News - page 1507

This afternoon President Obama addressed the nation to talk about the recent government shutdown, as well as to promote the rollout of the new U.S. healthcare coverage website that just launched today.

During his remarks President Obama addressed criticisms that HealthCare.gov is full of bugs and loads too slowly. Obama deflected most of the blame toward the more than 1 million people that visited the site before 7AM and bogged down the servers. The President did admit there are a lot of bugs that need to be addressed, but then he used Americas Most Valuable Brand, as an example of why rollouts don’t always go to well by comparing the Healthcare.gov rollout to glitches in iOS 7:

The iPhone 5c is supposed to be Apple’s breakthrough device for the Chinese market – though we’ve heard they’re crazy for gold – so to make the import process quicker and cheaper Apple plans to ship iPhones from supplier Foxconn’s factory directly to China.

Carl Icahn finally got his dinner date wish with Tim Cook last night, after the famous billionaire investor took to Twitter a few weeks ago to preach how Wall Street has seriously undervalued AAPL stock. Along with parading his optimism for Apple’s stock, Icahn purchased a major stake in AAPL stock and has been dying for Cupertino to issue more buybacks.

Apple is expected to release another minor iOS 7 update next week to address more bugs and early teething problems. The Cupertino company released iOS 7.0.2 late last week to fix a lock screen security vulnerability, but that introduced new problems of its own that are likely to be addressed with iOS 7.0.3.

It seems a lot of users who upgraded to iOS 7 last month are having issues with iMessage. Apple’s Support Communities forums are full of complaints from disgruntled iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users who cannot send or receive iMessages anymore, and you’ll find plenty of people voicing their frustrations on Twitter, too.

Initially it seemed Apple’s servers were the problem — as they often are when iMessage has problems — but that’s not the case. Instead, it appears to be a simple bug that can be easily rectified with a quick bit of tinkering. Here’s what you need to do.

Today’s the day you’ll probably have to start paying for iCloud storage, folks — if you’re a former MobileMe subscriber, anyway. After giving us 25GB of iCloud storage absolutely free for two years, Apple has now ended the offer and dropped all non-paying iCloud users down to the basic 5GB plan.

If you need more than that, you’ll have to sign up for a subscription from today.

Clear for iPhone, the wonderful to-do app from Realmac Software, has now been optimized for Apple’s latest iOS 7 software. It features the latest Clear design — which was originally debuted in Clear+ last month — coupled with all of the functionality that makes Clear one of the finest to-do apps for iOS.

What’s more, Clear is now available on your iPad.

As I write this, I’m sitting in Stuttgart airport waiting to take a connecting flight to my new home in Leipzig, Germany. And what is my biggest fear in my new life? The unbearable winters? The fact that smoking is still allowed in bars and restaurants in 2013? Nope. The scariest thing is that I may not be able to use BitTorrent to download the latest TV shows, thanks to pesky German traits like upholding the law.

If only there was a German equivalent of the new BBC download-only iPlayer app.

There are two things I love about these Kransen headphones from UrbanEars. Actually, there are three: that woven cord looks great in red. The other two are cable-wrangling tricks that would be welcome on any pair of earbuds: not that Apple would ever make an accessory so useful.

Pixa is our favorite alternative to iPhoto for the Mac, and it just got a solid v1.1 update. In addition to lots of polish (some of which you will have already seen in the recent 1.0.x updates), Pixa now makes snapping images and searching hem a whole lot easier.

To paraphrase serial sheet-folder Jill Cooper, one of the biggest challenges you’re going to face in your life is to control your cables. And although there’s no Jill Cooper to teach you how fold your cables into a perfect bundle, there are now two new gadgets to make things a little easier. They’re called the Rolio and the CableDrop Mini, and they’re from BlueLounge.

Remember Lodsys? The small LLC that basically invented the term ‘patent troll’ made news in 2011 when it started going after App Store developers for infringing on obscure, abstract patent filings. It sued small app developers for outrageous amounts because it claimed to own the definitive patents on in-app purchases and the general concept of an upgrade button.

The issue with Lodsys was that its sole business was buying up patents in bulk and using them to sue the pants off devs. Many devs don’t have the resources to finance a legal battle of that nature, so Lodsys would then settle with a lot of its victims outside of court. Apple went up to bat for its third-party devs in court a couple years ago, and today Apple’s motion to intervene was thrown out.

If you’ve been itching to get your hands on a 126GB iPad, Apple has started offering refurbished models at a discount in its online store. The fourth-gen iPad that was released back in January is available in a 128GB WiFi/Cellular configuration that normally prices at $799/$929 retail.

Now Apple is selling refurbished 128GB iPads at a 15% discount of $679 for WiFi-only and $689 for Cellular. That’s a great deal when you consider that refurbs are Apple-certified models that come with a 1-year warranty.

New iPads are supposed to arrive in October, so if you care about having the newest hardware, then it’s best to wait. Otherwise, take advantage of this discount Apple is offering.

Source: Apple Store

Today Dropbox released an update to its Mac app that adds the ability to automatically upload all screenshots you take. The feature is called Camera Uploads in Dropbox’s mobile apps, and now it’s finally coming to the desktop.

Not only can screenshots be automatically uploaded to your Dropbox, but a share link for each image is also pasted into your clipboard as screenshots are taken.

Another addition in today’s update is a new import tool that lets you transfer photos from your iPhoto library to Dropbox.

Source: Dropbox

As the battle for global smartphone supremacy has matured into just a two company battle pitting Apple against Samsung, Cupertino is looking to add more between itself and its archenemy by becoming less dependent on Samsung to build chips like the A7 processor featured in the iPhone 5s.

While Apple can’t totally rid itself of Samsung components just yet, a new report  claims that Apple plans to lean on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to handle more of the manufacturing of the A8 processor next year, rather than giving all the work to Samsung.

Given that it’s the most popular cross-platform messaging service on the planet, you might have thought that WhatsApp would have a new redesign ready to go when iOS 7 was made available to the public earlier this month, but as things stand, it’s still rocking its old look.

Presumably the team behind it are hard at work on the update as we speak, however, and hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for it. But in the meantime, check out these awesome WhatsApp for iOS 7 concept designs that give us a taster of what might be in store for our favorite messaging app.

The iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c will soon be available on Boost Mobile, according to two promotional posters that have been leaked today. Both devices will be supported by Boost’s Shrinking Payments plans, but their official release dates and price tags are yet to be confirmed.

You can now purchase the iPhone 5s from Apple.com and collect your order from your local Apple retail store. The Cupertino has the brought in-store pickup service back to the new device following a very brief stint this time last week — but who knows how long it will last.

At this point, there have been eight iPhones, and with the exception of this year’s iPhone 5c, each has a faster chip and more all around chutzpah than the model that precedes it. You’d naturally think, then, that if you lined them all up in a row and ran a speed test on them, each successive model would accomplish tasks faster than the model that precedes it. But as this video proves, the reality is more complicated than that.

Coca-Cola is often held up as that most American of brands, but it’s certainly not the most valuable American brand. In fact, that upstart Apple — a company 90 years younger than Coke — has just pushed the sugar-water purveyor off the list of most valuable brand in the world.

Apple doesn’t like to allow emulators into the App Store, so try submitting one for approval and you’ll quickly get a big fat no. But some cunning iOS developers have found a way to sneak emulators through Apple’s App Store approval process by making them look like innocent apps.

The latest hit the App Store today. It’s called Earthquake 7 and its App Store description promises “the latest earthquake news.” But enter a secret phrase into its search bar and you have an emulator that plays all of your favorite Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles.

Edgar Rios is not only a Photoshop whizz, but also pretty good at imagining the future. Extrapolating from iOS 7, Edgar has come up with what he thinks could be the next version of the Mac OS, and I really, really like it.

The MiStand might look like a big, heavy, over-engineered iPad desk stand, and it probably is. But it has one standout feature that makes it interesting: A big magnetic ball.

You know what’s great about Spotify and Rdio? The fact that they both exist, and that they’re both great services. Why? Competition. It’s hard to think of two other arch rivals which are adding great new features to their services so quickly.

Today it’s the turn of Rdio, which has slipped recommendations into its music-streaming service, taking the pressure off you to pick a song for yourself.

Whatever it is you want to know about cellphone camera sensors, you’ll probably find it in DP Review’s absurdly in-depth article on the subject. It details not only the common misconceptions about megapixels, but also many real world differences. And it contains the diagram shown at the top of this post, showing the size differences between the sensors in various phones, measured in pixels.