Luke Dormehl - page 281

7 of the 15 artists with an ownership stake in Jay Z’s troubled Tidal streaming music service may have their music pulled from it as a result of Jay Z failing to reach a music licencing agreement with Sony, which owns many of the streaming rights to the musicians in question.

Alicia Keys, Daft Punk, Jack White, Calvin Harris, J Cole, Usher have all released albums under one of Sony’s labels, while even Jay’s own wife Beyonce could see her music vanish from her husband’s attempt at a challenger to digital music giants like Spotify and Apple.

Chances are you’ve heard about the iOS bug that lets users send a string of text to another iPhone owner that causes their Messages app to crash and their iPhone to reboot.

Although Apple has yet to fix the Messages bug with a software update, it has published an official support document containing a temporary workaround for solving the problem.

If you’re in and about New York after June 13 you’ll have an extra Apple Store to check out, since that marks the date when Apple will open its new retail location on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Signage was put up overnight, revealing that customers have just over two weeks to wait until construction is finished on the impressive 4,000-square foot upmarket retail outlet.

Not that everyone’s happy about it, of course.

When Samsung dropped its Iron Man-themed Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge variant, I had a feeling I’ve never experienced in my days as an iPhone owner: Android envy.

Fortunately that brief emotional response can now be banished to the furthest limits of the Negative Zone courtesy of this gorgeous, metallic-flake-finish “Hero Collection” adhesive skin for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

No, it’s not Tony Stark’s titanium alloy, but in so far as it gives your iPhone the familiar metallic red-and-gold look associated with everyone’s favorite billionaire philanthropist superhero, it’s pretty darn good.

As one of the best Photoshop competitors on Mac and iPad, the superb photo editing tool Pixelmator is finally available for iPhone.

Promising to be more powerful than other iPhone image editing apps, Pixelmator’s universal app boasts support for layers, in-depth color adjustments, pro-level photo retouching, real-time photo warping, and even digital painting.

Check out a preview video below:

Every report we’ve heard suggests that Force Touch is practically a lock for Apple’s next-generation iPhones, but a rumor coming out of Taiwan claims that the feature was originally planned as a handset exclusive for the iPhone 6s Plus.

According to supply chain sources, the iPhone 6s Plus alone was originally designed to include Force Touch sensors, although Apple has since changed its mind and decided to incorporate the technology into both the 6s Plus and smaller 6s.

That’s certainly good news if — like the majority of customers — you plan to buy the smaller 4.7-inch iPhone 6s, but still want to take advantage of the latest Apple tech.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Apple is pretty darn keen on making Apple Pay into the de facto mobile payments solution.

With that in mind, the company is reportedly set to announce a new Apple Pay Rewards Program at next month’s Worldwide Developers Conference, offering exclusive perks to customers who use the service, while driving people to return to participating merchants.

We’ve had a new Steve Jobs biography and documentary already this year, with a movie biopic based on the Walter Isaacson book just around the corner.

If you thought Jobs’ life hadn’t been explored enough by biographers, however, think again! The National Geographic Channel is getting ready to a air a new documentary series called American Genius, which will explore famous business rivalries throughout history.

And it’s kicking off with an episode about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

The Cult of Mac faithful have spoken: Apple’s cuddly co-founder The Woz will be the latest tech icon recreated in wax as a Madame Tussauds statue.

Beating out other possible candidates including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak will take his rightful place alongside the waxen visages of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg at Madame Tussauds’ San Francisco museum this fall.

If you’re looking for a good deal on a movie to watch you may want to check out the freshly-launched Movie of the Day! app on iOS, which offers up to 70 percent discounts off the price of new and classic films.

A joint effort between Fox and Apple, the app offers users a new iTunes movie download each day. According to Apple these movie deals will “range from blockbusters to acclaimed indies,” so there’s a high probability that you’ll find something that you enjoy.

An iPhone 5 user from San Diego almost lost his Apple handset after accidentally dropping it into the sea.

“My brother tried throwing my phone to me,” Gregory Papadin told British newspaper The Mirror. “It ended up going straight under water and sank to bottom of the ocean floor.”

Papadin says the underwater pressure proved too much for him and his brother to swim down and retrieve the phone, but the captain of the ship he was renting was able to dive in and get it — to discover that the phone had not only managed to survive the episode, but actually film its own watery descent.

Check out the video below:

The phenomenal success of the iPhone 6 has catapulted Apple back to the spot of “world’s most valuable brand” in the 2015 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list, after it temporarily lost the title to Google last year.

According to organizers Millward Brown, Apple increased its brand value by a whopping 67 percent to $247 billion in the last year, compared to 2014’s winner Google, which achieved “only” a 9 percent value increase during that same time.

There is plenty that former Android-users won’t miss if they make the jump to iOS, but one thing they might is the iPhone’s lack of an Android-style “back” button — the result of Steve Jobs’ belief that everything about the iPhone be as uncluttered as possible.

A new Kickstarter project gives you back this feature, however, thanks to a “smart” screen protector which adds just such a button to your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus home screen.

And based on the fact that it’s already been funded more than six times over, we’re assuming it’s something a number of users would really, really like to get their hands on. Literally.

The man charged with keeping Apple user interfaces looking and working beautifully made his bones by suggesting hand-painted boxes for the original iPhone.

That’s just one shimmery detail from the resume of Alan Dye, Apple’s new vice president of user interface design. Here’s everything else you need to know about the man taking over from Jony Ive when it comes to the day-to-day running of all things UI.

Apple could make its upcoming iPhone 6s handsets slimmer and lighter than ever by taking advantage of new smaller LED backlighting chips, according to a new report.

The new chips have the same 3.0 x 0.85mm dimensions as those used in present generation iPhones, but are an impressive 0.2mm thinner than the current 0.6mm components.

If Apple’s former CEO had been more sentimental, we’d be referring to the company’s upcoming “Spaceship” headquarters as the Steve Jobs campus, according to an interesting tidbit in Stephen Fry’s Telegraph article about Jony Ive’s promotion.

While being given a tour of the rapidly advancing Apple Campus 2 site, Fry suggested it should be named after Jobs, who died in 2011 but was heavily involved with the early stages of planning.

“Oh, Steve made his views on that very clear,” said Tim Cook — hinting that the idea was discussed, but that Jobs wasn’t a massive fan of it.

The first Apple devices to boast A9 chips aren’t even out yet, and already manufacturers are fighting it out to get a piece of the next-next-gen A10 order action — which are likely to make their debut with the iPhone 7 in 2016.

Having come dangerously close to losing out on A9 orders entirely, TSMC is reportedly wasting no time in investing in the right equipment to wow Apple into handing over its order book for the A10 chips.

Jony Ive received a nice gift for the Memorial Day weekend: a promotion to the role of Chief Design Officer at Apple, which will broaden his design duties at Apple while handing day-to-day running of the design team to long-time Apple employees Alan Dye and Richard Howarth.

Congrats, Jony!

Rumors that the iPhone 6s will be getting a vastly improved camera are picking up steam.

According to a new report coming out of China, the next-generation Apple handset will boast a 12MP camera with a special Sony sensor to improve the performance of shooting in low-light conditions.

Living in a world where the iPhone dominates, and rivals don’t so much compete by doing things differently as by offering cut-rate versions of the same core technology, it can be easy to forget how much of a disruption Apple’s handset actually caused when Steve Jobs unveiled it in 2007.

A new book chronicling the rise and fall of BlackBerry tells the story from the perspective of the one-time king of (semi-)smartphones. And the reaction was every bit as full of shock, awe, anger and denial as you might expect.

Because iPhone and BlackBerry don’t have to compete for customers, right? Right?

The India government has previously blocked Apple from opening any brick-and-mortar retail outlets in the country because Apple don’t manufacture any products in India.

That could be about to change, however, thanks to a recent rumor claiming that Foxconn has been given permission to open new iPhone-manufacturing plants in Maharashtra, the heavily-populated state in the country’s western region which claims Mumbai as its capital.

The factories would benefit from government funding aimed at bringing more manufacturing companies to India.

Rapper and entrepreneur Jay Z made waves when he claimed that there is a racially-motivated component to why Apple and others are “hating on” his new Tidal streaming music service.

But if you thought the whole hip hop community would stand behind Jay Z on the topic, you’d be wrong. In particular, “Pump It Up” hit maker, Slaughterhouse member (and Apple fan?) Joe Budden hit back with comments in a recent interview.

His take on the situation? That people don’t buy products based on their love of a particular company. They do it because that company makes the best products. And right now, Apple does and Tidal doesn’t.

Oh, snap!

Apple Watch orders are currently coming in at a rate of around 30,000 units per day — according to analytics provided by Slice Intelligence, which combed through the e-receipts of around 14,000 online shoppers who used Slice’s services.

Although there was, unsurprisingly, a big drop-off from launch day, numbers appear to have been pretty consistent since then. So far, Apple has sold upwards of 2.5 million Apple Watches — more than the iPod, iPhone, or iPad sold during the same period of time in their first year.

If you’ve long found yourself unable to communicate effectively with your friends because of the lack of “bacon,” “shark” and “man in tuxedo” emojis, you could be in luck next year.

That’e because the Unicode Consortium, aka the Mountain View, California-based organization that standardizes characters and emoji across different operating systems — is set to add 38 all-new emojis to its Unicode 9.0 update.

Arriving in June 2016, they should find their way onto iOS not long after. Here’s what you can expect:

Kanye West is reportedly distancing himself from Jay Z’s Tidal music service and set to launch his next album — his seventh solo studio album — on Apple’s refreshed Beats Music service, rumored to arrive at this year’s WWDC in June.

Called SWISH, Kanye’s album currently has no official release date, although Wikipedia (for what it’s worth) claims it will drop on June 1. WWDC kicks off one week later on June 8 at Moscone West in San Francisco.