Apple just sidestepped a $9.2 billion tax bill by financing part of a $55 billion stock buyback with debt rather than using its offshore cash. The sneaky trick means the U.S. government is unable to bill the Cupertino company for tax on the deal, which is said to be the “the biggest corporate offering on record,” according to Bloomberg.
In a characteristically terse reports, the ever-spotty DigiTimes is backing up recent reports that Apple is readying a plastic 4-inch iPhone with a colorful casing… but also claiming, bizarrely, that Apple doesn’t have much faith that such an iPhone would sell.
Romanian Apple fan Andrei was a straight-A student and promising C++ programmer whose 21-year life was tragically cut short before he could fulfill his dream of working for Cupertino, and possibly, if he was good enough, becoming Steve Jobs.
His passion for Apple was so much that when he died, his parents erected a tombstone with his honor, featuring the Apple logo on it. The message on the stone from his parents reads: “Our son, our hope, you are with us in every moment, and we are with you every moment. You are the champion!”
Source: Cancan.ro
Thanks: Victor!
Apparently, there is a magnet somewhere inside the back panel of the iPhone 5. How do I know? Because these cool new lenses from Carson use it to stick themselves to the back of the phone. The result is something like a small, less-bulbous Olloclip, only for close-up photography.
You already have a connected scale for tweeting your weight. You might also have a baby scale to do the same, (only for the baby). Now you can get a smart scale for dinner. Not to eat for your dinner–to weigh your dinner. Or breakfast. You know what I mean.
The Smart Food Scale is a Kickstarter project and comes from Chef Sleeve, the folks behind the Chef Sleeve, the ultimate wipe-clean iPad prophylactic.
There’s certainly no lack of great ways to share photos from your iPad: Photo Stream, iPhoto Journals, Dropbox, Everpix, Flickr and on and on. Despite this wealth of options, I’m going to add to your confusion. Fotopedia’s News Reporter for iPad is a new app that lets you turn your photos into gorgeous magazine-style news reports and publish them to Fotopedia’s site. It’s pretty great.
Remember Sparrow? Of course you do – it was the best e-mail app for the iPhone, and the only app for Gmail that didn’t suck. Then Google bought it and killed it before the team could release its iPad version.
Well fret not, dear Gmail-using iPad user – we have good news. Evomail is a new thing which exists, and it’s kind of like Sparrow for the iPad.
Google brought its intelligent Google Now service to iOS earlier this week with an update to the Google Search app, and for many, the feature works very well. For a lot of others, however, Google Now appears to be causing a significantly negative impact on battery life — as we reported on Wednesday.
Google has since responded to these reports, calling them “incorrect” and insisting that Google Now does not have a battery drain issue.
OpenStreetMap is a project that makes and distributes free map data for the world, letting anyone use the data for free, without any legal or technical restrictions.
Startup skobbler uses this global mapping data to create its own set of location-aware mobile apps, like ForeverMap 2, an app that has been on Android for a while now, and which is now available on the App Store for your iOS device.
Apple has started a new contest to promote the supremacy of the App Store. Apple is giving away a $10,000 iTunes giftcard to whomever downloads the 50 billionth app from the App Store.
Apple had a similar contest last year for the 25th billion app downloaded from the App Store. Apple’s also going to give out 50 iTunes giftcards worth $500 each to the next 50 people would download apps right after the 50 billionth.
We’ve talked before about all of the Braun products that have inspired Apple’s designs. Perhaps the best known is the Braun ET66 pocket calculator, first released in 1987 replacing the earlier ET22 model which inspired iOS’s own calculator app and has become a Dieter Rams design classic.
Outside of inside your iPhone, it’s hard to find a working ET66 these days, which is why it’s so great that Braun intends on re-releasing the original model later this year as an official replica. No word on price or exact availibility yet, but I know I’ll be getting one. Won’t you?
Source: Acquire
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.