Buster Hein - page 171

The squads of the NFC and AFC are gearing up for training camp in just a few weeks, and the NFL is ready to make a killing by feeding your leather and spandex addiction with an NFL Sunday Ticket package that stream every game to your iPad, even if you don’t have a satellite subscription.

In a huge victory for cord-cutters, DirecTV is finally ready to loosen restriction to make it easier for non-subscribers to pay for the NFL Sunday Ticket, but it’s not going to be cheap.

Apple has added extra protection to iCloud’s outgoing email, making it harder for hackers, the NSA, or any other malicious spying groups to get their digits on your messages.

One year after being found guilty of e-book price fixing, Apple has reached a conditional settlement with the U.S. State to pay $450 million for its role in the price fixing conspiracy that involved five major publishers.

Apple’s settlement could bring $400 million back to consumers’ wallets, reports Reuters, but the court documents filed on Wednesday reveal that the company isn’t quite ready to throw in the towel yet, with hopes that its appeal will shrink that fee down to just $70 million.

Dropping cash on a new iPhone dock each time Apple decides to change the form factor can get pretty annoying, but if you’re down with rolling your own home brewed solution, you can actually create a sturdy dock for your iPhone 5s or iPod Touch using nothing but the LEGO blocks laying around your house.

We’ve seen a few LEGO docks over the years, but a YouTuber has created a simple step-by-step tutorial that teaches everyone how to build their out of three parts – a top segment, cable holder and a base. The dock in the video only uses black and white LEGOs for a sleek look, but we’d love to see it with a splash of color.

Watch the full tutorial below:

Apple has been waging a fierce war against Flash ever since the iPhone debuted without the power to run Adobe’s battery hungry, multimedia software. Finally, seven years into the battle, Google is adding another blow by flagging Flash content in mobile search results with a warning that sites might not work properly.

iOS users have proven they have an uncanny ability to waste obscene amount of coin on silly in-app purchases, and the latest tech-titan to cash in on all that spending is none other than reality star Kim Kardashian.

Kim launched her first iOS game at the end of June to surprisingly great reviews, but the bigger surprise is the mountain of cash Kardashian and developers Glu Mobile are about to make off of all the fans flocking to download a piece of Kim’s Hollywood life.

We’re still waiting to get our first glimpse of Apple’s upcoming smartwatch, but according to a new report, Apple is planning to release not one, not two, but three different models of the iWatch this fall.

Citing supply chain sources in China, the Economic Daily claims Apple will make the iWatch available by the end of 2014 with three different sizes to choose from, but you’ll probably want the fatty 1.8-inch unit, as it will supposedly be the most durable of the bunch.

Apple has been looking a lot friendlier ever since its PR boss Katie Cotton left the company last May, and even though no one has been tapped to fill her vacancy yet, Cupertino might be looking to make a huge splash by tapping President Obama’s former press secretary for the post.

Apple and Google may reign supreme as the top two tech companies in the U.S., but when it comes to attractiveness, Amazon and Microsoft employees are absolutely slaying them.

After crunching the numbers from its social-networking app for professionals, Hinge found that employees from Amazon are the most sought-after on network, topping both Google, Facebook and Microsoft, with Apple’s young professionals coming in dead last.

Ever want to sit down with the guy at Apple who has basically been tasked to fix every disaster of the last five years? If you got more than ten grand to spare and love basketball this may be your lucky day, as CharityBuzz just opened a new auction lot that includes a one-hour paid lunch at Apple HQ with you, your friend, and Mr. Fixit Eddie Cue.

If there’s one thing we learned during the World Cup (other than ze Germans are relentlessly brilliant machines), it’s that Beats has some of the best damn marketing on the planet, and Apple really, really needs its help.

After getting tossed around by Samsung in the marketing ring the past few years,  the NYPost reports that Apple is looking to Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine to help it reignite its marketing magic, even if it means cutting ties on its 30-year partnership with TBWA.

The iPhone 6 isn’t expected to get a huge battery upgrade, but in just a few years your next iPhone might be able to go weeks on a single charge.

Apple and British fuel-cell firm Intelligent Energy have supposedly been working on a secret partnership, according to The Daily Mail, that might bring embedded fuel cells with weeks of battery life to Apple’s armada of MacBooks, iPhones and iPads.

Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre just made billions off Apple’s acquisition of Beats Electronics, but the company is ready to squeeze out a few billion more from a ring of Chinese knockoffs.

Legal filings from Beats claim that cheap counterfeit headphones are screwing the company out of billions of profits by using the company’s popular “b” logo to rake in an ungodly $135 billion in sales. Now the doctor wants his cut.

Swift, a completely new programming language for the App Age, was one of the biggest announcements that come out of WWDC and now it’s also got its own blog.

Apple launched a new blog dedicated to the development of Swift on its developer site this morning to educate coders on the new language that has replaced Objective-C to build iOS and Mac apps. The blog will give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the design and development of Swift from the very engineers who created it. News and hints will also spill over the blogs’ pages to help devs become more productive with the Swift language.

Here’s the first post:

The back of your iPhone is about to get a little more minimalist.

Thanks to a new bill introduced in the Senate, manufacturers may soon be allowed to use digital stamps on smartphones, laptops, and other gadgets, instead of using the strange symbols etched onto the back of your iPhone.

The first vehicles to support Apple’s CarPlay infotainment system are just starting to roll off the assembly lines, but within five years CarPlay could be the most popular car platform in the world, with over 24 million cars sporting Cupertino’s dashboard system.

Despite being in its infancy, a host of auto manufacturers from Audio to Volvo are partnering with Apple on CarPLay, and ABI Research estimates that more vehicles will use CarPlay by 2019 than MirrorLink, the #1 open source solution that integrates popular smartphone apps with your vehicle’s dashboard.

Buying movies on iTunes just got a lot more like purchasing a Blu-ray from Best Buy, thanks to the addition of an all-new iTunes Extras features for HD movies. The new feature is part of the iTunes 11.3 update Apple released this morning, that brings new content to movies played on your Mac and Apple TV.

Apple released its full 2014 Environmental Responsibility report this afternoon with new climate change data and information on the company’s promise to reduce its carbon footprint.

The new report highlights some of the good decisions Apple made to reduce its environmental impact in 2013, by doing things like converting Apple Stores to renewable energy, building solar farms for data centers, as well as its controversial shuttle bus program.

Using the same models it used to calculate its 2013 numbers, Apple decided to recalculate its 2012 emission data and found that its carbon footprint shrank year-over-year for the first time since it began tracking numbers in 2009, but that wasn’t the only good news.

Here’s a quick rundown of the both the good and the bad:

Apple Maps crashed and burned coming off the runway in iOS 6, but new additions in iOS 8 beta 3 show Apple’s had a change of heart, and is even making it easier for Apple Maps users to jump to Google Maps and other services thanks to some new UI tweaks.

Starting in iOS 8, users will be able to run a search for locations in Apple Maps and use either Apple’s own driving and walking directions, or switch directly to another app already installed on your device via a simplified menu. 

Apple has long been criticized by shareholders for stuffing its leadership ranks with a bunch of old white dudes, but as Tim Cook touched down in Sun Valley Idaho for Allen & Co.’s annual media moguls conference, the Apple CEO said his company is about to be a lot more transparent about its diversity.

Following the path of Google and Facebook, who have publicly released information on the diversity of their workforces this year, Tim Cook pledged Apple will do the same, he’s just not sure how long it will take.

The FTC came down hard on Apple earlier this year for its lack of parental controls for in-app purchases on iOS, so Apple did what anyone caught red handed would do — they ratted out the competition too.

A week after news of the FTC’s investigation broke, Apple’s SVP of legal, Bruce Sewell sent an email to FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Commissioner Julie Brill, linking to a scathing Consumer Affairs report that claimed Google Play kids could spend money like drunken sailors.

Tim Cook swears Apple TV isn’t just a hobby for the mothership anymore, but according to the latest estimates, it might be time for Apple unleashed some new non-hobby Apple TV features if it wants to catch up to Roku and Chromecast.

New data from Parks Associates reveals that while the Apple TV streaming box has been available for over seven years, Chromecast has already surged past Apple TV in 2013, making Google’s tiny stick the most popular streaming device in the U.S.  

Design questions aside, the true mystery about Apple’s long-rumored iWatch lies in exactly what types of health-related sensors the wearable might include. A recent report claims the iWatch will sport an astonishing 10 different sensors, including one for sweat.

While pedometers, accelerometers, thermometers and every other o-meter Jony Ive can get his hands on might all make sense for a smartwatch, we’re wondering what Apple could do with a sweat sensor? Other than verify that, yes, your sweat glands are pouring out more fluid per minute than Niagara Falls during your jog?

It turns out that adding sweat sensors would do more than differentiate the iWatch from smartwatches by LG, Motorola and Samsung right out of the gate. It could make the iWatch the most “personal” device you’ve ever shackled yourself to, with surprising applications that go far beyond fitness and health.