Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iDevice Accessories , iPod , iPod Accessories , Reviews Provides: External battery power for USB devices Developer: Just Mobile Minimum Requirements: iDevice or other USB device Capacity: 4400mAh Price: $69.95 Availability: Now As your iDevice ages, you may find yourself needing a little extra battery life.  Even brand new iDevices may have a hard time keeping up with your demanding lifestyle. Thankfully, you have many options for extending your mobile (un)productivity with an external battery. As such, it’s pretty hard for individual options to stand out among the sea of batteries, but Just Mobile’s Gum Plus Power Pack most certainly does. Designed to fit right in with your MacBook Pro, the Gum Plus Power Pack will keep you topped off for days in style. Before I get started, I think I’ll let Just Mobile introduce their own battery, since they have such a nice video put together just for this purpose. Now, what are the two things you care about most concerning external batteries?  I think most of us would say capacity and how it looks, with an emphasis on the first.  If it doesn’t have a large battery, it’s not useful. And if it doesn’t look nice, you probably won’t want to use it.  Well, that’s clearly what Just Mobile thought was important, because the Gum Plus has a capacity that makes most batteries feel insufficient, and a style that speaks directly to the little bit of Steve Jobs that may or may not be inside of you. I was instantly impressed by the Gum Plus from the moment I opened the box.  It comes with all necessary accessories, which are simply a mini USB cable and an iDevice cable.  Both are black and noticeably shorter than what you’re likely used to.  The only thing that might be missing in this box is an AC charger, which would help recharging times go down.  Still, you have everything necessary, and that’s enough. The outer shell of the Gum Plus is grey plastic made up to look exactly like the aluminum on your MacBook Pro.

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Former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is laying claim that the current Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, threatened action against his company in 2003, in regard to desktop OS technologies, according to Apple Insider . Back in 2003, Schwartz said that Jobs contacted him personally "to let me know the graphical effects [in Sun's Project Looking Glass project] were ’stepping all over Apple’s [Intellectual Property].’"  If Sun had opted to release it for commercial purposes, Jobs was reportedly going to sue for infringement. Schwartz went on to say that Sun opted not to launch the product, but it was not because of Jobs’ accusation.  In place of that particular project, Sun decided not to launch the Linux desktop UI shell as it came to the conclusion that there wouldn’t be a place for a competitor to the Windows desktop amongst businesses. Image courtesy of enterprisenetworkandservers.com  

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Filed under: iTS , Retail , iTunes , Apple This feature over at GigaOM has quite a few interesting insights about the iTunes LP program — while Apple sells it wholeheartedly as “the visual experience of the record album,” it appears the story behind the story is not quite so clean. According to an anonymous source in the industry (note, not Apple themselves), the service didn’t come from Cupertino. Instead, it was designed by record companies, and agreed to by Apple as a “concession” to “make a gesture in favor of album sales.” The piece also states that Apple subsidized the creation of the first few “LPs,” some of which cost up to $60,000 to assemble and license. As you might expect with any other less-than-popular product at Apple, iTunes LP isn’t exactly being thrown into the spotlight, either. While a much more visual music experience would be perfect for the iPad, GigaOM notes that it didn’t even merit a mention by Jobs at the iPad announcement. It’s certainly possible that iTunes LP could find a new home in the future, if bands really get behind the service and make their own (a few have, as noted, but the cost seems pretty prohibitive , especially if sales aren’t that impressive), but from what this anonymous source says, the LP service is a record company concession that hasn’t paid off for Apple even in the way its originators hoped. [via iPodNN ] Report: RIAA pressured Apple into creating iTunes LP originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Report: RIAA pressured Apple into creating iTunes LP originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Almost as soon as the iPad was shown in Steve Jobs’ hands back in late January, speculation ran rampant about whether or not some of the stock iPhone applications were missing in action, or simply consolidated into some kind of secret “widget mode.” MacRumors is letting the air out of the so-called “secret widget mode,” a theory that missing iPhone applications have been included on the iPad, revealed only by way of some kind of Mac OS X Dashboard-style magic (with a five-finger gesture being proposed). Among the missing apps are Stocks, Weather, Voice Memo, Clock and Calculator. But according to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber , his sources dispute that there’s any kind of “secret widget mode” and that the missing apps were in fact scrapped by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “It’s not that Apple couldn’t just create bigger versions of these apps and have them run on the iPad,” Gruber writes. “It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem. There were, internally to Apple (of course), versions of these apps (or least some of them) with upscaled iPad-sized graphics, but otherwise the same UI and layout as the iPhone versions. “Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated,” Gruber continues. “So they were scrapped by you-know-who. Perhaps they’ll appear on the iPad in some re-imagined form this summer with OS 4.0, but when the iPad ships next month, there won’t be versions of these apps. At least that’s the story I’ve heard from a few well-informed little birdies.” Furthermore, Gruber notes that while iPhone games will work well on the iPad, simpler “non-game iPhone applications” may feel strange on the new device, regardless of which method they are run (blown up to full screen or at native resolution as a small box in the center of the screen). It seems like the iPad will be an entirely new user experience, which will likely require a lot more app tweaking to make enhanced versions of existing apps work well. We’ll all know soon enough, as the Wi-Fi enabled iPad will finally be available on April 3…

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(Images courtesy of AppleInsider) Veteran Mac database software FileMaker Pro 11 was released Tuesday, and among the new features are improved chart visuals, on the fly reporting, Quick Find and a host of new productivity tools to make database creation faster and easier. Apple’s FileMaker Inc. subsidiary announced the latest version of their flagship software today with FileMaker Pro 11. But they didn’t stop there: Updates are available for the entire product line, including FileMaker Pro 11 Advanced, FileMaker Server 11 and FileMaker Server 11 Advanced, according to AppleInsider . "FileMaker Pro 11 is designed for solving real-world business problems, such as the need for interpreting business data," explains FileMaker Inc. vice president of marketing and services Ryan Rosenberg. "With easy-to-use integrated charting, we bring dynamic visual reporting to FileMaker Pro 11 users. We also provide new tools to boost all users’ productivity, helping novice and expert users alike build, share and publish better databases." Among the new features, FileMaker Pro 11 offers dynamic professional-quality pie, bar, area or line charts which allow users to visualize, evaluate and report on data in a new or existing layout. Add a pie chart tab within an existing layout, for example, and you can see your sales charted graphically in any way you choose

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While most developers won’t hesitate for a moment to sign Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement in blood to have even a piece of the App Store action, a new legal analysis reveals some disturbing reasons as to why you might want to think twice. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has gotten their hands on a copy of Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement and have distilled a few choice nuggets which should give most developers pause before they drink the Kool-Aid, as it were. Thanks to the existence of the NASA iPhone app , the EFF was able to use the Freedom of Information Act to ask the space agency for a copy of the license agreement dated March 17, 2009, and here’s some of what they discovered. Section 10.4 of the agreement “prohibits developers, including government agencies such as NASA, from making any ‘public statements’ about the terms of the Agreement.” The EFF finds this section “strange,” noting that the Agreement itself is not “Apple Confidential Information” as defined in Section 10.1 — meaning that “the terms are not confidential, but developers are still contractually forbidden from speaking ‘publicly’ about them.” Section 7.2 makes it clear that if you use the iPhone SDK to develop your app, you can’t sell it anywhere but Apple’s own App Store. All well and good, unless your app should get rejected — meaning you are then prohibited from distributing it through Cydia or Rock Your Phone, both available for jailbroken devices. Section 3.2(e) was widely reported on when first added last year, which essentially bans jailbreaking to begin with. But it doesn’t stop there: The EFF notes that “it appears to prohibit developers from tinkering with any Apple software or technology, not just the iPhone, or ‘enabling others to do so.’” That could preclude iPhone developers from making iPods work with open source software, for instance. Section 8 is one of the more draconian: Apple can “revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time.” Yes, that means that Apple essentially has a “kill switch” built into the App Store and they can remove your app from it at any time

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Along with a glimpse of Apple CEO Steve Jobs attending Sunday’s Oscars, viewers may also have seen the first public shots fired in the ebook pricing wars between the Cupertino, Calif. company and online retail goliath Amazon. The 30-second commercial included several best-sellers appearing on the iPad’s iBookstore and at prices spanning $7.99 to $14.99. Sen.

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Section: Apple News , Commercials and Ads , iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPad If you were watching the Oscars last night, you may have caught sight of Apple’s brand new advertisement for the much awaited iPad . The ad itself races through (with shortened sequences, of course) several features of the device, making it seem irresistible to potential customers, and giving you the chance to “Meet iPad,” as the title suggests. Like many of you, I was already convinced I wanted to pick up an iPad on launch day, but if you weren’t sure, maybe seeing the advert changed your mind. The Oscars seems to be an important event for Apple. The “Hello” iPhone advert premiered during the 2007 Oscars awards, and according to sources on Twitter, Steve Jobs was spotted on the red carpet at this years event—likely for his strong connections with Pixar and Disney. We’ll likely see a couple more advertisements in the run up to April 3rd iPad release , and we’ll keep you posted. You can watch the video in all its glory over on the Apple website , or catch it below from their YouTube channel. Enjoy. Full Story » | Written by Ed Parry for Appletell . | Comment on this Article »

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A few short months ago, the Kindle seemed completely unassailable. While Amazon’s e-reader was hardly a tech revelation, before the iPad, it didn’t need to be: Amazon’s gigantic e-book store engorged with millions of $9.99 titles and free online connectivity through Whispernet was a huge wager that other companies struggled to meet. In the wake of

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Section: Reviews Provides: Voice activation for alarm and time settings Developer: Moshi Lifestyle Minimum Requirements: AC wall outlet (3 AAA batteries for backup), voice Price: $49.99 Availability: Now What does an alarm clock have to do with Apple products? Not much, in this case. There’s no iPhone dock, no iPod compatibility at all. This is just an alarm clock, but with one fairly unique feature; it’s almost entirely voice activated. So, let’s say you’re getting a little to used to calling up your music by simply stating the name of the band and the song. Or maybe you use voice dialing on your iPhone pretty much every time you make a call. You can now carry that simplicity over to setting your alarm at night and waking up in the morning. The conversation goes like this: You: “Hello, Moshi.” Moshi: “Welcome. Command Please.” You: “Set time.” Moshi: “What is the current time?” You: “3:45 p.m.” And there you go. The time is now set.

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