Apple Worm

Review: AmazonBasics Lightning to USB Cable

AmazonBasics Apple Certified Lightning to USB Cable – 6 Feet (1.8 Meters) – Black

You never know just how dependent you are on your cellphone until you’re stuck with a dead battery.

You forget to charge your phone the night before.

You wake up and have to run to a meeting. 20% charge.

“Well”, you think. “I can make it through the day, right?”

Then you get three phone calls, ten texts, need directions to where you’re going, and BOOM.

Brick.

You get smart to this, though. You bring an extra Lightning cable in the car, just in case.

But it being in the car, the lifespan of the Apple Lightning cable is about 3.7 minutes. One pump of the brake at a red light and your precious cable has been julienned.

Apple makes incredible, elegant, but not always durable products. Their charging cables have a particular weak point at the juncture between the Lightning (or 30-pin) connector and the cable itself. This area tends to hold a great deal of stress. Apple is aware of the problem and if you bring your cable back to the Genius Bar, they’ll usually kindly replace it if the product is within warranty.

However, you’re simply getting another soon-to-be-faulty cable.

Other manufacturers have solved the problem by reinforcing this area on their cable or making thicker cables.

But out of every third-party cable I’ve tested or used, the best by a mile is made by, of all companies, Amazon.

AmazonBasics is a new line of electronic and home accessories that are generic versions of everything from charging cables to Bluetooth speakers to coat hangers.

They’re priced right, too. While Lightning cables can cost anywhere from $9 at the cheapest on eBay to $29, the AmazonBasics cable is $10.99. It’s Apple Certified too, so no more sketchy-mall-kiosk cables that work half the time and the other half either elicit a pop-up on your phone saying how it’s less compatible than you and your ex. Or it burns your house down, just like your ex.

The best part of all – it comes in a 6-foot length for $3 more. You can plug it into the wall next to your bed and use your phone while laying in bed. You can plug it into the front of your car and someone in the backseat can use it. You can plug it into a wall outlet and use it while seated in an actual chair in the airport instead of huddling next to the wall like a transient.

This is the most durable cable I’ve ever owned, and I’ve had it for almost a year. It doesn’t have a single weak point, fray, rip, tear, or patchy spot that electrocutes you every time you touch it.

Since buying my first one, I’ve bought four and (reluctantly) given two away as stocking stuffers. I keep one at home and one in the car and I’m never, ever without a charge.

iPhone Screen Size Ads

December 19, 2014 / Staff / 0 Comments

We were told the iPhone 5’s screen was engineered to fit perfectly in our hands but then the 6 came out as Apple caved to the pressure of large screens being more popular. Note the difference in advertising approach…

New iPad details leaked, will there be a gold one?

October 12, 2014 / newton / 0 Comments

A Japanese Apple site has leaked some photos of upcoming iPad parts, showing some of the upgrades we can expect when the new model comes out.

First is the upgrade from the A7 chip to the A8X chip, which will provide faster processing speeds.

Also, it will have Touch ID just like the iPhone 6.

And an image of the home button surround shows that there will, indeed, be a gold iPad.

GOLD IN THAR HILLS

Rumor is that there will be a new iPad Air as well as a top of the line version called the iPad Pro.

The new iPad will essentially carry over the upgrades to the iPhone 6 to the iPad platform, which should provide room for new, high-quality apps to extend the usability of the iPad.

Why doesn’t Yosemite beta have text-to-speech?

October 1, 2014 / newton / 0 Comments

As Yosemite is past its first beta and almost ready for release, many folks are reporting issues with text-to-speech functionality in Yosemite.

This may have to do with Siri being integrated into the final form of Yosemite, per an Apple patent:

The US patent, titled “Intelligent Digital Assistant in a Desktop Environment” suggests that Siri is making the move from Apple’s mobile platform, iOS to OS X Yosemite.

The included photo is a clear depiction of Siri.

Jeff, stop poking me

Also, Yosemite will support 24 new dictation languages, up from 8 currently in Mavericks, including Arabic and Portuguese.

We’ll find out more after Yosemite’s rumored final release in October.

Are you bent out of shape with the iPhone 6?

September 28, 2014 / newton / 0 Comments

In the wake of the explosive release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are reports that the devices, the 6 Plus in particular, are very easy to bend.

Some customers are returning their bent iPhones to Apple for a refund–per Genius discretion.

The main concern is not over intentionally bending the phone, but the phone developing a bend over time–for instance, if it’s carried in the pocket of a pair of jeans.

According to Apple, they’ve received a total of 9 complaints of bent phones.

Has your iPhone 6 bent since you bought it?

Let us know!

Google partners copy Apple for new products?

August 22, 2014 / newton / 0 Comments

The new line of Google Chromebooks is out and they look, well, familiar.

The design of the new Chromebooks match very closely with Apple’s MacBooks, which have had the same unibody design since 2008.

This is nothing new for the Chromebook line.

The Samsung Chromebook, first generation, looked like a knockoff MacBook Air, and apparently had the build quality to match, with frequent reports of screens separating from their casing.

The second-generation Chromebooks continue the tradition, with 2 out of 3 that look shamelessly Apple-inspired.

As you can see, the black beveled screen of the MacBook Pro was lifted by the HP Chromebook, as well as the centered silver text and rounded-edge bottom.

The Chromebook on the left apes the MacBook air’s bottom case shape, with the same vertical and rounded bevel and profile.

There’s more than one way to design a sleek, affordable laptop.

But Samsung and HP (who Google partners with to manufacture Chromebooks, as well as Acer and others) have designed Apple lookalikes to run Chrome OS, showing that the industry just can’t get over that classic Apple design.

This Oscar-winning actor’s typewriter app is one of the App Store’s most popular debuts

August 20, 2014 / newton / 0 Comments

When you think “App Developer”, you don’t think of “Oscar-winning actor”.

But typewriter enthusiast Tom Hanks isn’t your typical Hollywood star.

Tom Hanks is an old-fashioned kind of guy.

He once replied to a typewritten podcast invitation and typewriter gift from The Nerdist with a typewritten letter of his own.

In a New York Times interview, he spoke of his love for the more traditional ways of doing things:

I use a manual typewriter — and the United States Postal Service — almost every day. My snail-mail letters and thank-you notes, office memos and to-do lists, and rough — and I mean very rough — drafts of story pages are messy things, but the creating of them satisfies me like few other daily tasks.

And now, Hanks has combined his love of the old with the newest technology.

Working with developers, Hanx created the Hanx Writer app–a virtual typewriter for the iPad that mimics the look, sound, and text of a real typewriter.

Hanks even lent some of the typewriters from his personal collection to the app developers to create the app.

The free app immediately hit #1 on the App Store sales charts. There are also two pay versions that implement the different look and sounds of two other typewriters in Hanks’s collection.

No word yet if it’s available for MacBook or iPhone. But Hanks is also a MacBook Air user, so there’s a possibility.

It’s an unusual idea, but one that Hanks believes brings back the feel of good, old-fashioned writing:

‘With Hanx Writer, you’ll hear the rhythm of your work with SHOOK SHOOK or FITT-FITT.” – Tom Hanks said.
‘No longer must you surrender modern luxuries, like the DELETE key, to enjoy the look, feel, and sound of good, old-fashioned word-processing.’

Apple solves USB flaws for iPhone 6?

August 20, 2014 / newton / 0 Comments

Despite the advent of FireWire and Thunderbolt. USB continues to remain king in the world of peripheral and device connections.

Every iPhone and iPad is charged via USB, every Apple laptop and computer has at least two USB ports–even the Air.

But USB has one handicap by design–finding which way is up.

We’ve all been there.

Apple may have found the solution.

A leaked photo by an Apple inside purportedly shows the iPhone 6’s reversible USB plug.

In other words, it will work no matter which direction you plug it in.

So no more fumbling around to plug it in!

Also, it will reportedly support USB 3.0, which means faster speeds and the capability to handle HD audio and video file transfers.

iWatch drawings, name, features leaked?

August 19, 2014 / newton / 0 Comments

The iWatch is one of the most anticipated Apple products of the decade.

Considering that Apple has not released a new product line since the iPad in 2010, and has never made a wearable product (unless you count the iPod Shuffle which had a clip, the iWatch will be a gamechanger.

Few details have been released about it, and Apple hasn’t even confirmed its existence.

Other industry players like Samsung have released wearable gadgets, to little success, in the same way that before the iPad, there were Android tablets and, earlier yet, Palm Pilots, which never quite broke into the market.

But Apple’s been hiding plans for an iWatch right under our noses at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office since July 2011.

The patent refers to a “wrist-worn electronic device”. Check it out:

The name?

“iTime”.

The “iTime” can do the following:

Store and playback media (listed as its “first set of functions”)
Accept notifications from a mobile phone.
Accept or decline incoming calls from the mobile phone.

It also includes a “sensor to detect an arm or wrist gesture” along with haptic functionality, which means it can vibrate and alert you of an incoming call or iMessage.

Interestingly, 3 different designs are posed, so there could be multiple iWatch models.

Figure 5 is for an iTime with a removable center and Bluetooth capability. This would likely be the one that connects with the iPhone. Given the details earlier, this would be the iTime Pro.

Figure 6 is for an iTime with a removable center that is another device in itself. The patent filing specifically states that it could fit an iPod Nano. This would be more of a wristband with added features to the iPod Nano, so this would be like the standard iTime.

Figure 7 is for a fully-integrated iTime, where the device is permanently encapsulated within the band. It also appears to be almost paper thin, so could this be an iTime Air?

In the way the iPad took tables from “bulky, clumsy touchscreens” to “elegant slates controlled with a flick of a finger”, the iTime seems poised to do the same.

Throwback Thursday: Apple Pippin

August 14, 2014 / newton / 0 Comments

AppleTV is one of the most little-known current Apple products, yet has incredible functionality. For a relatively low price, you can do just about anything you can do on your iDevices right on your TV.

But long before AppleTV, there was a humble product known as the Apple Pippin. Named after a variety of, well, apples, the Pippin was designed to be a video-game player with functionality unheard of in 1995 when it made its debut.

Originally, Pippin was intended to be an open software platform, almost a proto-App Store. The description, per Apple’s original FAQ for the product, is fascinating:

Apple believes that families are looking for more than video game players today. Certainly they want to be able to play their favorite games, but they also want to communicate, learn, play interactive music, access information and much more. Pippin provides them this capability. In addition it provides them a high level of compatibility with a mainstream personal computer technology. This will provide them the knowledge that their investment in CD-ROM titles and experience will not go to waste.

In other words, Apple wanted to use the Pippin as something resembling a modern XBOX:

Their Pippins will integrate within their audio-visual consumer electronics world. In addition, it will be able to communicate and transfer files with their personal computers should they have them in their home. Finally, the Pippins with the addition of a GeoPort adapter or external modem will permit the customers to communicate over cyberspace.

While these descriptions of communicating over cyberspace seem laughably dated, this was cutting edge for the mid-90s. This was a device that was expandable, had multiple uses, and was one of the first entries of a computer company into the video game market.

This was my favorite portion of the FAQs, just because of how dated it feels:

Apple is integrating hardware technologies which improve the “on-screen” appearance of text on a TV screen. While the text will never be as clear as that on a computer monitor it is substantially better than anything in the video game industry today.

The Pippin was manufactured by Bandai and was intended to expand to other manufacturers, but with the return of Steve Jobs to Apple in 1997, the project was shut down along with all other projects where Macintosh technology was whitelabeled for other companies to use.

This museum description says it all:

It was not a success.

Have you used an Apple Pippin? Let us know in the comments.

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑