Buster Hein - page 175

Rumors of Apple’s upcoming “Made for iHome” API in iOS 8 sent fanboys rocketing with excitement that Cupertino might be launching a makeover in the living room, but expectations are about to get dashed when Apple presents a much simpler system on Monday.

The move to home automation will be more about fighting fragmentation, reports GigaOm, than creating an entire home experience. Apple’s home efforts will just focus on easily connecting devices to Wifi and tossing in voice control over Bluetooth.

There will be no central control center. No asking Siri to turn off your Hues and lock the door. But the report does have some interesting details on what Apple will announce:

Apple has a proud tradition of cannibalizing its products before someone else does, but in the case of the iPad mini, Cupertino might start eating its rotting corpse as soon as the 5.5-inch iPhablet is announced.

The latest projections from IDC claim that tablet sales are starting to level off even faster than expected with only 245.5 million units forecasted to sell in 2014 – a palty 12.1% year-over-year growth rate after tech companies just feasted on 51.8% YOY in 2013.

During Apple’s last earnings call Tim Cook boasted that iPad is the fastest selling product in Apple history, but IDC gives two major reasons why that could soon change:

24 hours haven’t even passed since Apple announced it scooped up Dre’s bass-loving headphone company but that’s not stopping the Dr. and Iovine from busting out an encore to their most successful headphones yet.

This morning Beats revealed its replacing its popular Beats Solo headphones with the new Beats Solo² that not only offer better sound, they’re the most Apple-like set of cans we’ll see before Jony Ive gets his team on them.

Apple is busy putting the finishing touches on WWDC before the invasion of 5,000 developers destroy the corridors of Moscone West, but even if you didn’t get a ticket to the hottest developer event in the world, you can still enjoy WWDC like you’re actually there by sporting some of this gear from the comfort of your couch.

Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple gang are coming straight out of Cupertino on June 2nd to kick off WWDC with the first keynote of the year. iOS 8, OS X 10.10, a home automation platform, new iMacs and possibly even an 8GB iPhone 5s are rumored to make an appearance.

We’ll be covering the action on our liveblog starting at 10AM PDT, Monday June 2nd and won’t let up until WWDC finishes on June 6th, but to get yourself ready for the assault, here are eight things you should buy to get your WWDC on.

Now that Apple’s acquisition of Beats has finally been made official, Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine took the stage at the the inaugural Code Conference tonight to give a peak behind the scenes of deal, as well as glimpse at what’s to come in 2014 – including the best product pipeline the company has seen in 25 years.

The interview comes as Apple is preparing for its annual developer’s conference in San Francisco next week where it’s expected to announce new versions of iOS and OS X, and while will have to wait to see if any hardware will come out as well, Eddy Cue is already hard at work hyping Apple’s upcoming products.

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg led the conversation with Eddy Cue starting things off by parroting Tim Cook’s statements that Apple acquired Beats for three reasons: Talent, Headphones, and a Music Subscription Service, before revealing these eight new tidbits on the deal as well as the future of Apple:

Three weeks of speculation and rumors have led to this. Apple is finally buying Beats for $3 billion.

News of the deal broke weeks ago but the tech world is still scratching its head, wondering why Apple decided to buy a company that peddles overpriced plastic headphones and is co-anchored by one of hip-hop’s most notorious MCs.

Forgetting the fact the fact that Beats has captured 60% of its market, makes over $1 billion in sales and has one of the fastest growing music subscription service in the U.S., the acquisition is the most perplexing Apple purchase since NeXT, but now that Tim Cook has broken the silence on why Apple bought Beats we finally answers you wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

Coding marathons, packed parties and more fanboys than should be legally permissible in one building await developers when Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off in San Francisco next week, and while the conference is serious business for most devs, who says you can’t have a little bit of fun too?

WWDC rips into high gear with a keynote on June 2nd followed by days of coding sessions, high-profile speakers, hands-on labs and tons of get togethers for developers of all sizes and backgrounds.

Sneaking in time to tour San Francisco is nearly impossible thanks to the stuffed scheduled at WWDC and nearby AltConf, but whether you’re coming to WWDC as a first timer or a seasoned vet, here are nine things every Apple fan must do at least once while visiting the Bay Area.

We’re less than a week away from WWDC and while Apple’s official app is slim on clues for the event, the company just revealed it will stream its entire keynote to Macs and iPhones so you can learn about all the new goodies, even if you didn’t get a golden ticket.

Imagine a world in which an Apple portable called Pippin rules the video game industry. Nintendo and Sony are nothing more than petrified corpses after a surprise attack from Cupertino vaporizes their platforms with a portable device so simple, so magical, that Michael Spindler would have let John Sculley waterboard him with Pepsi to make it a reality.

That’s the world imagined by Mike Donovan, a New York City designer who draws faux prototypes of everything from retro iPads to iPhones based on the iMac G3. His retrotastic mockup of the gaming gadget that never was, which he shared exclusively with Cult of Mac, takes the concept of Apple’s failed Pippin video game platform to its logical, period-appropriate extension.

“We’re inundated with new tech choices at almost every turn but there is something so alluring about the fun and simplicity of those early ’80s and ’90s gadgets,” Donovan told Cult of Mac. “Plus, who doesn’t love a good throwback?”

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.

A set of images of the iPhone 6’s alleged backlight panel have been leaked on the Chinese site Weibo this morning. User “顾Gooey” who posted the pictures claims they’re fit for the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 that Apple is rumored to release later this year.

We can’t verify the legitimacy of the photos, but the part does appear to be produced similar to the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. However, Nowhereelse.fr notes that the connector has been moved slightly from the iPhone 5c backlight, and the pins are slightly different, signaling some possible changes from Cupertino.

Here’s another shot of the display from the back:

Apple’s sapphire glass could be the biggest thing to hit the iPhone since Touch ID, and even though it hasn’t announced an iPhone 6 or iWatch with a Sapphire glass display yet, its chummy parasitic buddy Samsung is already looking for a way to copy.

Still stumped what to get your dad for Father’s Day? Apple’s hoping you’ll go big and gift him an iPad Air, but even if you just want to get a sweet iPhone case for the old man the online Apple Store will now ship it to you at no extra cost.

You probably don’t waste much thought on where to plug-in your iPhone, but not using a real Apple charger has its disadvantages. Not only are they higher quality, and safer, but they also charge faster than a 5W Chinese knockoff.

Millions of cheap Apple copycats make it difficult to tell whether a charger is the genuine article and have been blamed on everything from iPad explosions to spontaneous electrocutions, but thanks to a teardown comparison from Ken Shirriff there’s one little flaw to look for that gives the dangerous fakers away.

Just look for the signature.

It’s time to cancel your cable subscription. The best TV shows, movies, and documentaries have landed on Amazon Prime thanks to a deal with HBO that unleashes the networks’ exceptional collection of content to the Internet for the first time ever.

Starting today Amazon Prime users can catch up on entire seasons of HBO’s top shows by streaming them to your Mac, iPhone, or iPad at absolutely no extra cost. It’s an unprecedented treasure trove of greatness that required an HBO GO subscription to access until today when it was finally set free for the first time ever.

HBO has been reluctant to embrace a paid-streaming model that would cut its ties to lucrative cable subscriptions, but the move is a sign that a top-down approach could be on the way as HBO adds its GO app to Amazon Fire TV and other services.

The entire HBO lineup isn’t available quite yet, but the company says shows like Veep and The Newsroom will be added once they pass their third seasons, making them available for the low-cost of a $79 annual Amazon Prime subscription.

Here are five shows you should start binging on today.

Apple is having some fun with the mystery surrounding its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, updating the WWDC app to include whimsical session titles designed to give devs a chuckle even as they’re guessing what’s next.

Just about the only solid piece of information from the app update is that Tim Cook and company will kick off the annual event with a special keynote June 2 at 10 a.m. Pacific in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Apple is expected to reveal details of iOS 8 and the next version of OS X during the address.

Dan Lyons lambasted Steve Jobs and his fellow Silicon Valley cronies for years under the Fake Steve Jobs blog, but now after stints at Fortune, Newsweek and Hubspot, the tech writer will mock a new generation of startup wannabes and tech wackos as a writer for HBO’s hit comedy Silicon Valley.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love affair with his iPad hasn’t been as well documented as some of his other lusts but Conan the Governor loves his Apple tablet so damn much he takes it everywhere, which makes it the perfect tool for capturing the Austrian Oak’s greatest love – his deteriorating guns.

Here’s Arnold’s iPad selfie from another angle:

Apple and Google may have declared a truce but the patent war with Samsung still rages across the Atlantic as an ongoing patent battle in the Dutch appeals court has upheld Apple’s plea for an injunction against sales of older Samsung Galaxy phones.

Apple wants to deliver content directly to your iPhone, iPad or Mac and according to a report, it’s ramping up development of its own Content Delivery Network (CDN) to take make it happen.

Dan Rayburn at Streaming Media reports that Apple’s CDN plans are ramping up as the company has begun negotiations with the US’s largest ISPs to secure paid interconnection deals that would let Cupertino beam updates directly to your iPhone more efficiently than the third-party providers it currently uses.

Instead of taking on the iPad Air’s 9.7-inch display, Microsoft is thinking even bigger with a 12-inch Surface Pro 3 that could make it the perfect competitor for Apple’s long-rumored 13-inch iPad Pro.

Like Microsoft’s other’s tablets, the Surface Pro 3, which the company revealed Tuesday morning, comes with a kickstand and a collapsible keyboard that Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay says will remove all the conflicts you’ve had about buying a laptop or tablet, plus they’ve added a Surface Pen for seamless digital writing.

There are a number of way to track emoji use on Twitter but this globe of real-time emoji tweeted across the world has me so spellbound I can’t look away.

Good thing too, because unlike EmojiTracker, it won’t cause a seizure.

The web has spun about 13,000 different theories on why Apple bought Beats. Did they want the headphones? Or was it Beats Music that tipped things over?

It’ll be months, if not years, before we learn Apple’s real play with the Beats acquisition, but Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson has his own theory on why Apple bought Beats and it has nothing to do with music, overpriced headphones, or other wearables.

It’s all about video.

iPad users in the UK, Spain, Germany and France can now trade-in their old iPad for credit towards a new device as Apple expands its iPad trade-in program internationally

Apple’s trade-in program doesn’t give customers cash for their old devices, but it will exchange it for Apple Store credit that can be used to purchase a new iPad or iPhone.

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.