Engadget

Well, it's hardly a secret that customers are unhappy with Apple's new mapping solution in iOS 6. And, while the company has admitted that, perhaps, it's not quite up to snuff yet, it has played down Maps' flaws and urged customers to be patient. Today, in an open letter to the Apple faithful, Tim Cook struck a far more candid and conciliatory tone, apologizing for failing to deliver a "world-class" product. Cook went so far as to suggest that unhappy customers could check out offerings from competitors like Bing, MapQuest, Google and Nokia -- at least until Cupertino sorts this mess out. You'll find the complete text of the letter after the break.

Auto show concept cars are all whizzy styling and impractical interiors, and Smart's latest offering, the Forstars EV at the Paris Auto Show, has all that in spades. But the stubby car has another show-stopping feature we'd love to see in production -- a projector installed right into the vehicle's grill. That would let you and a special friend pull the two-seater up to any white wall and beam the flick of your choice from an iPhone's bluetooth port, while blasting the audio through the sound system. Other friends not in the Forstars' confines would also get the sound from speakers located in the ventilation grills behind the doors. Once rolling, the concept Smart moves along with an 80 horsepower electric motor and 17.6 kWh battery, boasting 127 lb/ft of torque and an 80MPH top speed. Since the car's currently a one-off, don't get any ideas about heading to Lookout Point with a screen in tow -- but you can head to the video after the break to see how it works.

Smart forstar concept EV

Smart forstars EV concept press images

Neil Young isn't shy when it comes to embracing new technology, something he put beyond question with his latest appearance on The Late show with David Letterman. The artist took the opportunity to reveal plans for his high-fidelity Pono music service. The aim is to tackle the poor quality in which he believes most people receive their music these days -- the humble MP3. Young's offering would comprise a three-pronged approach, including a music store with high-resolution recordings, a digital-to-analog style conversion technology, and portable hardware to listen to it all with. The simple intention is to offer music as it was originally intended to be heard, but at this time there's no detail as to what this actually entails (sorry specification fans).

According to Rolling Stone, the big three labels are interested, and the goal is to unify, rather than diversify, the quality of recorded content. The Pono players (that yellow wedge you see above) will serve up your existing catalog, but you'll likely need to re-buy some of your collection if you want the holistic experience. With no cards fully on the table, we're at the ransom of Young's celebrity endorsements, which all claim that the benefits are tangible. Young, of course, says "You can't get better than this, this is what they do in the studio," but until we get some details, or ears on, everybody knows this is nowhere.

[Image credit:CBS]

The original Tablet S has already absorbed a few interesting updates and now it's getting one more: devices are waking up to an Android 4.0.3 update that brings significant additions like a Guest Mode for creating restricted user accounts, revamped media and social aggregation apps, and six assignable macro buttons on the IR Remote Control app. Sony has also bolstered its Small Apps function, allowing you to overlay a browser, IR remote and other utilities in a window on top of another app. What this update isn't is Jelly Bean, which is headed to the Tablet S's similarly-named replacement, the Xperia Tablet S.

Correction: We originally confused the Tablet S with the newer Xperia-branded model. Thanks to all who spotted the error.

After months of speculation about who would step in to save the scandal-ridden Olympus' rocky fortunes, Sony has finally opened up its checkbook. The two companies are entering into a "business and capital alliance," with Sony pumping in $650 million to its former rival. In exchange, it's gaining a seat on the company's board and a 51 percent stake in a new joint venture based on Olympus's coveted medical imaging tech -- something Kaz Hirai outlined in his "One Sony" strategy. The deal also includes a component-sharing agreement in the photography space, with Olympus mirror cells and camera lenses being given to Sony, while image sensors (where Sony is very strong) will go the other way.

Why get a Smart TV when you can enhance your existing HDTV with a dongle? That's the precise inquiry FAVI is aiming to answer with its SmartStick, a device that lets you access streaming movies, music, apps, and games just by plugging it into your television's HDMI port. It runs Jelly Bean, the latest Android OS, and supports services like Netflix, Hulu, Epix, YouTube, and Pandora. Other features include a full internet browser, 4GB of memory, and the ability to wirelessly stream media from your computer via its MediaSHARE app. Since it runs Android, you can download apps from the Google Play store as well. While we're still fans of the Roku Streaming Stick, the SmartStick's $50 price tag is hard to beat. You can also get a mini wireless keyboard and touchpad mouse for $39.99 for easier navigation. The FAVI Streaming Stick will be available this November, though you can pre-order it now for an October 30th ship date. Check after the break for the SmartStick promo video and the press release.

Breaking up with a web-based ecosystem is hard to do, especially when you have several gigabytes of data invested in a specific platform. However, things just got a whole lot easier for disgruntled vloggers. Google recently added YouTube to its Takeout data migration service, which now gives users the ability to pull all of their uploaded videos from the company's servers in a single stroke. This groovy tool should definitely come in handy when you're busy shopping around your latest foreign film to different movie studios. In addition to being extremely easy to use, the service will also send an email letting you know that your download has finished. Simply set it and forget it!

Much of the business news out of Japan from Sharp hasn't been good, but for now at least it's worked out a loan agreement to keep rolling. It's still pursuing a deal with manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry / Foxconn that would provide a much-needed injection of capital, but those talks have reportedly stalled. Until something happens there it has a 360 billion yen ($4.6 billion) syndicated loan worked out with a couple of Japanese banks that runs until June 30th 2013. We're still not sure how Sharp will proceed with all this, but hopefully an agreement can be reached that brings its sweet IGZO LCD tech and any other new screens it will be showing off at CEATEC next week to more devices.

When it comes to your device being the "world's thinnest" or not can be decided by a single millimeter. Just days after Toshiba unveiled its 9mm-thick 500GB external hard drive, ADATA has knocked a little more off its own enclosure and declared victory. It's releasing the DashDrive Elite HE720, a stainless steel USB 3.0 drive that measures in at 8.9mm-thick, and size is not the only department where it's making an end-run around ol' Tosh -- it's also $25 dollars cheaper, costing $90. In more mundane news, users who pick up the unit are entitled to snag a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security and it'll be available shortly.

There are few things we love more than custom-crafted carbon fiber cars with meaty all-electric powertrains and torque for miles and miles and miles. So, when we wandered by the display for the Furtive-eGT from Exagon Motors and, we couldn't help but stop and throw together a gallery -- despite that company trotting out mildly modified versions of this concept for a few years now. The all-electric supercar weighs just over 3,600 pounds and has dual electric motors, one for each rear wheel, pumping out a combined 402 horsepower. That's good for a 0 - 60 dash in 3.5 seconds and, with its carbon ceramic brakes, it can pull 1.2G while doing a hard stop. Exagon says it could manage up to 225 miles on a charge. When will it ever go into production, and how much will it cost if it does? The company still isn't saying, but if you have to ask...

Exagon Furtive-eGT

Steve Dent contributed to this report.

Intel just outed its new Atom SoC, and at its tablet event in San Francisco today, the company had a whole slew of slates packing the Clover Trail silicon on hand. Dell's Latitude 10, the ASUS Tablet 810, Acer's Iconia W510 and W700, Lenovo's ThinkPad 2, the HP Envy x2 and Samsung's Series 5 were all there. However, it was the handsome slice of Windows 8 from ZTE that really caught our attention. Called the V98, it has a 10.1-inch, 1366 x 768 LCD on top of an aluminum chassis with a beveled edge similar to what you'd find on a white iPhone 5. Beneath that handsome exterior is the aforementioned Intel Z2760 chipset, 64GB of ROM, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (plus a microSD slot if you need more digital space). There's 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, tri-band UMTS and quad-band GSM radios, plus NFC and LTE can be had as options. It's got an accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensors, a magnetometer and a gyro, too. An 8-megapixel camera is stuck in the back, while a 2-megapixel shooter resides round front. ZTE managed to stuff all that and a 7,000mAh battery inside a svelte 8.9mm-thin package.

We got to spend a little bit of time with a prototype ZTE model, and found the hardware to be solid for a hand-built unit. Its aluminum chassis makes for quite a rigid device in hand, and the machined and polished bevel gives the V98 a very high-end look. The chromed plastic volume rocker, power button and screen orientation lock switch nestled in the plastic radio reception strip at the top of the device are decidedly less luxurious, however -- the travel of each was shallow, and the finish on the plastic appeared a bit cheap to our eyes. That said, the rotating magnetic aluminum door that reveals the SD card and SIM slots is slick -- far easier to open and close than the plastic port covers found on most other slates. There's also a 30-pin docking port on the bottom edge of the tablet, but ZTE informed us it'd be another month or so before the dock is ready for public consumption. Unfortunately, the V98 won't be available for purchase until Q1 of next year, but you can see if its worth waiting for in our gallery of shots below.

ZTE V98 Windows 8 tablet hands-on

According to Simple.TV, there have been articles circulating around the interwebs that may have caused confusion amongst parties interested about the shipping dates of its facile white puck. So, in order to induce some clarity, the folks behind the project have posted a Kickstarter update to let its backers know their Simple.TVs will be arriving soon enough -- somewhere between October 10th and 15th, to be precise. On the other hand, Simple.TV is also set to start taking pre-orders on its website tomorrow from people who missed out on the crowd-funded party, with these particular units estimated to ship "within 20 days" after the order has been placed. The good news is we're only a couple of weeks away from its long-overdue arrival; in the meantime, however, don't forget we have our own hands-on for you to graciously pore over.

Samsung made much ado of the Galaxy Camera coming in both 3G and 4G versions, but it wasn't clear just which carriers would let us upload photos when away from WiFi. The FCC might have just given out a big clue with approval filings for two 3G editions. As it's been tested for US clearance, the Android point-and-shoot in its EK-GC100 and EK-KC100 guises has support for HSPA-based 3G on the 850MHz and 1,900MHz bands used by AT&T and larger Canadian carriers -- a possible hint of Big Blue's ongoing connected devices push, but not a very promising discovery for most T-Mobile users or any CDMA customers. Before anyone bemoans the absences of LTE or support for more American networks, however, we'd note that this is just one filing and might not represent the totality of Samsung's US plans, if we're indeed looking at one or more US-bound examples. We'll keep an eye out ahead of the Galaxy Camera's international launch in October to see if there's anything more in the FCC's cards.

We all know those web pages where the only alternative to a site-specific login is a social networking account. That's not very reassuring for anyone skittish about linking their commentary to a Facebook account relatives might see, if they're even willing to join a social network in the first place. Mozilla has been aware of that hesitation long enough to have just released its long-in-development Persona sign-in service as a beta. Although it has the same kind of simple approach to a login as a Facebook or Twitter pop-up window, Persona's emphasis is on privacy: it stops paying attention the moment credentials go through, keeping any diatribes or subscription details from landing in social streams or central databases. Users don't have to play a rousing game of guess-the-username, either, as they just need to sign in with one or more familiar e-mail addresses and a single password. Persona faces an uphill battle in getting web developer adoption when the establishment sign-in services are open to hundreds of millions of internet citizens, but it does have The Times' online crossword section, OpenPhoto and Voost as early poster children -- and anything that lets the privacy-minded join the party has our vote.

Small carrier Cellcom just announced pricing details for the iPhone 5, which it will offer starting this Friday, September 28th. Apple's latest smartphone will run on the carrier's 3G network, and pricing for the various models is as follows: $149 for the 16GB version, $249 for 32GB and $349 for 64GB. iPhone 5 owners on Cellcom will have to choose one of four plans, ranging from $69.95 for unlimited testing and 200 voice minutes to $109.95 for unlimited voice, text and 2,048MB of data. (Of course, there's a mandatory two-year contract as well.) Head past the break for the carrier's full press release.