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Review PowerMat iPhone Charger and Case

PowerMat iPhone Charger The Powermat Wireless Charging System for the iPhone provides iPhone users a protective case that also charges cable free. Powermat sent the Geeks a Wireless Charging System for both the iPhone 3G/3GS and the iPhone 4 and we put the case in the hands of some of our reviewers for a couple months to test in real world situations. One reviewer did accidentally drop their shiny new iPhone 4 on a concrete parking deck during the test… did the Powermat protect the device? What were the reviewers overall impressions of the Powermat iPhone case?

Review: Krypton iPhone 3G/3GS Case

Krypton Products iPhone 3G/3GS Case The Geeks received some Krypton Products a couple months ago then put the products to real world testing. This review concentrates on the Krypton iPhone 3G/3GS Flex Case.

The iPhone 3G/3GS Krypton Flex Case includes several funky styles: Black Pyramids, Black Groove, Orange Groove and White Spiral. As mentioned, these cases were tested by several reviewers and it was hard for the reviewers to choose the style they wanted. Orange and Black Groove went first followed by Black Pyramids. Personally, I preferred the Black Groove style but would have used any case.

Google eBookstore Online

Google eBookstore Google’s eBookstore has opened their virtual doors with the goal of capturing some market share away from other eBookstore’s including Amazon for the Kindle, Apple’s iBooks, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Kobo from Borders with over 3 million titles from some 4,000 publishers.

Google provides a web reader but the iOS and Android apps have been released as well allowing synchronization of your bookmarks and library.

What I like about the Google library is that you can download the book as either an ePub or PDF format. ePub is the open source ebook format. With these formats you can view and print on just about any device not to mention “loaning” books to friends.

iOS 4.2 Released to Developers

Apple started notifying iOS developers that version 4.2 is in GM status and available for download.

In addition to fixing the iOS 4.1 DST bug, iOS 4.2 will bring the following features to the iPad:
– Multitasking
– Folders
– AirPlay wireless music, movie, and photo streaming
– Printing support over wireless networks
– Game Center for multiplayer and social gaming
– Unified and improved Mail inbox
– Search text within Safari
– Enhanced enterprise support
– Accessibility enhancements
– Keyboard and dictionary enhancements

iOS 4.1 DST Bug causes Europe to Oversleep

Time warp A couple of weeks ago New Zealand and Australia iOS 4.1 device owners lost an hour of beauty sleep thanks to a bug in iOS 4.1. People with recurring alarms had their alarms trigger an hour earlier when the countries switched to DST.

While Apple states that the bug will be fixed in a software update, the fix has yet to appear. Unfortunately for our friends in the UK and other European countries, their DST ended this past weekend causing iOS 4.1 European users to oversleep by an hour.

While some hope the iOS 4.1 bug will be fixed by November 7th, which is when DST ends in the US and Canada, I plan to oversleep an hour and blame Apple if I don’t get an iOS update.

Apple iLife and OS X Updated

The 8th major version of Mac OS X was officially announced on 10/20/2010 at the Apple Media Special Event. Codenamed “Lion”, Jobs calls this release “OS X meets iPad” with features including multi-touch gestures, Mac App store, auto install apps, one-click download for apps, auto update, licensed for all personal Macs, app home screen called the Launchpad, full screen apps, auto save, auto resume and Mission Control which provides a dashboard of all spaces, apps and widgets running.

Check out the iLife 11 updates below.

Apple outgrows PC industry 4.5 years straight

At the Apple Special Media Event this past week, the Apple slogan was “Back to the Mac”.

We found out that the Mac makes up 33% of Apple’s revenue stream which is equal to $22B. If Apple spun the Mac division off, the Mac division would instantly rank as a Fortune 110 company. Last year, Apple sold 13.7M units which is three times as many as in FY 2005 with an install base now just shy of 50M users.

Additionally, year over year growth has standard PC growth around 11% while Apple is growing at 2.5x the market rate at 27% growth and the Mac has outperformed the PC for the past 18 quarters straight (4.5 years). Apple is on a roll as their stock price demonstrates.

Finally, developers have are coming to Apple as there are 600k registered developers releasing titles including Afterlife, AutoCad and Office 11 with Outlook. Game developers have finally started to come back to the Mac platform after nearly disappearing in the 90s.

There are 318 Apple stores in 11 countries (and the Beijing and other China stores are the busiest) with 75M visitors. 2.8M Macs are sold in the stores and about 50% of the Macs sold are to consumers NEW to the Mac.

Thinnest MacBook Air hits market

New MacBook Air At Apple’s Special Media Event on 10/20/2010, Jobs announced the newest version of the MacBook Air in his typical “one more thing…” fashion during the keynote. While referring to the theme “Back to the Mac”, he showed how features Apple learned and used in iPods and iPads will now be used in Macs… or as Jobs put it: “What if the MacBook and iPad hooked up?”

The features Jobs specifically talked about included instant on, great battery life, amazing standby time, solid state storage (no optical or hard drives), and more mobile (thinner and lighter).

Web Browsers Benchmarked

October 2010 Browser Benchmark

Ars Technica performed a battery of tests with modern browsers. All tests were run on the latest stable and the recent nightly build of each browser.

The tests included SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark to measure JavaScript performance, V8 Benchmark Suite which is developed by Google, Nontroppo General Browser Load-Time Test and the Peacekeeper: The Browser Benchmark.

What’s the verdict? Chrome one again performs best with Opera in second. Safari barely beat Firefox for the number three spot and Internet Explorer continues to bring up the rear. In Ars Technica conclusion:

Chrome: it’s fast!

Chrome is the obvious winner in these tests. It has a such a significant lead that we doubt it’s going to be bumped out of the top spot anytime soon, especially if we take into consideration that the team wants to release a major version every six weeks. Still, competition in the browser market is only getting fiercer, so Chrome’s king-of-the-hill status may not last forever.

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