News - page 1456

Let’s make a little wager. I’ll put a $1 on the fact that most people who buy the tiny new Panasonic Lumix GM1 will never change its lens, instead opting to use it as a rather cool little compact. Not that this is a bad thing entirely – having a Micro Four Thirds sensor in a body smaller than that to the sensorially-challenged Pentax Q10 is great. But it’d be a shame not to stick Panasonic’s near-legendary 17mm ƒ1.7 lens on this baby and drop it in your pocket.

If there’s one thing we all need more of, it’s Angry Birds, am I right? No?

Well, either way, it doesn’t matter: you’re getting more of them. Rovio just announced the pending release of Angry Birds: Go!, a kart racing iOS game set to go live on the App Store December 11, 2013, which is–not too coincidentally–the Finnish studio’s fourth birthday birdday.

Love Dropbox, but hate the mobile app on your iPhone? Join the club; while having access to my Dropbox folder on all of my iOS devices is a fantastic productivity booster, the user experience of the default app is pretty bare bones.

What’s a Dropbox loving tech writer to do, then, to enjoy his Dropbox experience even more? Boxie thinks it has the answer, with a brand new Dropbox client app. Boxie connects to Dropbox, lets you access and use all the files in there, and promises to be much prettier and intuitive than the official app.

Sounds good, right?

I don’t know about you, but I love Control Center in iOS 7. I don’t know how I managed without it before (or why it took Apple so long to introduce it). And I’d love to see a similar feature brought to the Mac that would allow me to control my music, adjust the brightness of my display, and toggle things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait for Apple to create it, because it’s already here, thanks to Controls+ for Mac.

Not all iOS games are business ventures; some strive to bring awareness, educate, or do some good by supporting charitable causes.

Here are five of the nicest iOS games ever created.

TweetDeck for Mac, the free Twitter client from Twitter that’s not the official Twitter client, has been updated to make it easier for users to tweet, send DMs, and preview images before you share them. Composing, publishing, and replying to tweets is now faster than ever before.

In case you’re not from around here, you should know that I’m a huge fan of Scottish game developer Lucky Frame, what with their weird, wonderful visual and musical sensibilities that result in games like Pugs Luv Beats and Gentlemen!, a Victorian-themed Joust-like game.

They’ve just announced that one of their most award-winning games, Bad Hotel, is coming to the Mac and I, for one, couldn’t be more excited.

Dan Whisenhunt was visibly moved when speaking of his former employer Steve Jobs in front of the Cupertino City Council.

“A little more than two years ago, Steve shared his excitement about this project,” said Whisenhunt, Apple’s director of real estate and facilities, his voice breaking slightly. “It’s a campus to inspire innovation and collaboration between some of the finest engineers in the world.”

Just 10 days after the anniversary of the co-founder’s death, the giant “spaceship” campus is closer to landing in the city of Cupertino, which has a population of just over 60,000.

Whisenhunt’s speech enlivened a meeting that dragged on over four-and-a-half-hours–much longer than usual, Mayor Orrin Mahoney said–where locals fretted over the minutia of every intersection that might tangle the already clogged Silicon Valley commute. In the end, the council unanimously voted to OK the project. It still has one more hurdle to clear before Apple can break ground.

Path — the mobile only social network that I don’t understand, no one at Cult of Mac uses, and which recently started selling stickers to support itself — has laid off 13 staff members, or 20% of its total staff, in what CEO Dave Morin is calling a “realignment of the company.”

More than six months before Apple unveiled the new Mac Pro, we correctly predicted that it would be made exclusively in the USA. Now, as the Mac Pro gears up to start shipping in the coming month, a Texas newspaper is reporting that up to 1,700 workers are being hired near Austin to push the Mac Pro out the door.

Only three weeks have passed since the iPhone 5s and 5c became available for sale, but already, total webshare traffic of the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s are up 4% to 40.6 percent.

The iPhone accounts for most of Apple’s business, but can the success of the iPhone accurately predict Apple’s stocks? No, but the iPad might be able to.

Remember those swivel-screen ultrabooks? The MacBook Air knockoffs with a screen and keyboard that could be twisted and refolded to make the device into either a slimline notebook or a really fat iPad copy? Well, now you can do the same thing to your actual iPad with the iHome Type Pro Bluetooth Keyboard Case.

Apple has told iPhone suppliers in China to cut iPhone 5c orders for the fourth quarter following lower than expected demand for the device, The Wall Street Journal reports. Foxconn has been asked to cut orders by one-third, while Pegatron will reduce its shipments by 20%, sources claim.

Dictionaries, dusty tomes full of words. Books that are pointless now we can just tap a word and define it in-place. Who’d buy a dictionary app in 2013? Me. And you, probably, once you’ve seen what Terminology 3 has to offer.

Yes, it’s another iPhone 5 dock. And yes, it’s on Kickstarter. But just take a look at the Spool Dock and tell me you don’t want the hell out of it. Go on, I dare ya.

You know how Flickr is cool and all but whenever you just want to see the info about a photo, you have to search all over the page and click a bunch of buttons and they all take forever to load and OH GOD WHY ME? Well, you can say goodbye to that crap forever, with Flickr’s sweet new “Photo Experience.”

Olloclip’s new 4-in–1 lens “system” really is a system, all in one tiny, dense block of aluminum and glass. Like the other Olloclips, this one slides onto your iPhone’s top corner to add a lens between the world and your camera sensor. Unlike the other Olloclips, this one has four different lenses buried in the same unit.

The end of the crop-frame camera is nigh, for anything except special markets at least. Sony’s new A7 and A7r are camera with full-frame sensors. That’s right: full-frame SLRs, only without the “R”. (But with an extra, different “R” in the A7R… Perhaps the R stands for “recycle”?).

Square has unveiled a new product called Square Cash that lets you send anyone money from your bank account through email. You compose a new email to the person you want to pay, cc [email protected], put the amount in the subject, and send. No hidden fees or strings attached.

PhoneSuit’s Elite battery case crushed the field during a week-long test of battery cases for the iPhone 4 two years ago, thanks to its unmatched sleekness and, at the time, relatively large battery.

The company has finally released an iPhone 5/s version of the case, with a revised form factor but the same 2100 mAh capacity.

While other cases may have caught up in the power-per-millimeters of thickness ratio, the Elite still has a trick up its sleeve: Unlike, say, Mophie’s cases, the Elite doesn’t require the use of a headphone adapter.

Another reason to believe that the release of OS X Mavericks is just around the corner: Apple has started asking third-party developers to submit apps optimized for the new OS in the Mac App Store.

Apple wants devs to make sure their apps take advantage of the “great new features in OS X Mavericks when the world’s most advanced desktop operating system becomes available to millions of customers later this fall.” Such features include Timer Coalescing and App Nap.

The October 22nd media event is when Apple will likely announce the release date of Mavericks. Major updates to OS X are typically released a day after an Apple earnings call, and there just so happens to be one on October 28th.

Source: Apple

Today OtterBox unveiled its new Preserver series of cases for the iPhone 5, 5c, and 5s. The waterproof design is fully submergible up to 6.6 feet, and Touch ID is supported for the iPhone 5s.

Tim Cook revealed in an internal email to employees today that he’s had his sights set on Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts for quite sometime, and while Ahrendts’ work at Burberry is what won her the spot, new details about Ahrendts suggest that her affinity for watches has been an added bonus for Apple as it prepares to launch the iWatch.

According to former WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin, people who know Ahrendts say she is a “watch lady” and took a particular interest in the watch retailing space of Burberry’s stores:

Today T-Mobile announced that it is shuttering grandfathered plans to focus solely on its newer Simple Choice plans. The ‘UnCarrier’ sent out a letter to customers today, and discounts are being offered on newer plan rates for legacy customers who still need to switch over.