Alex Heath - page 44

This woman was told something about her Apple Care AND SHE WAS JUST TOLD IT OK!!!

(Also, this kind of thing is what Vine was made for.)

Record iPhone sales helped Apple beat Wall Street estimates for 2013’s third fiscal quarter, but the company’s profits declined and its earnings barely rose, dragged down by slumping sales of other products. Still, investors liked what they heard, with Apple stock rising in after-hours trading following the news.

Apple reported revenue of $35.3 billion and a net profit of $6.9 billion, or $7.47 per diluted share, for Q3 2013. The revenue surpassed Wall Street’s consensus of $35.18 billion; the company’s own prediction for the quarter had been $33.5 billion to $35.5 billion.

How many people do you know that have an expensive home security system that they never turn on? Maybe that person is you. Security systems can cost a lot, and unless you’re protecting a million dollar home or your drug money (or both), most of us don’t need something so fancy.

Canary is a new product that calls itself “the world’s first smart home security device for everyone.”

Last Thursday, Apple’s online Developer Center went down for maintenance. While the regular outage typically lasts a few hours, it wasn’t until Sunday night that Apple acknowledged the issue. In a message to its developer community and the press, Apple explained that an “intruder” had breached the Dev Center’s database. Apple claimed that no personal data was stolen from its users, but the threat was great enough to warrant a complete rebuilding of the site’s backend.

A Turkish security researcher by the name of Ibrahim Balic has come forward as the person responsible for the hack, although he claims no foul play and has submitted his bugs to Apple. More information has been revealed regarding how Balic got past Apple’s security.

Apple’s Dev Center has been down since Thursday, but that isn’t stopping the company from releasing new beta software to developers.

Earlier today, we cautioned that the hacking of the Dev Center could result in delayed updates to the iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks betas. But Apple has still pushed out the fourth developer preview of Mavericks today.

Until the Dev Center comes back online, developers won’t be able to login and directly download the new version of Mavericks. The update is only currently available in the Mac App Store for those already on a previous version of the beta operating system.

The third developer preview Mavericks came out two weeks ago. We’ll let you know if there’s anything of note in today’s version.

Have you ever wished you could record your iPhone’s screen activity? Short of a tool on the Mac like Reflector, it’s hard to capture video of iOS in action. Apple doesn’t allow apps in the App Store that can record video of anything on the screen… until now.

A new app called xRec has managed to slip into the App Store, and it can fully record the iPhone’s screen, including any audio.

Today AT&T unveiled two new Mobile Share plans. The carrier’s shared plans originally debuted last summer, and now two more options are being brought into the fold. For $20 per month, subscribers can have 300MB of shared data for $20 and 2GB for $50. The new plans will be available to all subscribers on Friday, July 26th.

A couple of days ago, it was reported that Apple had bought HopStop, a mapping app that specializes in transit directions. Apple confirmed the acquisition shortly after the news surfaced. HopStop is currently a top navigation app in the iOS App Store.

Now HopStop’s Windows Phone app has vanished. Big shocker, right?

Apple is prototyping larger versions of the iPad and iPhone, according to The Wall Street Journal’s supply chain sources overseas. Details are scare, but the report states that Apple is considering a 13-inch display for the iPad, which would be quite the increase from the current 9.7-inch display.

After days of being down, Apple has explained why its Developer Center is unavailable. The above message is being emailed out to registered developers and the press, revealing that the developer site was targeted by a hacker earlier this week.

Apple is saying there’s no evidence personal data was stolen, but the hack was serious enough to warrant a complete shutdown and internal restructuring of the site’s database.

Apple is buying HopStop, a small company that specializes in transit directions, according to Bloomberg. Google Maps offers built-in transit directions while Apple Maps does not, so this acquisition makes perfect sense if Apple wants to makes its mapping solution more attractive.

Apple’s Developer Center is where it keeps the documentation and resources third-party developers need to make their apps. If a registered developer needs to download the latest iOS or OS X build, they go to the Dev Center. It’s an invaluable resource Apple provides for $100 per year to each person in its developer program.

When the Dev Center goes down for maintenance, it usually only lasts for a few minutes. But for some unknown reason, the Dev Center has been down for well over 24 hours. Developers are scratching their heads on Twitter, and Apple hasn’t said anything.

If you use Reddit and own an iPhone, chances are you’ve heard of Alien Blue. It’s considered the go-to client for Reddit on the iPhone and iPad, and up until now it didn’t have any real competition.

A new app called Ruby for Reddit is out, and it offers a load of features while adhering to a more minimalist, clean design.

Government officials have hired security experts from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center to crack Apple’s new security methods in iOS 7. In a preemptive attempt to curb an influx in smartphone theft, San Francisco’s District Attorney and New York’s Attorney General are putting Apple to the test. Samsung’s Galaxy S4 will also be examined.

Leap Motion is a futuristic, Minority Report-like desktop platform that uses physical gestures to interact with apps. The hardware controller has been delayed a couple times, but it is finally scheduled to ship alongside a dedicated app store on July 22nd.

All kinds of content creators are working on integrating Leap Motion into their apps, including The New York Times. The American publication will offer a “Top News” app for Leap Motion customers that uses hand gestures to browse and read articles.

Savvy Apps makes Agenda, one of the most popular third-party calendar apps for iOS. Today Agenda hit version 4.0 with a complete redesign, new gestures, and integration with other great third-party apps.

“With over 3 million updates since launch, we did something right with Agenda,” said Savvy Apps. “That’s why Agenda Calendar 4 is a brand new app that maintains the spirit of what everyone has loved, while reimagining every last detail of what makes a great calendar app.”

Try misspelling “abortion” in iOS. Does Apple help you spellcheck it like most of your mistakes? Nope.

It turns out that there’s a huge collection of controversial lingo and not-so-controversial-lingo that Apple takes a hands-off approach to with spellcheck.

Apple’s CEO wants to sell more iPhones, but only in his stores. The iPhone is Apple’s cash cow with its high profit margins, and it creates a “halo effect” that causes customers to buy other Apple products.

Less than 20% of iPhones are currently sold in Apple Stores, and Cook won’t stand for it. Despite the fact that 80% of customers buy their iPhones elsewhere, 50% bring them into the Apple Store to get serviced. If Cook wants the sales/repairs ratio to improve, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.

Google has released version 28 (yes, 28) of Chrome for iOS in the App Store. The universal app now has “improved interoperability with many other Google Apps” and a host of other improvements.

Here’s the full list of changes:

When I saw that the developers behind DaisyDisk had a new app, I had to check it out. In case you don’t know, DaisyDisk is the best Mac app for visualizing the contents of your hard drive and deleting unwanted stuff.

The company behind DaisyDisk, Software Ambience, has released LilyView, a lightweight Preview replacement for the Mac.

Today Microsoft released iPhone and iPad versions of Outlook in the App Store. The native iOS app offers features that the mobile web version can’t, like incoming mail notifications.

Microsoft’s release notes:

Apple has been trying to get a TV streaming service off the ground for quite some time. Instead of requiring your expensive cable subscription, Apple’s approach would likely be internet-only and rely on individual deals with the networks.

In order to entice the networks, Apple has proposed an interesting business model for advertising. According to a new report, Apple wants to compensate networks by paying them for ads that viewers have skipped.

Apple swears that it can’t read your iMessages, but with the NSA monitoring just about everything you do on the internet these days, complete security is rarely guaranteed. Heml.is is a new messaging app from a group of Swedish developers, including a co-founder of The Pirate Bay.

The main focus of Heml.is is privacy, although the app also boasts a pretty, iOS 7-like design. End-to-end encryption will keep anyone from being able to intercept messages, including the guys behind Heml.is. Since “Hemlis” literally means “secret” in Swedish, the developers want their product to live up to its name.

Apple is helping look into how the iPhone 5 played a role in the death of Ma Ailun, a 23-year-old woman from the Xinjiang region in western China. Ma, a flight attendant for China Southern Airlines, was electrocuted to death after taking a call on her iPhone while it was charging.

Apple is “aggressively” hiring new talent to make the rumored ‘iWatch’ a reality, according to a report today from the Financial Times. The last specific claim we heard regarding the iWatch was when Bloomberg said Apple wanted to launch the product this year after placing a team of around 100 product designers on the project. Engineering issues have caused Apple to seek outside help, and now the Financial Times believes that we won’t see the iWatch until late 2014.