Leander Kahney's Blog, page 1461

Batman Is Coming To The App Store Later Tonight In This Unreal Engine 3 Powered Game

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I love Rocksteady's series of Batman games for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. They are loving, incredibly crafted tributes to the Dark Knight clearly made by fans who get Batman, who is equal parts acrobat, brawler, psychopath, hero, detective and muscle. That's why I'm excited to check out Batman: Arkham City Lockdown when it is released later tonight.

Built on the same version of the Unreal Engine as Infinity Blade, the game ties-in to the plot of the recently released (and incredible) Batman: Arkham City to feature Batman fighting some of his greatest opponents (including Joker, Two-Face, Solomon Grundy and Deathstroke) in one-on-one combat.

I'm a little wary of the game after checking out this in-game footage, though. In Rocksteady's Batman games, fighting as Batman is all about gracefully spinning, lunging, pirouetting and countering the blows of crowds of enemies, stringing individual attacks into a series of moves that can make entire gangs feel like Batman is everywhere at once. In the iOS game, though, he's more like a street brawler, fighting bad guys in clumsy one-on-one combat. It's a little un-Batman-like.

Still, I'm looking forward to giving it a try. Arkham City Lockdown should be available later tonight as a universal app, compatible iPhone 3GS and above, 3rd generation iPod touch and above, and all models of iPad. It'll cost $5.99.

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iPad 3 Will Be Backwards Compatible With All Smart Covers, But Not Current iPad 2 Cases [Report]

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According to Japanese Mac blog Macotakara, the iPad 3 will be backwards compatible with current Smart Covers, despite the fact that it will be so thick as to not work with iPad 2 cases.

Macotakara claims that they don't know the reason the iPad 3 will be thicker than the iPad 2, but we do: it's necessary in order to install the twin-light system needed to lluminate the iPad 3′s Retina Display.

As for the image above, your guess is as good as ours. Macotakara seems to think it somehow relates to an iPad 3, so maybe it's the unbranded aluminum back panel of one or something? As for the Smart Cover backwards compatibility, considering that all that is necessary to keep a Smart Cover on are magnets in the right places, I wouldn't be surprised if Smart Covers continued to be backwards compatible for future iPads for many generations to come.

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Check Out This Video Walkthrough Of Apple's Huge New Grand Central Location

We've seen a lot of images of the inside of the new Grand Central Terminal Apple Store ahead of its Friday grand opening scheduled for 10AM, but up until I saw this three-minute YouTube video walking through it, I had no idea just how big the space was.

It's just huge. I suppose it would have to be, given the amount of traffic this store is going to get, but even so, it's going to take the average person at least a few minutes to walk from one end to the other.

[via Apple 2.0]

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700 Pound iNuke Boom iPhone Speaker Dock Uses 10,000W To Make Your Head Explode

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Not happy with your iPhone's tinny speaker? If you've got 30 G's to help solve the problem, BEHRINGER is ready to sell you the biggest, baddest iPhone/iPod speaker dock this side of Mount Olympus: the iNuke Boom, a 700 pound monster speaker system measuring 8 feet wide and 4 feet tall that can output up to 10,000 watts of sound.

Holy crap. That thing will have you sneezing skeleton. The iNuke Boom isn't available quite yet, but it'll be on display at CES 2012. We'll make sure to stop by BEHRINGER's booth then and see how many fillings we can knock out of their sockets with the iNuke then.

Press Release

New EUROSOUND sub-brand will offer consumers concert sound at a great value.

iNuke Boom and all EUROSOUND products will be unveiled at CES 2012 –
Central Hall, Booth 15348

Bothell, WA – December 7, 2011 – BEHRINGER, award-winning innovator of affordable professional audio and music equipment, is excited to announce the launch of the EUROSOUND consumer electronics brand — concert quality sound at an amazing value. To celebrate the launch of 50 new consumer audio products, BEHRINGER will unveil the iNuke Boom, the loudest iPad®, iPod® and iPhone® dock you've ever heard at CES 2012. The $29,999.99 (manufacturer's suggested retail price) monster speaker system measures a whopping 8 feet wide by 4 feet tall, weighs over 700 pounds and pumps out over 10,000 Watts of power.

The EUROSOUND line fully embraces a modern, European design while remaining true to BEHRINGER's roots in professional audio engineering. Four distinct product lines will be marketed under the EUROSOUND name. The Home line brings a professional, live concert sound from the stage into the comfort of your home. EUROSOUND Live products amplify your sound. EUROSOUND Portable products deliver a mobile audio experience anytime, anywhere, while the Creation line proves you don't have to be a professional musician to make great music.

The underlying quality in all EUROSOUND products is a commitment to delivering high performance audio at an incredible value, something BEHRINGER has been providing to musicians and audio professionals since the company's inception more than twenty years ago. The BEHRINGER mantra "Double the Features at Half the Price" will also translate to the EUROSOUND products.

"When I started BEHRINGER 22 years ago my goal was to provide musicians with high quality equipment at an affordable price," said Uli Behringer, founder and CEO of Music Group LLC. "With the launch of EUROSOUND we are challenging ourselves to share the incredible sound and quality we have worked to so hard to craft over the last two decades with all music and audio enthusiasts."

Follow BEHRINGER at @BEHRINGER or facebook.com/BEHRINGER for the latest news on the company's complete line of Eurosound consumer products and all of BEHRINGER's award-winning pro audio equipment.

About Behringer:

BEHRINGER, a division of MUSIC Group, was founded in 1989 by Uli Behringer under the mantra "Double the Features at Half the Price". The company has since been designing and producing loudspeakers, amplifiers, mixers, DJ products, microphones, headphones, wireless systems, musical instruments and lighting systems to both professional and amateur musicians for over two decades. Today a team of more than 3,500 people across four continents work to deliver high performance audio at an incredible value in over 100 countries around the world.

iPod, iPhone, iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

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Apple's New Solar-Powered Spaceship Campus Could Juice A Million Apple TVs

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This morning we reported that Apple had provided some more details to the Cupertino City Council about their proposed plans to build a new "spaceship" campus, including a render that showed a roof entirely tiled in solar panels.

How much power would that generate, though? Enough to power a million Apple TVs.

9to5Mac did some math, and the results are very cool:

From today's plans, we can estimate the roof surface area to be over 750,000 square feet. Assuming (conservatively) 2/3rds of that, or 500,000 square feet of that is utilized for solar, that gives Apple close to a 5MW installation on the amin building alone. On average or as a general "rule of thumb" modern photovoltaics (PV) solar panels will produce up to 10 watts per square foot of solar panel area. Since Cupertino is generally favorable in terms of weather and Apple will obviously use the latest Solar technology developed in the coming years, that could give Apple over 5,000,000 Watts of power to play with. Additionally, Apple has a few other buildings on campus that could be outfitted with solar roofs.

That could make Apple's new campus the largest solar facility in the world. Either way, it's a hell of a lot of power to play with, and while it's not enough to drive all of Apple's day-to-day operations, it sure is enough to seriously mitigate the company's already notoriously green-friendly environmental impact. But inquiring minds want to know: is it enough to let the spaceship blast off?

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AT&T Starts Throttling Heavy iPhone Data Users To 2G Speeds

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(Photo/TipB.com)

If you've been whining about why the iPhone 4S has no 4G, get ready for a real letdown — 2G speeds. The move by AT&T to throttle its top 5 percent of data users to a snail's pace is an unwelcome Christmas present for many iPhone users.

It appears AT&T is breaking the news to subscribers via text message. The text reads: "Your data usage is among the top 5 percent of users. Data speeds for the rest of your current bill cycle may be reduced."

Earlier this year we reported on AT&T's decisionto throttle some accounts, starting in October. It's unknown how much data you must consume to make it into the 5 percent affected by the throttling; however, AT&T has made it clear in the past that this move should only effect jailbreakers on unlimited plans who are using tethering Cydia hacks to get around subscribing to AT&T's official tethering plan.

It is ironic that the iPhone may help AT&T add a record number of smartphones during the fourth quarter. This morning, the carrier proclaimed it's network is the only one where "iPhone 4S users [can] download three times faster and talk and surf at the same time."

While it's unknown whether any other carriers will follow AT&T's lead, the move could give an advantage to Sprint, which boasts no data limits. However it shakes out, I can just hear iPhone users adopting the "Occupy Wall Street" mantra: We are the 5 Percent.

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Change Settings, Launch Apps And Dial Friends Through Notification Center, No Jailbreak Required

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There's a lot to like about iOS 5′s Notification Center, but unfortunately, it's not nearly as configurable as it could (and perhaps should) be.

If you want to wring more power out of your Notification Center, though, we've got good news: there's a really simple way to turn Notification Center into a quick launch bar for all your favorite settings and contacts. Even better? Unlike many Notification Center tweaks, there's no jailbreak required.

The app is called App Switcher, and what it does is allow you to quickly and easily launch your favorite tasks right from the Notification Center.

Here's how it works. All you do is set up a task as a Quick Launch, which allows you to access it by pulling down the Notification Center bar and tapping the appropriate task. For example, you can set up a Quick Task to call your wife, send a text to your brother, turn off Bluetooth, open an app or even load a webpage.

Once you've set up your Quick Tasks, they will always show up as notifications in Notification Center, with no limit to the number of quick tasks you can set up.

The result? Notification Center can now function as an infinitely long quick task launcher, helping you supplement the limited space in your iOS dock. Brilliant.

App Switcher is available now from iTunes, and costs just $0.99.

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Apple's Not Making An iTV, They Are Just Bringing The iMac To The Living Room [Analyst]

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We've been hearing a lot lately about the so-called iTV, Steve Jobs's "cracking" of the HDTV problem. But what if the iTV is just a rumor, and Apple instead plans on fixing television by making iMacs into HDTVs?

According to Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair, the iMac could work as a "bridge" TV to the eventual iTV:

Blair envisions the company pushing the largest screen sizes of the iMac toward the TV market by integrating Apple TV and iCloud features into a slimmer all-in-one PC with TV capabilities.

"We think this makes sense because while we typically think about the newest TV's hanging on the wall in large form factors, Apple could effectively start with what they already have on the manufacturing line and slowly push their offering from 27 inches and scale up from there to 32 inches and then move on to the 42, 50 and 55 inch market," he writes. "In short, we believe the initial Apple TV is their iMac computer that can function as a TV, over the iCloud platform."

In essence, what he's saying is that if you turn Front Row into the Apple TV's interface and make iMacs in slimmer sizes up to 55-inches, Apple can have their cake and eat it too: iMacs could work as both mountable HDTVs and desktop computers, just by knocking off the base.

That's interesting, but what will ultimately make or break the Apple TV isn't the hardware, it's how you control it. The iTV is all about the interface, and it's the minutiae of how Apple intends for us to finally get rid of our remotes that will really prove if Steve Jobs really did "crack: the HDTV problem.

[via MacRumors]

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AT&T Singles Out iPhone For Likely Record Smartphone Sales

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Photo by Steve Rhodes - http://flic.kr/p/21zyYN

AT&T appears to be the latest announcing higher iPhone sales. Continued "strong" demand for iPhone 4S likely will push the carrier beyond its previous single-quarter record sales of 6.1 million smartphones — and a month still remains before the end of the fourth quarter. The news isn't too surprising, given in October AT&T activated 1 million iPhone 4S handsets in just five days.

In just the first two months of the quarter, the carrier sold 6 million smartphones, AT&T announced today. Earlier today, we reported other predictions of a record quarter for the iPhone. Citing "supplier checks," Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu told investors he expects Apple will sell 28 million iPhones during the holiday quarter, up from an earlier forecasted 26 million. Despite "much improved production capacity," supply for the handsets still can't keep with the demand.

Although AT&T did not mention specific iPhone sales figures for the quarter, the Apple handset was the only smartphone mentioned by name. During the previous quarter, the iPhone comprised 56 percent of AT&T smartphone additions, or 2.7 million handsets. By comparison, rival Verizon posted 700,000 iPhone activations for the third quarter.

AT&T also updated investors on its progress building out an LTE network ahead of the LTE-enabled iPhone expected in early 2012. The carrier announced New York City would get LTE this month with 70 million people covered by AT&T's 4G network by the end of 2011.

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Chase Adds PayPal-Like Person-to-Person Pay Feature To Its Apps

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Here's another sign we're edging closer to a world without paper money: Chase bank has added a feature to its iDevice apps that lets its customers transfer money from their Chase accounts to any bank account in the U.S. (both Chase and non-Chase alike).

Frequent PayPal users should recognize the new feature — and it's usefulness, as money can be easily transferred from a Chase account to any other U.S. account via the recipient's attached telephone number or email address. To our knowledge, this is the only major bank in the U.S. to so far adopt the feature.

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