John Brownlee - page 69

If it seems like David Bowie hasn’t released a decent album in years, it’s because he hasn’t: his last album, Reality, came out in 2003. A few weeks ago, though, the heterochromic androgyne began teasing songs from an upcoming album called The Next Day, to be released on March 12.

Can’t wait to hear it, though? You don’t have to. Just load up iTunes and David Bowie and you can stream the entire album for free, up until The Next Day’s March 12 release.

Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust era Bowie fans, or even Labyrinth era Bowie fans, take note: this album is very definitely what one would characterize as “late Bowie.”

Source: iTunes

The latest data from Display Search suggests that the iPad mini is cannibalizing iPad sales, and that Apple won’t sell as many larger iPads this year as it anticipated. Generally speaking, self-cannibalism is something Cupertino’s okay with… but they may not like the taste in their mouths nearly as much this time.

It’s a bad week for app updates. Hot on the heels of an epic Kindle for iOS bug that wiped out users’ e-book libraries comes a bug affecting version 5.2 of Evernote, which causes the app to crash upon startup. Luckily, it’s a simple fix.

Skewering Apple’s recent ads aired during the Oscars, Conan O’Brien spells out for everyone what the iPad is really used for more than almost anything else: porn. Of course, the iPad mini is even better, since you can hold it with one hand.

Source: YouTube
Via: Gizmodo

For the sixth year in a row, Apple has topped Fortune’s list of world’s most admired companies, beating out other tech giants to the top spot like Google, Amazon and IBM.

The iBookstore might not be the most profitable leg of Apple’s empire, but it is said that Apple doesn’t get into a business if it can’t make a billion dollars off of it… so no surprise that the iBookstore is a billion dollar business, even if it’s not much more than that.

At today’s Apple Shareholders Meeting, CEO Tim Cook admitted that Apple was “looking at new product categories” but that the company had no interest in just “pressing a button or two” to have Apple make the most products.

Heads up! If you use Amazon’s Kindle app for the iPhone or iPad, don’t hit update! The new 3.6.1 update will, if installed, delete your entire book library from your device. Amazon’s working on the problem, and for a problem of this magnitude, expect a quick fix.

Update: And it’s now been fixed!

Apple’s always looking to miniaturize its gadgets down to the slimmest, smallest form factor possible, which is why the venerable iOS home button is such a conspicuous space waster: although the button grounds users in the iOS operating system, it’s also a fairly big and bulky element of the front of the device.

According to Peter Zigich in his new concepts for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 mini and iPhone 6 Maxi, Apple should just eliminate it from the front of the device to make way for a nearly bezel-less screen. Bizarrely, though, he thinks it should be shifted to the lower left hand side of the device, in a lower location on each side.

Apple is an LGBT-friendly company that embraces all sorts of people as long as they are committed to excellence, so it’s bracing to see that they are urging the Supreme Court to support legalizing gay marriage.

Too cheap to actually buy Tweetbot, Tapbot’s awesome Twitter app for iPhone, iPad and Mac? Are you pirating it despite the fact that it only costs a couple bucks, and Tweetbot has a limited number of tokens that it can distribute before Twitter says they can’t sell their client anymore?

Well, Tweetbot’s not going to force you to do anything, but they have started autofilling the Tweet box in its iOS app to publically broadcast that they are no-good, dirty pirates.

There have been a lot of theories floated for why Foxconn froze new hires earlier this month. Early rumors suggested that iPhone 5 production had slowed, while later reports said that Apple’s new measures to improve working conditions had caused fewer workers than usual to abandon their posts over Chinese New Year.

Now there’s a new theory: Foxconn’s getting out of China, at least in part.

One of the best games of last year — XCOM: Enemy Unknown — is coming to the Mac, allowing Mac gamers for the first time to tactically repel a full-on invasion of the planet Earth, one turn at a time.

Want to hear a good argument for the possibility of Apple launching an iRadio service? According to a couple ofnew report, 2012 is the first time since 1999 that piracy is down, and the music industry has actually grown. And music streaming services like Rdio and Spotify can take all the credit.

Rumors are swirling that Apple, a company which has been having a rocky time on Wall Street lately despite reporting their most profitable quarter ever, might announce a decision to issue a stock split tomorrow at their next shareholder meeting, to be held tomorrow.

Owners of late 2012 Macs like the Mac mini, the new iMac or the MacBook Pro with Retina Display are reporting a major problem with their machines: they can’t re-install Mountain Lion or even re-install from a Time Machine backup if their systems get corrupted.

Apple doesn’t like jailbreaks. Never has, never will… which is why it’s odd that the evasi0n jailbreak, first unleashed to the world with iOS 6.1, has seen two small bug fix releases of iOS come and go — iOS 6.1.1 and iOS 6.1.2 — that don’t fix the exploit.

Better get your jailbreak in while you can, though, because word is that Apple is now beta testing a new version of iOS 6.1.3 that closes the exploit for good.

It’s not every day that a Mac accessory comes along and promises to give you superpowers, but that’s just what Thalmic Labs is promising with their innovative new armband today. Called the MYO, it’s a Bluetooth-enabled device that allows you to control your Mac, just by flexing your muscles.

For his girlfriend’s birthday, Alex and some of her friends all chipped in to get her a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

The finishing touch, though? The piece de resistance, as it were? A brilliant custom birthday card that apes the style of an official Apple product announcement.

That’s a hell of a gift, with a hell of a personal touch. Alex’s girlfriend better marry that guy.

Via: Reddit

Jake Marsh is the designer of the stunning, minimalist iOS weather app, Conditions, which costs just $0.99 on the App Store. But because some people are so lame that they would rather go through the trouble of pirating a good app that they like than give the developer a buck for it, Jake decided to program a special ‘Pirate Mode’ into Conditions, in which users who pirate the app always get a weather report of 666 degrees in which fire and brimstone literally hails down upon them.

The prevailing conditions? “ARRRmageddon.” Absolute genius.

Via: Twitter

There’s few better ways to extend the capabilities of your Apple TV 2 than installing XBMC on it, but after the latest Apple TV 5.2 software (iOS 6.1) dropped, there was just no way to do it. Thankfully, XMBC has been updated, and will now stably supercharge your second-gen Apple TV just as well as it did before.

To do the install, it’s as simple as following the instructions over on the XBMC wiki. It’s pretty easy, although it does require some command line delving and a reboot. Power through all of that, though, and you’ll have an incredible, open-source media center running on your Apple TV 2 that can play pretty much anything. Nifty.

Source: XBMC

Why should you buy an iPhone 5 over a Samsung Galaxy S III? Well, besides the fact that the S III is for jerkfaces, the iPhone 5 is nearly 300% more reliable and less likely to break than your average Samsung phone. Ouch!

In addition to forecasting that Apple would double existing investor dividends to 6% by borrowing low-interest cash domestically. Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty walked away from her recent meeting with another conviction: that a cheaper ‘iPhone mini’ aimed at emerging markets was extremely likely

With AAPL stock in decline, investors are rioting to get a piece of Apple’s $137.1 billion cash horde. Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, of course, has been making waves with his lawsuit against Apple and his proposal that Apple issue an ‘iPref’ preferred dividend to investors; now, Morgan Stanley Katy Huberty has come out of a meeting with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, apparently convinced that Apple will more than double its existing dividend to investors to 6%.

Google has just unveiled an absolutely mystifying new product apparently created by insane millionaires, for even crazier millionaires: the Pixel, a $1,300 Chromebook with a Retina-like display. Although it’s attractive and well specced, it might be the most inexplicable product announced this year.