Bike2Power has just added an iPhone 5s version to their line of ruggedized, weather-sealed BikeConsole Smart Mounts for bicycles. The lineup already has a version for the 5 and 5c, but the new 5s model allows access to the Touch ID fingerprint sensor.
Microsoft loves to make ads for the Surface that pit it against the iPad. Two new ads for the Surface 2 are perfect examples of how Microsoft can’t effectively market the Surface on its own merits, but must instead compare it to things the iPad can’t do. It’s an incredibly predictable, miserable marketing tactic that Microsoft just can’t seem to let go.
In its two latest ads, Microsoft tries to convince us that the Surface 2 is better because it supports hand gestures and multiple user accounts.
The latest Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher that everyone loves to hate is now available in the iTunes Store. You can purchase the movie for $20 in HD or $15 in SD, or rent it for $5 in HD or $3 in SD.
The digital release is accompanying the Blu-ray for $18 and DVD for $23 with deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes commentary. So the digital HD movie costs more than the Blue-ray and less than the regular DVD, which doesn’t make sense at all.
Jobs originally received pretty polarizing reviews, but the public ended up receiving the film pretty poorly—it tanked at the box office. It currently has a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Source: iTunes Store
Apple has tweaked the App Store’s search engine to help users find the right apps even when they’re misspelled, according to a TechCrunch report. This means that developers with apps that either have tricky spellings or spacings should see a boost in traffic. Previously, misspelled searches were hardly ever leading to users discovering the right apps.
As the holidays draw near, supplies of the iPhone 5s are finally starting to meet demand. When the smartphone first launched in September, it was nearly impossible to find any model in Apple stores and third-party retailers. As the weeks progressed, more and more models starting becoming available, while gold remained the most allusive.
Apple stores in the U.S. now have 90% of iPhone 5s models in stock, according to research from Piper Jaffray analyst and iTV rumormonger Gene Munster.
Time Planner — Productivity — Free
When you need to track stuff you need to do, it’s essential to have an app that can handle tasks and to-do items as well as a robust calendaring system. Time Planner does just that, and does it very well. It also adds a colorful palette, a nicely organized way of creating tasks and reminders, and a list of categories that really helps you focus in on what each task is about.
Choose to add a task to Home, Work, Rest, Lifestyle, and other categories to color the tasks with a visual cue. When you start looking at your schedule for the day, you’ll have a colorful reminder of the things you’ll need to focus on, perhaps noticing that you spend too much time at work, and not enough on restful activities.
You can have Time Planner remind you of stuff you need to do by day, time, or location, which is pretty much what all to-do apps should have these days.
Apple clearly has designs for Siri that go far beyond the intelligent assistant's current implementation. Siri forms a key component of CarPlay right now, but it could certainly go further. Apple also has a number of interesting concepts, such as a patent designed to let you ask "Siri, where's my car?" when you're lost in a parking lot — at which point, your dedicated AI helper will guide you back to your car. Helpful, no?
Today Honda announced that it is offering Siri Eyes Free integration with certain 2013-2014 Honda Accord and 2013 Acura vehicles. Honda said that it would be implementing Eyes Free as a dealer installed accessory back in January, and now customers can visit a dealership and have the technology installed.
Activision announced its new app, released Tuesday to the App Store: Skylanders Collection Vault. With it, collectors of the video game/collectible toy game series can track and manage their collection on the go, or at least on the couch with their iPad in hand.
If you download the app, you’ll be able to share and compare your collection with family and friends for free, and even sign up for a holiday wish list sweepstakes. Even more essentially, you’ll be able to read up on each of the Skylander characters, along with their powers and backstory, browsing your own wish list, images, videos, and unlocking special content.
Rockstar Games announced this morning that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will be making its way to iOS device next month after originally being released for the PS2 back in 2004.
Not only is Rockstar porting the game to iOS, but the company says it’s also adding support for Made for iOS controllers on iOS 7, along with the addition of brand new touch controls and contextual control options that only display as you need them.
America’s favorite shopping day is almost here and what better way to prepare your customers for the slaughters of Black Friday than a juicy new app update? Target has released a free update for its iPhone app that finally brings an iOS 7-friendly UI to the retailer’s app.
Included among the new features is an improved Shopping List that allows users to build lists faster with typeahead results and shows which items on your list are on sale. The new What’s In Store feature shows shoppers which products are trending along with popular Cartwheel offers and recipes. Target has also improved its Find feature with more accurate maps, but unless you live in one of the beta areas you’ll have to wait before your local store map is available.
Here are the full release notes:
Few companies are better at keeping their games updated than Rovio, who’ve released more updates for its Angry Birds games than one can count. Add another grain of sand to the beaches of infinity, then, because the bird-vs.-pig physics strategy game has just gotten a new update, adding 30 levels to the core game as well as giving the bomb bird a new electric power.
One of our favorite toys here at Cult of Mac is the the Lytro, a bizarre and radically cool digital camera that allows you to refocus your images after you snap them. The Lytro is fairly big — it’s about the size of a small flashlight — and the pictures it outputs are pathetically low-resolution by modern smartphone standards, but the promise is obvious: with the Lytro, you might never take a bad photo again.
The Lytro’s so incredible that before he died Steve Jobs reportedly wanted to put its light field technology into the iPhone. Today, Apple has patented a method of doing just that.
The Rumor: Angela Ahrendts is only three weeks into her reign at Apple but rumors claim she's already outlined a plan that will completely revamp the end-to-end Apple Store experience.
The Verdict: The shift from computers to wearables is the perfect time for the ex-Burberry CEO to shake things up at Apple's glass and aluminum shrines, I just hope she gets rid of the annoying musical chairs-style support at the Genius Bar while she's at it.
Who sells the most iPhones of them all? It’s not a carrier or a third party: it’s Apple itself. In fact, the Cupertino company sells 25% of all American iPhone sales, combined. Even more staggering, though, is that Apple sells one in ten smartphones, too.
Back in 2010, Apple was seemingly randomly sued by an eccentric 70-year-old crank who claimed to have “come up with the idea” of the smartphone. That lawsuit has now come to trial, and the crank has lost, but what’s confusing is how torn the jury seems to have been by the decision, even going so far as to call the alleged smartphone creator a “little guy” crushed by big business.
Nuance Communications — best known as the software makers of Siri — saw a slump in profits below its forecast 2014 projections, thanks to a shift to a subscription-based business model.
The move, which brings in less money upfront and instead is spread over a longer period, ensures more predictable recurring revenue — but also means a short-term hit in profit margins.
Hong Kong-based Biel Crystal Manufactory Ltd — a company that makes iPhone screens for Apple — is violating workers’ rights at its Chinese factories, according to a rights group.
The Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior alleges that Biel Crystal demands that employees work 11-hour shifts, 7 days per week, with just one day off every month.
Procreate is pretty much my favorite drawing and painting app for the iPad, and v2.0 blows the metaphorical, Cockney-accented doors off the previous version. Yes, it’s now iOS 7-ready, but it’s also now an absurdly powerful images editor, with a whole new interface design to boot.
Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost formed Studio Neat after a successful Kickstarter campaign funded a simplistic iPhone tripod mount that conveniently doubled as a stand. That was back when the iPhone 4 was Apple’s latest. The smartphone landscape has changed quite a bit since then, and now the Glif has too.
Rival tech companies have no problem promoting their products by ridiculing Apple’s, as evidenced by Microsoft’s recent anti-iPhone ads it had to end up pulling off the internet out of embarrassment.
In a new commercial for Nokia’s 2520 tablet running Windows RT, we are privileged to hear the inner dialogue of a man with an indistinguishable accent in a coffee shop wrestle over whether he truly loves his iPad. He finds it impossible to meaningfully connect with members of the opposite sex because of his iPad’s shortcomings, and we are supposed to sympathize with his inner torment. Then he sees the light of day when a girl whips out the Lumia 2520 with a physical keyboard. Microsoft Office! It all makes sense!
The man asks “Did I buy the wrong tablet?” at the end of the ad. No, but if you want a physical keyboard for the iPad, they are pretty easy to come by these days.
Apple’s Industrial Design studio is one of the most secretive corporate locations in the world, where even some of the company’s own high ranking execs can’t get in unless Jony Ive wants them to. So with the ID group barred tighter than a nuclear lockdown, how does one go about getting secrets about the design processes at Apple for a book?
Bloomberg TV’s Emily Chang sat down with Leander on her show this afternoon to talk about some of the secrets he discovered about Jony Ive and the design team at Apple for his new book. Not only did The Gov dive into how hard it is to cover Apple, but he also dished on rumors he’s heard about Ive butting heads with top execs who have left Apple – and not just The Felt King, aka Scott Forstall – as well as how Tim Cook has become the ultimate peace keeper at Apple in contrast to Jobs diabolical ways of pitting execs against each other.
You can hear all the secrets in the video below:
Apple has yet to announce a successor to its three-year-old Thunderbolt Display, despite the fact that the company is releasing a new Mac Pro by the end of the year with the ability to power up to three 4K displays at once.
A Redditor did some digging and found that a display supplier overseas with ties to Apple is currently making 4K desktop-sized panels that are designed for Thunderbolt and could very easily be put in future Apple monitors.
Infinity Blade came out nearly three years ago, but even though its been one of the most successful iOS games ever thanks to its impressive graphics and rich gameplay, Chair has only made the game available for free once, but for a limited time the company is giving away the game on the App Store starting today.
Thanksgiving is almost here, which means its time for the sacred American tradition of Black Friday sales madness. Apple hates to hand out big discounts on its premium products, but even Cupertino can’t resist offering a few Black Friday sales, and its already starting to promote this years deal with a new promo page.
Apple has posted a teaser image on its Australian site for its upcoming sale on Friday, November 29th that promises free shipping to anyone who buys something from Apple.com on Friday.
Black Friday started as a major shopping day in the U.S. the day after Thanksgiving, but more international retailers have started to embrace the sales day as well. We’re still waiting to see what kind of modest deals Apple will offer, but if last year is any indication, don’t expect to be blown away. Here are the price cuts Apple had last year:
In 1983, Electronic Arts released M.U.L.E., a seminal title in the history of gaming that not only was one of the first real-time strategy titles, but also one of the first multiplayer games. It’s a game that has been widely hailed for decades by gaming enthusiasts, but has never seen an official update… until now, as M.U.L.E. Returns has hit the iOS App Store.
When it comes to screens, 3-D=lame: our own brains are more than capable of turning 2-D cues into full 3-D scenes without any weird glasses or other trickery. But 3-D scans are totally useful for all kinds of fun and frolics, as well as real, serious applications. And now you can turn your iPad into a 3-D scanner with the Structure Sensor.