Alex Heath - page 10

It’s not like bagging a burrito at Taco Bell takes a long time, but the fast-food chain’s hot new mobile app makes ordering unbelievably fast and frictionless.

The app promises that you’ll be able to order anything off the menu, pay for it, and have it prepared for you when you arrive. Not quite revolutionary, but a deliberate stab at modernizing the drive-thru experience. Order from your iPhone, and you get to skip the line.

It’s not every day that I get to write about Taco Bell, so I jumped at the opportunity to give it a test drive. Here’s my experience with the Taco Bell app from start to finish:

What if you could skip the late-night line at Taco Bell by ordering from your phone? It would be Doritos Locos heaven.

Taco Bell is trying to reinvent the drive-through with a new mobile app released today for iOS and Android. The entire Taco Bell menu is available inside the app, with all the customization options you can get in-person (and some app-exclusive food items coming in the future). Most importantly, you can place orders from anywhere and have them ready when you arrive.

Whether you’re a Mac novice or a seasoned veteran, there are a ton of tips and ticks out there for mastering OS X Yosemite. In Part 2 of our Yosemite tip series, we gather more of the very best.

Tim Cook gave a rare public interview on Monday night at the Wall Street Journal’s new tech conference, WSJD. The Apple CEO touched on a range of topics, including Apple Pay’s success, a big potential partnership, why the iPod classic was discontinued, and more.

Here are the biggest takeaways from Cook’s comments:

Banks and credit card companies have been heavily pushing Apple Pay already, but perhaps the biggest gesture of support so far is from Wells Fargo.

In a promotion announced today, Wells Fargo said that it will pay customers up to $20 just for trying Apple Pay.

Two major pharmacy chains have stopped supporting Apple Pay as merchants in the U.S. take sides on which mobile wallet platform to embrace.

Reports from a couple days ago revealed that Rite Aid had started disabling its NFC terminals, thereby forbidding the use of Apple Pay and Google Wallet. Now CVS has reportedly started shutting down its NFC terminals.

The Apple SIM in the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 is based on an awesome idea—who doesn’t want to switch carriers with a tap of the screen? But the actual utility of the Apple SIM is pretty muddled, as evidenced by AT&T locking the SIM to its network.

Amazon added Apple Pay support today for its Amazon.com Rewards Visa.

Since Chase, the Amazon rewards card issuer, was an Apple Pay launch partner, some speculated that Amazon intentionally opted out of Apple’s mobile payments system. But Amazon quickly confirmed this week that it was working on adding support for its credit card in the near future. Now it’s followed through.

Christian Bale is Steve Jobs. The Oscar-winning actor has officially signed on to play the late Apple co-founder in Sony’s upcoming movie based on Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay. Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle is attached to the project, but no other cast or crew members have been confirmed.

A lot of big Hollywood actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, have been in talks to play Jobs at some point, but Bale’s name stayed in the hat till the very end. Looking at Bale as an actor, it’s easy to see why. Here’s why he will play the perfect Steve Jobs.

A crucial part of making apps involves the beta testing process, and Apple has released a new tool to help streamline the process for everyone.

After initially previewing TestFlight for third-party developers alongside iOS 8 at WWDC in June, Apple made it available for use today. Developers can now invite up to 1,000 beta testers, including non-developers, to try early builds of their apps before they hit the App Store.

Apple appears to have acquihired the small team behind Pin Drop, a location-bookmarking app set to close down at the end of the month.

Based on redacted information, Cult of Mac has reason to believe that at least some members of Caffeinehit, the London-based development team behind Pin Drop’s iOS and Android apps, will soon be part of Apple’s iOS engineering team.

Thanks to how apps can hook into each other with Extensibility in iOS 8, third-party developers are able to rival the systemwide functionality of Apple’s stock apps like never before.

So is the case with Flexibits, maker of the popular calendar app Fantastical. In a big 2.2 update today, Fantastical has not only been optimized for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but it’s received a number of iOS 8-only features.

Preorders for the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 will start arriving on doorsteps as soon as tomorrow, and now a flood of early reviews has hit the web.

There’s a general theme throughout these dozen or so reviews of Apple’s newest tablets: boring. While these are unequivocally the best iPads every (like every year since the original), that’s not quite enough anymore.

Recent reports of iCloud phishing attempts in China illustrate just how important it is always verify that you’re logging into legitimate websites before you enter your precious passwords.

To help, Apple today outlined how users can protect themselves from phishing attacks, in which bad guys pose as legitimate entities in an attempt to gain sensitive data on the web. Apple’s simple PSA page shows how web surfers can verify the authenticity of any website.

This morning I woke up and slide my finger down my iPhone’s lockscreen to see the weather. With a single line of text, Dark Sky told me what it felt like outside and that it would be overcast for at least the next hour. No need for sunglasses then.

There are a lot of weather apps out there to choose from, and I’ve tried a lot of them. But in terms of features, design, and actual usefulness, none comes close to being as good as Dark Sky.

While Apple Pay is technically limited to the United States, iPhone owners around the world are having luck using the service with cards issued in the U.S. Reports out of Australia show Apple Pay working like normal at NFC terminals down under.

The first iOS app to receive Apple Pay integration is of course one of Apple’s very own. The official Apple Store app has been updated with “easy one-touch checkout with Apple Pay” on Touch ID-equipped iOS devices.

Using Apple Pay requires iOS 8.1 and a credit or debit card on file in Passbook. While NFC in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is required for making Apple Pay transactions at physical stores, online payments only require Touch ID. That means you can use Apple Pay through apps on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 3.

Several other apps should be updated with Apple Pay support any minute now, including Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Groupon, Instacart, OpenTable, MLB.com, Panera Bread, Target, and the Disney Store app.

Source: App Store

Apple just released iOS 8.1, bringing Apple Pay, iCloud Photo Library and other new features to the mobile operating system.

Available now via Software Update, iOS 8.1 will let you quickly set up Apple Pay on compatible devices. Upgraders running OS X Yosemite will also notice additional Continuity features that let iOS 8 work with the latest version of the Mac operating system.

The folks at iFixit have already gotten their hands on a new 27-inch Retina iMac, and their teardown reveals everything you need to know about the machine’s innards.

Thanks to a rear access door, the RAM in the new iMac remains user upgradable without needing to open the case. Most of the iMac’s internal design has stayed the same from last year’s model.

OS X Yosemite packs a lot of new features inside a cleaner, flatter interface on the Mac. It’s a big upgrade, and there’s a lot to take in at first glance.

Whether you’re a Mac novice or a seasoned expert, there’s plenty to explore in the latest version of OS X. Wondering how to get started? Here are some of the best tips and tricks for getting the most out of Yosemite: 

Like any new Apple software release, OS X Yosemite has great third-party apps that are worth checking out.

Developers can take advantage of iOS 8-like extensions, Handoff, iCloud Drive, Notification Center widgets, and more to create a better experience. Many apps also need to be updated aesthetically to look at home in Yosemite’s cleaner, flatter design. The ones that aren’t updated stick out like sore thumbs.

We’ve collected a running list of the best third-party apps that are already optimized for Yosemite:

Now that OS X Yosemite is out, many of Apple’s own apps are getting updated with design tweaks and features like Handoff and iCloud Drive.

The iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) has been updated on both OS X and iOS with Yosemite compatibility.

After announcing new iPads and Macs today, Apple has unleashed OS X Yosemite on the world as a free download in the Mac App Store. Yosemite is a major upgrade to OS X that’s been in developer and public beta for the past several months.

“OS X Yosemite is the most advanced version of OS X we’ve ever built, with a brand new design, amazing Continuity features and powerful versions of the apps you use every day,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, in a statement. “OS X Yosemite ushers in the future of computing, where your Apple devices all work together seamlessly and magically. It’s something only Apple can do, and it’s available today.”

Before you install Yosemite, make sure your Mac is supported.

There’s a really cool feature in today’s new iPads that got zero stage time during the keynote. Apple has built its own SIM card that allows the user to switch between different carriers and plans right from iOS.