News - page 1564

The Washington Post has reported that the NSA has created a $20 million spy program called PRISM, that has been allowed to directly access citizens’ private data on Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple servers – the company joined the program in that order as well..

Both Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple have all denied any involvement in the PRISM program, however, the Washington Post’s story alleges that the companies “participate knowingly in PRISM operations.”

PRISM was started in 2007 when Microsoft became the first corporate partner. Apple demonstrated the most resistance to the program and held out for five years before joining in 2012.

Here’s what data PRISM collects, according to the Post:

Yesterday we reported that Joseph Brown, the young developer behind the recent carrier hacks, had found evidence that carriers are throttling iPhone and iPad data speeds without cause.

After investigating into Brown’s report (which has been deleted), AnandTech published its own investigation into the matter that proves Brown’s throttling claims are not true.

In his article, Brian Klug gives on general reason of why the iPhone throttling conspiracy is false:

There are hundreds of apps on the App Store that claim they’ll help you boost your productivity, keep your thoughts organized, and help you finish all of those great side project ideas you have floating around. Some of those apps are genuinely helpful, but famed Apple-blogger John Gruber just released a new note-taking app that challenges them all.

Vesper is a sublime note-taking app for iPhone that just hit the App Store. Its price tag is a bit steeper than most apps, but even at $4.99 it’s a pretty good deal. Designed by John Gruber’s new company, Q Branch, Vesper is a hybrid of notes and list-making features that helps you keep your thoughts organized.

“What’s the difference between a thought, an idea, and something you want to do? I don’t know exactly. That’s why we made Vesper.” – John Gruber

In an effort to boost iPhone unit sales, Apple is planning to roll out a new trade-in iPhone program later this month, according to a new report from Peter Burrows at Bloomberg.

Details on the new iPhone trade-in program are scant right now, but according to the report Apple is teaming up with Brightstar Corp. to run the exchange program. The new trade-in program will only be available at Apple retail stores, and should serve as a big incentive to get customers to upgrade their iPhone 4 and 4s units to an iPhone 5. 

VSCO Cam has already become one of our favorite camera apps on the iPhone thanks to its film emulation effects and clean interface, but a big update for the app is making us fall in love all over again.

Visual Supply Company just released VSCO Cam 2.0 on the App Store and it comes with a huge batch of new features, including new presets, more efficient editing, and separate Focus and Exposure rings that give you more control when shooting pictures.

Best of all, Visual Supply Co. dropped the price on VSCO from $0.99 to free so there’s no reason for you not to give it a whirl. You can pick it up from the App Store now, or dig into the full list of new features after the jump:

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Jason Citron is a veteran of both the console and gaming space, involved with developing Double Fine’s Brutal Legend in 2006, and then releasing one of the first hit iOS games in the early, heady days of the iOS App store, a match-three puzzle game with a twist, Aurora Feint. Soon after, he created OpenFeint, which was the de facto leaderboard and multiplayer matching system for Apple mobile devices long before Game Center.

After OpenFeint was sold to Japanese social-gaming company, GREE, in April of 2011, Jason headed out to engage his passion for video game development once again with a new company, Hammer & Chisel, and a new game, announced today, called Fates Forever, an iPad-only massively online battle arena (MOBA) game.

Citron took some time out of a busy schedule to talk to Cult of Mac about the new game, it’s mechanics and business strategy, and his own take on what iPad games should be.

Mail Pilot, the email client that was born on Kickstarter and first hit iOS back in April, is coming to the Mac. We don’t have a release for it yet, but if you’re itching to get your hands on it, you can sign up for the public beta today. 

Casemakers are known to gamble on upcoming iOS product launches. Every day they can have their product on the shelves closer to launch is a day they have a leg up over their competitors in the hyper-competitive case market.

Case in point, here’s a story about Hard Candy Cases gambled (and lost) $50,000 on iPhone 4S moldings from China to get their cases first-to-market. When the iPhone 4S actually debuted, though, it looked identical to the 4, instead of the radical redesign the case makers expected. Oops.

Now the same case maker is doing the same thing, gambling on the iPad 5 launch. This time, though, Tim Hickman has less to lose.

Logitech has today announced that it is acquiring TT Design Labs, a two-person startup responsible for the TidyTilt cover for iPhone. The deal will make Logitech the owner of TT’s assets, and the accessory giant has already made the TidyTilt available to pre-order.

https://youtu.be/2Azoteu5nzs

I am a snorer. This should not be taken to mean that I make soft, puppy-like growling sounds in the back of my throat as I sleep. In fact, if you happened to hold that puppy up within six inches of my face while I sawed logs, it is likely that all of the flesh, fur and musculature of that baby dog would be vortexed off its skeleton only to become lodged in the yawning chasms of my throat and nostrils. My snore is the sound of the Seventh Seal being opened, or the universe tearing itself asunder. In all probability? You have never heard anything like me.

So imagine my poor girlfriend, who sleeps next to me every night as the bed vibrates, the house shakes and the ceiling buckles with my snoring. As you might well imagine, she’s eager for me to do something about my snoring.

And what do you know? There’s a new app for just that. It’s called Snorelab.

The current Internet scuttlebutt has it that when Tim Cook takes the stage on Monday for the WWDC keynote, he will not only unveil iOS 7, but a new, flatter ‘look’ for the entire mobile operating system spearheaded by Jony Ive. This would bring the look of iOS closer to modern design principles employed by the likes of Google and Microsoft, and finally flush Scott Forstall’s skeuomorphism turd.

Developer Steve King wanted to give people an idea what a redesigned iOS 7 with flatter, less skeuomorphic design elements would really look like, so he mocked up a flatter iOS 7. But what makes King’s mock-up even more existing is it’s all done in HTML, CSS and Javascript (no images!), meaning it’s fully interactive in any browser.

I use a lot of different devices — I’m always switching smartphones — so I store all my photos in Dropbox so that I can get at them no matter which platform I happen to be using. But it’s not always easy to get all the photos I’ve imported into iPhoto into the cloud. At least not yet.

But that’s about to change. In the latest Dropbox for Mac beta, you can finally import your iPhoto library.

Instead of just selling you a new phone, Apple is now doing in-store screen repairs on broken iPhones… and this is the monster machine doing the repairs.

Kindgom Rush has been one of our favorite tower defense games for the past two years, so we’re really excited to hear that Ironhide Game Studio just released the sequel, titled ‘Kingdom Rush Frontiers.’

The new game features all new levels as you defend your lands in the deserts, jungles, and even the underworld. You get some new customizable abilities along with a host of new bad guys and nine legendary heres.

We got the full release notes after the break, but if you’re already eager, you can pick up Kingdom Rush Frontiers in the App Store for $4.99.

Game Features:

The popular photo messaging application, Snapchat, just got a big update. Version 5.0 of the app was released on the App Store today and it comes with a bunch of nice improvements that will help users send messages faster than ever.

The overall design of the app has been cleaned up and streamlined. There’s a new swipe navigation feature that makes it a lot quicker to navigate around the app. Snapchat has also made it easier to find friends on the service, and there’s also new in-app profiles of all your contacts.

Here are the official release notes:

Crafting great looking, professional documents in iWork or Office can be really tricky, even if you spend a ton of time on the computer. To make things easier, the guys Made for Use created some incredible professional templates for both Office and iWork that make it easier for users to look like a Pages-guru.

We’ve grabbed about Made for Use’s iOS Templates app in the past, but now the team is bringing all the greatness to the Mac with Templates for iWork Pro, and Templates for Office Pro. Both packs offer over hundred of templates for their respective suite of apps. And if you specialize in only one app, you can pick up the Templates Pro Pack for PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Keynote, Numbers and Pages individually.

Templates for iWork and Office Pro are two of the easiest ways to make high quality, professional looking documents, without having to take some college course on Office apps.

To celebrate the launch of Templates for iWork Pro and Templates for Office Pro, Made for Use  is giving away 40 FREE CODES to some lucky Cult of Mac readers. Entering the contest only takes a second, but you gotta play to win.

Here’s How To Enter:

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According to Russel Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content at Amazon, publishers involved with the e-book anti-trust federal case told the Seattle-based retailer that unless Amazon agreed to their terms, it would have been barred from releasing e-books on the same day as print on Kindle, the wildly popular e-reader device that Amazon sells.

Grandinetti testified today that this ultimatum to switch to an agency model of publishing, in which the publishers set book pricing, came after the publishing houses made deals with Apple for their then new iBooks e-book service on the iPad.

China is largely known for cheap iPhone knockoffs and fake Apple Stores, and now a Chinese businessman is impersonating Steve Jobs himself. And he isn’t using the late Apple co-founder’s likeness to peddle plastic phone shells on the corner market.

Lei Jun owns Xiaomi, a multi-billion dollar tech company that is commonly referred to as “the Apple of the East” in China. As you can see in the photo above, Lei rocks a black turtleneck and jeans behind an Apple-like presentation at Xiaomi product unveilings. The fact that he’s selling iPhone look-a-likes certainly helps his falsified persona.

Have you tried searching in Messages on the Mac? Well don’t try now unless you want to get really frustrated. Among the app’s other numerous bugs, Messages can tend to suddenly throw a tantrum whenever the search bar is invoked.

Flexibits, makers of popular iPhone calendar app Fantastical, have announced their next app: Chatology, a tool for searching Messages on the Mac.

Every year Apple holds the iTunes Festival, a month of free concerts with some of the biggest names in music. The shows take place at the Roundhouse in London, and this year’s lineup includes artists like Justin Timberlake, Jessie J, Phoenix, Queens of the Stone Age, Jack Johnson, and Thirty Seconds to Mars.

Today the official iTunes Festival 2013 app got updated with Passbook support, allowing attendees to download tickets straight to their iPhones. So how do you get your hands on a ticket to see your favorite artist for free? As you can imagine, your chances of going to the iTunes Festival are slim. And that’s because Apple doesn’t put the show on for normal music fans in the first place.

Depending on the way you ask Siri for the date of Father’s Day this year, she might give you two completely different answers. A redditor discovered that when you ask Siri, ‘Is Father’s Day this weekend?’ the personal assistant erroneously replies that “Father’s Day is on Friday, June 14th,” even though it most definitely is not.

To make matters more embarrassing  Siri answers the questions correctly if you phrase it as “When’s Father’s Day?” On the bright side of things though, you now have an excuse if you forget to buy dad something in time.

Source: Reddit

Update: Brown’s report has proven to be completely false. AnandTech has posted a lengthy explanation as to why Brown’s report is patently false –

“Apple doesn’t limit cellular data throughput on its devices — there’s both no incentive for them to do so, and any traffic management is better off done in the packet core of the respective network operator rather than on devices. Sideloading tweaked carrier bundles isn’t going to magically increase throughput, either.”

Brown’s original report has since been deleted and he has resigned from his post.

Over the last few years, cellphone carriers have become notorious for throttling iPhone users’ data speeds. Most of the time carriers claim they only throttle users when they’re consuming way too much data, but that actually might not be true at all.

Joseph Brown, the guy who made all the iPhone carrier hacks for Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile has thinks he has proof that AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have all worked with Apple to bake a soft throttle into your iPhone via carrier updates, and there’s nothing your can really do about it.

Here is Brown’s evidence from his report:

https://instagram.com/p/Zi-AAmGBqM/

The square cropped photo has never been more popular thanks to Instagram. There are a lot of benefits to being challenged to shoot within the confines of Instagram’s square — plus square photos make for easier browsing — but a lot of times cropping down to a square cuts out a lot of beautiful shot.

Even though Instagram forces users to upload square pictures, there are lots of ways to get around it. Not only can you post oblong pictures at whichever aspect ratio you want, you can also crop images into circles, triangles, and all sorts of other shapes.

Here’s our guide on how to break out of Instagram’s square:

Following word that Apple’s iAd team is being restructured to allow for tighter integration with iOS 7’s new streaming music feature, iRadio, a new report talks just about how the ads on iRadio are going to work, how Apple’s going to make money on iRadio, and how much Apple’s paying the labels to make it happen.

A few weeks after the 11.03 release the brought iTunes a redesigned MiniPlayer comes iTunes 11.04, an incremental bug-fixing update that fixes a problem that can cause iTunes to quit if you switch between wired and wireless syncing, and an issue where the iTunes Store keeps on asking you to login to your account ad infinitim.

You can grab the update through Software Update or the Mac App Store now.