LifeProof announced this past Tuesday that they're offering a Total Water Protection Program for the Apple iPhone and iPad to anyone who purchases a LifeProof case from their website. This optional program takes the protection of these devices to an entirely new level by offering a one-time repair or replacement of the device if it sustains accidental water damage while in one of their cases. LifeProof cases are advertised as being waterproof, submerged down to 6.6 feet deep, as well as being dirt proof, snow proof and shock proof. The Total Water Protection Program will offer consumers even greater peace of mind. Available as of Tuesday,...

When is the best time to purchase a new Apple device? Is there a best time? We’re fully aware of how sporadic and paltry the big Apple can be when it comes to offering customers discounts on their products. Usually feeling like you’ve earned a ‘deal’ from an Apple retail store or from their online store involves taking advantage of a promotion, which can result in spending extra money to receive reduced priced accessories or services (of which you may or may not actually need). But saving any amount on a fresh Macbook Pro or iPad straight from the source? Not likely. So...

Have you ever run across a solution looking for a problem? Unfortunately, that's my reaction to Perdrix TXT, a new e-reading app for iPhone and iPad. The developer contacted me over the weekend and gave me a promo code for a free review copy, and I gave it a look. Here's what they say about the app on their site: Getting closer to the real book experience… Focused on book immersion, this app features innovative design such as book side views, life-like bookmark and a separate Search screen. Read free e-books and plain text files. At a quick glance that sounds good. The app...

If you're like me, you keep a close eye on your app updates on your iDevice. This morning, as I was leaving the house for an early morning meeting, I noticed an app update available. Good thing I always check what's new before updating. This was the first time I've ever seen this message: Note: There is a known issue with this update. If you are an existing Kindle for iOS user, we recommend you do not install this update at this time. Reports around the Web talk about people losing their books on their device, especially samples, because the app forces...

Yesterday, we filled you in on the fact that the Berlin-based digital reading platform known as Readmill was very close to releasing an e-reading app for the iPhone, and as it happens ... the app was officially released today. (Quite a coincidence, no?) According to the company, the newly-released app (appropriately enough, it's called Readmill for iPhone) was designed to create what they're referring to as "a seamless mobile reading experience for users." Readmill, after all, is already available as an app for the iPad. And so Readmill built the new app partially to cater towards the growing number of people wanting to...

We've written a bit about the Berlin-based startup Readmill in the past; here's a Q&A-style interview we ran back in August 2012 with Henrik Berggren, the company's über-ambitious founder. As we wrote in the introduction to that interview: The easiest way to understand exactly what Readmill is and what exactly it can do for you is to watch the simple introductory video on the company’s homepage. To put it simply, though, Readmill is something like a social networking site for the sorts of readers who like to share what they’re reading, and who like to discover what their friends are reading, too. The latest news...

Following up on the recent “blown away” comment from Apple, we finally have have some solid sales numbers. We've also got some potentially bad news: Apple has announced that the iPhone 5 pre-orders have topped two million. And just to clarify that point, that was more than two million in the first 24 hours. Incidentally, this tops what we saw with the launch of every previous iPhone. In fact, it has doubled the previous record, which was held by the iPhone 4S, of one million in 24 hours. All of this sounds really good for Apple, but the recent press release did give us...

By Kirk Hiner | for Apple Tell Almost immediately after Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 at last week’s press event, iPhone case manufacturers were bombarding us with new designs and updates to previous models. Seems they trust the rumor sites more than we do. Since then, even more cases have been announced, and we want to make sure you know about those, too. Ballistic Coming soon Ballistic Case Company just debuted its latest collection of protective cases, all of which are compatible with the iPhone 5. The collection consists of five individual series, two of which (the Ballistic Shell Gel and the Ballistic Smooth Series) are...

By Jonathan Pena  | for Apple Tell Apple has been highlighting features of the forthcoming iOS 6 for many months now, and today, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, many journalists and consumers are waiting to see what Apple will unveil. Tons of leaked pictures of the rumored iPhone 5 cases, 4-inch screen panels, and connector jacks have appeared on the Applet web, and we gathered them in our iPhone 5 rumor roundup. The iPhone 5 will be unveiled at 10:00 am PST (1:00 pm EST) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and Apple Tell (a...

We tend to find reporter John Paczkowski's anonymous source reports to be overwhelmingly reliable, which is why we'd like to bring your attention to a brief article he posted on AllThingsD earlier this morning. Here are the first three paragraphs of the story: "Apple’s next generation iPhone and its so-called “iPad mini” will debut at two separate events this fall, rather than a single one as has been widely speculated, according to several sources. "First comes the latest iteration of the tech giant’s hugely popular smartphone, which will be unveiled at an as-of-yet unannounced event on September 12. "Only after the next generation iPhone is out...

"The smartphone in your hand is a marvel of innovation, packing sophisticated computing and communications technologies into a sleek digital device," writes Steve Lohr, in an article posted on the New York Times' website earlier today. "It is also a litigation magnet." The many specific and detailed aspects of the Apple-Samsung case, in which a decision was reached by a federal jury yesterday in San Jose, Calif., were indeed so complicated and confusing that the jury verdict form required "the jurors to consider 773 individual infringement claims at issue," according to a Cult of Mac post published on August 24. Nevertheless, the...

A few days ago on the Bloomberg Businessweek website,  a fascinating and well-argued Ben Kunz article was published that suggested Apple devices will soon be projecting holograms, and über-realistic ones at that. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well ... maybe not. According to Kunz, who runs a media planning and Internet strategy firm, "In November 2010, Apple patented a three-dimensional display system that would 'mimic a hologram' without requiring special glasses." We'll link to the article below, but first, here are the main takeaways: (1) It's true that 3DTV technology has not been a runaway success for the consumer electronics industry. But as Kunz points out, Apple has a long history of significantly improving...