Netgear CEO Apologizes For Jobs Health Jibe

Netgear CEO Patrick Lo has apologized for suggesting that Apple CEO Steve Jobs needs to “go away” in order for Apple to introduce more open standards in their devices.

Gizmodo Australia quoted Lo as saying:

“It’s critical for Apple to make a decision how to go forward. And I think as long as Steve jobs lives, there’s no way they’re going to open it up. Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform.”

Jobs is on his third medical leave of absence as he continues to battle health issues related to the diagnoses of a cancerous tumor in his pancreas in 2004.

While there is no official diagnoses for the comments made by Patrick Lo, some medical practitioners, and ordinary Joe’s, referred to him as suffering from a bit of a “brain fail”.

Fortunately for Netgear, Mr. Lo was able to able to somewhat redeem himself by releasing a statement where he again reiterated his stance on Apple to be more open while also issuing an apology.

“I deeply regret the choice of words I used in relation to business decisions Apple must grapple with in the future in relation to open vs. closed systems, which have been construed by some to be references to Steve Jobs’ health and which was never my intention.  I sincerely apologize that what I said was interpreted this way, and I wish Steve only the very best.”

(Via Washington Post)

MacLegion Bundle – 10 Mac Apps For $49.99 (Originally Priced @ $630)

Mac App bundles are a dime a dozen, and they all promise you the same thing – savings, massive savings on Mac apps. The MacLegion Fall bundle is no different and is possibly one of the best Mac App bundles that we have ever seen.

This bundle offers 10 quality apps, priced at a combined $630, all for only $49.99. That’s a saving of more than 90%. Wow! And, if you look closely, you will notice that more than half of the apps individually cost more than the entire bundle!

Check out the MacLegion bundle page for more details, but be quick, not only does the bundle expire in a little under 10 days but the first 9,000 customers get CleanMyMac for FREE!

So, let’s get down to business. This is what you get for you hard earned $49.99!

Corel Painter Essentials 4

Corel® Painter™ Essentials 4 is based on arguably the world’s most powerful painting and illustration software, Corel Painter. If you want to do more than just edit and print your photos or sketch and paint original images, Corel Painter Essentials 4 is for you.

RapidWeaver

RapidWeaver makes it ridiculously easy to create stunning websites on your Mac. RapidWeaver is a next-generation web design application to help you easily create professional looking web sites in minutes. No knowledge of complex code is required, RapidWeaver will take care of all that for you.

BannerZest Pro

BannerZest Pro is a popular authoring tool used to create amazing banners based on a wide range of ready-made themes. In its latest version BannerZest Pro supports both Flash and HTML5 banners. This means your creations can also be viewed on iOS browsers (iPad, Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch)! 14 new HTML5 themes along with 30 Flash themes are available in BannerZest Pro.

Postbox

Postbox is a new desktop email application for Windows and Mac OS X, but we like to think of it as something much more — a system for managing your work life. Because the Inbox is where all the action is. It’s where we communicate, store files and information, keep track of things to do, and everything in-between. With so much going on, it’s hard to stay on top of things.

DEVONthink Pro

In today’s world, everything is digital. From shopping receipts to important research papers, your life often fills your hard drive in the form of emails, PDFs, Word documents, multimedia files and more. How do you organize these different file types? Furthermore, how do you find the exact file you’re looking for at the moment you need it? It’s almost as if you need a second brain just to keep your digital life straight. DEVONthink Pro IS your second brain!

Swift Publisher

Swift Publisher is an excellent Macintosh page layout application for designing and printing colorful flyers, newsletters, brochures, letterheads, booklets, etc. A great selection of templates inspires your creativity and a variety of editing tools lets you quickly apply it. No doubt that staying in touch with your customers and/or friends/group members is important for you.

Disk Drill Pro

Disk Drill Pro is a professional but extremely easy to use Mac data recovery app.  Disk Drill Pro can recover data on and off your Mac, external or internal hard drives, memory cards, cameras, flash/thumb drives, iPods etc. So if your hard drive was damaged, or you just accidentally deleted your favorite photos, music, videos and/or other data, no worries… Disk Drill Pro has you covered!

Checkup

CheckUp has been specifically designed to help you monitor the behavior and health of your Mac in a simple, straightforward manner, all in real time. No more needing to go ‘under the hood’ to find all the technical details that could be affecting your system. We’ve done all the work for you!

Voila

Voila is a screen recording and image capturing tool for your Mac, developed to enhance your productivity and creativity. Voila allows you to capture anything and everything on your desktop, your iSight camera or even snap an entire web page as well. You can then easily annotate the image with variety of editing tools and share the images instantly!

Fumy

Fumy (formerly Smoke) is a cutting edge, unique graphics editor. Fumy offers a distinct type of brush rendering stunning graphics with the simplest of mouse movements. Abstract backgrounds, lighting texts, art-house drawings, the sky’s the limit – this brilliant tool helps convert your ideas into digital art.

And that’s it? What? You expected more? Oh wait, there is more… the first 9,000 customers get Clean My Mac for absolutely free.

You better get a move on.

Byte Dock Releases First Third-Party Thunderbolt Dock For 2011 MacBook Pro

Byte Dock has just released the first ever third-party Thunderbolt dock for the 2011 MacBook Pro. The Byte Dock is essentially a Thunderbolt-based desktop dock for your 2011 MacBook Pro, and will begin shipping on September 9 for £149.99.

The dock is available for 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch Thunderbolt-enabled MacBook Pros, features two USB ports, a Thunderbolt port, a line in/mic port, audio out, one FireWire 800 port and an Ethernet port.

The Byte Dock is a full docking solution for the MacBook Pro, and allows you to keep all of your usual devices permanently connected. This dock would look great sitting next to one of Apple’s nice Thunderbolt displays. You can read more about the Byte Dock by visiting the product page on the web.

Some of our readers will remember the Byte Dock that we featured on the site back in May, it is basically a dock for your MacBook Pro and comes with a range of built in features.

We just got an email from the guys over at Byte Dock to let us know that the Byte Dock will go on sale this Friday the 9th of September for £149.99, and it is available for the 13 inch, 15 inch and 17 inch MacBook Pro’s.

The Byte Dock features two USB ports, one Thunderbolt port, one mic/line in, one audio out/headphone socket, one FireWire 800 socket and an Ethernet port, you can find out more information over at Byte Dock.

The Byte-dock is a fully comprehensive docking solution for your MacBook® Pro allowing you to have all your usual peripherals permanently connected in your home or work environment.

All-in-one docking solution with no need for extra cables.
Simple and seamless plug-and-play functionality.
No additional power adapters needed.
Thunderbolt technology.
Free Minidisplay to HDMI Cable that supports audio.

Evernote For iOS Gets Massive Update

Following Evernote’s recent acquisition of Skitch, Evernote has now released a major update to its popular note management app for iOS, adding support for rich text edition, notebook haring, and more (Free, App Store Link).

Previous versions of Evernote have been able to display rich text content, but have not been able to author or edit such content. Also new is the ability to share your notes and access other peoples’ shared notebooks through the Evernote app, the ability to search within individual notes, and the ability to view images as a slideshow.

In addition, the iPad version now has a brand new look and feel, gains the ability to pinch and zoom in the note list, and the ability to select multiple notes at once for sharing and deletion.

Evernote is a free download from the App Store, but requires an Evernote Premium subscription to access some advanced features, as well as additional storage. For more information or to download, head on over to the App Store (Free, App Store Link).

Xcloud.me Begin To Roll Out OS X Lion Server Packages

Xcloud.me, the company that hosts MacTrast.com, have begun rolling out OS X Lion Server to all new clients. Xcloud.me offer a 100% Mac server environment.

This means that all their servers run on Mac and are all powered by OS X Server.

From their blog:

The wait is over: All functional tests have been passed! Mac OS X Lion Server based Xcloud plans are available immediately. After extensive testing during the last couple of weeks, we are pleased to present you our new Xcloud plans simultaneously with the launch of our new homepage.

A big thank you to the Xcloud crew for not only keeping MacTrast.com up, but for also ensuring the site loads in double quick time.

MacTrast.com is proud to be hosted on Mac, by Xcloud.me, and for Mac users.

Want to try out an Xcloud.me server for yourself? The guys are giving away a server solution for 18 months to one lucky winner. Visit this link and find out how you can win.

1991 Classic “Another World” Comes To iOS

Another World, a classic game from 1991 that enjoyed a massive following, has been remade from the ground up as a universal app in a special twentieth anniversary addition for the iPhone, Apple iPod touch & iPad ($4.99, App Store Link).

The game features completely revamped visuals, audio and effects, and you can freely switch between the old-style original graphics and the revised HD iDevice graphics as often as you with. The game also now includes three different difficulty modes, and includes Game Center achievements.

The app seems to be receiving overwhelmingly positive ratings so far, and those of you that were fans of the original game can enjoy losing a few precious hours of your weekend reminiscing on old times. The app is available immediate as a universal app from the App Store ($4.99, App Store Link)

Review: Max And The Magic Marker HD- Draw Your Path Through This Creative Platform

Welcome to the world of Max & The Magic Marker. In this physics based puzzler you control Max, who one day gets a mysterious marker in the mail. He then draws a monster on a piece of paper. Once the marker leaves the paper, the Monster comes to life and has to be stopped. Max then draws himself onto the paper and the chase begins. Max And the Magic Marker HD, developed by Press Play is a really colorful game. It uses the theme of drawing and coloring to give the platform a different feel and it works, because not only is it fun to play. The worlds in Max & The Magic Marker look really sharp.

Gameplay

In this physics platform, your one tool is the marker you control to make platforms, defeat enemies, and conquer obstacles. In every level, throughout the way, you have to collect golden spheres, black spheres, and of course the ink you need to fill up your marker. There are quite a number of ways to get Max to the next level using his marker. To destroy enemies, you have to draw round orange shapes above the enemies which will then kill them. To get past some platforms all you need to do is draw a line to the other side of the screen. Other times it’s not so easy and you have to be creative to get through to the next level such as making seesaws or stairs to get from platform to platform. Since Max is in a drawing, he can’t come in contact with water or rain, so if there’s a raincloud you need to get past, you can draw a shied of sorts around Max and he’ll pass through easily. During the first few levels, you’re given the line where you need to draw over. I was getting worried that this would continue throughout the whole game. Luckily after the first few levels, you have the option to turn it off.

Graphics

The graphics in Max & The Magic Marker are so well done. Every part of the world is colorful and the drawing aspect of the game blends well with tall he assets and the backgrounds. Even when you toggle the level to pause everything and keep drawing, the drawings and platforms you make, are made to resemble the artwork in the game when its toggled on. From the enemies to the water to Max himself, the game in a whole has some of the most colorful graphics of any platform game on the Mac App Store.

Controls

The controls in the game are pretty simple. You use the direction buttons to move Max and up to jump. The “x” button is used to erase all of the drawings you made with the marker and the “q” button is used to erase the last drawing. The space bar is used to toggle freeze, which is to freeze the environment and continue drawing. The controls are really basic for a platform that takes some thinking and creativity to do on some levels.

Verdict

Max And The Magic Marker is a fun physics platform which has a lot to offer. The game is creative but simple. It will have you playing for house on end. Once I started playing, I didn’t want to stop. There are 58 levels and lots of achievements and puzzles to conquer. There can be more intuitive ways to get through the level besides making stairs and standard platforms, but for what it is, its one of the better platform games on the app store.

$9.99 (Mac App Store Link)

Pros

58 levels
Great art style
Lots of achievements

Cons

Can be a bit more challenging

Every Major iPhone 5 Rumor In One Amazing Video

The creative folks at Nowhereelse.fr have assembled Apple iPhone 5 rumors from all across the internet, putting them all together in one awesome video that presumes to show you what the next-gen Apple iPhone might bring.

Although this video doesn’t cover every rumor, it does seem to cover the most major and popular ones in a fast, visually appealing, and easy to absorb manner. They even rate the likelihood of each rumor in the video. Check it out below!

Dont Mourn The iPod Classic Because The 128GB iPod touch Is Incoming
This morning, a report surfaced that the next Apple iPhone would come with 64GB of storage for the first time ever. It’s looking pretty solid.At the same time, rumors have been bubbling up for the last couple weeks that Apple would soon be discontinuing the venerable Apple iPod Classic… and today’s move to axe the iPod Clickwheel Games section of the iTunes Store certainly seems to confirm as much.That’s a bummer. Okay, sure, iTunes Match and iCloud take some of the hurt out… but what if you want to carry your whole music collection around with you without having to sign up for a data plan? For customers like that, the death of the only 120+ gigabyte Apple iPod is a bitter pill to swallow.Don’t worry. A new 128GB Apple iPod touch is almost definitely coming.It’s actually easy math: if Apple is going to release a 64GB Apple iPhone 4, then they’ll release a 128GB Apple iPod touch.First, there’s the convention: Apple iPod touches have always shipped with twice the NAND Flash memory of the Apple iPhone 4.This convention is informed, however, by how much physical room there is in the device itself. In the Apple iPhone 4, space is at a premium even at significantly more thickness than the Apple iPod touch: modems, antennas and all the other guts that get stuffed into an Apple iPhone so that it can make calls and suck up 3G mean that there’s only space inside for one module of NAND flash.Up until now, Apple has been using Toshiba’s 32GB NAND Flash Modules in both the 32GB Apple iPhone 4 and 64GB Apple iPod touch. These are actually old chips, though, and back in 2009, Toshiba managed to double the storage they could fit on a single module to 64GB.If Apple releases a 64GB iPhone, they’re using one of these modules. But here’s the thing: in the Apple iPod touch, there’s room for two Toshiba NAND Flash modules. That means Apple can now max it out at 128GB.Back in 2009, I said this about the possibility of a 128GB Apple iPod touch:128GB of storage is a magic number for the Apple iPod touch: 128GB means I can finally get rid of my 160GB Apple iPod Classic and cram my iTunes library onto a Touch without worrying about juggling albums around like some sort of Walkman-wielding, early eighties troglodyte. For me, the whole point of living in music’s digital age is that there shouldn’t be a problem walking around with sixty two days worth of music crammed into my front pocket.Even though I never anticipated the rise of the iCloud, 128GB is still a magic number for the Apple iPod touch, because unless it’s on WiFi, it can’t take advantage of iTunes Match. When you’re out with the Apple iPod touch, you’re limited to what you synced to your device manually.(And before you pipe up in the comments: no, Apple’s not going to put 3G in the Apple iPod touch. See, as it turns out, once you cram all the guts of a 3G cellular modem into an Apple iPod touch, you end up with a substantially thicker device… in fact, one exactly as thick as an Apple iPhone 4. The only way to mitigate this is to go the iPad route and make the device bigger in height and width to keep it thin. )So there you have it. If the reports of the Apple iPhone 4S boasting 64GB of storage pan out — and they certainly seem pretty solid — it’s a lock that the Apple iPod touch will be available with a 128GB capacity. It’ll be pricy, doubtlessly replacing the existing $399 64GB Apple iPod touch, but it should fit all but the biggest iTunes collections, and finally replace the Apple iPod Classic for pretty much everyone.And if your music collection is over 128GB? Well, what do you know: in June last year, Toshiba announced new 32nm 128GB NAND Modules perfect for the iPhone, iPad and Apple iPod touch. We may just see a 256GB touch in 2012.

OS7 Running on iPhone via JailBreak! :/

Making friends is important. Even Apple and Microsoft are friends… for the most part. But this is taking things a bit too far!

An Apple iPhone running OS7 via a Jailbreak!! Why? Why would you do such a thing?

But of course this is just a theme and not the actual OS7. Phew!

Italian blog HDBlog.it posted details on how to trick your Apple iPhone into believing she is an OS7.

But fear not if you can’t speak Italian. Google Translate to the rescue…

Requirements:

The Apple iPhone must be jailbroken with Cydia installed
It requires an internet connection (preferably Wi-Fi)

Guide:

Launch Cydia and install Backboard (free)
Create a backup of your current theme in Blackboard. You can do this by pushing the “+” at the bottom left of the app.
Now with your iPhone, click on the link below, or write it by hand into the navigation bar in safari:
” backboard: / / http://wyndrepo.googlecode.com/files/OS7Beta.zip “
Press “Yes” and wait for the download to finish. This may take several minutes depending on your internet connection.
Select the theme from the board OS7
Press install and wait for the automatic message of Restarting iPhone.

(Via 9to5 Mac)