Hello Cleveland! Or, you know, wherever you are. Are you ready to rock? No? Oh, well, maybe just a little jam session, then? Apogee Electronics (no, not the company that brought you all those Duke Nukem releases back in the day) has announced the new Jam device, which enables a digital connection for electric and bass guitars into iOS 4.2.1 (and greater) devices or into any Core Audio compatible apps on Mac. You can record straight into GarageBand if you like and use the built-in control knob to adjust your levels. That connectivity won’t come for free, naturally, with a $99 MSRP slapped on this one. It’ll start rocking stores in March — plenty enough time to find another new drummer. Gallery: Jam Continue reading Jam guitar input for Mac and iOS devices gets your axe into GarageBand Jam guitar input for Mac and iOS devices gets your axe into GarageBand originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 12:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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iOS 4.3 is getting itself a pretty snazzy launch vehicle in Apple’s brand new iPad 2 . The thinner, lighter, faster Apple tablet now comes in a choice of black or white, has cameras on front and back, and we understand its cake-cutting abilities are unrivaled. Now that you’ve had a good few hours to digest the news, consume the subsequent comparisons against the original iPad and the rest of the tech world’s tablet offerings , we want to know what you think. Will the iPad 2 pry open your purse, is the oldie still a goodie, or will you wait for the bigger and better things coming down the road? Answers below, please! View Poll iPad 2: are you buying one? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Disgruntled Android developer sounds battle cry, rallies troops, demands Market tweaks from Google (updated)
March 3, 2011 No Comment
A dude making a living writing Android apps — who, by all appearances, is an upstanding guy with actual quality software in the Android Market — is taking Google to task this week for what he calls “unacceptable” treatment. His beef seems to originate from the unexplained pulling of one of his titles — Rapid Download — a fact that he discovered not through any sort of communication from Google, it seems, but by the fact that he noticed was no longer making any coin from it. He goes on to say that he was unable to get anyone in Mountain View to explain the situation until his third attempt, at which point he received some unhelpful “generic information” plus a threat tacked on that if he violated the rules again, he’d have all of his titles pulled. For someone whose Market apps are breadwinners, we can imagine that would be a little scary. Long story short, this particular developer decided he wasn’t going to take it — not after paying “over $14,000 in ‘service fees’” — and started a site to get his story public and enlist fellow devs unhappy with the way Google’s been treating them. Now, we can’t vouch for the accuracy of the guy’s story, but if this movement and ones like it gather enough steam, it puts Google in a precarious position; the Market, after all, is the crown jewel in the company’s strategy of allowing only approved devices to be the most relevant to consumers. Take away the absolute importance of the Market — like, say, Amazon is trying to do — and the power structure starts to shift. Update: If you look at the legacy Market posting for Rapid Download on AndroLib, we can immediately spot at least one thing that’s wrong here — the guy is encouraging users to infringe copyrights right in the product description. Whoops! Sure, Google should be more proactive in letting developers know where they went wrong… but if you don’t see the problem in this, you probably have no business being a professional developer — at least, not one that’s claiming ethics on their side. Thanks, everyone! Disgruntled Android developer sounds battle cry, rallies troops, demands Market tweaks from Google (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Intel Core i7-990X reviewed: best performance ever, but far from best value
March 3, 2011 No Comment
As T-Pain once so wisely proclaimed, “it ain’t hardcore unless it’s hexacore .” Intel should have no worries with its Core i7-990X , which has enough processing units to satisfy even the most demanding of hip hop moguls, but it pads out its extreme credentials anyway with an audacious 3.46GHz default speed. That can be Turbo Boosted to 3.73GHz (yes, we are talking about a CPU that can run at 3,730MHz right out of the box) and there’s 12MB of L3 cache and three channels for DDR3 memory to justify the $999 price tag. Well, to partially justify it, anyhow. Tech Report and Tom’s Hardware both ran this new chip through their benchmarking suites and both concluded it’s the fastest consumer processor around, but neither was willing to recommend it as a terribly astute purchase decision. Then again, when has an Extreme Edition of anything ever been a good value proposition? Intel Core i7-990X reviewed: best performance ever, but far from best value originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 12:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Sony announces Move.me application for researchers and hobbyists, promises improvements to PlayStation Home
March 3, 2011 No Comment
The PlayStation Move may not have proven to be as instantly hackable as Microsoft’s Kinect , but it looks like Sony is now trying to change that — it’s just announced its new Move.me server application that promises to let researchers, hobbyists and others use the Move as a controller for a PC, with the PlayStation 3 handling all the work in between. It will be available for download from the PlayStation Network this spring, although you can also try your luck with Sony’s early-product seeding program if you’d like to get it sooner — no PS3 SDK or licensing agreement is required. In other PlayStation news, Sony’s also confirmed that it’s now working on version 1.5 of PlayStation Home , which promises to add real-time multiplayer gaming functionality to the virtual world, along with improved physics and refined graphics. Details on it are otherwise still fairly light, but it’s also slated for a public release sometime this spring. Head on past the break for the official word on both announcements from Sony. Continue reading Sony announces Move.me application for researchers and hobbyists, promises improvements to PlayStation Home Sony announces Move.me application for researchers and hobbyists, promises improvements to PlayStation Home originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Sony announces Move.me application for researchers and hobbyists, promises improvements to PlayStation Home
March 3, 2011 No Comment
The PlayStation Move may not have proven to be as instantly hackable as Microsoft’s Kinect , but it looks like Sony is now trying to change that — it’s just announced its new Move.me server application that promises to let researchers, hobbyists and others use the Move as a controller for a PC, with the PlayStation 3 handling all the work in between. It will be available for download from the PlayStation Network this spring, although you can also try your luck with Sony’s early-product seeding program if you’d like to get it sooner — no PS3 SDK or licensing agreement is required. In other PlayStation news, Sony’s also confirmed that it’s now working on version 1.5 of PlayStation Home , which promises to add real-time multiplayer gaming functionality to the virtual world, along with improved physics and refined graphics. Details on it are otherwise still fairly light, but it’s also slated for a public release sometime this spring. Head on past the break for the official word on both announcements from Sony. Continue reading Sony announces Move.me application for researchers and hobbyists, promises improvements to PlayStation Home Sony announces Move.me application for researchers and hobbyists, promises improvements to PlayStation Home originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Visualized: US smartphone market share, by manufacturer and platform, made pretty
March 3, 2011 No Comment
They say a picture is worth a thousand words — but in this case, a picture is worth tens of billions of dollars in market share. Nielsen has broken down its US smartphone market share stats between November and January in two dimensions — by market share and by platform — and stuffed all that data into a single block of mesmerizing color. It’s interesting to see the Apple and RIM juggernauts flanked by two imposing, red slivers of HTC, isn’t it? The research firm also took a look at platforms by age group; the shares are surprisingly consistent across the board, though Android does have a slight edge with the young’uns. Follow the break for that chart. Continue reading Visualized: US smartphone market share, by manufacturer and platform, made pretty Visualized: US smartphone market share, by manufacturer and platform, made pretty originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Visualized: US smartphone market share, by manufacturer and platform, made pretty
March 3, 2011 No CommentThey say a picture is worth a thousand words — but in this case, a picture is worth tens of billions of dollars in market share. Nielsen has broken down its US smartphone market share stats between November and January in two dimensions — by market share and by platform — and stuffed all that data into a single block of mesmerizing color. It’s interesting to see the Apple and RIM juggernauts flanked by two imposing, red slivers of HTC, isn’t it? The research firm also took a look at platforms by age group; the shares are surprisingly consistent across the board, though Android does have a slight edge with the young’uns. Follow the break for that chart. Continue reading Visualized: US smartphone market share, by manufacturer and platform, made pretty Visualized: US smartphone market share, by manufacturer and platform, made pretty originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR SGX543MP2 really is faster, better, stronger (video)
March 3, 2011 No Comment
You may have heard of the PowerVR SGX543MP — you know, the GPU behind Sony’s NGP and possibly on its way to the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 — but chances are, you’ve yet to see it working up close. Well, feast your graphics-hungry eyes on this: that’s Futuremark’s Tai Chi benchmark running on a tellingly sheathed device, working the MP2 (dual-core) iteration of the processor, and that fine smartphone to its right is the Nexus S , sporting the PowerVR SGX540 you’ve come to know and love. As you can tell, Imagination Technologies’ promises of 4X the performance aren’t just baseless boasts — the lady on the left moves with grace and fluidity, while her counterpart on the right is all sorts of herky-jerky. Think that’s fast? Check out what the GPU can do with two more cores . Sean Hollister contributed to this report. Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR SGX543MP2 really is faster, better, stronger (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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If you’re old enough to remember tweaking your Autoexec.bat and tackling IRQ conflicts, days when launching Windows required typing “win” at a command prompt, prepare for a blast of nostalgia. YouTuber Andrew Tait (aka “TheRasteri”) took a freshly minted VMWare instance and spent what looks to be a full day running through every version of Windows starting with DOS 5.0 and Windows 1.0, which was basically just Explorer paired with one heck of a crummy text editor. From there he dutifully leads us on a crazy upgrade path all the way up to modern times, charting interesting things like how long a version of Doom installed in DOS ran (failed in Windows 2000, but worked again in Windows XP) and when color settings made in Windows 2.0 were finally overwritten (also in 2000). It’s a 10 minutes in length and is probably the most interesting video you won’t watch today. Continue reading Charting the upgrade path from DOS 5.0 to Windows 7 (video) Charting the upgrade path from DOS 5.0 to Windows 7 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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