Javed Anwer, writing for The Times of India, in a post titled:
Oh! So they cut the prices of MacBook Pro everywhere but India? That’s not very nice of Apple now.
However, Apple is not the one to blame here for the India-specific high price. The higher than expected price of new MacBook Pro laptops in India is due to the dollar-rupee exchange rate, which is higher compared to the rate in February this year when Apple revised the price of 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Uhh…
This is a guest post by my buddy & fellow Apple enthusiast, Rohan Naravane.
Over the years, Apple’s current and former CEO have been quoted referring to Apple TV as a “hobby” for the consumer electronics giant. Apple TV, if you don’t know already, is a tiny box that connects to your television and can stream audio-visual content from the iTunes store and can also mirror your Apple iOS devices and Macs wirelessly. It is a worthy buy for a 100 dollars if you’re one with the Apple ecosystem, but is brimming with potential to do a lot more. Right now, rumours afloat suggest Apple making deals to serve more variety of content and will announce them on the 22nd October event. That’s nice and all, but I’d rather have something that was universally applicable — not just the US. And like any informed customer, I will tend to look at what else is available for $99 and whether those devices will serve my needs better.
For that price, there’s Ouya — an Android-based game microconsole that has gotten average reviews and the PlayStation Vita TV — which isn’t available in all regions yet. Nonetheless, they both have things that I’d want out of my $99 TV box. Ouya’s games store also features apps like Plex that I love so dearly; as content from the Plex Media Server (i.e. my computer) is automatically transcoded and streamed over-the-air to the receiver device. Imagine your entire movie and TV show library; instantly playable on your television while your computer sits in the other room. Plex does it beautifully too — pulling artwork, synopsis, ratings and showing details about the source file. Then there’s the PS Vita TV that brings titles from Sony’s popular handheld console to the big screen (to be played with a separately purchasable Bluetooth Controller).
I can’t wait for Apple to unlock the greater potential of the Apple TV that could possibly unlock many of these functionalities. Although Apple TV’s software is based on iOS, there’s no app store like other iOS devices. Having one would enable Plex and a million other apps to flex the function of the Apple TV beyond what Apple offers out-of-the-box. And speaking of hardware, it would probably need a beefier chip than its current ageing single-core A5 chip to run modern day apps and games well. Lastly, Apple has already introduced Bluetooth controller support with iOS 7. With this support extended to Apple TV, a typical wireless controller will serve a new way to experience those fantastic iOS-based games on the big screen.
It feels like we’re almost there; to a point where it is getting irritating as we wait for Apple to push this product to the next level. To my disappointment, it is unlikely that Apple will announce a majorly overhauled Apple TV product tomorrow. Maybe they’re taking their time because one big piece of the puzzle is yet unsolved — the User Interface. Currently, because of its simplicity the Apple TV is usable via the bundled IR remote or the barebones Remote app on an iOS device. But bringing the App Store may require a sea change to the current form of user interaction. There are rumours of Apple trying the gesture-based interactivity like the one possible with Xbox 360’s Kinect accessory. Whatever the method, it could finally reveal a part of what Steve Jobs had told Walter Isaacson in his biography about Televisions and its User Interface — “I finally cracked it.”
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Rohan Naravane manages the content for PriceBaba.com. He is usually found rambling tech on Twitter @r0han.
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Apple has just sent out the press release announcing the official pricing for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in India. The phones will be launched and available in India on November 1st, 2013.
The prices of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will be as follows:
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– iPhone 5s 16GB: Rs. 53,500
– iPhone 5s 32GB: Rs. 62,500
– iPhone 5s 64GB: Rs. 71,500
– iPhone 5s Case: Rs. 3,200
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– iPhone 5c 16GB: Rs. 42,900
– iPhone 5c 32GB: Rs. 53,500
– iPhone 5c case: Rs. 2,300
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– iPhone 4s 8GB: Rs. 31,500
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Apple today has announced an updated iMac lineup that includes faster fourth-generation Quad-core processors, new GPUs, support for PCI-e based flash storage as well as faster 802.11ac Wi-fi.
Compared to the prices of the current-gen iMacs in India, the prices of these new iMacs have been hiked, thanks to the poor performance of the Indian Rupee against the US Dollar.
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Model
21.5-inch
21.5-inch
27-inch
27-inch
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Old Price
Rs. 85,900
Rs. 99,900
Rs. 1,22,900
Rs. 1,34,900
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New Price
Rs. 99,900
Rs. 1,14,900
Rs. 1,39,900
Rs. 1,54,900
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Price Hike
Rs. 14,000
Rs. 15,000
Rs. 17,000
Rs. 20,000
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The new iMac line-up will be as follows:
21.5-inch iMac – Base Model: Rs. 99,000
– 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 Processor
– 8GB (2x4GB) Memory
– 1TB HDD
– Intel Iris Pro Graphics
– 802.11ac Wi-Fi
21.5-inch iMac – 2nd Model: Rs. 1,14,900
– 2.9GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 Processor
– 8GB (2x4GB) Memory
– 1TB HDD
– NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 1GB video memory
– 802.11ac Wi-Fi
27-inch iMac – Base Model: Rs. 1,39,900
– 3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 Processor
– 8GB (2x4GB) Memory
– 1TB HDD
– NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M with 1GB video memory
– 802.11ac Wi-Fi
27-inch iMac – 2nd Model: Rs. 1,54,900
– 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 Processor
– 8GB (2x4GB) Memory
– 1TB HDD
– NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M with 2GB video memory
– 802.11ac Wi-Fi
The new iMacs will be available from today in the US and will take about a month to be available in India.
Peter Rubin from WIRED brings an exclusive preview of the new Xbox One and its new Kinect sensor.
Watching the keynote last night and then the reactions on Twitter after, I noticed a lot of hate towards the announcement. No games, no backwards compatibility, no pricing and release info, etc. But watching this video blew my mind. I’m not gamer, yet I feel like grabbing the Xbox One when it comes out just to play with the Kinect sensor and the new games built for it.
Over the last few months, App.net has been maturing into much more than just a “Twitter alternative”. The team behind the service has been slowly rolling out some impressive features and updates to it, making it a very solid product that stands on its own and makes it very different from Twitter. Even though the Alpha web app works very much like twitter, the core of App.net & the API that it offers is much more advanced and includes many different features for users — the most notable being the 10GB of File Storage for every account & the corresponding Files API.
One of the first few apps to make explicit use of this Files API by App.net, is Orbit. The app, designed and developed by Joel Levin and Andy LaVoy, is a tiny menubar app that lets you easily manage your files stored on App.net. Similar to Droplr or Cloud App, you can drag your files onto to the app icon in the menubar. Orbit automatically uploads the file and returns a URL that you can share with anyone.
Clicking on the menubar icon reveals a tray that displays a list of all the files in your account. You can drag any file out of the tray to save it and double clicking a file opens it in the default browser. You can hit ⌘+C (or right click) on a file to copy its link manually or ⌘+Delete to delete the file. At the bottom of the tray, Orbit shows you how much space you’ve used from your quota. You can toggle between values displayed either in MBs or percentage by clicking on them. Orbit also includes the option to upload Screenshots automatically, which makes it very easy to quickly share something.
Orbit is the perfect little utility to manage files in your App.net File Storage. It stays out of the way, but is very nifty when you do need it. Orbit is a Free app and can be downloaded from here.
Apple today has updated the processors in their lineup of MacBook Pro with Retina Display and has also lowered their prices. The following is the updated Indian pricing for these is as follows:
13-inch MacBook Pro with 128GB – Rs. 99,900 [$1499 + tax in the US]
13-inch MacBook Pro with 256GB (2.6GHz) – Rs. 1,14,900 [$1699 + tax in the US]
13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB – Rs. 94,900 [$1399 + tax in the US]
Apple has also updated the 15-inch MacBook Pro with a faster 2.4GHz Quad-core processor in the base model and a 2.7GHz Quad-core processor with 16GB of memory in the top-of-the-line model.
A little while ago, I came across this thread on Reddit that was advertising a certain weather app available on the App Store. The OP claims that he’s a 17-year-old developer of the app and that the app is:
[…] a whole new and revolutionary concept: Weather, only with Gestures. Very simple, but effective. It only cost 0,99$.
Curious enough about it, I looked up the app ‘CubeWeather‘ (DO NOT BUY) on App Store and was kinda blow away when I glanced at the screenshots listed for the app. The screenshots very closely almost exactly resembled the Sun weather web app, developed by Jakob Henner — a designer/developer from Copenhagen. If you haven’t heard about Sun yet, I urge you to first go and check it out. Sun is a remarkably good web app and it often puts me in awe how ridiculously well it works on the iPhone or iPad in spite of it being a web app. When I wrote about the app on Beautiful Pixels, I’d wished that there was a native iOS version of it.
So when I came across CubeWeather, for a moment, I thought it had finally happened. But then I took a gander at the developer who was listed as ‘RFV UG (haftungsbeschrankt)‘. I looked through his other apps and realized that something wasn’t right. One look at the following set of screenshots and it’s clear what was going on.
To confirm, I shot off an email to Sun’s original developer who confirmed that CubeWeather was NOT his app and was in no way related to Sun.
I thought of trying out the app at first, but I really don’t want to give my $1 to the scammer. This doesn’t appear to be a case where the screenshots were swapped after the app was released on the App Store, as Apple has recently started locking screenshots down in iTunes Connect and they can only be updated when the developer submits an update to the app. It’s likely that in this case, this scammer just took Sun and wrapper it in a web-view and submitted it to the App Store.
It’s a shame that cases like this are so easy to happen on the App Store and there seems to be no way to report an app on the App Store.
TL;DR: Sun is a weather web app for iOS. It’s awesome and Free to use. CubeWeather is NOT related to Sun. It’s probably a scammer who’s selling it for $0.99. Do not buy it.