According to Reuters, that’s the best performance of any book since George W. Bush’s Decision Points and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth. Both titles were released in November of 2010, and both sold 400,000 copies in their first week. Steve Jobs was released on October 24th, a little more…
Bryan Chaffin
Bryan Chaffin is the cofounder of The Mac Observer and currently serves as Afternoon Editor. He has contributed to MacAddict and MacFormat magazines, and co-authored the last two updates of iPad and iPad Pro for Dummies with Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus and Ed Baig. You can find out more about Bryan at his personal site, GeekTells, or find his Twitter link below.
Articles by Bryan Chaffin
Apple to Fix iPhone 4S Battery Drain “in a Few Weeks”
“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” Apple said in the statement. “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.” A subset of iPhone 4S owners have been complaining…
Tim Cook Brings Small Changes to Apple
Apple CEO Tim Cook Mr. Cook was named CEO on August 24th when the ailing Steve Jobs stepped down from the position—Mr. Jobs passed away on October 5th. On August 25th, the day after he assumed the helm of Apple, Mr. Cook wrote a letter to the company’s employees that said, in part: I want…
Microsoft Killed Courier Tablet Because it Wasn’t Windows
For those not familiar, Courier was the code name for a journal-like tablet that was being developed by Microsoft. According to the CNet report, the project was headed by J. Allard, the man who had led the development of Microsoft’s popular Xbox console gaming platform, and the 130-person team was months away from having the…
Success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire Kills Profits, Sinks Stock
The Kindle Fire AMZN ended the day at $ 198.40, down $28.75 (-12.66%), on heavy volume of 24.1 million shares trading hands, three times the previous daily average. The online retailing giant recorded sales that were up 44% year-over-year for the September quarter at $10.88 billion, up from $7.56 billion. In addition, the company guided…
Samsung Loses Early Bid to Block iPhone 4S in Italy
Samsung has accused Apple of infringing on patents covered by FRAND licensing agreements in an attempt to defend itself against Apple’s own patent infringement claims regarding Samsung’s Galaxy line of Android devices. So far, Samsung has not been able to persuade any courts or regulatory bodies to bar Apple’ products around the world, but Apple…
Nokia Unveils First Two Windows Smartphones - Lumia 710/800
“Eight months ago, we shared our new strategy and today we are demonstrating clear progress of this strategy in action. We’re driving innovation throughout our entire portfolio, from new smartphone experiences to ever smarter mobile phones,” Stephen Elop, Nokia President and CEO, said in a statement. Lumia 800 The Nokia Lumia 800 is the more…
iPod Creator Tony Fadell Brings Sexy to…Thermostats (Video)
Nest Learning Thermostat That’s the Nest Learning Thermostat, and if the still doesn’t do it for you, skip to the video at the end of the article. The company, Nest Labs, announced the product Tuesday, describing it as a device that never stops learning from your behavior, increasing efficiency all the while. In essence, the…
TMO Updates OS X Safe Download Version Checker/Updater
TMO’s OS X Safe Definitions Versions checker/updater OS X Safe Download Version Checker is utility we put together that allows you to check the version number of your OS X Safe Download Definitions from Apple. Safe Download Definitions is a list used by your Mac to check downloads for malicious software such as MacDefender and…
SoundJam/iTunes Cocreator Leading Apple’s TV Effort
The story builds off one of the many revelations in Steve Jobs (US$16.99 on Amazon Kindle and iBooks), where Mr. Jobs said that Apple had “finally cracked” the code for making a TV integrated with settop box functionality with, “the simplest user interface you could imagine.” This is one of the few times that Mr.…
Apple Releases MacBook Pro “Black Screen” Fix
Apple acknowledged the problem on October 13th in a KnowledgeBase article that described the problem and said Apple was working on a fix. that KBase article has been updated with links to the software update linked above. The article also has information for Snow Leopard users: For computers with OS X Snow Leopard, v10.6 Select…
Steve Jobs Bio Tops Best Seller Lists
The book was originally scheduled for a March 2012 release, but in August of this year, publisher Simon & Schuster moved the date up to November 21st. When Steve Jobs died on October 5th, the company announced it was moving the release date up yet again to October 24th. The book has been heavily talked…
Audioengine N22 Amp Offers Desktop Musicians Powerful, Clean Sound
Audioengine’s N22 desktop amplifier was introduced as a partner to the company’s P4 passive speakers, and while I am going to talk about the P4s in another review, in this review I wanted to look at the N22 by itself, especially from the standpoint of the desktop musician. A Desktop Amplifier? Let’s start with what…
ITC Rejects “Public Interest” Concern on Potential HTC Injunction
The ITC staff comments are in response to the Public Interest comment phase of an ongoing ITC complaint Apple filed against HTC’s Android devices. The ITC has already ruled that HTC’s Android devices infringe on two of Apple’s patents, and the Commission is progressing through the review process towards a point where they would issue…
Android Head: Your Phone Shouldn’t Be Your Personal Assistant
“I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant,” Mr. Rubin said. “Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.”Android will not be your slave! He also said that voice command on smartphones, “isn’t a…
Analyst: iPhone Expectations Got Out of Hand
“We are not proud modeling 18.5 million iPhones which turned out higher than actual 17 million shipments,” Mr. Wu wrote, “but we were materially below consensus of 20 million, not to mention some analysts who assumed as high as 23 million units. He added that, “It turned out that a concern we raised in our…
Apple Claims 180 Million iBooks Downloads
Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer told analysts that Apple customers have downloaded more than 16 billion songs and 650 million TV show. He added, “We’ve also been very pleased with the growing popularity of the I bookstore with over 180 million downloads of I books to date.” iBooks was launched in April of 2010, just ahead…
How-To Use Siri (or Dictation) to Speak Your Tweets
First, let’s look at how you can set Siri up to handle your tweets, because, really, Siri should handle everything in your digital life, right? The secret to making this possible is to configure your Twitter account to allow you to tweet via SMS text message. To do so, go to Twitter.com, log in to…
Siri Drives 55% of iPhone 4S Purchases in NYC
The survey was offered to Mr. Um’s clients as a snapshot look of what was driving early adopters to buy Apple’s new iPhone 4S. Among those 195 respondent, the survey found that 39% planned on getting a 32GB model, while 19% planned on buying a 64GB mode. The remaining 42% planned to buy the 16GB…
Hands-On Photos of the iPhone 4S & Siri
A white iPhone 4S with photo cropping (Click the image for a larger version) White iPhone 4S from the side (Click the image for a larger version) In the image below, Jeff Gamet activated Siri and asked, “Do I need to wear a jacket today?” “Do I need to wear a jacket today?” (Click the…
Apple Releases Aperture 3.2 for Photo Stream, iCloud
With Photo Stream, when you take a photo on an iCloud-enabled device, it will be pushed to all of your iOS devices, your Mac, and/or your PC. Photo Stream keeps the last 1,000 pictures you took, and users can grab any image from the Stream and save them or otherwise manipulate them. Apple’s patch…
Report: Apple Working on Adding Movies to iCloud
The report was quite vague on details, but said that the service could be launched as soon as late 2011 or early 2012. All of the sources for the story requested anonymity. If Apple does bring the studios on board, it could technically put the Cupertino company in additional direct competition with a project called…
iTunes Match Still Waiting in the Wings
iTunes Match Apple is scheduled to launch iCloud on Wednesday, as well as iOS 5, both of which are being pushed out ahead of the iPhone 4S launch on Friday. iCloud is the name of Apple’s wide-ranging cloud service that includes many services. One of those services allows users to access their iTunes purchases from…
Mythbusters to Host Steve Jobs Documentary on Discovery
Adam Savage & Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters Source: Discovery The show is just one of many mainstream responses to the death of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who passed away on October 5th. An October 16th air date means the network will have turned the show around in less than eleven days. “Someone once said that…