Apple’s iOS devices have today been cleared for use on United States military networks by the Defense Department, Bloomberg reports. The move comes after Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 and the latest devices from BlackBerry gained government clearance earlier this month.
Inside every Mac — the one I’m writing this one, the one you’re reading this on, the one next to you at the cafe — is a little chip called the SMC, or system management controller. If you’ve ever had a problem related to your Mac’s performance or power supply, resetting the SMC is usually the first thing people suggest.
For most of us, worrying about the ‘security’ of our SMC is pretty harmless. While your SMC can be hacked, it’s a Mission Impossible style process that is only really likely to occur if you’re so important that the techno-elite of another country’s government decides they want to know what’s on your laptop.
Here’s where it gets funny, though. Let’s say China did want to hack your Mac’s SMC… how might they start? By entering the name of a Harry Potter spell!
AU Optronics, one of Apple’s display manufacturers for the iPad mini, is set to decrease its shipments from 4 million units in the first quarter of 2013 to between 2.5 and 2.8 million units in the second quarter, according to sources in the supply chain.
The move comes as we enter a traditionally quiet period for consumer spending.
Although Apple doesn’t like to talk too much about it, they admit right on their official website that all of the glass used in their iPhone and iPad displays are made by Corning, makers of Gorilla Glass.
Corning’s always looking to make their glass stronger, thinner and more useful to Apple, though, which is why they’ve just announced Corning Lotus XT Glass, which looks to be a prime contender for use in the upcoming iPhone 5S, iPad 5 and iPad mini 2.
The video above, frankly, is pretty boring. Here’s what you need to know: Lotus XT Glass is a new type of glass from Corning that is specifically designed for use in high-performance displays, like Retina displays. Its primary characteristics are that they allow more light through, so Lotus XT Glass reduces power draw (light goes through easier, so a backlight needs to do less to compensate) and increase color vibrancy. In addition, Lotus XT Glass is easier for manufacturers to work with, reducing manufacturing costs and increasing yields.
Press release is after the jump.
The winner of Apple’s $10,000 App Store gift card has revealed how he saved up apps to download to his iPhone in an a bit to become the 50 billionth downloader. Brandon Ashmore, 21, from Mentor, Ohio, held his downloads until Wednesday night to try to give himself a better chance of winning the contest.
He still thought it was a joke when Apple called to tell him he had won, though.
A new Mac malware has been found in the wild that allowed attackers to steal data and install unauthorized apps on a compromised machine. What makes this malware different than other recent Mac malware, though, is that it breezes right past Gatekeeper… and the people behind it might have been gunning for the life of their malware victim.
Virgin Mobile has slashed 15% off both the 8GB iPhone 4 and the 16GB iPhone 4S on one of its prepaid Beyond Talk Unlimited data plans. The deal will get you a new iPhone — without a contract commitment — for less than $300.
Gameloft has made Gangstar Rio: City of Saints and N.O.V.A. 3, two of its high-end mobile games, free for a limited time on iOS. Both titles are universal releases that can be played on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and they’re usually priced at $4.99 and $6.99 respectively — saving you $11.98.
Well, that’s some positive news. The CW television network is bringing its television content to the Apple TV, the first network to do so directly, instead of via Netflix or Hulu. Even better, you won’t have to have a cable subscription to access the CW programming on Apple’s set top box, like many other content providers require.
The CW plans on launching an app to bring shows like Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, and 90210 sometime in the next few weeks, according to a report at Deadline, though no release date has been reported.
One word cropped up over and over at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, and it wasn’t “speakerdock” (yes, that may be two words; but I’m merging them here because that’s what I’m doing). In fact, the word was “Bluetooth” — a word discordant with the very idea of a dock-equipped speaker.
And yet, amid the tsunami of Bluetooth-equipped speakers at CES, there were holdouts — adherers to the Old Way of doing things, of physically connecting a device to its speaker.
One such holdout is the Aud 5, iLuv’s first speaker dock to harbor a Lightning connector.
https://youtu.be/Vi0HhR-PmQE
Polish-based Infinite Dreams has seen pretty sizable success with their iOS games. Can Knockdown, a physics game that gives the player a row of balls with which to virtually smash stacks of cans, is so popular that the second game in the series (Can Knockdown 2) was even super-sized into a coin-op arcade game.
Now the third game in the series has arrived for iPad and iPhone, Can Knockdown 3. And just like its predecessors, it’s beautifully engineered, gobs of fun and horribly, horribly addictive.
eBay has released a pretty big update for its iPhone and iPad app. If you’ve used eBay on iOS before, you know that it’s not the greatest experience in the world. Today’s update hopefully makes it better.
Besides a visual redesign, eBay has added several nice features, including multiple item checkout, quicker registration, bug fixes, and more.
For years there have been rumors saying that Intel will make mobile processors for the iPhone, and we’ve explained why that won’t happen multiple times. It’s just too late for Intel in a world that is dominated by ARM.
The CEO of Intel stepped down today, and he has revealed a juicy factoid: Apple approached Intel to provide processors for the original iPhone some six years ago, and Intel said no.
Tim Cook is going to Washington to testify before a Senate committee next week, but the Apple CEO is pulling a rare move for the company and going on the offensive early by giving media interviews to explain its position.
During an interview with Politico, Cook addressed the controversy surrounding Apple’s cash hoard by explaining where its offshore cash comes from, how Apple plans to bring more manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., and why the company will push for policy change in Washington:
A new piece of Mac malware has been discovered. The virus installs itself as “macs.app” and silently takes screenshots to then upload to shady servers. It doesn’t appear to be very widespread at the moment.
The malware was uncovered on an African activist’s Mac at the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual event dedicated to “exploring how best to challenge authoritarianism and promote free and open societies.”
If you have a mid-2012 MacBook Air, Apple has released a small firmware update that addresses “a storage firmware issue that, in rare cases, may cause a system to fail to recover from crash.”
The update itself is just 1.69MB, and can be downloaded here
Even though the iPhone has thousands of apps that help you organize your thoughts and ideas, nothing works quite as well as a traditional paper notebook. At least that’s the thinking that went into DODOnotes, the first iPhone compatible paper notebook.
DODOcase, the company behind one of our favorite iPad cases, has come out with a new product for iPhone called DODONotes. It’s basically just a notepad with a little die-cut tray nest for your iPhone while an elastic strap holds it in place and also prevents you from actually using your iPhone.
For the past six year that I’ve owned an iPhone, not once have I thought about buying a dock. What’s the point? You’ve got your cable right there anyway, and unless it adds some great functionality to the iPhone, I’ve never seen much point in them. But the Projectone from Karas Kustoms has changed my opinion on the usefulness of iPhone docks.
The Projectone is a machined aluminum dock for your iPhone 5 that passively amplifies sound like a megaphone. Its simplistic style and industrial stylings make it one of the best-looking iPhone docks we’ve seen in a while, but is it actually worth its $45 price tag?
Apple just released a new version of iTunes that comes with a couple of unexpected new features. The 11.0.3 update includes a new MiniPlayer, an improved songs view, and finally support for multi-disc albums along with some bug fixes.
Amazon announced today that it has struck a deal with NBC/Universal to bring more popular TV shows to Amazon Prime Instant Video. The new deal gives exclusive streaming rights to a number of shows for the next four years as Amazon continues to beef up its catalogue of shows to do battle against Netflix.
Among the shows that you’ll be able to find on Prime Instant Video (but not on Netflix) you’ll find Grimm Season 1 and Covert Affairs Seasons 1-2 starting today, and then Hannibal and Defiance will be added later this year.
Jeff Bezos announced the deal this morning via a public letter on Amazon’s homepage. An accompanying press release detailed the news shows from the deal as follows:
Blackberry Messenger might finally be coming to iOS this summer… but it’s just been confirmed that doesn’t mean a native iPad version.
See that girl in the MacBook Air on the right? She’s a professional model for stock image site Shutterstock.com, who once did an entire set of images called “Pretty Woman Lying On The Sofa Holding Her Smartphone.” And that smartphone in question is clearly an iPhone 3G/S.
Okay. Now see the image on the left? That’s from a recent Samsung ad, and what do you know? The model’s iPhone has been artlessly photoshopped into a Samsung Galaxy S4… even though that device features a 5-inch display that is so large, the phone’s tiny size in the model’s hand implies a woman who is over eight-feel tall. Here’s proof.
On the one hand, this is a photo from a stock photo site, meaning as long as Samsung paid for the image, they can do what they like with it. But still…. jeez, Samsung. Surely there’s one pretty girl in the world who prefers her Galaxy to an iPhone that you could track down for a photoshoot, right?
Via: Samsung Copies Apple
What if your iOS lockscreen intelligently pulled together all the data inside your iPhone and made sure that you could keep track with your real-world life without even sliding-to-unlock?
This beautiful iOS 7 concept by Jürgen Ulbrich of Apfellike.de reimagines iOS as something a lot more similar to Google Now than we’ve ever seen in iOS before.
Stylistically, we can quibble about it — the visual style of this concept obviously is more in Google’s school than Apple’s — but the functionality is exquisite. I would love a Google Now-like experience on my iOS 7 lockscreen, wouldn’t you?
With the exception of the possibility of new color offerings, we all know that the iPhone 5S will likely look pretty much identical to the iPhone 5… but that doesn’t mean things aren’t changing significantly on the inside. And BGR thinks they have proof.
Apple’s current flagship store in San Francisco is in something of a cramped location, so Apple wants to move it three blocks away, to Union Square.
