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Following the premiere of Ashton Kutcher's new film Jobs at the Sundance Film Festival, a number of publications have posted reviews of the flick which is scheduled to arrive in theaters nationwide on April 19. The first video clip of the movie was released earlier this week.


Cinema Blend:

A biopic about a great man that's way too aware of his greatness, jOBS tells us a lot about the genius of Steve Jobs, but doesn't show us much of anything that actually reveals it.

The Next Web

But, overall, jOBS works. The lead actors are likable and appear to have put serious effort into getting the spirit of the characters right. The film looks (mostly) good aside from some of what could likely be ascribed to budgetary constraints. And though the director is a tad indulgent here and there, it doesn’t take away from the overall feeling of ‘decent’ that I came away with.

The Verge

As expected, there are some liberties taken with Apple’s story and even / especially the representation of some characters — but the emotional resonance of Steve Jobs himself is convincing. It’s not revisionist history, and it’s not some greater parable about the human spirit. Jobs is a point-A-to-point-B story about a uniquely innovative thinker and ruthless businessman — one that had a notable and meaningful impact on the world. It’s a good film, but it’s also very “safe” — a familiar story that doesn’t try for a bigger picture.

CNET

Others will write of the things "jOBS" omits, gets wrong, or simply avoids. My primary disappointment was in how shallow the film felt, given the extensive historical record. In the early days Jobs' co-workers had to wrestle with a man who smelled bad, who cried often, who yelled constantly, who missed deadlines, who overspent his budget by millions. He did it in service of products we love and use daily, and yet his obsessions took a toll on those around him. He also inspired others to do the best work of their lives, pushing themselves further than they ever imagined they could go. There is great drama to be found in all that, but it is not to be found in the saccharine "jOBS."

Other reviews are available from The Hollywood Reporter, Slashfilm, Indiewire, and the Salt Lake Tribune.

TouchArcade notes the appearance of an arcade game called Gridlee in the App Store.

Gridlee is a 1983 arcade game that was never officially released, but the code was later released for free for non-commercial usage in 2001. The App Store app uses MAME 0.139u1 (MAME4iOS) to provide the emulation engine for the game. MAME is a popular arcade machine emulator that will run thousands of arcade games if you have the original ROMs.

When launching the free app, users are greeted with the Gridlee game. TouchArcade readers, however, quickly noticed that additional ROMs could be copied into the App's ROM directory (without jailbreaking), revealing the fully functional MAME emulator.

When word of this hit our forums, readers were quick to pull out iExplore and begin digging about the app's directory structure looking for a ROM folder. Well, it's in there, and sure enough, if one copies other MAME ROMs into that folder, the Gridlee app starts up with the standard MAME4iOS ROM listing, allowing for a great many games beyond just Gridlee to be played on the iPhone or iPad in this Universal app.

The story is similar to the iMAME Emulator that was released into the App Store in December, 2011. Apple quickly pulled that app a few days after its release. While a number of individual emulators do exist on the App Store, Apple has been more restrictive about these open emulators, presumably due to potential legal issues.

Gridlee is a free download on the App Store. [Direct Link]

iPad Mini ship times have dropped to 3-5 days at a number of Apple Online Stores around the world, including the U.S., Canadian, Australia, New Zealand, Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Japanese outlets. This was first noticed by iPhoneinCanada.ca.

The most notable exception to the shipping time improvement is the European stores, which have a 2 week lead time.


During its first quarter conference call, Apple executives noted that the iPad mini was constrained for the entire holiday quarter. The company believes it can achieve supply/demand balance on the mini by the end of the March quarter.

Apple has quietly added a new notes feature to its curated apps in the iOS App Store. Apps chosen for Editor's Choice and App of the Week now come with App Store Notes, which offer a quick description of the app. For example, here’s the new note feature for Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes:

Clash of Heroes has it all: epic storytelling, a wonderful blend of style and substance, and a spectacular battle system. This strategy-puzzler is genre-defining and an absolute must-play effort from the creators of Sword & Sworcery EP.

The App of the Week, Gesundheit, which is currently offered for free in the iPhone App Store, features a similar description. Some other apps, such as those found in the "New and Noteworthy" and "What's Hot" sections of the App Store also have App Store Notes, though not all of the apps in those sections have the new notes.


Six of 24 New and Noteworthy apps on the iPhone have notes, while the rest do not. Only two apps, Temple Run 2 and Momonga Pinball, on the What's Hot have notes included.

App Store Notes might be trickling out to all of Apple's selected apps, or may be reserved for those that are the most popular. At this point in time, it is unclear what criteria Apple is using to determine which apps are furnished with notes, or if it is a feature that will roll out to all curated apps. The new app notes are only visible in the iOS App Store, and do not show up in the desktop version of iTunes.

Best Buy is having a Winter Doorbuster Days sale on Friday, January 25 and Saturday, January 26, providing discounts on several products. Most notably, the retailer is offering $200 off on select MacBook Airs.

Both the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models are discounted, giving the entry level 11-inch Air with 4GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD a price tag of $799.99. The base model 13-inch MacBook Air, sporting 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD is $999.99.

Additional configurations with more storage space are also available, and the 13-inch MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD is $1299.99, while the 11-inch 128GB model is $899.99.

The sale is available both online and in stores, and while the 11-inch $799.99 variant is sold out online, it is possible that it is still available at retail locations.

Best Buy is also offering 30% off of all OtterBox cases and a free $20 gift card with the purchase of a 16GB iPod nano.

Following up on his report from earlier today about Apple's plans for the full-size iPad and iPhone, iLounge's Jeremy Horwitz has a new article sharing additional information on Apple's mobile device plans. The information comes from a "trusted source" and discloses product code names for the various devices as well as plans for an upgrade to the rear camera system for the iPhone 5S.

The iPhone 5S is still months away from mass production, but our source suspects that the star feature will be an upgraded rear camera—perhaps featuring Sony’s 13-Megapixel sensor, plus the aforementioned flash upgrade—along with a processor bump. Current prototypes are codenamed N51 and N53, with July mentioned as the target date.

The source indicates that the code name for the fifth-generation iPad is J72, while the second-generation iPad mini has a code name of J85.


The report indicates that the second-generation iPad mini is unlikely to appear until October of this year, roughly the same timeframe as for the next full-size iPad. Sources have scant information on the actual device, but suggest that it is likely to retain essentially the same form factor as the current model and add a Retina display. A move to a Retina display without increasing the physical size of the device would almost certainly necessitate a change in the display technology such as the adoption of new IGZO panels.

Some previous reports had indicated that the iPad and iPad mini could see updates as soon as March as part of an effort to accelerate the product development cycle, but iLounge's claims of an October launch are more in line with a recent report from frequently accurate KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Half-Life, the first person shooter originally released in 1998, skyrocketed developer Valve to fame and influenced an entire generation of first person shooters. Despite its popularity, the game has never been available through Steam for Mac, until today.


As discovered by Cult of Mac, Valve released Half-Life for Mac on Steam this morning, though the company has yet to make an official announcement about the product.

Other Valve games like Half-Life 2 and its episodes have been previously available on the Mac version of Steam, but users can now add the original Half-Life to their collections for $9.99. It has also been bundled into several different value packs.

Half-Life was originally developed for the Mac back when the Windows version was released, but due to disagreements with Apple, the Mac version was scrapped at the time.

The Half-Life page in Steam still indicates that the game is Windows only, but Cult of Mac bought and installed the game on a Mac to confirm that it functions. The game can be purchased via Steam for Mac for $9.99.

Back in August 2011, Apple first passed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. Both companies have risen in value since, but Apple's recent slide has allowed Exxon Mobil to again regain its position at the top of the corporate world.


In the 17 months since Apple passed Exxon Mobil, XOM's stock is up some 27%, while AAPL has risen roughly 18%. Today, however, Apple has set a new 52-week low, while Exxon is matching its 52-week high set last September.

Currently, Apple's stock price is at $441.11 with a market capitalization of $414.28 billion. Exxon Mobil is at $91.43 with a market cap of $416.86 billion.

In Apple's most recent quarter, the company generated $13.08 billion in profit on $54.51 billion in sales, with 72,800 employees. Exxon Mobil generated $9.93 billion in profit on $115.71 billion in revenue with 82,100 employees.

iLounge's Jeremy Horwitz has filed a new report offering a few new details on the fifth-generation iPad, as well as on Apple's work toward future iPhone models.

Most notably, Horwitz says that he has inspected what is said to be a shell designed for the fifth-generation iPad, and that the device will adopt many of the features seen in the iPad mini's design.

What does it look like? Well, it’s a lot smaller than one would guess was possible: in portrait orientation, picture a 9.7” screen with virtually no left or right bezels, and only enough space above and below the screen to accommodate the mandatory camera and Home Button elements. Beyond that, it’s noticeably thinner, as well, which is to say the the fifth-generation iPad will be smaller in every dimension than its predecessors. As it will have the same chamfered edges and curves, calling it a “stretched iPad mini” is very close to entirely accurate.

The report notes that the upcoming iPad is so much smaller and thinner than the current design that it seems to require a complete redesign of the interior, likely including a shift in display technology to IGZO panels and smaller chip components.

Horwitz says that while Apple had originally hoped to push the fifth-generation iPad out in March, it now appears that an October launch is more likely, perhaps due to issues with component yields.


On the topic of the iPhone, Horwitz says that the iPhone 5S will unsurprisingly appear nearly identical to the iPhone 5, although it will have a slightly larger rear flash. The rumored lower-cost iPhone with a plastic shell is indeed said to be in Apple's plans for 2013, with a focus on China Mobile as Apple seeks to lower the cost of entry for the world's largest carrier.

Finally, Horwitz says that the rumored "iPhone Math" is indeed in development, but that it will not be appearing this year, if ever.

Addressing the so-called “iPhone Math”—hinted by one source as a mistranslation of “iPhone +”—we’ve been told that this is another new model and in early prototyping stages, certainly not expected in 2013. It supposedly has a 4.7” screen, at least for the time being. It might never make it to market, and plenty could change before it does. Consider it Apple’s “just in case / Plan B” hedge against ever-growing Android phone screen sizes.

Horwitz has shared fairly accurate information on Apple's product plans several times in the past, suggesting that he does indeed have reliable sources with access to Apple's supply chain.

Apple is to move its Tokyo HQ from the Shinjuku district to a $2.2 billion development in the more central area of Roppongi Hills, reports Bloomberg.


Apple is said to be planning to take one or two floors of the 54-story building, which is home to Goldman Sachs and Barclays. Roppongi Hills is one of Japan's largest integrated property developments, the complex including a Grand Hyatt hotel, art museum, movie theatre, private club and apartments.

“Rents of large office buildings in central Tokyo peaked in the second quarter of 2008 and have fallen 40 percent from the peak,” Kayoko Hirao, the head of Japan research at DTZ Research in Tokyo, said in a phone interview today. “It is a good time to consider an office relocation to the central business area and it should be a good chance for Apple. The office rental market will recover this year.”

Apple is terminating the lease of its current Tokyo Opera City Tower offices as of June, and is said to be moving into its new HQ as early as April.