Luke Dormehl - page 325

Tim Cook has been an ardent supporter of LGBT rights while leading the ship at Apple. That continued this weekend, as Apple (in a display known as “Apple Pride”) participated in the San Francisco Pride Celebration & Parade, one of the many gay pride parades held Sunday across the United States.

Apple gave out $1 iTunes gift cards to onlookers at the parade, allowing them to download free songs from the iTunes Store. It also celebrated the event by including an “LGBT Gay Pride” station on iTunes Radio.

iPad screenmaker Sharp is allocating a major chunk of its LCD production facilities to Apple — but doesn’t seem all that happy about it.

According to an interview published Monday with Sharp Senior Executive Managing Officer Norikazu Hoshi, the company worries about what it means for the entire output of the Japanese display maker’s Kameyama No. 1 plant to go “to just one company (Apple).”

Unless someone’s *ahem* Putin us on, this 18-carat gold plated iPhone 5s featuring the visage of Russia’s controversial president is currently selling for around $4,363.

Called the Caviar iPhone 5s Supremo Putin, it is the work of luxury jewellery house Perla Penna, and is available only in Russia.

In addition to an etching of Vladimir Putin, the phone case is accompanied by the Russian coat of arms, along with the first two lines of the Russian national anthem.

It’s all about home automation here in 2014, and General Electric are taking full advantage. More than a century after General Electric founder Thomas Edison created his version of the light bulb, the company has introduced a new smart LED light bulb called Link.

What’s neat about Link light bulbs is that they can be remotely controlled by iPhone users from anywhere in the world, being Internet-connected and operated using the so-called Wink app which allows for the control of its settings and syncing with associated devices.

By enhancing discoverability and human curation in its App Store, and favoring innovative indie developers over brainless money-hungry giants, Apple is doing a lot of things right these days when it comes to iOS.

An area it could still work on, however, is kicking out knockoff titles — or making sure they never make it into the App Store to begin with.

Case in point is Cloned Blek. Brought to our attention by Gamezebo, the title is a shameless display by apparent ripoff artists Coffee House Apps.

Endless runners are a popular genre on iOS, and the newly-launched Go Go Ghost looks like it’s not going to buck that trend.

A side-scrolling auto-runner, it varies up the formula by adding missions. To complete each mission, your character (a ghostly figure with a flaming skull, a bit like a cuter version of Marvel’s Ghost Rider) must collect coins, power-ups and other objects, chase down enemies, avoid pitfalls, and defeat sinister bosses. To help you are a variety of colorful supporting characters, who will do some of the gem-collecting work on your behalf.

If you’re looking for a way to charge your Apple devices in the simplest, most hassle-free way possible, you may want to check out the new Kickstarter project, MOS Reach.

Acting as an extension of the traditional wall outlet, MOS Reach is a rectangular device that includes a standard socket alongside two 3.1 amp USB ports — giving you enough power to charge both your iPhone and iPad simultaneously.

Siri’s starting work — or at least something like that. SRI International, the brains behind the Siri standalone app bought by Apple back in 2010, has announced the creation of Kasisto, a business version of Apple’s virtual assistant.

Kasisto will enable companies to integrate their own branded Siri-style assistants within apps, providing a way of letting helping consumers navigate complex tasks through a conversational Artificial Intelligence program. While SRI International has yet to release many details, this means that it should be possible to harness the regular Siri interactions for more specialized tasks within apps, allowing specific businesses to “train” their own version of Siri to become an expert in a variety of areas, from medical advice to, say, movie rentals.

If you’re looking for a good deal on an iPhone — and aren’t too concerned about being the first person on your block to own an iPhone 6 — it’s a great time to be a customer.

A few months back, RadioShack lowered its prices on the iPhone 5s, and now Walmart is doing the same. From today, Walmart is making the 16GB iPhone 5s available for $99 on a two-year contract, representing a $50 saving. The 16GB iPhone 5c is even better value, costing just $29 (down from $49) for a similar two-year contract.

Way better than it sounds iOS collectible card superhero beat-em-up Injustice: Gods Among Us recently received a notable update.

Adding four new challenge characters, players can now expect to confront the likes of Killer Frost, Luchadore Bane, Arkham Origins Deathstroke and Red Son Batman, all of whom will go live in the coming weeks. The interface for challenges has also been reworked, meaning that it’s now a whole lot easier to tell how many challenge levels it is that you’ve completed, and what the rewards are for each one.

Apple has been focusing on improving App Store discoverability as of late, and now it has added a “Best New Updates” section for games, which introduces users to notable updates of top-selling titles.

Prior to this addition, Apple included game updates as part of its curated “Best New Games” section, which resulted in a long list that took ages to scroll through. By separating updates from entirely new games, users can now more easily browse through the list to discover games that they might otherwise miss.

Back in August, a new game arrived in the iOS App Store and almost immediately vanished without a trace.

“I received a few great reviews from news sites, but not enough to have an impact,” says Robert Topala, founder of RobTop Games and developer of the disappearing game. “Since I had no marketing budget it quickly dropped in rankings after release.”

For most games that would have been it. And if the story stopped there, it wouldn’t have been a tale of total failure: Topala wasn’t a professional coder, and had only been making mobile games for a couple years at the time. Simply finishing a game, getting it in the App Store and picking up a few accolades would have been nice enough.

But that wasn’t Topala’s story.

Apple has made another interesting hire to augment the already impressive number of biometrics experts the company has snapped up in recent times.

Alex Hsieh, who joins Apple as a new firmware developer, was formerly lead engineer at the weight training-oriented, fitness-tracking company Atlas Wearables.

Launched on Indiegogo back in February, Atlas raised an impressive $629,000 to create the most accurate and social wearable activity tracker yet available on the market. This accuracy was largely the result of an impressive suite of internal sensors, designed in part by Hsieh.

With reports about the iWatch in full swing, this hire confirms once again that Apple has one of the most biosensor impressive teams ever assembled for its long-awaited arrival in the wearables field.

Source: Networkworld

Bad news for those of you who use Apple’s Podcasts app: For the vast majority of users running iOS 7.1.1, the app crashes immediately after launching.

There’s currently no word as to why this is happening, since the Podcasts app was last updated May 29 — adding only minor bug fixes — but the malfunction has just kicked in.

With so much focus on its iOS devices, it’s easy to forget that Apple is constantly innovating for its Mac product line as well.

On Thursday, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals the company’s investigations into possible future Mac Keyboards which support gesture controls, as well as in-key pictograms, symbols, and glyphs.

A couple of months after debuting its new look iPhone app complete with updated iOS 7 design, The Weather Channel has finally given its iPad app the same treatment — with a new look interface that is “closely aligned to the iOS 7 aesthetic.”

While it’s certainly taken its time (apparently weather apps change a whole lot slower than the weather itself), there’s no disputing that the app looks better than ever, with a flat interface and simple menu that makes this particular meteorology app incredibly easy to use.

What did we miss?

Got your own favorite movie or TV franchise that’s just begging for a reboot? Let us know in the comments below.

The iPhone 6 is undoubtedly one of the year’s most eagerly anticipated gadgets, but how does this translate into actual sales?

Crunching the numbers, Taiwan’s Topology Research Institute predicts that the iPhone 6 will sell around 80 million units by the end of 2014. With most sources suggesting that Apple plans to release both a 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone 6, these devices will likely be going on sale in September — meaning that Apple would be selling an average of 20 million iPhone 6 devices per month, for the final four months of the year.

If you like a bit (a lot!) of wanton carnage in your iOS games, you may want to check out World of Tanks Blitz, which has finally rolled into App Stores around the world.

Based on the massively popular World of Tanks game for PC and Xbox, World of Tanks Blitz is a free-to-play mobile massively multiplayer online game, which lets you battle it out in explosive 7v7 PvP battles, using 90 iconic tanks from Germany, the US, and Soviet Russia.

Possibly coming with a $100 premium, Apple is going to need some extra reasons to get users to stump up for a 5.5-inch iPhone 6, and according to a new report they may have found them.

While it’s been reported that the 4.7-inch iPhone will be arriving in both 32 GB and 64 GB variants, a rumor from the Chinese website Wei Feng suggests that Apple may introduce a 128 GB version of the phone in the 5.5-inch form factor only.

This would allow users to get the full “phablet” experience from their device, since it would provide plenty of storage space to save various documents and data. It would also blur the line between Apple’s iPad and iPhone models, since iPads currently allow for up to 128 GB of storage, whereas current generation iPhones only allow a maximum of 64 GB of in-built storage.

Having reportedly snagged the bulk of iPhone 6 orders from Apple, Taiwanese manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry, a.k.a. Foxconn, has every reason to be happy.

Earlier today it announced record breaking consolidated revenues of $131.82 billion for last year, while company chairman Terry Gou commented that he expects this year’s earnings to be even better.

Interestingly, Gou had some choice words to say about wearables, however — which is slightly surprising given how closely the company’s success is tied to Apple, which is expected to enter the wearables market with its forthcoming iWatch, supposedly coming this October.

3-D scanning is set to get a whole lot more user-friendly, thanks to a new app from visual technology company Itseez.

Called Itseez3D, the just-launched free iPad app works with the $499 Occipital Structure sensor, which launched on Kickstarter in the fall of 2013 and went on to raise more than $1.2 million. Using the app and sensor, you can scan an object simply by circling it with your iPad — and then send this scan directly to SketchFab, a browser-based 3D design viewer and online portfolio.

Is Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats Music a potential antitrust case? European Union antitrust regulators announced this morning that it will rule on whether or not to clear Apple’s Beats music bid by July 30.

It is hoped that the deal will help Apple gain the lead in the rapidly-growing and lucrative music streaming business. The European Commission has the power to either clear the Beats deal unconditionally, or else demand concessions if it sees competition issues.

I recently wrote about an upcoming game that re-imagines SNK Playmore’s The King of Fighters as an, um, music-based beat-em-up, called The Rhythm of Fighters. As a huge fan of the franchise (and the proud owner of a 4 CD compilation of the series’ various soundtracks) I was intrigued by the idea — even if it is a major departure from what we’re used to.

Jump forward a week and the game has now landed in the App Store, priced $0.99.

Common sense would dictate that Apple should release the iPhone 6 right around the time that iPhone 5 early adopters’ two-year phone contracts run out — which would mean a mid-September launch.

For the second time in two months, a source has come forward claiming to know the release date Apple has its eye on, and it “reconfirms” the date given by Deutsche Telekom’s support representatives back in May.