Ron Gilbert of Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and Backyard Sports fame teamed up with Hothead Games to make a brand new humor-infused action-RPG. For the most part, this game is successful at melding Gilbert’s humor with the genre, but there is a lot of grinding that needs to be done. For a limited amount of time, you can grab the game for only $2.99 on the app store.

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue

Originally designed as the second half of a larger game, Thongs of Virtue is part of Ron Gilbert’s original work, and follows directly after the original DeathSpank. This installment adds modern weaponry, and continues the tale of our goofy eponymous character. If you think you’ll like DeathSpank, you should pick up both this and the original. Just as above, it is available for $2.99 for a limited time on the app store.

The Baconing

Much like the third installment of the Godfather series, many people feel that it lacks the special sauce that made the first two special. It could easily be argued that the sauce in question is Ron Gilbert. The Baconing was made without his involvement, so don’t expect the story to be as interesting or funny. Plus, you get to do EVEN MORE GRINDING! This is $2.99 in the app store as well, but YMMV.

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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.

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Camera, ships with 15 hipster filters for aspiring iPhoneographers, lets you tag your friends in photos directly from the phone, as well as quickly crop and rotate your pictures before shipping the images off to the Facebook servers.

I hate to say it, but this is the kind of thing Apple needed to do with the native iPhone camera application. Photostream is great and all, but manually emailing and iMessaging images to friends and family is getting old really quickly.

The install process for getting Facebook’s Camera application is a little bit strange. Currently you have to head to their site, click the install button, and have the company text message you a download link. It may only be temporary until the app propagates around the various App Stores, but I can’t help but wonder if its an attempt at harvesting phone numbers.

It’s also kind of strange that the app is named Camera, exactly like the iPhone’s native camera application.  How that got by Apple’s review team is beyond us…

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Airfoil Speakers is an app from Rogue Amoeba that lets you turn your device into an AirPlay receiver. The iOS version has been in the app store since 2009, but unfortunately that has changed as of today.

Paul Kafasis, Rogue Amoeba:

This highlights one of the biggest issues for developers on the app store. Even if you follow all of Apple’s written guidelines, they still have ultimate say on your fate. Sadly, they have shown that they aren’t worried about removing apps for seemingly arbitrary reasons or no reason at all. Apple controls the vertical and the horizontal, and sometimes that means developers (and users) get the short end of the stick. Let’s hope that Apple reverses their decision here so we can get back to rocking out using AirPlay.

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The iPhone 4 and, to a greater extent, the iPhone 4S are excellent point and shoot cameras. For most cases, they are exactly what you want in a camera. Your phone is always with you, it is easy to go from 0 to record, and the clarity is acceptable in pretty much all situations. But what about some edge cases? Should you really buy a whole other camera when you’re mostly content with your iPhone? Well, consider the Olloclip.

Originally a Kickstarter project, the Olloclip is now available at good ol’ Thinkgeek for only $69.99 USD. This quick-connect lens system that attaches to your phone comes with three different lenses for your photographic fringe cases. Wide-angle, fisheye, and macro lenses can easily be attached to your iPhone in a snap, and you’re good to go. When you just can’t get that small knick-knack in focus, switch to the macro lens, and the problem is solved. When you need to take a group shot, switch to the wide-angle lens, and your iPhone becomes the best consumer camera you’ve ever owned.

If you like the Olloclip, or any other product we cover, please take a moment to hit us up on Twitter. When you take the time to give us feedback, our coverage will get even better, so don’t hesitate. We love to hear from readers.

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Today Bump has announced that it will begin letting its customers Bump photos directly from a mobile handset (iPhone, Android) to a computer. You can now head to their website http://bu.mp, select the photos you want to send in the Bump application on your iPhone, and then tap the spacebar with your phone, or finger.

From The Bump Blog:

It’s pretty snazzy, and it looks like it’s going to be a great way to share your photos with friends and family without having to send an iMessage or email. It’s pretty damn cool. Just make sure you don’t deny the bu.mp website access to your currently location in Safari. The app won’t work without access to your location. Learnt that one the hard way.

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From the sounds of it, and there’s very little detail to go on here, it sounds like GameFly wants to be Steam for Android. Which is nice, but it’s the publishing for iOS thing that has piqued our interests the most. Is GameFly planning on becoming the next Chillingo? It certainly sounds like that’s the plan according to GameFly’s SCP of Business Development and Content Sean Spector. While the company is planning on becoming a publisher for iOS, the announcement seems to focus most heavily on Android. “We plan to be a leading player in mobile games by launching our retail GameStore for Android and helping to fund mobile developers of all sizes to publish, promote and sell their smartphone and tablet games.”

We plan on being a lot of things, but the real question is whether or not GameFly can make it actually happen. Their business may certainly hinge on the success of this move. It may not be this year, or next, but GameFly is going to have a very difficult time renting video games if game publishers stop shipping game discs with their titles and rely on digital downloads exclusively.

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Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

In addition to the normal in-app advertisements that DrawSomething forces users to draw as part of the game to get their money, the company will now also be rolling out even more advertisements. In the future you’ll find yourself looking at banner ads, video trailers, and puzzle words for DreamWorks’ Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. The Wall Street Journal has pegged the value of that advertisment partnership somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000.

Maybe the plan was to introduce these ad models all along, but it’s hard not to think that Zynga is rushing to make coin while it can before gamers leave the game behind entirely. At its height, 14.5 million people were playing OMGPop’s DrawSomething, and it’s now rumored to be seeing only half of that number on a daily basis (7.6 million).

That $183 million dollars is starting to look a little ridiculous, isn’t it Zynga? Hats off to OMGPop for getting top dollar though, that was quite the coup.

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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

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Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

Microsoft is hilariously late to the tablet market with anything resembling a modern tablet OS. Sure, Bill Gates loved the idea of a Windows desktop with a stylus, but that ain’t no tablet, sonny! As Windows 8 (RT BBQ Edition for Tablets of Beloved Fearless Leader Of The Motherland 2008 Server Edition) was revealed, Microsoft went on and on about how duct-taping Metro to the classic Windows OS was all about choice and no compromise and blah blah blah. That said, they had the good sense to make the ARM version of Windows free from plug-ins. Most of us assumed that would mean Microsoft would join Apple’s fight to wrestle the web away from Adobe, but it turns out they’re compromising.

Rafael Rivera, Within Windows:

Yuck, yuck, yuck. So a half-working sorta version of Flash will be rolled into Internet Explorer 10, and Flash continues to limp its bloodied corpse forward another long, long year. This is less than happy news for those of us who fight with Flash on a daily basis. I’m sure that Windows tablets will be super fun to use, and we’ll all be punching chimps and watching splash screens for decades to come.

Source: Within Windows

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On The Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness

The first in a planned quadrilogy of games, episode one of On The Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness (Or Otterspod) set the bar high. Clever writing and lovely comic strip styled cut scenes made this game beloved by quite a number of gamers. Episode two was released, and then a long wait without any news happened. Then, sadly, it was announced that the developer, Hothead Games, had canceled the last two games in the series. Luckily, Zeboyd Games picked up the franchise, and we’ll be seeing episode 3 in a new form this summer. If you want to kick off your adventure, all you need to do is drop $1.99 USD on the App Store.

DLC Quest

This game is all about playing with the tropes of the game industry. Inside jokes, satire, and sassy dialog are the bread and butter of DLC quest. To gain features like audio and the ability to move left, you need to “buy DLC packs” with coins you find in game. It’s extremely clever, and absolutely worth the $1.99 USD asking price in the App Store. If you’re a gamer, you’ll find yourself chuckling the entire way through.

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So apparently this unknown company called Blizzard took a chance on a risky title called… I forget the name… I think it was Diablo III… and shocked everyone on the entire planet by breaking sales records like crazygonuts.

I kid. Blizzard is so good at breaking sales records that nobody’s surprised. As the parrot in Aladdin said: I may have a heart attack and die from being not surprised.

Having only a week behind it, Diablo III has already torpedoed through 6.3 million purchases — 3.5 million of which were in the first 24 hours, thus making it the fastest-selling PC game ever. As if that’s not enough, there’s an additional 1.2 million players who received Diablo III as a freebie for signing up for World of Warcraft’s Annual Pass promotion, which put 4.7 million people around the world in front of their computers ready to fight evil on day one. What’s more, that figure of 6.3 million doesn’t even include the players in Korean Internet game rooms where Diablo III is the top-played game (North Americans may not be aware that gaming cafés, or “bangs” as they’re known in Korea, are a pretty big deal).

Here’s Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime expressing his profound disappointment in the pathetic sales and bleating about how he promises to do better next time:

Those preparations of which he speaks are in reference to the server problems Blizzard had when Diablo III hit the streets. To put it briefly, Diablo III ended up loading Blizzard’s Battle.net servers to create the same result one sees when a steam roller drives over a pudding cup. Apparently problems still persist, but Blizzard has dealt with the worst of it and is likely to get things under control before too long.

Still on the fence about Diablo III? Treat yourself to the Macgasm review and hear what we had to say about it.

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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.

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Great for LaCie, and a pretty questionable move for Seagate. According to their press release, Seagate is essentially purchasing LaCie for its “premium-branded direct-attached storage line, strengthen our network-attached storage business line and enhance our capabilities in software development.” Whether or not that is worth the price of investment is up to Seagate, but to us it sounds like all they need is a nice external enclosure for their drives. We’re oversimplifying obviously, but are we really that far off the mark? One thing’s for certain, Seagate is about to inherit some nifty looking case enclosures.

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The PC market (mobile or otherwise) has seen some strange days in the last few years with the meteoric rise of mobile technology, and nothing underlines that better than Apple’s iPad which once again takes the number one spot. NPD reports that Apple shipped 17.2 million mobile PCs globally in the first quarter of 2012, and that nabs them a 22.5 percent share, which is more than twice what second-runner-up Hewlett-Packard managed to bag with 8.9 million mobile PCs for an 11.6 percent share.

AllThingsD talks about the rise and the rise of the iPad, which, to date, is not only surfing atop the declining sales of every other mobile PC maker but also remains unrivaled by any other tablet for its marketshare:

It’s also interesting to consider the iPad as a PC — without the qualifier of “mobile”. One doesn’t have to be very observant to see the iPad doesn’t really look like a PC, and so critics are justifiably skeptical as to whether or not it’s fair to compare the tablet to one. Yet, at the same time, “Personal Computer” in 2012 might very well mean something other than a beige box on your desk.

Source: NPD
Via: AllThingsD

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In this week’s episode, the boys show off Bike Baron for the iPad (works on the iPhone too) and a new app from photographer extrordinare Ron Brinkmann called FreezePaint. Both apps are worth checking out.

[Download][Direct Feed][iTunes]

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If you need to keep track of your environment from afar, your options aren’t great. Multiple devices would need to be purchased, assembled, and a workflow would need to be thought out on how to combine all of the data and send it to you. Knut is looking to make it simpler.

Knut is a tiny little sensor hub that operates on two AAA batteries, connects to your Wi-Fi network, and sends you the data it collects. A thermometer and battery level sensor are built into the device, and then additional sensors can be attached.

Here are the additional sensors they’re currently making available for Knut:

• Waterproof thermometer
• Humidity sensor
• 3-Axis Accelerometer
• Door switch sensor
• Water pressure sensor
• A breakout board (A device that allows you to attach your own sensors to the Knut)

Once it collects enough data, it then sends it as a CSV file to a designated email address over your local Wi-Fi network. Sadly, the device is 802.11b-only, but should spend most of its time sleeping, so it shouldn’t drag down your G or N networks too much. Then, you can view and manipulate the data using the Knut app on Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android.

If you want a Knut of your own, you need to pledge $95 or more on Kickstarter. Shipping is free in the US, $10 USD for Candian shipping, and $15 USD for shipping elsewhere. As of writing, they have raised just under $10,000 of their $25,000 USD minimum funding goal. The project ends on July 5th, so don’t wait too long to order yours.

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We’re not completely sure how the company behind AVG Anti-Virus holds any copyright to a music video that’s five years old, and hopefully this is just an AVG-Roll.

For now though, it looks like the RickRoll is officially being killed off. Stupid AVG.

Via: TorrentFreak

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Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

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.

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If you sit down and think for a bit about every Apple product that has been released, and some of the changes and alterations that went into those new products, it becomes pretty apparent that the ethos at Apple centres on logic and inevitability. In hindsight, any average Joe from Main St. can see the inevitable changes from the first generation iPhone through to the iPad’s release, but it takes someone special to notice those kinds of things before anyone else is talking about them. Apple does that better than anyone. It’s why they took the first step towards a computer in your pocket. It’s why they took a step towards the iPad. Heck, it’s why they went straight for a digital music player when all the other major players in the industry were still trying to figure out ways to make portable CD players skip less.

It’s remarkable really when you sit back and think about it. Doing it once can be written off as luck, but making the right decision time and time again takes talent. Steve Jobs had that talent, obviously. And from the sounds of it, that ethos is still alive and well in Cupertino. Apple sees the inevitability in their product road map; everyone else just claims they do after Apple takes the first step.

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Up until recently, bioengineers were only able to write data once to DNA, but Bioengineers at Stanford University have now discovered a way to write and rewrite data to a strand of DNA. “We can write and erase DNA in a living cell,” says Jerome Bonnet, a bioengineer at Stanford University. “Now we can bring logic and computation inside a cell itself.”

Science News explains the findings published by Stanford’s Drew Endy in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.:

I’m pretty speechless. Mostly because this stuff is WAY over my head. I’m pretty glad people a lot smarter than I are on the case of turning DNA into a storage device. We’ve been hearing for years that a test tube filled with DNA could store a heck of a lot of information if not our entire historic record. It’s pretty exciting to think of the potential storage possibilities that a device the size of a typical thumb drive could have if it was based on a DNA-like storage system. Lossless audio and raw video footage wouldn’t even be a problem, and that’s just in the consumer media market. Imagine what something like this could do in the medical industry?

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IBM’s chief information officer Jeanette Horan offers a brief look at how BYOD works at IBM with MIT’s Technology Review:

Horan goes on to highlight how “conservative” the company is, and bemoans the lack of basic “awareness as to what constitutes a risk” among her employees. I’d like to suggest that if she really meant it, she’d take a moment and have her IT department explain to employees why using iCloud or Siri could be a security risk instead of disabling it on employees’ mobile devices. A simple, “people can steal our trade secrets if these services are breached” email should be sufficient and still give people the ability to ask Siri where the closest taco stand is in the area.

The best security policy is one that actually educates employees to help them make smart security decisions, not one that removes access or limits their functionality to certain applications without a basic discussion about the risks. Then again, having a smarter, more secure workforce would likely mean less IT jobs, so… there’s that.

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Some thieves may be smart enough to know that an iPhone is worth stealing, but they don’t all understand a whole lot about how an iPhone works. This was proven to Katy McCaffrey last month when her iPhone was pinched while on a cruise ship. Though normally one would consider their chances of recovering a stolen phone to be slim, it seems McCaffrey’s thief loves taking photos and — obviously unbeknownst to him — uploading them to iCloud for anyone to see.

For those of you who don’t know, iCloud offers users a feature called “Photo Stream.” When someone takes a photo with their iCloud-enabled iPhone (or iPod or iPad), it’s automatically and transparently uploaded to the cloud and can be downloaded on any other iCloud-enabled device the user owns (including their Mac). As you have already figured out by now, the phone thief has been loading up iCloud’s Photo Stream generously so far.

Nobody could blame McCaffrey for then creating a public Facebook album entitled “Stolen iPhone Adventures” in which she shares 20 photos from the thief’s collection (whose name is Nelson) and lets the world know when and where the phone was nabbed. Apparently, Nelson works on the Disney cruise line, has a pregnant girlfriend who works at the ship’s spa and loves the Mexican coastline.

The thief hasn’t yet been apprehended but, thanks to iCloud, it truly is a small world after all.

Source: Cult of Mac

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Though digital photography is all the rage and prices for the gear are (relatively) affordable, a lot of us don’t know much more about digital cameras than what our phones teach us. Clearly there are reasons to upgrade from your iPhone if you have an interest in taking better pictures, but how does a neophyte navigate the waters? Buzz words such as megapixels seem like they might be the most important thing, but if you’re going to shell out a chunk of cash for a hardcore camera, you probably want to know a little more.

LifeHacker delves into the topic with a bit more depth (and they say that megapixels, in fact, are mostly irrelevant when it comes to image quality), and tools a little guide specifically for the layperson who wants to up their photo-taking game. Here’s a bit of guidance:

There’s a lot of speculation about whether or not cell phone cameras will be at the point where they can replace SLRs completely. If you watch the way the iPhone’s camera has improved (especially over a short time), it seems not just possible, but inevitable. Is that day here? No, no it isn’t. If you want better pics, you still have to actually buy a device whose sole purpose in life is giving them to you.

Source: LifeHacker

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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.

Quick Look At Some Screenies

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If you only have the cash to purchase one new mobile Apple device this year, what’s it going to be?

Image Credit: Hashdash. Thanks For Sharing The Image In Instagram With Us!

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The application will sell for $9.99 and includes an SSH Terminal app built in, syntax highlighting, remote file editing, AirPreview, which turns your iPad into a Coda preview monitor, and a document shelf.

Long story short, if you ever find yourself having to make some edits to your website while you’re barreling down the highway at 60 MPH, you’re gonna want to pick up Diet Coda before putting rubber to asphalt. We’ve got a feeling this is going to be a must-have application.

We also have to ask, what happened to Coda Zero?

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If you’re a proud owner of a third generation iPad, you’ll know that non-Retina applications stick out like sore thumbs. You’ll be reading your beautiful smooth text, and then your eyes stumble across a low resolution button. Oh, the jaggies! Up until recently, the premium service Hulu Plus was delivered on your iPad via a non-Retina app. All of the eyes were sad. Good news, though! Hulu Plus has been updated this week to take advantage of the third generation iPad’s 2048×1536 display.

Along with Retina support comes genre-based browsing of content, a re-written video player, a revamped graphical user interface, improved AirPlay and HDMI output support, and a handful of bug fixes. The app, of course, is free, but you need to subscribe to the $7.99 Hulu Plus service. It’s available in the US, but it almost certainly doesn’t work anywhere else — unless you know what you’re doing.

Is Hulu Plus not providing enough entertainment? Well, why don’t you check out Macgasm TV? We have dozens of videos with useful information and hilarious banter. If you’re not already subscribed, you can get it directly in iTunes if that is what blows your skirt up.

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Limbo

Mystery is this game’s bread and butter. When you look at the description in the App Store, you only get one sentence: “Uncertain of his sister’s fate, a boy enters LIMBO.” This indie platformer is dark — both in theme and luminance. Taking place in the monochrome world of Limbo, this art style is fantastically creepy. Clearly, this takes the fundamentals of the classic genre, and brings them to a mature audience. Limbo is available on the Mac App Store for only $9.99 USD.

Civilization IV

Ah, Civilization. This franchise is beloved and revered as an enormous time sink. If you’re looking for lots of bang for your buck, you’re in for a treat. Civilization IV is on sale for only $7.99 today on the Mac App Store. You’ll be busy for dozens of hours trying to get George Washington to build the first library before Napoleon discovers nuclear weapons. This is a wonderful game, and the price can’t be argued with.

If you like gaming on OS X and iOS, make sure you subscribe to our gaming feed. You’ll always be up to date on great deals and big news.

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Lately you’ve probably seen a lot of rumors about the next iPhone and how the screen will be so much bigger than the current model. Rumors have proliferated about size changes for all iOS devices since the day they emerged. Whether they’re rumored to be bigger or smaller, there’s always a cabal of pundits who are going to tell you it’s as good as given that the iPhone/iPad/iPod will get bigger or smaller. Some write it up because they actually believe what they’re saying. Some write it up because they want to draw page views, and they know rumors are good search engine fodder. Either way, time has not been kind to those who look into the crystal ball and predict a shrinking or swelling of an iOS device. In fact, any size changes to the iPod, iPhone or iPad in the last five years have been so minimal that they barely qualify as changes at all.

This is not to say that the rumors about a larger iPhone screen won’t come to pass (even if the handset size doesn’t increase). More crystal ball-gazing won’t bring clarity to the subject, but looking at why we think it has to be bigger just might. After all, the Samsung Galaxy II sports a generous 4.3-inch size — so big, in fact, that the average person’s thumb can’t travel from one side to the other when it’s cradled in your hand. And yet, the screen resolution is no bigger than the iPhone’s. In fact, the Samsung’s 480 x 800 pixel display (217 dpi) is rather humble when compared to the iPhone’s 960 x 640-pixel (326 dpi). Increasing the screen size doesn’t increase the quality of the screen one iota, and in fact, the screen quality is considerably inferior. Does the iPhone need a size boost in order to compete with the Galaxy II, its biggest rival? The superior image quality and ease-of-use for those of us with average thumbs suggests it does not.

Though I’ve heard countless arguments about the merits of a larger screen (even with a considerably lower picture quality), frankly, I just don’t buy it. The device sits bigger, which makes it a little harder to stash in, say, a business jacket or the back pocket of your jeans. It’s too small to add meaningful benefit for book-reading (as, say, a tablet would). Why would Samsung create a phone that’s bigger just for the sake of being bigger?

It turns out they didn’t. I recently was made aware of a large-screen argument that actually made some sense, and it gave context for the entire concept (finally).

Samsung, as most of us know, is a Korean company. I recently met someone who spent an extended period of time in Korea and got to know a little about their technology and how it works. There’s one thing that Koreans do with their phones that North Americans do not: They watch television on it. It’s such a common practice, in fact, that mobile phones with antennae for better TV reception are commonplace. As it was explained to me, little by little the penny started to drop: The bigger screen makes a lot more sense when you imagine watching X-Factor on your mobile. The low definition of standard television means the lower resolution of the handheld screen is irrelevant, and for that sort of functionality every inch of screen real estate is a blessing.

As Samsung is a Korean company and has deep, deep roots in that nation’s economic and cultural infrastructure, they will (obviously) always consider what Korean mobile needs are. This is not to say they do so to the exclusion of the rest of the world, but of course they’re going to create a device that Koreans can watch TV on. Apple… less so. The Korean market is not currently their biggest growth opportunity; neither is it their strongest foothold. Apple is entrenched in the North American market and culture to the extent that it’s held up by the United States as an example of American business do-goodery. To wit: Apple may not be unconcerned with who wants to watch TV on their phone, but it sure isn’t their priority. Instead, Apple wishes to steer customers towards higher definition and on-demand TV and video, which funnels the consumer into the iTunes ecosystem. Hence, small screen, but big resolution. Though both the Galaxy II and the iPhone are ubiquitous all over the world, one takes its design cues from Asia and one from North America.

Again, the iPhone 5 (whenever that happens) may see a screen size increase. There’s equally firm data to suggest it will as there is to suggest it won’t (in other words: none). What we do know, however, is that an increase in screen size is not a unilaterally accepted milestone for competition in the market. When Apple looks beyond the borders of the USA, it sees Korean tech culture as part of a large puzzle, whereas Samsung starts its design journey in Korea. It’s a very good example of how two companies can do completely different things, and in each case, it was the exactly right decision for them.

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Google continues to refine and hone their flagship email service, Gmail, buffing up features and functionality. Search has received a much-needed improvement (for English users only so far), even adding autocomplete services. According to Engadget: “Now, instead of simply returning results for labels and contacts, queries will also include relevant email info based on the conversations stored in a user’s account, like flight or hotel reservations.”

This new searchy goodness only exists on the web app (not your mobile app or whatever), but Google will no doubt intend to roll this out to all permutations of Gmail with a little time and testing, including non-English languages. Here’s the blurb from Google’s blog:

While some have trepidation about using Gmail because of the way that Google’s tech crawls through your messages in order to better hone advertising, it continues to be the most efficient and well-maintained mail service on the web. Note that I didn’t say “biggest”, as Hotmail likely still holds that title. Unfortunately.

Source: Google Blog
Via: Engadget

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Kodak’s hopes to get Apple and RIM on the ropes with some patent infringement claims have been smashasized into little pieces by ITC judge Thomas Pender, who essentially told Kodak to cram it. The once-upon-a-time giant of the photography world, which for two years has been trying to bring patent infringement claims against the two tech companies, filed for bankruptcy protection in January. Generally regarded by pundits as a “Hail Mary” attempt to scrape some money together, Kodak was seeking $1B for damages, but Pender ruled the patent that was the basis of their claim to be invalid. The New York Times has a little info on the patent in question:

Interestingly, Pender said the particular aspect of the patent that was pivotal to this case was “covered an obvious variation of earlier inventions,” and that, if it were actually valid, BlackBerry devices and the Apple iPhone 3G would infringe it, while the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 wouldn’t (presumably, this would also cover the 4S).

Source: New York Times

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If you like the idea of a kind-of steampunk iPhone, this case will tickle your fancy. Available from Zazzle, this Rotary Dial iPhone Case brings the ascetic appeal of an old-fashioned rotary telephone to the back of your iPhone. Combined with the Rotary Dialer app for only $0.99 USD, you’re in good shape in the retro department.

If you want your very own Rotary iPhone case, you’re going to need to drop $51.40 on Zazzle.com. Shipping and handling prices will vary, and don’t expect international shipping to be cheap. That said, you can almost always find a decent deal for Zazzle on RetailMeNot.com.

Is this the iPhone case of your dreams, or are you much too hip and modern? Maybe you prefer something else? If you think you’ve found a case that we should know about, don’t hesitate to drop us a tip. We love to hear from readers, and we’ll certainly credit you if you spur us to write an article about something.

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We’ve seen a lot of polarizing topics on Macgasm over the years, but this may be the closest split to date. It’s no wonder comments and posts around the blogosphere are so split on Siri and whether or not it’s a disappointment. Being Canadian, and the fact that Siri is pretty limited up here, I fall in the diappointed category, but that’s a pretty unfair reason for me to cast a vote in one direction over another. We simply don’t have access to everything Siri has to offer just yet.

That said, we’re really hoping Apple moves to include a lot more features in Siri in iOS 6. Rolling out an API for other developers to integrate with the service may not be something we see in the short term, but over the long term, it’s going to be crucial to the service’s success. We absolutely need more integration with popular Internet services, as well as the ability to do things like send a Tweet or post a Facebook status update directly from Siri.

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I’ve been waiting for this kind of thing for years. AppFresh, a popular app management app, had automatic app updates built in for years, but I’ve always had a hard time getting the updates to work. AppFresh would go out and grab Apple updates, Sparkle updates, Microsoft updates, as well as widget, prefpanes, and plugins and then download and install them automagically.

The fact that it appears that Apple’s finally built in this kind of functionality makes the Mountain Lion update worth it for me. It’s funny how something so small as automatic app updates can completely make an upgrade worth it.

I can’t wait until I can stop heading to the Mac App Store to update my apps. Hopefully this kind of thing happens in the iOS App Store as well in iOS 6. That would completely make my year. No seriously, my YEAR.  Not having to think about these kinds of things and being able to just open up the latest and greatest patch from developers is going to be a huge time saver for a lot of appaholics. Me included.

Hat Tip To Zach Kahn for this super awesome find.

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The iPhone 5 won’t look like this, but it’s fun to speculate. Personally, I prefer the header image they’ve used for the post (seen above). It looks a lot more elegant than the video concept.

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The lastest and greatest rumor from 9to5 Mac has indicated that insiders at Apple HQ, who apparently don’t value their jobs, have tipped them off with news that the next iPhone will not only have a bigger screen, but that it will also have a 16:9 aspect ratio.

While we’re not sold on a 16:9 aspect ratio in the next iPhone, we’re certainly starting to lean towards the next iPhone having a bigger screen. It’s based on a hunch, but a lot of people are “confirming” that the next iPhone will indeed have a bigger screen.

Personally, I’d like to see the iPod touch get the bigger screen, bringing the device in line with other gaming-only platforms on the market, and thereby turning it into Apple’s balls-to-the-wall gaming device. Hell, you could even name that the iPad mini or whatever else you want to call it, but I digress.

Via: Gizmodo
Image Credit: Christyam

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The acquisition will, of course, result in some turnover in the company, starting at the top. Google announced that Sanjay Jha will be stepping down as CEO of Motorola and Google executive Dennis Woodside will take over this position.

Google CEO Larry Page on the acquisition:

Motorola jumped on the Android bandwagon early, delivering handsets with the open source operating system from Google since 2009. When the acquisition was initially announced, Google indicated that they hoped the purchase of Motorola Mobility would “help supercharge Android.” Particularly attractive to Google is Motorola’s suite of wireless patents, which should help protect Android from its many patent-infringement lawsuits.

Source: Google Official Blog

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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.

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Our Macs are built-in with the capability to run in HiDPI mode. That’s right — Retina-level graphics right on your Mac. Sadly, most screens available aren’t high enough resolution to be useful. Well, except for that shiny new iPad you have! Its 2048×1536 native resolution means that if it was a monitor in HiDPI mode, it would have the effective real estate of a 1024×768 monitor with the clarity of a glossy magazine. That’s where Air Display comes in.

Once you install the free Air Display Connect software on your Mac, you’re going to need to buy Air Display for your iOS device for $9.99 USD. Once you’re running the software on both devices, your iPad will show up on your Mac a display that you can manipulate like any other. Best of all, you can turn on HiDPI mode, and look at how beautiful everything will be when we have better displays hooked up to our Macs. You probably won’t be watching movies over your wireless connection, but it is more than fast enough to get work done if you’re using 802.11n. A wired connection from your Mac to the router would probably make things smoother, however.

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Apple users have different opinions about different topics, but everyone seems to agree on one thing: Ping sucks. The iTunes-based social media effort that’s intended to create conversation among music lovers feels like trying to start a fire with wet newspaper. Where the success of social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter are now legendary in their scope, Ping has mostly failed to capture the attention or interest of the average Joe, which, for social media, is the equivalent of death by starvation. Jim Dalrymple of The Loop said it best: “I don’t think Apple knows what to do with Ping. That seems clear because users don’t know what to do with it either.”

Apple’s efforts to jump in on the social media phenomenon failed to get traction, unlike their entrance to the MP3 and mobile markets. Why? Because the inflexible, controlled, manicured experience that makes devices and interfaces a joy to use can’t be overlaid onto social media. People have to be allowed to discuss freely and personalize their experience. Though Apple allows users to enjoy modest customization such as their own friend list, Ping doesn’t offer the freedom to do much beyond saying “I bought a song and it is being enjoyed.” What’s more, celebrities and pop music artists have used Ping almost entirely as a colorless marketing system while, conversely, their Twitter presence is vibrant and personal.

Adam Haworth wrote up a pretty good manifesto of how Apple could potentially save Ping. While under no misconceptions about the service (“We all know Ping is kind of shit. Well, not kind of. It is shit.”), Haworth postulates some thought-provoking and sometimes excellent ideas about how to kickstart the sagging, sterile social media ghost town that is Ping:

It’s a little surprising that Ping has endured as long as it has, as Apple has a history of quickly killing products and services that don’t catch on quickly, such as the G4 Cube, iTools, and numerous others (whereas Microsoft tends to hammer a crappy product mercilessly until it starts to behave, even if it takes decades). As Ping is still here, it suggests Apple may still have plans. Perhaps they’ll be listening to Adam Haworth.

Source: Adam Haworth
Via: The Loop

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If there’s one thing that gives phone service carriers a profound sadface, it’s Apple’s iPhone “subsidy.” In order to sell the most popular phones in the world (the Apple 4S, 4 and 3GS, in that order), they enter into a multiyear deal with Apple during which they subsidize the cost of the iPhone in order to make it more attractive to customers. Apple stipulates a stiff subsidy, too; so stiff that analysts predict carriers will revolt any day now and tell Apple to cram it. But is that day here? No, no it isn’t.

If carriers don’t subsidize the iPhone to make it affordable for customers, the business they’re seeking for offering the phone in the first place is likely to walk out the door. AllThingsD comments on the pressure those poor, poor carriers are experiencing now that, instead of making billions and billions of dollars, they’re only making billions of dollars:

With AT&T, Verizon and Sprint all locked in to long-term deals with Apple, it’s hard to consider a renegotiation for lower fees is nigh.

One of the most important things to consider when examining the whys and wherefores of the subsidy is to compare Apple’s business model to their biggest competitor, Google (who makes the Android operating system). Where Apple’s model is concerned, they make money if the customer loves the phone. If that doesn’t happen, they don’t profit. Where Google is concerned, profit comes from putting as many eyes on as many ads as possible. The phone is secondary because (as you can tell from the rock-bottom prices) not many companies make their fortune from an Android handset. The carrier mostly banks on the low subsidy and the contractual monthly fees while Google wants to serve up more ads. This, obviously, whets carriers’ appetites for a similar deal with Apple where crappy phones can be sold for dirt cheap so the contracts come easy and with maximum profit. So far it looks like Apple has neither plans nor need to budge, and carriers who don’t want to be locked out of the iPhone’s unqualified success will have to stick with the program… albeit begrudgingly.

Source: AllThingsD

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If you’re looking for video games on the cheap, you’re in for a treat this week. Aspyr is discounting one game per day this entire week. Today’s game is Prey.

Wikipedia explains the game as follows:

If that sounds interesting, now is the perfect time to try it out on your Mac because you can grab it on the App Store for only $2.99 USD. Be quick, though. The sale is for today only. The good news is that a different Aspyr game will be on sale for $7.99 tomorrow, one for $4.99 on Wednesday, one for $2.99 on Thursday, and one for $9.99 on Friday. Each day, they’ll announce which game is on sale, so make sure you check back to find your daily deal.

If you’re interested in learning about all of the latest and greatest in OS X and iOS gaming, make sure to subscribe to our Gaming News RSS feed. You’ll always be up to date then.

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Ever wonder what’s under the hood of the humble, ubiquitous iPhone charger? Okay, me neither… but the little device that keeps your precious iPhone, iPad or iPod chugging has a bit more to it than you might think. Ken Shiriff did a pretty extensive breakdown of the little white cube and it’s umbilical cord attachment and discovered some interesting stuff, such as how incredibly complex the construction of this seemingly simple device is and (a little less surprising) how much Apple makes off of every unit sold:

Though Shiriff is taken aback by Apple’s profit on these devices, he’s also very clear about how the Apple chargers are a cut above knock-offs, saying “Apple went to extra effort to provide higher quality and safety than other name-brand chargers, but this quality comes at a high cost.”

Our philosophy on the high cost is simply this: When a knockoff charger costs a third as much as the Apple product and yet shatters, shorts out, falls apart or simply fails to work when you need it… did you really save yourself something of value by keeping $20 in your pocket?

Source: Ken Shirrif’s Blog
Via: TUAW

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There are some mistakes you make on Facebook that, frankly, nobody but your psychiatrist can help you with… but the other mistakes? There might be some hope. The average Facebook user arrives without training or savvy as to how the site works or what the pitfalls are. We’ve all seen the novice who says “yes” to every single app, accepts every friend request, joins every group and then posts status updates about how his/her Facebook is out of control. Poor n00bs.

Lifehacker has taken a look at ways to get your Facebook experience under control and, more importantly, to put an end to our dumb mistakes. From auditing your approved apps to filtering your news feeds to managing your privacy settings, you could be having a better Facebook experience overall and greatly improving the signal to noise ratio. In fact, Lifehacker even goes so far as to help you pull the plug if you need to. Kinda:

Facebook may not make up the entire web, but it’s the backbone of many core services and connections for countless sites and resources. Hey, you may say you don’t have the time to sit around streamlining your Facebook experience, but you may want to ask yourself if you have the time not to.

Source: Lifehacker

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When you’re in a dark or poorly lit room, plugging in your phone is a hassle. You feel around for the slot, and then you try jamming it in the wrong way. Small inconveniences add up, and there is no reason to keep banging your head against the wall if there is a clever solution. That’s why this Kickstarter project is clever as hell.

CordLite looks like your everyday standard 30-pin dock connector for your iOS device of choice, but when you pick it up, it starts to glow. That’s right — it is touch sensitive. Pick it up, find the slot, plug it in. You don’t have to turn it on or off. “It just works.”

Scrap Pile Labs, the designers of CordLite, are based out of Florida, and they’re looking for a minimum funding of $70,000 USD. As of writing, they are just under the $30,000 mark with 36 days to go. If you’re interested in ordering a CordLite of your very own, all you have to do is back the project for $30 USD or more. US shipping is free, but you’re going to need to add $10 USD for everywhere else. Even better, you can pick between black or white plastic to match your device. Maybe pick up a white one for you and a black one for your significant other.

For those of you who are interested in this technology for other devices, the developers are working on a MicroUSB version, but it is Apple-only for the time being.

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Apple has re-iterated through an email sent to developers this past Friday that yes, June 1 is the start date for properly “sandboxed” Mac App Store app submissions. Here’s the word from Apple, as reported by MacStories:

For those of you who aren’t aware, the process of sandboxing is a new direction for the MAS and is more than a little controversial: An app that’s sandboxed will have limited ability to interact and use other apps. This is intended to limit the ability of malware to access other programs and wreak havoc upon the user. It’s not an unreasonable concern, either: How many Windows viruses enter through the browser and then use Outlook to do their damage? Apple has decided the Mac will have none of that and has said that after June 1 only sandboxed apps will be accepted to the Mac App Store.

The problem, however, is that apps can call upon other apps for much-needed help from which the user greatly benefits. Apps such as TextExpander or Dropbox use inter-app or background functionality to deliver their features to the user, and so obviously the sandboxing will greatly diminish their ability to work as intended. Developers aren’t super crazy about this. Luckily, a system of “entitlements” is created for apps to establish which other apps they need access to, and those entitlements are approved by Apple. So it’s not as if sandboxed apps are unable to access other apps. It’s just that they can’t do it without a “license”, so to speak.

It’s imporant to note that one does not have to acquire apps from the Mac App Store. As it has always been, anyone can download any app they like from anywhere on the web or install via CD and run it (in fact, for most apps, you still have to). The twist comes from the fact that Mac developers who don’t distribute their apps via the Mac App Store make 20 percent of those who do. This incentive catches developers in a bad place where they may have to choose between making the app they want to make or being able to make rent.

Source: MacStories

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