Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category

iPING Putter App improves your putting

Technology has been used to help golfers improve their game for quite awhile now. We’ve covered some apps before, and a high tech glove, and now the folks at PING have a new way to improve your putting. Called the iPING Putter App, this app measures your stroke type, impact angle, and tempo which you can use to compare with your friends and some pre-entered golfing pros.

The app aims to help users improve the consistencies of their putts, which in turn will make users’ putting strokes more reliable when playing on the golf course. The iPING Putter App will be available for free on the Apple App Store on June 20th, but the cradle for you to attach it to your putter is available separately. Video demonstration of the app after the break:

iPING Putter App improves your putting, By Ubergizmo. Top Stories : Atrix Review, Dell Streak 7 Review,

AirPlay for Windows Media Center does exactly what you’re thinking it does

This isn’t the first time Windows has been invited to the AirPlay party, but Thomas Pleasance’s AirPlay for Windows Media Center addin seems to already be one of the smoother combinations we’ve seen and it’s still in beta. Unsurprisingly, it does what the name says, so after installing Apple’s Bonjour service and the free client on your Media Center PC you should be able to stream video or pictures to it (there’s no support for music yet) from an iPad or iPhone with a simple click. The Digital Lifestyle has already gotten a quick hands-on with the app and got it working seamlessly as seen above, check that out for more details or hit the source link to download the necessary software to make it all work.

AirPlay for Windows Media Center does exactly what you’re thinking it does originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 03:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acoustic Research ARS20i: a dock for your iOS device

If you haven’t got a docking station for your iOS device mainly because you don’t want to spend a fortune on one, you don’t have to. The great thing about having a popular device like the iPad or iPhone means there will be tons of third party manufacturers creating accessories for the gadget. So while docks like the JBL OnBeat might be a bit too pricey for some, the ARS20i from Acoustic Research might be a little more affordable at about half the price.

Acoustic Research’s dock has the ability to dock your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch through the 30-pin proprietary Apple port. Once plugged in, your iOS device can play music through the docks’ two speakers. While connected to the dock, the device is also charged while playing music. If you’re using the dock to watch movies, it even has an easily rotated base that can hold your iPad in landscape mode.

It also comes with a 3.5mm audio input port for those times when you don’t have your iOS device with you or you have a non-iPod using friend who wants to share his/her music on your speakers. The ARS20i also functions as an alarm clock and a digital FM radio when used standalone. It is available now from Amazon for $77.74 (normal price $79.99).

Acoustic Research ARS20i: a dock for your iOS device, By Ubergizmo. Top Stories : Galaxy Tab 8.9 Preview, HTC Thunderbolt Review,

Apple’s Slow and Careful Crisis Management Doesn’t Always Work

Slow and meticulous is how Apple generally approaches product design, and it’s also how it handles crisis management. The company doesn’t rush, so that it can get things right the first time.

But when it comes to responding to crises, being slow hasn’t always been the best idea for Apple.

Macworld editorial director Jason Snell published a peculiar but intriguing piece Friday, analyzing how Apple handles crisis management. He notes that the way Apple responds has a clear pattern: The company takes its time to react with care and with a lot of detail. This is illustrated by the past week’s iPhone location-collection controversy and last year’s “Antennagate” debacle.

This technique seems idiosyncratic to some crisis-management experts, who believe companies should respond much faster in the event of a crisis.

“We live in a world that’s measured in seconds,” said Michael Robinson, senior VP with Levick Strategic Communications, a firm that helps companies deal with public relations emergencies, in an interview with Computerworld. “Companies grow and go away in that time. If it takes a week, it might as well take a month.””

Apple isn’t the only big corporation that takes its sweet time to respond to concerns. Sony, too, took over a week to acknowledge and publicize a massive security breach that resulted in hackers potentially stealing personal information, including credit card data, from millions of PlayStation Network customer accounts.

Data researchers revealed April 20 that an unprotected file inside iOS devices stores location data, dating as far back as 10 months. The file stores information about nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi access points, leaving a digital trail of your general whereabouts.

Apple waited an entire week to publish its response to the location-data collection discussion in the form of a Q&A, explaining that the company had made some mistakes. And when asked why, Steve Jobs defended the company’s decision to wait:

“By the time we had figured this all out, it took a few days,” Jobs told All Things Digital. “Then writing it up and trying to make it intelligible when this is a very high-tech topic took a few days. And here we are less than a week later.”

During last year’s iPhone 4 antenna controversy, in which some customers reported that holding the iPhone in a very natural way caused signal loss, Jobs made a similar statement to explain Apple’s slow response.

“We heard about [reception problems] 22 days ago and have been working our butts off. It’s not like we’ve had our heads in the sand for three months,” he said during a press conference.

In both these scenarios, Apple’s slow and calculated response to crises seemed to address the issues effectively, although later than some critics would have liked.

Snell argues that in the case of Antennagate, Apple’s idiosyncratic crisis management didn’t seem to do Apple any harm, as shown by skyrocketing sales of the iPhone 4 despite the controversy. Therefore Apple will probably go unharmed with the location-data fiasco, too.

“I’m not convinced that Apple’s been given any reason to believe that its approach to crisis management is wrong,” Snell writes.

But it’s worth noting that in another major “crisis,” Apple’s slow-to-respond M.O. didn’t bode well.

How Apple Fumbled ‘MobileMess’

Think back to the debut of MobileMe, Apple’s $100-per-year online service for e-mails, calendars and contacts.

MobileMe was riddled with bugs and glitches when it launched in 2008. Then things got worse. There was an outage that left 1 percent of MobileMe customers (20,000 people) without e-mail for weeks. Some reported temporarily losing thousands of their e-mail messages due to the glitch.

Even if that was just a small portion of MobileMe customers, an e-mail outage is a serious problem, especially when it’s a paid service. You could miss important notes related to job offers, family members and friends.

During the MobileMe debacle, which critics dubbed “MobileMess,” Apple didn’t respond to queries from press. And for customers, it issued a vague statement acknowledging the problem, but gave no clear estimate of when the problem would be fixed.

It was the same slow and cautious crisis-management technique that we saw again this week, but with a different outcome.

Throughout the weeks of e-mail blackout, there weren’t regular updates assuring customers of what was happening, each step of the way. The only status update from Apple was, “We understand this is a serious issue and apologize for this service interruption. We are working hard to restore your service.”

But by the time the problem was fixed, it was too late. MobileMe’s brand was damaged forever. And the consensus among technology writers, and even Steve Jobs, was that MobileMe was “not up to Apple’s standards.”

“It’s amazing that Apple doesn’t recognize this situation,” New York Times columnist David Pogue wrote on the “MobileMess” debacle in 2008:

This is an airplane that’s stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom. And the pilot doesn’t come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what’s being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: “We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The difference between MobileMe and the location controversy? In the case of MobileMe, customers affected by early bugs and the e-mail outage were the ones demanding answers. They didn’t get the attention they needed from Apple, and for many, MobileMe could no longer be trusted.

In the case of the location-collection controversy, it was mostly the media and some senators demanding transparency from Apple, not thousands of customers complaining, and so, Apple will probably continue selling millions of iPhones anyway.

Customers Deserve a Quicker Response

While Apple’s late response to the location controversy was indeed effective, I’m not convinced this was the best way to handle the situation. Customers, not just journalists, deserve to have an idea of what’s going on with their products sooner.

If its explanation is to be fully believed, Apple had to know that it was a mistake to store a year’s worth of geodata on iPhones the minute it took a look at the file. It could have defused the situation sooner by acknowledging that there was an error, while promising that it was working on a full explanation and a fix to come later.

Apple even had a prefabricated response waiting for it. When asked, Apple could have pointed journalists to a letter its general counsel penned almost one year ago disclosing the iPhone’s location-data methods to Congressman Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts). Most of what appeared in Apple’s Q&A this week was already buried inside that year-old legal letter.

Finally, the only reason the location issue ever came to light was that Apple’s security team simply didn’t respond to questions from the two data scientists who originally published a story on the issue: “We’ve contacted Apple’s Product Security team, but we haven’t heard back,” they wrote.

A slow and thorough response to a crisis can work for Apple, but with the location-tracking controversy, the issue could have been avoided altogether with a single response.

As it turned out, the location-tracking issue was not an immediate or huge concern. But in the future, Apple might not be so lucky if its mistakes prove to be more serious. The company should reevaluate its crisis-management technique before it gets into another MobileMess.

Head Tracking Software Provides the iPad 2 with Glasses-Free 3-D

Turns out you don’t need a special display to get 3-D images and effects on a tablet like Apple’s iPad 2.

Thanks to the new iPad’s front-facing camera, researchers at France’s Engineering Human-Computer Interaction Research Group have been able to deliver real-time glasses-free 3-D using some clever head-tracking software.

The system is named “Head-Coupled Perspective” and works by following your head movements to provide a 3-D image that extends into the screen rather than towards your face, somewhat like looking through a window. It could also be applied to other Apple devices that sport a front-facing camera, like the iPhone 4.

In the past, there have been applications that use the iPad as a tool for 3-D modeling, as well as iPhone apps and gaming accessories that provide 3-D effects, with varying degrees of success. Johnny Chung Lee also created a similar, albeit more hardware intensive head-tracking system that used a Wiimote and IR-outfitted safety glasses.

Head-Coupled Perspective exists only as a tech demo for now, but may get turned into a full-fledged iOS app at some point.

iPad 2 Gets Glasses-free 3D Display [TUAW]

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