Electronics accessory maker Moshi has unveiled at IFA 2012 a set of high-end ceramic earphones targeted at audiophiles and an upgraded card reader that supports UBS 3.0 and matches the color and style of Apple’s MacBook portables.
The earphones, named Keramo, contain a ceramic housing that is said to deliver a sound that’s both unique – because of its rigidity – and accurate. Despite the fact that the material is popular among audiophiles, there are just a handful of earbuds that use it.
They also feature an asymmetrical design and a braided cord, and you’ll get a custom carrying case and six pairs of ear tips with it. Moshi plans to begin selling the $120 earbuds in October.
Back in May, TNW reviewed Moshi’s Vortex Pro earbuds and found lots to like, though we also bumped up against a foamy fatal flaw .
The new $49 Cardette 3 reader brings the company’s popular line of card readers up to date with USB 3.0.
The reader also now supports Ultra-High Speed (UHS-I) memory cards and Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) Compact Flash cards. Other compatible formats include Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, SecureDigital (SD), microSD, SDHC and SDXC.
One of the biggest draws for the Cardette series has been its visual similarity to Apple’s iMac and MacBook laptops. It’s always a nice bonus to have accessories match and this is no exception.
Cardette, which also doubles as a dual-port USB 3.0 hub and is backward compatible with USB 2.0 equipped computers, is coming in the fourth quarter of this year.
Image via Flickr / Caffeinehit
We’re only 11 days into ‘The year of Smart TV’, and I’m already sick of it
Yes, yes, yes – this is the year of Smart TV – it’s all potentially very interesting, and our viewing experiences could be transformed forever, but it’s going to get very tedious before it becomes truly exciting.
Looking at some of the news we’ve seen this week so far: Samsung is opening an API for its TVs ; Myspace is reinventing itself as a social TV service; Google TV is getting new hardware and a revamp; Ubuntu is entering the TV space ; Opera is launching a TV app store ; UK broadcaster BSkyB has invested in innovative social TV app Zeebox and aims to integrate its features into its own apps…
Expect the Smart TV buzz to build further as talk of an Apple TV set mounts throughout the year.
This is the latest frontier in the world of technology – TVs that allow us to be more interactive, to watch what we want, when we want. The problem is that this is just like the Wild West: while many settlements were successfully built, there were plenty of casualties along the way. We’re going to see a lot of failures in the Smart TV arena – many of services we’ll see this year will go nowhere.
This is unavoidable, of course – every technology has its period of trial and error where manufacturers and consumers work out together what is the best mutual approach. Sometimes superior technology loses out to better marketing, but in the end we tend to reach a consensus over which technologies are the ones consumers should invest their hard-earned money in.
The problem is that right now ‘Smart TV’ is such a buzz phrase that a lot of consumers are going to get burned by buying set-top boxes or TVs with ‘smart’ technology that could be dead in the water in a year’s time. There’s no way of knowing which technology will be successful and which will fail – it’s like Blu-ray versus HD DVD all over again but with many more contenders. We won’t have an overall winner this time, but there will be many casualties. Prepare for at least a year of confusing and noisy marketing, inflated claims and hype in the meantime.
I’m highly excited about the potential of Smart TV, but for now I feel like putting my fingers in my ears and ignoring it for a year until it shakes itself out.
Developers finally bring iOS apps to Apple TV, but it’s a work in progress
Whilst Apple TV owners have their own frustrations with the lack of certain features on their Apple TV set-top boxes, perhaps the biggest frustration was that Apple hadn’t upgraded its latest release to run a number of iOS applications.
Showing the true spirit of the iOS development community, this particular feature has been delivered, in part, after developers Steven Troughton-Smith and another developer going by the name TheMudkip , rewrote parts of the Apple TV software to enable the installation and execution of certain iOS applications on the platform.
9to5mac posted a video of the proof-of-concept , which has a little while to go until it is ready for public release, demonstrating both the iOS calculator and Safari apps running — in unique side-by-side windows:
According to the developers, the software that is behing the application launcher, the iOS Springboard, had to be completely rewritten. TheMudkip’s MobileX window manager for iOS and Chpwn’s MobileLaunchpad launcher were then loaded, allowing multiple iOS apps to be run natively on the Apple TV, without AirPlay.
As it stands, there will not be a public release of the Apple TV hack, but we imagine it is in development. With specific milestones already achieved, the developers will be working to outfit the Apple TV with more functionality, greater control and support for more iOS applications.