Buster Hein - page 146

Along with today’s release of iOS 8.3 beta 2 to developers, Apple has also seeded a new version of OS X 10.10.3 on the Mac Dev Center.

The second beta preview comes two weeks after Apple released the OS X 10.10.3 to developers with a preview of the new Photos app. The new preview build 14D87h can be found in the Mac App Store or in the dev center.

Apple added two-factor authentication, an improved emoji layout, and paved the way for racially diverse in emoji in the last beta build. The release notes don’t mention any new features, but we’ll let you know what we find once it’s installed on our machines.

We’re still waiting for the release of iOS 8.2 but Apple just pushed out the second beta build of iOS 8.3 to developers.

The software update was made available this morning in the iOS Dev Center. Along with iOS 8.3 beta 2, Apple released beta build 2 of Xcode 6.3, which includes Swift 1.2. There’s also a new pre-release version of Apple TV beta for the third-generation Apple TV.

The iOS 8.3 beta 2 release notes don’t mention any new features, but we’ll tell you about all the goodies we find as soon as it’s installed on our iPhones. In the meantime, check out our feature on the new additions in iOS 8.3 beta 1, which included a new emoji layout, CarPlay features, two-factor authentication for Google, and Apple Pay support for China. Or use  the direct download links below to jump into iOS 8.3 beta 2:

Toyota was one of the first car manufacturers to announce it would support CarPlay, but the company is pulling back on its plans to embrace Apple’s car infotainment system. Despite still being listed among Apple’s CarPlay partners, Toyota says it’s sticking with its own Entune systems.

The company says that while it has talked frequently to both Apple and Google about CarPlay and Android Auto, it has no plans to bring the technologies to its cars in the United States anytime soon. Toyota’s manager of advanced technology communications, John Hanson, told the New York Times, “We may all eventually wind up there, but right now we prefer to use our in-house proprietary platforms for those kinds of functions,” Mr. Hanson said.

While Toyota’s not so hot on CarPlay, other manufacturers like Ford, BMW, Volkswagon, and GM are more bullish on Apple’s car offerings. Here’s a full breakdown of which service auto makers currently support:

We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.

This week the Apple Car rumors have revved into fourth gear as a tsunami of reports from various outlets have claimed that not only is the iCar project real, but Apple is trying to get it onto highways by the end of the decade. While everyone’s focusing on the iCar, don’t forget about Apple Watch though. The rumor mill spit out five juicy rumors this week covering everything from pricing to customization.

Take a look at this week’s electrifying Apple rumors see which one’s are destined to come true:

Apple Watch isn’t just a techie gadget. It’s a fashion item.

To drill that point into everyone’s heads during launch, it looks like Apple is setting up a special booth at one of the fanciest high-end department stores in Paris: Galeries Lafayette Haussmann.

Construction on a special booth at Galeries Lafayette began a few weeks ago, according to Mac4Ever. There’s no official word that the structure is for the Apple Watch, but the timing, location and large white walls all point to Apple.

Take a look at the site:

Tim Cook is heading out to Israel in a few days to inaugurate what will be Apple’s biggest overseas R&D center in Herzliya, but before the place gets Cook’s official visit, Apple is already looking to expand its staff.

Apple announced that its hiring 49 more positions for the Herzliya headquarters as wells as posts at its Haifa office. The 12,500 square-meter Herzliya offices are scheduled to open this week includes a gourmet restaurant, a fish pond and green surroundings.

Some of the new job posts include the following:

The Year of the Goat is finally upon us and to celebrate the start of the Chinese New Year, Apple has curated a special section in iTunes full of apps, movies, books, and music to mark the special occasion.

IFTTT is ready to become more than just a standalone service in 2015. Hoping to transition to a company with multiple products, IFTTT revealed today that it has created three entirely new ‘Do’ apps — Do Button, Do Camera, and Do Note — that let you personalize and execute your favorite IFTTT recipes with one tap.

To go along with the new apps that make it simply to automate your most common Internet tasks, IFTTT has rebranded its original app to just IF. The three new apps are kind of a mixture between Yo and Workflow, giving you a new level of control for favorite services and applications.

Here’s a quick look at each new app.

The eastern U.S. is still getting pelted with snow, but spring is arriving a little early across the pond in Saltaire England thanks to David Hockney’s newest gallery of iPad artwork entitled ‘The Arrival of Spring.’

The famous pop artist’s exhibition of 33 pictures went on display today at the Salt Mill gallery in West Yorkshire. Each of the five-foot high framed pictures were drawn on Hockney’s iPad during the period when he lived in Bridlington and painted the Yorkshire woods for London’s Royal Academy.

Take a closer look at some of the piece below:

The iPhone has been killing it in Japan lately. Apple’s smartphone marketshare in the tech-obsessed country is continuing to dominate year-over-year, even though the company had a hard time giving out iPhones just five years ago.

With the iPhone 6’s bigger screen, the company is making more of an inroads than ever, but according to a report from Reuters, smartphones in Japan are facing stiff from competition from an unlikely suspect: flip-phones.

Apple’s architectural firm, Foster + Partners, released pictures of the gorgeous new West Lake store in Hangzhou that was recently completed. The new Apple Store was covered by an incredible mural during construction, but the finished all-glass facade is even more stunning.

The firm says West Lake store was made in close collaboration between Apple and Foster + Partners’ engineers to create the perfect environment to view products. The end result is a 15-metre-high glazed box with a design that “combines an understanding of the local context with the philosophy of simplicity, beauty and technical innovation that characterises Apple’s products.”

Check out the store’s floating staircase below:

The Apple Watch Edition has perplexed many Apple fanboys with its ridiculously high price tag. We still don’t know how much the beautiful, high-end smartwatch will cost, but it’s expected be one of the most expensive Apple products ever, which has a lot of analysts wondering, how many is Apple going sell?

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that only 17 percent of the first 5 million Apple Watch orders were for the pricey gold Edition. That number sounds almost insignificant, but Daring Fireball’s John Gruber did some math and found that Apple is expecting to sell about 1 million of the exorbitantly expensive timepieces per quarter.

Hitting 1 million in sales for the super-expensive smartwatches in the first quarter would be an impressive feat. But what’s more surprising is that if Apple actually hits that number, the gold Edition Apple Watches would account for the most Apple Watch revenue, bringing in at least $5 billion per quarter.

Here’s why:

Congressman John Lewis paid a visit to Tim Cook at Apple’s Cupertino campus today as part of the civil rights icon’s Northern California tour for his new book.

The Georgia lawmaker played a pivotal role in the bloody Selma march that’s back in the spotlight thanks to the its 50th anniversary and the Oscar-nominated film by the same name. Lewis was a guest speaker at Apple HQ today as part of the company’s celebration for Black History Month, and he met privately with Cook.

Apple’s is continuing to make big changes in the friendlier post-Kate Cotton PR era with the announcement today that Chris Breen, the long-time senior editor at Macworld, has been hired by the fruit-flavored tech company.

Breen has worked at both Macworld and MacUser, but is making the change to working at the mothership after decades of covering the company as an Apple journalist.

Apple is no stranger to having competitors copy its style. Samsung, HP, and Xiaomi have all been caught in the act multiple times, but the last company we expected to rip off Apple is Comcast.

For its new cable remote, Comcast has taken a page out of Apple’s playbook by copying the company’s iconic “Designed by Apple in California” tagline. The copy job is so bad, they didn’t even bother to change the font. It looks like the words “Comcast” and “Philadelphia” were basically slapped over Apple’s original tagline after production.

Take a look at the ‘premium’ remote below:

You may have never heard of the Aral Sea, even though it was the fourth largest lake in the world as recently as the 1960’s.

The once-gigantic body of water which rests on the border of Uzbekistan has shrunk to less than 10% of its former size over the last half century. It’s been dubbed one of the worst environmental disasters ever, but looking at Apple Maps you’d never even know the Russians drained the mighty lake dry, destroyed its robust fishing industry, and left behind a wasteland of salt, pollution, and toxic dust storms.

Touch ID has completely changed security on the iPhone, and now Apple’s fingerprint-scanning technology could soon be coming to the Mac.

Apple is planning to bring Touch ID to the upcoming 12-inch MacBook Air, according to sources at Taiwanese Apple blog Apple.Club.tw. In the past, the site successfully leaked the iPad Air 2 logic board, the Touch ID sensor and the iPhone 6 Lightning port, so it has a track record for accuracy. The site claims Apple has big plans for Touch ID in 2015 and wants to put it in everything from MacBook Pros to Magic Mice.

The iPhone 6 Plus has a hard time sliding into most pants pockets, but if you’d like to make the iPhone 6 Pinch even more unbearable, Bandai is coming out with a new case that transforms your device into the time machine from Back to the Future.

The DeLorean time machine case brings all the incredible details of Marty McFly’s DMC-12 to your iPhone with moving parts like wheels that switch between hover and street modes. The case doesn’t come with actual time-traveling and levitating features, but Bandai did pack in a couple extra goodies.

MacBooks and iPhones have been no strangers on Modern Family but in an upcoming episode, Apple’s mobile devices are also taking over filming duties.

Modern Family plans to be the first major TV show to air an episode shot almost entirely with the iPhone 6, iPad Air 2 and MacBook FaceTime cameras. The episode, titled “Connection Lost,” airs February 25 on ABC, but the sitcom’s creator, Steve Levitan, says filming a TV show with the iPhone was even more difficult than anticipated.

The Apple Car rumor mill has been heating up today with reports that Apple has been hiring auto talent from companies like Mercedes and BMW. Now the Wall Street Journal is chiming in with its own report that claims Tim Cook approved Apple’s project over a year ago.

Apple reportedly has several hundred employees working on the secret project that’s aiming to create an Apple-branded electric vehicle that can take on Telsa.

Silicon Valley’s top CEOs snubbed President Barack Obama’s appearance at Stanford University today for the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, but Apple CEO Tim Cook used his invite to make the case for improving security.

Cook addressed attendees before Obama took the stage and reaffirmed Apple’s belief that everyone has a right to privacy and security. In part of his speech, the Apple CEO warned of “dire consequences” if the proper balance between security and privacy isn’t maintained.

“We must get this right!” Cook told the audience.  “History has shown us that sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences.”

Apple Pay has already become the top mobile wallet at a number of stores, but now Apple’s about to take on the great outdoors.

During his address at today’s White House cybersecurity summit, Tim Cook said that starting in September you’ll be able to use Apple Pay for transactions with the federal government, including paying fees to get into Yosemite and the other national parks.

Cook’s visit to the summit was a big win for Apple Pay, which Cook says is now supported by more than 2,000 banks, putting us one step closer to the age when your wallet will be a thing of the past. The White House has given Apple Pay its stamp of approval, too, and announced plans to enable it on all federal-payment cards.

Tim Cook and President Obama are attending today’s White House Cyber Security Summit to talk about a range of issues facing the U.S. tech industry.

Mark Zuckerberg, Marrisa Mayer, and Google CEO Larry Page all decline invites to the summit where Obama is expect to urge tech firms to share data with the government. While Silicon Valley’s elite have snubbed the event, Cook’s appearance could be a big deal in his effort to advocate for the importance of privacy for users. Tim Cook’s appearance is expected soon, while President Obama is scheduled to take the stage at 2:15 ET.

You can watch a live feed of the summit below:

We still don’t know the exact date the Apple Watch will ship, but a new rumor claims you won’t be able to pick one up at BestBuy, Walmart, or other non-Apple Stores at launch.

Apple plans to make its timepiece an Apple Store exclusive, according to German distribution sources who claim resellers will be shut out so Cupertino can suck up as much Apple Watch profits in the first year as possible.

Apple plans to launch a new streaming music service this spring, but music industry insiders say Apple isn’t trying to just compete with Spotify, it wants to become the music business.

Tim Cook and Jimmy Iovine were two of the most in-demand people at this year’s Grammys. Eddy Cue and iTunes VP Robert Kondrk were also in attendance according to a new report from Billboard, which claims artists and labels execs alike were lined up at Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy gala to get a meeting with the biggest names in tech that are now poised to take on music, again.

Jimmy Iovine has devoted recent weeks to meeting senior execs at major and indie labels to talk about the new music service that will launch by summer at the latest and come alongside a major redesign of the iTunes Store as the company struggles to adapt to decline music sales.