime and file transfers directly into one application. Alongside the FaceTime video is a button for the telephone, access to contacts, and a history of previous SMS/iMessages messages sent between contacts. It certainly makes sense.

Shut up and take my money already. I’d pay for that app.

If Apple’s serious about bringing iOS back to the Mac, and a little more OS X to iOS, they’d be smart to reevaluate how we communicate in 2012 and then rebuild the tools we have to make those kinds of connections with friends and family a whole lot better. One app to rule them all, one app to find them.

The last time Microsoft Office for iOS rumors popped up online, and more particularly in The Daily, the Internet not only got its panties in a bunch, but it also got Microsoft a little hot under the collar, forcing the company to take to Twitter to refute the original claims, stating “Great respect for The Daily but regrettably someone is giving them bad info, and that’ll be clear in the ‘coming weeks.’” While nothing was ever “made clear” about the information, we are getting another round of Microsoft Office for iOS rumors today.

Jonathan S. Geller, founder of BGR, is reporting that Office for iOS and Android will be available in November:

Whether or not you believe it is up to you, but the move would certainly be smart for Microsoft. Getting Office on all major tablet platforms will ensure that the suite lives on in an entirely post-PC world, should the world ever get to the post-PC state. Contrarily, opponents to that argument suggests that Office on a Microsoft tablet would be a sure-fire way to get the enterprise interested in Microsoft again. There’s no way to tell just where this rumor is heading, but Microsoft has done pretty well with the Office:Mac version of their popular suite. While the suite is a little hobbled in OS X, a similar lite-ish version for iOS and Android and a full-fledged version for Windows 8 Mobile could be something the company considers moving forward.

When it comes to Tower Defence games, few stand up to the fun and beauty of the original Fieldrunners game. The game has been updated plenty over the years, and it has won a ton of gaming awards ranging back all the way to 2008. The game’s about to get another update, but this time it won’t be a patch or new levels. Nope, it’s going to be a brand spanking new game — Field Runners 2 is a real things and it’s coming soon.

From The Subatomic Studios Blog:

Field Runners 2 is due out this summer, and details are pretty sparse about the project. That said, some screen shots have been published online, and we have to say, they look pretty freaking amazing.

Check Out The Screenshots

The fine folks over at Sonos have introduced a brand-spanking-new subwoofer for their multi-room, wireless audio systems. The Sub is built to work in conjuncion with Sonos’ ZonePlayer system, as well as the Play:5 and Play:3 speaker systems.

The Sub system is built to fill only one room with “thick layers of deep, bottomless sound that let you hear and feel every chord, kick, splash and roll.” So, if you’re planning to set up a Sonos system throughout your house, you may want to consider a couple of these for key areas in need of better bass integration throughout your house.

The Sub also uses Sonos’ famous one-button setup that the rest of the system uses to sync your audio devices to the main network for your system.

While the Sub has been announced, you can’t walk away with one just yet. That said, the Sub is available for pre-order at $749, and it’s only available in a Black Gloss finish.

Never one to take a pass on a moment to moan about their politricks in as public of a manner as is physically possible, Greenpeace took to projecting quotes on Apple’s Cupertino HQ a couple of days ago. Apple has decided that the time was right to publish a page on its website that illustrates just how green and renewable its data centers are currently:

Anyone else get the feeling that these moronic environmentalists are picking a fight with the wrong company? Does Apple own a huge data center that gobbles 20 megawatts of power at full capacity? Yes. Is Apple doing something to lower their power consumption and carbon foot print? Hell yes.The Renewable Energy page states: “We want to ensure that our efforts to use renewable energy are transparent and that everyone can follow our progress.” Maybe someone would be kind enough to print this page out show Greenpeace the website so they can compare it to other major tech industry leaders and those companies’ plans for lowering their carbon footprint. Oh, right. They don’t exist, just like Sony, Amazon, and Microsoft’s plans to right the wrongs at Foxconn don’t exist.