If you’re an Rdio user, great news. The official iOS app has just been updated to optimize the music-streaming service for iOS 8. And it gets even better if you happen to have an automobile with CarPlay installed.
Yesterday, Apple unveiled the iPad mini 3, a slightly updated version of the second-gen iPad mini with Retina display. But even though it’s two generations old at this point, Apple still sells the original iPad mini for $249. That makes it the cheapest iPad yet, albeit for good reason: It packs the same A5 chip and other silicon guts that the iPad 2 did way back in March 2011.
That might actually seem like a good deal for consumers, but it’s turning out to be a nightmare for developers who will likely have to support the iPad mini until 2017.
First launched in January 2011, the Mac App Store promised to give developers the same sort of centralized marketplace to sell their apps that had made the iOS App Store such a success. Instead of making developers rich or giving them a better place to market their apps, though, an increasing number of developers are actually leaving the Mac App Store in what Milen Dzhumerov, one of the devopers behind Monodraw, has called a “subtle exodus.”
Why? It all has to do with Apple’s Mac App Store policies.
Current rumor suggests that the next iPad Air will be even thinner than the last one.
And as we know from the release of the last iPhone, when something’s thinner… well, it’s likely to get bent.
So what will happen if Bendgate comes to the iPad? Our favorite concept designer Martin Hajek imagines the next iPad Air if it proves as pliable as the iPhone 6.
There are more images after the jump. What do you think?
Update: False alarm. As we suggested was a possibility, Philips was misunderstood by a reporter. They are actually just bundling Apple TV’s with new televisions, not building in the hardware.
We don’t know exactly what Apple plans on announcing next Thursday, but one thing’s for sure: It’s not just new iPads.
The tagline for the event — “It’s been far too long” — implies that we’re about to see a new version of a product that hasn’t been updated for a while.
One strong candidate is the Apple TV. But if a (possibly premature) announcement by consumer electronics company Philips is anything to go by, Apple might not just be giving the Apple TV a spec bump. Cupertino might announce instead that it will be integrating Apple TV hardware into third-party television sets!
Before the iPhone 6 was officially announced, developers confirmed the higher resolution of the iPhone 6 by examining the beta for iOS 8, specifically in the way apps would prefer to load a 3x image over the 2x image on existing Retina Devices.
Now the iOS 8.1 beta is out, and developers are discovering that it will similarly call up 3x versions of many iPad UI assets, implying that the iPad could be seeing a resolution bump sometime soon.
In Apple’s invitation to the company’s October 16th Town Hall event at its Cupertino headquarters, the company’s tagline is: “It’s been way too long.”
This has prompted a lot of speculation. It hasn’t been too long since Apple’s last event, which was just a month ago. And there aren’t that many other Apple products that we haven’t seen updated in the last year, with the exception of Thunderbolt displays, which frankly aren’t important enough to reference in an Apple tagline that the whole world will scrutinize.
But here’s a good theory. What if the tagline doesn’t reference a single product, but a variation of product? What if we’re about to see the return of colored Macs?
We all know that Apple’s advertising is a cut above the competition, but sometimes Cupertino’s competitors stoop so low that all you can do is just shake your head in embarrassment.
That’s certainly the way I feel about Toshiba’s racist new ads. Released in Croatia, they feature a couple of slanted tablets that have been placed to look like squinty eyes, just like the way Asians have been stereotypically portrayed in Western media for centuries. Face palm!
Which weighs more? An iPad filled with media and apps, or an iPad with no media or apps installed?
It sounds like a trick question — the digital age equivalent of “What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of rocks?”
But surprisingly, an iPad without anything installed on it does weigh less than an iPad that is full.
Despite complaints that the Apple Watch is just too big to appeal to women and thinner-wristed men, the Cupertino’s upcoming wearable isn’t actually that big. In fact, it’s about the same size as a Rolex.
Still not convinced that the Apple Watch will look good on your wrist? Why not print one out and see how you look wearing it?
Here’s an important heads-up: If you keep documents in your iCloud Drive, don’t use iOS 8’s “Reset All Settings” option. It could delete files stored in the cloud.
One of iOS 8’s great new features is Quick Type, which scans your history for your most commonly used word combinations and suggests the word you’re most likely to use next, which can be selected with just a tap.
That said, Quick Type is hardly perfect… a fact made abaundantly clear by the latest xkcd comic, in which iOS 8 mangles famous quotes from Scarface, Wizard of Oz, Serenity, Goonies, Lord of the Rings and Goldfinger.
And you thought Damn You, Autocorrect was hilarious!
If you hate iOS 8 -— whether because it runs like crap on your device, you miss your jailbreak, or because it’s significantly more buggy — you’ve previously had the option to downgrade back to iOS 7.1.2 if you wanted to.
But bad news. That ship has sailed. Apple has stopped signing iOS 7.1.2, making iOS 8 the only version of iOS that can be installed on any device capable of supporting it.
Of all the carriers you could possibly get your iPhone 6 through, AT&T is one of the worst. But starting on Sunday, signing a new two-year contract with AT&T is going to get a little more attractive, especially if you use a lot of data: for a limited time, Ma Bell is offering double the data for Mobile Share Value Plans.
Before the iPhone 6, the reason Apple decided on 3.5-inch and then 4-inch displays was to allow for the entire screen to be easily within reach of your thumb when using your iPhone with a single hand. Now that the iPhone 6 starts at a massive 4.7 inches, you’re going to need a bigger thumb.
Like this one! Thanko, a Tokyo-based maker of electronic crapcessories, has just delivered unto the market its magnum opus: a soft, silicon-based “finger stylus” that extends your thumb up to 0.6 inches, helping you reach the far corners of your iPhone 6 Plus with one hand.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the new owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. No surprise, then, that our favorite sweaty iOS hater is banning iPhones and iPads on the court.
Unless you’re talking about critically endangered species, using up a sizable percentage of the world’s anything is an impressive benchmark. When that’s 25 percent of the world’s RAM, though — a critical component of every smartphone, tablet and ultrabook on Earth — only Apple is capable of placing those kinds of orders.
If you regularly use an iPhone or iPad app that uses a built-in browser, you could be vulnerable to a major vulnerability in iOS that allows unscrupulous app developers to spy on your typing.
Microsoft has been having quite a bit of fun with Siri in its new Windows Phone ads. Reminiscent in feel of Apple’s old “Mac vs. PC” ads, the Cortana vs. Siri ad campaign shows Microsoft’s digital assistant having fun at the expense of slow, dumb ol’ Siri.
Not afraid to whip a dead horse, Cortana is now back in two news Windows Phone ads, showing just how much more she can do on Microsoft’s new Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia 635 than Siri can do on the iPhone.
The difference between an iPhone 5, and iPhone 6, and an iPhone 6 Plus sounds like it would obvious, but it’s not: a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 has a 38% bigger screen than an iPhone 5, and the 5.5-inch iPhone Plus has a screen that is almost 89% larger than the 4-inch iPhone 5s. The point is, it can be hard to mentally visualize the difference between a 4-inch iPhone, a 4.7-inch iPhone, and a 5.5-inch iPhone.
Apple knows this. That’s why in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Cupertino’s advertising department has taken out a full page ad, showing the actual size of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. All you need to do to see how much bigger an iPhone 6 is over your current phone is place it next to the magazine.
Very simple, but also very brilliant. For the iPhone 6, Apple’s selling size, not speed, and this is a great way to make it relatable to everyone. Nicely done, Apple.
Source: Mac Observer
President Obama, sadly, does not have an iPhone 6. But he totally wants one, leading him to openly lust after Apple’s newest handset in a meeting Tuesday at the United Nations.
Mojang, the Microsoft-owned developer behind hit game Minecraft, has a new game coming to the iPad. And good news! It’ll be getting a price drop across all platforms when it does.
From the iPhone to the iPad, immediate reactions are always mixed on new Apple products, as the public struggles to wrap its head around Cupertino’s next bold idea. And so we hear a lot of warrantless criticism until the product actually lands on shelves.
One refrain we’re hearing a lot from Apple Watch critics is that Jony Ive may have dropped the ball with the Apple Watch design. The problem? To these critics, the Apple Watch’s casing looks shockingly thick.
As it turns out, though, this is largely an optical illusion. The Apple Watch isn’t really any thicker than a Rolex.
Despite KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s usually excellent track record on Apple predictions, he messed up his last prediction that the iPad Air 2 would make its appearance at Apple’s iPhone 6 launch event two weeks ago.
Obviously, that didn’t happen. But if you’re eager for an iPad Air boasting an A8 chip, a new report corroborates a rumor we’ve heard before: it’s coming in October. Don’t wait for an A8 iPad mini though: it’s at least three months away.
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the biggest iPhones yet. But that comes with a drawback: Since they have bigger batteries than any iPhone ever, they also take longer to charge.
But here’s a killer trick. You can use a 12-watt iPad charger to juice up the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in half the time when compared to the 5-watt iPhone charger your device ships with by default.
