MobiValet

The MobiValet is a simple device billed as, “the smart place to park your mobi.” It’s primarily for use in a car but there’s no reason you couldn’t affix one to a desk, table, chair, or almost anyplace you need to park your “mobi.”What’s a mobi? I think it’s short for your, “mobile device,” which…

O2 Apologizes as iPhone/Smartphones Gorge on Bandwidth

“Where we haven’t met our own high standards then there’s no question, we apologize to customers for that fact,” Mr. Dunne told FT. “But it would be wrong to say that O2 has failed its customers en masse.” To address the issue, O2, which is Apple’s iPhone partner in the UK, is adding some 200…

Apple Nabs iSlate.com & Trademark for "Magic Slate"

The domain name was first registered in October of 2004, and MacRumors traced its life to 2007, when it was transferred to Mark Monitor, a firm that specializes in “brand protection” for large corporations, including half of the Fortune 100, according to the company’s Web site.. The Web site found documentation showing a period of…

Getting It Right With Numbers Templates

First, some background: Numbers is one of the 3 applications included in the iWork package.  The other two are the Keynote presentation solution and the word processor Pages, and the whole iWork package costs $79.Numbers is a spreadsheet application, and that’s what we’re here to talk about today.  While similar to Excel, Numbers is not…

Gendai Games Announces Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge

Gendai said it will announce finalists on January 29, 2010, and the grand prize winner will be decided by a panel of judges and Twitter participation, with each weighted equally. All finalists will receive a Macworld 2010 Platinum Pass and have their games showcased during the awards presentation – the grand prize winner will get…

Harvard Business Review Names Steve Jobs Top CEO in the World

“The #1 CEO on the list, Steve Jobs,” writers Morten T. Hansen, Herminia Ibarra, and Urs Peyer said, “delivered a whopping 3,188% industry-adjusted return (34% compounded annually) after he rejoined Apple as CEO in 1997, when the company was in dire shape. From that time until the end of September 2009, Apple’s market value increased…

Cooking Mama Lite, Olive Garden Demos, Spam iCan and More

Food, I mean the good stuff, is a huge part of any holiday gathering regardless of what the occasion. Of course, this isn’t Star Trek or Hogwarts so food does not magically appear before us when we sit down to dine (unless you are rich enough to not have to deal with such trifling concerns)…

Apple Chronology for July through December 2010

–Scott Adams. I am not a big fan of prediction articles for the new year. They require lot of hubris, and, honestly, no one can really make good technical predictions, even us who follow Apple very closely. If one tries, the author and the readers waste time fretting about how good the predictions were. As…

Innovative Text Input Technology Swype Comes to Android

The software then interpolates that to determine what word you’re typing, and if it’s not sure, it presents a list of options. Tests between Swypers and iPhone typers have been showing up on the Internet showing the Swyper as being the faster input method. Swype Inc.’s self-titled technology was developed by T9 predictive text inventor…

War? Raytheon Has an App For That

OFT taps into the iPhone’s abilities and features, including the built-in compass, global positioning system, accelerometer, 3G networks, WiFi, and multitouch screen. The company also said it has designed, “disruptive-tolerant networking, content-centric networking and augmented reality, incorporating security guards for tactical operations.” In the screenshot to the left, a battlefield map is shown with soldiers…

Apple Chronology for January through June 2010

14 Jan 2010. Apple stock (AAPL) reaches an all time high of $228.61. 26 Jan 2010. Apple announces its earnings for the holiday (1st Fiscal) quarter. 13.5 million iPhones, 3.3 million Macs, US$14B in revenue, profit of US$2.1B. “The best Apple quarter ever,” says Peter Oppenheimer. 09 Feb 2010. On the eve of Macworld, Apple…

Psystar's Web Site Goes Dark

While Psystar had a non-Mac business — it’s main business model was making cheap PC computers on which one could run one’s OS of choice, including Mac OS X with the help of software (more or less) developed by Psystar called Rebel EFI — it’s not yet clear if the company intends to try and…

Microsoft Censors Tweets in Zune Twitter App

Tests tweets with words that aren’t allowed on prime time television showed the first letter with stars for the remaining letters, like “f***.”Censoring isn’t the only problem Zune HD owners will face with their new Twitter client. It seems the app also offers poor performance and fails to respond to button taps, and the Zune…

MailForge Follows Ghost of Eudora Past

In the 1990s, the heyday of Macintosh e-mail programs, Eudora shone with a strong light. (As did Claris Em@iler.) But as time passed, events conspired to force Eudora to end of life. Today, MailForge, from Infinity Data Systems, continues the spirit and tradition of Eudora as a ground up rewrite. Those who were bumped off…

And the Winner Is…Apple

With all of that in place, what device would I pick? It took me almost no time to come up with the answer: an iPhone. For me, the iPhone unquestionably and undeniably emerges as the device of the decade. Nothing else comes close. Checking online for “gadget of the decade” lists, I found one from…

myPantone

Finding the right colors for your project, and then picking colors that work well with your choice, can be a little intimidating. Pantone’s myPantone app for the iPhone can help with that, and it works as a great color reference for designers, too. myPantone is an application that puts Pantone’s color reference libraries in the…

Apple, Psystar Present Oral Arguments for Mac Clone Injunction

Apple filed its motion for a permanent injunction after Judge Alsup ruled in a summary judgement that Psystar infringed on Apple’s copyrights by selling PCs with Mac OS X installed, and it violated the DMCA by circumventing the code that binds Mac OS X to Apple hardware.Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar in Northern California…

NY Times Columnist Blames AT&T Issues on iPhone Glitches

The premise of the article is that AT&T gets a bad rap for its network, but that the facts don’t back that up. “When I set about looking for independent data to confirm the superior performance of Verizon’s network” Mr. Stross wrote. “I was astonished to discover that I had managed to get things exactly…

Surviving High School

NOTE: While the Mac Observer content management system says that I wrote this review, it was mostly written by my 17-year old son Jacob. As a junior in high school I think he has a much better handle on what high school is like, how well this simulation/game emulates the real deal, and how much…

Pocket Girlfriend

This week (12/11/09), however, Pocket Girlfriend appeared as #4 on the top ten paid apps list at the App Store. Now, that got me really curious. What could possibly be so great about an app that purports to be a virtual girlfriend. Apple’s app reviewers would not let an app through that displayed anything racier…

WSJ: Apple to Use Lala to "Reboot" iTunes Into Web-Based Service

Apple would, according to the report, leverage Lala’s existing technologies and engineering talent to move iTunes to a browser-based online store and service, though the article did not address whether this would be in addition to or instead of the standalone software we know today as “iTunes.” As Apple relies on iTunes to manage iPods…

Apple Features TMO's Mac Geek Gab in iTunes Rewind 2009

The Mac Geek Gab was listed in the “Classic Audio” category, which includes such podcasts as This American Life, Onion Radio News, Twit, Grammar Girl, 60 Minutes, NPR’s Planet Money, and several more — and we humbly note that’s not bad company to keep. Congrats to Dave Hamilton and John F. Braun for a job…