Unless you got incredibly drunk last night and you don’t know what day it is, you’re probably already aware of the fact that the iPad Air launches today. And if you don’t want to venture out and wait in line to get one, you can order yours now from the Apple online store.
If you picked up a new iPhone 5s this year, you’d better take good care of its home button, because you can no longer pick up a cheap replacement on eBay and fit it yourself. The repair experts at mendmyi have discovered that Apple pairs every Touch ID sensor with an A7 chip, and if you install a home button that doesn’t match up, Touch ID simply won’t work.
Forget for a moment all the talk about Apple’s recent quarter financials disappointing Wall Street analysts — and instead focus on two “nuggets” from Apple’s recently released 88-page Form 10-K, as picked up by ISI’s Brian Marshall.
In a note to clients sent Thursday, Marshall notes that not only is Apple’s $11 billion in projected capital expenditures for fiscal 2014 a double-digit increase for a company already “the single largest CapEx spender” in his “Big 7 Hyperscale group”, but also that Apple generates “off-the-charts” revenue-per-head metric compared to the other IT and networking companies he covers — which includes Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Facebook (FB) and Yahoo (YHOO).
Apple had added its name to an open letter from the tech industry — also signed by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo! — demanding “oversight and accountability” of NSA surveillance.
The letter, sent Thursday, was addressed to the sponsors of the USA Freedom Act, a legislation designed to end bulk data collection by the National Security Agency. It claims that the tech industry (including Apple) welcome debate about the best way to further national security, while also protecting individual user privacy interests.
For the first time in the country’s history, Turkey has an Apple online store. Apple’s full lineup of newest products is available except for the iPad Air and Retina mini—both should be available as the international rollout continues in the coming months.
Apple is expected to open its first retail store in Istanbul, Turkey next year. Apple executives recently flew to Turkey to discuss the country’s multi-billion dollar tablet initiative for schools.
Thanks: Sihirli
Keeping tabs on your brood this Halloween? Sure, you could use Apple’s Find My Friends. But it doesn’t have as many cool features as these two new apps, and it also can’t track Android phones — while these two apps can.
Apple was bested by Samsung in the results of J.D. Power’s latest tablet customer satisfaction survey, marking the first time that Apple hasn’t come out ontop in the rankings in over two years.
Samsung was the only tablet manufacturer to improve its score since the last survey was released in April by jumping from a 822 to a score of 835, even though it finished third behind Apple and Amazon in the last survey. Apple ranked second in the latest survey with a score of 833 with strong scores in both performance and ease of use.
It’s almost a given that the iPhone 6 will feature a new, more-advanced camera — although there's been far less of a consensus on what form that camera is likely to take. Some things are known for sure: Apple recently snapped up Nokia’s PureView camera engineer Ari Partinen, although his impact is more likely to be felt on the iPhone 6s or iPhone 7.
Apple also recently received an electronic image-stabilization system instead of an optical one, essentially faking the stabilization technique using software instead of moving parts.
It’s likely that the iPhone 6 camera will have pixels that are 1.75 um instead of the iPhone 5s’ 1.5 um, too.
In what little advertising attention the iPhone 5s has received from Apple, the device’s new gold color option has been the main focal point. There are both TV and print ads in circulation that tout the gold, and the gold 5s is still the hardest to buy.
While Apple capitalizes on gold fever, the company has required that third-party developers not use the color in any of their marketing materials.
So Apple won’t let you pre-order the iPad Air and the very thought of waiting in front of an Apple Store for eight hours send spasms of dread from your eye sockets all the way down to nether regions you don’t even want to think about. Standing in a line, any line, for hours, sucks.
Yes, it’s a huge time investment, and no one really wants to sit outside an Apple Store for a couple of hours before the break of dawn, but we’re here to help you come prepared and make the most of your iPad Air launch line waiting experience. In fact, this could even be a lot of fun. Just follow this guide and you’ll be in and out of the store and cradling your skinny new iPad Air.
iPad Day is less that 12 hours away if you live on the East Coast – or already here if you live in Japan. Either way, Apple fans across the globe are already lining up in front of the nearest Apple Store, waiting anxiously to fork over their cash for the new iPad Air.
We don’t expect to see quite as long lines as at the iPhone 5s and 5c launch last month, but early indications show that Apple’s new lightweight tablet will be in high demand over the weekend. One reader in Hong Kong told us their reservation system filled up in 15 minutes.
If you’re planning to brave the night in front of the Apple Store, tweet us a pic @CultofMac. If not, check out all these people crazy enough waiting for their iPad Airs.
Who doesn’t love bugs? Kids of all ages love them, of course, and in new educational app, Grandma Loves Bugs, they’ll get a chance to explore the wonderful world of the many legged creatures with ten super fun mini games and eight instructional bug videos for young kids.
The mini games include Spot the Difference, Magic Coloring, Letter Match, bug Spelling, Counting Fireflies, and more. The live action nature videos are fully narrated and teach kids all about the wonderful world of bugs, too. The artwork and pedagogy are spot-on, as well, so parents can feel comfortable releasing their tiny bundles of joy onto their iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.
Check out this adorable video to see what we mean:
Boo Halloween — Entertainment — Free
Alright, so today’s app isn’t the most practical one you’ve ever seen. It’s not even the most clever. But it’s fun and easy to use, and it’s Halloween, damn it. Boo Halloween is a quickie photo app that lets you put a variety of spooky faces on pictures of you and your friends using reasonably accurate facial recognition. It comes with six masks — four of which are pumpkins — and you can buy nine more for a dollar if you think your buddy would look better as Batman, a zombie, or Billy, the puppet from Saw. Not much to it, but it’s silly, and it made me chuckle.
While malware isn’t as widespread or as common on Macs as it is on PCs, you’re kidding yourself if you still believe OS X is immune to it. It’s a very real threat, and if you’re not careful about what you download and install, you could end up with a serious problem. But there are ways in which you can avoid it.
There are anti-malware programs that will detect threats, of course, and OS X now has some nifty tools built-in that prevent software from running on your machine if it’s not from a trusted source. And if you’re a Google Chrome user, you’ll soon find that malicious downloads are blocked automatically.
Unofficial iDevice chargers have taken the form of everything from the hand crank to to the camp stove, and now it seems that Apple is getting in on the act too by taking out a patent for portable solar panel chargers. The patent application — filed with the US Patents & Trademark Office — details a power management system incorporating a solar panel accessory, compatible with both Macs and iDevices, and potentially attached by way of a USB connection. By turning solar energy into electricity, this could then be used to charge future iPhones or MacBooks without the need for a mains power charger.
What are the most popular colors of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c? According to new data, it’s the space gray iPhone 5s and blue iPhone 5c. But availability may have more to do with that than anything else, at least for the iPhone 5s.
If you love Epic’s trilogy-concluding game of immortal swordsmanship, Infinity Blade III, things are getting better. As is their wont, Epic has opted to release a massive 1.1 Infinity Blade III update that adds a huge number of improvements, as well as new content including a new location and an enemy, the fearful Deathless Bloodmage.
The iPad Air is the first 9.7-inch Retina iPad to ship without an A-X series chip. Put more simply, it’s the first such iPad to forego bolting more graphic cores onto the core chip to drive the massive 2048 x 1536 display.
But if you think that means the iPad Air will have weaker graphic performance than the fourth-gen iPad, you don’t know Apple very well. In fact, graphic performance is as much as 70% better than the last 9.7-inch iPad.
When is the iPad mini with Retina Display coming out? Apple would only commit to November, but Cupertino’s third-party retail partners might have more information. In fact, they seem to think that the Retina mini will debut on November 21st.
Cloud computing giant Marc Benioff has praised hailed Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s new head of retail and online sales, as the “future Apple CEO.” Referring to her in a Tuesday tweet as “the most important hire Tim Cook has ever made”, Benioff’s toasting of Ahrendts has left analysts asking whether it is simply a show of support for Burberry’s outgoing CEO — or evidence that Benioff knows more than he is letting on, following disappointing fourth quarter numbers for Apple.
It’s a natural instinct to assume that a book written in the wake of a famous (and famously litigious) person’s death might well be a cash-in — particularly when the author of said book is an ex-lover, with an all-too-apparent axe to grind. That was my first instinct when approaching The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs, whose author, Chrisann Brennan, will be well-known to Apple followers as the first girlfriend of Jobs — and the mother of his daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, who the Apple co-founder denied paternity of for many years. The suggestion that this is a money grab is seemingly backed up when Brennan starts the book by claiming that she not only never considered studying history, but had little interest in writing a book either: both seeming prerequisites for a person writing what essentially amounts to a modern history book. Misgivings deepen yet further when Brennan locates the book’s origins as following on from a 2006 spate of ill-health which left her financially destitute and “virtually homeless.”
The people behind Vybe are calling it a “smart bracelet,” because it’s missing a key element included in all smartwatches: the screen. Instead of relaying information through a display, Vybe vibrates, nagging you to look at your phone.
A device that repeatedly requires halting your current activity seems to defeat its own purpose — namely, untethering you from your phone. It’s also strange that Vybe’s promotional clip suggests you pick up your phone while driving, which is illegal in many states — including California, where WearVybe, the bracelet’s maker, is based.
Just over a week after 2K announced there would be a sequel to their turn-based strategy dogfighting game Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol, we now have details about pricing and release date, along with a wee screen shot to whet our appetites.
Today Apple acknowledged that a small number of its newest 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros have an issue that is resulting in the laptop’s trackpad and/or keyboard becoming unresponsive. Any machines that could be potentially affected by the glitch would have had to been purchased since Apple announced the new 13-inch model at its Oct 22nd iPad event.
“Apple is aware of rare circumstances where the built-in keyboard and Multi-Touch trackpad may become unresponsive on 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (Late 2013) computers and is working on an update to resolve this behavior,” said the company. An Apple support forum thread with over 48,000 views is full of users who have been experiencing trackpad and keyboard glitches.
Until the update is available, Apple suggests closing the MacBook’s display for one minute to let it reset.
Source: Apple
Via: CNET
Auctions for rare Apple equipment have attracted a lot of attention the past few years, with prices for the Apple 1 going as high as an astounding $671,000! Another Apple 1 is going up for auction in Germany next month on November 16, but in addition a very different rare Apple item will be on the same auction block. One of only two known working Twiggy Macs in the world is going up for sale.
Twiggy Macs were prototype versions of the original Macintosh and used a proprietary 5.25-inch floppy disk drive, instead of the 3.5-inch disk which ultimately shipped with the system in 1984. All Twiggy prototypes were ordered destroyed by Steve Jobs – and long thought lost – but the last couple of years have seen an eventful rediscovery of this piece of Macintosh history. Now one can be yours – if the price is right.
Maps© — Social Networking — Free
If you want to use Google’s Street View function without having to go into Apple’s occasionally dodgy Maps, you might want to check out Maps©. In addition to letting you look at people’s lawns like you’re there, you can also drop pins between two points to calculate distance (this gets less accurate the farther apart your points are), check traffic, and get directions. And if you want to see where your friends live (which is creepy, but I’m sure you might have innocent reasons), you can import their addresses from your contacts and drop pins there.
It does a bit of everything, really.