Wall St. can’t make up its mind who is doomed.
∞ Read this on The Loop
Wall St. can’t make up its mind who is doomed.
∞ Read this on The Loop
Nimble Quest takes the classic Snake game and gives it an RPG twist. 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 other Apple-related products.
| Read more »This week's roundup of new and updated iOS apps offers better ways to board your airplane, get a laugh, share short videos, and watch TV. Read on!
| Read more »The Joy of Tech has once again offered a bit of biting commentary, this time on the nature of "privacy" in the modern age in the wake of Verizon outrage. On Thursday it was reported that Verizon was giving the U.S. government information about our phone calls, and then another leak later in the day detailed a program called PRISM. The Joy of Tech reminds us that the issue of privacy is more complex—the segment below is just part of the comic.
Click to view slideshow.
AT&T released a Push to Talk iPhone client for Enterprise customers today. Wish Sprint closing its Nextel PTT services soon, this will come in handy for a lot of businesses. The service allows business customers to:
ConnectED is a new Obama administration initiative that hopes to see high speed broadband Internet access in 99 percent of US schools within five years.
| Read more »BMW drivers with iPhones may want to take a look at the company's forthcoming models, as the automaker announced on Friday that it would be integrating Apple's Siri Eyes Free mode into all of its 2014 cars. ...
| Read more »An Anandtech report claims Apple isn’t throttling iPhone or iPad cellular data through carrier bundles, directly refuting a recent claim from developer Joseph Brown. While Brown claims cellular data speeds for AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint are throttled through coding, Anandtech’s Brian Klug writes that “Apple doesn’t limit cellular…
| Read more »It's always busy in the App Store with a never ending flood of new apps landing on iOS and OS X. Take a few minutes and check out our list of standout titles from the past few weeks!
New iOS Apps
You’re not going to like this.
Per Senor O’Grady over on the Apple Core, a group of researchers from Georgia Tech have discovered a way to hack into an iPhone or iPad in less than a minute using a “malicious charger.” The group plans to present its findings at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on July 27, 2013.
Billy Lau, Yeongjin Jang and Chengyu Song are presenting a session is called “Mactans: Injecting Malware Into iOS Devices Via Malicious Chargers” at the popular security conference next month. The name “Mactans” comes from Latrodectus Mactans, the highly venomous (and deadly)...
Sony has signed a deal to supply music for Apple's upcoming streaming music service, usually nicknamed iRadio, a source allegedly familiar with the talks says. The agreement should mean that Apple has the three biggest record labels on board, including also Warner and Universal. Still missing is Sony/ATV, a joint venture that handles publishing.... ...
| Read more »Sony has signed a deal to supply music for Apple's upcoming streaming music service, usually nicknamed iRadio, a source allegedly familiar with the talks says. The agreement should mean that Apple has the three biggest record labels on board, including also Warner and Universal. Still missing is Sony/ATV, a joint venture that handles publishing.... ...
| Read more »A certain doctor makes an appearance in this week's iPhone-case roundup alongside a repurposed life-saving device. We've of course also got the usual smattering of cases for all tastes.
| Read more »Sony Music has agreed to terms with Apple on the company’s iRadio service, making an iRadio debut at next week’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference likely. A report notes that Apple has now agreements with “all three major music labels,” although the company was previously reported to be working to sign…
| Read more »
If you’re using Windows 8 on your Mac, there’s some changes coming down the pipe.
Per The Verge, Microsoft demonstrated a number of new features in Windows 8.1 earlier this week, but the company briefly showed the return of the Start button as well.
During Computex this week the company took the time to fully demo the Start button. In the following video you can see how Microsoft is adding options to show the All Apps view when the Start button is activated. The animation of the Start button switching between the desktop and Start Screen is clearly shown too with the new support for desktop wallpapers on the Start...
Give them time at the negotiation table and they will come.
Per AppleInsider and AllThingsD, Sony Music, the last big kahuna they were waiting for, has reportedly signed a deal with Apple for its anticipated “iRadio” streaming music service, marking the last of the three major music labels to reach an agreement.
The story cites a source familiar with negotiations between the two companies, the agreement lending credence to the rumor that Apple is gearing up to unveil its rumored “iRadio” service at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
Details of the deal...
Images of supposed "iPhone 5S" components continue to leak out, with the latest purported pieces showing off what could be the camera and home button from Apple's next smartphone. ...
| Read more »Logitech has announced the acquisition of TT Design Labs, a Kickstarter-backed smartphone accessory maker. The company's two co-founders will be joining Logitech to help design future smartphone products, with Derek Tarnow joining full time and Zahra Tashakorina offering advice through an ongoing consulting basis. Logitech plans to further develop two of the acquired products, JustMount and TidyTilt+, and release them to customers under the Logitech brand. Meanwhile, the Logitech JustMount and Logitech TidyTilt are available for pre-order today and will ship to consumers in the coming weeks.... ...
| Read more »The Rumor Roundup comes early this week in anticipation of Apple's forthcoming WWDC keynote, AKA Christmas in June for Apple geeks, AKA the cue for thousands of idiot pundits to hit "publish" on their pre-drafted "Apple is DOOMED" drivel.
Before I tear into this week's typically dumb rumors, let's do a brief mini-roundup of what's expected at WWDC.
What we will see
iOS 7
A preview of the next version of Apple's mobile device OS is a guarantee. It's widely expected that the user interface and design elements will have received an overhaul after designer Jonathan Ive took over responsibility for them. What exactly that overhaul entails has been the subject of months worth of breathless (and pointless) speculation, including hundreds of mockups from bored graphic designers who probably would have been better off updating their portfolios and résumés instead.
Aside from a new coat of paint, what else can we expect to see in iOS 7? Well... no one...
| Read more »More documents allegedly related to the National Security Agency (NSA) and its data harvesting activities has surfaced, courtesy of hacking collective Anonymous. The group released a total of 13 documents that it claims "prove that the NSA is spying on you," and that its spying activities are not just covering Americans, but also people in over 35 different countries.... ...
| Read more »A Washington Post report claiming the National Security Agency and FBI are accessing the servers of Apple and eight other companies has been denied by Apple. The program is code-named PRISM — launched in 2007, it is claimed to let the NSA directly collect data from Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo,…
| Read more »9to5Mac.com reported yesterday that Facebook is trying to 'declutter' the iOS contacts app by no longer syncing friends that have no useful contact information. Users have observed missing contacts as being a bug, however the move is an intentional endeavour to improve the relevancy of imported contacts. A Facebook spokesperson stated that friends with no contact information other than a Facebook e-mail will not be synced to the Contacts address book from now on. These contacts can be added manually as desired.... ...
| Read more »All 2014-model BMW cars will support the Siri "Eyes Free" technology included in iOS, the luxury automaker has announced. The technology is being delivered through an update to BMW's iDrive platform. By pressing and/or holding a voice command button on the steering wheel, people will be able to trigger Siri without reaching for their iPhone. The same button will also be able to trigger S Voice on Samsung phones.... ...
| Read more »We often need multiple apps on our iPhone and iPads to perform the same functions a single app handles on our Macs. Mark Greentree thinks that's a problem leading to extra steps for what should be simple tasks, and to frustration for those of us that use iOS regularly.
American Airlines updated its app for iPhone and iPad today bringing an enhanced Passbook experience for digital boarding passes, improvements for AAdvantage account holders, and the ability to chat with the airline’s Twitter team.
Perhaps the most notable update, and something British Airways announced it will be adding soon to its recently announced Passbook support, is the ability to view updates about departure times, gate and seat changes directly from your iOS device’s lock screen. The updates will appear after you’ve added your boarding pass to Passbook.
Also included in today’s update is the ability to “Send a direct message to the AA Twitter Team for assistance with flights, highlight...
Apple lawyer Orin Snyder questioning Thomas Turvey, Google’s director of strategic partnerships in the e-book trial:
Things went downhill from there. Under Snyder’s questioning, Turvey acknowledged that he couldn’t remember a single name of any of the publishing executives who had told him Apple was the reason the publishers were switching their business model. He conceded that the publisher’s move to the agency system was important to Google’s own business, yet Turvey couldn’t remember any details about the conversations with publishers. By the end of the interview Turvey had gone from saying the publishers had told him directly, to saying they had merely told people on his team, to finally saying the publishers had “likely” told someone on his team.
Oh Google.
...
Mac Sim City fans hoping to grab a copy of the popular lifestyle game next week are going to be disappointed with EA today. The gaming company confirmed that it is delaying the launch of Sim City for the Mac from the original June 11th date to sometime in August.
A post on the Sim City blog claims the quality of the game is not up to EA's standards and the company needs more time to work out the kinks.
Hi, Mayors - today we are announcing that we are moving the release date of the Mac version of SimCity to August. We are announcing that we are moving the release date of the Mac version of SimCity to August. We have made this tough decision because we do not believe it is ready for primetime yet. We want to ensure the Mac...
| Read more »It’s interesting when you use something that’s really well designed—it just becomes part of what you’re doing. However, use something that’s poorly designed and all you notice is the poorly designed tool. It takes away from the experience.
∞ Read this on The Loop
BMW, one of Apple’s Siri Eyes-Free partners, has announced that Siri support is finally coming to the iDrive console on its 2014 model cars, along with a range of other enhancements. The car-maker is also adding support for Samsung’s Siri equivalent, S Voice.
You’ll also be able to access music on your iPhone through the iDrive system via Bluetooth, rather than the wired connection required with earlier versions, and access the web while the vehicle is stationary …
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With BMW offering its own voice-control functions, things could get confusing, so you can choose whether you want to talk to the car or your phone by either a single-press or press-and-hold of the steering-wheel button.
With the latest update to BMW iDrive, both Apple Siri...
Earlier this year, we discovered buttons in iOS 6 that seem to imply that users will be able to purchase the songs that they listen to via Apple’s upcoming radio service.
AllThingsD reports that Apple has secured a deal with Sony to launch its long rumored iRadio service. You may recall Sony was the last major record label to secure as Apple had already signed deals with both Warner and Universal. We expect to see iRadio previewed at WWDC which kicks off Monday.
Sony Music has signed on to Apple’s forthcoming iRadio service, according to a person familiar with negotiations between the two companies.
WSJ previously reported that Apple will pay Warner 10% of ad revenue,...
Sony Music has reportedly signed a deal with Apple for its anticipated "iRadio" streaming music service, marking the last of the three major music labels to reach an agreement. ...
| Read more »The Department of Justice suffered an early blow in its antitrust case against Apple yesterday, reports say. Testifying in court was Google's director of strategic partnerships, Thomas Turvey. In previous written testimony, Turvey had claimed that representatives from book publishers told him in 2010 that they were switching to an agency model because Apple required it in its iBookstore contracts. Under cross-examination by Apple lawyer Orin Snyder however, it emerged that the written testimony was drafted with the help of Turvey's lawyers, and he was unsure who wrote the central allegation... ...
| Read more »Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com
Sony Music has signed on to Apple’s forthcoming iRadio service, according to a person familiar with negotiations between the two companies.
The deal means that Apple now has agreements with all three major music labels. Apple had been pushing music executives to come aboard in advance of its annual developer conference next week, so you should expect to hear an official announcement Monday.
It’s still possible that Apple may have hurdles to clear. As of earlier this week, the company had yet to sign up Sony/ATV, Sony’s music publishing arm.
But the gaps between Sony/ATV and Apple were supposedly smaller than the ones Sony Music and Apple were looking at a few days ago. I’ll update on that deal if I learn more. Apple has previously signed on Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, the two other major labels.
In any case, Apple isn’t expected to...
Apple is planning on starting its own in-store trade-in program for iPhones later this month. The program, according to anonymous sources, will help drive iPhone 5 sales while collecting older models to refurbish and sell in other markets.
The Mac Observer Spin:
Finding more ways to get iPhones into consumer's hands makes sense even though Apple already has a wildly successful product. Giving buyers more economical ways to start using iPhones ultimately means more life-long Apple customers, and more people using the company's other services, like the iTunes Store, as well.
Emulation specialist BlueStacks has an interesting feature up its sleeve for its upcoming GamePop console.
The company already announced that the device will be able to run games written for Android. But, in a surprise move, the startup is announcing Friday that the set-top box will also be capable of running games written for Apple phones and tablets. It’s doing that through a virtualization process BlueStacks is calling LookingGlass.
It would appear to be the first non-Apple device capable of pulling off such a feat.
“Developers really like this because it gives them another way to monetize,” CEO Rosen Sharma said in an interview. Those who have written their apps for iOS would work with BlueStacks to offer their games through...
In case you hadn’t heard: BlueStacks, the company with around 10M+ using its technology that brings Android games to PC and Mac, has recently been working on a new dedicated Android gaming console that aims to compete with OUYA and others in the space. It’s yet to launch, and up until today its big differentiator has been its $6.99/per month subscription model, but today it becomes the first to bring iOS games to the TV.
We spoke to John Gargiulo from BlueStacks who told us a little more about the announcement and how the company will bring iPhone and iPad games to the GamePop platform using its ‘Looking Glass’ technology. It’s also announcing its first major partner from the iOS developer world, and it happens to be creators of the hugely popular Fieldrunners series, Subatomic Studios.
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As for what developers will have to do before...
| Read more »A perfect game with which you can waste your entire Friday right from the comfort of your own desk (or couch, or chair, or bed, or ... wherever). Visit GeoGuessr, see a 3D view of someplace on earth, and get points for guessing it correctly. The closer you are, geographically, the more points you get. We're sorry, we know you had other things to do today. Just remember to come back here to TMO, because we've got some more cool stuff coming your way, too.
Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is right around the corner, and the company's opening keynote on June 10 will be its first public event in months. The recent dry spell hasn't stopped the rumor mill from churning—if anything, the absence of actual news has only fueled the speculation about the company's plans. Apple watchers are looking for something big, and even if you only subscribe to the most plausible rumors it looks like they're going to get it.
We've been following all of these rumors as they've unfolded, taking note of which ones seem likely based on Apple's public statements (and the company's past behavior). What follows is a list of what we think Apple is going to talk about on Monday—even if Apple doesn't have any big surprises up its sleeve, it looks like it will be a busy keynote.
iOS 7
Aurich Lawson
The next version of Apple's mobile operating system is expected to take center stage at the keynote, and for good reason: it will...
| Read more »Please join us on Monday at 10AM Pacific (1PM Eastern) as we liveblog this years WWDC keynote. From Ive-inspired interface updates to possible hardware announcements, we're all ready and eager for what WWDC will bring.
Have some predictions for WWDC 2013? Share them in the comments.Please join us Monday at 10 AM PT for the WWDC Keynote originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | ...
| Read more »Amid concerns that sales of the Galaxy S4 could disappoint, shares of Samsung fell more than 6 percent on Friday, in a selloff that mimics Apple's own losses driven by investor pessimism starting in late 2012. ...
| Read more »Apple's aggressive enforcement of environmental policies in China has turned activists ? who were once some of its harshest critics ? into ardent defenders. ...
| Read more »Warner Bros has revealed the Man of Steel game for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android smartphones and tablets. The game will be available from June 14, 2013 on the App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore for Android. We’ll keep you updated
More here.
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| Read more »
The antitrust trial pitting the U.S. Department of Justice against Apple over fixing e-book prices began this week, and it didn't take long for the company's lawyers to poke a hole in the government's case. On Wednesday, they showed through questioning that a key element of the DoJ's case had less to do with Apple colluding with publishers to hike e-book prices than with standard business practices. Apple cooked up a scheme with major publishers to increase the price of e-books, the DoJ maintains.
Claims made by The Washington Post that the National Security Agency was tapping into the servers of nine tech companies for details of user activity have been denied by Apple and most of the other companies alleged to be involved.
“We have never heard of PRISM,” said Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple. “We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”
Similar denial statements have been issued by Yahoo, Dropbox, Google, Microsoft and Facebook.
The Post published slides from what it said was a...
Lawyers patent-trolling their own clients is the latest evidence that the U.S. patent system has gotten out of control. But perhaps help is on the way. 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 other Apple-related products.
| Read more »Virtual city planners counting down the days until the June 11 release of SimCity for Mac will have to revise their calendars. The release date has been pushed back to August, according to a blog post on the SimCity website.
“We have made this tough decision because we do not believe it is ready for primetime yet,” wrote SimCity Senior Producer Kip Katsarelis. “We want to ensure the Mac is a great experience for our players and that is why we are taking more time.”
As a consolation, buyers of SimCity for Mac will get the SimCity Launch Park, an area that was made available to early adopters of SimCity for PC in update 4.0.
SimCity for Mac is available for pre-order though Electronic Arts’s Origin online store. The $80 Digital Deluxe version and the $60 standard version are available as...
| Read more »AT&T is streamlining its GoPhone prepaid brand by removing some of its data plan options from its cheapest offerings. The carrier will be limiting the number of data plans its customers can choose from on June 20th for its two lowest plans, forcing data-hungry customers to upgrade their plans to a more expensive version.... ...
| Read more »Despite debuting as the fastest selling smartphone in Samsung's history, fears that Galaxy S4 sales are slowing and that the company is trading profit margin for volume has led to $12 billion being wiped of its market cap. According to Reuters, the 6 percent share plunge follows the release of cheaper, lower spec Galaxy S4 variants including the Galaxy S4 Mini, which have much tighter profit margins. Further, analysts also believe that sales of the Galaxy S4 flagship are already starting to flatten out, while the mooted Apple iPhone trade-in scheme will put further downward pressure on Galaxy... ...
| Read more »The Washington Post is reporting on a program code-named PRISM that provides the U.S. National Security Agency and FBI with direct back-door access to the servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies to record and analyze audio and video conversations, email messages, online documents, and connection logs in order to track foreign targets. The firms in question include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple, with Dropbox “coming soon.” All deny knowledge of and involvement in PRISM. More details about PRISM will undoubtedly be forthcoming, but in the meantime, remember the dictum, “Don’t put anything on the Internet that you wouldn’t want on the front page of the New York Times.” 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...
| Read more »Under cross-examination from Apple's lawyers, a key government witness -- Amazon Vice President for Kindle Content Russell Grandinetti -- undermined a key element of the Department of Justice's case against the Cupertino giant by admitting that once it decided to move to the "agency model" under pressure from publishers, it demanded exactly the same terms from the publishers as Apple had required. The deal even included a 30 percent cut and a "most favored nation" (MFN) clause that is the crux of the DOJ's complaint against Apple.... ...
| Read more »Unless you are a cardiologist, learning about how the heart works can be an daunting task. Words alone can't describe it and static images can't capture the complexity of how the heart functions. Medical students, heart patients or anyone with an interest in cardiology should look beyond paper textbooks and take a look at HeartPhys from Dr. Michael Parker.
Dr. Parker is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and has a background in computer science. He brought those two skills together to create interactive medical books and web-based animations describing the heart, lungs and kidneys. The next logical step in making this material accessible to the public was to bring these multimedia elements to the iPad in the form of an educational app.
HeartPhys was born out of desire to educate medical students, physicians and heart patients about the heart and how it works. The...
| Read more »Just a day after respected UK newspaper The Guardian reported that a leaked secret US court order showed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was harvesting millions of phone records and "telephony metadata" from Verizon customers, a new report from The Guardian and the Washington Post has charged that the NSA is further using a secret program called PRISM to harvest usage data from the internal servers of most of America's major tech companies -- including Apple, Google, Microsoft and many others.... ...
| Read more »The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday called a Google director to testify against Apple in its antitrust case over e-book price fixing, but the move proved unhelpful at best as the executive buckled under questioning. ...
| Read more »Hulu has implemented wholesale changes to the user interface for the iPad. Starting in version 3.0 of the app, the iPad editin boasts a new UI design similar to that of the web interface. Additionally, the update fixes a number of bugs with both the iPhone/iPod Touch versions as well as the iPad.... ...
| Read more »It's that time again! TUAW and MacTech will be at WWDC and would like to talk to you. From MacTech:
Once again, MacTech Magazine and TUAW are joining forces to do a series of interviews and stories on those attending the 2013 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference. The interviews will explore what they think about the announcements Apple makes on Monday, what they are hearing, as well as what developers have in mind or coming.
MacTech and TUAW be doing a combination of video interviews and written stories and are currently taking requests for 10-minute appointments on June 11 at a location near Moscone West (easily walking distance). For more info go to http://www.mactech.com/WWDC-2013-Interview-Request .
"Our strong preference is principals from each company rather than public relations personnel...
| Read more »Advertising revenue generated specifically by YouTube has tripled on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets -- giving nearly $350 million to parent company Google's coffers. According to the search engine, about 250 million global users view content on handheld devices, forcing a shift in ad purchases to reach that audience.... ...
| Read more »Zen Studios is very well known for their pinball titles, which all feature great graphics, well-made themes, and excellent pinball table mechanics. Just today, Zen has brought their very popular Marvel Pinball game to iOS, and you can now download the app itself for 99 cents.
Unfortunately, that price is a strange one -- all it will get you is one Avengers-based table, which is interesting enough, with its various Avengers-style pinballs that you can send out into battle as you play for points against Loki. But there are 14 other tables to play with, and all of them need an in-app purchase of $1.99 each. That's it -- there's no way to earn or unlock tables from within the game itself, which is a missed opportunity at the very least. Charging users 99 cents to download the app for one table in this case just seems like charging for a free trial, unfortunately, and I wouldn't be too surprised if the...
| Read more »Nine technology companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, have been accused of giving the National Security Agency (NSA) direct access to the companies servers. Citing leaked documents, The Washington Post reported that the companies were all voluntarily participating in the programs, though Apple denied it was doing so.
You can say what you will about Gameloft (and lots of people do, as the company has earned a reputation for essentially copying HD console games onto Apple's iOS platforms), but this is at least true: The developer knows how to put a game together. Modern Combat is Gameloft's take on the extremely popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series, and the company has just released a trailer for Modern Combat 5, which serves as the latest and greatest full first-person shooter on iOS. Thanks to the success of Angry Birds, most iOS trailers consist of a series of cute animals playing around to some overly sweet music, but not this one. As you can see below, Gameloft has figured out how to draw a whole lot of realism out of the iPad and the iPhone.
Modern Combat 5 is set for a release in the fourth quarter...
| Read more »While users of each of the two major mobile platforms debate each one's merits and issues, in one aspect of comparison there is a clear and unequivocal difference between Android and iOS: Apple has a serious advantage when it comes to having its userbase all on the latest major version of its smartphone and tablet OS. A new study by mobile ad and market analyst Chitika shows that an astonishing 92.7 percent of iPhone owners are using iOS 6 as of June, while 82.9 percent of iPad owners are also using iOS 6 -- far ahead of Android users on OS 4.1 or later ("Jelly Bean").... ...
| Read more »In an interview on Thursday, YouTube's vice president of sales Lucas Watson disclosed that mobile ad sales have tripled over the past six months, suggesting the removal of Apple's ad-free version formerly baked into iOS was a key factor in driving revenue. ...
| Read more »Apple has told CNBC that it does not provide the U.S. government with direct access to its servers, contradicting a Washington Post report that the company, among others, is knowingly participating in a secret program that is allowing the government to monitor the activity of U.S. residents.
The program, code-named PRISM, was created in 2007 and is used by the National Security Agency and the FBI to provide information on everything from emails to photo and videos and connection logs to monitor a person's online movements -- all without having a warrant issued. The companies the Washington Post say have openly complied with PRISM...
| Read more »Finally we've received the third in the Mophie Juice Pack trilogy. First, it was the slender and lightweight Juice Pack Helium (US$79.95). Next, it was the classic Juice Pack Air ($99.95). Now Mophie has filled out the Juice Pack family with the ultra-big-capacity Juice Pack Plus for iPhone 5 ($119.95).
Design
Like the two other Juice Packs, the Juice Pack Plus has a two-piece design; an upper sleeve containing the battery that your iPhone 5 slides into, and a bottom portion that contains speaker channels, the charging connector, and a set of LEDs to tell you how much juice is in the pack.
As you'd expect from a battery case with a 2,100 mAh capacity (compared to 1,400 mAh for the Helium and 1,700 mAh for the Air), the Plus is thicker than the other kids in the family. The...
| Read more »Refuting a previous report, Anandtech has published in great detail why it believes that Apple is not using network provisioning to intentionally hobble the internet connection on iPhones and iPads. The debunk called the notion that Apple would do such a thing blatantly wrong, and notes that "there's both no incentive for them to do so, and any traffic management is better off done in the packet core of the respective network operator rather than on devices."... ...
| Read more »Game makers Electronic Arts and Maxis delivered some bad news for Mac gamers on Thursday, alerting them that the release of the Mac version of SimCity has been delayed until August. ...
| Read more »Q Branch announced on Thursday the release of Vesper, a note-taking and thought-organizing app for iPhone. Vesper allows users to take notes and ideas without imposing a specific method for doing so.
As more information regarding a secret Internet data mining initiative comes to light, one report reveals Apple staved off advances from both the NSA and FBI until six months after cofounder Steve Jobs died, though the company claims not to have even heard of the program. ...
| Read more »Last August Apple announced it had lost its license to include the iPhone-bundled YouTube app as a part of iOS 6. Google wanted to make its own app, one that had ads, unlike the one found in iOS 5. The move appears to have been a smart one. Bloomberg reports Google has tripled its mobile ad revenue in the last six months.
So what happened six months ago? Why the debut of Google's new ad-enabled YouTube app for iOS! The Bloomberg report goes on to say that more than half of all U.S. smartphone owners, at least 70 million people, have used a YouTube app of some sort, be it on an Apple or Android. With Apple's share of the U.S. at 39.2% according to a ComScore report released this...
| Read more »The ebook negotiations game, in case you were wondering, is hardball. Meanwhile, Apple may start trading places (for your iPhone) and your MacBook Air may become even more magical. The remainders for Thursday, June 6, 2013 just had two weeks left before retirement.
Apple ebooks trial: Amazon ‘yelled … and threatened’ when publishers tried to control prices (The Verge)
The ebook price-fixing trial continues apace, and we continue to hear about how Apple and Amazon negotiated with the publishers, which is starting to sound a bit like excerpts from Glengarry Glen Ross 2: Die Harder.
Apple Said to Start IPhone Trade-In Program in Stores (Bloomberg)
...
A seemingly incompatible perspective on the reports from the Washington Post and the Guardian today that the U.S. National Security Agency has for six years been operating a project called PRISM — for which Internet companies provide massive amounts of online user data crucial to intelligence operations — is that of the Internet companies themselves. They say they’ve never heard of it.
Said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling in a statement today, “We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with...
It's too soon to tell, but Samsung might have finally beaten Apple to become the United State's top smartphone maker, at least for now. A new report by the investment research firm Canaccord Genuity shows that Samsung beat Apple in US sales in May. In particular, Canaccord found the Galaxy S4, Galaxy Note II, and Galaxy S III sold more units combined than Apple's iPhone.
It's important to be aware of the methodology Canaccord used to develop their findings. The study surveyed only the retail stores of carriers AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. Apple Stores were not surveyed. At Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint stores the Galaxy S4 was the top-seller for the month of May. The iPhone 5 only beat the Galaxy S4 at AT&T stores.
According to Canaccord analyst T. Michael Walkley:
"While we believe Samsung and Apple maintained dominant share of the U.S....
| Read more »A Webkit bug report filed in Apple's own Radar system on May 8 has revealed an internal build number for the OS X 10.9 upgrade, also informing developers and others that Apple appears to be quite far along on testing the forthcoming major release. The filing, reported by AppleInsider, posts a presumed OS X 10.9 build numbered 13A451 -- the "13" referring to 10.9 (Mountain Lion's current build is 12E55), the "A" meaning a ".0" release, and the last digits indicating a build number. In this case, it suggests that Apple is very thoroughly testing the forthcoming release.... ...
| Read more »Hi, Mayors – today we are announcing that we are moving the release date of the Mac version of SimCity to August. We have made this tough decision because we do not believe it is ready for primetime yet. We want to ensure the Mac is a great experience for our players and that is why we are taking more time.
| Read more »Microsoft launched a free keyboard cover promotion for its Surface tablet, and Bryan Chaffin takes the opportunity to express some snarky smugness. Join him in his mocking!
Cambridge Audio has been known for its high-end audio systems and audiophile speakers for quite some time, and recently the company entered the world of Bluetooth speakers with the addition of the Minx Air range (US$449.00 - $599.00). Since those speakers might be a bit on the spendy side for many Apple device owners, Cambridge Audio today announced the much more affordable and portable Minx Go Portable Wireless Speaker ($149.00).
Available in black or white, the Minx Go includes 5 speakers and a bass radiator to blast out sound. That sound is practically guaranteed to be crisp and impressive, since the Minx Go also has an advanced Digital Sound Processor (DSP) and Digital/Analog Converter (DAC) to coax the details out of every recording.
Unlike most Bluetooth speakers, the Minx Go can be cranked up to full volume without any sound distortion...
| Read more »Despite making some progress on the game overall with recent patches, Maxis and Electronic Arts have revealed that the Macintosh version of the problem-plagued game Sim City, previously due June 11 has been pushed to an unspecified date in August. An official developer blog post by senior producer Kip Katsarelis made the decision because "we do not believe it is ready for primetime yet."... ...
| Read more »Hulu users that enjoy the streaming service on Apple's iPad can now download a new version of the app, one that features a full redesign, new capabilities, and features aimed at making discovering content easier than before. ...
| Read more »Things have been on a roll lately for Passbook-supported apps outside of North America. First it was easyJet, then British Airways, and then iTunes Festival London. Now the Subway UK app has finally gained Passbook support.
The new Subway UK app, Subcard, lets customers scan their iPhones at checkout to earn points towards free sandwiches. Additionally, users can browse their Subcard ID number and the total of number of points they've earned right in Passbook.
Currently Subway does not offer Passbook support in the US, nor does it have a country-wide Subway app.
...
| Read more »From 9to5Toys.com:
A large majority of the deals we cover each day come from a variety of ‘Daily Deal’ websites or are so popular that they don’t even last 24 hours. We know you can’t be at your computer every second, so we’re going to roundup the best deals each day to make sure you have a fair shot at the deals you want. Be sure to follow 9to5Toys.com so you never miss a deal... Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook
Today’s Featured deals:
...
Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has teamed up with BrightStar Corporation, a mobile-phone distributor, to begin an in-store trade-in program, according to an unnamed source. The program will help users with aging iPhone handsets transition to the more recent iPhone 5.
This isn't the first recycling program from Apple. Apple runs a Web-based recycling service in conjunction with PowerOn Services Inc., a company based in Roseville, CA. The company offers cash for used iPhones, iPads, and Macs. The program with BrightStar, however, will be available at Apple’s retail locations so that consumers will receive their money quickly and avoid having to deal with packaging and shipping products, as is standard with some other trade-in services. This tactic will also help ensure that the...
Just a day after a developer wrote a blog entry maintaining that Apple was intentionally limiting cellular download speeds for iPhone and iPad users on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, the claims have been withdrawn and his mistake in understanding how carrier bundle files has been explained. ...
| Read more »With Apple rumored to announce a refreshed MacBook lineup at its Worldwide Developers Conference next week, Gazelle on Thursday said its website has seen a substantial increase in traffic, with MacBook trade-ins jumping 171 percent compared to the period leading up to WWDC 2012. ...
| Read more »We've been asking why Android device owners don't seem to use their devices all that much for months at The Mac Observer. On Thursday, Flurry released a report with quantifiable data demonstrating the discrepancy in usage between iOS and Android device owners along with three possible reasons for that discrepancy. Bryan Chaffin offers his analysis.
“As a culture we have moved into a realm where the consumption of news is a near-constant process,” says Richard Gingras, Senior Director, News & Social Products at Google. “Users with smartphones and tablets are consuming news in bits and bites throughout the course of the day — replacing the old standard behaviors of news consumption over breakfast along with a leisurely read at the end of the day.”
So Google moved to the more creepy Google Now and Google Plus. No thanks.
∞ Read this on The Loop
Nerval's Lobster writes "Strengthened by an agreement with Apple that set the prices for their respective e-books higher, publishers strong-armed Amazon into giving them similar terms, an executive for the online retailer has testified in Manhattan federal court. The U.S. Department of Justice has taken Apple to court over the alleged price-fixing, after reaching out-of-court settlements with five publishers (HarperCollins Publishers LLC, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group, and MacMillian). Apple, which competes with Amazon in the e-book space, refused a similar settlement. "Certainly if someone offered reseller, we would have taken them up on that offer," Russell Grandinetti, Amazon's vice president for Kindle content, testified before the court, according to Reuters. "Reseller" means a company sells goods to a retailer for a particular price (usually wholesale), allowing the retailer to set the actual sales price. Under the terms of that model, Amazon could...
| Read more »Great article by John Kirk that looks beyond market share numbers.
∞ Read this on The Loop
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 June 6, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:15:00 EST. Please see our...
| Read more »Apple CEO Tim Cook’s suggestion that Apple is ready to open up the iPhone has developers champing at the bit.
Cook said at D11 that the company does plan on opening up more opportunities for developers, but didn’t go into specifics.
“I think you will see us open up more in the future,” he said. “But not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience.”
That leaves a lot of open questions as to what access Apple might grant developers and when. Details could come at Monday’s Worldwide Developer Conference, where Apple is set to show off the next version of its iOS operating system.
Among those eagerly hoping for good news is TouchType, the maker of the popular...
Matthew Panzarino over at The Next Web has a really insightful piece up discussing how interviewers and analysts afforded the chance to ask Apple CEO Tim Cook questions aren't really taking full advantage of the opportunity.
Following Tim Cook's interview at this year's All Things D conference, there seemed to be a collective yawn from people who found Cook's time on stage to be particularly uninteresting and not terribly informative.
Adam Lashinsky, who perhaps went a bit overboard in his critique, penned a piece titled, "The unbearable lightness of what Tim Cook says."
Here's a snippet:
It is a strange sight to see the CEO of Apple, a company known for its brilliance and vision, decline over and over to discuss just about anything in any detail. It was the...
| Read more »Apple is planning to launch its own iPhone trade-in program later this month, sources say. The company is reportedly partnering with Brightstar, a phone distributor that already takes care of trade-ins at carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile, as well as some phone makers. Although the program means paying for used hardware, it could encourage people to upgrade to new products; AT&T for example is paying up to $200 for a working iPhone 4 or 4S, which is enough to cover a 16GB iPhone 5 on contract.... ...
| Read more »Vesper (US$4.99) is a new iPhone app designed for the sole purpose of collecting and organizing your thoughts in a logical manner, and if the all-star development team is any indication, it should be a cutting-edge app with a modern, intuitive UI. The developers, a company named Q Branch, were kind enough to provide TUAW with a copy of Vesper for testing, and here are my first impressions of the app.
To begin, let's talk about Q Branch. It's made up of the stellar team of John Gruber (Daring Fireball, creator of Markdown), Dave Wiskus (former designer and creative officer at Black Pixel), and Brent Simmons (NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, Glassboard). The team formed after a chat at...
| Read more »Over the past week a number of 9to5 readers have noticed issues with their Facebook contacts within the Contacts app on iOS 6 and up that are automatically synced when logging into Facebook through Settings. Some users have taken to the Apple support forums to discuss the problem, noting that a large portion of their contacts from Facebook no longer appear in the iOS Contacts app. Rather than a bug, we reached out to Facebook about the problem who told us it’s actually Facebook’s new effort to remove “phone book entries that were not useful.”
In other words, Facebook is trying to remove some of the spam from your iOS Contacts app by no longer syncing friends that have no useful contact information. According to a Facebook spokesperson, friends that have no contact information on their profile other than a @facebook.com email address will not be synced to the Contacts address book going forward....
Photo by Nick Thulin
By this time in 2012, Apple had taken the stage and dominated the news cycle multiple times to announce products like a new iPad, Apple TV, new Mac operating system, and various other software for both iOS and OS X. However, the first half of 2013 has been low on Apple product introductions as the company, coming off of a big fall, has focused on minor tweaks to existing products.
Even though Apple has been out of the limelight, the Cupertino company has been hard at work on a slew of new hardware, software, and services products, and the company plans to...
Before/After (via Zach Kahn)
Hulu Plus for iOS received a major update today including an overhauled user-interface on the iPad, editor’s choice collections of content to view, and the ability to watch previews of content inline without going full-screen.
The update is available for free on the App Store.
//
What’s New in Version 3.0
We’re excited to introduce you to an entirely new Hulu Plus experience for iPad. In addition to hundreds of internal optimizations, the Hulu Plus app has been...
Reuters is reporting that among the announcements we'll see at next week's WWDC keynote, Apple will introduce a new music streaming service called iRadio. The service will be free and ad-supported, Reuters says those in the know claimed, and will feature ads from the iAds team. The service is designed to dive into the already crowded market of music-streaming services, which includes Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Slacker Radio and a number of other sizable options.
I will buy this rumor, but I don't know if Apple's plan is simply to just introduce "another" music streaming service. The company has been working hard with iCloud and iTunes Match to get you access to your music from any of your devices, and my guess is that any "iRadio" reveal would be along those lines, aimed at providing you direct access to any tunes...
| Read more »If you miss the old three-finger swipe upward on the trackpad to return to the top of a Web page, then you will like this keyboard shortcut. Originally posted at How To
| Read more »In an effort to sell more iPhone 5s, Apple will start an in-store iPhone trade-in program this month, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Apple is running the program in conjunction with mobile phone distributor Brightstar Corp. According to the report, “Used iPhones collected in the U.S. will…
| Read more »
