Apple has been awarded a new patent for adding moving radial menus to both Macs and iOS devices.
The use of radial menus would give Apple an alternative to the pull-down menus currently used in most applications — allowing context-specific menus and submenus to be created at optimal positions close to a user’s mouse cursor or, in the case of an iPhone or iPad, their finger.
If you’re the type of person who enjoys/has a work-related need to track airplanes using their iPhone or iPad, you may want to download plane-tracking app Plane Finder, which has just received a brand new update — letting you watch previous flights, dating all the way back to April 2011.
The app lets you replay holiday flights, diversions, and major incidents, as well as easily seeing the effect of storms, ATC strikes, volcanic ash clouds, and more.
An alleged mass iCloud hack has seen a veritable who’s who of Hollywood nude selfies leaked onto the Internet.
The photos — which include the likes of Avril Lavigne, Hayden Pannettiere, Kate Upton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rihanna — appeared first on 4Chan, with an anonymous poster telling people he/she had obtained the photos by hacking iCloud accounts. In addition, the photos were being sold for Bitcoins, which most likely makes this a first.
While we don’t yet know what kind of battery life the iPhone 6 is going to have, it’s always good to have a way of charging your smartphone when you’re out and about.
With that in mind, the city of Seoul in South Korea has announced that it is building a series of outdoor recharging ports along manmade stream, the Cheonggyecheon, in the city’s downtown region. Rather than drawing from the city’s regular power grid, the chargers will instead draw their current from various hydroelectric turbines which are embedded in the stream itself.
On the 51st anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful “I Have A Dream” speech, Tim Cook has tweeted to celebrate the life of the African-American civil rights leader and activist.
Describing King’s stirring words, delivered in 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., as “the speech of my lifetime,” Cook notes that “we must recommit to achieving his vision.”
As more and more of our lives are lived on social media, the importance of being able to efficiently search through content is greater than ever.
With that in mind, Facebook is currently user-testing a new feature letting mobile users sift through old posts by friends using keywords — allowing them to more easily find content that would otherwise be lost.
The feature, which only counts for posts you’re allowed to see (meaning that private posts won’t show up) has currently only been rolled out to a select few, but will likely be officially added into an update of the Facebook iOS app in the near future.
A protest involving around 50 people blocked customers from entering the main doors of Apple’s flagship San Francisco Union Square retail store yesterday.
The protest was related to service employees claiming to be underpaid. Organized by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), they staged a sit-in for nearly an hour. While the Apple Store remained opened during this time, customers had to enter through a side door.
One of the protestors, describing himself as an Apple security guard, decried the firm for its lack of job protection. “If [security officers] miss a day of work, they don’t know if they’ll have the job the next day,” he told Business Insider.
Earlier this week it was announced that Apple was replacing certain iPhone 5 models, sold between September 2012 and January 2013, due to a problem related to the devices’ battery life.
According to certain customers, however, things are not quite as straightforward as they may seem.
Some users, who fulfilled the criteria in terms of their iPhone 5 serial number, were still denied the free device replacement after Apple added additional tests. One iPhone user in Queensland, Australia said that she was told by an Apple Store employee that while the battery was “borderline” defective (it allegedly ran for only a couple of hours after charging) it was “not close enough” to warrant a free replacement. The customer was then asked for $99 in order for the Apple staffer to install a new battery.
Are we seeing the collapse of freemium game makers as the monster money spinners they were a year or so back?
Following the recent news that the recently-public Candy Crush Saga maker King had posted a disappointing quarter in terms of revenue, now the CEO of Angry Birds dev Rovio has announced that he is stepping down for similar reasons.
CEO Mikael Hed says he is “passing the hoodie” to new CEO Pekka Rantala, who recently joined Rovio after serving as head of Finnish drinks maker Hartwall.
“It has been an amazing ride and in the coming months I will be very happy to pass the hoodie to Pekka Rantala, who will take Rovio to the next level,” Hed noted in a statement. “Pekka is known to be a great leader with experience building successful global consumer brands. I will continue to play an active role and will support Pekka in any way I can to ensure Rovio’s continued success.”
Apple may view its mobile health push as a “moral obligation,” but for it to really become the tech leader in this area it’s going to need to ensure that it has user trust on its side.
That may help explain why — ahead of the September 9 event many predict will see the unveiling of the long-awaited iWatch — Apple has taken the opportunity to update its HealthKit privacy policy to ensure that developers keep user data away from advertisers and data brokers.
We’re 23 days and counting (most likely) from the iPhone 6 going on sale, and more and more components are surfacing to tease what we can all look forward to in our next generation handsets.
The latest leak comes from French Apple website NowhereElse.fr and depicts a selection of SIM trays, Home buttons, Apple logos, speakers, and vibrator motors.
The drive toward mobile health has seen more and more research into the possible medical applications of smartphones. The latest comes from a team of researchers at the University of Washington, who have developed an app capable of diagnosing jaundice in infants simply by taking their picture.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has called the wearables product category — of which Apple’s eagerly-anticipated iWatch will be one — “a hard sell.”
In an email exchange with CNet on Wednesday, the routinely outspoken Woz (who recently turned 64) noted that smart watches are “go-betweens for your smartphone, but are an extra piece and need special advantages that the smartphone doesn’t have, in my opinion. If they are just a Bluetooth go-between then it could wind up in the category of Bluetooth headsets: Fun to wear and show off for a day.”
Okay, so this month saw the announcement that the Pokémon Trading Card Game Online is coming to iPad, but the Pokémon game players really want to see on iOS is the classic series of RPGs that made the Game Boy a must-have console.
While the first-generation games were all well and good (and by “well and good” I mean that I personally pumped hours into each one) it was with the follow-up trifecta of Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal where the series really took off. For the first time, day and night cycles were incorporated in a meaningful way, with certain Pokémon discoverable only at specific times.
There was also a Friendship/Happiness system, which meant that Pokémon became increasingly devoted to specific trainers. Throw this game into the App Store, and we’ll be clued to our iPhones pretty much non-stop.
(Picture: Nintendo/Samit Sarkar)
While it certainly has its fair share of clones and discoverability issues, Apple’s mega profitable App Store is still the toast of the App Store world.
With that in mind, Microsoft is using it as its (unofficial) model for rethinking its own Windows app store which, to put it bluntly, is downright broken.
With the iPhone 6 and public launch of iOS 8 mere weeks away, one of the first products to take advantage of Apple’s new HomeKit platform has started shipping.
The product in question is the August Smart Lock, an electronic lock designed to allow keyless entry into people’s homes. “Now you can control who can enter and who can’t—without the need for keys or codes,” the company’s website notes. “And you can do it all from your smartphone or computer.”
Is it any wonder that Steve Jobs — who transformed Apple from an incredibly leak-heavy company during the 1990s, into one of the most secretive tech companies in existence — hated word getting out about his future products?
While bloggers and other reporters could get harsh treatment from Apple, however, it was loose lips on the part of actual Apple partners that really threw Jobs into a rage.
An anecdote from a new story about Time Inc. in this week’s New York magazine illustrates this, by relating how Jobs responded to Time Inc. releasing a YouTube video showing how its publications might survive the digital age, by harnessing the possibilities offered by the iPad.
The problem? Apple hadn’t yet announced the iPad’s existence.
Apple is planning to launch an even slimmer MacBook, possibly as soon as the end of 2014, or else the vaguer long-term date of 2015, according to a new report from Digitimes.
The rumor cites Taiwan-based supply chain makers, and claims that production of components has already begun in small volumes. The report also states that the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro is expected to be retired by the end of 2014.
How do you celebrate the arrival of a new member of the family? If you’re super Apple fan and former training manager for the Apple Online Store team Andreas Kleinke the answer is that you announce it in the same way Apple introduces a new product.
Adopting the minimalist design Apple is known for, Kleinke created a website for his new baby Jonathan, describing his son’s “20-inch seamless unibody enclosure,” “ten meticulously aligned fingers” and “maximum volume going all the way up to 120 dB.”
The site notes that parental sleep mode is disabled by default, and that gibberish comes as the pre-installed language, although additional language packs are available.
“The response has been truly amazing,” Kleinke tells Cult of Mac. “We already got hundreds emails from all around the globe, and there’s not a single mean one among them. Only very friendly people wishing the best. I’m sure Jonathan will be pleased, once he gets over that whole screaming thing.”
September 9 seems all but officially confirmed as the date when Apple will unveil its eagerly-anticipated iPhone 6, but when can users expect to get their hands on Apple’s next generation handset?
According to a new report coming out of China — from PCinLife, the country’s top IT portal — Apple’s new flagship phone will be available in stores between the 16th and 19th of September. This tallies with another earlier rumor from May, in which a German retailer stated that the iPhone 6 would hit the market on September 19: suggesting that this date may be the global date.
Ports of popular console and arcade game series can be hit-and-miss on iOS, but Namco Bandai’s Ridge Racer Slipstream definitely falls into the “hit” category.
An iOS game which pulls together a lot of the best vehicles and tracks from previous Ridge Racer games, Ridge Racer Slipstream has just been updated for the first time since March adding two brand new race tracks, four new Class 1 vehicles (including the Kamata Synci, Kamata RC410, and Lucky Wild Evolver), Masters’ Class career content, and support for MFi game controllers.
Apple may be on the verge of releasing its most generously-sized iPhone yet, but the company is always on the lookout for new ways of providing screen real estate to its users.
A new patent published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show how Apple is investigating “Electronic devices with flexible displays,” featuring a flexible display layer overlaid on top of buttons, switchers, speakers, microphones and other components which feature in iOS devices.
Normally a story about a stolen iPod touch wouldn’t be worthy of major news coverage. That changes, however, when the iPod touch in question is used to control its war veteran owner’s prosthetic hand.
The iPod touch belongs to Afghanistan vet Staff Sgt. Ben Eberle, 27, who lost both his right hand and two legs in a bomb explosion three years ago while on a tour of duty. The device features an app called i-limb, which allows Eberle to use his prosthetic hand.
The creator of minimalist text game A Dark Room has just released an intriguing new title entitled Gridland. Although the game has yet to arrive in the App Store, it is playable on iOS devices using Safari.
Gridland is a match-3 game, which requires players to make matches in order to gather resources and build buildings during the day — and then to fight off creatures at night. In other words, it’s every bit as “out there” as A Dark Room — and quite possibly as immersive as well.
Apple has updated its lineup for next month’s iTunes Festival London, adding several new names including Tony Bennett and Mary J. Blige, demonstrating just how wide-ranging the festival is in terms of its music.
The festival kicks off in September, taking place at the Roundhouse in London. As always, tickets are 100 percent free, although attendees will need to win competitions (organized by Apple and local partners) in order to get hold of them.
The current festival lineup can be seen below: