News - page 1236

Just like The Force, the Internet has both dark and light sides. How you see the possible spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens that just leaked is mostly a matter of perspective.

If you read on, you’ll be exposed to an embarrassing wealth of spoiler-y plot and character details about J.J. Abrams’ upcoming film. But be aware: Whether true or not, the sheer volume of close-up detail and conflicting information will change you.

If you want to go in unspoiled, read the following rumors at your own risk.

As for the supposed insider who leaked the information? Who knows their motivation? Even the Sith think they’re doing “the right thing.”

Apple has been fighting an iPod-related class-action lawsuit for nearly a decade now, but just as the trial is heating up in Oakland, the New York Times reports that the lawyers suing Apple have suddenly found themselves down to just one plaintiff.

The $350 million case accuses Apple of stifling competition on iTunes from competing music services by deleting songs off users’ iPods from September 2006 to March 2009. But lawyers in the case have withdrawn one of the named plaintiffs today, after they discovered her iPod wasn’t purchased during the time period in question.

Eddy Cue and Phil Schiller have both testified this week at the trial regarding Apple’s use of DRM.  Evidence from Steve Jobs is also expected to be presented, however, there might not even be a case by the time they get to it.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lashed out at Tim Cook’s privacy policy, calling it “ridiculous,” and knocking Apple for pricing its products as highly as it does.

Zuckerberg’s rebuttal follows comments made by Cook in September, in which he noted that, “When an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.” While the message was most likely meant for long-time rival Google, Facebook’s head honcho definitely took it personally.

Read Zuckerberg’s impassioned response after the jump:

After an expansion into China that is nothing short of spectacular, Apple next has its sights set on India, with its vast population of 1.2 billion citizens and rapidly-growing smartphone market.

With that in mind, the company is reportedly finalizing plans to open 500 “iOS stores” in the country, ranging from smaller 300-600 square foot retail outlets, to ones over 2,000 square foot in larger locations.

These stores will likely be run as a franchise model, and operated by Redington, one of Apple’s two distributors in India, which supplies Apple devices to regional stores. Remington currently accounts for around 70 percent of Apple sales in India.

This week: the oddly uplifting tale of Apple co-founder Ron Wayne, who sold his stake in the company for $800. Plus, road-ready gifts for bicyclists, killer Vainglory strategy guide, and awesome iOS 8 widgets you won’t want to miss. That and more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine!

Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine December 5 Edition, Free on iTunes

President Obama might not be allowed an iPhone for security reasons, but an iPhone 6 Plus did make into the White House recently — to photograph the Presidential Christmas decorations.

“If you are looking to capture something candid, people are so used to seeing mobile devices that their reaction time is slower,” said photographer Brooks Kraft in an interview with TIME magazine. “You have a better chance of getting the shot, and that was the case at the White House.”

Because the pre-Christmas event is less formal than many occasions at the White House (the President isn’t there for one thing), Kraft said he seized the opportunity to “try out new gear that I might use later in more news-oriented environments.”

And what better gear to try out than an iPhone 6 Plus?

Foxconn has been working to replace its human workforce with robotic “Foxbots” for some time now, but it seems that a 2011 promise by CEO Terry Gou to unleash an army of production robots by the end of 2014 won’t be coming true after all.

According to the Chinese financial publication Jiemian, Foxconn is facing numerous difficulties building robots capable enough to carry out the kind of precision needed for constructing Apple devices. First and foremost is the fact that the bots are simply too clunky to do the work required of them — primarily because they were designed for automotive work rather than for assembling iPhones.

The current crop of bots reportedly have a production accuracy of 0.05mm, making them a little shy of the 0.02mm accuracy needed to build Apple products.

Christmas is still a few weeks away, but Apple is getting into the holiday spirit by activating a number of its festive-themed curated iTunes Radio stations — ranging from collections of country Christmas songs, to stations featuring the kind of Christmas standards we all know and love.

The ten stations include Children’s Christmas Holiday Sing-Along, Country Holiday, Classical Holiday, Holiday Classics, Holiday Hits, Latin Holiday, Rockin’ Holiday, Soulful Holiday, Swingin’ Holiday and The Sounds of Christmas.

Of all the big companies that would interested in buying their employees the Apple Watch when it comes out, fashion brands like Louis Vuitton and Fendi come to mind first. What doesn’t come to mind is BuzzFeed.

But that’s exactly what BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti is doing for his 700+ employees. As a reward for reaching 200 million unique visitors and 750 million video views in one month, every BuzzFeed staffer gets an Apple Watch.

Besides a $75 million gym for employees, Apple’s massive new campus will have a number of nice perks, including a state-of-the-art theater for future product unveilings. The 1,000-seat venue will likely be where Apple holds the majority of its media events, and so the company is willing drop some serious cash on the space.

Apple was forced by major record labels to implement digital rights management technology in iTunes, according to testimony in an ongoing class-action lawsuit that accuses Cupertino of stifling competition with competing music services.

Apple contemplated licensing its DRM, called FairPlay, to other companies, “but we couldn’t find a way to do that and have it work reliably,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services.

If size does matter, being too big can get you laughed at, too.

Such is the case with Samsung’s 105-inch curved UHD TV. With a price tag approaching $120,000 — the cost of a few cars or a small house in most ZIP codes — the reviews on Amazon are pure comedy gold.

A visit to Amazon’s listing for the gigantic TV, which includes FREE Prime shipping, by the way — might leave you disappointed at first because the item is not in stock. But scroll through the reviews and you will find the many hilarious ways shoppers express sticker shock.

Have you been noticing some weird problems with your Instagram feed today, like pictures not showing up? You’re not alone, says Instagram, which notified users this morning that it is experiencing some issues, but a fix is in the works.

Instagram users have reportedly been experiencing issues where their main photo feed isn’t updating with new pictures, even though Instagram users they’re following are still able to upload and share new pictures.

Apple announced today that in support of Computer Science Education Week, anyone can come to an Apple Store on December 11th for a free-introductory course on how to become the next great iOS developer.

The free coding workshops are part of Code.org’s Hour of Code initiative, that seeks to make coding a little less intimidating by educating people of all ages on the basics of computer programming, because like Steve Jobs once said, every American should learn how to code.

Apple Computers was recently named the 10th most disruptive idea of the last 85 years  by Businessweek. To celebrate the historic impact of the Apple I and Apple II computer had on the digital revolution, the magazine interviewed Steve Wozniak to talk about the early days of Apple.

Wozniak talked about working with Steve Jobs in high school and how the two founded the company with Ron Wayne, but Woz says that while he realized the world was on the verge of a huge computer revolution, it took Jobs a little longer to see the impact computers would have on the average Joe.

Many people haven’t even gotten their iPhone 6 devices yet, and already the rumors are starting up about what Apple has planned for its next generation handsets.

One slightly sketchy rumor, citing sources in the Apple supply chain in China, suggests 2015’s iPhone lineup could include a 4-inch model, in line with the size of the iPhone 5 and 5s. According to the report, the idea would be to appeal to “female users” who are put off by the larger screen size of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

The rumor doesn’t elaborate on whether Apple would create a new 4-inch iPhone from scratch, or refresh a previously launched model instead.

We’re not convinced!

My team slid in under cover of night over at Harfeld Manor, an easy run into a low-security data vault that my old shadowrunner pal Monica promised would be an easy in and out.

It wasn’t, of course, but it took the death of our mutual friend, the mage Deitrich, to really wake us up to that fact.

Sure, we hit that place hard, but there was a ton of security both on the ‘Net and in the premises themselves, and we paid dearly for our hubris.

It would take us another several runs to really figure out what was going on in the dark shadows that we came across in our shadowy dealings, but I think we’re getting somewhere. If only we knew where this will finally lead.

This, then, is Shadowrun: Dragonfall in the special Director’s Cut edition, out now from Harebrained Schemes for your iPad. Check out the game trailer below to get a sense of how it all plays out.

As part of its Apps for (RED) AIDS initiative, Fall Out Boy singer-songwriter Patrick Stump will make a special musical appearance at Apple’s SoHo brick-and-mortar retail store in New York City later today. Kicking off at 8pm Eastern, the December 4 performance is part of what Apple has called its “biggest fundraising push yet” to battle HIV.

Stump won’t just be playing, however. In addition, he’ll talk about Apple’s GarageBand app, and how he uses it as part of his creative process.

For almost a decade, between 1985 and 1994, award-winning documentary photographer Doug Menuez photographed Steve Jobs — focusing particularly on his work at NeXT, but also getting some fascinating snaps of what was happening at Apple at the time.

Menuez was recently interviewed by the BBC World Service about his time with Steve Jobs, with the photographer telling a few of the stories behind some of his iconic images. The resulting short video, which shows off a few of Menuez’s rarer images alongside his best known ones, can be seen after the jump.

For anyone who enjoys hearing stories about Steve Jobs (including how he wooed investor Ross Perot, and his dream that one day someone would use one of Jobs’ computers to cure cancer) it’s well worth checking out:

An anti-discrimination bill designed to protect LGBT employees is set to be named after Tim Cook, according to a new report from Reuters.

The bill was put forward by Alabama’s only openly gay lawmaker, Democratic state Representative Patricia Todd. Given Cook’s status as not only the head of the world’s most valuable company, but also an Alabama native, the suggestion to put his name on the bill was first made by Todd “in jest” — only for the comments to be taken seriously and published.

Soon after, she heard from Apple, which was initially hesitant about Cook’s name being associated so publicly with such a politically sensitive issue. However, Apple apparently reconsidered, and Todd received a positive call from Apple’s general counsel, Bruce Sewell, saying Cook was happy to lend his name to the cause.

In a statement, Apple said that, “Tim was honored to hear that State Rep. Todd wanted to name an anti-discrimination bill after him, and we’re sorry if there was any miscommunication about it. We have a long history of support for LGBT rights and we hope every state will embrace workplace equality for all.”

Tim Cook and U2 just got roasted for forcing music onto customers’ iPhones, but from 2007 to 2009, Steve Jobs’ Apple was allegedly playing a different tune, and deleted music off of iPods that was purchased on rival music services.

That wouldn’t have been so bad if it were just your embarrassing Nickelband albums, but attorneys for consumers at the ongoing antitrust lawsuit, say iTunes deleted all rival files without ever giving users a warning that they were about to lose their tunes.

GQ Magazine has named Apple exec and Beats cofounder, Jimmy Iovine, as one its Men of the Year. To go with the annual honors, the music legend sat down for an interview to discuss how he went from sweeping floors in a New York recording studio at 19, to creating the iconic Beats brand at 55.

Apple acquired Iovine’s company for a record $3 billion earlier this year, but according to Jimmy, it took him about two years to convince Apple that they needed him to plug the musical hole Steve Jobs left when he died in 2011.

In what seems to be a new pattern of movie promotion, the next entry in the Terminator film series, Genisys, got a teaser trailer Wednesday for the official trailer coming the following day.

Take a look at this tiny trailer, which features a liquid-metal Terminator that looks a lot like ex-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger.