News - page 1620

Intel and Apple, teaming up to make A-series chips for the iPhone and iPad? That’s what the rumors are saying, with a recent Reuters report going so far as to claim that executives from both companies have actually met to discuss the possibility of the x86 maker pumping out ARM chips custom designed by Apple!

“Intel Once Again Rumored To Be Working On iOS Device Chips With Apple,” read our headline this morning. But would Intel really cash in on its x86 heritage to make ARM chips? And if Apple did switch, would that really be a win for everyone?

The short answer? Yes, Intel would make ARM chips for Apple. But no, it probably wouldn’t be a win for either company. Here’s why.

We use Skype a lot to keep in touch with everyone at Cult of Mac, so we’re always happy to see some solid updates come out for the app.

Earlier today, Skype released version 4.6 of their iOS app, which brings a couple of new features as well as some bug fixes and general improvements. Like some previous versions of Skype though, this one doesn’t work with jailbroken iPhones so not everyone will get to enjoy the glory.

As Apple continues to ramp up development on its new music streaming service, negotiations with record labels haven’t been going well.

Apple’s music streaming service is rumored to be similar to Pandora’s radio service, but rather than settling with the same royalty rate that Pandora enjoys, Apple is trying to lowball record labels into giving them a better deal.

When I woke up this morning, I had a handful of emails waiting for me in my iCloud inbox, and alongside those was a series of delivery error notifications. There was one for every new email I had, and among all the mumbo-jumbo, they all said the same thing: “recipient is not a valid address.”

It’s the error you usually receive when you try to send an email to an address that doesn’t exist, and I know I’m not the only one who’s receiving them; over the course of the morning we’ve had a number of emails from readers who are seeing the same thing, and there are plenty of forum posts detailing the issue all over the web.

So what’s going on with the iCloud mail service?

I shall apologize now for bringing you yet another crowd-funded gadget today, but this is something special. I won’t dilly-dally here: It’s a frikkin’ Star Trek button for talking to Siri.

A new Apple patent application purchased by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office details a new system that may one day allow you to sell or lend on your “used” digital goods, such as iTunes purchases and software you’ve downloaded from the App Store.

Apple details a system that could see used goods sold through their original marketplaces, like those mentioned above, or directly between users.

Marvel Unlimited is a subscription service that offers access to a catalog of 13,000+ comics spanning a period of 70 years. After a newer comic has been in circulation for 6 months, it makes its way to Marvel Unlimited in digital form. The service costs $10 per month or $60 for a yearly subscription.

In the past you could only access Marvel Unlimited through an ugly Flash-based reader on the desktop or a clunky HTML5 app. Now Marvel has released a native iOS app for the subscription service. You can also read previews and browse dozens of full issues for free.

The db on these headphones stands not for douche-bag but for Duobuds. And now you’ll have no excuse not to share your music when somebody asks — unless you’re the d-bag, that is.

Check this out: up on the International Space Station, Colonel Chris Hadfield uses an iPad as a teleprompter when recording transmissions for Earth. It looks like the app he’s using is Teleprompt+ for iPad, a $15 app that lets you film yourself via Facecam while reading your lines from the iPad display.

Via: Reddit

Apple has been using Intel’s desktop processors in the Mac since 2005. The next-gen Haswell processor is expected to come in the next iteration of the iMac.

For years, a reoccurring rumor has been that Intel will eventually provide mobile processors for iOS devices. But Apple has been designing its own ‘A series’ of chips for the iPhone and iPad based on ARM. Would Apple really abandon what it’s doing on ARM for Intel, a chip maker that’s been really struggling on mobile?

Now another report claims that Apple and Intel have recently discussed a mobile partnership.

Wall Street has spent most of the last six months hyperventilating about the future of Apple, chomping at their fingernails and openly wondering if Apple is taking too long to innovate in the post-Jobs era.

Over at the Apple Gazette, Robin Parrish has put together a simple graphic, showing Apple’s historic product pillars. Essentially, if you add it all up, the average time between major product pillars for Apple is three years and ten months.

Have you ever written this in a forum, addressed to a software developer: “I have $50 here which I’ll totally give you if you make this app”? No, of course not, because that would make you a thoughtless individual — we all know that software costs way more than that to develop.

Take NumLock, for example. It’s exactly the kind of app that forum-begging is made for. It turns back on the num-lock that Apple removed from its keyboards for seemingly no reason other than the aesthetic. How much would you promise a developer that you’d “totally pay” for an app to re-enable the number keypad? Well, now you can put that money where your, uh, keyboard is, and pitch in to DenVog’s cheap-as-chips Kickstarter campaign.

Rovio’s original Angry Birds game for iOS has today been updated with 15 new Bad Piggies levels, and is now available for free for the first time ever on both iPhone and iPad. The incredibly popular title was first introduced to the iPhone back in December 2009, and it’s been priced at $0.99 ever since.

But if you’re not one of the many millions who have already downloaded it, now is the perfect time to grab it.

Flexibits’ fantastic calendar app Fantastical has reached v1.1. In numerical terms, this is just the addition of 0.1 to the original 1.0. But in terms of app goodness, it’s much more hugerer.

There’s no shortage of weather apps in the App Store. Every week it seems like a new weather app is enticing us with beautiful graphics and a unique design aesthetic.

While the apps are plentiful, there hasn’t been any mobile-oriented hardware related to checking the weather. It’s an untapped market many haven’t given much thought to. In the age of the iPhone, what value does a traditional thermometer even have?

Robocat has already put out some great iOS weather apps, and now it’s launching a Kickstarter campaign for Thermodo, a physical thermometer which integrates with the iPhone.

Our Killian Bell tossed around words like “terrific” and “impressive” when he reviewed the Nuu MiniKey for the iPhone 4/S two years ago. Now, the little backlit Bluetooth keyboard-case has almost arrived (it drops March 15) for the iPhone 5, with a whole slew of improvements.

Infinite Dreams has come a long way since we first discovered their virtual-pottery app, Let’s Create Pottery HD, at the App Store in 2010. They’ve since created a smash-hit tower defense game, and unveiled the first touchscreen coin-slot arcade console based off an iOS game.

Now, with the help of 3D printing, they’re turning virtual pottery into the real thing.

Social media iOS app, Path, updated today to version 3.0.1, adding some new features to the purported all-in-one personal social network’s iOS app. The update adds private messaging along with photo filters and stickers designed by a small group of indie artists for the app.

The sequel to classic puzzler/adventure game, The 7th Guest, is currently in development for iOS, Mac, Android, and Windows PC, according to Polygon, who spoke with Trilobyte Games’ co-founder, Charlie McHenry, today. The game should feature the atmospheric horror and clever puzzles that the series, which includes The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, is known for. The 7th Guest 3 will be set in the Stauf Mansion, as well, and should be in real-time 3D, instead of that pre-rendered stuff of the past. Whew.

Adding photos and videos to a conversation in the iOS Messages app isn’t as streamlined as it could be. You have to tap the little camera icon, then tap whether you want to take a new photo or select one from your Camera Roll. It’s functional, but not optimal.

Let’s take a look at two jailbreak tweaks that help streamline the process of adding photos to messages.

Did you know that Chipotle had an iPhone app? Well it does, and that app allows you to order from your iPhone and skip the line when you arrive to inhale your burrito goodness. It’s a beautiful idea, but the app itself has not been so beautiful for the past few years. Today Chipotle updated its app with iPhone 5 support, the ability to select brown rice, and so, so much more.

As of January 26th, it is now illegal for you to unlock your smartphone if you want to use it on another network. Carrier unlocking has been legal in the U.S. for years, but in October the Library of Congress ruled that unauthorized unlocking is a crime.

The Obama Administration has already voiced its opinion that citizens should be allowed to unlock their smartphones without risking criminal penalties, and a senator from Oregon just introduced a bill that would making unlocking legal again.

If you’re using Twitter on your iPhone instead of a third-party client like Twitteriffic or Tweetbot, version 5.4 has just rolled off the App Store updates pipeline, bringing better search, better conversation views and more. But it also yanks some features, including the ability to upload from Mobypicture, Vodpod and Posterous.

Last year, Apple launched its Labor and Human Rights page to give some transparency to the human rights controversy’s it’s been having with supply chain workers. Along with numerous explanations on what Apple is doing to make sure its supply chain workers are treated fairly, the company releases the percentage of supplier work-hour compliance every month.

For the first time since Apple started tracking its supplier work-hour compliance metric, they just hit 99% compliance in January 2013.

You know those black balls in the kid’s section of the Apple Store? Yeah, you probably shouldn’t sit on them: underneath the fabric exterior, they are essentially gigantic sponges soaked with the pee of a thousand children with such weak bladder control that they just hose off when they get excited, even in the Apple Store.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a picture of one black ball Apple was getting rid of after a bunch of kids had whizzed all over it. As the former Apple employee and Redditor who posted it says: “Just one of the nasty little “ewwws” lurking in arguable the coolest retail environments around.”

Source: Reddit