"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." - Immanuel Kant
Ours is an imperfect society. The nature of our reality, our desires and our need to possess, while maintaining a façade of moral righteousness, puts us at odds with the reality that exists within the systems we have created.
In recent days, the character of our era of consumerism has been put in question. We want what is new, shiny, fashionable. We want it now. With this desire we turn our heads from the consequences it takes to produce our toys, our symbols of status. When The New York Times reports that our gadgets are made in Chinese factories where working conditions can be horrendous, we express outrage and tweet the article from our iPads. The culture we have created comes with the cost of doing business.
Just to be clear, Lingual is an extension for phones and iPads that are jailbroken (big surprise), but as you can see from Jeff Benjamin's preview, it's pretty remarkable. Not only will it translate individual words (it supports more than 30 languages), it can do phrases, too: "What's 'I need an iPhone 4s, please.' in simplified Chinese?"
The Saudi prince who invested $300 million in Twitter in December said the move was not politically motivated.
"It was a pure financial investment with economic objectives," Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Chairman of Kingdom Holding Company, told CNN. "Politics has no ingredients whatsoever in that investment ... the secure economic financial investment with expected huge returns to our company Kingdom Holding."
Alwaleed, who also has a stake in Apple, said he expects the computer maker to thrive despite last year's death of Steve Jobs.
One of the most entertaining aspects of studying the Android ecosystem is the fact there is just so much of it. It is overwhelming, especially for consumers that do not know what smartphone or tablet they are supposed to buy because a new device is released every other day.
Samsung is the largest culprit of the flood of Android devices to inundate the flood plains of the mobile coastline. Just look at its Galaxy Tab line of tablets. None have performed well on the market. Unlike smartphones, the "be everything to everybody" approach does not work in the tablet market. There is a reason that Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle Fire are eating Samsung's tablet lunch.
There are plenty of impressive stats in Apple's December quarter earnings report, such as 37 million iPhones shipped, $46 billion of overall sales, and $13 billion of profit.
But Apple's most impressive stat continues to be its growth rate: Apple is not only huge, but it is growing at a rate far greater than its peers. And, even more incredible, its growth rate is accelerating.
As a company gets bigger, or as a market matures, its growth rate typically falls. It's only natural: The numbers get bigger, so the percentage of change eventually shrinks. But for Apple, during the Christmas quarter — its busiest time of the year — that hasn't happened yet.
In its quarterly earnings call this afternoon, Apple threw around quite a few very large numbers. For starters, the company brought in $46.3 billion dollars in the last quarter, which was a 73% increase over the previous year. In terms of profit, they netted $13.1 billion, a 118% year-over-year increase and a number that exceeds Google's entire quarterly revenue, as one observer pointed out.
By far the biggest chunk of revenue came from the iPhone and related products. This isn't surprising considering the highly successful launch of the iPhone 4S in October, which landed at the same time as iOS 5 and iCloud. The quarter on which Apple was reporting today also included the holiday shopping season, which is always a peak time for smartphones, MP3 players and tablets.
When Apple unveiled plans last week to ramp up its efforts in the education space, the company's announcement was met with decidedly mixed reactions. While many welcomed Apple's foray into digital textbook publishing, others were less enthusiastic. The idea of delivering textbooks via tablets may have promise in theory, but Apple's initial execution doesn't look all that disruptive yet.
The latter part of the announcement covered the impressive expansion of iTunes U and the launch of iBooks Author, a DIY tool for publishing digital textbooks. If anything could pose a threat to the status quo in the textbook industry, it would be such an application. But wait. As it turned out, the so-called "Garage Band for e-books" wouldn't be quite as open and revolutionary as some thought.
People sure do love jailbreaking their iOS devices. In fact, after Friday's launch of the Absinthe A5 tool, jailbreaking iOS 5 on A5-powered devices was almost as popular as the iPhone 4S itself when it first launched.
Nearly 1 million people jailbroke their iPhone 4S or iPad 2 between Friday and Monday, according a blog post from the Chronic-Dev Team, who took the lead in developing the untethered solution for jailbreaking iOS 5 on Apple's newest gadgets.
Google Maps and Google Earth just got their second update of 2012 to add 45º imagery, which now covers 17 U.S. and seven international cities. These 45º views cause buildings to cast shadows and rotate with real perspective. It's an almost-3D view that makes the satellite view of a place more realistic while still supporting most systems.
45º views act as a transition between the standard top-down view and Google's new Google MapsGL, a full-3D Maps experience powered by WebGL in the browser. That part won't work on certain low-end graphics cards, but for those who can run it, Google Maps gets pretty magical. Google has good reason to push the envelope on 3D maps. Its competitors are working on magical maps of their own.
Owners of Apple's newest mobile gadgets can now break their devices free from the confines of the company's restrictions. The iPhone 4S and iPad 2 can be jailbroken without being tethered to a computer for the first time thanks to a new tool called Absinthe A5.
Last month, hackers released a jailbreak for iOS 5 that covered all compatible devices except for those with an A5 processor. That meant that iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners were out of luck if they wanted an untethered jailbreak solution. Today that changes, thanks to the efforts of the Chronic Dev Team and other developers in the jailbreaking community.
