News - page 1317

About a month ago, I said on Twitter that I was looking for a new podcast app to try. I’ve been a user of Instacast on iOS and OS X for a long time, but recently the app’s cloud sync has become too unreliable and glitchy.

I got a lot of suggestions, but ended up settling with Apple’s own Podcasts app. It didn’t address several things I wanted out of a podcast client, but it was the most reliable and easy to use option from what I came across.

And now, lo and behold, the most highly-anticipated new podcast app in a long time has come out. Today Marco Arment released Overcast, a simple and yet powerful podcast app for the iPhone. I’ve given it a test run, and although there is plenty of room for improvement, I’m pretty impressed.

The squads of the NFC and AFC are gearing up for training camp in just a few weeks, and the NFL is ready to make a killing by feeding your leather and spandex addiction with an NFL Sunday Ticket package that stream every game to your iPad, even if you don’t have a satellite subscription.

In a huge victory for cord-cutters, DirecTV is finally ready to loosen restriction to make it easier for non-subscribers to pay for the NFL Sunday Ticket, but it’s not going to be cheap.

Apple has added extra protection to iCloud’s outgoing email, making it harder for hackers, the NSA, or any other malicious spying groups to get their digits on your messages.

While the iPhone 6 has sparked tons of speculation in the tech world, rumors regarding the alleged Apple smartwatch have as well. All the gossip and leaks about the long-rumored device, popularly referred to as the “iWatch,” have created big expectations for the company to meet.

In today’s video we take a look at all the rumors and get a good feeling of what an iWatch might look like when it’s revealed (possibly this October). If the reports are true, you’ll enjoy more than the average smartwatch as you track blood pressure, hold FaceTime calls and more, all on an amazing device that redefines wrist wear.

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Airbnb is poised to completely disrupt the hotel industry, and today’s rebranding of the startup makes it even more obvious.

Like Uber and TaskRabbit, Airbnb is all about using technology to make a seamless experience in the real world. You can look up a place to stay in the iPhone app, communicate with the owner, and book it without ever having to be put on hold or wait in line at a front desk.

With a redesigned interface focused on simplicity and discoverability, Airbnb is making it easier to find places to stay. But sadly all of that is being ignored because of how ridiculous that new logo looks.

You should be able to easily switch carriers in the U.S. once you fulfill your two-year contract, but most of the time it’s easier said than done. A new bill being reviewed in Washington plans to let you unlock your phone to take it to any carrier after your contact is over.

One year after being found guilty of e-book price fixing, Apple has reached a conditional settlement with the U.S. State to pay $450 million for its role in the price fixing conspiracy that involved five major publishers.

Apple’s settlement could bring $400 million back to consumers’ wallets, reports Reuters, but the court documents filed on Wednesday reveal that the company isn’t quite ready to throw in the towel yet, with hopes that its appeal will shrink that fee down to just $70 million.

Dropping cash on a new iPhone dock each time Apple decides to change the form factor can get pretty annoying, but if you’re down with rolling your own home brewed solution, you can actually create a sturdy dock for your iPhone 5s or iPod Touch using nothing but the LEGO blocks laying around your house.

We’ve seen a few LEGO docks over the years, but a YouTuber has created a simple step-by-step tutorial that teaches everyone how to build their out of three parts – a top segment, cable holder and a base. The dock in the video only uses black and white LEGOs for a sleek look, but we’d love to see it with a splash of color.

Watch the full tutorial below:

Just because people are expecting Apple to revolutionize wearables with its long-awaited iWatch, doesn’t mean that there aren’t already some interesting developments going on in the wearable tech field.

I’m a massive fan of Jawbone, which has just updated its UP by Jawbone iOS app with a new fitness-oriented update — designed to focus on food-related goals, such as weight and calorie intake.

The Flappy Bird phenomenon will never die. Although the game has been pulled from the App Store, the addictive little Bird has spawned a million clones, and been ported to all manner of devices, including Android and Windows Phone smartphones, as well as the Mac.

But what you’re about to see might just be the ultimate Flappy Bird port. It’s Flappy Bird running on a vintage Apple IIc, at an astonishing 60 frames per second.

So long as we live in a world where WhatsApp can be bought for $19 billion and even an ultra-simple novelty app like Yo manages to scrape together $1 million in venture funding, people are going to go right on creating messaging apps.

One of the latest is La-La Messenger, which promises users the possibility of conducting entire conversations out of song snippets. A greeting, for instance, might be “Hello” by Lionel Richie, while “the world is a dark place if this is the future of communication” could be Sean Paul’s “Gimme the Light.”

Smartphone user habits may change depending on where you are in the world, but one thing remains largely the same: the iPhone (and Apple brand) is a status symbol.

With that in mind, Apple is tapping FPT Corp., Vietnam’s biggest listed information and communication technology company, to help grow its market share across Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

As with China, developing markets such as Vietnam represent important potential hotbeds for Apple to target, and establishing a presence early is of the utmost importance. According to Lam Nguyen, Ho Chi Minh City-based country director at International Data Corp, Vietnamese smartphone sales will increase by around 56 percent to 12 million units in 2014 alone — and Apple should be in a position to get a large chunk of those sales.

Photos have surfaced on French Apple website Nowhereelse.fr that purport to show the Touch ID sensor for Apple’s next-generation iPhone 6.

While at first glance, the images look identical to the sensor embedded within the iPhone 5s — Apple’s first smartphone to feature the Touch ID technology — upon closer inspection some tiny differences in design can be spotted. These predominantly relate to the edges of the sensor where the tiny screws will attach it to the device’s metal housing.

The two sensors can be seen next to one another in the image below:

Photography is all about light, and photographers are all about light painting. There are many tricks to try, from isolating objects with incandescence outside the frame to shining light directly at the camera as in Janelle Pietrzak’s Bambi series, created using light stencils.

Creating this interesting analog photo effect doesn’t require any special equipment, just a detachable flash, some craft materials and a lot of imagination.

Splicing a cute little animal into a photograph doesn’t take more than a few seconds for anybody with a copy of Photoshop.

But Colorado artist Janelle Pietrzak spends hours cutting light stencils with a razor blade, then uses a shoebox and long-exposure photography to bring Bambi and other cuddly creatures to life inside her home.

“If you look at my photographs there is fantasy world full of mythical creatures, floating orbs, ghosts and goddesses, all created by manipulating light,” Pietrzak tells Cult of Mac. “The catch is that I hardly use any Adobe Photoshop. What you see in the images is basically what I saw on the back of my camera.”

Apple has been waging a fierce war against Flash ever since the iPhone debuted without the power to run Adobe’s battery hungry, multimedia software. Finally, seven years into the battle, Google is adding another blow by flagging Flash content in mobile search results with a warning that sites might not work properly.

IBM and Apple used to be sworn enemies, but a lot has changed since the early days of the Macintosh and the PC race. Both companies have committed to making Apple software and hardware a one-stop shop for businesses in what some consider one of the “most important and powerful tech partnerships” ever.

In an interview with CNBC, Tim Cook and IBM CEO Virginia Rometty discussed their mutual excitement about the “landmark” partnership.

Today Apple announced that it’s partnering with IBM to “transform enterprise mobility through a new class of business apps.” The relationship will combine IBM’s enterprise data specialties with Apple’s iOS hardware and software.

“iPhone and iPad are the best mobile devices in the world and have transformed the way people work with over 98 percent of the Fortune 500 and over 92 percent of the Global 500 using iOS devices in their business today,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. “For the first time ever we’re putting IBM’s renowned big data analytics at iOS users’ fingertips, which opens up a large market opportunity for Apple. This is a radical step for enterprise and something that only Apple and IBM can deliver.”

There are four key areas that Apple will be working on with IBM:

Today Snapchat introduced Geofilters, which are location-based stickers that can be quickly applied to a snap by swiping once to the left after you take a picture. The feature could finally provide a revenue model for the startup that turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook.

iOS users have proven they have an uncanny ability to waste obscene amount of coin on silly in-app purchases, and the latest tech-titan to cash in on all that spending is none other than reality star Kim Kardashian.

Kim launched her first iOS game at the end of June to surprisingly great reviews, but the bigger surprise is the mountain of cash Kardashian and developers Glu Mobile are about to make off of all the fans flocking to download a piece of Kim’s Hollywood life.

The iPhone 6 isn’t expected to feature radical improvements in battery life, but that doesn’t mean Apple hasn’t had trouble making new batteries for the device. Since the next iPhone will be thinner than the current design, its battery needs to be thinner as well.

Apple has been having trouble with battery makers overseas meeting its specifications, but now it’s being reported that new suppliers have been brought on to solve the issues. The news highlights how diversifying its partners in the Asian supply chain continues to be Apple’s strategy moving forward.

We’re still waiting to get our first glimpse of Apple’s upcoming smartwatch, but according to a new report, Apple is planning to release not one, not two, but three different models of the iWatch this fall.

Citing supply chain sources in China, the Economic Daily claims Apple will make the iWatch available by the end of 2014 with three different sizes to choose from, but you’ll probably want the fatty 1.8-inch unit, as it will supposedly be the most durable of the bunch.

Earlier today we reported on how Apple’s new iTunes Pass feature hints at Apple’s interest in mobile payments. However, Apple’s not the only company interested in this area.

Last night, PayPal updated its iOS client with one important new feature, allowing it to support loyalty cards. That means that PayPal’s app can become your one-stop-shop for payments and checkins for some of your favorite stores, including Starbucks, CVS, and others.

Apple has launched a new service called iTunes Pass in several countries, including Japan, Brazil and China.

The service lets customers buy iTunes Store credit from brick-and-mortar Apple retail stores — only using Passbook, rather than the physical gift cards most commonly used. The service appears to work by letting users add a new iTunes Pass inside the Passbook app, which they can then present at their local Apple Store. The user then states how much money they would like to turn into iTunes Store credit, and this is instantly transferred to their account.