Alex Heath - page 9

Another day, another app from Facebook.

That seems to be the trend lately for the social networking giant, as seemingly every aspect of its service has been siloed into its own app. The latest is Facebook Groups for, you guessed it, managing and interacting with different groups.

As promised, Apple has given third-party developers tools to start making apps for the upcoming Apple Watch. Today the company announced the availability of WatchKit, its new SDK for creating app experiences on the wrist.

With WatchKit, developers will be able to make actionable notifications, Glances “for timely information accessible by an easy, quick look,” and eventually full-fledged apps. Early WatchKit partners like ESPN, Instagram, and American Airlines have already tested the new APIs for future versions of their apps.

We got a lot of great feedback from last week’s minimal iPhone 6 case roundup. Many of you suggested other cases to check out, and we got so many good recommendations that we decided to share them with everyone.

Not all of these cases are necessarily super slim and minimal, but they’re worth checking out if you’re in the market for something stylish and functional to cradle your precious iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

You’ve got a brand-spanking new iPhone 6, and boy is it beautiful. You love looking at it and holding its tender, curved edges, but you’re terrified that you’ll drop it and scratch it up. Or worse: shatter the screen into a million tiny pieces.

You need a case that’s protective, functional, and most importantly, good looking. Something minimal and preferably made of quality material. OtterBoxes are great if you’re worried about your iPhone getting run over by a tractor, but most of us want something sleeker for everyday use.

The good news is that there’s already a handful of sexy iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cases worth checking out. We’ve collected the very best:

Apple is preparing an unprecedented push into the world of enterprise, according to a new report from Reuters. After partnering with IBM in July to develop corporate software and services, Apple is building its own sales team to court clients.

Momentum is strong for Apple in a key market that executives have described as a long-term growth opportunity. New research shows that iOS market share gained in the enterprise sector last quarter while Android slipped.

Frequent Apple Store shoppers will love the company’s latest credit card partnership with Barclaycard and Visa. Like rewards cards from Amazon and others, you earn points when you spend that add up to free money.

“The Barclaycard Visa with Apple Rewards” card also offers special financing deals for new Apple product purchases.

One of the longstanding complaints about iMessage is how it can stay active even when you switch to an Android phone. The result is that texts often get sucked into some sort of purgatory where they never actually reach your contacts.

Today Apple released a new web tool that permanently deregisters phone numbers from iMessage. Anyone can enter their phone number and cut all ties with Apple’s messaging platform for good.

The iOS 8 Pangu jailbreak tool was made available on the Mac today after being on Windows only for the past few weeks.

Apple is working on a new pair of Beats headphones, according to leaked FCC documents. They work over Bluetooth and appear to be pretty much identical to the Solo2 headphones Beats released in May.

Remember the iPhone 6 “prototype” that was listed on eBay and almost sold for $100,000 before getting mysteriously pulled? It was relisted last week and just sold for $11,100.

The seller got what he thought was a brand new iPhone 6 from Verizon only to find what appeared to be an unfinished prototype running internal software. After he told us that he was excited to hear from Apple regarding the prototype, the listing was suddenly taken down.

Today Apple quietly added a new feature to the developer beta version of iCloud.com. Photos can now be uploaded directly from the browser to a user’s iCloud Photo Library, which was introduced with iOS 8.1.

Since Apple isn’t releasing its new Photos app for OS X until next year, this could very well be the only way to upload photos to iCloud from a desktop for months.

Today’s good news: a new Toy Story movie.

Pixar just announced that it’s releasing the fourth installment of Toy Story in June 2017. The movie will be directed by John Lasseter, the legend who directed the first two movies and currently serves as Chief Creative Officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Toy Story 3 came out in 2010 and earned nearly $1.1 billion worldwide at the box office. No plot or character details about Toy Story 4 have been revealed yet.

Via: Variety

iOS 8 has been technically jailbroken since October 22, but it’s taken weeks to get it polished enough for Cydia, the jailbreak alternative to the App Store.

Now that things are “stable enough,” Cydia creator Jay Freeman has flipped the switch to start allowing the sale of iOS 8 tweaks and themes.

Today CBS News added a new channel to the Apple TV. The network’s CBSN channel is the first of its kind to offer live, anchored coverage without a cable subscription.

CBS is now seriously competing with Fox, ABC, CNBC and other competitors on the Apple TV with a mix of streaming news and on-demand content.

(Updated with Apple statement below.)

A new class of malware targeted at OS X and iOS is spreading like wildfire in China, according to new research by Palo Alto Networks. Dubbed WireLurker, the trojan hides itself in apps distributed through a third-party Chinese app store for OS X and side-loads itself onto iOS devices via USB.

What sets WireLurker apart from other malware is that it is capable of infecting non-jailbroken iOS devices, and it heralds “a new era in malware attacking Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.”

Today AT&T announced a Next 24 plan that allows you to pay for your phone in small payments over the course of 30 months, with the option to upgrade after two years.

The new 24-month plan joins Next’s current 12 and 18-month upgrade options, which AT&T has been promoting heavily to get subscribers off traditional two-year contracts.

The hot potato game of who will play Steve Jobs in Sony’s biopic continues. Christian Bale was attached to the role until yesterday, and before that Leonardo DiCaprio’s name was in the mix.

Now it’s being reported that Michael Fassbender is considering filling the Apple co-founder’s shoes. Sony is “moving quickly” to find a replacement for Bale, and Fassbender has entered “early talks,” reports Variety.

The seemingly never-ending saga of Apple vs. CurrentC may come to an end sooner than expected. When CVS and Rite Aid turned off NFC support to block Apple Pay, it became clear that were backing CurrentC, a rival mobile wallet service coming in 2015.

Despite repeatedly denying any sort of enforced Apple Pay ban, MCX, the consortium behind CurrentC, is holding its merchant partners to an exclusivity agreement. The good news is that the agreement is set to expire in less than a year.

A group of banks added support for Apple Pay today, including USAA, PNC Bank, US Bank, Barclaycard and Navy Federal Credit Union.

USAA and PNC had previously said Apple Pay wouldn’t be supported until November 7, but their cards have already started working in Passbook as of this morning.

Apple is expected to announce a huge iPad in early 2015, and a new report details some of the tablet’s specs.

According to the reliable Japanese site Macotakara, the larger iPad (or ‘iPad Pro’, as it’s been dubbed by the press) will feature a 12.2-inch display and improved stereo audio. The device will also reportedly be about as thin as an iPhone.

Facebook apps for the Mac have come and gone over the years, but none have managed to capture much attention. A new contender has the goods to stick around.

After working at Apple as an engineer on WebKit and iAd, Scott Kyle decided to get into indie app development. His first stab at it is Current, a new Facebook app for OS X that lives primarily in the menubar. With quality design, notifications, a classic chat interface, and some other tricks up its sleeve, Current makes Facebook feel at home on the Mac.

For the last year or two, Spotify’s iPad app has been sadly, pathetically ignored. Like Twitter for Mac and Tweetbot for iPad, the app has lagged behind the iPhone version so badly that it almost feels like using a different service.

So the use of the word finally is very fitting when describing Spotify’s big update today on the iPad.

Yesterday Apple notified indie developed James Thomson that he would have to remove the iOS 8 widget from his calculator app, PCalc. After the news received a good amount of backlash and press attention, Apple has reversed its stance on the issue.

When you live in Apple’s world as a third-party developer, you are required to play by Apple’s rules. And sometimes those rules are subject to sudden change.

James Thomson, the developer behind the scientific calculator app PCalc, was notified today by Apple that his iOS 8 widget must be removed. The reason? A new stipulation that iOS widgets cannot perform calculations.

The reasoning behind Apple’s decision may never be known by Thomson or anyone outside the company, and that’s just the point. The App Store is Apple’s kingdom to rule, for better or worse.