The Blokket is just about the most stupid, wrong-headed case I have seen in a while. It certainly looks nice enough, and I’d probably use it based on its cute tool-bag styling alone. But the case also blocks cell signals, letting you “turn off distractions” for a moment. I hope you like dead batteries.
If you a) use a MacBook and b) hate it when you lose the use of your arms and neck than you might like the Roost, a notebook stand that puts your MacBook at the perfect angle and height for working safely, without causing pain and RSI disorders. Oh, and it looks like the bottom of the Eiffel tower, which is cool.
I asked Siri something yesterday, and s/he – as usual – misheard me. Whatever I actually asked, Siri thought I said “Election Tacos,” and as that didn’t really fit in with Siri’s abilities, he did a web search. Only instead of popping me into Safari, the results were shown right on the lock screen. And that’s not all.
Dropbox for iOS just got a great update. No, it still doesn’t have the photo Albums feature found on the web and Android, but it does add some neat new features. Let’s take a look:
During the WWDC 2013 keynote, Apple made sure to note on several occasions, that the new Mac Pro will support multiple 4k displays. As the current Thunderbolt display is due for an update, many have wondered whether Apple will update the Thunderbolt Display to 4k to go along with the new Mac Pro when it comes out in late 2013.
Shortages at third-party retailers can occasionally indicate whether Apple has a new product in the pipeline, so Glenn Künzler at MacTrast researched the current supply of Thunderbolt displays at third party retailers and found that supplies are beginning to dwindle. One retailer even confirmed that Apple is no longer allowing them to order the Thunderbolt displays.
Here’s are the retailers that are out of stock:
One slick feature of Android handsets is the back button. No matter what app you’re in or what screen you’re on, you should be–in theory–able to back out the way you came. It’s tremendously helpful.
With iOS 7 beta, Apple has quietly introduced a gesture that does the same thing, and it seems to work in most apps like Safari, Mail, and Settings. Here’s how to make it work.
G4Games has posted a photo from the Chinese blogging site Weibo which allegedly shows the iPhone 5S front display on an assembly line.
We’ve seen a few pictures of the iPhone 5S front display, but until now, no one has seen these parts actually on an assembly line.
While the pictures are surely a sign Apple is making progress on the manufacturing end of the iPhone 5S, that does not guarantee iPhone 5S launch is coming within the next few weeks. It takes months of lead time to make enough iPhones for a launch, so we have no reason to expect an earlier iPhone launch than the currently rumored timeframe of this Fall.
Source: G4Games
It’s been hard to miss Apple’s new ‘Designed by Apple’ ad campaign that has taken over TV the past few days. Apple isn’t content with just a TV commercial, though, as the company has begun to publish two-page advertisements in newspapers to push the campaign forward.
Today’s edition of the Toronto Star features a two-page Apple ad of a man wearing an iPhone armband while exercising, with the monologue for the ‘Designed by Apple’ commercial printed above. We expect similar ads to pop-up across the U.S. over the next few weeks.
Source: MacGasm
Image: Drake Shipway
iTunes U hasn’t been redesigned to mesh well with iOS 7 just yet, but Apple is still putting out a few feature updates for its educational app.
Apple released a new version of iTunes U in the App Store today that adds pull to refresh, improved language support, bug fixes and more. The new update is available in the App Store for free.
Here are the release notes:
Earlier this month it was discovered that Plex can be added to Apple TV without jailbreaking the device, and now a Russian blog has discovered how to add Russia’s UnliMovie digital TV service to the Apple TV by using the device’s Trailers app.
Popular group messaging service, HipChat, announced today that its Mac app is finally out of beta and ready for primetime. The good news doesn’t stop just there, though, as the HipChat iOS app has been completely redesigned too.
Both HipChat 2.0 for Mac and HipChat 2.0 for iOS are available now for free. HipChat for Mac finally runs natively on the Mac rather than being powered by AIR, and new features include better performance, vertical tabs, Retina support, Notification Center alerts, and more.
Here are the release notes on the iOS app:
iOS hacker Joshua Hill, more commonly known as P0isxninja, has taken to Twitter to announce that “amazing things” are coming to us all soon. The details of Hill’s latest project are still a mystery, so we have no idea what he’s planning to unveil. But he says “think bigger than jailbreak.”
American Airlines has now ditched heavy flight manuals and become the first major commercial carrier to introduce iPads to all of its cockpits in a move that is expected to save more than $1 million in fuel costs every year.
The company first began piloting (get it?) the scheme back in April, when it used Apple’s device alongside traditional paper manuals, which typically weigh around 35 pounds. Now those manuals have been phased out completely in favor of digital versions.
Sony Music Unlimited for iPhone has been updated to offer offline playback and high quality 320 Kbps music streaming. These features were first introduced to the Android version of the app back in January, so it’s nice to finally see them on iOS with the version 1.3 update.
I shall assume that you all make some use of IFTTT, a.k.a. The Glue of the Internet. IFTTT (If This Then That) grabs things from various internet services and sends them to other services. Thus you can have all your Instagram photos sent to Flickr, or get a Boxcar push notification if its going to rain, or, or…
And IFTTT just added a couple of new services to the mix — Feedly, 500px and JetSetMe — plus one huge update to Gmail: support for attachments.
NetNewsWire is the granddaddy of RSS readers, and v4.0 is now ready for you in beta form. It still doesn’t really sync, but it brings the arrow-based navigation from the previous incarnations of NNW that might make it the fastest news reader on your Mac.
There are tons of iPhone-detectable device trackers, widgets that let you find your lost items using an app. But the Tile might just be the first one to get it all right. It will let you find things you lost down the back of the sofa, but it also has some other killer features.
Here’s Fujifilm’s new XM-1, a compact mirror-less body set to go up against the likes of Panasonic’s GF series cameras. It’s a 16MP box which can take all of Fujifilm’s x-System lenses, but which weighs in at just grams, or just shy of 12 ounces.
One of the unsung advantages of the iPhone’s crazy popularity is that you can almost always find a charger for it, whether from the lost property box at a hotel or from the guy at the next desk in your office.
But now that Lightning exists, things are more complicated, and a lot of the old 30-pin cables people were willing to lend out are now useless. So how about carrying your own? That’s the idea behind the Nomad cable, a three-inch stub which attaches to your keychain.
After I started my Mac mini running OS X Mavericks Developer Preview, or beta, today, I visited the Mac App Store to see what was new.
What greeted me there was a host of new software updates, all part of OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 2, as noted by Apple on the Developer page.
As you can see in the screenshot above, there are quite a few of these little updates bundled together.
Here’s a couple neat new features to Messages in iOS 7 Beta 2: you not only can see contact photos for users in Messages.app now, you can also see the time that messages were sent.
We’ve seen a lot of what iOS 7 will look like on the iPhone, but for the past week there has been little info on the iPad version other than this video. The iOS 7 beta for iPad just came out though so we’ve already dug in and started to explore Jony Ive’s vision for the iPad.
Here is what iOS 7 looks like on an iPad:
WWDC 2013 came and went without Apple saying anything about the Voice Memos app that was noticeably absent from the first iOS 7 beta. With the release of the iOS 7 beta 2, Apple revealed a completely redesigned Voice Memos app that comes installed on iOS by default.
The new app ditches the old skeuomorphic look of the microphone in favor of a UI that’s more consistent with the flat, parallax look of the other iOS 7 default apps.
Here’s a GIF of how the new Voice Memos works:
As we predicted, iOS 7 Beta 2 dropped for developers today, but substantially, it’s the first iOS 7 beta to support the iPad 2, Retina iPad and iPad mini.
We’ve already seen official shots of what iOS 7 looks like running on the iPad, as well as shots of iOS 7 running on Xcode’s iPad emulator. Now, though, we’ll get to finally see it running on a real device.
Here are the direct download links:
The iOS 7 beta 2 just drop today – true to our prediction – and is now available to developers. The first iPs and iPad mini betas for iOS 7 were also released this morning. The update can be installed over the air or downloaded directly from the Dev Center
Here are the download links: