News - page 1018

Apple’s proposed 850 million euro ($960 million) data centre in Athenry, Ireland may be one of the most environmentally-friendly projects the company has yet put its name to, but that’s not stopping locals from kicking up a fuss about it.

This month, Apple will defend its plans during a hearing to be held on Tuesday 24 May in Galway City, when Cupertino representatives will attempt to convince An Bord Pleanála, an independent, statutory body which decides on appeals from planning decisions made by local authorities in Ireland.

Jony Ive suggests that Apple is bound to make some missteps as it continues to explore wearable devices, and offers some vague, tantalizing hints about Apple’s plans for the Apple Watch in a new interview.

“Regardless of whether we declare an interest in fashion or not, we are making products that are more and more personal, products that you wear and you wear every day,” he told Business of Fashion ahead of the Apple-sponsored Met Gala. “We’ve not done that before and we’ve got a lot to learn.”

With 13 million subscribers, Apple Music is pretty far from being a failure. At the same time, it’s fair to say that the service probably hasn’t been met with the rapturous applause which greeted, say, the launch of the iTunes Store back in 2003.

That’s about to change at WWDC, however, with Apple rumored to be using the developer conference to unleash “sweeping changes” to its streaming music service.

Twenty years after it was first released to the public, Apple has finally confirmed that its WebObjects Java-based web application framework is dead — at least as far as official Apple updates are concerned.

Never heard of WebObjects? You’re probably not alone, but back in the 1990s it was considered a breakthrough product, was one that Steve Jobs was incredibly high on, and officially came over to Apple as part of the historic deal to acquire Jobs’ former company NeXT. Even today, aspects of WebObjects are used to power its online Apple Store and iTunes Store.

If you’re a fan of classic synth music (and, let’s be honest, who isn’t?), you may want to check out Moog’s latest iOS release, which astonishingly recreates the company’s iconic 1973 Model 15 modular synth inside an iPad app.

Considering that a genuine Model 15 will set you back $10,000, and Moog’s app is just $30, that’s a whopping $9,970 discount!

A 10-year-old with insane hacking skills just scored a $10,000 payout from Facebook for uncovering a serious flaw in Instagram.

The Helsinki-based boy, who can’t even open a Facebook account for another three years, found he was able to alter code on Instagram’s servers to delete comments posted by any account.

Google’s autonomous cars have taken to the road with the rest of us normals in our comparatively Flintstones-esque, human-directed rides. And the very small brush-ups are starting to come in.

In fact, the California DMV has created a form just for reporting accidents involving at least one self-driving vehicle, and it publishes these reports on its website. And while the doomsayers and doubters have wrung their hands about cars plowing into trucks filled with baby penguins, the truth is that the dozen or so accidents on the list are so hilariously small that they hardly seem worth the paperwork at all.

They should definitely file the reports; don’t get us wrong. But we imagine an eye-roll or two while it happens.

Apple has added yet another wicked smart talent to its ranks recently by hiring famed robotics expert Yoky Matsuoka.

Yoky was working as the head of technology at Nest before joining Apple. She was also one of the co-founders of Google’s X Lab and is a MacArthur genius award winner.

Looking for a T-shirt that will be the envy of all your Apple fanboy friends?

The Company Store at Apple’s headquarters on 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino has stocked up on some great retro shirts that you won’t find anywhere else. The new items feature the rainbow Apple logo and clip art created by Susan Kare for the original Macintosh created by Susan Kare. There’s also one with the original Apple logo drawing with Isaac Newton.

Take a closer look at the new Apple T-shirts:

Apple’s encryption showdown with the U.S. government may be more or less dormant for now, but Facebook-owned WhatsApp has its own courtroom drama happening in Brazil. It scored a slight win today, however, as a judge overturned a decision yesterday that would have shut the whole thing down across the country for several days.

The controversy surrounds the messaging app’s end-to-end encryption. Specifically, the developer’s inability (and/or unwillingness) to crack it to comply with law enforcement requests.

Spotify is ditching its hamburger button for a more familiar navigation bar on iOS, making it quicker and easier to access your music and features like Spotify Radio.

Users in some countries — including the U.S. — can enjoy the changes today.

Grant Hutchinson has never owned an iPad. He does, however, own some 15-dozen Newton devices, a few of which he uses every day to help manage tasks, a schedule and software clients.

Why would Hutchinson cling to and even rely on a clunky obsolete digital message pad, an Apple failure so big it inspired f-bomb rage in Steve Jobs and a week’s worth of damning Doonesbury comic strips?

Hutchinson is just one of a few thousand people worldwide who collect and even use Apple’s first mobile computing device, discontinued in 1998 after a number of incarnations over a rocky five-year run.

Apple’s iconic consumer electronics continue to top the record books, fitting into the first (iPhone), third (Macintosh), and ninth (iPod) spots in Time Magazine’s list of the 50 most influential gadgets of all time.

The list is rounded out with the iPad (number 25) and Apple’s original candy-colored iBook (38), the Sony Walkman at number four, Kodak’s Brownie camera at number eight, and several consoles from Atari, Nintendo, and Sony scattered throughout.

It’s a surprisingly mixed list, in terms of historical time period, but it does tend to skew a bit modern, thanks to our rapid advances in our own “gadget” era.

Having to bid farewell to iMessage is one of the reasons why many iPhone users won’t jump ship to Android. But thanks to a new app called PieMessage, you can now enjoy Apple’s insanely popular messaging platform on a Google-powered smartphone.

Next time you buy an iPhone from China, you better be careful you’re not really getting a luxurious leather purse.

Apple is no longer the exclusive owner of the iPhone trademark in China, after losing a long legal battle against a Chinese company that claimed to have filed for the trademark much earlier.

Listen up, beta testers! Apple’s latest iOS 9.3.2 beta is rolling out now, and it’s reaching registered developers and public testers at the same time. The update brings a fix for a Game Center bug, and the ability to use Night Shift in Low Power Mode.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a GIF must be worth… well, a lot more. And they’re only getting more popular, which is why you need Giphy’s new keyboard for iOS, which puts all the GIFs you could ever need at your fingertips.

Everyone knows you shouldn’t say “bomb” on an airplane — and it should be just as obvious that you shouldn’t name your wireless gadgets ridiculous things, either.

A simple Wi-Fi hotspot sparked terrorism fears on a recent Australia-bound Qantas plane because someone thought it would be a good idea to name it “mobile detonation device.”

India might be willing to bend some laws to help Apple gain traction in the country, but when it comes to the company’s request to import and sell refurbished iPhones to the world’s second-largest mobile population, things aren’t quite so positive.

According to a new report, Apple’s application was turned down on the grounds that it might hurt local handset manufacturers.

And one of the companies behind the campaign to stop Apple? None other than decidedly non-local smartphone maker, Samsung!

Rightly or wrongly, Apple’s stock taking a prolonged plunge has opened the floodgates for people to hold court about what it is that Apple’s apparently doing wrong — and how the company can be righted again.

Today it was the turn of venture capitalist Fred Wilson, founder and managing partner of Union Square Ventures. His answer: that Apple is failing to invest enough in artificial intelligence and cloud cloud computing.

Google is on the verge of signing a new deal with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to build “several dozen” self-driving minivans, according to a new report.

The first models could be on the road sometime this year for the first phase of the self-driving vehicle partnership, but it’s not yet clear what the main objective is.

Considering that Apple is the company behind the “Jesus Tablet,” and that its Apple Stores are pretty much modern day tech cathedrals, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to bump into the son of God in one.

Perhaps more of a surprise, though, to arrive in the Apple Store in Center City, Philadelphia to witness a long-haired man in robes — known to locals as the “Philly Jesus” — being dragged out in handcuffs.

The iPhone SE may be Apple’s smallest iPhone, but it’s apparently a big hit — possibly even more so than Apple expected!

After Tim Cook spoke enthusiastically about the iPhone SE during Apple’s most recent earnings call, the company has reportedly upped its orders for the diminutive handset for next quarter.

One of the most widely-circulated rumors about the upcoming iPhone 7 is that it will ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack in favor of Lightning or wireless headphones.

But don’t be so certain that this is the case: a newly-published photo, reporting to be a shot of the next-gen iPhone internals, appears to show the headphone jack still hanging on despite rumors of its demise.

The Apple Watch may have out-earned Rolex to the tune of $1.5 billion last year, but according to Fitbit CEO’s James Park, Apple’s pursuing the wrong direction with its wearable devices.

“We look at it from a consumer point of view,” Park said, noting that the Apple Watch, “is a computing platform [instead, and] that’s really the wrong way to approach this category from the very beginning.”