The company’s patent application describes a method of using, “a layered fiber-in-matrix type material, such as CFRP” to make both a spine and and a CFRP spine. “The CFRP spine may be a unitary frame that imparts strength and rigidity to the overall housing and also form at least some of the corners of the…
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
Camera + iPhone X Bullet = Art
Published by French magazine Fubiz, the photos are of iPhones, iPods, iPads, and MacBooks that have been shot, smashed, sawed, and scattered, and then photographed by Mr. Fairchild. An example is the iPhone below. At least we think it’s an iPhone, judging by the scale of the Home button and display. There are many more…
Report: Apple Beat Google & Amazon to Land Beatles
The effort was spearheaded by EMI CEO Roger Faxon, who came to his new position in June of this year. He reportedly hammered out a deal (detailed below) with The Beatles and its management company, Apple Corps, and then set out to win the best deal from one of the major players in digital downloads.…
RIM CEO Poopoos Need for Mobile Apps
“We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web but you don’t need to go through some kind of control point of an SDK, and that’s the core part of our message,” Mr. Balsillie said, according to eWeek. “You don’t need an app for the Web [or to use a special defined set…
Apple Approves Google Voice for iPhone
Apple had rejected the app for some time, an issue that cause its fair share of hoopla on the Internet. Its appearance today was not specifically anticipated, but CNN noted that Apple had begun approving third party apps that interfaced with the service in recent weeks. The app is currently available only in the U.S.,…
iTunes: Beatles Claim 14 Top 40 Albums First Day
The Beatles are performing less well on in sales of single songs, with seven of the Top 100 singles, from #39 to #85. Both charts have been swiftly changing throughout the day, and the list we compiled below had to be renumbered three times just whilst we were putting it together due to all 17…
Apple Home Page Promises Tuesday iTunes Announcement
What will this be? There’s probably a group of folks in Cupertino who know, but speculation has already begun that it will be an announcement for The Beatles catalogue, a subscription music service, and a long expected move to the cloud with your iTunes library. Or all three. Or maybe something else. What’s curious, however,…
Analyst: Apple May Miss Q4 iPad Estimates
The analyst’s glum estimates are still higher than Apple’s guidance, however, as Apple said it expects to sell 4.9 million iPads during the quarter. Mr. Kumar said that many consumers see the iPad, and tablets as a category, as “tweener” devices with limited capabilities, according to a research note covered by Bloomberg.“It’s a nice-to-have product,…
Cisco Hires Former Apple VP Mark Papermaster
Mark Papermaster was a longtime executive at IBM where he worked on both processor designs and Big Blue’s blade servers. He was recruited by Apple to head up the company’s mobile device engineering efforts, where he was in charge of, among other things, the iPhone’s innovative antenna design. Apple never blamed those problems on Mr.…
macProVideo.com Releases Logic’s Guitar Recording Toolbox Tutorial
The tutorial covers some broad aspects of recording with Logic, such as an explanation of the differences between a single coil and humbucker pickups, and a discussion how to manage a proper noise to signal ratio when recording your guitar. Most of it, however, focuses on how to get the most out of Amp Designer…
AMD Slide Suggests Apple Will Embrace Fusion APUs
Fusion is a next generation processing platform that combines a CPU and GPU on one die. In particular, Fusion supports OpenCL, a 3D rendering technology Apple initially developed (it was turned over to the Khronos Group and is now an open standard). Fusion’s graphics performance is reportedly impressive, and its small footprint and low power…
Apple Stores Suspend Sales of iPhone 4 Slide-In Cases
There have been a relatively few reports of such problems for some time, and Gdgt reported in October that Apple was investigating the issue, and the reality today is that while other third-party iPhone 4 cases (snap-in and bumpers, for instance) are available at Apple Stores, slide-in cases are not. Slide-in cases for earlier iPhone…
iOS 4.2 App Updates Begin Appearing on App Store
Screenshot from iTunes showing the Discover – Wikipedia in a Magazine for iPad app update notes
Toshiba To Sell MacBook Air’s Thin SSDs
While the company didn’t specifically announce that these are the same thin SSDs Apple is using in the MacBook Air, our friends at MacRumors noted that both the Blade X-gale and Apple’s SSD units, which is not-so-coincidentally supplied by Toshiba, have the same part numbers. The 64GB and 128GB units are a mere 2.2mm tall,…
Bank of America & Citi Testing iPhones
Apple has been boasting that large percentages of the Fortune 100 and Fortune 200 have either deployed or are working on deploying the iPhone and iPad, but the banking industry has been one of Research In Motion’s strongholds, and helped pushed BlackBerry into early smartphone prominence. Together, Citi and BOA have more than a half…
Report: Apple Could Bring Light Peak to Macs in 2011
Citing a single unnamed source “familiar with the progress of the technology,” CNet said Light Peak will appear earlier, rather than later, in that first half of 2011, which means Apple could be introducing it in the first quarter. Intel has been developing the technology for years, and first demonstrated it in 2009 (on a…
iKlip: Clip Your iPad to Your Mic Stand
The device offers a multi-angle, adjustable iPad holder that attaches to directly to a mic stand. The company said that it offers access to all of the iPad’s buttons, and that users can position their iPad in either landscape or portrait mode. iKlip features (from IK Multimedia): Sturdy, durable thermoplastic construction with six secure touch…
T-Mobile Disses iPhone for Being on AT&T
The spot was produced in the same vein as Apple’s “I’m a Mac” TV commercials, and presents the MyTouch 4G as a beautiful young woman. The iPhone 4G is presented as a youngish hipster-with-an-actual-but-not-too-formal-job, with AT&T as the proverbial monkey on his back in the form of a stodgy, balding, and overweight business suit. The…
Report: iPhone 5 NFC Could Make Mac Settings Portable
“The Mac authenticates with the iPhone, which contains a lot of the information the computer needs, such as bookmarks, passwords and other data,” the site’s source said. “The system would essentially turn any Apple computer into your own — like you’re actually working on your own computer. Same settings, look, bookmarks, preferences. It would all…
Canalys & NPD: iPhone #1 Smartphone in U.S., Android #1 OS
Canalys pitched its results as Apple taking the lead in the U.S. smartphone market. According to the firm, Apple now has 26.2% of that market, ahead of #2 RIM’s 24%. On a global scale, Apple now has 17% of the worldwide market for the #2 spot, while Nokia claimed #1 with 33% and RIM came…
AmpliTube 2 for iPhone Adds Recording, More Effects
Recording The company has added in-app recording in two ways. The first comes with the app out of the (virtual) box, and allows one track recording on your iPhone. For a US$9.99/€7.99 in-app purchase, however, you can add a four-track recorder that allows you to record four layers of music. Those readers old enough to…
Sprint CEO Attributes Increased MiFi Sales to iPad
Mr. Hesse made the comments to Gigaom, where he said that the popularity of Apple’s WiFi-only iPad models has led to many customers turning to Sprint’s 4G MiFi device to connect them to the Internet when on the go. Just like other MiFi devices, the Overdrive Mobile Hotspot connects to wireless networks like a smartphone.…
Apple Clarifies TV Rental Terms & Conditions
The T&C used to specify that rented “movies” could not be moved between devices. The term “movies” has been replaced with “content” when it comes to rentals, thus including everything one can rent from iTunes, which is, more or less TV shows and movies. The screenshot below is the T&C notification, complete with the change…
China Claims World’s Fastest Supercomputer, 40% Faster
Designed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, Tianhe-1 is comprised of 7,168 Tesla graphics chips from Nvidia and 14,336 central processing units designed by Intel, according to CRN. In 2009, Tianhe-1 reached 500 trillion calculations per second (half a petaflop). Tianhe-1 is currently listed as #1 in a listing maintained by the University of…