Apple News

Filed under: iPad

Back at Macworld, I checked out a company on the show floor that made solar (photovoltaic) panels. I was hoping to see a panel for sale ready to charge the iPhone, because an easy-to-use panel at a reasonable price would have probably had me opening my wallet on the spot. Unfortunately, they only made custom-designed panels, and nothing mass market (or in my price range), so I was disappointed. But this one might be what I was looking for: Quickertek, makers of all sorts of Mac-related accessories, has adapted its MacBook “Apple Juicz” solar panel to the iPad. This provides 10 watts of sun-based power (reportedly the same as the regular iPad charger) to your magical and revolutionary device.

I don’t have an iPad yet, and the price of the Apple Juicz (US$250) is still a little steep for me, even though it’s probably cheap for what it is. But I am always in favor of using solar technology, and if you’re doing something like camping in the middle of nowhere and using your iPad or MacBook a lot, this might be a workable solution.

If nothing else, at least we’re getting closer. Someday, photovoltaic panels will be so good at grabbing light and batteries will be so good at storing the generated power that all you’ll need to do to charge your iPad is go read outside in the sun for a bit.

[via Cult of Mac]

TUAWQuickertek selling solar panel for iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 17 May 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Humor, Odds and ends, iPhone

It doesn’t take much to make yourself look like a fool, but in the case of The UK’s Sun and Daily Mail newspapers, they have to be feeling quite idiotic right about now. Perhaps not, as these tabloids have a history of running fabulous stories about celebrities, politicians, and the supernatural as a matter of daily business.

John Ware, a 47-year old builder, sent the newspapers a photo he had taken with his iPhone that allegedly showed a ghostly little boy dressed in turn-of-the-20th-century clothing, balefully looking at the photographer. You can see the little boy at the right side of the photo, standing in the foreground. The papers dutifully ran the story, with the Sun’s example shown at the top of this post.

There’s only one problem: as Macenstein pointed out, the same little boy haunts the US$0.99 iPhone app Ghost Capture. That’s right — it’s apparent that Mr. Ware snapped a shot of a demolition site with the app, and then submitted the photo. Our guess is that Ware was having a little fun with the papers, and that the “Got a story? We pay £££.” tag line you see at the top of the page might have provided some motivation.

Here’s hoping that the developers of Ghost Capture add The King to the family of ghosts in the app, so the Sun and Daily Mail can report a rash of Elvis sightings to their readers.

TUAWiPhone photo of “ghost” makes UK tabloids look foolish originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IPhone – Daily Mail – Smartphones – Handhelds – Apple

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store

Yes, PopCap is at it again — this time, their crazy addictive (just like all of their games) take on the tower defense genre, Plants vs. Zombies, is headed off to the iPhone. They just tweeted confirmation a little while ago, and released this trailer showing all of the flower vs. undead action that we enjoyed so much in the other versions of the game, squeezed into the smaller screen of the iPhone.

They don’t mention a price point, but I’m guessing it’ll come out at $4.99, since that’s what most of their releases have debuted at (though if you’re patient, it’ll probably drop down in price after a while). I’ll tell you that yes, if you’ve never played it, the game is more than worth $5, but even if you don’t believe me, you can go play it online for free and see what you think. PopCap is the master of dropping colorful graphics, sparkling gameplay, and constant little rewards on your plate, so PvZ on the iPhone will probably be yet another meal you won’t want to stop eating.

TUAWPlants vs. Zombies coming to iPhone on February 15th originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone – plants-vs-zombies – PopCap Games – App Store – Apple

Filed under: Software, Open Source

There are many options for running Windows programs on the Mac. Boot Camp, for instance, is included with OS X for installing Windows on a separate partition. Parallels, VMware, and Sun offer virtualization software that let you run your Windows programs without logging out of OS X. And then there’s Wine.

TUAWHow to run Windows apps for free with Wine on OS X originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Open Source – Windows – Operating system – Mac OS – Microsoft Windows