News - page 1374

So far, the consensus is that while we will see a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 in September, we will have to wait until the holidays, or even later, to see the rumored 5.5-inch model. The culprit, claim reports, are those ever pesky “yields,” but what does that mean? Why is a 5.5-inch iPhone 6 so much harder to make than a 4.7-inch one?

A new report out of Taiwan sheds some light on the matter. The issue apparently is that the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 is meant to be super thin… even thinner than the 4.7-inch. And that requires perfecting a very special kind of battery.

Do you have an ancient first-gen iPod lying around? A candy-shelled iMac G3? An iPhone 2g? Heck, even a vintage Macintosh SE, or working Apple I?

Good news. Starting today, Apple’s retail stores will accept any of its old products for recycling, and if they think they can resell it, you’ll even get some store credit (although you may want to hold off on trading in that Apple I).

Back in the early 80s Apple greeted the arrival of IBM PCs with a snarky full page newspaper ad reading, “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.”

In the past few years, however, Apple’s claws haven’t come out all that often when it comes to taking rivals down a peg or two.

In fact, most of the recent sideways swipes involving Apple tend to be other companies (normally Samsung) taking shots at Apple, rather than the other way around.

Well, the tables have turned in a new print ad which appeared in the UK’s Guardian and free commuter paper Metro today.

Like any good Apple product, there isn’t too much publicly confirmed about Jobs — the forthcoming movie about Apple’s late CEO, penned by Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

However, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter did take a moment on Monday to shed a bit more light on the project, while answering questions at New York City’s School of Visual Arts for the Tribeca Film Festival.

Describing the script as “one of the very few times I ended up writing what I set out to write,” Sorkin noted that it will reveal both the positive and negative aspects of Jobs’ persona, as detailed in the 2011 Walter Isaacson biography, of which this is a (loose) adaptation.

To celebrate the fact that April 22 is Earth Day, Apple has updated its logo to include a green leaf, as seen in the above picture of Apple’s giant Nanjing East retail store in Shanghai.

2014 is the first time in eight years that Apple has celebrated Earth Day. In addition to the revised logo, Apple will also give employes at selected stores special Earth Day shirts to wear. A special event is additionally planned to take place in Cupertino.

Is Nike going to be teaming with Apple for the iWatch?

Ever since Nike announced the surprising news that it was scrapping its rival fitness-tracking FuelBand line of wearables — including a new, slimmer device planned for this fall — the rumor mill has been buzzing with suggestions that Nike is now positioned perfectly to partner Apple for its long-awaited iWatch.

Here’s why it makes sense:

CloudConvert, the web-app that lets you convert almost any file format to any other file format, now comes as an iOS app. It still uses CloudConvert’s great web service as its engine, but adds a native iOS interface.

You know what that means? It means you can send any file to CloudConvert using the standards iOS “Open In…” dialog. Got a Word DOCX file in your webmail and need to send it to someone else as a PDF? No problem.

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Evernote’s new Business Notebook (made my Moleskine) lets you share just a part of your handwritten notes with other businessy-type folks, and it also lets you check a box on each page to set a reminder. And of course it does this in concert with the Evernote suite of apps.

Eye-Fi – the company that makes the Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards we use for covering trade-shows – has launched a Eye-Fi Cloud, a new app and service that stores all your photos in the cloud, whether you took them on your iPhone or a big fancy camera.

It’s hard to come up with a reason you wouldn’t buy the Jimi, a little dongle that plays the hell out of your iMac, then smashes it all over the stage and sets fire to it, all while continuing to kindle sweet electric guitar music from its dying body.

Wait, that’s not the same Jimi? The Bluelounge Jimi is a little j-shaped USB extension that lets you plug your peripherals into your iMac from the front? That sounds pretty cool.

We’ve known that Apple has been interested in mobile payments for some time. Now the company is interviewing potential candidates to lead the initiative, according to a new report from Re/code.

Apple’s head of e-commerce, Jennifer Bailey, has reportedly been meeting with executives in the payments industry “to fill head of product and head of business development positions.”

While Apple’s “ambitions” are described as “very, very serious,” it’s likely that any sort of mobile payment system from Apple won’t come out anytime soon.

As promised, Mailbox has added its intelligent Auto-swipe feature in a new update. Tighter integration with Dropbox, the app’s parent company, has also been added to sync preferences across devices.

Auto-swipe is essentially like a more intelligent version of Gmail’s filters. The feature learns from the user’s choices to snooze and archive certain messages. For example. if you trash the same kind of spam email more than once, Auto-swipe will trash it for you. Parameters Auto-swipe creates based on your behaviors can be edited in Mailbox’s settings.

Dropbox recently previewed Auto-swipe and the upcoming Mac version of Mailbox, which is currently in a private beta. Mailbox for iOS is free in the App Store.

Source: App Store

Image: The Verge

Now that David Fincher isn’t in the running to direct Sony’s Steve Jobs biopic, Christian Bale probably won’t star. As Sony searches for someone else to helm the project, another director and star actor combo have been added to the mix.

Oscar-winnng director Danny Boyle is reportedly in early talks to direct the movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter. And he has approached Leonardo DiCaprio to play Jobs.

Google Glass wearers who also use an iPhone will get a convenient update later this week.

As per a new post on the Google+ page for the device, the update will let iPhone users see text messages directly on Glass — without having to take the phone out of their pocket first. In Google’s words:

iOS fans, by popular demand you can now get texts from your friends on Glass. Get started by going to your iPhone’s Bluetooth settings and turning on “Show Notifications” for your paired Glass. When you receive a new text message, it will appear as a notification on Glass. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to reply from Glass due to some limitations with iOS. (Android fans, don’t feel left out – you’ve got SMS on Glass already.)

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If there are two things you’re likely to hear from Monument Valley players it’s this: “Wow, what an incredibly original game” and “That didn’t take long to complete.”

Both statements are totally factual. Ustwo’s puzzle game masterpiece is one of the most original games of the year, but also an experience that flies by all too quickly.

With that in mind, the developers have confirmed that they are, in fact, working on extra levels to bolster the game.

But they’re not just doing this for the sake of doing it. According to Neil McFarland, ustwo’s director of games:

Duck Dynasty fans rejoice, you can now binge on all the splendors America’s favorite hillbilly family has to offer from your Apple TV, but you’ll still need a cable subscription.

An Apple TV update this morning added new channels for the History Channel, Lifetime and A&E offering cable subscribers full access to a catalog of shows from Duck Dynasty, American Pickers, Vikings, Pawn Stars, and yes, even Project Runway.

Along with the new Apple TV app the History Channel and A&E apps for iOS were updated to include live-streaming of TV shows for subscribers, but if you don’t have a cable TV, Verizon FIOS or Direct TV subscription you can still enjoy previews of great hits like Dance Moms.

A video detailing the creation of Apple Campus 2 was released this morning featuring glimpses of the Spaceship’s architectural achievements in natural ventilation, renewable energy, trees regrowth, and other revolutionary tech that’s will make it one of the best office buildings in the world.

The video also features interviews of the people behind the campus, like architect Norman Foster, who tells the story of how Steve Jobs recruited him for the job of building Apple Campus 2 and how the project didn’t start as a circular building but grew into that as the intensive project progressed.

Check out the video below, before Apple takes it down:

Apple has released its latest commercial, and it’s a doozy.

Called “Better,” the ad (which is narrated by Tim Cook) refers to Apple’s work in terms of its environmental efforts — describing the company’s push to reduce its carbon footprint, conserve resources, and inspire others to follow suit.

Come July 1, Mac users running various older versions of OS X won’t have the ability to use their mac.com and me.com addresses to log into the AOL Instant Messaging service via iChat.

Apple says that users who want to take advantage of the service must upgrade to at least OS X Lion 10.7.2.

iOS devices might be ruining your child’s ability to play with building blocks, according to a recent report.

Members of the UK’s Association of Teachers and Lecturers claim that addiction to iPad and iPhones mean that children aged between 3 and 4 have no problem swiping a screen, but have difficulty understanding real space, and possess “little or no” dexterity in their fingers.

“I have spoken to a number of nursery teachers who have concerns over the increasing numbers of young pupils who can swipe a screen but have little or no manipulative skills to play with building blocks or the like, or the pupils who cannot socialize with other pupils but whose parents talk proudly of their ability to use a tablet or smartphone,” says teacher Colin Kinner.

If you’re the owner of a jailbroken iOS device, a new tweak can give you a wealth of better power down options… and even graft iOS 7.1’s new power down slider onto stock iOS 7, or give you back iOS 6’s power-off slider. Keen!

Apple has turned even the most modest weekend strummer into a guitar hero.
This week in Cult of Mac Magazine, our games editor and disco band frontman (!) Rob LeFebvre takes you on a magical mystery tour of Garageband’s latest and greatest features. He’ll walk you through a shiny new piece of kit called Drummer, plus get you ringtone making and learning from the pros in the Lessons store.

Rob has also kept his ear to the ground for all the other great gear you need to make your homegrown music making hit the right notes and, well, sound better. And definitely louder. Whether you’re rocking at home or taking your iPad with you on stage.

So. The beat goes on with Charlie Sorrel sifting through MacBook stands to single out the best, plus his picks for the best Apple-related gear and Buster Hein’s top choices from iTunes for music, books and movies you’ll be grooving to all week.

Cult of Mac Magazine

First unveiled in iOS 6, Apple Maps has been known to distort reality before, but can it conjure a mythical prehistoric beast from the waters of Loch Ness?

Cryptozoologists are saying yes. They are claiming that Apple Maps has finally located the elusive Loch Ness Monster!

Wall Street consensus is that when Apple announces its Q2 2014 quarterly earnings on Wednesday, Apple’s year-over-year iPad numbers won’t look good. On the low end, at least one Wall Street analyst says that Apple will have sold 23% fewer iPads this year than last year in the same quarter; on average, Wall Street expects Apple’s iPad sales to have declined 0.7% year-over-year.

How can this be? This is the year that Apple unveiled the Retina iPad mini and the beautifully redesigned iPad Air, after all. How is it possible that these iPads can be selling worse than the inferior iPads a year ago?

Ex-Apple exec Jean-Louie Gassée has a theory, and it’s not one that Apple fans are going to be happy to hear: the iPad is a big tease, and fundamentally less useful than both a smartphone or a laptop.

Every aspect of Facebook’s entire business is essentially designed to target ads. Is anyone surprised, then, that the social networking giant intends on launching its own mobile ad network, similar to Apple’s iAds?