News - page 1543

Last Thursday, Apple’s online Developer Center went down for maintenance. While the regular outage typically lasts a few hours, it wasn’t until Sunday night that Apple acknowledged the issue. In a message to its developer community and the press, Apple explained that an “intruder” had breached the Dev Center’s database. Apple claimed that no personal data was stolen from its users, but the threat was great enough to warrant a complete rebuilding of the site’s backend.

A Turkish security researcher by the name of Ibrahim Balic has come forward as the person responsible for the hack, although he claims no foul play and has submitted his bugs to Apple. More information has been revealed regarding how Balic got past Apple’s security.

Apple’s Dev Center has been down since Thursday, but that isn’t stopping the company from releasing new beta software to developers.

Earlier today, we cautioned that the hacking of the Dev Center could result in delayed updates to the iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks betas. But Apple has still pushed out the fourth developer preview of Mavericks today.

Until the Dev Center comes back online, developers won’t be able to login and directly download the new version of Mavericks. The update is only currently available in the Mac App Store for those already on a previous version of the beta operating system.

The third developer preview Mavericks came out two weeks ago. We’ll let you know if there’s anything of note in today’s version.

Have you ever wished you could record your iPhone’s screen activity? Short of a tool on the Mac like Reflector, it’s hard to capture video of iOS in action. Apple doesn’t allow apps in the App Store that can record video of anything on the screen… until now.

A new app called xRec has managed to slip into the App Store, and it can fully record the iPhone’s screen, including any audio.

Today AT&T unveiled two new Mobile Share plans. The carrier’s shared plans originally debuted last summer, and now two more options are being brought into the fold. For $20 per month, subscribers can have 300MB of shared data for $20 and 2GB for $50. The new plans will be available to all subscribers on Friday, July 26th.

A couple of days ago, it was reported that Apple had bought HopStop, a mapping app that specializes in transit directions. Apple confirmed the acquisition shortly after the news surfaced. HopStop is currently a top navigation app in the iOS App Store.

Now HopStop’s Windows Phone app has vanished. Big shocker, right?

Google copied pretty much every aspect of iOS when it came up with Android, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the Search Giant is now shamelessly copying Apple’s patents… right down to the drawing.

As noticed by Patently Apple, on the left you have Apple’s already granted patent for a wider MacBook trackpad that would be able to use the Facetime camera to detect whether someone was just resting their hands on the trackpad, or actually using it.

On the right? A new Google patent for a Chromebook that can detect a user’s presence based upon the forward-facing camera. Notice the line drawings used for both are essentially identical. Ballsy, Google!

Source: Patently Apple

Since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, smartphones have really taken off , and more than 1 billion people worldwide now own one. Last year alone, smartphones generated $293.9 billion in sales, but the cost of the average smartphone has begun falling.

More than half of cellphone owners in the U.S. and other developed markets already own a smartphone, and those in emerging markets such as China and India aren’t able to pay for high-end devices like the iPhone. As a result, cheaper options are becoming increasingly popular.

Wow. Animated GIFs are everywhere now… even on a vintage Apple II Plus!

Nathan Griffith put together an awesome bit of code that makes it possible to display animated GIFs on an Apple II+ with only 64K of RAM.

Apple announced Logic Pro X last week, and alongside it an iPad companion app called Logic Remote that allows users to record, mix, and play virtual instruments remotely. The Cupertino company has now moved to trademark the app’s icon.

Just a friendly note. Apple has so far been releasing new betas of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks every other Monday, like clockwork. But with the iTunes Developer Center, down for almost four days now (because of a hack that might have been committed by a researcher) and no end in sight, if you’re expecting iOS 7 Beta 4 and OS X Mavericks Beta 4 to drop today, you might not want to hold your breath: if Apple can’t get the Developer Center up and running this afternoon, releasing a new beta isn’t likely.

Apple’s Dev Center mysteriously went down for several days last week, and the Cupertino company revealed over the weekend that “an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers.” The site was closed immediately so that the potential for further threats could be eliminated.

It looked like Apple’s website had been hacked by someone trying to obtain our personal data, but according to one security researcher, it was his discovery of 13 bugs in the system which prompted the company to take action.

Apple has refunded Briton Lee Neale £4,000 ($6,131) after his 8-year-old daughter Lily spent the cash on virtual items in her favorite iPad game. Lily knew the password for her father’s iTunes account, but no one expected her to use it to rack up a huge bill on in-app purchases.

Dumb phones had a few advantages over today’s smartphones. First, their batteries lasted for what seemed like weeks between charges. And second, if the battery did die, all you lost was the ability to call and SMS people. You didn’t lose your e-mail, your camera, your iPod, the book you’re reading or the movie you were planning to watch on the train home.

So you carry a spare battery. But what if you could eliminate the need for that spare, and also ditch that creepy wrist-strengthener you insist on pumping all the time like some hyperactive pervert?

Good news! With the Mipwr Dynamo Case, you can do both.

This is the Cambridge Camera Bag, and it is supposedly inspired by the schoolbags of English children. Perhaps this was the case in past years, when only the privileged offspring of royalty and wealthy industrialists attended school, because these days English schoolkids drag their crap around in the same battered Eastpak backpacks as anyone else.

Not that this makes the Cambridge Camera Bag any less desirable. Quite the opposite, in fact, if you’ve ever met a genuine English hooligan.

A new experimental add-on for DSLRs brings Lytro-like refocus-able photos to any camera, and tosses in a few extra clever features for good measure. The KaleidoCamera, as it’s called, is a unit that sits between your lens and your camera and performs some clever magic on the light that streams into it.

Manything turns a spare iOS device into a cloud-connected security camera. Install the app, sign up for an account and leave the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with its camera pointing at your desk, your yard or hidden in a plastic bag and pointing up from the bowl of your toilet.

For any unsuspecting visitors, it will be too late. You’ll have seen everything.

The Braven 855s is pretty good for barbecues, or what some folks call “grills.” How do I know? I tried it last night. And even when I spilled cow’s blood on my un-dyed leather loafers, the music kept on going. And it sounds pretty good too.

Oh Hasselblad. As if your absurd and hideous Lunar wasn’t bad enough, you’re about to compound the embarrassment with the Stellar compact, yet another Sony NEX camera dressed up with a stupid wooden grip and a huge markup. What happened to you?

Apple is prototyping larger versions of the iPad and iPhone, according to The Wall Street Journal’s supply chain sources overseas. Details are scare, but the report states that Apple is considering a 13-inch display for the iPad, which would be quite the increase from the current 9.7-inch display.

After days of being down, Apple has explained why its Developer Center is unavailable. The above message is being emailed out to registered developers and the press, revealing that the developer site was targeted by a hacker earlier this week.

Apple is saying there’s no evidence personal data was stolen, but the hack was serious enough to warrant a complete shutdown and internal restructuring of the site’s database.

The people who believe Apple will sell a TV set are right. And the people who believe Apple won’t sell a TV set are also right. Here’s why.

This week on The CultCast: Logic Pro gets Pro’er with new features and iPad controls; Google Maps finally comes to iPad; Apple hunts for iWatch engineers; more iPad Mini retina rumors; Apple slangin’ TV deals with studios to kill commercials; we dish great computing tips on Tips Ahoooy!

Have a few laughs and get caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.

Back in 1989, I was a young punk in college who read science fiction voraciously and had a history of playing Dungeons and Dragons. I know, slow down ladies, what a catch.

Anyway, it was with unreserved glee that I started playing Shadowrun in those days, a table top role-playing game in the vein of D&D that included computers, hacking, and all sorts of megacorps, like a William Gibson novel gone magical.

Flash forward to now, and–after a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign–Shadowrun Returns is headed to iOS, Mac, Android and PC. There’s a sweet launch trailer that just came out today, and a release date of just one week from now, on July 25th. Holy smoking dragon hackers!

Dyslexia is a disability that likely affects 70 – 80 percent of people with poor reading skills, with one in five students having a language-based disability that could include dyslexia.

Many folks with dyslexia have trouble differentiating between different letters of the alphabet, many of which–especially in digital text form–look very similar. Many of the letters in our alphabet, like ‘i’ and ‘j’, or ‘n’ and ‘u’ can be mistaken for each other, especially if someone has a visual processing difference and reverses or rotates the letters when reading.

There’s a new font that aims to help, and a great eBook reader, vBookz PDF Voice Reader, has recently inclded that as a font choice in its iOS app.

Apple is buying HopStop, a small company that specializes in transit directions, according to Bloomberg. Google Maps offers built-in transit directions while Apple Maps does not, so this acquisition makes perfect sense if Apple wants to makes its mapping solution more attractive.