John Brownlee - page 49

One of the best hacks to come to the Apple TV in the last year is PlexConnect, an amazing little program that hijacked the Trailers channel on your Apple TV and connected it to the Plex home media library running on your Mac. What the hack meant was that you could stream your Mac’s entire video or media library to your Apple TV just by navigating with the remote… no AirPlay required.

It was wonderful, but Apple doesn’t like hacks. That’s why PlexConnect is now dead. (Update: It’s back!)

Apple has purchased AlgoTrim, a Swedish firm specializing in image and video compression techniques, for an unspecified price. It could pave the way to better iOS device battery life, and much improved photo and video quality across Apple line-up of devices.

Steve Jobs was known for his incredible presentation and keynote skills. The man could sell anything, but he needed a proper tool to do so. That tool was Keynote, which would eventually become part of the iWork suite. But how was keynote created?

In the two weeks preceding every major Apple product launch, the buy-back companies start circling, trying to convince you to sell your old iPhones and iPads to them instead of the competition. This year’s iPhone 5S and 5C launch is no exception, and even Apple is rumored to be starting a buy-back program.

Gazelle is one of the oldest “recyclers” of used iOS devices, and we have recommended the service before. This year, though, their service is getting even better, because they are allowing now offering a price-lock guarantee.

An iPhone or iPad dock is a very nice thing to have for keeping one’s desktop regimented and tidy, but they have drawbacks.

For one, a dock that you buy for one generation of iPhone might not work if Apple changes the handset design in the next generation. In addition, iPhone and iPad docks tend not to be cross-compatible, so if you have a dock that fits your iPhone, you usually can’t force an iPad into it, and vice versa. And then, of course, there’s the case problem. Docks and cases tend not to play well together, but most of us like to use a case to protect our devices. That means we usually go without a dock.

Twelve South’s latest product, the HiRise for iPhone and iPad mini, is a combination dock and stand that very cleverly finds a way around all of these problems. We love using it, but putting it together? That’s another story.

When last we heard about Apple’s 64-bit aspirations, a notable CPU designer was saying that Apple couldn’t outrun Moore’s Law, and that the earliest Cupertino would manage to swing a 64-bit A7 processor was by 2014.

According to a new report by Fox News reporter Clayton Morris, though, Cupertino might have been juicing. A 64-bit A7 processor could be included in the iPhone 5S.

You know what everyone should do if they have an Apple TV? Install Plex, the incredible media server that can stream any digital media file on your Mac to your Apple TV, no jailbreak required.

I’m dead serious: Plex is awesome, and installing it on my Mac has been a total game changer in regards to the way I watch media in my own house. From my Apple TV, my MacBook Air, my iPad or my iPhone, I can stream my entire video library anywhere with no hassle.

Right now, the iPhone 5 comes in white-and-silver and black-and-slate. When the iPhone 5S debuts on September 10th, there’s every reason to believe that Apple will supplement the traditional two color choices with a third option, a golden color (champagne gold, rather than ingot).

Is that it, though? Not according to new leaked images suggesting that the iPhone 5S will actually come in four colors. The last one? Graphite.

In every country, there’s the holdouts, the also-ran carriers that haven’t inked a deal with Apple and so soldier valiantly on, selling Android and (gasp) Blackberries to their sad clientele. In Japan, this also-ran carrier happens to be the nation’s largest, NTT DoCoMo. But eventually, even the holdouts come around, and shares of NTT DoCoMo are up this morning following reports that Apple is in talks to bring the iPhone to the network.

In all likelihood, the iPhone 5S and 5C will be released in the United States on Friday, September 20th. What about Apple’s second most important market, though, China?

Well, if you’re a Chinese Apple fan, we’ve got bad news for you. You’re going to probably have to wait a lot longer for Apple’s new smartphones than the rest of us. A new report says the iPhone 5S and 5C won’t be released in China until November 28th.

One of the key patents in Samsung and Apple’s neverending patent dispute was ‘381, the so-called “bounce back” patent. As you might recall, the patent describes the way in which an iPhone, when inertially scrolling a document, will bounce back when it reaches the top. It’s a little detail, but it’s one of the few patent infringement verdicts Samsung hasn’t been able to weasel its way out of.

Not that that has stopped Samsung from trying, but it looks like the dispute over the famous bounce back patent is finally over. On late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh denied Samsung a motion for a new trial regarding the ‘381 patent. Finally.

Gearing up for the school year, Apple has just launched a newly redesigned “Apple and Education” page on its website, featuring a simplified design and fresh categories showing how iPhones, iPads and Macs can make a difference in the classroom.

A couple months back, Apple updated the MacBook Air line with Intel’s new, power-sipping Haswell processors, leading to a doubling of battery life across their lineup of ultraportables. No joke, Haswell’s like a miracle: my MacBook Air gets better battery life than my iPad these days.

Despite the fact that Haswell’s such an incredible boon to battery life, Apple still hasn’t rolled it out to the MacBook Pro line. A new report suggests that will change in September.

Three years ago, Tim Cook very memorably said that although Apple was selling $40 billion worth of products every year (that number has since more than quadrupled), all of Apple’s products could fit on a dining room table. That amazing quote was slightly disingenuous — many of Apple’s products are virtual, and take up no physical space at all — but it still made a point: Apple chooses what it does so carefully that everything has its place. What Cupertino doesn’t do is just as important as what it does.

It’s all interesting food for thought, to be sure, but what if we took Tim Cook’s table metaphor and broke it down? For every foot of table, how much money does Apple make on each product?

Doctors in Germany have just used an iPad to operate on some guy’s liver, not by smashing the screen and using the jagged shards as a scalpel, but by using Apple’s tablet as a second-screen for an augmented reality app. Will wonders never cease? Is there anything the iPad can’t do?

If you’re having problems accessing the iCloud this morning, it’s not just you: Apple’s official Systems Status page indicates that multiple iCloud users are having problems accessing Apple’s services.

If you’re anything like me, no matter how much evidence has mounted that Apple is indeed planning a gold iPhone 5S, you’ve had a hard time believing it. Gold in a gadget usually turns it into gaudy, undignified bling, more appropriate for a Saudi oil baron or diamond-toothed rapper than, say, the pocket of Jony Ive.

It looks like I needn’t have worried. Apple may be planning on making a gold iPhone 5S, but as you can see from the image above (you can see it in the middle), it’s a very tasteful affair… more champagne, or even platinum, than anything else. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if I were going to buy a new iPhone 5S, I might even opt for that color.

There are more images below the fold. What do you think?

The iTunes Festival is an annual, month-long music festival and concert series that Apple has thrown since 2007 at the Roundhouse Art Centre in London. Earlier this year, Apple revealed the lineup for the 2013 Festival, but now Cupertino is starting to get the ball rolling on the festivities, updating the Apple TV with a new channel and updating the iTunes Festival iOS app accordingly.

Earlier this month, we reported that Vevo, the popular music platform, was in talks with Apple to make its own Apple TV channel a reality. The channel would allow Apple TV owners to access Vevo’s 24-7 music programming, and would be monetized by ads.

Unfortunately, there were no other details, and you know what they say, “A rumor’s not a rumor that doesn’t die.” So let’s kill off this rumor by making it a reality: the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that the Vevo app could launch on the Apple TV as early as this week.

If you’re anything like me, you spent several months play Blizzard’s latest hack-and-slash action RPG, Diablo III, back in the latter part of 2011. During that period (again, if you’re anything like me), the skin on your back probably slowly grew into the fabric of your computer chair, your complexion became a shade best described as translucent, you bathed with a rag on a stick, and your eyes became the size of a lemur’s… all because you couldn’t tear yourself away from the game.

You might want to tie another rag to a stick now and save yourself the trouble later. Blizzard has just announced the first Diablo III expansion, Reaper of Souls.

Just to put the following report in the proper perspective, let’s start out by saying that two months ago — just two days after Apple debuted iOS 7 at WWDC 2013 — we predicted that the iPhone 5S would be released on September 20th later this year, after debuting ten days earlier.

How did we come up with that date? It was easy. We looked at what Apple had done in previous iPhone launches, and then took a look at the calendar for 2013. No soothsaying, no mysterious sources. It was as simple as that.

So when Japan’s largest industry newspaper, Nikkei, starts reporting that Apple will release the iPhone 5S and 5C on (yup) September 20th, you have to ask yourselves. Do they actually know? Or are they just fudging it?

Even as it stands, Thunderbolt is blisteringly fast, allowing up to 10 Gbps per lane, for a maximum throughput of 40 Gbps. Intel, though, has already upgraded Thunderbolt with the new Thunderbolt 2 spec, which not only doubles the possible transfer speed on a single lane to 20 Gbps (although not increasing total maximum throughout), but enabling 4K video file transfer and display simultaneously.

Since Thunderbolt debuted on the Mac, you’d probably expect Thunderbolt 2 to show up first in an Apple product, right? Maybe an updated Retina MacBook Pro? Alas, it’s not to be: the PC motherboard you see above is the first Thunderbolt 2 compatible product.

If you believe recent scuttlebutt, one of the reasons Apple is looking to release a gold iPhone 5S later this year is because gold is a color that sells really well in China. Is that supposition even remotely true though? If it is, it should be quantifiable.

Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt went looking for data to see if Chinese buyers really do like gold. Data’s actually pretty slim, but if the cars Chinese consumers buy are any concern, not only is gold not their favorite color… it’s only slightly more popular than puke green.

If you use Luxogram, or Webstagram, or any other Instagram compatible app, prepare yourself for the possibility of some change. Instagram has started approaching app developers and services, telling them that if they have “Insta-” or “-gram” in their names that they can expect to have their access to the Instagram stream cut off.

One of the brilliant ways in which Dropbox sort of ingratiates itself to users is the way it hands out extra storage for various tasks. For example, you might get extra Dropbox storage by allowing Dropbox to automatically upload your iPhone photo roll to their servers, or by recommending a new user.

Technically, Dropbox could pretty easily just give everyone a massive amount of storage — say, 100GB — and not impact their business model much (this is the strategy Flickr uses), the gaming aspect of Dropbox is part of its charm. It’s more fun to earn more storage than to simply have storage.

So here’s a nice trick on earning your next Dropbox level up. You can easily add 1GB to your Dropbox account just by linking it to the popular email app, Mailbox.