As you may have heard, Apple released the public beta for OS X El Capitan yesterday. Since I tend to ignore the risks of beta software in favor of all the new features, I downloaded it on my mid-2011 MacBook Air. Do yourself a favor: don’t be like me. Understand and acknowledge the risks of beta software. It’ll save you time and data.
Slack is ingraining emojis even deeper into your work environment whether you like it or not. Users were already able to send emojis casually while chatting, but now anyone can specifically react to messages in Slack with emojis. It’s pretty easy to get creative with this, and it’s sure to spice up the chat with your co-workers.
It’s a little late to the party, but three betas in Apple released the News app it announced at WWDC 2015. Soon to be on every iPhone and iPad running iOS 9, News lets users customize the topics that are most important to them, then browse and read distraction-free news articles.
If you’re not running iOS 9 beta 3 or in a supported country like the U.S., fear not, we have the full tour.
Another day, another iOS beta. Two weeks after Apple released iOS 9 beta 2, here arrives iOS 9 beta 3 for developers. If you haven’t already yet, go download it on your iPhone and iPad. Most notably, this is the first iOS 9 beta that includes support for Apple Music and the redesigned Music app. However, iOS 9 beta 3 brings many other changes and improvements like Apple News and even a photo album just for your selfies. Take a look.
Apple put up a new page on its website detailing the qualifications that third-party iPhone and iPad accessory makers must meet before the company will start selling those products in retail stores or online in the Apple Store. It’s not exactly the easiest process to meet Apple’s high quality standards. In fact, Apple now touts that these cases are “tested to the limit” before they make it on store shelves.
Opening a new Apple product for the first time is pretty close to a holy experience. Part of that is because Apple spends so much time perfecting product packaging so it’s simple, elegant and secure without compromising on intuitiveness.
However, it’s a mistake to think Apple is the only company that pours thought and care into something as basic as a box. In light of the recent rumor that Apple will be working with third-party accessory makers to co-design packaging for their products in Apple retail stores, it’s clear many other companies care as well. It’s about being eye-catching without straying from uniformity, it’s about being simple yet still adorned.
With this spirit in mind, take a look at some of the other electronic companies out there getting extremely creative with their product packaging. The goal for these seems to be making the boxes as gorgeous as the products themselves – and they succeed.
Amazon is getting more serious about taking a piece of the cloud storage action. Over the holiday weekend, the company released its Amazon Cloud Drive app for iOS, letting you finally access your files in Amazon’s cloud from your iPhone or iPad.
The app competes with the likes of Dropbox by enabling you to view your files anywhere, but falls short in a number of key areas.
Former Apple CEO and business parter of Steve Jobs, John Sculley dropped some interesting new tidbits about Apple’s history in a recent interview. He said that all the way back in 1984, Jobs was dreaming up the idea of a “Mac phone.”
This “Mac phone” would be a desktop device that acted as a phone, but ran a version of the Mac’s software.
Actress and one of the stars in the upcoming biopic aptly named Steve Jobs Kate Winslet, dished about some details of the movie. It seems she’s pretty enthusiastic about it, proudly boasting about how the film was made. She also had kind things to say about co-star Michael Fassbender, who plays Steve Jobs in the movie.
My MacBook Air’s charging cord was basically destroyed after only about two years of owning it. I just kept putting black electrical tape around it but that only seemed to make it worse. I finally waved the white flag, went to the Apple Store and bought a new charger for a whopping $79. If you’ve been through this before, listen up, because Juiceboxx will help you out.
Juiceboxx is a plastic case that wraps around your MacBook’s power adapter and forces the cord to point straight forward at the base. That way when you need to wrap it up and go, the cord isn’t dealing with the stress of being bent and twisted. More importantly, your cord won’t fray as it tends to do, leaving you with more money in your pocket and one less trip to the Apple Store.
No one has shut up about this album since it came out in October 2014. Taylor Swift’s “1989” sold over a million copies in the first week alone and continues to sell well even today, largely due to the fact that it was previously nowhere to be found on streaming services. That is until Apple Music launched and Swift suddenly had a change of heart.
Still, since everyone I know buzzed about this album and the media certainly buzzed about it given the Spotify melodrama, I had to give it a listen. I didn’t want to buy it because I truly didn’t care that much, but I cared enough to listen if I was already paying for a streaming subscription. Now that I’m officially an Apple Music member, I got to stream “1989” in its entirety while I was cooking my lunch.
Well iCloud Music Library is pissing people off already. The new service almost identical to iTunes Match has a DRM problem. Turned on, iCloud Music Library is taking the music you rightfully own and place in your iTunes library and automatically adding DRM protection to it. In essence, it’s placing a lock on music that’s already yours.
You may have written off the iPod as something Apple doesn’t care to breathe new life into by this point, but the iPod is exactly what appears to be getting an update. Alongside the release of iTunes 12.2 to support Apple Music, some users quickly discovered that images of the iPod family within the app feature new, unreleased colors.
Open your iOS 8.4 Music app and start listening. Beats 1 radio went live today at 9 a.m. Pacific time or 12 p.m. Eastern time, one hour after the launch of Apple Music itself. But is it any good? I’m your fellow music lover here to answer that question in as much depth as possible based on some first impressions.
First, a little background: Apple’s own radio station billed as “programs from people who love music” will stay live 24/7, broadcasting in over 100 countries. The station promises interviews with A-list celebrities and even radio shows hosted by the celebrities themselves every so often. They’ll create their own playlists and mixes and broadcast some of their favorite tunes. Jaden Smith will have his own show, so prepare to have an existential crisis.
Apple Music makes its big debut tomorrow, June 30, at 8 a.m. PST. It’s going to be a very big day for the music industry, and for us listeners. It’s the day streaming goes truly mainstream. From tomorrow on, it’s officially the streaming era.
But how does it work? What artists are going to be available? You probably have a lot of questions about what Apple Music’s launch means for you — and we’ve got answers.
There’s good news and bad news for Beats Music and future Apple Music users alike. Apple has confirmed that the new music service will arrive for Sonos apps and speakers, but unfortunately not right away. It turns out integration won’t be ready in time for the big launch tomorrow, June 30, but the two companies are working together to bring Apple Music to Sonos as soon as possible.
It’s no surprise that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5s are significantly faster than the iPhone 5c. Yet, even with iOS 9’s Low Power Mode turned on, the newer phones still manage to make long strides over that plastic (yet colorful) contraption.
Geekbench released an update to its app today, adding support for iOS 9. Even though iOS 9 is still in beta, the new tools have already revealed some surprising facts about the iPhone 6. Upon running benchmarks on an iPhone 5c and iPhone 6 in low power mode, the tools show that the iPhone 6 is still more powerful that the 5c.
Apple Music’s launch is just days away, and Spotify is already running to catch up to the free trial Apple thinks will convince you to become a paying customer.
In an attempt to match Apple’s controversial three-month free trial period, Spotify announced that it will extend its Premium free trials from 30 days to 60 its days, but only if you’re outside the U.S.
The worst part about vacationing is coming back home and getting hit in the face with cold, hard reality. Excessive food consumption, relaxing atmospheres and sugary alcoholic beverages are out of your life and work is back in. But what if you take the travel part (not to mention the cost) completely out of equation? You get Flyover in Apple Maps.
Why vacation in this costly, unforgiving world when you can live vicariously through your iPhone, iPad or Mac?
Flyover, the immersive 3-D view in Apple Maps, now supports hundreds of cities around the world and Apple adds more all the time. In fact, seven more were added to the list just today so we thought it would be fun to take a look at the hottest vacationing spots of 2015, without even leaving the couch.
Get your summer vacay on at these hot Flyover spots:
Apple seeded iOS 9 beta 2 to developers today and while there aren’t any groundbreaking new features or drastic improvements, the company did manage to add a bunch of little changes and tweaks across the OS.
Most of the improvements are small design changes, but there are a couple really useful additions too, like adding Handoff to the app switcher, search improvements are more.
Take a look at everything that’s new in iOS 9 beta 2:
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple 52 patents today, including a notable patent for a new hearing aid technology that would make the iPhone an even better device for the hearing impaired.
Apple has launched a replacement program for certain iMac models with 3TB hard drives. If you bought a 27-inch iMac with a 3TB hard drive between December 2012 and September 2013, you might be eligible for a free replacement hard drive.
The last iPad with a non-Retina display was sent to the grave today, almost three years after its debut.
Apple quietly pulled the iPad mini from its online store, leaving just the iPad mini 2 and 3 behind to go with the iPad Air 2. In doing this, Apple made a significant milestone stone: the Apple Store no longer sells non-Retina iOS devices.
The Dark Sky app — famous for its crazy accurate weather predictions that give you down to the minute details on everything — has been updated to version 5.0 today, bringing with it an awesome new design and feature improvements.
Among the most noticeable differences is a new vertical timeline that dispenses weather predictions over the next 24 hours. It’s also adjustable so you can view precipitation, temperature, wind, humidity or the UV index.
Apple’s iOS 9 News app hasn’t even seen the light of day yet, but publishers are already heavily discontent with the email Apple sent out to them regarding its terms and conditions. The email essentially tells publishers what they’re agreeing to by opting in to the News app and assumes they agree unless they explicitly state otherwise.
Even if publishers don’t like the terms and conditions Apple lays out, Apple is basically forcing their hands unless they later specify that they don’t agree. In that case, of course, they also don’t get to be a part of the News app. The terms and conditions themselves don’t entirely appear to be causing the uproar, but rather the odd presumption that all the publishers are automatically willing to participate even in total silence.
