News - page 1466

Amazon’s Whispersync for voice was always an interesting curiosity: You can read a book on your Kindle, seamlessly switch to the Audiobook version, and then switch back again, all without losing your place. This works thanks to the fact that Amazon owns Audible, the biggest audiobook seller around.

The service just got a lot easier to use, thanks to a doubling of compatible titles, and a new Matchmaker service which automatically pairs up any books you already own, and lets you grab the audio version for a big discount.

Dr. Drang is on a roll these days. After letting us organize our photos in the Finder with his fantastic shell scripts, he will now change the way you use your iOS reminders app. Are you ready to have your mind blown?

The Satechi Smart Travel Router might just be the most useful travel adapter ever made. Not only can it plug into a wall socket pretty much anywhere in the world, it can also charge your iPhone and create a wireless network.

Apple’s iPad event is slated to happen in two weeks on Tuesday, October 22nd, according to the venerable AllThingsD. Not only will the iPad and iPad mini be updated, but the “new Mac Pro and OS X Mavericks will likely get some stage time as well.”

The U.S. government has no love for Samsung after the Korean company requested that President Obama veto a sales import ban that had been placed on some of its older products. Back in August, the ITC ruled in favor of Apple and placed a ban on several Samsung phones and tablets that infringe on Apple’s patents.

Samsung had hoped that the ban would be vetoed, but no dice.

Ever since Phil Schiller admitted that Apple considered making a standalone camera at one point, we’ve wondered what the results would look like if Sir Jony Ive’s obsessive attention to detail was applied to a full-framed camera. As part of Bono’s charity auction for Project (RED), Leica unveiled The Leica M for (RED) designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson that will be auctioned off at Southeby’s on Nov. 23rd to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.

Jony and Marc redesigned the Leica M by going through a total of 561 models and nearly 1000 prototype parts over 85 days to create the one of a kind camera that features a laser machined aluminum body, and an anodized aluminum outer shell to go with the full-format CMOS sensor inside.

Get a glimpse of all the impeccable details in the gallery below:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has confirmed that Microsoft Office will come to the iPad just as soon as it’s ready for devices with a touchscreen. Speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Florida today, Ballmer said, “iPad will be picked up when there’s a touch first user interface.”

That user interface is “in progress” Ballmer added, but it’s likely to come to the Windows version of Office first.

Nest Labs, the company that was founded by “father of the iPod” Tony Fadell, is famous for reinventing the home thermostat with the pretty little Nest device launched in 2011. But now the company is hoping to expand its presence in your home with a new, $130 smoke and carbon monoxide detector called Nest Protect.

Instead of just beeping at you, Nest Protect provides vocal alerts that will inform you just how dangerous the conditions in your home may be. And if it goes off accidentally — as ours often does when my wife is cooking — you can silence it just by waving at it.

Admit it. There’s two major things you still want from OS X: multitouch support, and 4K support. 4K support would make the Retina iMac finally possible, and as for multitouch, this is where the laptop and desktop market is heading despite Steve Jobs’s protestations about “gorilla arm.”

It’s taking Apple its sweet time to deliver the above, but you don’t have to wait. Sharp has just announced OS X compatibility for their 32-inch 4K touchscreen monitor.

How good is the iPhone 5s camera? Good enough for National Geographic. And Apple’s own Phil Schiller is getting braggy about it on Twitter.

Everyone knows that listening to podcasts is one of the most computationally complicated tasks you can possibly do. In fact, it was only a few years ago that anyone who wanted to listen to some anonymous Internet dork mouthbreathing his thoughts into a mic in low-fidelity audio had to purchase themselves a veritable supercomputer to accomplish the feat.

I kid, of course, but even in podcasting, every bit of performance helps. Which is why we’re happy to report that our favorite podcasting app, Instacast, has just hit version 4.1, adding support for the iPhone 5s’s 64-bit processor.

Former Apple CEO John Sculley believes Tim Cook is doing a “terrific job” at leading Apple after taking over from Steve Jobs two years ago. Cooks is “continuing the Apple philosophy of no compromise and quality of their products and great styling,” Sculley said, and he commends Cook for “not trying to be Steve Jobs.”

I think I might finally have found a screenshot app for OS X which is simple enough to replace the built-in screen-capture tools. It’s called Inboard, and it further distinguishes itself by having one of the best app icons ever.

Imagine that you had a stick of gum that could be bent into any shape. OK, that part was easy – all you had to do was imagine a normal stick of gum. Now imagine that that stick is weight-bearing, and that it would actually stay in the shape you gave it.

If you were doing it properly, then you just imagined the Gumstick, a rubbery, pose-able stick of gadget goodness.

Camera+, one of the best third-party camera apps for iOS — and one of the most supported — has today received its fourth update since Apple released iOS 7. This one delivers full resolution burst mode on devices that are capable of supporting it, plus all of the photo filters you’ll find in iOS 7’s built-in Camera app.

Sadly, the “Mobislyder” isn’t a way to make delicious, tiny steamed hamburgers with your cellphone, but it’s almost as good: It’s an aluminum track rail for your mobile phone, letting you make amazing tracking shots when shooting video with your iPhone.

Apparently Nikon’s D600 was already pretty much perfect, because the new D610 that replaces it is little more than a tweak. Let me put it this way: If Apple released a “new” iPhone with such a minor spec bump, the company would be “finished.”

iTunes Radio is currently limited to the United States, but according to a report from Bloomberg, Apple is gearing up to expand the service internationally in the coming months. The U.K, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are all reportedly set to gain access by “early 2014.”

Offering iTunes Radio outside of the U.S. is complicated because Apple has to get separate licensing rights for each country. Apple is using a combination of luring big advertisers and aggressively negotiating with labels to build its iTunes Radio empire.

Source: Bloomberg

Apple announced today that its financial earnings call with investors for Q4 2013 will be held on October 28th at 2PM PT.

AAPL shares have been slowly recovering from a recent slump after hitting a high of over $700 per share in 2012. The recent announcement that iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c sales shattered past iPhone sales records with 9 million units sold should portend good things for Apple’s earnings and the share price, but Wall Street is always pretty fickle with AAPL, so we’ll have to wait and see if the good news will be enough to get more of Wall Street on board.

Like its previous earnings calls, Apple is allowing the press and its shareholders to listen in to a live audio webcast, which is available via its website and can be accessed on iOS devices. Cult of Mac will be on hand to liveblog the results as they come in, along with any commentary from Tim and the gang.

Evernote announced Monday the availability of Two-Step Verification for all its users, increasing security for everyone, instead of just the premium members.

In a blog post, Evernote’s Andrew Sinkov said that the software company values its users’ data security. The feature was introduced with a few other security measures last month, including Access History and Authorized Applications, but was only available for Evernote Premium and Evernote Business users.

These extra security features are now available to all Evernote users.

File this one under, “huh?”

CNBC reported Monday that billionaire hedge-fund investor Julian Robertson sold all of his shares in Apple because he’d recently read a biography of founder Steve Jobs, and found the former CEO of Apple to be a “really awful person.”

Robertson admits that the stock did very well for him, but would rather “let someone else make the money from now on,” as he said on CNBC’s investment show, Closing Bell.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has officially closed its review of Apple’s 2012 tax disclosures after finding that the company complies with the letter of the law. Apple’s practice of routing cash through international subsidiaries to avoid paying U.S. taxes, or the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” was called into question this summer by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee.

After being accused of implementing the “holy grail of tax avoidance” by Senator Carl Levin, Apple has been cleared of any current investigation by the SEC.

Tim Cook and other Apple executives testified at the Senate hearing this summer. “We pay all the taxes we owe,” said Cook at the hearing. “Every single dollar. We not only comply with the laws, but we comply with the spirit of the laws.” For now, the government agrees.

Source: AllThingsD

Image: Reuters

Music lovers rejoice! Capo, the Apple Design Award-winning app that teaches you how to play your favorite tunes, has been updated to version 3.0 today.

Developed by indie dev Chris Liscio of SuperMegaUltraGroovy, Capo 3 is a major redesign that packs several new features. The coolest addition of them all is automatic chord and beat detection that instantly analyzes a song loaded from iTunes and adjusts as you tune, change key, or start using a.. er.. capo.

Jonathan Zufi is an expert at taking beautiful photos of Apple products. He’s been doing it at the Shrine of Apple for years, and now he has a new book out called Iconic: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.

For an extensive, professional gallery of every Apple product imaginable, look no further. Zufi has assembled an immense tribute to Apple’s legacy that every fan of the company will appreciate.

Apple and Samsung are headed back to San Jose on November 12 to clash again over the retrial of their billion-dollar patent lawsuit that Apple won in 2012, and it looks like Scott Forstall might be coming back to testify as a witness for Apple.

The jury originally rewarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, but after finding some errors in the awards, Judge Lucy Koh has cut $450 million from Apple’s award. Samsung and Apple filed a joint pretrail statement that listed the potential witnesses that might be called and both Scott Forstall and Apple’s marketing chief, Phil Schiller appeared on the list after both were witnesses at the orignal trial, before Forstall was fired.