News - page 1159

Developers have been busy combing through the first iOS 9 beta for clues about upcoming Apple services, but in the lastest iOS 8.4 beta that was also seeded to developers earlier this week, the first signs of the Apple Music streaming service have started popping up (literally).

Some iOS 8.4 beta testers have received pop-up notifications in the old Music app. The introductory prompts reveal how Apple plans to get iOS users to sign up for the new service, either on an individual plan or family plan.

Here’s signup screen users will be greeted by:

Apple supplier Foxconn has come under fire over the last few years for its factories’ working conditions in China, but the company is now making plans to open up a new Apple plant in one of the world’s other booming nations: India.

ST. JAMES, Missouri — The first in Tom Gasko’s impressive collection of vacuum cleaners arrived before he was born. It was a summer day in 1962 and his mother, Jean, was pregnant and uncomfortably hot. The Rainbow vacuum salesman in her living room realized she was in no mood to listen to his sales pitch, so he placed ice in the vacuum’s water pan, switched on the machine and blew cool air on her.

 Eighteen days later, Mrs. Gasko had a new vacuum and a son who would grow up to collect one of every model of vacuum cleaner ever made in the United States.

Many of his 704 vacuums, including the Rainbow that brought sweet relief to his mother, is on display in a museum he curates in St. James, Missouri.

“If you turned on a vacuum and I couldn’t see it, I could probably tell you the brand just by the pitch of the motor,” Gasko told Cult of Mac. “I’ve always been fascinated by the motors and how subtle changes over the years to design affects the suction.”

We’re down here at WWDC, fishing for ProTips. It’s rich hunting ground. WWDC is the world’s biggest gathering of Apple developers, the alpha geeks, experts par excellence. What’s a ProTip? A ProTip is a nugget of knowledge, a little bit of expertise from someone in the know — a pro.

Astro HQ is a two-person indie software company that launched its first app in February.

Run by two ex-Apple engineers — Matt Ronge and Giovanni Donelli — their app was successful. They’re now making their livelihoods from their software. They’re living the dream! Independent app developers!

They’re as rare as unicorns.

Only 0.01 percent of app developers are financially successful, according to a depressing survey by Gartner.

Ronge and Donelli did a lot of things right, including their own app marketing, which they say was key to their successful launch.

They did the app marketing themselves, with no prior experience, and a lot of what they learned was thanks to one book.

UPDATE: I added a short statement from stylus-maker Adonit below.

SAN FRANCISCO — Tim Ritchey is an expert in iPad styluses — the pressure-sensitive digital pens that draw with pinpoint accuracy on an iPad.

Ritchey works for Adonit, a company that makes a line of Bluetooth styli for the iPad. His job title is “OS architect.” He knows his stuff.

In the middle of a session at this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, he heard something that prompted him to send a panicky note to his colleagues in Slack, the popular messaging system.

“Oh shit!” he said.

Steve Jobs famously pledged that Apple would never ship an iOS device with a stylus, but there’s mounting evidence that the company is working on a new and bigger work-oriented iPad that will come with a stylus.

A couple of big clues dropped this week at WWDC.

If you’ve ever hopped onto Wikipedia just to “look one thing up really quick” and then come to an hour later with a comprehensive knowledge of the various forms of lightsaber combat, WikiLinks 3 might very well be your Kryptonite.

And even if you’re not the type to fall into a Wiki-hole of cross-references and endless chains of links, it’s still a cool app that offers an interesting way to get lost on the Internet.

For years, Apple’s software engineers have played a cat-and-mouse game, closing loopholes that let non-developers install unsigned apps on their devices. But it looks like they’re finally giving up and will let any user install anything on any Apple device — as long as they’re using Xcode 7 to do it.

The world beneath the city is often portrayed in movies as a dark, sinister place with a criminal element and some marginalized segment of society in hiding and fighting to survive.

But one group believes it can bring sunlight and vibrance underground to a one-acre space below a busy neighborhood in New York City.

The Lowline is a proposed subterranean park that would occupy an old trolley station beneath Delancey Street on the city’s Lower East Side. It would use solar technology to not only light and power the park but create the necessary wavelengths that would allow plants and trees to grow.

iOS security researchers Jan Souček has discovered a new bug in iOS’s mail client that could trick users into accidentally giving attackers their AppleID and password.

The Mail app exploit was discovered at the beginning of 2015, and Apple’s engineers were quickly notified of its existence, but a fix for the bug hasn’t been released in any of the updates following iOS 8.1.2. According to Souček, the bug allows remote HTML content to be loaded, making it possible to build a password collector that looks just like an iCloud sign-in prompt.

Here’s a video of the bug in action:

Apple has already released a steady stream of major and minor software updates and continues to do so with the release of ResearchKit 1.1 that includes several new features, most notable of which is support for iPads.

This Red Bull-sponsored film of Tyler Fernengel, an up and coming BMX star, shredding through the creepy post-apocalyptic remains of Detroit’s Silverdome stadium is both amazing to watch and poignant at the same time.

The stadium represents with a gravelly-voiced narration, as well.

“I remember it like yesterday,” it says. “The smell of fresh paint. The stands overflowing; a colosseum for the modern age. Forty years ago, I stood for Detroit.”

Check it out below.

Apple seeded the fourth iOS 8.4 beta to developers yesterday, and while the company didn’t add any major new features, it appears that they’ve squashed iMessage’s biggest bug that caused iPhones and iPads to crash when they received a certain string of unicode characters.

SAN FRANCISCO — Game developer Brianna Wu’s life became the inspiration for an episode of the hit cop show, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

While she was kinda flattered, she wasn’t entirely pleased. To get Law & Order: SVU‘s attention, your life has to be messed up one way or the other.

“There’s no good way to be on Law and Order,” she joked.

Jon Bernthal (AMC’s The Walking Dead) is joining the cast of Netflix-exclusive superhero series Daredevil for the hit show’s second season.

And even better: He’s playing Frank Castle, better known as The Punisher.

“You’ve got a secret,” says Naomie Harris’ Miss Moneypenny in the new TV spot for upcoming Bond film SPECTRE. “Something you can’t tell anyone because you don’t trust anyone.”

Daniel Craig is back in a new Bond film, this one named after the fictional spy syndicate that figured heavily in the Ian Fleming novels and debuted in the film Dr. No in 1962.

Here’s a full trailer full of the things you’ve come to associate with James Bond, including explosions, intrigue, and plenty of women. Bond is such a slut, right?

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC financial-advice show Mad Money, is a fan of the Apple Watch, but it doesn’t seem to be enough for him.

The boisterous host has recently introduced an interesting companion for his wearable, which he has been sporting on his show for a few weeks.

The next wave of iOS devices could sport some huge improvements to their front-facing camera, according to referrences found in iOS 9 that hints to the upcoming devices.

It’s been rumored for months that the iPhone’s rear camera could be in for a big upgrade, but the new FaceTime camera could get a panoramic capture mode (think of the selfie possibilities), 240p video and more.

Apple is planning to open up mobile Safari to “Content Blockers,” according to a new features discovered in the iOS 9 beta. The change could pave the way for ad blocking extensions, which prevent images, popups, and other content from loading as you browse the web.

Apple Music may come with a long list of advantages over rivals like Spotify — such as real radio and a super-affordable family plan — but there’s one thing it’s lagging behind on, and that’s music quality… or so it seems.

The highest bitrate Apple Music will offer is 256 kbps, which is lower than the 320 kbps offered by Spotify, Rdio, Tidal, and Apple’s own Beats Music service.

A post on Apple’s site for its Maps app heavily suggests that it’s hard at work on a feature to rival Google’s Street View, which lets users zoom into maps to explore areas from ground level. The company hasn’t officially announced that that is what it’s doing with those camera vans, but we’re running increasingly low on alternative theories.

During Monday’s introduction of Apple Music at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple said “over 100 countries” will have access to its music-streaming/social/radio platform when it launches June 30. But it didn’t say which countries those would be.

We’ve done some investigating, and we’re pretty sure we’ve got a good idea of who’s definitely getting their dance on. Check out our map below.

Apple’s two-hours-plus keynote at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week was packed with new and exciting information about the future of software for its current major hardware. But we couldn’t help but notice some things that were missing.

Here are some of the ways Apple’s presentation left us hanging this year.

SAN FRANCISCO — The key to crafting great Apple Watch apps can be summed up with a simple mantra: “Make the user happy.”

That’s designer Joe Cieplinski’s approach to all design, really, but the precept is even more important than ever for developers making apps for Apple’s new wearable. Instead of attempting to cram all the features of an iPhone app onto that tiny screen, devs need to focus as much on what they leave out as what they include.

“That’s how you get a successful product,” Cieplinski, who works for Philadelphia-based Bombing Brain Interactive, told Cult of Mac after his AltConf panel here Tuesday. “It’s not just trying to be philosophical.”

Why does the latest iPhone still ship with just 16GB of storage as standard? Why does the new MacBook have only one USB port? Why does Apple make devices thinner and thinner rather than adding bigger batteries?

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, marketing chief Phil Schiller sat down with The Talk Show to address some of these questions.

Jonathan Mann is the Song a Day creator who’s (so far) written and recorded 2,350 songs (including this one) for his YouTube channel. He’s an Apple fan, of course, and many of his songs have to do with the Cupertino-based tech company.

Mann set up his Macbook and guitar across the street from the Moscone Center and recorded this latest tune live on the sidewalk, and it’s all about the Monday’s developer keynote.

“Not one but (count ’em) two,” he sings, “women up on the stage. It’s a start, and it’s about time ’cause these white dad jokes they’re starting to fade.”

Check it out.