Buster Hein - page 214

Frayed charging cables are nasty, and they can shock you. Over the last couple days, there has been a lot of discussion on Reddit about the best solutions to keep Apple’s new Lightning cables from fraying.

Some people go to some crazy lengths to keep their cable’s in tip-top shape. One guy coils the end of his cables with a paperclip. Another redditor actually dips his Lightning cable in Plasti Dip. But my_clock_is_wrong has the best solution of all, grip the cable at the proper spots. It’s fool proof.

Source: Reddit

It’s always nice to be able to split the cost of something with a group of friends, except when it comes time to actually pay up. There’s always one or two people that suck at paying on time, but GroupMe’s got a great new feature for the app to help out with that.

GroupMe just released version 4.1 of their iOS that adds a couple of great new features, including the ability to split a bill with friends.

Dropping your iPhone is a horrific experience. You don’t know if your precious slab of glass and metal is going to shatter or just walk away with a few scratches. If you’re the type that is always dropping your iPhone, you should consider paying $20 for this iPhone 5 tether.

Even though Apple and Google hate each other now days, that hasn’t stopped Google from making some really great apps for the iPhone. Google’s latest creation just hit the App Store today and it’s focused on local discovery.

Field Trip has previously been an Android-only app, but Google is bringing it to the iPhone today for free. The app is kind of like Google Now. It runs in the background and then automatically alerts you of interesting information in your area based on location data.

We use Skype a lot to keep in touch with everyone at Cult of Mac, so we’re always happy to see some solid updates come out for the app.

Earlier today, Skype released version 4.6 of their iOS app, which brings a couple of new features as well as some bug fixes and general improvements. Like some previous versions of Skype though, this one doesn’t work with jailbroken iPhones so not everyone will get to enjoy the glory.

As Apple continues to ramp up development on its new music streaming service, negotiations with record labels haven’t been going well.

Apple’s music streaming service is rumored to be similar to Pandora’s radio service, but rather than settling with the same royalty rate that Pandora enjoys, Apple is trying to lowball record labels into giving them a better deal.

As of January 26th, it is now illegal for you to unlock your smartphone if you want to use it on another network. Carrier unlocking has been legal in the U.S. for years, but in October the Library of Congress ruled that unauthorized unlocking is a crime.

The Obama Administration has already voiced its opinion that citizens should be allowed to unlock their smartphones without risking criminal penalties, and a senator from Oregon just introduced a bill that would making unlocking legal again.

Last year, Apple launched its Labor and Human Rights page to give some transparency to the human rights controversy’s it’s been having with supply chain workers. Along with numerous explanations on what Apple is doing to make sure its supply chain workers are treated fairly, the company releases the percentage of supplier work-hour compliance every month.

For the first time since Apple started tracking its supplier work-hour compliance metric, they just hit 99% compliance in January 2013.

In the competition between iOS and Android, Google’s Android operating system has been growing in the U.S. much faster than iOS until now. For the first time, Android actually lost some of its U.S. marketshare in 2013 while iOS gained a few points.

comScore just released its report on the U.S. smartphone market and had some very encouraging news for Apple. While most other manufacturers are slumping, Apple is increasing its lead on Samsung, HTC, Motorola and LG in the U.S.

In the latest spat of the carriers, AT&T ran a one-page ad in newspapers last week attacking T-Mobile and claiming that the purple carrier drops two times more calls and is 50% slower.

It hasn’t taken long for T-Mobile to respond with their own one-page newspaper ads, which are simply brilliant: “If AT&T thought our network wasn’t great, why did they try to buy it?” Touché. T-Mobile’s got a couple of other ads to taunt AT&T, which you can check out here.

Source: Tmonews

Not everyone is convinced that Apple’s iWatch would be a success, and you can add Swatch’s CEO, Nick Hayek, to the pile of detractors.

Hayek says that he doesn’t think the iWatch will be a revolutionary device, because your wrist can’t handle a display big enough to interact with. But despite Hayek’s aversion to the iWatch, Apple’s reached out to him over the years for help on materials and watch batteries.

Ferrari announced its newest supercar today — the hybrid model ‘LaFerrari’ — along with plans to deepen its partnership with Apple.

The newest Ferrari comes equipped with iPad minis on the passenger seats, but Ferrari says it is in talks with Apple about bringing more in-car entertainment to their supercars.

If you love jailbreaking and all the little tweaks that come with it, then you’re probably very familiar with Cydia. It’s the number one place to go to if you want to find hacks for your iPhone or iPad, but it also kind of sucks at the same time.

Cydia is massively unorganized and slow when there’s a rush to jailbreak. Most people want to blame its creator, Saurik, for its weaknesses, but in a recent discussion on jailbreaking, Saurik admitted those things bug him too, but there’s not much he can do about it.

Included in Bloomberg’s big story this morning on Apple’s iWatch was a small paragraph that said Jony Ive and his team ordered a bunch of watches made by Nike in the mid-2000s.

Maybe Ive and his design team just liked the Nike watches, but according to Scott Wilson, who was Nike’s Creative Director at the time, Ive might have ordered the watches so his team could study them for inspiration on the iWatch.

Last month, a petition was created on the White House’s ‘We The People’ website that demanded the White House ask Congress to rescind its decision to make unlocking cellphones illegal.

After 114,000 signatures were collected on the petition, the White House invited experts on telecommunications, technology and copyright law to come over to the White House and talk about the issue.

The official White House response was issued today stating that the Obama Administration believes that consumers should be able to unlock their cellphones without risking criminal penalties.

Apple’s iCloud service hasn’t been perfect, but it’s performed fairly well since its debut in 2011.

Dropbox’s CEO on the otherhand thinks that Apple’s users really shouldn’t get too invested into the data-synching service, because it will probably hurt them in the long run.

There are a lot of crazy rumors floating around out there about the iPhone 6. It might boast a huge screen, come in different colors, have a polycarbonate body, and maybe even a fingerprint sensor. If you believe even half of those rumors, then this might be Apple’s craziest iPhone yet.

Most of the rumors will probably be proven false, but what if Apple decided to go down a crazy path and actually rip off Samsung’s smartphones? Well, one concept artist decided to dream it up.

Apple announced today that they have updated Safari’s web plug-in that blocks older versions of Adobe Flash Player.

The update comes after Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft experienced a slew of malicious attacks on their computers via a Java exploit. Blocking the Adobe Flasher Player plugin should protect users from vulnerabilities.

We’ve seen quite a few rumors over the last couple of months that the next iPhone will come in a variety of colors. Last month we even detailed exactly how Apple will colorize the iPhone 5S, and it looks like we’re probably right.

Apple just posted a new job listing today that shows they are looking for an Anodizing Engineer to help add color to the next generation of Apple products like the iPhone 5S.

So you went out to drink with your friends and you forgot to charge your battery. What an idiot. At one point in the evening you know you’re going to get one of those dreaded “20% of battery remaining” notifications, but by that point you’ll probably be too drunk to care about conserving battery.

Maybe if the iPhone’s low battery notifications had a little bit more sass we’d listen to them more? I don’t know. But it sure would be a hell of a lot more fun if they were like these mockups from College Humor.

Source: College Humor

Via: Gizmodo

Over the last couple of weeks a ‘silly sideshow’ has been playing out between Greenlight Capital and Apple Inc. Greenlight Capital’s CEO, David Einhorn, has been trying to force Apple to offer preferred stock plans by suing Apple in court, while Tim Cook and Apple disagree with his proposals.

Even though Einhorn has won at least one small victory over Apple in court, it’s been reported that Greenlight Capital just dropped their lawsuit against Apple.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek is one of our favorite Apple analysts in the entire world. Mostly because his Apple predictions are usually horribly wrong.

After the disastrous Apple TV SDK Event rumor he created earlier in the month, Misek is back with a new note to Apple investors, and it’s not a happy one. According to Misek, Apple is about to face a very rough two-year period, and he might actually be right.

Remember that one time that a U.K. judge told Apple that they have to publish a public apology to Samsung on their homepage? It was a really weird punishment that made a lot of us scratch our heads, but Apple handled it pretty well.

Well it turns out that that same U.K. judge who was pro-Samsung now has a really good reason for wanting Samsung to win against Apple – he just got a new job with Samsung!

Apple announced today that their free education portal, iTunes U, just topped over one billion downloads for content. iTunes U provides free educational content from some of the top universities around the world and is the world’s largest online catalog of free educational content.

If you’re looking for a free education, or just want to brush up on some subjects, you can enroll in iTunes U courses from professors at Duke, Yale, Cambridge, MIT, Oxford, and Stanford.

Even though Steve Jobs gets credit for making the gutsy move to open Apple retail stores across the country, Ron Johnson deserves a lot of praise for the Apple Store’s success.

Johnson’s vision helped Steve create the most successful chain of retails stores on the planet. Then Johnson left to become the CEO of JC Penny, where he’s faced some heavy criticism for his efforts to revitalize the brand. According to Apple’s old marketing guru Ken Segall, Ron is a visionary in his own right, and he’s transforming JC Penny just like Steve Jobs transformed Apple.