News - page 1373

Tim Cook will put his iPhone on speaker this afternoon to tell the world how much money Apple has made selling us insanely great gadgets, and we’ll be liveblogging the call.

During the quarterly earnings report, which starts at 2 p.m. Pacific, Cook and company will share details about Apple’s Q2 financial performance with investors and the rest of the faithful.

Some analysts predict a yawn-inducing “business as usual” earnings report, but you never know – Cook might have to sing some fancy arpeggios if the numbers don’t jibe with predictions made last year, when he crowed about exciting products in the Apple pipeline.

Whether Tim’s talk leads to boos or a standing ovation, Cult of Mac will brave the recital of all the mind-numbing money-speak to help you tune in to the true meaning behind it all. Keep this page open as we post all the interesting bits.

The iPod might be a dying business, but “dying” businesses for Apple are still businesses the competition would kill to have.

Apple’s iPod business, for example, is still worth $5 billion. Here’s an interesting metric to show how big the iPod still is in comparison to other companies, though. New mobile ad traffic data from Opera Mediaworks suggests that just a single iPod — the iPod touch — accounts for more web traffic than BlackBerry and Windows Phone combined.

Last month, we reported that always reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo was predicting that when Amazon finally gets into the smartphone business, it challenge the iPhone with a smartphone with as many as six different cameras. Kuo predicted that at least four of these cameras would be used for gesture control, allowing users to operate the smartphone without touching the touch panel.

We had a hard time wrapping our heads around it at the time, but now more data has come to light about how the system will work. And it sounds kind of dumb.

When Apple reveals its Q2 2014 sales numbers later today, few people are expecting any miracles: Mostly, Wall Street expects that growth will have stalled. All the more reason why Apple needs a major new product like the iWatch to give them some of their mojo back.

One business that everyone definitely expects to have declined this quarter, though, is the iPod. Apple CEO Tim Cook has himself said that the iPod is a “declining business” and sales have been dropping ever since 2008.

The bad news for iPod fans is that at least one analyst thinks the iPod business is in such serious decline for Apple that they won’t bother updating the line at all in 2014. But the good news? He thinks the iWatch will replace the iPod.

As rumors start to coalesce into likely fact that the iPhone 6 will come in two larger sizes — a 4.7-inch model and a 5.5-inch ‘iPhone Air’ — one big question that arises is what will happened to the iPhone 5c. Will Apple shelf their ‘budget’ iPhone, based upon poor sales? Or will they reinvent it when the iPhone 6s finally comes around?

Our favorite armchair iDevice designer Martin Hajek thinks the latter. He thinks that the iPhone c-series will live on, and in a stunning series of renders, he shows just how beautiful the iPhone 6c could be while still leaving room for the iPhone 6s to be the ‘luxury’ device with smaller bezels, TouchID and other perks.

More images after the jump. What do you think? Would you buy an iPhone 6c that looks like this?

Nifty free voice call and instant messaging service Viber has upgraded to iOS 7.0 with its latest update — incorporating the flat design we’ve come to expect across all iOS apps.

With more than 100 million monthly active users, and having been recently acquired by e-commerce giant Rakuten for $900 million, the upgrade was definitely in order, and it looks great.

That’s not all the update brings, however. It also adds new features to the app — including the ability to send multiple photos at once, as well as the option to create a list of blocked numbers/contacts.

Police in Milan busted an iPad thief who used the device to take photos of himself, apparently unaware that the images could be accessed remotely.

Another piece of the “when will Apple release the iWatch” puzzle may have fallen in to place, with the news that Apple is actively pursuing the iWatch trademark in dozens of countries around the globe.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Apple if it was that straightforward.

Rather than trademarking the term itself, Apple appears to be using a shell company called Brightflash USA LLC to do the work on its behalf.

The firm is registered in Delaware, and has previously been tied to trademarking efforts by Apple. One indicator of the connection between Apple and Brightflash is that it is using the same IP attorney in several locations.

I keep a movie to-watch list, a plain text list somewhere in my Dropbox. And as you may have guessed, I never read it. What I probably need is an app like Moviedo, a to-do list for movies that runs on your iPhone.

Apple’s latest iPhone 5s ad debuted during last night’s Agents of SHIELD on ABC, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Built around the idea that “You’re more powerful than you think,” the ad shows the iPhone being used to as a tool by people in various lines of work. In this way, it’s very reminiscent of Apple’s recent “Your Verse” campaign for the iPad.

But while it’s good aspirational fare — with absolutely nothing offensive about it — it also comes across as, well, kind of boring really.

The iOS Kindle app just got an update, and it’s a good one. The left sidebar that you can summon while reading now has direct access to the table of contents, and you can access X-Ray info just by tapping on a word.

Remember the Elevation Dock? Yeah, me too. The Kickstarter took so long to ship that everybody who’d ordered one had upgraded to the iPhone 5 by the time the dock shipped, so they needed adapters to make them fit their new phones.

Still, that won’t happen with the new Elevation Stand, which is a simple $100 aluminum brick that adds a few inches to the height of your iMac.

DC Comics comic game, Injustice: Gods Among Us, will be getting a new mobile multiplayer mode and tons of new characters, according to reports coming out of WonderCon.

Developed by NetherRealm and published by Warner Brothers, the fighting game is one of a very select few that gets it right on touch-based devices — faithfully translating the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 console game to Apple’s mobile operating system.

Until now, however, playing the game on iOS has been a solitary experience. That looks like it will be rectified in a future game update, as a video from DC All Access reveals a multiplayer mode in the works.

Barely two months after I bought the original, Logitech has updated the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad, with matching new models for the iPads Air and Mini. The Bluetooth keyboards still work as covers and stands for your iPad, but now they also hold the iPad at an adjustable angle, and have a hidden hinge that pops out when your need it.

Lytro’s new Illum field Camera is the first of its products you’ll want to buy. The original Lytro Field Camera was a nice proof of concept, but the low resolution images were pretty crappy, and the unit itself was one of the least ergonomic camera designs I’ve ever seen.

The Illum still has some ergonomics issues, but promises much better pictures.

Apple has released security patches to fix the Heartbleed bug on AirPort base stations, and SSL-based security updates for Apple TVs and Macs.

You should probably go and update all of them as soon as possible.

Apple has aired a new ad for the iPhone 5s titled “Powerful.” It’s the first TV spot dedicated solely to the 5s since “Metal Mastered” last fall.

This new ad showcases the iPhone helping with creative tasks live music. The song is “Gigantic” by the Pixies, a hit song from the 90s.

Under the watchful eye of Tim Cook Apple’s gone from the most powerful tech company in the world to the most green. Yesterday’s new ad shone the spotlight on Apple’s environmental practices but the true celebrations of going green kicked off today for Earth Day.

Select Apple Stores around the world sprouted green leafed logos to go with new Earth Day shirts and lanyards for Specialists and Geniuses, but rather than driving all the way to your local store we’ve gathered shots of Apple Stores near and far celebrating Apple’s pledge to leave the world better than they found it.

Take a look:

If pangs of jealousy hit you every time developers start waxing poetic about new OS X goodies found in a new beta update, your time has finally come to join in on the fun.

Starting this afternoon Apple has opened up its OS X Mavericks beta testing program to let everyone – not just those slick coding developers – download the latest OS X beta seeds.

It’s been over a month since Apple released its beefy iOS 7.1 update but iPhone and iPad users can now update to iOS 7.1.1 which was just made available this morning.

The update comes with a number of bug fixes as well improvements for Touch ID fingerprint recognition. Other fixes added a included the extermination of a bug that was impacting keyboard responsiveness, and an issue when using Bluetooth keyboards with VoiceOver enabled.

You can grab it via an OTA update on your device, or through iTunes, or you can grab the version you need in the download links below:

It’s easy to get a thrill from the action portrayed in the movies. While these characters perform bank heists and other risky situations, these are all far from being like our average days. When the office isn’t giving you a rush, the new app Bike Assault is perfect for you. Tilt your way through traffic shooting an armored truck, and catching as much money as possible, without crashing. Just how much loot will you be able to pick up?

Take a look at the video and see what you think.

Your iPhone and iPad already have some fonts on board, but what if you want to make something that looks like it was stenciled or written in cursive? Or maybe you just like knowing that you have like 800 typefaces to choose from, just in case? Install New Fonts has you covered with enough options to keep you out of trouble for a while. If you’re wondering how to install fonts on iPad, here’s a guide that covers everything you need.

It’s free to download, but most of it is locked behind a $2.99 in-app purchase. But everything’s licensed for commercial use, so think of it as an investment.

Source:Install New Fonts – Free | Denis Tokarev

Pretty much every Apple product has cannibalized sales from another one: the MacBook cannibalized the Mac, the iPhone cannibalized the iPod, the iPad cannibalized the MacBook, and the iPad mini cannibalized the iPad Air.

On its part, though, Apple has always been cavalier about cannibalizing its own sales. In February, 2013, Tim Cook told investors that “if we don’t cannibalize, someone else will.” Which is why Cupertino is unlikely to be worried about analyst concerns that a larger iPhone 6 could cannibalize sales of the iPad mini.

When the developers at AgileBits showed me 1Password’s highly anticipated iOS 7 redesign at Macworld last month, I naturally asked when it would come out. They were cagey, but I was told to expect some “interesting things soon.” The day has finally arrived, and 1Password’s biggest update since version 4.0 is out in the App Store.

Redesigned to match the cleaner aesthetics of iOS 7, 1Password 4.5 finally brings support for switching between multiple vaults. The feature was previously limited to the Mac, but now the iOS app can switch between vaults from within its settings.

1Password 4.5 also includes notable improvements to its built-in browser, better integration with its desktop counterpart (which has also been updated), and some other welcomed features.

Streaming media services that want to sell subscriptions to users of their apps on the iPhone or iPad have to make a deal with the proverbial devil: if they want to sign up customers on an iOS device, they have to give Apple a 30% cut of the sale.

For music subscription services like Rdio and Spotify, where the margins are razor thin, giving up that 30% cut is enough to turn a subscription from a profit to a break-even proposition. So when a company goes this route, it’s easy to assume they are hurting.

By this logic, Beats Music — the new subscription music service launched in January — is hurting.