News - page 1580

Without a doubt, my favorite Mountain Lion feature is AirPlay Mirroring, which allows me to easily mirror whatever is happening on my Mac to my Apple TV. My girlfriend and I use it pretty much all the time to watch movies at night — I digitized our vast DVD collection long ago to save space. It’s truly indispensible to me.

Although I love AirPlay Mirroring, the feature still has two main issues. First of all, AirPlay Mirroring doesn’t work at all on Macs released before 2011, meaning that my 2009-era 27-inch iMac can’t easily stream anything off of its 3.25 TB (rolled-at-home) Fusion Drive. There are apps like AirParrot that get around that limitation, but I’ve always found them to be a little bit strange and laggy, doing weird things like letterboxing my iMac’s display on all sides.

Even if you have a Mac that is newer than 2011, though, there’s one major limitation of AirPlay Mirroring: if you’re streaming a movie to your Apple TV using AirPlay Mirroring, you can’t actually do anything else with your Mac while the movie is playing. If you switch away from the video player to check your email or your Twitter account, it’s all mirrored on the screen.

What I have always wanted is this: the ability to easily stream a movie to my Apple TV from any Mac in my house, while allowing me to still use my Mac without disrupting the viewing experience.

Today, I discovered a gem of an app that lets me do all of this. It’s called Beamer and it frickin’ rocks.

Here’s a fantastic blast from the past. Back in the early 80s, there was a show called Computer Chronicles that was sort of a televised proto-podcast about the world of personal computing. In this episode from back in 1985, the Computer Chronicles put the vintage Apple Macintosh — released just a year before — through its paces, including a talk with Larry Tesler, a legendary engineer who was part of the Xerox PARC team, Palo Alto’s famous R&D center that gave Steve Jobs the idea for the Macintosh GUI and the venerable computer mouse.

Sadly, we can’t get the video to embed, so if this piques your interest and for more information on the show, be sure to check out this article on Wired for the whole thing. It’s a great way to wile away the morning on this Good Friday.

Source: Wired

We’ve openly speculated that the Evasi0n jailbreak might be the last public jailbreak now that Apple has closed the security holes that makes evasi0n work, but maybe we spoke too soon: well-known jailbreaker posixninjasays he’s collected enough new exploits in iOS 6.1.3 to patch together another jailbreak.

Apple can’t catch a break in China lately. The Chinese state run press has been targeting Apple in a series of increasingly vicious attack pieces, while Apple simultaneously defends itself in court against allegations of patent violation. Now, China’s oldest animation studio is accusing Apple of stealing their movies and selling them on the iTunes store, without paying a cent.

The ugly tan leather and stitching is still there, but Apple has a new feature for its Find My Friends app that users will find pretty useful. Apple just updated Find My Friends so that users can setup up geofences and receive a notification once a friend leaves a designated area.

Last week Apple launched its new ‘Why You’ll Love iPhone’ webpage that many viewed as a defensive effort to combat the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S 4. Today, Apple unleashed a similar website, only for the iPad.

The “Why You’ll Love iPad” webpage on Apple.com gives potential customers a number of reasons why the iPad and iPad mini are the best tablets on the market, including it’s apps, precision design, brilliant display, and battery.

Looks like even Steve Wozniak wants Apple to release a Siri API to third-party developers, and he has a pretty good idea how it would work: a lot like AppleScript, basically. For example, to do something in Foursquare, you’d launch Siri, say “Foursquare” and then anything you said after that would be parsed through the Foursquare app. Sounds good to me… maybe with iOS 7?

Hot on the heels of word that Apple was launching a new campaign to try to woo video professionals back into the embrace of Final Cut Pro, Apple has released Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.8, adding new features and shoring up some weaknesses.

A new report suggests that the next iPad mini will be getting a new touch panel supplier, and guess what? It’s not Samsung.

Here’s a little something that might get you formatted-text nerds excited: Rich Notes, yet another new text-editing app, lets you write on the iPad in rich text. That is, you can italicize and embolden your words right there on the page. Yes, this works with some other apps, but Rich Notes lets you use keyboard shortcuts to do it. If you have an external keyboard hooked up, CMD-B and CMD-I will do just what they do in every desktop app.

Rich notes comes from the developer DenVog, who also makes the excellent Index Card app for iPhone and iPad. It’s due to launch on February 20th. Let’s take a look:

While Apple’s Maps has certainly come a long way since its release last year, there’s still a lot of improving that needs to be done. The good news is that Apple is working to improve the accuracy of its mapping, and the company is hiring “Ground Truth” managers to help improve the “quality” of Maps in different regions around the world.

A “confidential presentation” that outlines the upcoming product plans for a manufacturer based in Shenzhen, China, suggests the iPhone 5S could launch in June this year. Most rumors have suggested the device wouldn’t arrive until this fall, around 12 months after the iPhone 5, but an accessory manufacturer with direct links to Foxconn is confident it’ll be here much earlier.

Earlier this week, T-Mobile announced that it will finally begin selling Apple’s iPhone next month, almost six years after the device first made its debut in the U.S. When you buy an iPhone 5 on T-Mobile, it will come with support for AWS bands, so that it can be used on the carrier’s LTE network.

Existing iPhone 5 handsets already in circulation don’t have this, but it can be enabled on the AT&T and unlocked models. And if your iPhone 5 is jailbroken, you can enable it yourself. Here’s how.

Do you use an Eye-Fi or other wireless card to send pictures from your camera to your iPhone or iPad? Or maybe you have one of those fancy cameras with built-in wifi? Well, be careful: If the card’s network isn’t locked down, then it’s as vulnerable to hacking as an unsecured home network. And depending on your setup, attackers could gain access to your camera and its photos, and even seize control of the camera’s functions.

It has been two years since Apple debuted the completely redesigned Final Cut Pro X in the Mac App Store for only $300. Final Cut Pro X was a simplified, barebones version of the $700 workhorse that came before it, and Apple managed to lose the faith of many media professionals in one fell swoop. Although Apple has continued to add big features to the new Final Cut over the years, many pro users have abandoned it for other alternatives.

Apple is beginning a new Final Cut marketing push to win back the hearts of professionals, according to a new report.

Apple has reportedly cut its iPad mini orders for the second quarter of 2013 by as much as 20% in preparation for the next-generation device. Shipments of the current iPad mini could be as low as 10 million units during the quarter, according to “multiple sources who provide various components” for the device.

We’ve been waiting for Samsung to launch a new smartphone with a flexible, wraparound display ever since the Korean company began showing off its new technology at trade shows like CES. But it may need to move a little faster if it wants to be the first to market with this new form factor.

A new Apple patent published today by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office shows the Cupertino company has been also experimenting with wraparound displays for the iPhone, which provide a more rounded form factor not too dissimilar to that of the fourth- and fifth-generation iPod nanos.

Having just discovered that my beloved PadPivot iPad stand also works great with a closed MacBook Air (the 13-inch), you’d have a hard time convincing me to buy another iPad stand, especially one which only has a single angle of view, and which only holds the iPad in horizontal mode.

However, the Sne Stand, fashioned as it is from beautiful bent Baltic Birch plywood, is certainly tempting. Right up until you get to its $90 price tag.

I never used the Ulysses word processor. I tried it a bunch of times, but it always seemed like overkill for someone who just wanted to type words. Textedit was really more my speed.

But Ulysses 3 is just about to launch, and I'm writing this post in an almost-done preview version. And man is it slick. The only problem is how to describe it. Forget everything you knew about text editors and come take a quick look. It really is something completely new.

If you’re not using 1Password on your Mac and iOS devices, you might as well just package up your bank and credit-card details, your passwords, your passport and your ID, and mail the parcel off to Russia or China, clearly marked “FAO: Identity Thieves. ”

If you are using 1Password, then you’ll be pleased to know that the Safari extension just got a great update. Sure, it brings lot of improvements under the hood, but what we’re interested is the new animated form filling.

Reader is one of the most popular RSS clients out there for Apple devices. It’s available on OS X and iOS, and up until now it has mainly been used in conjunction with Google Reader. Now that Google has announced its plans to kill Google Reader in the coming months, many are starting to look to alternative RSS aggregators.

Today the maker of the app Reeder, Silvio Rizzi, announced that Feedbin support will be added soon to the iPhone version. Feedbin is a simple, clean-looking Google Reader replacement with an API that third-party clients can utilize.

We all know that Samsung loves to copy Apple more than anything in the world. It’s embarrassing  And while most of the copying has been limited to hardware, Samsung’s decided to step up its game on the software front, too.

Yesterday Samsung introduced its version of Apple’s iTunes Store, except it’s got a really bad interface and even worse name. They’re calling it “Samsung Content & Services“, and with a little magic pixie dust, Samsung hopes its customers will think it’s as good as the App Store or Google Play.

There are all kinds of little tricks developers can use to try to get their app to gain some recognition in the App Store, but Matt Henderson inadvertently discovered that naming your app ‘Butt Crack’ can reap unfathomable rewards.

No one launches a product like Apple. There are lines, and fanboys, and cheering, and crying. It’s truly amazing. But what if Apple Stores were stocked full of beer instead of gadgets?

Somersby Cider made an excellent ad which parodies Apple’s product launches… only it’s all about beer. They’ve even got docking stations and different storage options for your brew.

Source: YouTube

Apple’s stock hasn’t been doing too well lately. While many analysts think the problem is that Apple hasn’t released any new products in months, Microsoft’s former COO thinks it’s more of a leadership problem.

In a recent article, former Microsoft COO, Bob Herbold claimed the problem with Apple is that it doesn’t have a visionary leader who is paranoid with details, so Apple’s totally going to start sucking like Microsoft pretty soon.