News - page 1408

Greetings, comrades! This time on CultCast: we travel to mother Russia and dance with gogo dancers (no, really); Apple talks to Tesla, we talk iCars. Plus, for the first time, Apple brings the iTunes Festival to the United States; Facebook buys WhatsApp (but why?); Jony Ive vanishes from Apple’s website; and don’t miss an all new Faves N Raves where we pitch favorite tech and apps then vote one which one’s best!

Belly-laugh your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.

And thanks to Fresbooks for sponsoring this episode! FreshBooks, the simple online accounting solution built for small business owners – just like you – who want to skip the headache of tax time. For a limited time, try FreshBooks free 60 days, and enter “CultCast” in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section.

Blackberry has been dealt another blow as yet another major customer jumps ship to iPhone. The U.S. Air Force is planning on replacing 5,000 Blackberries with iPhones.

Did you miss the Flappy Bird phenomenon?

Well, if you’re a Twitterific user, no need to download one of the seemingly infinite number of clones: an Easter egg within the popular Twitter app lets you play a great 8-bit Flappy Bird clone with just a gesture.

If you own a Fitbit Force — a fitness tracker with a built-in OLED display that we like quite a lot at Cultofmedia — you might want to check under the band.

Do you see any redness? If so, you should avail yourself of a voluntary recall of the Fitbit Force.

After releasing iOS 7.0.6 yesterday with an important SSL bug fix, jailbreakers were put in a quandry. The bug that iOS 7.0.6 fixes a seriour security flaw that makes SSL/TLS sessions insecure, which puts your personal details in web transactions at risk of being stolen. On the other hand, is it really worth sacrificing your jailbreak for?

Luckily, it turns out that iOS 7.0.6 is still capable of being jailbroken using the existing Evasi0n jailbreak. Although Apple has patched out the Evasi0n jailbreaking exploit in iOS 7.1, iOS jailbreak dev winocm has said on Twitter that iOS 7.0.6 is still jailbreakable.

Of course, the existing Evasi0n jailbreak installer hasn’t yet been updated to support iOS 7.0.6, but if previous iOS 7.0.x updates are anything to go by, it won’t take long. In the meantime, if you want to jailbreak iOS 7.0.6 and don’t mind doing some hex editting, you can do so by following the instrucions here.

Personally, I love the look of the new stealth engine Mac Pro, but some people find it to look, well, a little too much like a trash can (which may not be a coincidence).

Jarred Land, one of the key figures of the Red Digital Camera Company, obviously agreed. He built himself a machined aluminum chassis to keep his Mac Pro in, plus an integrated Redmag Mini card reader with 8TB internal Thunderbolt RAID, and a monster fan to keep things cool.

It looks pretty awesome, but sadly, it’s a one-off: Land says he did it just for fun.

Source: Facebook
Thanks: Chuck W.

We’ve been excited about Tengami ever since we saw it at a gaming conference a couple of years back. The long development time has paid off for developer Nyamyam, as Tengami is by far one of the best games of its type we’ve seen on any platform.

It came out for iOS just this week, and we’ve lost ourselves (and our sense of time) playing through the lushly illustrated pop-up book. The story is told without dialogue, tasking us with moving from one beautiful environment to the next, solving puzzles along the way to keep the journey going.

Here’s a video of some of our play through of the game.

Well-known jailbreaker “winocm” announced today that he will be taking a job at Apple later this year.

When reached for comment, the 17-year-old hacker declined to elaborate on what his new role at Apple will entail. He also declined to provide his real name, which is a common theme amongst high-profile jailbreak hackers who prefer to hide behind their online pseudonyms.

While winocm did not work on the recent iOS 7 jailbreak, his expertise in reverse engineering iOS will undoubtedly make him a valuable asset at Apple.

Apple has purchased Burstly, the company behind iOS app beta platform TestFlight. The specific details of the buyout have not been disclosed, but TechCrunch reports that Burstly’s engineers are working at Apple already.

We’re still waiting for iOS 7.1 to get its wide release, but in the interim Apple just released a new build of iOS 7.0.6. The small software update contains a fix for SSL connection verification.

The update should be available soon OTA and via iTunes, but if you want it now here are the download links:

It’s been more than 700 days since we’ve seen an Apple TV hardware update, but Apple’s not the only company hurrying out the finishing touches on TV set-top box.

Amazon is planning to launch its answer to the Apple TV this March, according to a report from Re/code. The Amazon TV box will take aim at the Apple TV and Roku, utilizing Amazon’s growing video catalog.

To aid in its uphill battle against Apple and Android, Microsoft is adding a voice assistant of its own to Windows Phone 8.1 and according to the latest details she could pass as Siri’s sister.

Inspired by AI character from the Halo series, Cortana will replace Bing-search in the update and act as a mix between Siri and Google Now, according to the Verge, but the UI and personality will be pretty similar to Siri:

The first Macintosh clone in the world was not one of the Apple sanctioned systems released in 1995, such as those from companies like PowerComputing, Radius, Umax or Daystar Digital. Nor was it the Outbound laptop in 1989, a hybrid system produced using Mac ROMs taken from working Mac Plus systems.

No, the first Macintosh clone was the Unitron Mac 512, a unauthorized copy of the 512k “Fat Mac” produced by a Brazilian company in 1986. And it was a pretty darn impressive copy. The fallout from that effort nearly help start a trade war between Brazil and the United States; to prevent theft of Intellectual Property, Apple and other companies lobbied Congress to hike import taxes on Brazilian goods like oranges and shoes as a response.

And as we know, nobody messes with Tropicana …

It’s not a widely known story. Pieces of this long-forgotten chapter in Mac history can be found scattered on websites around the world. Here is the fascinating tale of the first Macintosh clone in the world.

Apple began rolling out its two-step verification system for your Apple ID last year, adding an extra layer of protection for users. Now it is making the security feature available in more countries — including Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Spain.

The concept of the two-step verification system, for those unfamiliar with it, is to make you enter a code (sent to a single trusted device) each time you make changes to your account, or make a new iTunes or App Store purchase using a new device.

The world’s leading online survey platform SurveyMonkey finally has an app available in the App Store — letting iOS users on the move create surveys and polls, send them to out, and then monitor the result as they come back in.

Apple is reportedly planning to open a new Apple Store in Eastwood Towne Center, in Lansing Township, Michigan, according to new documents.

A contractor working for Apple recently filed an application with town officials to begin work on an almost 6,000-square-foot retail store at a shopping center at 3025 Preyde Boulevard.

Apple’s already “big-ass” North Carolina data center is about to get even bigger.

Based on an erosion permit filed with Catawba County on Wednesday, Apple is looking to build an additional structure onto the side of its existing already enormous complex. Made of precast concrete wall panels, along with steel columns, this add-on is set to add 14,246 square feet, and be around 25 ft tall.

Ever wonder how your iMac stays so silent, despite being equipped with three separate fans?

A new patent application, published Thursday, details the innovative computer fan used in present generation Macs and MacBooks.

The U.S. Postal Service will sell a collectable stamp of Steve Jobs in 2015, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post. The design of the stamp is still being developed, and the exact date of availability is not yet known.

The late Apple co-founder has become even more of a cultural icon since his passing,. His memory and legacy continues to be honored in everything from Smithsonian exhibits to the Grammys.

Other notable figures to appear on postage stamps next year include Johnny Carson, Ingrid Bergman, Elvis Presley, and James Brown.

Source: The Washington Post

Via: Engadget

Control Center was one of the top touted features added to iOS 7, but while the new swipe up gesture to toggle it is great, you might find yourself using multitask function more, so Bill Labus created a gorgeous iOS 8 concept that merges multitasking with control center to give you quicker access to your most used controls.

“Flicking up from the bottom of the edge allows the multitasking app views to be tied directly to the gesture, which allows for direct manipulation and avoids having to wait for a passive animation to complete before interacting with them.”

Developers can grab the Xcode project and take it for a spin or you can get your fill from the video teaser below:

The story of WhatsApp — the messaging app just purchased by Facebook for an insane $19 billion — is pretty fascinating.

Seems that the app’s founders did everything right by doing everything wrong. They flouted Silicon Valley rules like getting press and adding features, and instead focused on making the app do one thing well: send messages. It all sounds very Apple-like, and it’s been well covered in fascinating features from Forbes and Wired that are currently doing the rounds.

One detail in the Forbes piece flew out at me in particular — detailing how Apple accidentally created the core element of WhatsApp by adding a new iOS feature.

https://youtu.be/kCQUbkt68T0

Fleksy, the alternative keyboard for iOS and Android, has just been updated to allow any developer of iOS apps to easily implement its streamlined features for free. The software development kit (SDK) will allow any app that needs a keyboard effortlessly include Fleksy’s system without making any changes to the app itself.

“We’re very excited to finally make our SDK available to hundreds of thousands of developers around the world. We learned a lot from the private beta and today’s release brings the most beautiful, streamlined 3rd-party keyboard experience yet for iOS” said Ioannis Verdelis, COO of Fleksy.

When T-Mobile sent out an email to BlackBerry-using customers suggesting that they switch to an iPhone 5s, the response from the BB faithful was loud and angry.

Even BlackBerry CEO John Chen said that he was “outraged” by T-Mobile’s behavior.

As a make-good, the network operator has now said that it will offer any customer who wants to upgrade to a new device $250 for a BlackBerry phone — or $200 for any other smartphone, including the iPhone.

Everyone loves mini golf, but how do you make mini golf even better? By adding robots, of course. And by having it take place in outer space.

Helping Orbit the Robot and his ladyfriend Tess find their way home, Astro Golf players must participate in a variety of space-themed mini golf challenges — involving dodging black holes and avoiding a plethora of spaceship-related impediments.

During an Ubuntu Town Hall Hangout on Wednesday, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth made some interesting comments regarding Apple’s sapphire displays.

“Apple just snapped up three year’s worth of the supply of sapphire screens from the company that we had engaged to make the screens for the [Ubuntu] Edge [smartphone],” he said.

For those unfamiliar with it, the Ubuntu Edge was a proposed “high concept” smartphone announced by Canonical on 22 July 2013. Canonical was seeking to crowdfund a production run of 40,000 units through Indiegogo, but the project was scrapped when fundraising was able to only raise $12,809,906 out of the $32 million goal needed to kickstart the project.