Photos+ is a new iPhone app from Justin Williams aka Second Gear software aka the developer of iOS text editor Elements. Photos+ is in the “one thing well” school of apps: it lets you look at the photos you have on your iPhone, and it does a better job that the built in app. In most ways at least.
MIDI Guitar for GarageBand is a Mac app (remember those?) that turns your guitar into a MIDI controller for, well, for any instrument you like. Thus you can thrash away on your axe like the heavy metal rock god you are, and have the sound emerging from the speakers be a plinking, ringing triangle.
After 22 years at the Wall Street Journal reviewing technology, columnist Walt Mossberg is moving on. In his final column, Mossberg picks the 12 devices that had the most impact over the years.
“I chose these 12 because each changed the course of digital history by influencing the products and services that followed, or by changing the way people lived and worked,” Mossberg writes.
One company completely dominates the list. Guess which one it is (and what devices he chose)?
Beyoncé rocked the internet last weekend when she released her self-titled album in the iTunes Store as a total surprise. In exchange for launch exclusivity, Apple gave her the red carpet treatment in iTunes and iTunes Radio. The move was a smart one, as Beyoncé is the fastest selling album in iTunes history, moving an insane 828,773 units within the first three days of availability.
Target, another big music retailer that prides itself on exclusive deals with artists, isn’t too happy about Beyoncé’s decision to go the iTunes route.
Apple has added the ability to gift iBooks through its iTunes Store. Until now, the iBookstore was the only section of iTunes that did not support gifting. Here’s how it works.
Yesterday the White House announced that President Obama would be meeting with a number of tech executives today about HealthCare.gov, the NSA, and how tech is converging the public and private sectors. Another topic of discussion ended up being Netflix’s popular House of Cards series, and apparently Obama is a fan.
While leaving the panel with the President and 14 other American executives, Tim Cook told a reporter that they had “a great meeting.”
Apple TV owners across the pond have received an early Christmas gift, a dedicated channel for Sky Sports through Now TV. Live sports can be viewed without an existing cable subscription, and Sky Sports is offering day passes that offer unlimited access to six sports channels. Pocket-lint explains:
Apple’s new tear-jerking Christmas commercial Misunderstood has quickly been lauded as one of the company’s best iPhone commercials in years. The syrupy-sweet ad pays homage to the holiday season with a medley of cliché family Christmas scenes while a sullen teenage boy sits in the background nose deep into his iPhone, only to find that the sad teen was really filming a beautiful family movie the entire time.
The ad is heartwarming, maybe even horrible, but also completely unrealistic as the teen shot vertical videos that magically switched to portrait orientation.
Business Insider and others have already pointed out the huge flaw in Apple’s commercial, but Youtuber Andy Nyugen has taken it a step further by making a parody of what Apple’s commercial would look like if it were real-life.
Take a look:
Today the Dropbox-owned Mailbox app was updated with support for iCloud and Yahoo mail accounts. The popular email client for the iPhone was previously only compabile with Gmail, and it stills lacks support for a number of other services, namely Exchange. Mailbox tells us that Exchange “is a huge priority” for the app’s development.
The update also includes background syncing in iOS 7, the options to disable the “help me get to zero” banner and swipe to open drawer gesture, and bug fixes.
Mailbox is a completely redesigned inbox that makes email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash. Scan an entire conversation at once with chat-like organization. Snooze emails until later with the tap of a button — they’ll return to your inbox automatically so you can focus on what’s important now.
You can download Mailbox in the App Store for free.
Source: App Store
The iPhone has already been named Yahoo’s top ranked search in tech for the year, and now Google has released its top 10 searches for 2013. It’s no surprise that the iPhone was part of the list, coming in at third under Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker. The poor Samsung Galaxy S4 snagged the number 8 spot.
Here’s the full list of Google’s “global trending searches” for the year:
Google Glass isn’t expected to hit the market until sometime next year , but if you just can’t wait another minute to feel the tingle of the futuristic spectacles on your face you can at least set a placeholder in your heart and on your iPhone with the companion app that just hit iTunes.
MyGlass, the official Google Glass companion app for iPhone, was just released on the App Store today for free. The app delivers better compatibility between iOS and Glass by letting users configure and manage Glass devices from the app.
Unless you already won a pair of Google Glass there’s not much to see, but the app does finally give iOS users the ability to screencast what you see on Glass to your iPhone – something Android users have enjoyed for a while now – as well as option to add Glassware and contacts.
Here are the release notes:
As part of the ongoing legal saga with Apple, Samsung’s lawyers have filed a request with Judge Lucy Koh requesting a retrial of November’s case, which Samsung says Apple only won because it totally race baited the jury to get sympathy.
Two juries have already slammed Samsung with astronomical fines during its patent trials with Apple in the U.S., but the South Korean handset maker says it’s not ready to stop the fight yet and is asking for Judge Koh to award them with a judgment as matter of law in its favor, or a massive adjustment of the damages Apple was rewarded.
Here’s Samsungs’ explanation why the court should let them off the hook for the $379 million in fees Apple was just awarded :
Square Enix announced Tuesday the release of the very first Tomb Raider, the initial game in a long-running franchise that has spawned sequels across console platforms, PC, the Mac, and even a couple of movies.
The release today to the iPhone and iPad is a direct port of the original game, complete with charming old school graphics and gameplay. And buttons. Lots of crappy virtual onscreen buttons.
Even though there are a ton of games out there that have refined this type of gameplay that you can get for a similar price, you’ll surely get to see where this popular genre got its start.
If someone came up to you on the street and told you that you could make ten dollars for nothing, as long as you gave him forty dollars to get started, you’d rightfully view him as a shifty grifter, yet when a retailer comes along, offering $50 iTunes cards for $10 off, we all shout ‘free money!’ and fork over our cash.
Society’s double standards are a strange thing, but regardless, discounts on iTunes Gift Cards are always a hot deal, and right now, there’s a particularly good deal on $50 gift cards going on at Office Max. For just $40, you can buy yourself credit for $50 worth of apps, movies, games, TV shows or music to purchase from iTunes, and that includes free shipping.
There’s a limit of three per customer, and these deals usually don’t last, so get in on the action now. It’s the perfect stocking stuffer.
Source: OfficeMax
On iOS as on the Mac, there’s only two browsers that most people take seriously: Safari and Chrome. But another browser you should consider is Coast, an iOS browser made by Opera that turns the worldwide web into a sea of apps.
It’s a great browser, one of the few that re-imagines surfing as if it were designed from the ground-up to happen on the iPad, with a primarily gesture driven interface and chrome that stays out of the way until you need it. And now, Coast is getting better, thanks to a beefy 2.0 update.
It might still be a tiny player in the smartphone market, but Microsoft is keen to build on recent successes by releasing a next-gen mobile OS, featuring a Siri-like voice assistant feature.
Windows Phone 8.1 will reportedly launch next April at the company’s Build conference — according to “sources familar with Microsoft’s plans”.
After Apple released the iPhone 5s with the A7, the world’s first 64-bit chip, ARM competitor Qualcomm made quite the fool of themselves about it. First, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called a 64-bit ARM chip a “gimmick.” Then they ate their words, soft fired Chandrasekher, and announced their own 64-bit chip to ship in 2014.
If that seems like a disorganized, chaotic response, you’re right. But there’s a reason for that. According to a new report, Apple’s unveiling of the 64-bit A7 chip took the entire semiconductor industry with their pants down… and everyone’s now scrambling to catch up.
Nineteen months after reaching its $500,000 target on Kickstarter, a new crowdfunded game developed by a former Metal Gear Solid and Halo developer is set for release on iOS this Thursday.
When the iPhone 5c first came out, people were expecting Apple to finally release a mid-range iPhone. Instead, what they got was last year’s iPhone at a $100 discount in a colorful new plastic shell.
Perhaps because of these expectations, the iPhone 5c is seen as something of a middling success by Apple: a new ‘budget’ iPhone was supposed to open Apple’s handset up to more customers than ever, yet the iPhone 5s is still outselling the iPhone 5c two to one.
But the iPhone 5c is far from a failure. And if you don’t get the iPhone 5c’s appeal, you’re probably a dude.
Certain parties were practically salivating at the prospect of an iPad Pro the moment its seemingly-natural companion piece the iPad Air was announced earlier this year.
Well, according to rumors Apple may have a 4k “iPad Pro” for launch in October 2014 — joining reports of a next-gen iPad with a 2K display due earlier in the year.
Looking for a $330 camera bag that looks like and old thrift-store leather satchel? Then look no further: The Brooklyn ONA Camera Bag is just such an enigma, a beautiful bag that can carry your gear in a safely padded interior. Or you could opt for my excellent alternative…
There’s much to love about the CEO Folio and its accompanying web page. It’s the modern-day equivalent of a Filofax, and I guess even the “CEO” part of the name is a kind of upgrade to the mountain of “executive” faux-pleather crap that fills the pages of the Sky Mall catalog.
Anyhow, let’s ridicule it:
Okay, so December’s generally a fairly quiet news month, but that does mean that we get to look back and remember the year which preceded it.
Well, it seems Apple is getting similarly misty-eyed about the year that was 2013 (either that, or they want to gloat about the phenomenal success of the App Store this year) since the company has just released its annual “Best Of” list — revealing the top iPhone and iPad apps according to the numbers.
Why do you confuse us like this, Apple?
Renaming the 12 Days of Christmas app “12 Days of Gifts” one moment (just to underline that this is, after all, the holiday of shopping), and then producing what is genuinely one of this winter’s most heartfelt and touching Christmas ads the next — Apple has now further befuddled (and angered) a large group of people by banishing the giant Christmas tree in shopping area De Passage of Netherlands city The Hague.
We talk about people who take their jobs home with them, some folks take this way too seriously. Our own Killian Bell, for instance, gave his poor disappointed daughter a Kindle Fire instead of an iPad last Christmas.
This year, Santa tells me that she has begged him for a phone with Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich, and he’s going to give her this: an iPhone 5 with an ice-cream sandwich case. What a dad!
