Features:

• Ships with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
• 2560 x 1600 13.3-inch at 227 PPI
• 128GB SSD
• 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 Processor
• MSRP: $1,499

Pros:

• Portability combined with high-quality display
• Super speedy sleep and resume
• Good battery life

Cons:

• Just two USB ports
• Non-upgradeable RAM

If I could only have one MacBook (which is usually the case for your average laptop-buyer), this is the one I’d pick without hesitation. Fewer issues than its 15-inch cousin, which pioneered the Retina line, combined with a much lighter design with a smaller desktop footprint for a display that can still give you crazy amounts of screen real estate all add up to a sure-fire winner.

The Most Flexible Mac

I’ve owned a lot of Macs. To find myself so ready to claim any single one a clear “winner” seems crazy, but the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is it. The smaller Retina notebook has proven itself through trial by fire and continues to be the Mac I pick for nearly every situation.

For example it’s my constant companion at every travel event I ever go to. The 15-inch is just a hair too heavy and unwieldy, but the 13-inch Retina hits the sweet spot. It slides easily into any bag, takes up an amount of desk space that’s better for your peripherals and for those seated around you, and yet can stil provide you with one of the best screens in the business.

True Retina-quality graphics isn’t the reason to own this notebook. Apple’s “Best for Retina display” radial button in the Displays settings menu is something you can go ahead and forget about right now; instead, select “scaled” and crank that sucker up to the “More Space” maximum. But if that’s not enough, go grab DisplayMode from the Mac App Store and enjoy up to 2560 x 1280 resolution, which is beyond that supported by Apple’s official settings. My eyes suffer after 2048 x 1280, so that’s where I keep it, but even there you get so much screen real estate it feels positively sinful. If you’re used to a Cinema display or two at home, there’s nothing else that compares.

The hardware is up to Apple expectations, and while I’ve experienced case creak on the 15-inch version (a widely reported issue), I’ve never had a problem with the 13 inch’s fit and finish. It feels as sturdy as a laptop can (with the possible exception of Google’s leaden Chromebook Pixel) and it withstands rough treatment with gusto, as a busy blogger can attest.

In terms of Geekbench, the base Core i5 13-inch, which is the version I’m reviewing here, consistently scores between 6,000 and 7,000. That’s not a chart-topping number, but the machine hardly stutters, even under fairly demanding conditions. I thought I’d miss the dedicated graphics card or upgraded RAM from my 15-inch model, but I don’t, at least not for anything short of using Final Cut Pro X.

Another nice win for the 13-inch is battery life. The Pro can stretch itself to around seven and a half hours if I need it to, but even with my incredibly sloppy, multi-app setup with tons of things going on in the background and about a thousand Chrome tabs open, it seems to average around five.

Who is it for?

Designers

Yes. The one complaint that designers might have with the Retina MacBook Pro is that its screen is still glossy and that the color rendering and contrast are a little exaggerated to make photos pop. But if you need a device for running Photoshop or Illustrator, the Retina scratches that itch, even with the minimum specs at the $1,499 level.

Plus, you can always power up to three external displays via Thunderbolt and HDMI out, but I’d only recommend doing this if you’re very cold and also enjoy the sound of a fan operating at maximum power. Still, in a pinch the Retina Pro becomes a solid companion for a 27-inch Cinema Display, giving designers even more flexibility.

Founders

Yes. John pointed out that entrepreneurs love MacBook Airs in his review of the Dell XPS Developer’s Edition, but that’s actually outmoded. If you’re a modern entrepreneur, and keeping a close watch on your company’s design and suitability for the future of HiDPI devices and displays, you’ll want the 13-inch Retina. It’s still light enough to carry with you everywhere, plus you can pile on the open applications thanks to the screen real estate benefits I mentioned above.

The 13-inch Retina is pretty much exactly like the successful entrepreneur: flexible where it needs to be, rigid when it doesn’t; equally comfortable doing their thing in the boardroom or working out of the small local coffee shop; equipped with enough endurance to keep producing through the day.

Programmers

Yes. Programmers love Macs, and this is a Mac that’s easy to fall in love with. You want to run Xcode next to the iOS Simulator and still have room to keep a team chat window open? You can do that with the 13-inch Retina Pro, so long as you’re okay with squinting. You can build websites and watch them output and tweak on the fly without squishing anything inordinately. If there’s a development flaw on the Pro, it’s not an apparent one.

Bottom Line

MG said this laptop was near perfect back when he reviewed it at launch, and it’s pretty hard to disagree. There are support threads filled with growing pains and other issues experienced by the inaugural 15-inch Retina Pro, but Apple seems to have worked out any kinks with this one, and the added portability is a big benefit besides. It’s still a pricey beast, but the use value to cost ratio is through the roof regardless.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Nook HD and HD+ got a great update late last night (via Engadget), as Barnes & Noble finally moved away from its closed and system-specific app and media ecosystem. The two Android tablets now offer Google Play, and new devices will ship with the app pre-loaded, while existing owners can get it via a software update over-the-air or via direct download.

Other changes with this update include the introduction of some stock Android apps, including Gmail, Maps and Chrome (which replaces the Nook’s existing web browser as the default option). Essentially, Barnes & Noble is turning the Nook HD line into a very cheap Android tablet play, and not in the limited way it was doing so before.

Where once the Nook brand was a reader first, with Android-powered full-color readers with some tablet functionality, now it looks like we’ll see Barnes & Noble embrace the tablet identity much more fully. Another sign that the book seller is banking on tablets as a much broader attempt at reaching customers is the fact that the Nook Tablet and Color don’t get the Play update, meaning we could see those left behind in terms of future hardware updates.

John took a look at the updated Nook HD+, and found it impressive, especially at $269, or a full $60 cheaper than the cheapest iPad (16GB Wi-Fi iPad mini). The problem, though, was summed up in John’s conclusion: the Nook HD+ is a great upgrade as a reader, but not necessarily a real tablet competitor. Opening up the broader Android software market place and its selection of tablet apps definitely helps to change that.

The Nook line could be the key to Barnes & Noble’s future, but right now it’s also a weight hanging around its neck, as slow sales of the Simple Touch e-reader prompted a fire sale to help move more HD+ inventory, and the Nook division lost cash in the most recent fiscal quarter. There’s still an opportunity for a cheap Android tablet to capture the hearts and minds of consumers, however, and Nook is now in a better position to capitalize on that now that its ecosystem wall has come down.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Xamarin, the company behind the cross-platform mobile development platform with the same name, today announced that it has recently acquired the Danish mobile testing startup LessPainful. LessPainful is the company behind the popular open source cross-platform functional test platform for Android and iOS, and Xamarin has already put this acquisition to use. The Xamarin Test Cloud, the automated user interface testing platform the company launched at its Evolve 2013 developer conference in Austin today, is based on Calabash.

Test Cloud is a pretty ingenious product that solves a real problem for mobile developers. It allows users to easily write user interface tests and then see how their apps perform on real-world devices. Indeed, LessPainful – and now Xamarin – operate a lab with hundreds of devices, and the service runs these tests directly on the device and provides users with detailed logs and screenshots about how the app performed.

As Xamarin co-founder and CEO Nat Friedman told me last week, fewer than 10 percent of developers currently use automated user interface testing for their apps. The tools that are currently on the market, he noted, tend to be hard to set up and use – and once they run, the tests are often very fragile because they rely on image recognition, so even the slightest change to the wording on a button can throw them off. Developers, however, should really run these tests, given the huge fragmentation in the mobile space (and especially on Android). They only get a short amount of time to convince users that their apps are worth using, and the smoother the experience, the more time the user will spend with the app.

Test Cloud – and Calabash – takes a different approach. It provides users with a very basic language to write tests and a great user interface for running the tests and seeing the logs. Developers can choose which phones to test their apps on or just choose to run their apps on the top 10, 20 or 30 phones on the market.

As Friedman noted, one of the nifty features of Test Cloud is that users don’t even have to write a test to get some early results (he called it a “gateway drug” in our interview). The Xamarin App Explorer will automatically navigate through your app and visit every screen, press every button and try every UI element. All of the user interface elements are identified by object IDs and not image recognition or gesture recording, so as long as the ID remains the same, developers and designers can change the color of the layout of their apps at will and the tests will still work.

Because it can be integrated into popular continuous integration systems like Team Foundation Server, Jenkins and TeamCity (Xamarin offers plugins for those), as well as an API and command-line interface, it’s easy for developers to regularly test their apps.

Xamarin, Friedman told me, is growing rapidly. The company has over 15,000 paying customers and in total, over 300,000 developers are now using the service. Some of the company’s most well-known customers include Rdio, Clear Channel, the Portland Trailblazers and National Instruments. The launch of Xamarin 2.0, which allows developers to use Visual Studio to write iOS apps, has been a major factor in the recent interest in the company’s tools.

Access to the Test Cloud is currently only available by invite. During the beta phase, the service will be available for free to Xamarin users. After the beta ends later this year, the pricing will be based on device hours, but the company is still working out the details.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Pittsburgh-based startup AutoRef.com, which is something like a CarWoo for used vehicles, has raised $850,000 in seed funding. The round was led by an interesting, strategic investor: the large European online car marketplace, AutoScout24, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom.

T-Venture, the venture arm of Deutsche Telekom, also participated in the round alongside Innovation Works, plus local angels and other investors.

AutoRef.com was founded in December 2010, but didn’t really have a product until its participation in Pittsburgh’s AlphaLab accelerator, home to companies like Mark Cuban and Floodgate-backed Insurance Zebra, college search startup CollegeZen, hiring platform The Resumator, and many others.

Launched in July 2012, AutoRef has now expanded to 5,200 dealerships across the U.S., largely in the northeast, and in New Jersey in particular.

CEO Michael Pena, whose background is in equity trading, says he came up with the idea while working at the trading desk. “I always thought that an option platform – similar to trading or bond trading – would make a lot of sense in the car space,” he explains. Pena also grew up in the car industry, as his family owns a dealership Vegas where he had spent summers working when younger.

Pena thought it would be great to use the “reverse auction” format with cars – meaning, putting customers at the center, then allowing dealerships to bid for them. That’s the same idea that the car-buying service CarWoo uses today, but Pena was especially interested in employing the model for used vehicles.

“New cars are easy. You get three new cars, zero mileage, and you control all the variables – color, mileage, and year. It’s really easy to just get the lowest price,” Pena explains. “With used cars it’s difficult there are so many variables – maybe the mileage is off, the color is off, or it’s even a different model…how do you commoditize that? How do you equalize that so the consumer gets the best deal?”

AutoRef came up with a model where the consumer chooses a car they’re interested in, and the site then provides them with similar vehicles based on their research history. The customer then picks three cars from that list, and that information is sent off to dealers who compete for that customer.

Despite how it sounds, the service is not just a lead gen operation. Traditional sites bombard consumers with phone calls or emails after they provide their contact information. “It annoys the heck out of customers and it makes it so that most customers don’t even want to go through the process,” Pena says.

AutoRef works differently. It uses technology to provide customers with a “proxy” email and phone number, so dealers don’t have access to this personal information. And the buyer gets to say when the dealer is allowed to call or email. These virtual means of contact only work for up to 72 hours, and the customer can shut off access at any time.

For those unfamiliar with what a proxy number is, you can think of it as something like Google Voice, for example – a virtual line that can be configured to ring your phone. And a proxy email is essentially a temporary, disposable email address which forwards to your inbox. Again, both of these work only for 72 hours, providing the customer with a bit of protection.

An interesting data point about AutoRef.com, is that while the idea is to negotiate the car buying online, when customers actually show up for their test drive, over half of them end up buying a different vehicle than the one they were researching. Pena is careful to explain that it’s not a bait-and-switch situation – that is, it’s not that the dealer is saying their car is unavailable – it’s the customer who’s looking around and sees something else they like better once they’re on site. But what got the customer in the door was the relationship and rapport they developed initially, having used the service to make that initial contact with the salesperson.

It’s still early days for AutoRef, which claims to see around 20,000 uniques per month, 2 percent of which convert. Of those conversions, around 38 percent end up buying a car, which averages the startup around $250 per car sold. Revenue-wise, AutoRef is making around $19,000-$20,000 per month – but revenue isn’t why AutoScout24 made this deal.

The European company has been looking for a entry point in the U.S. market, Pena says. “They loved the business model, and how we’re doing things differently – how we’re charging for things on a transactional basis, how we’re scaling, and how we’re growing,” he explains. (AutoRef is growing uniques at 20 percent per week). “You don’t see these large convertible debt rounds happen quite often…and we’re actually already in talks about putting an A round together,” he says.

There’s also the potential for a revenue model based on the analytics AutoRef is now collecting, though it will need to grow larger for those figures to be reliable.

In the meantime, AutoRef is focusing on growing its U.S. footprint, and scaling the business. With the funding, it will hire a few more sales people and engineers. However, because of AutoScout24′s involvement, the startup now has access to AutoScout’s developers in Germany for assistance on projects going forward.

Interested used car buyers can try out the site here for free.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

HTC today revealed the HTC First, the first Android smartphone that comes with Facebook Home pre-installed on the device.

With Facebook Home pre-installed on the HTC First, users can get all the experiences from the new Facebook Home app, such as cover feed and chat heads. But the HTC First packs some exclusive Facebook Home functionality that the app won’t have like the ability to feed in email and calendar notifications to the home screen.

“It’s a great opportunity to bring mobile and social together,” said HTC CEO Peter Chou at the event today held at Facebook’s headquarters.

Instead of building the mythical Facebook phone or its own mobile operating system, Facebook decided to partner with mobile device manufacturer HTC, and build an Android app that functions as a home screen replacement, without the need to fork or modify the Android OS.

“Android was designed from the ground up to support these deep integrations,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg also revealed the Facebook Home Program for all original equipment manufacturers of Android devices, so in the future, more and more Android manufacturers could potentially design devices like the HTC First, with Facebook Home pre-loaded as the default home screen.

The HTC First will be available exclusively from AT&T on April 12 for $99.99, with four color choices including red, light blue, white and black. Pre-ordering for the HTC First begins today.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

The Google April Fool’s train continues with the announcement of “Gmail Blue.” Yes, it’s a version of Google’s email service where everything is the color blue. The YouTube one from earlier was OK, and the Nose one was just so-so, but I’d actually use this product if it existed, especially since it took six years to “develop the technology.”

Can you imagine something like this actually happening? Some people flipped out about the new compose screen becoming the default, so they’d lose their mind if Google changed all of the colors in the email service.

The real bit of news here? Gmail turns nine tomorrow. Yes, we’re all old.

The video for Gmail Blue is pretty damn hilarious and worth checking out. Be sure to count the number of buzzwords used:

I can’t help but wonder if this is a not-so-subtle poke at Facebook, which of course is well-known for having the color blue all over the place within its apps and site. One of our readers, Edd Friedman, smartly suggested in the comments that this could be Google making fun of Microsoft Windows Blue. Makes sense. The line about brown being a disaster? Commenter syntaxsyntax999 thinks it’s a riff on the Zune.

Regardless, hearing Googlers have a sense of humor about themselves and their “moonshot thinking” was enjoyable.

Get ready for more April 1st funnery from Google, and the rest of the Internet, tomorrow.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I want a black and white computer, and I don’t want it out of sheer, wanton weirdness. I actually think it’s a good idea. Here’s why.

A huge, huge proportion of the content we consume every day is text. And, for many, an equal proportion of what they work with is text — be it code, email, or published content like this. For the consumption and creation of text, a monochrome display is all that is necessary, and in some ways even superior to a color one.

Pixels on an LCD like the one on which you’re probably reading this are made up of dots or sub-pixels — usually one red, one green, and one blue. The transistor matrix changes the opacity of a sub-pixel of a given color, and by working together they can create millions of hues and shades. But they work (with a few exceptions such as sub-pixel font smoothing and pentile layouts) only as triads, meaning a display with a resolution of 5760 by 3240 addressable dots has just 1920

The Portland-based Vizify came out of TechStars’ accelerator in 2011 with the goal of helping everyday people turn their personal data — the stuff that’s fragmented across scores of profiles, networks and websites — into one, unified visual profile. Essentially, piggybacking on the rise of digital portfolio platforms that aim to recast how we use the resume, Vizify wants to help change how we build our identities online.

Shortly thereafter, Vizify won support from Tim Draper, Feedburner co-founder Matt Shobe and others to do that. Now, eight months from launch, with 250K users, a partnership with Twitter and a redesigned mobile experience under its belt, the startup is finally emerging from beta today with a new update up its sleeve. (This means no more “invite” code required.)

Previously, Vizify has tried to be About.me on steroids, offering users their own personal websites populated by their social data. The sites essentially Hoover data from your Foursquare, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts to create a simple profile and a “unified dossier,” if you will.

Coming out of beta today, Vizify is expanding on that experience with “Vizcards,” which are essentially bite-sized infographics about you, designed to be easy to customize and publish on your Vizify profile or social network of choice. Users can showcase their achievements, interests and quirks and help you present yourself personally or professionally online.

Again, Vizcards can be added to your bio or published on social media channels as a single graphic. CEO Todd Silverstein says that it’s an easy way for social media uber users down to the experimental novice to show what makes them tick and what matters. The team explains in detail how Vizcards work in this blog post, but, essentially, users start by choosing a topic that matters to them from Vizify’s library of subjects.

For example, take “cups of coffee” (in my case Red Bull), which allows you to share how many cups you’ve had, while enabling you to customize the mood these cups of coffee have inspired, the color and so on. You can then display these cards in a collection on your bio in a cascading, Pinterest-style layout, or on social media. In a way that’s mobile and tablet friendly.

“We think the lines between your professional and personal identity online are blurring,” Silverstein tells us. “For instance, our research with hiring managers told us that their biggest pain point was finding a cultural fit. Our vizcard prompts are designed to address that; they showcase your achievements, but also your interests, and quirks.”

More on Vizcards here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Barnes & Noble Nook isn’t doing amazingly well by most accounts, including a recently introduced giveaway program from the company itself that isn’t quite (but sure resembles) a fire sale. Now, B&N has made an announcement that is clearly designed to prop up developer interest in the platform, with the introduction of a feature that brings it up-to-speed with others: in-app purchases.

In-app purchases aren’t coming to Nook right away; they’ll be rolling out gradually over the next few weeks and months, with availability beginning in April, thanks to a new partnership with mobile payments company Fortumo. Fortumo will be providing the software tools and resources needed to build in the in-app purchases, as well as a dashboard where developers can track their progress.

It’s about time, too. In-app purchases have been available on iOS and Android for years now, and in fact have risen to become one of the most important revenue sources for developers on those platforms. Amazon, the Nook’s chief direct rival, took the beta label off of its own in-app purchase system back in April 2012. That brought Kindle Fire and Fire HD developers the chance to implement the popular revenue generating option, so the Nook HD, HD+, Nook Color and Nook Tablet are now a year behind their biggest competition.

Nook’s implementation through Fortumo will be one-click, the company says in its official release. ”In-app purchasing makes it possible for developers to ensure the customer only pays when they absolutely love the app,” said Rain Rannu, Co-Founder and CEO of Fortumo in the announcement. “This has proven to be a compelling value proposition for customers and a very successful strategy for developers.”

Nook needs this to be a draw for both developers and consumers, which is why it’s promoting the feature now before it’s fully baked. Nook sales dropped significantly last quarter, contributing to a $6.1 million quarterly loss. Digital content sales were up, however, and Barnes & Noble said that it remained fully committed to Nook hardware. In-app purchases are a good way to both capitalize on and hopefully increase digital goods sales, while making Nook hardware more attractive to consumers who are now used to the freemium model of content delivery. But it’s a late move, and one that brings the Nook only to parity with other, more popular platforms.

A key ingredient will be the revenue agreement B&N works out with developers for in-app purchases. It hasn’t shared that info on its site or in the announcement, but we’ve reached out directly to learn more, and will update if they provide additional information.

Update: Nook developers will get 70 percent, pretty much par for the course:

Developers will receive  70% revenue share from IAP transactions within their apps.  This is standard across all platforms.

- Claudia Romanini, Vice President, NOOK Apps

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In a land where entrepreneurs are struggling desperately to integrate location into the worldwide photo-sharing phenomenon, Albumatic may have swooped in just in time.

Ventures like Color and others have tried and failed, and not for lack of funding, to let users enjoy location-based events by sharing photos with each other around that specific event. However, it turns out that sharing photos with strangers, whether you find yourself in the same location or not, doesn’t attract users as much as you’d think.

It’s not the photo-sharing that stops people, but more the “location” bit. Even Highlight, which has nothing to do with photos per se, hasn’t taken off as expected due to the fact that location has very little to do with relevance when it comes to social.

Albumatic takes a new approach, by letting users close-by join Albums and add to them, while users far away can join to watch, but not add. This gives a little more control to the user, and also allows people who aren’t right there next to you still enjoy the photo-sharing process.

Albumatic is in the process of raising $4.5 million in funding, according to a recent SEC filing.

All in all, it’s unclear if people really want or need a service like that, especially alongside our many media-sharing apps like Instagram, Vine, etc. However, if there is a demand for location-based photo-sharing, Albumatic seems to have it figured out.

Two flies.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch