Hasta La Gadget!

It’s Friday once again folks, with most of you already enjoying the weekend. Today, the iPhone 5 launched in 22 additional regions around the world, setting Apple’s plan to have it in over 100 countries by the end of the year on track. Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized for the sad state of Apple Maps today (recommending some other Maps apps in the process), and we took a closer look at his words in a new column. Even more surprising is the fact that the iOS App Store now features a download page specifically for other Maps applications.

All of you Apple dissenters will definitely want to watch the iPhone 5 get destroyed by some powerful lasers, and Sharp reassured today that it’s making plenty of iPhone 5 screens, which are rumored to be the bottleneck on production. Today we got a closer look at the vibrator inside the iPhone 5, and learned that it costs less than $1 to charge your iPhone for an entire year. Microsoft has assured that it has tested Windows 8 thoroughly ahead of next month’s launch, and it seems that Kodak will soon be dropping out of the inkjet printer business.

Google now lets YouTube creators re-download their movies in their original format, and the FCC has approved an auction to reclaim broadcast TV spectrum. HP has launched Open webOS 1.0, and Amazon gave us a little video detailing the technology behind the Kindle Paperwhite. Good news for all of you Call of Duty fans: Modern Warfare 3 is free-to-play on Steam this weekend, and there are rumors floating around that HP will soon be jumping back into the mobile market.

Microsoft was spotted lamenting the lack of highly skilled technology workers today, and Notch is refusing to certify Minecraft for Windows 8, despite Microsoft’s requests. For the first time ever, Instagram has beat Twitter when it comes to daily mobile users, Sony has invested $640 million into slowly dying camera company Olympus, and a new BlackBerry 10 video gives us our first look at RIM’s new QWERTY device. Finally tonight, Chris Davies takes an up-close look at RIM’s Q2 results, which were posted yesterday, while Chris Burns has a new review of the movie LOOPER, starring Bruce Willis and Jason Gordon-Levitt. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy your weekend everyone!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: September 28, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The newest iPhone model on the market, that being the iPhone 5, has been revealed this week as working with essentially the same rotational vibrator that the original iPhone did – this a break back from the iPhone 4S which used a different unit. What’s been shown here is the fact that though the Verizon iPhone 4, then the iPhone 4S in all iterations, had a new vibration motor that was slightly less intense than the original rotator. Now with the iPhone 5, according to iFixit, it’s back in with the old.

The simple reason for this – basically without a doubt, that is – is the fact that the iPhone 4S’s vibrator was slightly larger than the rotational motor used in the original iPhone. This linear oscillating vibrator didn’t need to be tiny at the time because the iPhone 4S had room for it. Now with the iPhone 5 needing to be significantly smaller overall, it was time to kick the big lump out.

The folks at iFixit show both models above, with the iPhone 5′s vibrator (here from the original iPhone 4 – pre-Verizon) in blue and the original iPhone’s vibrator hovering above it like the one deadly eye of Sauron. Of course this little difference means next to nothing for most smartphones, tablets, and everything larger, but with the iPhone 5 packed so tight as it was, this little difference makes an impact. There’s also the power factor.

The larger vibrator simply does not vibrate with the same power that the smaller one does. With the smaller vibrator working with a motor that flings a piece of metal around for hardcore sound and movement, this older design just buzzes better. Let us know if you notice the difference once you’ve got the iPhone 5 in your hand – after having used an iPhone 4S for an extended period, of course.

[via The Next Web]

iPhone 5 vibrator gets rough once again is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A lovely bit of news mixed with a bit of a downer for the first owners of the iPhone 5 has come down today from the NYPost where they’ve got an inside track on deals between Apple and Sony/ATV for streaming music rights. It appears that though Apple had been working on a competitor for the most popular streaming music radio app Pandora, but ran into a last-minute snag in negotiations with Sony/ATV. The Sony/ATV group is the world’s largest music publisher and is currently in the process of buying EMI Music Publishing, this eventually placing them in control of 2 million copyrights that span the globe.

Apple’s negotiations with Sony/ATV were reportedly down to the per-song rights fees which Sony/ATV asked to be higher than the standard tenths of a penny per stream standard. The NYPost also noted this week that “executives close to the matter” have said Sony/ATV will be pulling out of the two main copyright associations Ascap and BMI by January of 2013. If they do indeed pull out of these groups, licensing songs by businesses across the map will be more difficult as they’ll have to go through Ascap/BMI as well as Sony/ATV instead of working with a one-stop-shop, as it were.

Apple’s service would act as a main competitor for Pandora as it would be able to lower costs between free streams and final song purchases as they’ve already got a music store that can facilitate purchases. With iTunes, Apple is already a massively beastly music-toting group, but with a free radio streaming service that could give a more “human” way to the music discovery process, they could move on to a new level.

When word that a Pandora competitor was in the works for the iPhone 5 earlier this year, Pandora company stocks dropped significantly. This new news source notes that “They didn’t put whatever they needed to put in the app,” and that “It seems they were rushed into it.” This same source notes that music streaming from Apple on devices like the iPhone 5 is still a possibility for a software update months in the future – stay alert!

iPhone 5 Pandora rival still possible as Sony sets snag is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Today, Tim Cook made his first major apology as the CEO of Apple. It probably won’t be his last. Despite the obvious knee-jerk reaction regarding the Maps debacle, it’s actually interesting that this particular scenario is yet another example of humans having extraordinarily short-term memories. It’s the same reason that whatever game we most recently saw is the “best or worst ever.” (Packers v. Seahawks 09.24.2012, I’m looking at you.) In truth, Apple has a fairly solid history of ingesting pride in the iPhone era, when it surged headfirst into the realm of serving consumers in a way that it never had before. And moreover, hearing Cook apologize isn’t something that should be mocked or berated; one can only hope that more companies of all shapes and sizes develop a policy of listening and reacting. Allow me to explain.

Continue reading Editorial: Apple apologies actually aren’t that infrequent, and that’s okay

Filed under: Cellphones, Apple

Editorial: Apple apologies actually aren’t that infrequent, and that’s okay originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After waiting in line to buy and spending seven days with the iPhone 5, living with it, owning it, I can say confidently that it’s the best smartphone you can buy. The whiners, the babies, the cranky zealots who think it’s boring, or disappointing, or not different enough? They don’t understand. The iPhone has finally grown up. There’s nothing boring about it. More »