News - page 1405

Many states have laws against using smartphones while driving, for talking and texting… but does that count for Apple Maps? A California appeals court has ruled no.

Amazon is reported to be in discussions with music labels to launch a streaming music service for its Amazon Prime subscription members. Will it be more like Spotify, or iTunes Radio, though?

Google has released a major update to its Hangouts iOS app. Most notably, the new version includes a design makeover that’s more akin to iOS 7. Short video messages can be sent to contacts, and location data can also be shared.

Here’s the full changelog:

The vibe will certainly not be killed at SXSW this year, as Apple has added rapper Kendrick Lamar to its lineup of artists performing at the iTunes Festival. Lamar performed at the iTunes Festival last year as well.

ScHoolboy Q, Isaiah Rashad, Band of Skulls, and Capital Cities have also been added as supporting acts. Soundgarden was added to the lineup yesterday.

The men and women who ensure the safety of Apple employees will stand against the Cupertino company to demand better pay. With some of them forced to rely on public assistance and for housing and food due to the low quality jobs provided by companies like Security Industry Specialists (SIS), they want Apple to secure a better contract for them.

As another in a long line of rallies and protests, it may be difficult to get the attention of the Cupertino-based company’s shareholders, but the security officers and their community supporters hope to make enough noise to point out that while they work for the most profitable tech company in the world, the security officers are usually hired on part-time as on-call employees.

Apple has been named Fortune’s most admired company for the seventh year in a row. Amazon ranked second and Google came in at third. Samsung and Microsoft didn’t make the top ten.

While the iOS 7 software update has brought along a total design revamp, with it has also come irritating wallpaper settings. Not being able to scale your photo to the sizes you’d like and more have been just some of the newly associated issues. The new application Wallpaper Fix claims to be the perfect fix for all of your wallpaper problems. Is Wallpaper Fix the app that will help you get your wallpapers the way you want?

Take a look at Wallpaper Fix and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the iOS application Wallpaper Fix brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”

The folks behind the brilliant and sticky Tiny Death Star and Pocket Trains are back at it again, this time with another free-to-play title, Disco Zoo. This time, however, NimbleBit has the added talent of rock-star developer Owen Goss, a Canadian dude with a pedigree in gaming that reaches back to pre-iOS days (gasp).

Disco Zoo has the same Nimblebit retro bitizen look and feel, and the fun mechanics from Pocket Trains and Tiny Tower are out in force. You’ll take over running of the titular Zoo, adding animals and building habitats while earning in-game soft currency on a timed basis, as well as randomly on the zoo map screen.

The main part of the game involves rescuing animals from a variety of habitats–each requires the purchase of more and more expensive aircraft–and adding them to your zoo. The zoo animals will sleep after a time, which encourages you to keep checking back into the app to wake them up.

Clear, the popular to-do list management tool for iOS from Realmac Software, is now free for the next 24 hours.

The promotion is designed to give those who purchased the now defunct Clear+ the opportunity to migrate to the original app without having to pay again — but those who have never purchased Clear can take advantage of the offer, too.

Legal practice management software company Clio has just released the latest results of a survey it calls “Apple In Law Offices,” detailing the use of Apple devices in law firms across North America.

The 2013 survey marked a considerable increase in Apple adoption — with a 10% leap in both office Mac OS usage (from 56% in 2012 to 66% last year), and iPad usage (from 57% to 67%), while iPhone usage spiked 12% to 74% (while Android and Blackberry both saw decreases in law firm usage compared to global adoption rates).

The new light-based physics puzzle game from developers Playmous sure looks interesting!

Called God of Light, the game features 3 different game worlds, and 75 dozens of mind-expanding, puzzle-filled levels. Your mission is to join game mascot, Shiny, to save the universe from impending darkness — which means seeking out game objects that reflect, split, combine, paint, bend and teleport rays of light energy to activate the mythical “Sources of Life.”

If that sounds all a bit confusing, the above video may help shed some light (pun intended!) on what we’re talking about.

Nearly one third of all games released in the App Store in a 24-hour period are Flappy Bird clones.

That’s according to the Guardian newspaper’s Stuart Dredge, who used an RSS feed of the Appshopper site to get his hands on a list of every game released in the 24-hour period, ending 5am on February 27.

Of the 293 new iOS games, he discovered that 95 (just over 32%) were clones of the recently deceased Flappy Bird.

At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the themes were – as we expected – waterproof phones, smart-watches and NFC (again). Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 was a high-profile example of the waterproof trend, and the company also showed its new Galaxy Gear watch, which looks pretty neat for a giant wrist-screen. And NFC is in every Android handset these days.

But how do these themes relate to the iPhone and iPad? Let’s think about that.

Apple may have only released iOS 7.0.6 one week ago, but it’s already showing impressive adoption rates.

According to a study by Chitika Insights, just 48 hours after the update went live, 13.3% of all iOS traffic was driven by the latest update.

You can now double the storage space of your MacBook Air by jamming Sandisk’s new 128GB microSD card into an adapter in the SD card slot. Or you can slide it into any number of devices that use the pink-nail-sized storage standard. And if you are using it in a phone or a camera, it’s fast enough to capture HD video recorded straight to the card.

Fujifilm has announced the Instax SP–1 mobile printer at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. It’s a wireless, battery powered number that spits out 3×2 prints, and is controlled by an app on your iPhone (or Android device).

And while it looks pretty neat, if you can do without the battery power then I have a much better recommendation.

One of several themes at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has been cellphone cameras (the others were waterproof phones, crappy smartwatches, and NFC). Samsung’s new flagship Galaxy S5 ups the pixel count from 13MP 16MP, and adds 4K video capture. Nokia’s handsets can now shoot RAW pictures (or rather, record RAW pictures, as all photos are RAW to begin with) and Sony was showing off new camera modules (the iPhone uses a Sony camera).

As I was walking around the show and shooting everything with my iPhone 5, I started to wonder: who cares?

The NBA Game Time app for iPhone and NBA Game Time for iPad have just been updated, adding support for classic games.

As its name suggests, Endless Surf is pretty much an endless runner with a whole lot more water involved. If you’re looking for a true to life surfing sim, complete with realistic board dynamics and the like, you’re going to be disappointed. But if you can look past that, Endless Surf is a giant wave of fun.

Although Google bought social mapping service Waze in June of last year, the iOS app is still getting impressive new updates.

The latest? Waze for iOS has just gained Calendar integration. It might not seem useful at first glance, but it’s actually a great addition.

When will the iPhone 6 be released? Ever since the iPhone 4s, Apple has unveiled the next iPhone in September, but at least one analyst is now claiming that Apple might go back to a WWDC launch in 2014.

If you have a brand spanking new Mac Pro, Apple has released a new firmware update that will help it stay quiet and not sound like the jet engine that it may physically resemble.

Recommended for all late 2013 Mac Pros, the Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update 2.0 allows the Mac Pro to enter Power Nap without running the Mac Pro’s fan for most Power Nap activities.

The update also addresses a rare issue where a low-speed USB device may not be detected at boot.

If you’ve already dropped a few grand on a Mac Pro, the good news is the update’s free. You can grab it from the link below.

Source: Apple

Here’s a hard to believe story: one of Apple’s executives behind the original iPhone has gone so far as to apologize to anyone who bought one during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.

Why? According to ex-Apple senior director of product marketing for the original iPhone Bob Borchers: “If you had the original iPhone, I apologize; it was not a great phone, it was an OK phone.”

Unbelievably, he may have a point.

Automatic is one of our favorite iOS car accessories and while we’ve been blown away how easily it can future-proof your dumb car, the smart dongle just got a lot more intelligent thanks to an update that brings IFTTT integration into the car for the first time.

Automatic can already track your trips and tell you where you parked, but with IFTTT recipes you can now let your car Tweet, post to Facebook, or send an email to your mechanic based on a set of triggers Automatic has created.

The new Automatic Channel on IFTTT exposes some powerful triggers, including the following:

While movie streaming applications like Netflix and Hulu Plus remain popular for what they have to offer, Disney has just released their own take on the genre. Disney Movies Anywhere is Disney’s latest application, giving users the ability to access an extensive library of Disney movies on the go. With plenty of great options and features available will Disney Movies Anywhere find its way on your devices.

Take a look at Disney Movies Anywhere and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the application “Disney Movies Anywhere” brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”