News - page 1428

Would Carl Icahn’s memoirs be titled How To Lose Friends And Influence People?

Activist investor Icahn has been proving divisive in recent months by spearheading a campaign to get Apple to carry out a $150 billion stock buyback (which he later dropped to “just” $50 billion).

Well, it’s difficult to be as outspoken as Icahn without certain other investors speaking out about you — and that’s exactly what Anne Simpson, head of corporate governance at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, has done.

Here’s a funny idea with a high potential to go wrong: bake a batch of cookies in the shape of iPhones, drive around pretending to talk on them, and then when you inevitably get pulled over, take a bite, look the law enforcement official straight in the eye, and say, “Are cookies against the law, officer?”

This bold (although possibly ill-advised) plan was the recent brainchild of Los Angeles comedian Randy Liedtke. Thanks to Twitter, followers were able to see how the dicey scenario played out in more-or-less real time. Here’s what happened:

Instapaper, the first service of its kind for saving articles to read later, has gone free in the App Store for the first time ever. It has been discounted before, but this is the first time it has gone completely free.

Why? Apple has named it “App of the Week,” an honor bestowed upon popular apps—you guessed it—once a week. It normally costs $4.

Today Apple updated its Remote app with the ability to control iTunes Radio on a Mac or PC. Previously, you could only control music in an iTunes Library. A new “Radio” window has been added in the app like the official Music app.

Remote was just recently updated with a big iOS 7 redesign, and it’s available for free in the App Store.

Source: App Store

Everything Thing Is A Remix Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson just released a new case study for his popular series that tackles whether the iPhone is a truly original idea, or just a hodgepodge of copying and improvements like pretty much everything else.  The case study starts by contesting Steve Jobs’ claim that Apple invented Multi-Touch – when really the technology was being developed for years by many companies – before strolling through some of Apple’s other inspirations.

The video does give Apple credit for creating a device that the entire mobile industry copied, while also providing a great survey of the real world objects Apple used as inspiration in Apple’s UI designs  that helped make the iPhone and iOS so revolutionary. Ultimately the film turns to iOS 7 and the ideas Apple borrowed copied remixed from Windows Phone and Android.

Watch the video below and tell us in the comments whether you think the iPhone got a fair treatment:

If you’ve never given the classic Fallout games a try, now’s your chance. GoG.com is giving three of them away for free for 48 hours, as part of the classic games digital distributor’s Winter Sale for 2013.

You can get the Mac version of Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics for free until Friday, December 12, so get on it now.

There are tons of solutions to get iOS photos from your device to some sort of backup system, from Dropbox to iPhoto. Backing up your photos is imperative, especially on iOS, as the iCloud backup system doesn’t back up photos, and PhotoStream only keeps the last 1,000 photos on your phone synced to all your enabled devices.

Backing up to cloud services is extremely convenient, but what happens when you no longer want to pay for the storage, or would rather hang on to your digital memories on your own computer? Sure, you can connect to your Mac with a cable, but then you’ve got to do the hard work of figuring out which photos you’ve already backed up.

Sync Photos To Storage, a new app from developer Simplex Solutions, aims to make this process much, much easier.

We’ve seen a bunch of “OS X meets iOS” concepts for the Mac over the last few years, most of which have been pretty meh, but this recent submission to us is the first one I wouldn’t mind using if OS X 11 absolutely has to take all of its design cues from iOS 7.

Created by Andrew Ambrosino, the OS X 11 concept is dripping in translucent blurs with flatness and minimalism spread all over. I really like the transparent menu bar with the expandable menu, though I’m not a fan of forcing OS X app icons to be rounded squares just like in iOS.

Take a look at what the Mail app could look like if given the iOS 7 treatment:

Today Twitter updated its official Mac app (yes, it still has one) with a number of new features, including a tweet detail pane, profile header images, and image previews in the timeline.

Here’s the full list of changes:

The Room Two launched today on the iTunes App Store. As the sequel to Apple’s 2012 Game Of The Year (The Room), it has a lot to live up to.

Our reviewer called it a “must download” game, and we picked the original locked box puzzle game as an iOS Game of the Week.

The Room Two promises more of the same, and that’s not a bad thing. Developer Fireproof Games found the perfect mix of eye candy, just-tough-enough puzzle solving, and a haunting soundtrack in the first game, so any more of that is extremely welcome.

Black Friday produced a number of awesome deals for the iPhone 5c, but Walmart is looking to offer its biggest price cut yet on the 5c as part of its upcoming Christmas sale.

Starting Friday, December 12, the retailer plans to sell the iPhone 5c for $27 with a two year contract from AT&T or Verizon. Walmart is also going to offer the iPhone 5c for $127 with a two year contract.

Fleksy, the developer of an innovative third-party keyboard for the blind, launched its own integration software development kit (SDK) by partnering with four other app developers to include in their software.

The partners include Launch Center Pro, Wordbox, GV Connect and BlindSquare, and they’ll demonstrate the innovative approach to keyboarding for everyone.

Smart Decisions — Productivity — Free

I clearly have a lot on my mind — I can’t even decide which pants to wear. Luckily, Smart Decisions exists. It’s an app that breaks up your major (or minor) quandaries into their component parts and helps you reach conclusions simply and methodically. First you identify the problem, and then you list out the alternatives. After that, you figure out the most important factors to consider and rank them in order of importance. The app then has you compare two options at a time based on the factors you listed. After you’ve exhausted all combinations, it tells you what your best choice is.

Apparently, I want cereal more than pancakes. That was a surprise.

Smart Decisions

Making your own beer is hard work. It’s a series of intensive scientific processes, and a mistake at any one of them can ruin hours of work and possibly poison someone. But if you get it right, it’s a middle finger right to the face of Big Beer.

Is “Big Beer” a thing? I’ve lost track of which corporations are evil.

Fiz is an independent management game about independent brewing, and it tasks you with building up your own brand from the garage up. And that’s every bit as complicated as it sounds. More so, actually, because numbers are also involved.

Here’s a pretty nifty feature you probably didn’t know it about in iOS 7: it’s possible to take a picture using your iPhone’s camera while looking at the multitasking screen. Here’s how to try it out for yourself.

Clear, the wonderful to-list management tool for Mac and iOS from Realmac Software, is finally going to get Reminders next February. It’s one of the most requested features from Clear’s more than one million users, and it will make the app even more useful than it already is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGzY54bt1rE

In the words of Family Guy, are iPhone-controlled model planes “a thing” now?

It was only September when we reported on the PowerUp 3.0 iPhone-Controlled Paper Airplane — speculating that it may well be “the coolest toy ever“.

Well, what a difference a few months make, since our wannabe-pilot hearts have now gone out to another: in this case to the SmartPlane, a Bluetooth-controlled miniature plane which promises to stand out from the growing pack of iPhone-oriented RC copters and the like.

Although a graceful crystal ballet danced in the world of symbols, for those of us who aren’t particularly math minded, all those plus signs, minus signs, dividers and parentheses can get confusing when we’re trying to figure out a problem.

For us, iOS app Soulver is a godsend, allowing you to perform various mathematical captions and functions by just typing them out on real text. Today, the plain text math app has received a beefy update, not only updating its look for iOS 7 on iPad, but also making it universal.

Prepare to take a trip to a dimpled, plastic galaxy far, far away. Warner Bros. has just released LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga to the iOS App Store. And even better, they finally figured out something to do with the Phantom Menace!

Part of Steve Jobs’ genius was his ability to find just the right words to explain why whatever Apple product he was unveiling was so “insanely great” you had to rush out and buy it at that very moment.

Outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer never had that gift, but his final interview before stepping down contains a few really telling quotes about why things turned out the way they did — with Apple being the innovative market leader, and Microsoft being… well, Microsoft.

Hey guys! Do you like videos automatically playing when you scroll by them! No one does! That’s why Facebook’s just introduced the feature to its official iOS app.

The first time I played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was over ten years ago, and if you told me that one day, I would be able to play this massive 70+ hour open-ended carnage simulator, not on a bulky console, but a device thinner than a pack of cards I could fit into my pocket, I would have told you you were mad. Yet here we are, as Rockstar Games has released San Andreas to the iOS App Store.

How would you like that to be yours? No, not the MacBook. Or the iPhone. Or the sofa. Or… Okay, we’re talking about that chopping board-looking object with the holes drilled in it.

Everyone is so focused on the “will they, won’t they announce it?” Apple-China Mobile deal that it’s all too easy to forget about the success Apple is already enjoying in China.

According to technology market research firm, Counterpoint Research, Apple’s share in China’s burgeoning smartphone market leaped to 12 percent in October — with the iPhone now the country’s third biggest smartphone player.

Yesterday we reported on the tragic death of a 15-year-old worker at a Shanghai factory belonging to Pegatron — the Taiwanese manufacturing firm who produce the iPhone 5c and iPad mini.

At the time the story was written, Apple hadn’t responded to the reports — or to requests from the New York-based China Labor Watch asking the company to take a closer look at working conditions at its supplier.

Since then, Apple has given its answer: noting that it sent independent medical experts to conduct an investigation at the factory last month.

“While they found no evidence of any link to working conditions there, we realize that is of little comfort to the families who have lost their loved ones,” Apple said in a statement.