Samsung earned industry praise for estimating that it expected to ship 10 million units of its flagship Galaxy S4 to carriers in its first month on the market, six months after the same journalists voiced disappointment that Apple had sold "only" 5 million iPhone 5's in its first 3 days.  ...

In a court motion filed earlier today, MetroPCS is dropping its net neutrality opposition lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. The company filed a motion for voluntary dismissal, leaving Verizon to willingly fight the decree and US government on its own....  ...

Mozilla is delaying plans to start blocking third-party tracking cookies in Firefox by default, according to an announcement. The company states that more work is needed for the anti-tracking feature. "The idea is that if you have not visited a site (including the one to which you are navigating currently) and it wants to put a cookie on your computer, the site is likely not one you have heard of or have any relationship with," explains Mozilla's Brendan Eich. "But this is only likely, not always true."...  ...

One thing that seems to be a common attribute of hard-core Apple fans is that they are connoisseurs of great design. It doesn't matter if it's the sleek curves of a new iMac or the minimalist slab of the iPhone 5, we love how the devices are designed with pleasing dimensions and an enjoyable tactile sensation. That's why I was instantly attracted to the Kenu Airframe (US$24.95), a simple and lightweight smartphone car mount that's perfect for present and future iPhones.

Design

Some of the car mounts I've received for review over the years have been expensive overkill. They often use a suction cup mount to stick to the front window of the car, which doesn't work very well in hot dry environments as they tend to pop off when they sit in the sun for a while, dropping your expensive phone to the floor of the car. There's usually a long arm designed to bring the iPhone closer to your hand, which has the undesirable effect...

Warner Music Group and Universal Music are both excited about Apple's planned streaming service, but Sony Music is apparently hung up on how much it gets paid for songs that are skipped. Bryan Chaffin is mystified by this kind of myopia and thinks that Sony needs to pull its corporate head out of its corporate behind.

Amazon has cancelled two television pilots, after poor screenings. The television version of Zombieland will not be made into a series by the internet retailer, nor will Bebe Neuwirth's musical comedy Browsers about interns at a Huffington Post-esque website. Amazon has picked up John Goodman's Washington DC satire Alpha House, and Silicon Valley sitcom Betas....   ...

iOS devices are in the army now, Intel’s former CEO recounts his Apple misstep, and Apple’s got its work cut out for its WWDC keynote. The remainders for Friday, May 17, 2013 lead the way.

Apple Mobile Devices Approved for Use on U.S. Military Networks (Bloomberg)

The Pentagon has given thumbs up to iOS 6 devices on military networks, though the Defense Department is still waiting for Apple’s much anticipated “Find My Enemies” app.

Paul Otellini’s Intel: Can the Company That Built the Future Survive It? (The Atlantic)
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please...

Apple has removed a well-publicized iPhone hookup app from the App Store after just one week of it going live, Valleywag notes. Bang With Friends, still accessible via Android and the web, lets people indicate if they'd like to have sex with a Facebook friend. Notifications are sent out only if the feeling is mutual. Since launching in January, the service has already accumulated about 1 million users....  ...

I was lucky. My mom and dad had me while they were finishing up their graduate work in the 1970's at North Carolina State University. My dad was, at the time, a bit of a gadget nut. Of course, back then "gadgets" were more commonly found in the kitchen and came from companies like Ronco. My dad was more into the electronics side, and I remember seeing TAB books about building robots around the house. We never built those robots, but my dad did buy two pieces of tech which changed my life forever. One was an HP programmable calculator, the other was an Apple II.

For those who don't remember, the early programmable calculators from HP had less than 4 kilobytes of memory on them. My dad would program the equations needed to solve various math problems (he was getting his Ph.D in chemical engineering at the time), then he'd let the HP crank away on the math over the weekend. So yes, computers were a little slower back in those days.

While the HP lived at my dad's office...

Zoombies is a fascinating little game. It's made by a company called High Voltage that is probably best known for the Conduit shooter series, though they've been making licensed games for years (I remember visiting the studio for a tour back when I lived in Chicago -- they were based out in the Hoffman Estates suburb back then). Zoombies is a title that's been in development there for a while -- it was first considered for the Wii, then possibly for Xbox Live Arcade, and finally has seen release on Apple's iOS.

It's easy to see why High Voltage was trying to make this game as a motion control title -- the idea is that you're a kid trying to fight an army of invading undead zoo animals ("Zoo-mbies," get it?), and you are armed with a weapon that you can toss according to a line you've drawn on the screen. Control on the Wii or Xbox would probably have been more direct, but on the iOS...

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Subscribe via RSSDaily Update for May 17, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 16:45:00 EST. Please see our...

It's clearly not the best time to be looking for a MacBook Air. 13-inch versions are in especially short supply. The reason for the shortage will be obvious to those who follow Apple closely -- it's almost time for the Apple World Wide Developer Conference starting June 10, and Apple is likely going to refresh the popular laptops with the next-generation Intel Haswell Processor.

Apple Insider reports that the only reseller with any significant inventory of the best selling model -- outfitted with a 1.8 GHz processor and 256 GB solid state drive -- is...

Apple might have just ruined everyone’s weekend plans by pulling the provocative “Bang with Friends” iPhone app from the App Store.
BWF, which is the “anonymous, simple, fun way to find 
friends who are down for the night,” says Apple has banned it from the...

Earlier this month TUAW reported that iOS 6 had obtained FIPS 140-2 certification, "opening the door to more government use." It didn't take long for that door to swing wide open, as the Pentagon has now officially approved iPhones and iPads running a version of iOS 6 for use on secure government networks.

Two weeks ago, Samsung devices running the Knox security layer and BlackBerry devices including the BlackBerry 10 smartphones and PlayBook tablets were given the nod by the US military. Adding Apple's iOS devices to the mix was part of the platform agnostic plans of the Pentagon revealed in February. Those plans detailed adding wireless voice, video and...

Third-party vendors are starting to run out of stock of the 13-inch MacBook Air, says AppleInsider. Amazon, B&H, MacConnection, and MacMall are all out of a common configuration, a system with a 1.8GHz processor and a 256GB SSD. Another reseller, J&R, is saying that it only has the configuration at retail stores. Best Buy continues to have some units....  ...

The latest edition of iLounge Weekly, our weekly newsletter covering all things iLounge, will be arriving in subscribers’ inboxes early next week. iLounge Weekly is a summary of the week’s best news, reviews, and feature articles we’ve published, and it also features giveaways and accessory discount offers from various companies.…

Apple's mired negotiations with the music industry may prevent it from announcing an "iRadio" service at WWDC on June 10th, industry sources tell The Verge. The people note that Apple is having trouble not just with Sony/ATV, but also BMG. At the same time they suggest there's still a lot of "market momentum" behind iRadio, and that major players such as Universal want to see it launch as soon as possible....  ...

Apple and Google are engaged in a fight for our technological souls. With a temporary lull in activity from Apple, it looks as if Google is winning the war. But really? What will determine the winner in the long run not simply new product announcements. It's something else. John Martellaro takes the 30,000 ft view.

Moshi has released its new line of Lightning cables for Apple's latest iOS devices. Encased in aluminum, the 3.2 foot cables are fully certified for use with the iPhone 5, iPod touch (5th gen), iPod nano (7th gen), iPad (4th gen) and iPad mini. Moshi's USB Cable with Lightning is sold online in two color variants, black and white, for $20....  ...

Keeping up with Apple is hard enough, but when Google announces a boatload of products, updates, and services during a 3-hour keynote at the Google I/O developer conference, we’re happy to let others — The Next Web in this case — compile the list. Many of these announcements were relevant only to developers, but updates to Google Maps, the Google Play Music All Access streaming music service, new Google+ features, and a unified messaging service called Hangouts may be of interest to anyone using Google services. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and...

This week in the MacNN forums, one Professional Poster was trying to get to the bottom of a problem they had with their Retina MBP shutting down while in sleep mode, a solution has yet to be found. Fresh-Faced Recruit "frozentundra" is wondering when Apple will update the Mac Pro line....   ...

BlackBerry’s recently announced iOS app for its BBM messaging service is expected to launch this summer, but it apparently won’t be coming to iPad right away. According to a report, Vivek Bhardwaj, head of software portfolio at BlackBerry, said BBM will be coming to “iOS phones running iOS 6…

21-year-old Brandon Ashmore of Mentor, Ohio has a lot to smile about as the winner of a $10,000 gift card from Apple for being the person who downloaded the 50 billionth app from the App Store. Ashmore told NewsChannel5 in Cleveland that he had saved up five apps to download onto his iPhone 5 to try to win the contest, and thought he was being pranked when an Apple rep called him to relay the good news.

Ashmore finally believed the caller, saying that the Apple employee had "too much information" about him. The winning app was Say the Same Thing by SpaceInch, LLC, a free word game that has been floating around the Top Free Apps list since it was released in April of 2013.

So what's Ashmore going to do with his $10,000 gift card? He...

Good news.
∞ Read this on The Loop

Game developer Gameloft is giving iOS users a treat starting this weekend, as two of its titles ? Gangstar Rio and N.O.V.A 3 ? are both free for a limited time.   ...

The U.S. Air Force has opened up about how the iPad will help it realize over US$50 million in savings over the next ten years, as 18,000 iPads replace flight manuals.

In an interview with The Street, U.S. Air Force Major Brian Moritz described the huge drop in costs. "We're saving about 90 pounds of paper per aircraft and limiting the need for each crew member to carry a 30 to 40 pound paper pile [of flight manuals]. It adds up to quite a lot of weight in paper."

The Street notes that specific weight savings varies across aircraft. For instance, the iPads eliminate 250 pounds from a four-person C-17, and up to 490 pounds in a C-5 with a crew of 10.

In a related story from the civilian world, American Airlines recently described how its...

F-Secure

Stealthy Mac OS X spyware that was digitally signed with a valid Apple Developer ID has been detected on the laptop of an Angolan activist attending a human rights conference, researchers said.
The backdoor, which is programmed to take screenshots and send them to remote servers under the control of the attackers, was spread using a spear phishing e-mail according to privacy activist Jacob Appelbaum. Spear phishing is a term for highly targeted e-mails that address the receiver by name and usually appear to come from someone the receiver knows. The e-mails typically discuss topics the two people have talked about before. According to AV provider F-Secure the malware was discovered during a workshop showing freedom of speech activists how to secure their devices against government monitoring.
The malware was signed...

    ...

Industry sources are saying that Google's willingness to acquiesce to music label demands and the structure of the hybrid service Apple is trying to build are the main reasons why the search giant's music service is live now while the iPhone maker's offering might miss WWDC.  ...

Love your Apple TV, but don't love all of the applications that come pre-installed? Then hide the ones you don't want, and enjoy a cleaner user interface! All you need is your Apple remote and a couple minutes of your time.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini:

”We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we’d done it,” Otellini told me in a two-hour conversation during his last month at Intel. “The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do… At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.”

So basically, Otellini is the Pete Best of the tech business.
...

Tim is setting the record straight and offering new ideas.
∞ Read this on The Loop

With Intel's next-generation Haswell processors set to launch in a matter of weeks and WWDC to kick off soon after, availability of Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air had begun to dry up at major authorized resellers.   ...

Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a lengthy interview with Politico which was published yesterday, shedding some light on what he plans to say in his upcoming congressional appearance on Apple's tax practices. There's a hidden gem at the end of the piece however:

And Cook is also promoting a $100 million investment in domestic manufacturing, where the company will begin producing a new version of a current Mac product later this year.
"We’re going very deep in this project," Cook said, noting that not only will the final product be manufactured in the US, but so will many of its components. Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Kentucky are among the states he mentioned as having parts and assembly located.

Apple has made noise for some time now about moving some...

Apple CEO Tim Cook.

lemagit

Unlike his predecessor, Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn't appear reluctant to face down a Senate subcommittee. He's due to appear in Washington DC next week to testify at a Senate hearing on offshore profit shifting and he plans to directly address the concerns Congress is raising:
The Subcommittee will continue its examination of the structures and methods employed by multinational corporations to shift profits offshore and how such activities are affected by the Internal Revenue Code and related regulations. Witnesses will include representatives from the Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, representatives of a multinational corporation, and tax experts.
The roles of "...

Allston rocks.

The Fair Labor Association has released a report acknowledging that Foxconn and Apple are making progress on improving work conditions, but the companies are still exceeding working-hour laws. Apple and Foxconn have agreed to comply with Chinese working-hour law by July — under the law, workers may work 40…

I love that these types of transitions no longer require Flash.
∞ Read this on The Loop

I have never used a case on my iPhone, except for the Mophie Juice Pack Plus. Having the extra battery power made it worth while and the Mophie never let me down. Good seeing it available for the iPhone 5.
∞ Read this on The Loop

Just as the Defense Department granted iOS devices approval for use on military networks, TheStreet reports that the U.S. Air Force plans on saving around $50 million through its purchase of iPads. The savings will mainly be due to the ability to cut weight on flights by replacing traditional flight bags and come over a ten year period:
“We’re saving about 90 pounds of paper per aircraft and limiting the need for each crew member to carry a 30 to 40 pound paper pile [of flight manuals],” said Major Brian Moritz, EFB program manager, in a phone interview. “It adds up to quite a lot of weight in paper.”
Removing the need to print and distribute thousands of flight manuals, however, equates to an even greater...

Zakk Wylde, Lee Ritenour, JJ Grey & Mofro, and Rock Candy Funk Party (RCFP)–featuring Tal Bergman, Joe Bonamassa, Ron DeJesus, and Mike Merritt–will take The Iridium stage to celebrate Les Paul’s 98th birthday with more than a week of shows June 3-12.

I was at the first celebration at the Iridium in New York after Les died sitting at a table with Zakk Wylde and Steven Van Zandt. Jeff Beck played that night — it was absolutely amazing.
∞ Read this on The Loop

A move by the US Air Force last year to replace maps, charts, logs and other paperwork contained in a kit with iPads is expected to save more than $50 million over next 10 years. The 18,000 deployed iPads form an "electronic flight bag" that can hold flight manuals, weather and navigation charts and volumes of technical and procedural information -- eliminating the need for the 30- to 40-pound flight bag pilots used to have to carry with them, resulting in savings ranging from fuel costs to printing costs to even reducing pilot back injuries.... ...

CW announced its TV Now app will be coming to Apple TV. Much like the Xbox and mobile TV Now apps, the Apple TV app will offer full episodes of ad-supported CW shows the day after airing. No cable authentication will…

NASA has a series of excellent educational iOS apps that appeal to adults and kids alike. Most have a strong scientific bent, but if you lean more towards art than science, NASA has an iPad app for you, too. Mixing a little bit of earth and planetary science with a keen eye for art, NASA has created its Earth As Art app, an iPad title that shows off the unseen beauty of our planet.

NASA's Earth As Art app picks the best images of Earth from the Terra, Landsat 5, Landsat 7, EO-1, and Aqua satellites. It also adds in some choice photos from the USGS Landsat image gallery. The satellites used to take these photos can measure light outside the visible range. The resulting images show you the earth as you have never seen it before.

The images are presented in gallery format, allowing you to see...

If you’re using a mid-2012 MacBook Air, you’re going to want to snag this.
Per 9to5Mac, Apple on Thursday released its MacBook Air Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.0, a 1.69 megabyte download that helps to address problems with the device recovering from a crash. Apple release notes said the update addresses “a storage firmware issue that, in rare cases...

Corning, the company that currently supplies glass for Apple’s iOS devices, yesterday introduced its second generation glass substrate with the commercial launch of Corning Lotus XT Glass. While we initially expected Corning’s recently announced Gorilla Glass 3 might end up in an iOS device, the second generation Lotus XT Glass could be a prime candidate for LCD and OLED displays on future Apple devices.
The end result for consumers, according to Corning, is an easier method of manufacturing “faster, thinner, brighter, and higher resolution” displays.
The Corning Lotus Glass platform enables organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays and liquid crystal displays (LCD) that use either low-temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) or oxide thin-film...

Aurich Lawson / Warner Bros. Entertainment

The Mac on your desk or on the cafe table next to you has a chip with secret functions that can be unlocked only by inputting a spell from the Harry Potter series. The SMC, or system management controller, is a chip used to regulate a Mac's current and voltage, manage its light sensor, and temporarily store FileVault keys. Turns out that the SMC contains undocumented code that is invoked by entering the word "SpecialisRevelio," the same magic words used to reveal hidden charms, hexes, or properties used by wizards in the Harry Potter series written by author J. K. Rowling.
That fun fact was presented Wednesday at the NoSuchCon security conference by veteran reverse engineer Alex Ionescu. While most details are far too technical for this article, the gist of the research is that the SMC is a chip that...

Previously unknown Mac OS X spyware, signed with a valid Apple Developer ID, has turned up on the laptop of an activist from Angola at a human rights conference in Norway.

Security researcher and privacy activist Jacob Appelbaum found the spyware on the activist’s Mac at the Oslo Freedom Forum earlier this week.

The activist’s computer was compromised as a result of a spear phishing attack, Appelbaum said Thursday on Twitter. The researcher claims that he has copies of the attack emails and two different malware samples.

Security researchers from Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure analyzed one of the malware samples and concluded that it is a previously unknown Mac backdoor program which appears to be signed with a valid Apple Developer ID.
To read this article in full...

A report from market analysts IDC looking at market conditions in the United Kingdom says that in the first quarter of 2013, tablet shipments outpaced the combined desktop and notebook PC for the first time. A total of 2.8 million tablets were shipped in Q1, outpacing the 2.3 million PC units (which include Macs alongside Windows desktops and laptops) by a half-million units -- a rise of 188 percent year-over-year. While the report is limited to the UK, the results likely foreshadow future trends elsewhere.... ...