Awesome! I want this on my next iPhone... not that I've had any problems with breaking glass on any iPhones I've had so far, but there can't be anything wrong with even stronger glass.
I do have one question, when can we have this in our cars? It seems I am constantly getting cracked windshields due to flying rocks and the like. It's really annoying!

Gorilla Glass 3

Jacqui Cheng has a nice gallery of pictures showing the evolution of SoundJam MP iTunes.
Apple purchased SoundJam in the year 2000, and thus iTunes was born. Looking at those screen shots of SoundJam, I wonder if this was the first, or one of the first interfaces to sport Brushed Metal before it was cool pervasive. I honestly don't know where Brushed Metal started for sure, but this is certainly the oldest app I have seen to sport Brushed Metal.
<img src="/images/blog/2013/01/10/soundjammp_ipodobserver.jpg" alt="soundjammp_ipodobserver">
Click through for the full gallery.

Jacqui Cheng writing on Ars Technica

iTunes Turns 12 - Picture Gallery

Let me tell you a little bit about something I like and enjoy.
(Warning: spoilers for Portal and Portal 2 follow)
One of the things I have been enjoying in my precious few spare moments after my work is done for the day and the kids go to bed is Portal and Portal 2. A friend of mine had our family over for the evening a few weeks ago and he introduced me to Portal. Of course I had heard of it before. But in my mind somehow it was linked to first person shooter games and the like. I'm not into those so I never thought to check out Portal.
But Portal is not a first person shooter. Sure it's played in the first person, which I don't usually care for. But that's about as far as the similarities go. Portal and its successor, Portal 2, are essentially puzzles that must be solved with differently positioned portals. The portal gun you carry can shoot two differently colored portals, orange and blue. Think of the colors as corresponding to sides. If you go in an orange portal, you come out of a blue portal and vice versa.
Portal is actually a fairly short game, especially when you play it the second time around, but it's been a long time since I had so much fun with a game. The plot is fairly simple. Your character, Chell, wakes up from what is apparently some sort of stasis sleep, and an AI tells you that testing is ready to begin. A portal opens, you go through it and begin advancing through the stages of "testing". As you go, the AI (if you know Portal's story and lore you know her name is GLaDOS) seems to get more and more menacing until finally, she leads you to a chamber of fire where she intends to kill you. But you portal up and go behind the scenes, eventually finding the nerve center of the AI and destroying her.
Words cannot do this justice, solving the puzzles, advancing, figuring out how to kill the AI is so much fun.
Portal 2 is a much longer, and even more fun and satisfying game. In Portal 2, GLaDOS is resurrected from her destroyed pieces. Wheatley, another AI we meet, is trying to help you get to GLaDOS control room. When you get through GLaDOS' testing with Wheatley and show up in her chamber, another computer voice announces that a corrupted core has been detected, but a new core has also been detected and would you like to install it.
After installing Wheatley and ousting GLaDOS, Wheatley seems to be corrupted by the power, and drops Chell down a shaft all the way to the bottom of the facility. Now you have to make your way back up to the top and face off with Wheatley. This is the heart of the gameplay and it is even more fun than the original Portal. Along then way you meet up with what's left of the GLaDOS core, now powered by a potato battery. You and her ascend back to the top to face off with Wheatley. Wheatley has gone stark raving mad and once you get back up to the facility proper, he begins testing you in a similar manner to GLaDOS, only much more deranged.
In the end, after a battle with Wheatley, he is sucked into space by firing a portal at the moon.
None of what I am writing here can convey just how much fun both of these games are. They are available on a variety of different platforms, including <a href="http://store.steampowered.com">Steam</a>, and I can't recommend the game highly enough.

Portal

Yeah, yeah, I know, Facebook video. This belongs on YouTube but I couldn't find it there! Seriously, this is worth clicking through and watching. It's fun stuff. Watch all the way through, it just gets better and better.

Facebook

Bach on a Floor Piano

I love this! This is a short audio clip of Steve Jobs explaining why they don't use Intel Inside stickers.

  

Fun stuff.

Intel Inside

iPhone 5 Drop Test

Apple has really done something about the break-ability factor.

Another iPhone 5 Drop Text

<blockquote>
If you’re down in the dumps about not being able to buy the iPhone 5 right now, we have the most amazing solution you’ve ever seen. It’s the Magical iPhone 4 Life Extension sticker. Basically it’s just a sticker that makes your iPhone 4/4S look like the two-toned back plate of an iPhone 5.
</blockquote>
I have way too much class for this, but it's still funny.
<img src="/images/blog/2012/09/19/iphone-5-sticker.jpg" alt="iphone-5-sticker">

Cult of Mac

Make Your iPhone 4 and 4S Look New

<blockquote>
We <a href="http://www.bgr.com/2012/09/13/iphone-5-announcement-analysis-disappointing/">recently wrote</a> that following all the leaks and rumors leading up to the <a href="http://www.bgr.com/tag/iphone-5">iPhone 5</a> unveiling, the only thing more predictable than the new <a href="http://www.bgr.com/tag/iphone">iPhone</a> itself was people’s reactions to it. Well, the only thing even more predictable than response to the iPhone 5 was the fact that preorders would sell out quickly. <a href="http://www.bgr.com/tag/apple">Apple</a> (<a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AAPL">AAPL</a>) made preorders of its new iPhone available on apple.com at 3:01 a.m. EDT, 12:01 a.m. PDT and in less than one hour, the company’s initial stock of new iPhones for <a href="http://www.bgr.com/tag/verizon">Verizon Wireless</a> (<a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=VZ">VZ</a>), <a href="http://www.bgr.com/tag/att">AT&#x26;T</a> (<a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=T">T</a>) and <a href="http://www.bgr.com/tag/sprint">Sprint</a> (<a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=S">S</a>) was depleted.
</blockquote>
So disappointing.

Zach Epstein writing at BGR

So 'Disappointing'

This is a comparison of the cites with LTE coverage.
Verizon:
<img src="http://buzzingpixel.com/?ACT=40&#x26;fid=90&#x26;d=1427&#x26;f=verizon__600.jpg" alt="">
AT&#x26;T:
<img src="http://buzzingpixel.com/?ACT=40&#x26;fid=90&#x26;d=1427&#x26;f=att__600.jpg" alt="">
Devastating.
Be sure to click through for the interactive part. You can hover over the cities and see the names.

CNN Money

Speaking of LTE Coverage

iPhone 5 'Exclusive Peek' (Hilarious!)

<blockquote>
Writing for Seeking Alpha, Ed Liston warns that <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/853071-apple-may-lose-the-smartphone-war-to-google?source=feed">“Apple May Lose The Smartphone War To Google.”</a>
Needless to say, what Apple is “losing” is just market share. Forget the fact that it makes most of the money and that Google makes more money on mobile advertising from iOS than Android and that Microsoft may have made more off of Android so far than Google. Forget all that! If Android has more market share, Google is winning!
</blockquote>
The Macalope's most recent column is good, as usual. But the last bit of the article from which I quoted is particularly relevant to the title. Who on earth does write this garbage?

Posts tagged “Fun” from the blog