News - page 1476

What’s better than HD? Super HD! And it’s coming to Netflix on your Apple TV and iOS device.

So let’s say for a second that Apple doesn’t ship a Retina iPad mini this year… but still decides to release a low-res iPad mini 2. How would they update it without a Retina Display?

Touch ID, son. 64-bit support. And, of course, by spraying it gold.

Will it go Retina or won’t it?

That’s the big question everyone has been asking about the upcoming iPad mini 2. We’ve heard conflicting reports, such as that it will only be available in 2014 instead of October of this year, when the iPad 5 is expected to show up. Other sources — like KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo — say that it will be out before Christmas.

A new report might dash the hopes of anyone expecting a Retina iPad mini this year, though. Instead, they say it’s coming next year.

Google+ already lets you upload RAW photos to the service, but now the rendered JPGs from those RAW files are going to look a lot better. Working with the boffins at NIK software (which Google bought when it acquired Snapseed), the G+ RAW conversions have been tweaked to give some dramatically better results.

If you write in Markdown on your Mac, then you should buy Brett Terpstra’s Marked 2. It could be described as a tool for previewing Markdown files, but that would be like calling an iPhone a… well, a phone.

According to Derek “beefcake with a brain” Morgan from Criminal Minds, “sitting is the new smoking,” and too much of it will kill you. But who wants any boring old standing desk? Yes, you could put a couple of milk crates onto your regular desk and prop your MacBook on top, but why do that when you can spend $3,900 on the Stir Kinetic Desk, a standing desk with a touch screen?

If you have a router (no, not that kind of router), a chunk of plywood and some mad craft skillz, then you could make your own Undulating Contours charging station. If you are missing any one of those, then, it’d be better to spend the $24 on the real thing, hand-hewn in Louisiana.

Speaking of snapping photos and saving them in Evernote, Notograph is a beautiful new iPhone that will do just that, as well as syncing with Dropbox and iCloud.

The Evernote iOS app has gotten another big update, barely a week after it was revamped for iOS 7 and made useful again. The news today is the new Post-It camera, which now lets you scan the yellow sticky squares right into your Evernotes.

Apple VP of Gold Raffi Jaharian is back in another Conan video. This time, he’s here to tell you how to get your grimy hands on a gold iPhone 5s (because gold is BEST).

We wish it was easy as meeting one of his cousins in the back of an Apple Store, but unfortunately, the real chances of getting a gold iPhone anytime soon are slim to none.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is in the process of rolling out iPads to all of its students in 47 K-12 schools. It’s a huge educational partnership for Apple, and the goal is to have students use the iPads to help learn the curriculum.

Apparently LAUSD didn’t anticipate that students would be able to easily hack around the security measures on the iPads and use them to surf the web and download apps. Hundreds of students at Theodore Roosevelt High School have already broken the restrictions, and the district is considering halting the iPad rollout until it figure out what to do.

Apple was hit with a Y330 million (about $3.3 million) bill  by the Tokyo District Court on Thursday after the company was found guilty of patent infringement. Japanese inventor Norihiko Saito was awarded by Presiding Judge Teruhisa Takano after the court ruled that Mr. Saito’s patent, which had been filed in 1998, covered technology for the Click Wheel controller Apple added to the iPod back in 2004.

U2 frontman and AIDS activist, Bono was on hand at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting where he announced that his Product (RED) partner Apple has raised over $65 million for the charity organization.

Bono at #CGI2013 on @RED partners: "Apple is certainly leading the crew" Thank you Apple for raising over $65 million to fight AIDS.

— (RED) (@RED) September 26, 2013

Apple updated its Apple TV offering this morning to include new channels for Major League Soccer and Disney Junior. The new channels aren’t bound to raise much excitement from average consumers, but sports fans and parents of young kids are sure to enjoy the new additions.

MLS allows soccer fans to hookup to their MLS Live subscription to watch live games across the country, while also keep tabs on scores and standings. There are a number of soccer-themed videos that can be enjoyed for free, and you can watch highlights of your favorite team via the Club Channels.

The new Disney Junior app provides live access to Disney Junior with a cable subscription, as well as access to Disney Junior TV shows on demand, so you can load up an episode of Jake and the Never Land Pirates for your rugrat while you rush around getting ready.

Apple just released a new patch for iOS 7 that fixes a bug that allowed anyone to bypass the lock screen in the new iOS 7. The exploit involved swiping up on the lock screen to access Control Center, then opening the alarm clock. Holding the iPhone’s sleep/wake button brings up the power off option, and you could hit cancel, double click the home button, and have access to the multitasking screen. This would give anyone access to your photos, camera, email, Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr account.

Today’s update to iOS 7.0.2 purports to fix that, and reintroduces a Greek keyboard option for passcode entry.

Source: Apple

With an odd mix of Bejeweled and Pokemon, including a dash of inspiration from Puzzles and Dragons, Dragon Academy aims to be your next iOS game addiction. available now in the App Store for the low price of free-to-play, Dragon Academy tasks you with matching jewels of different dragon-enhancing powers to level up your adorable, charming dragons for even more jewel-matching fun.

We got the chance to sit down with Trent Polack, creative director at developer Team Chaos, and chat a bit about dragons, “hatch-three” puzzle games, and why the team decided to go with such a saturated genre to begin with.

With the fifth-generation iPad set to feature a new design based on the smaller, sleeker iPad mini, Apple’s existing lineup of iPad Smart Covers aren’t going to fit it. But fear not, Smart Cover fans — Apple is already working on new models that will fit the iPad 5’s smaller chassis. Check them out in the hands-on video below.

Apple has moved to trademark the “Advertising Re-Imagined” slogan used to promote its iAd mobile advertising platform. The Cupertino company filed for the trademark on Wednesday, September 25, more than three years after it launched the iAd business.

We all know the iPhone is a huge part of Apple’s business, but how huge? A new chart shows that if it were a standalone company, the iPhone would have greater revenues than some of the most iconic businesses on Earth.

Earlier this morning in the Cult of Mac chatroom, Killian told me that “iOS 7 as a whole is little more than a lick of paint.” He was baiting me of course (I hope so anyway, or I have some punishment to administer), but it’s a common enough view. However, as we shall see, there’s plenty going on under the hood too.

Exhibit A: Mail app now lets you look right inside ZIP attachments and open the individual documents direct.

Warning: Sarcasm follows.

“Are you drinking enough water?” asks BluFit. Well are you? This is how to tell:

1. Are you thirsty?

If the answer to the above question is “yes,” then you should drink some water.

I’m kidding, of course: BluFit is in fact a totally legit gadget that makes it easy to track how much water you drink. What is it? It’s a water bottle that connects wirelessly to an app on your iPhone.

Seriously.

Strava Run, the fitness-tracking app that records your runs and lets you compete against strangers who have use the same routes, might be the first fitness app to take advantage of the M7 Motion Coprocessor (MoCoPro) in the iPhone 5S.

Now the app will not only run for longer thanks to saved battery power, it’s more accurate too.

Here’s an idea to file in your Evernote app under “Why didn’t anyone do this before?”: Evernote Post-It notes. That’s right; Evernote has teamed up with 3M to offer multi-colored, Evernote-branded sticky notes which can be scanned into the app to save, well, forever.

There’s a funny fact in the world of iOS apps: Whereas one-man shop can manage to have a radically new version of its app available day and date with a big iOS update, giant software companies seem to take years to get things done. Spotify took (literally) years to come up with a ho-hum iPad app, and Instagram still isn’t on the iPad. One can only assume it will never be designed for the tablet.

And speaking of Instagram, this new iOS “update” is a sham.

Vesper, the iPhone note-taking app made by the all-star team of Brent “NetNewsWire” Simmons and John “Daring Fireball” Gruber, was already pretty iOS 7-friendly at launch a few months back. Now it has received an actual proper iOS 7 update, and it’s even better.