Apple just pushed out a new update for iBooks 2 today.  This update patches some minor issues with the way iBooks 2 handles the newly available text books.  There were a few issues at the initial get go of iBooks 2, some media rich text books didn’t want to open properly. Those issues have been fixed in this update. Here’s a full summary of what’s been fixed and added on.

iBooks 2.0.1 addresses an issue where iBooks textbooks may not open.

iBooks 2 introduced iBooks textbooks.

• Experience gorgeous Multi-Touch textbooks designed for iPad
• iBooks textbooks are filled with interactive features, diagrams, photos, and videos
• Tap to dive into images with interactive captions, rotate 3D objects, swipe through image galleries,
watch videos in full screen, and more
• Use a finger as a highlighter when swiping over text in a textbook
• Take advantage of Study Cards to help you memorize important highlights, notes, and glossary terms
• Tap glossary terms to see definitions of key topics and concepts without leaving the page

The iBookstore offers textbooks on Algebra, Biology, Chemistry, Geometry, and Physics from McGraw-Hill
and Pearson.
These textbooks are currently available to customers in the United States.
Textbooks from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are coming soon.

iBooks textbooks are created with iBooks Author — now available as a free download on the Mac App Store.

There seems to be some idiotic banter going around about Apple releasing or announcing the iPhone 5 tomorrow at the special media event in New York.  News flash! It’s not happening!

Why on earth do you think Apple is going to release the iPhone 5 tomorrow? The iPhone 4s is 2.5 months old, they would be cannibalizing one of their hottest selling products of all time. Production just caught up with the ongoing demand for the phone.  So there’s absolutely no way in hell Apple will announce a new phone tomorrow. Period.

People need to stop listening to all of these market “analysts“, half of the time they are full of shit. It’s pretty irritating when off the wall rumors get construed and twisted as if it’s fact. You’d think after all these years some of these jokers would figure out Apple’s release cycle. Apparently not.

Link-baiting is stupid, half of these people conjure up these fake rumors to get hits! Stop re-tweeting that crap! Do you remember that old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is” ?

Just try to put some logic into these rumors before you believe them. Ask yourself, “why would Apple do this?”, “does this make any logical sense ?” If you cannot come up with a feasible answer, then the rumor is probably fake.

Apple announced last Wednesday that they will be holding a keynote tomorrow, Jan. 19th at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The keynote is set to cover whats new with education. As usual, that’s about all the info that was given out.  There are some rumors floating around that iTunes U will get a good overhauling and that there will be a whole new suite of iOS education software that will be released.

Some people are convinced Apple will be releasing an “E-Tablet” that is dedicated to reading course material on and nothing else. I find this highly unlikely.  They already have the iPad as a platform, I see them expanding on that versus releasing an entirely new product dedicated to reading.

I would however like to see an expansion of iBooks, as of right now it’s pretty difficult to find education books in the current iBook Store.  If a dedicated education section in the store existed, it would make it a lot easier to obtain the appropriate books for class.

Of course we’ll cover what Apple announces, so stay tuned in tomorrow.

I wanted to let you all know this hiatus will be ending shortly. We’re gearing up for the new year. Everything will be back on schedule on Jan 1st 2012!

See you soon!

When someone mentions Incipio, most tech-savvy people immediately know what you’re talking about. I guess that should come as no surprise to anyone since they are one of the largest and most widely known brands that currently manufactures iPhone and iPad cases.

So you can understand why I was excited when Incipio decided to ship one of their most known products out to us. The Incipio feather is one of their most widespread product lines for the iPhone.  This shell case has gone through many revisions over the years.

Today I’m unboxing the latest model that is compatible with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s. This feather case is universal, so it’ll work on any AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint branded iPhone 4/4s.

Stay tuned for the full review in the coming days.

(click here to watch the video in lights out mode) (HD)

The Mac Universe has finally jumped on the Google+ band wagon.  We decided to go ahead and create a page for all of our readers. So go ahead and add us to your circles and we’ll return the favor. We plan on posting excerpts of published articles, hold contests, chat with you all, and much more.

Thanks for your continued support!

The Mac Universe Google+

Apple just pushed down a new update for their creme of the crop web browser, Safari. This latest update puts the application to version 5.1.2, it is supposed to fix some memory leaks, improve stability, and it’s also supposed to fix some in-line PDF issues.

The download is 49.2MB, and it requires a system reboot.

This update contains various improvements, including fixes that:
Improve stability
Address issues that could cause hangs and excessive memory usage
Address issues that could cause webpages to flash white
Allow PDFs to be displayed within web content

I know we’ve been on a little bit of a hiatus as of late, I apologize for not letting you all know what’s been going on over here at The Mac Universe.

We had a drive failure last week and pretty much lost quite a bit of data. Most of the data was pretty fresh, I didn’t have a chance to back any of it up, so the content was nuked beyond being recoverable. (whoops)

I think most of the kinks have been sorted out now, we have a new drive in place and it’s humming along just fine. We did lose a few articles and videos that were in mid-edit or in the final draft phase that were supposed have been uploaded to the website last week and some stuff for this week. Unfortunately I have to re-shoot some of it and re-edit from the backed up data that I do have.

I just wanted to give you all a little insight as to why there haven’t been any new posts recently.  Data loss and holiday shenanigans don’t mix well.

We should be back up to full speed this week. There’s an unboxing video and a product review on the way, so stay tuned in for that, I think some of you will enjoy this product.

(image credit)

Earlier in the year, there was a game that was supposed to have been released for the iOS platform, it was going to be somewhat controversial, judging by the name itself.  The game was originally called “Smuggle Truck” by Owlchemy Labs. The main premise of the game was to smuggle immigrants across the boarder, basically you would have to drive a truck over all kinds of bumpy terrain and you would have to get to the end of the course without having all of your passengers fall out of the back of the pickup truck before you reached the end.

The game received some bad press from the get-go, obviously.  As usual people complained and thus, it was removed from the App Store. That didn’t stop Owlchemy Labs however.  They ended up re-branding the game for iOS and they called the new game, “Snuggle Truck”.  This game is nearly the exact same as Smuggle Truck, except instead of immigrants, you’re smuggling stuffed toys.

The game was originally intended to be in just plain fun, but people got bent out of shape. Hopefully you’ll enjoy Snuggle Truck though, that is of course if you have a sense of humor.

Anyway,  Snuggle Truck is currently free in the App Store. Both standard iPhone and HD “iPad” versions are fee. If you would like to check it out.

If you are interested in checking out “Smuggle Truck”, then you can head on over to the Smuggle Truck website and download it for the Mac or PC.

We’re quite the fan of the Little App Factory around here. They have always been a stand up team that makes some killer Apps for the Mac.  Also, it’s pretty great when Apps go on sale.  That’s why today’s App Deal is going to be all about, The Little App Factory.

If you’re really into having custom ringtones for your iPhone, then today’s deal is for you. The Little App Factory slashed the price of their awesome ringtone editing app that’s simply called, “Ringones”.

The app normally goes for $12.95 respectively, it can now be gotten for the insanely low price of $0.99! That’s right, ninety nine cents dude!  This is a limited time deal and there’s no official word when the deal will be ending. I have a feeling it’ll be soon though, so you better act fast if you’ve been eyeballing this app.

The Ringtones app allows you to create ringtones directly from your iTunes library, you can then import them back to your iTunes library to be put on your iPhone.  Theoretically you should be able to create ringtones for other phones as well, but I don’t know if they would suggest doing so. You’d be on your own if you did. I don’t think they offer support for other phone manufactures currently.

You can purchase the app through the Mac App Store here.