iPod touch

Avoid carrier SMS and MMS charges and keep all your IMs in one place with iOS iMessage right on your Mac

If you have been waiting for Apple to release a version of iMessage for Mac then that day has just become a lot closer. After the release of the beta of OS X Mountain Lion earlier today, Apple has followed it up with the release of a beta version of its new Mac Messages app. Messages, which will replace the current iChat app, brings all of the great features of iMessage to your Mac while keeping many that made iChat great as well.

Apple has sent out a letter via its iTunes Connect portal to all of its registered iBookstore content publishers advising them of some much needed improvements. The iBookstore will now allow publishers to submit screenshots of their books but even more importantly, they can now generate and issue promotional codes for any content sold in the iBookstore.

Apple has made a couple of adjustments to its iAd mobile advertising platform for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, including significantly lowering the buy-in price to $100,000 -- down from $500,000, which was already down from $1,000,000 -- and to increasing developer revenue sharing to 70 percent -- up from 60 precent.

Apple has voluntarily requested that the Fair Labor Association conduct special audits of its final assembly suppliers. Apple has moved very quickly following the damning report by the New York Times last month where workers’ rights and safety whilst working on the manufacture and assembly of Apple products was in question.

Like with Notification Center, Apple should look to and improve upon what Google's done with Android to better keep our Contacts safe.

Earlier this week the internet got itself into a kerfuffle over Path, a small-circle social networking app for the iPhone, which took Contact information without asking and openly transmitted it to Path's servers. It's an important issue to be sure, one worth getting into a kerfuffle over, and Path eventually apologized and vowed to make changes. But Path was only one of many, many apps to act this way.

iOS 5.1Many folks are awaiting the impending release of iOS 5.1 for their iOS devices but with no solid date to refer to some are now turning to various other resources such as some recently published operator profiles for clues.

Hasbro has announced that its next release of Lazer Tag guns will use your iPhone or iPod touch to provide augmented reality and a heads up display. The Lazer Tag guns can accept an iPhone or iPod touch which is slotted into the gun in a purpose made holder.

The VooMoteZapper is a clip on infrared remote control device that can take the place of your entire collection of home remote controls. The device simply clips into the dock connector of your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5 and transforms it into a universal remote controller

Activator allows you to launch apps or utilities on your jailbroken iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with a quick swipe, tap, or button press. Swipe up from the bottom of your screen to quick compose a text, double tap the status bar to bring up SBSettings, or shake your device to take a screenshot. Setting up an Activator gesture takes just a few seconds and the possibilities are endless.

Following up on the information iMore received yesterday on potential ZFS hooks in iOS 5.1, a reliable source let us know that Apple has been investing heavily in ZFS appliances from Oracle. (Whether or not this will be made public is unknown; it doesn't seem to be right now.)