News - page 1365

Both Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will take senior positions at Apple as part of the Beats Electronics deal, according to people close to the matter.

While neither would move to Cupertino, they would reportedly commute to Silicon Valley (or wherever is needed) from Los Angeles. Although it’s currently unknown what role Iovine and Dre would fulfill at Apple, it is thought that Iovine might become a “special adviser” to Tim Cook on creative projects. Dre was recently seen celebrating becoming “the first billionaire in hip-hop.”

So who are these two possible new members of the Apple brain trust, and what would they bring to the table?

Thank goodness for a game with just a few things to learn how to do.

Too many environmental puzzle games try to do too much, packing in all sorts of stuff you have to figure out to solve the ever-increasingly difficult levels.

Not so with Kiwanuka, an elegantly smart game that only has a couple of mechanics, but tons of fun levels to solve with them.

Oh, and it’s a little bit weird, too.

I’m constantly checking out new photography apps for the iPhone, and like many out there, my favorite remains VSCO Cam. There’s a new contender on the scene that was released this week, and it’s definitely worth trying if you like experimenting beyond VSCO’s filters.

A new video app from the Hipstamatic team also just came out in the App Store, and it has some of the best filters for mobile video I’ve come across.

Remember Facebook Poke? It’s become nothing more than a faint memory since its introduction in December 2012. But for some reason the iPhone app has stayed on the App Store until now.

Today Facebook decided to do some spring cleaning in the App Store by pulling not only the Poke app, but Facebook Camera as well.

They say your email inbox is a terrible place to manage tasks. I’d disagree. I think it’s the perfect place. After all, most of my tasks come in via email, and any app that can share information can share it via email. Why bother dickering with an extra app, keeping all that important stuff in two places, when it can all be easily managed in one spot?

I’ve been doing exactly this ever since I ditched OmniFocus, which is so long ago I can’t remember how long ago it was. With a little bit of setup in your everyday news and browsing apps, you can turn your inbox into a proper universal task list. Here’s how.

What would it look like if Apple let you work in multiple apps side by side on the iPad? Apple’s competitors like to poke fun at the iPad’s lack of desktop-class multitasking. But plenty of people are using the iPad to get work done, which begs the age-old question: is less really more?

Imagine OS X’s Mission Control ported to the iPad, and you’ve got the jailbreak tweak OS Experience. It’s an ambitious idea that is executed with surprising finesse.

If the rumors are true, Apple’s forthcoming purchase of Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion is all about one thing — making wearable technology fashionable.

Apple is poised to introduce a line of wearables that likely goes beyond the long-rumored iWatch. While the technology Tim Cook’s team is cooking up might be amazing, getting people to wear it — especially cracking the crucial mass market — will be one of the biggest challenges Cupertino has ever faced.

Injecting style into wearable tech notoriously difficult. Even Nike got flustered and discontinued its FuelBand fitness tracker. So far, no company has really cracked the code and turned gear into a fashion statement for the cool kids, with one giant exception: Beats, a phenomenally successful wearable technology brand that dwarfs the rest of the industry because it’s pulled off the hardest trick in the book.

With the global reach of Twitter, it’s totally possible you’re following a few folks that don’t necessarily Tweet in your native language.

When that happens, it’s TweetDeck to the rescue with its very useful translation function.

Here’s how to make that work.

Angry Birds is coming to a big screen near you. Rovio Entertainment is taking the epic battle of birds-versus-pigs from your iPhone to the cinema, in 3-D, and launching it into the wide, wide world in July 2016.

We’re aflutter with anticipation: Can they actually make a movie based on a video game worth watching? It’s happened time and time again that our favorite living room brain-cell killer was transported to the land of plush seats and buttery popcorn only to disappoint.

Most video games turn into celluloid duds even though we stupidly paid to see them; Rotten Tomatoes gives Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within only a 44 percent approval rating. The rest go down from there.

In the gallery above, you’ll find a brutal rundown of the best of the worst video game-cum-movies that Rovio should watch — as a reminder of what not to do.

Notorious vegetarian Steve Jobs had few weakness. Black turtlenecks were one. The other was an extreme love of sushi.

Some of the West Coast’s best sushi places dotted Steve’s backyard, but Kaygetsu, a small sushi spot in Menlo Park, held the key to Steve’s heart stomach so tightly that Silicon Valley’s most impatient CEO could be spotted waiting up to 30 minutes like a normal pauper just to get his tongue on some hamachi.

Jobs loved the place so much he had a surprise birthday party for his wife there and even crammed Apple’s board of directors into the tiny restaurant for board meetings.

Reports of Apple’s pending Beats Electronics acquisition has left the vast majority of us scratching our heads, but if you thought this was just another spurious claim from anonymous supply chain blabbermouths, you can think again. Not only did the story come from reputable sources, but it has been all but confirmed by Dr. Dre himself.

In the short video below, a drunk Dre proclaims himself “the first billionaire in hip-hop” as he celebrates with friends.

Nokia’s incredible PureView camera technology is one of the reasons why so many Android users were desperate to see the Finnish firm ditch Windows Phone and bring Google’s platform to its flagship smartphones instead — and you could soon see the same technology in future iPhones.

Apple has used Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset business as an opportunity to poach executives who are seeking new challenges, and the Cupertino company has just hired Lumia engineer and PureView camera expert Ari Partinen.

If you’re counting down the seconds until you can lovingly hold the iPhone 6 in your sweaty palms, you may have less time to wait than you thought, according to sources within Apple’s supply chain.

As per Taiwanese media reports, Apple might be set to drop the first incarnation of its next generation iPhone in August instead of the expected September.

If true, this would likely be 4.7 inch version of the iPhone 6, while the reported 5.5 inch model would follow in September.

More details are trickling out about Gameloft’s eagerly awaited first-person-shooter Modern Combat 5: Blackout, which is set to arrive on mobile later this year.

The first big reveal concerns a new unified progression system, which will aim to bring together the single-player campaign and online multiplayer modes by letting experience earned in either contribute toward your character’s overall level. This will also hold true for the game’s weapon mastery system also, meaning that whether you unlock a new weapon in campaign or multiplayer you’ll be able to use it in both.

Beats Electronics boss and music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine is in talks to join Apple as a “special adviser” to Tim Cook on creative matters, according to sources.

Along with his role as co-creator of Beats with business partner Dr. Dre, Iovine is also chairman of Universal Music Group’s Interscope, Geffen and A&M labels, which is home to artists including Lady Gaga and Eminem.

Protecting user privacy and sensitive information might drive Snapchat’s disappearing messages, but the Federal Trade Commission is keeping its eye on the company just in case!

The FTC has announced that it is settling with Snapchat after an investigation into the company’s privacy practices. The reason? The number of work arounds that allow photos and videos sent via Snapchat to be covertly captured.

“If a company markets privacy and security as key selling points in pitching its service to consumers, it is critical that it keep those promises,” FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez says. “Any company that makes misrepresentations to consumers about its privacy and security practices risks FTC action.”

The first impression upon seeing Satechi’s new GoRemote Bluetooth remote-controller for the iPhone is oh man, that’s really freaking cool! Followed rapidly by wait, what am I going to do with this thing again?

This probably isn’t the “iRing” you’ve been waiting for — assuming you’ve been waiting for the mythical (One) Ring, forged by the skilled elves of Logbar, that wants to control, well, pretty much everything in your life.

No, this particular ring — IK Multmedia’s iRing — won’t control your TV, your phone or your wallet. But it is imbued with the power to create music on your iDevice.

Apple is reportedly gearing up to buy Beats Electronics, the headphone manufacturer co-founded by Dr. Dre and music producer Jimmy Iovine that has also spun off a streaming-music service.

The deal could cost $3.2 billion, according to The Financial Times, and would give Apple full control of the brand that’s made gigantic flashy headphones the trendiest thing to hit kids’ heads since backward baseball caps.

Does this mean Dr. Dre is about to become the newest Apple employee?

Saunter up to the bar, pardner, and we’ll tell you all about our little town here.

We need a sheriff around these parts and you look like you’d fit the badge nicely. Here’s a gun; get out there and collect rewards, shoot wild animals and round up the bad guys.

Oh, and don’t mind the funny green light ’round these parts. It’s just how we get things done.

The smartphone wars are two company race and it’s not even close.

Apple and Samsung are dominating the competition so badly that a new report from Canaccord Genuity claims the two tech giants account for 106% of global smartphone profits.

Take a look at this chart:

Sir Jonathan Ive’s list of accolades is already longer than any other contemporary designer, but he’ll be adding a new award to his mantle this fall with a lifetime achievement award coming from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The museum is in the midst of a massive Snøhetta-designed expansion but the absence of an HQ won’t stop it from honoring Jony’s work at the intersection of technology and liberal arts with the the 2014 Bay Area Treasure Award, says SFMOMA director Neal Benezra.

Progress on Apple’s forthcoming “spaceship” campus continues to march on, as new aerial photos taken by AppleToolbox show.

The photos clearly illustrate how the site is taking on its circular shape, with plenty of work being done by construction workers and heavy machines.

Oh, you wacky Samsung-ites — will you never learn?

Samsung was somehow recently granted a design trademark for a “display screen with icon” and, wouldn’t you know it, it looks almost exactly like the icon Apple currently uses for Siri.

SAN FRANCISCO — Even in a town populated by ninjas, gurus and rockstars, Mario Estrada may have the coolest job around.

He’s the Director of Fun for digital photo app Hipstamatic and hopes you won’t hate him for it.

“Most people don’t believe that’s my job, but a lot of thought went into the title,” he says, enjoying the sun from the rooftop lounge of the startup’s SOMA headquarters. “Someone asked once why I wasn’t the VP of fun, but that implies there’s someone more fun than I am. And you can’t be the president of fun, because, actually, being president is never fun.”