News - page 1497

T-Mobile only recently started selling the iPhone, and it has proven to be a very good thing for the struggling carrier. By marketing itself as the hip “Un-Carrier” that charges less up front, T-Mobile is starting to see better days.

After the company reported healthy growth in its quarterly earnings report today, CEO John Legere made some comments about T-Mobile’s relationship with Apple. He said the carrier looks forward to carrying a “whole array” of Apple products in the future, hinting at more than just the iPhone. Could the iPad be next for T-Mobile after Apple announces new devices this fall?

Microsoft gave us a new anti-iPad ad yesterday, but there’s even more where that came from as the company released a new ad today that takes the iPad mini to task against the Acer Iconia W3.

The ad mostly focuses on the differences between iOS and Windows 8 and suggests that the iPad mini doesn’t have great games or productivity apps—which we all know is pretty much the exact opposite of reality.

Eventually the Siri-dubbed ad knocks on the iPad’s $429 price tag next to the $299 Iconia W3, even though Microsoft has conveniently forgotten that the W3 was originally priced at $380 before a series of price drops were introduced to try and get people to buy it.

Here’s the ad:

Social networks have trained us to share all the superfluous details of ourselves, but a new app called Leftover Swap is trying to take things to the next level by allowing users to share leftover scraps of meals with one another.

Hungry, but too cheap to buy a $0.99 hot dog down the street? With LeftoverSwap you can just pull up a map of discarded meals in your area, make a selection, and then go pick it up from your neighbor.

Last week, The Drowning released on iOS to mixed reviews, many of which echoed our own. Most reviewers praised Scattered Entertainment’s control scheme but panned the gameplay itself as shallow and repetitive.

The game has been doing well, however, hitting the top five most downloaded free apps list on iPhone in 16 countries, and the top five free apps on iPad in 42 countries.

This week, then, The Drowning is getting a global in-game event: The Toxic Beast Hunt, letting players take part in a boss hunt together and compete for prizes, though to truly win, you’ll need to buy some gold.

To celebrate the upcoming release of Ashton Kutcher’s role in the new JOBS biopic, famed Mac icon designer, Susan Kare, released new 32 x 32 pixel portraits of El Jobso himself and Señor Aplusk.

AgileBits has announced today that 1Password 4 will be on sale for just $7.99 for a limited time. That’s 55% off its regular price tag, and the app’s cheapest price tag to date. But what’s the reason for the sale? Well, on September 1, Dropbox syncing will stop in 1Password 3 for iOS, and AgileBits wants you to upgrade to the latest version to keep this functionality.

For Americans, iTunes in the Cloud has freed a lot of us from the tyranny of having to constantly switch movies and music on and off our devices. As long as we purchased a movie or song on iTunes (or, alternatively, subscribe to iTunes Match), we can stream it from the Cloud.

Unfortunately, Apple’s been taking a creeping approach to rolling out iTunes in the Cloud internationally. For at least two European countries, though, rollout has just started: Austria and Switzerland can now stream movies they bought from iTunes from the Cloud.

Where does Jony Ive get his inspiration? We’ve been asking that question for years, and while genius plays a part in it, like the best designers, Ive is profoundly influenced by the world around him.

The same is true with iOS 7. Ive’s new design might look radical with its bright colors and palette of pastels, but it is inspired by a color pattern that naturally occurs in the environs of Cupertino, and likely inside your own home. What is this inspiration? It might surprise you.

Sick of getting spam in your iCloud email? You’re not the only one. Apple’s sick of it too, and they’re making a hiring push to get spam and abuse under control in the iCloud.

For the last four years, T-Mobile has been just battered by the iPhone. Unable to ink the same deals with Apple as AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon to get the Jesus Phone on their networks at a subsidized price, T-Mobile tried to sell itself to AT&T, only to have the deal killed by the FCC.

In desperation, T-Mobile tried a new approach: they decided to call themselves an “Un-carrier” and start offering untraditional no-contract, upgrade-anytime-you-want plans. And you know what? It’s really paying off for them.

Grid is a pretty cool new app which brings a new approach to note taking. It uses a flat grid metaphor and some very easy-to-use gestures to add contacts, photos, notes and places.

Ever used your iPhone to take a photo through the viewfinder of your camera? Or tried to line up the iPhone’s lens with one half of a pair of binoculars? Then you’ll know how hard it is to get a good result. But if you’re willing to sacrifice an old iPhone case and pony up a few dollars for an SLR eyepiece, then you can make an adapter that’ll get you great Instagrammatical pictures every time.

The eTeleporter is a brand new box that will teleport humans from one physical location to another, instantaneously. Wait, no. Let’s start again. The eTeleporter is a kind of a phone booth for your iPad.

There’s a new option emerging for mobile apps that want to sync to the desktop: Evernote. No, Evernote isn’t new, but it’s fast becoming the service of choice for app developers who don’t want to develop a companion Mac app.

And the latest of these is Adventures for iPhone, an app which lets you save the places you’ve visited into a location-based journal.

Komoot (like commute, only not) is a gem of an app for German bikers and hikers. Or rather, it was: with today’s v5.2 update, the navigation app now comes in English, and adds support for a slew of new countries.

The short form: If you ever take to two wheels, then you need this app.

Live histograms, saving layered images as PSD files, clone stamping, geotagging, layer masking… I’m talking about a desktop class app like Acorn, right? Nope. I’m listing features from Leonardo, an absurdly powerful universal iOS image-editing app.

It should be apparent by now that wires are an endangered species, what with the recent explosive popularity of Bluetooth for transmission of sound and data, and the growing ability to keep everything constantly synced with the cloud.

The lone holdout restraining the iPhone from breaking free is the charging cable—but even that’s on its way out. Case in point, Buqu Tech’s Magnetyze wireless charging case for the iPhone 5 is now available.

The British Isles aren’t generally known for exporting headphones; mega boy bands and cycling superstars, yes, and perhaps Marmite. But headphones? All that’s changing though, with the impact RHA has made over the past year or so. The outfit has thus far produced a series of home run hits (or batted sixes, if you’re a cricket fan) with inexpensive headphones with sound way above their price.

If their past successes are anything to go by, these new ‘phones from RHA should sound amazing—because they’re the company’s most expensive yet.

When we first took a look at Anchor back in June after it had just launched, the social platform for coworkers was a decidedly walled-off environment; just like Hotel California, you could check out any time you like—but you could never leave. At least, your ideas couldn’t.

But that’s changed today, as the app sees its first big update and adds integration with Evernote, and the ability to email outside of the platform.

Not too surprisingly, the five major publishers originally named in the U.S. Department of Justice’s e-book case regarding their collusion with Apple on pricing have now themselves filed a complaint regarding the Justice Department’s proposal to eliminate the use of the agency model in any Apple agreements with publishers for a period of five years.

Publishers like the agency model as it allows them to set prices for e-books, instead of the distributor, as Amazon did before Apple’s own iBooks system launched on the iPad.

The cloud storage wars continue with a new tweet from Microsoft’s SkyDrive Twitter account. The service, typically offering seven gigabytes of online storage for free, just made an offer Apple’s jilted MobileMe members might not be able to refuse.

In a tweet today, @SkyDrive offered anyone who could forward the Apple downgrade email to a special SkyDrive email address would receive an extra 15GB of Microsoft’s own cloud storage system for one year for free.

You know the little Location Services triangle in the top right of your iPhone’s status bar well. It floats there faithfully every day, representing modern technology’s obsession with location data. Knowing where you are and what you do on a daily basis is incredibly valuable to advertisers and merchants looking to sell the next “x because you where at x.” Knowing your location also makes apps and iOS smarter, which ultimately makes the experience of using your iPhone more seamless.

If you’ve had Location Services turned on, then you’ve already been giving Apple permission to silently track your every move. A new setting in iOS 7 called “Frequent Locations” makes how and to what level you are tracked more transparent, right down to the minute you left your house yesterday.

Apple has released OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 5 today following the release of the fourth preview two weeks ago. The update is available via the Mac App Store for registered developers already on the Mavericks beta, and a direct download is available in the Mac Dev Center. Apple’s iBooks for Mac app has been included for the first time in this particular beta release. General stability and performance issues have also been addressed.

The eighth beta of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5 was also seeded today. 10.8.5 will likely be the last Mountain Lion update to come out before Mavericks is released to the public this fall.

Apple has been generally sticking to a two-week release cycle for Mavericks and iOS 7 betas this summer, despite the Dev Center outage. Mavericks is continuing to get more stable with each preview release, and the finishing touches are being put on 10.8.5.

Source: Apple

Microsoft’s recent barrage of anti–iPad ads have nearly all featured third-party tablets rather than boasting about Microsoft’s own iPad-killer, the Surface RT. Now that it’s desperately slashed prices on RT units, Microsoft is feeling inexplicably cocky in its latest ad, which pits the hardware and software specs of the iPad against that of the Surface RT.

Basically, Microsoft is praying the iPad’s lack of a keyboard (that you have to purchase separately), Microsoft Office, and a USB port will be enough to entice some unlucky nerds to buy a Surface RT instead of an iPad now that it’s cheaper than ever but still deprived of quality apps.

Here’s the ad:

Instagram just pushed out a big update for its iOS and Android apps which gives users the ability to import video from their smartphone libraries into Instagram.

Now you can film video at any time and then splice it together later into a 15-second video to import into Instagram. The update also brings video support to Android 4.0 devices and has a new trim and crop feature so your vids can be molded into perfect squares.

iOS users also pick up a new Automatic Straightening feature that set your photos level with the tap of a button. The new Instagram 4.1 update is available now in the App Store and Google Play.

Source: Instagram