Alex Heath - page 21

Everyone expects Apple to release a larger 4.7-inch iPhone this fall, and there are reports of an even larger 5.5-inch model floating around the supply chain. Heck, we’ve seen 12-inch iPad parts leak recently. It’s pretty clear that displays are only going to be getting bigger.

Developers will need to update their apps to fit new screen sizes, and today Apple provided a way for them to do just that.

Apple has posted the full video stream of its WWDC keynote from this morning on its website. The video should also hit Apple’s podcast feed for live events shortly.

At two hours, today’s keynote is jam packed with software announcements for iOS and the Mac. In typical Apple fashion, there were plenty of great moments, funny jokes, and positive adjectives.

The video tribute to developers Apple showed at the beginning of the keynote has also been posted on YouTube:

Apple’s WWDC keynote just ended, and betas of the new iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are already available to download for developers.

iOS 8 beta 1 and the developer preview of OS X Yosemite can be downloaded from their respective Dev Centers. Both are huge releases that will be available to the public in the coming months.

The iPhone 4s/iPad 2 and up can run iOS 8. Both Yosemite and iOS 8 are scheduled to come out this fall.

We’ll be combing through this new software to find all of the new and hidden features. Stay tuned. Our liveblog has all the other juicy details from the keynote.

Source: Apple

It’s the eve of the Worldwide Developers Conference kickoff, and tomorrow morning Apple will hold its first media event of 2014. Like always, there’s a ton of speculation on what will and won’t be announced.

Some last-minute reports share new information on what to expect from the stage tomorrow in more areas than just iOS 8 and OS X 10.10.

Apple’s first keynote of the year is taking place tomorrow morning to kick off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.

App Store developers from around the world started arriving in San Francisco over the weekend for the week-long conference. At event registration today in the Moscone Center, Apple gave each dev with a ticket some special swag. Excitement appears to be in the air. Before it was barely dinnertime, a line for tomorrow’s keynote started forming.

For any Apple coder, attending the annual Worldwide Developers Conference is a coveted opportunity. But for the young recipients of WWDC 2014 Student Scholarships, a free ticket to the event means more than an adventure in geekery; it’s the crowning achievement of their blossoming careers.

Take Shaan Singh, a 14-year-old developer and designer whose iPhone finance app Budgetize helped him bag a scholarship to WWDC, a prize that’s something like winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

“It’s a big honor for me to be selected because I made an app that I feel was creative and smart, and Apple thinks so too,” he told Cult of Mac. “I’ve always admired Apple’s design, and I’m excited that they like mine too.”

OS X 10.10, which Apple is expected to show at its Worldwide Developers Conference Monday morning, could very well be named after one of California’s most well-known national parks. While setting up for WWDC at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Apple has put up a banner for the next version of OS X that features Yosemite in the background.

In case you somehow doubted that Apple would reveal iOS 8 next week at its Worldwide Developers Conference, here’s the confirmation. Apple has started putting up iOS 8 banners along with giant signage and logos outside the conference’s venue in downtown San Francisco.

Cole Rise has nearly one million followers on Instagram and the hottest new photography app in the App Store. He also made seven of Instagram’s built-in filters, which explains where the name for the “Rise” filter originates.

His app, Litely, is less than a month old with over 3 million downloads. Considering he was one of the first 100 people on Instagram, he really gets mobile photography and where it’s headed. During our conversation, Rise goes behind the scenes of Litely’s development, shares his influence on Instagram during its early days, and gives some great advice on how to take better pictures.

The smartwatch race is on, and Microsoft has its own contender in the works.

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch lineup is widely considered a dud, and many are waiting to see what Apple has up its sleeve with the iWatch. Not to be left behind, Microsoft is gunning for the fitness market with a wearable of its own that could arrive as early as this summer..

Perhaps most surprising of all is that Microsoft’s device will reportedly be platform agnostic, meaning it would work with Android and even the iPhone.

Beats Music is now officially being bought by Apple, and to celebrate, the streaming-music service is extending its free trial and lowering the cost of a yearly subscription by $20.

Apple’s acquisition of Beats is official, and it’s clear that the move is more about the talent Apple is getting than anything else.

After the buyout was announced this afternoon, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained the reasoning behind the company’s decision. “What Beats brings to Apple are guys with very rare skills,” he said in an interview with Re/code. “People like this aren’t born every day. They’re very rare. They really get music deeply. So we get infusion in Apple of some great talent.”

So it’s obvious that Apple thinks very highly of the people at Beats. But who exactly are they getting as part of the deal?

Two weeks after the news of the deal was first reported, Apple has officially announced its buyout of Beats Electronics for $3 billion.

Apple will keep the Beats headphone and Beats Music brands separate as part of the deal. As previously reported, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine will join Apple full time.

“Music is such an important part of all of our lives and holds a special place within our hearts at Apple,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “That’s why we have kept investing in music and are bringing together these extraordinary teams so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the world.”

An analyst has traveled to Apple’s supply chain in Taiwan, and he claims to have learned about the rumored iWatch.

While the design of Apple’s upcoming wearable has been a point of contention so far, Brian Blair of Rosenblatt Securities claims that it will feature a round face. He also backs up previous reports that the device will go into production this summer. Based on the increasing frequency of such claims, we may see an actual iWatch materialize by the end of this year.

And that’s not all Blair has learned from supply chain sources.

For those with access to its mobile app, Uber is quickly becoming the preferred method of transportation over traditional taxis.

It’s a lot easier to summon a ride with a tap on your iPhone screen than hailing down a cab on the side of the street. For drivers, Uber is proving to be not only easier, but incredibly lucrative.

Apple wants to keep a tight grip on its supply chain, but it’s caught in a bidding war over a key component supplier for the iPhone.

Renesas Electronics has been in talks with Apple about Cupertino taking over a unit of the Japanese company that makes all the iPhone’s display chips. Apple has been interested in the purchase, but it’s now set to lose to a higher bid from Synaptics, a screenmaker that already works with Apple and its competitors.

Apple’s first keynote of the year is scheduled to take place this coming Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. And like clockwork, banners and signage for the event have started going up at the conference’s venue, Moscone West.

Apple has made a slight but also important update to the way the App Store handles apps that have been refunded by developers to customers.

While you used to be able to request a refund for a paid app and continue getting updates, that is no longer the case.  Once a refund has been granted, the customer is unable to get support for the app or download it again.

If you thought that round two of Apple vs. Samsung was the end, you are sadly mistaken.

Although Apple recently won $119 million in a second victory against Samsung in patent court, that modest figure is nowhere near enough to make Apple back down. Not only is Apple seeking a retrial, but it wants to ban past and potentially future Samsung phones from being sold.

Apple’s two latest ads in its expanding ‘Your Verse’ campaign tout the iPad as a content creation tool and instrumental part of the creative process. Calling them merely “ads” doesn’t actually do them justice, as they are much fuller stories than 30-second TV spots on Apple’s website.

Called “Orchestrating Sound” and “Exploring Without Limits,” the first narrative is a profile of renowned composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and how he uses the iPad to make symphonies. The second addition follows the deaf travel blogger Chérie King and how she uses the iPad on all of her trips around the world.

Countless “endless runner” games have made it big in the App Store—all the way back to Canabalt in 2009. Now we have more titles like Tiny Wings and Badland that pride themselves on not only fun, causal gameplay, but immersive design.

The next game in the endless runner camp to make it big could very well be Alto’s Adventure, an upcoming title from Snowman, the small developer behind popular to-do app Checkmark. In an exclusive peek at the game’s artwork given to Cult of Mac, we’re shown the incredible design that’s going into bringing Alto’s Adventure to life.

The recently revealed exploit that allows anyone to bypass the iPhone’s Activation Lock system is a rather simple process that requires adding just a single line of code to a computer running iTunes.

The exploit, which is called DoulCi (“iCloud” backward), has already been used thousands of times on locked iPhones and iPads around the world. It’s the work of a pair of anonymous hackers, who cracked Apple’s theft-deterrent measure by tricking lost or stolen iOS devices into thinking they are being reactivated by Apple’s servers.

What if you had access to any song you wanted while you were DJing? “It’s like giving a chef infinite resources for ingredients,” explains Algoriddim co-founder and CEO Karim Morsy. Algoriddim’s popular djay app is getting a major update today that gives users the ability to mix and match millions of tracks on the iPhone and iPad.

Thanks to a partnership with Spotify, djay users can now play any of the streaming’s service’s 20 million songs. Some fancy audio matching technology also makes it incredibly easy to match and discover new tracks.

While construction of its new campus is underway, Apple is having trouble accommodating its workforce in the Cupertino, California area.

Apple is now leasing a 290,000-square-foot office complex in Sunnyvale, an area north of Cupertino and just east of Mountain View. Up to 1,450 employees could be moved into the space, reports the San Jose Mercury News. Since it will be years before its massive “Campus 2” is ready to be occupied, Apple continues to struggle not having enough space for its corporate workforce.

An anonymous hacker who has exploited an iCloud security flaw that lets anyone unlock a lost or stolen iPhone says Apple contacted him about the matter today, but he deleted the email.

“They have asked me to contact [them] as quickly as possible, but why now?” the hacker, who goes by AquaXetine, said in an email to Cult of Mac. “I’ve already warned Apple couple months ago.” Cult of Mac confirmed that the email did in fact come from Apple.

The hack, which is the first of its kind, bypasses the iCloud security system for locked iOS devices called Activation Lock. By using the free DoulCi site, which appeared to be offline most of the day but is now back up, a locked iOS device can be tricked into thinking it’s talking to Apple’s iCloud servers when connected to a computer.