iPad - page 97

Custom keyboards are landing on iPhones and iPads this fall after Apple finally decided to give users more options than Jony Ive’s horrible shift key.

We’re still a few months away from finished keyboards being ready for the public, but this morning we got our first taste of using a custom keyboard on iOS 8 thanks to the guys at TouchPal. My fingers still need a lot of training before I’m able to sweep words together faster than an Android user, but the future of iOS keyboards promises to be swift, swipeable and super-simple.

Here’s what it’s like to install and use iOS 8 custom keyboards:

Logitech’s updated Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad Air replaced its predecessor mere months after the original’s launch. The most obvious difference between the two is the flip-out hinge that joins the keyboard to the iPad like a cover to a book, but in reality the two devices are completely different.

Is the new one better? In one way yes. In others? Nope.

I was all set to pull the trigger on Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan, which gives subscribers access to Lightroom and Photoshop as well as Lightroom Mobile for the iPad and iPhone.

After all, it’s just $10 per month, right? (or €12.29/$16.71 in the EU). That’s about what I spend on Rdio, or Dropbox, and I get Lightroom on my frickin’ camera.

But I decided to hold off and see if one huge doozy of a design problem is fixed before my 30-day trial of the service finishes up. This will also give me time to check out the amazing new Adobe Photoshop Mix, which is what Photoshop for iPad should have been all along.

And the little problem that could be a deal-breaker? You’re gonna love it…

Facebook is trying to transform its News Feed into more than just a hotbed of baby pictures and Buzzfeed quizes and its first move is a new side panel to help users discover more timely content.

To make the app more relevant for the way people use tablets, Facebook for iPad is adding a new channel on the right-hand side of your news feed featuring trending topics, videos and tons of game suggestions to try to get users to read more news, watch more videos and play games in the app. And you can bet there will be plenty of ads to compensate.

Sooner rather than later, Google will be tracking your every move.

The Mountain View search colossus already knows whether you have the flu or are interested in dropping a few pounds, thanks to its mining of your search data and Gmail missives.

Thanks to Google’s recent bargain buy of tiny satellite company Skybox Imaging — a purchase that cost Google just $500 million, or 1/38 what Facebook shelled out for WhatsApp — by 2016, Google may be able to predict market-moving factors like consumer spending and oil prices.

That means Google might be able to foretell when you’ll be waiting in line for the latest iPhone.

Scoring a sweet deal on an iPhone directly from Apple is nearly impossible. Luck for us, a bunch of Cupertino’s retail partners aren’t afraid to cut some dinero off its price-tag to try to get you in the store. But which store is best for Apple deals?

To locate the top places to get deals on Apple products, DealNews tracked several years worth of deals for the iPhone, iPad, and 11-inch MacBook Air and discovered that certain retailers offer consistently better deals on one specific product. Many of the big name retailers are great for iPhones deals, but you might be the surprised where to look for the best iPad and MacBook Air bargains.

Here are the best places to score a deal for each Apple product:

Apart from letting you quickly edit and share photos (and always sitting, ready to go, in your pocket), the iPhone camera has one other great feature: It geotags every photo and video you shoot with the place you captured the imagery. You might not care about that now, but in the future when you wonder, “Where did I take that naked self-portrait?” or decide to take a look at your old vacation snaps, you’ll love geotagging.

Hell, half the time I use a map to find a photo — I can usually remember where I was better than when I was.

Lack of geotagging is perhaps the main reason I don’t take my regular camera out as often as I’d like, so I decided to do something about that. I’m using a combination of the iOS GeoTagr app on iPhone and iPad, plus a Fujifilm X100S camera and a Garmin EDGE 500 GPS bike computer.

Let’s take a look.

WWDC came and went without a single breath mentioning the split-screen multitasking mode in iOS 8 that was rumored to be on the way, but iPad users hoping for more productivity features might be in luck after all.

Developer Steve Stroughton Smith says he’s been digging around in the iOS 8 beta files and noticed a new “main-screen-canvas-sizes” option that wasn’t in iOS 7, but will add multi-tasking to the iOS 8 SpringBoard, and it’s more advanced that we hoped for.

Apple is finally going to open OS X Yosemite betas to the public, but when it comes to iOS 8, Apple fanboys desperate for a sneak peek at Cupertino’s upcoming software have been left out in the cold.

Luckily, if you’re willing to give a little info and some cash to certain “developers” you too can become an official iOS 8 beta testers and reap all the new benefits and bugs of iOS 8 as Apple puts the finishing touches on the biggest iOS release ever.

Here’s how to do it:

Apple has made yet more improvements to AirPlay in iOS 8 by enabling compatible devices to make direct connections with each other for content streaming. This eliminates AirPlay’s reliance on a Wi-Fi network and fixes one of its biggest limitations.

Everyone expects Apple to release a larger 4.7-inch iPhone this fall, and there are reports of an even larger 5.5-inch model floating around the supply chain. Heck, we’ve seen 12-inch iPad parts leak recently. It’s pretty clear that displays are only going to be getting bigger.

Developers will need to update their apps to fit new screen sizes, and today Apple provided a way for them to do just that.

After reports of iPads, iPhones and Macs being hacked and held ransom in the U.K. and Australia, we put together this video to show you how to avoid the problem — and what to do if it’s already happened.

Related Apple resources:

• How to bypass your Apple passcode
• More information on two-step verification for Apple ID

Subscribe to the Cult of Mac YouTube channel so you don’t miss a single video.

We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.

If you’re a fan of Disney’s Oscar-winning animated smash hit Frozen, you may experience excited chills at the news that you can now sing along to all your favorite songs from the movie on your iPad using the new Disney Karaoke: Frozen app.

As apps go, it’s pretty darn (n)ice, with nine songs and music videos from the film on which you can either listen to the original vocal performances, or mute the voices to sing by yourself.

When the Microsoft Surface was first unveiled, one of its “iPad killing” features was splitscreen app support. Just by dragging an app to the edge of the screen, you could dock it, and run another app to the left or right… for example, playing a game while watching a movie in the corner.

It was a move designed to make the Surface more laptop-like… and one that Apple has been heavily rumored to copy in iOS 8, as tablet sales flatline. But don’t expect to see splitscreen multitasking at WWDC on Monday. Apparently it’s just not ready for showtime yet.

Apple has a proud tradition of cannibalizing its products before someone else does, but in the case of the iPad mini, Cupertino might start eating its rotting corpse as soon as the 5.5-inch iPhablet is announced.

The latest projections from IDC claim that tablet sales are starting to level off even faster than expected with only 245.5 million units forecasted to sell in 2014 – a palty 12.1% year-over-year growth rate after tech companies just feasted on 51.8% YOY in 2013.

During Apple’s last earnings call Tim Cook boasted that iPad is the fastest selling product in Apple history, but IDC gives two major reasons why that could soon change:

Readdle today rolled out its biggest update yet for PDF Expert 5, one of the finest PDF editing apps for iOS. It adds support for continuous scrolling and calculations, improves performance, and makes PDF Expert a universal app — so you only have to buy it once to use it on both iPhone and iPad.

Good news if you’re a student! Apple has introduced reduced education pricing for both the iPad Air and Retina iPad mini — with prices for the two tablets starting from $469 and $379.

This represents a $30 discount for the iPad Air and a $20 for the iPad mini, and also marks the first time that Apple has included the iPad in its special discount program. Last year the company cut the educational price of the non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro to $999, while Apple additionally offers discounts on its entire Mac line in its education store.

Imagine a world in which an Apple portable called Pippin rules the video game industry. Nintendo and Sony are nothing more than petrified corpses after a surprise attack from Cupertino vaporizes their platforms with a portable device so simple, so magical, that Michael Spindler would have let John Sculley waterboard him with Pepsi to make it a reality.

That’s the world imagined by Mike Donovan, a New York City designer who draws faux prototypes of everything from retro iPads to iPhones based on the iMac G3. His retrotastic mockup of the gaming gadget that never was, which he shared exclusively with Cult of Mac, takes the concept of Apple’s failed Pippin video game platform to its logical, period-appropriate extension.

“We’re inundated with new tech choices at almost every turn but there is something so alluring about the fun and simplicity of those early ’80s and ’90s gadgets,” Donovan told Cult of Mac. “Plus, who doesn’t love a good throwback?”

Apple’s two latest ads in its expanding ‘Your Verse’ campaign tout the iPad as a content creation tool and instrumental part of the creative process. Calling them merely “ads” doesn’t actually do them justice, as they are much fuller stories than 30-second TV spots on Apple’s website.

Called “Orchestrating Sound” and “Exploring Without Limits,” the first narrative is a profile of renowned composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and how he uses the iPad to make symphonies. The second addition follows the deaf travel blogger Chérie King and how she uses the iPad on all of her trips around the world.

With another week full of news in the past, your host Joshua Smith is here to give you a wrap-up on some of the latest and biggest features. Facebook’s alleged Snapchat competitor, Microsoft’s latest attempt at an ‘iPad killer’ and iCloud’s hacking are among just some of the featured stories in today’s rundown.

Take a look at the video and be sure to return next week for another. Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.

You probably don’t waste much thought on where to plug-in your iPhone, but not using a real Apple charger has its disadvantages. Not only are they higher quality, and safer, but they also charge faster than a 5W Chinese knockoff.

Millions of cheap Apple copycats make it difficult to tell whether a charger is the genuine article and have been blamed on everything from iPad explosions to spontaneous electrocutions, but thanks to a teardown comparison from Ken Shirriff there’s one little flaw to look for that gives the dangerous fakers away.

Just look for the signature.

It’s time to cancel your cable subscription. The best TV shows, movies, and documentaries have landed on Amazon Prime thanks to a deal with HBO that unleashes the networks’ exceptional collection of content to the Internet for the first time ever.

Starting today Amazon Prime users can catch up on entire seasons of HBO’s top shows by streaming them to your Mac, iPhone, or iPad at absolutely no extra cost. It’s an unprecedented treasure trove of greatness that required an HBO GO subscription to access until today when it was finally set free for the first time ever.

HBO has been reluctant to embrace a paid-streaming model that would cut its ties to lucrative cable subscriptions, but the move is a sign that a top-down approach could be on the way as HBO adds its GO app to Amazon Fire TV and other services.

The entire HBO lineup isn’t available quite yet, but the company says shows like Veep and The Newsroom will be added once they pass their third seasons, making them available for the low-cost of a $79 annual Amazon Prime subscription.

Here are five shows you should start binging on today.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love affair with his iPad hasn’t been as well documented as some of his other lusts but Conan the Governor loves his Apple tablet so damn much he takes it everywhere, which makes it the perfect tool for capturing the Austrian Oak’s greatest love – his deteriorating guns.

Here’s Arnold’s iPad selfie from another angle:

Instead of taking on the iPad Air’s 9.7-inch display, Microsoft is thinking even bigger with a 12-inch Surface Pro 3 that could make it the perfect competitor for Apple’s long-rumored 13-inch iPad Pro.

Like Microsoft’s other’s tablets, the Surface Pro 3, which the company revealed Tuesday morning, comes with a kickstand and a collapsible keyboard that Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay says will remove all the conflicts you’ve had about buying a laptop or tablet, plus they’ve added a Surface Pen for seamless digital writing.