News - page 1565

Foxconn is notorious for its tough working conditions and labor practices, but the company has started relaxing on some of its strict factory rules after two recent suicides occurred at its Zhengzhou factory last month.

Starting now, Foxconn has decided it will stop forcing workers from fraternizing with one another during work hours. Foxconn’s factories have used a “mute mode” policy with workers that prohibits any conversation that is not relevant to their jobs while in the workshop, but the iPhone-maker has decided it’s probably good for workers’ health to be able to talk to each other.

There are so many pictures of clouds, coffee, sunsets and trees on Instagram, that sometimes it can be hard as hell to find pictures of things you actually care about, like family and friends. Instagram is rolling out a new photo tagging feature today that will help make finding people way easier – which might be a good or bad thing.

The new feature, called Photos of You, allows users to tag friends who are in the photo. A new Photos of You section now graces the your profile, where you can find all the Instagram photo’s you’ve been tagged in. Just like on Facebook, if you don’t want to be tagged in a certain picture, you can decided to remove it.

Here’s a video Instagram released to promote Photos of You:

Blockbuster has been teetering on the edge of oblivion ever since its bankruptcy filing in 2010, but after being bought by Dish Network in 2011, the company has begun a push to get back into the movie businesses.

Blockbuster relaunched its streaming video service, Blockbuster On Demand, last year, and the company is finally bringing it to iOS today. Users of the new app can stream movies to their iPhone or iPad. Unlike Netflix’s all-you-can-stream model, Blockbuster charges a rental fee per video watched, that runs between $2.99 and $4.99 per movie. Blockbuster’s movie catalogue offers thousands of hit movies and the app now supports HD.

Here’s the full description:

Apple has just released a surprise iOS 6.1.4 update! What’s new? What incredible new features and bug fixes can we portend?

Nothing, pretty much. The sole change in the log is “updated audio profile for speakerphone” with no other enhancesments or bug fixes listed.

A month ago or so, it was said that the iOS 6.1.4 patch would be pretty much dictated by the lawyers, but it looks like Apple has somehow avoided the change to the “Always On” VPN setting that was requred in the aftermath of its patent lawsuit with VirnetX.

The iOS 6.1.4 release seems to only be for the CDMA and GSM versions of the iPhone 5, at least right now. Let us know if you see anything new.

When you buy a 16GB iPhone, iOS 6 takes up roughly 1GB of space on the device, leaving about 15GB or so to spare. Buy a 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4, on the other hand, and you get just 8.49GB!

Why? Samsung says all the bloat is because of the nonsense, half-baked “software features” they keep on baking in.

Evernote’s Penultimate app for iPad has today been updated with a number of new notebook features and new sync options. It also adds the ability to sign out of your Evernote account, and two new features for Evernote Premium subscribers.

A lot has been said and rumored lately about whether or not Intel would ever start making ARM-based chips. Current Intel CEO Paul Otellini was against it, but Otellini is stepping down this month, so ultimately the question was: “What would Intel’s next CEO think about making some ARM chips for partners like Apple?”

Ultimately, how the next CEO of Intel would feel about that prospect came down to whether or not he was promoted from within Intel (as all of Intel’s CEOs ever have been) or if he came from outside the company. What made the question of who Intel’s next CEO would be so interesting is that Intel’s board of directors was, for the first time ever, openly talking about looking outside of the company. Intel could have gained a much different perspective.

But it hasn’t.

Up until now, if you wanted a new 21.5-inch 2012 iMac from Apple, you had pretty dim prospects when it came to storage: your only options were a a stinky 1TB 5400RPM hard drive, or spending an additional $250 on a 1TB Fusion Drive. There were no options for a pure flash storage iMac, and on the 27-inch iMac side, things weren’t much better: the only thing you could opt for in a build-to-order iMac was a $900 768GB SSD.

That’s all changed for the better now, though. Apple has quietly updated build-to-order options across its iMac line to allow you to replace your new iMac’s 1TB hard drive with a 256GB or 512GB SSD for $300 and $600, accordingly. That’s actually pretty expensive for an SSD — which cost about $0.66 per GB on Amazon right now — but given what a royal pain-in-the-neck performing any surgery on Apple’s glued shut new iMacs is, it’s your only real option if you want a flash drive in your iMac.

Source: Apple.com

Australian airline Qantas has always been quick to embrace new technology. Back in October 2010, it became one of the first airlines to offer iPads as in-flight entertainment systems, and one of the first to embrace Passbook last November.

Today the company launched a new iPhone app that allows users to search and book flights, find accommodation  and store digital boarding passes in Passbook.

Angry Birds Friends, the latest bird slinger from Rovio, has today landed on iOS. It’s a little different from the other titles in the series, because this one’s all about social gaming, rather than playing alone. The game connects to Facebook, than allows you to challenge your buddies to weekly tournaments, and brag about your highest scores.

Yahoo! launched its new Weather app for iPhone a few weeks ago, and it’s quite possibly one of the prettiest weather apps you’ll find in the App Store. It’s received a ton of praise for its design, which combines gorgeous Flickr photos with clean, minimalist graphics.

If you instantly made it your new weather app — just like we did — then you’ll be pleased to know you can know make it your default weather app on iPhone with a new jailbreak tweak called “YahooWeatherisBetter.”

https://youtu.be/qKQAivS0xsE

Former Apple Retail Chief Ron Johnson’s time at JC Penney was not a good one for the company. Johnson tried to revamp the retailer’s image from a clearing house for cheap junk sold at discounted prices during an endless spree of “sales” and “coupons” into a refined boutique, a store-within-a-store retail concept similar to the Apple Store.

The result? A $12.99 billion year-over-year decline in revenue that got Johnson fired as CEO after his first year on the job. And if that’s not bad enough, JC Penney is now adding insult to injury by releasing a commercial apologizing for the changes he made.

It’s no secret that new MacBooks are coming at WWDC in June, but they’ll just be spec bumps, featuring a small ~8% performance boost thanks to Intel’s new Haswell processors, and a gain to battery efficiency. Nothing to get excited about, right?

Actually, no. Haswell’s hiding one super beefy update in its silicon: Iris, Intel’s super-charged integrated graphics that will boost Haswell’s polygon by 200% compared to the last generation… not to mention make the MacBook Air’s graphics beefy enough to support a Retina Display.

Ever wish that you could change the font size in your iPad web browser? Well, with NaviDys you totally can. You can also switch up the font, and adjust letter spacing and line spacing. What is this browser? A type nerd’s dream? Well, maybe, but really it’s designed to make things easier for the visually impaired.

The second-most-common use for my iPhone’s camera is
scanning. I snap pages from recipe books, business cards from, well, from the kind of people who still carry business cards, and hand-written notes from index cards. Which means that my Camera Roll is full of pictures of slightly skewed documents with my pink thumb peeking in at the bottom corner.

Standscan will stop this.

UK low-cost airline Easyjet – referred to by some Brits as "sleazyjet" – has brought Passbook support to its mobile app. Now you can not only shop for flights with the app, you can check in and have the boarding pass sent to your iPhone’s Passbook app.

You know those cool mini DNG previews that let you take edit your RAW photos even when your don’t have the drive containing your photos connected to your MacBook Air? That tech could soon lead to Lightroom on your iPad. On Scott Kelby’s show The Grid, Adobe’s Lightroom boss showed off a prototype of the app.

If you’re not already using Acorn for Mac OS X, now might be the time to give this Photoshop alternative a look. The newest version, Acorn 4, just hit developer Flying Meat’s web page, coming in at an affordable thirty bucks and a host of improvements, tweaks, and additional features.

There was a study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) last week which concluded that voice-to-text apps, like Siri, offer no benefit over standard texting. In fact, they say, reaction time nearly doubled when using these types of apps.

Adam Cheyer, one of the scientists that helped create Siri, however, begs to differ.

The Apple Pop-Up Museum showcases the history of Apple from its inception to today. The exhibit is run by Lonnie Mimms, a tech junkie who has been collecting every bit of Apple gear he can get his hands on for decades.

The museum opened last month, and if you’re in the Atlanta, Georgia area on May 18th or June 8th, Mimms will be opening the doors again.

Hackers want your web logins, especially ones that have sensitive banking info, like your Apple ID. A fresh round of phishing attacks that ask for Apple IDs and passwords has surfaced.

“Phishers appear to have concentrated their fire on a relatively new target: Apple IDs,” according to Trend Micro. “In recent days, we’ve seen a spike in phishing sites that try to steal Apple IDs.”

Twitter’s default app for iPhone isn’t necessarily our favorite app for tweeting, but it appears Twitter is starting to get more serious about edging out its competition.

A new update for the Twitter app for iOS was just released today with a new location-based Trends feature. The update also includes the ability to invite friends to join Twitter, better playback on Vine videos, replies to retweets now have more information, and there’s some bug fixes too.

Here are the full release notes:

Jony Ive has been working hard on revamping iOS 7 with a “flatter,” less skeuomorphic design, and Apple is trying to get everything together in time for WWDC in June. iOS 7 is rumored to be a pretty big departure from past versions due to Ive’s involvement. Many of former iOS chief Scott Forstall’s design choices have reportedly been undone by Ive, who prefers a more minimalist aesthetic than Game Center’s green felt.

We haven’t seen OS X 10.9 yet because Apple has been pulling engineers off the project to finish iOS 7 in time for this summer, according to multiple reports. But don’t fret, iOS 7 should still “should ship on time” later this year.

The iPad is one of the most magical devices ever created. It can store billions of books, photos, songs, and movies. It can entertain you with games, and help you boost your productivity with thousands of apps. It also doubles as a great head replacement.

Last week we put out the call to see what it would look like if Cult of Mac’s readers replaced their heads with iPads. The results were absolutely incredible. Some of you guys went with the funny route, while others showed off their serious photography skills. We’re giving five winners a free copy of FX Photo Studio Pro, but in our eyes they’re all winners.

Here are the 9 best people with iPads for heads:

Want to know why Steve Ballmer wakes up in a sweat at night, screaming at the shadows and clutching his hogshead-sized heart? Look at this chart of year-over-year growth rates of Windows PCs since the iPad came out, put together by the ever nuanced Horace Dediu at Asymco. When the iPad debuted, it immediately killed the PC industry as we know it.

In fact, as Dediu makes clear later in his analysis, Microsoft’s doing so poorly in the PC market right now that even though the Surface was a flop, it’s still accounting for a third of all Windows revenues. Absolutely mind boggling.

Source: Asymco