News - page 1671

AT&T has been dancing around its FaceTime restrictions for several months now. Before iOS 6 even went public, it was discovered that the carrier would block FaceTime calls over a cellular connection at its own discretion. AT&T later confirmed that users would have to be on one of its new shared data plans.

Public outcry caused AT&T to then backtrack and extend the feature to anyone with a tiered, traditional data plan and a LTE device. That still didn’t cut it. Now AT&T has updated its policy again, and subscribers with grandfathered unlimited data plans are the only ones still left out in the cold.

Cars are a fairly boring topic for me, but I just sat through this 15-minute documentary by Audi completely enthralled by the amount of dedication the Slots Mods team poured into making an iPad-controlled slot car race track utopia for Audi.

Basically, Audi asked Slot Mods to make an iPad-controlled slot car race track that would give people the experience of driving an Audi from their iPad. You can control the speed of the car from the iPad and a little video camera behind the windshield shows you what it’s like to be the driver. The concept is cool on its own, but the amount of details and obsession poured into the project make it truly enthralling.

The idea of a secret public transportation system that only a small, technocratic elite knows about has something of the Knight Bus about it, but it’s a reality here in San Francisco, where thousands of commuters go to their jobs thirty to fifty miles south in Silicon Valley on ultra-secret bus lines. And yes, Apple — of course! — runs one.

There have been all sorts of crazy rumors about the iPhone 5S. Some have said it might launch in June. It could have NFC built-in with a ‘Super HD’ camera. There might even be multiple iPhone colors for you to choose from.

If you want high-tech security in your iPhone, then maybe this new rumor will get you excited. According to one analyst, the next iPhone will be rocking a built-in fingerprint sensor, and it’s going to debut alongside a cheaper iPhone model.

If you haven’t already got more Final Fantasy than you can handle on iOS, then prepare yourself for Final Fantasy All The Bravest, a new Square Enix title that’s hitting the App Store tomorrow. Already available to those in New Zealand, this is a “touch-action RPG in which you continuously battle enemies to advance through the game’s many stages.” If you’re a Final Fantasy fan, it’s likely to be another worthwhile purchase.

Earlier this week we heard reports that Apple is cutting back on the number of iPhone 5 parts they’ve ordered. Some felt that it was a sure sign that Apple is slipping and that the iPhone isn’t as popular anymore, while others have said everything’s just fine.

A new report claims that the iPhone 5 orders aren’t getting cutback because it’s not popular anymore, but that it was initially too popular for Apple to sustain.

A Dutch court has today ruled that a number of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets do not infringe Apple designs. The court cited a previous decision made by a High Court in the United Kingdom back in October 2012, which ruled Samsung’s devices are “not as cool” because they lacked the “extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design.”

HTC is set to announce a new flagship smartphone at Mobile World Congress next month, and recent rumors have revealed it’s set to be called the HTC M7. We already know a lot about its internal specifications, thank to previous leaks, but we had no idea what the handset would look like — until today.

Now we’re led to believe the device is going to look almost identical to the iPhone 5.

Apple and Amazon are set to enter settlement talks over Amazon’s use of the term “Appstore,” Bloomberg reports. Apple has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the retail giant, claiming that its Android software store could be confused with its own App Store for iOS. A U.S. Magistrate Judge has now ordered the pair to enter talks and try to settle the case ahead of the trial.

Temple Run from Imangi Studios is one of the most successful games on iOS, racking up more than 75 million downloads during 2012 alone. If you’re one of the many players who are still addicted to it after all this time, you’ll be delighted to know that Temple Run 2 is hitting the App Store tonight.

Readdle is well-known for its awesome productivity apps for the iPhone and iPad, so it’s always exciting when the company launches something new. Today sees the release of Documents, a terrific file manager, document editor, and media player for the iPad that promises to be unlike any other app you’ve download.

“You will use it constantly, at home, office, university or on the road, every single day,” Readdle says. And what’s more, Documents is completely free.

If you lose a smartphone and you use a service that can track its location via GPS, ignore it when it tells you that your handset is a Wayne Dobson’s house. For the past two years, this 59-year-old retiree has had cellphone owners showing up at his Las Vegas home demanding their devices back. They turn up at all hours of the day, yelling and threatening to call the police.

But Dobson is no thief, and he doesn’t have their phones. It’s a strange glitch that appears to be affecting devices on Sprint, and its making this man’s life a misery.

LAS VEGAS — The wine list at Gordon Ramsay’s Steak restaurant changes so frequently, the servers need iPads to keep up.

The wait staff at the Englishman’s massively popular restaurant are armed with 20 iPads to take wine orders.

Not only does it save paper, it’s the only way to make sure the ever-changing wine list is accurate.

Not only do the sommeliers love it, the customers do too.

Verizon Wireless has helped a critical infrastructure company based in the United States catch one of its developers paying Chinese workers to do his job so that he could browse the Internet all day. “Bob” outsourced all of his work to China and paid the workers just a fraction of his six-figure salary so that he could spend his time on sites like Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, and eBay.

Verizon has revealed the fascinating story in a new case study.

You may not know Spicy Horse, but you’re sure to have heard of American McGee, its CEO, from his long association with critically acclaimed video games stretching back to Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and (of course) American McGee’s Alice. He subsequently built a game studio in Shanghai called Spicy Horse, which has just been given the greenlight on Steam for its new game, Akaneiro: Demon Hunters.

Amidst rumors of a mysterious smartphone and new iPad apps, Facebook held a big press event today at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The topic was search, or more specifically, social search. It’s a new feature Facebook is calling “Graph Search,” and the beta has started rolling out already. It will be available for all of Facebook’s one billion users soon.

Think of Graph Search as Google with a more personal touch. Facebook is leveraging everything it knows about you to help you connect with people who like what you like. Instead of leaving Facebook.com to get your results, all of your social data and timeline history is mined and collated inside Facebook’s walls. That’s good news for Facebook, and bad news for Google.

The folks behind this already-fully funded Kickstarter project for the ultra-thin AL13 iPhone 5 bumper case want you to help them reach and then spend their stretch goal money. They’re looking for you to hop onto their project page and leave a comment with your vote for your favorite color from the choices of Purple, Fuschia, Blue, White, and Gunmetal. The winning color will go into production if the project reaches $75,000, while the top two favorite colors will go into production if the project reaches a stretch goal of $100,000.

Since the original $20,000 goal has already been more than doubled, these are pretty realistic goals, especially since there’s still 28 days to go in the project timeline.

The recent departure of John Browett has left Apple searching for a new senior executive to lead its retail division. Internally, Apple has had a couple of execs who could fit the bill. One of the top contenders, retail VP Jerry McDougal, has now left Apple for personal reasons.

McDougal’s replacement will be VP of Finance Jim Bean, according to an official statement provided by Apple.

Remember the Braeburn Dock? It was a hefty, beautifully-crafted iPhone 5 dock hewn from a single block of aluminum, and incorporating special channels which boosted the sound from the speaker and to the mic.

Now it has been joined by the Braeburn HD, which is the exact same thing, only made to hold your iPhone in landscape orientation for watching movies. Or docking it on very tall desks which leave almost no clearance between their surface and the ceiling above.

We’re still waiting for iPhone 5 Lightning-compatible battery cases, but at least we’re finally getting some product teasers and (vague) launch dates. The latest comes from everybody’s favorite crapware vendor Brando, and costs a mere $35. And it even closes up like a book.

When I first got my iPhone 5, I was desperate for a dock. As time has passed, and as the iPhone has picked up a few scratches and dents, I find I don’t really care anymore whether the phone is docked or not when it charges.

And I expect I’ll soon be saying the same about my new iPad mini. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need a place to prop it, especially when watching movies. Which is why I’m pretty impressed by Swedish Peter’s Ikea hack, which turns the Ribba picture ledge into a tablet stand.

Alien Skin makes the human-like disguises that the lizard creatures in “V” used to pass themselves off as humans, and… Kidding! Alien Skin makes high-end Photoshop plugins and Mac photo-processing software. It also makes an iPhone app called Alt Photo, which distills the features of its desktop app Exposure into an iPhone-sized package.

And now it is free.

Over the last few years we’ve seen all manner of Apple and iPhone shaped deserts, but this one takes the cake (zing!). It’s the most detailed iPhone cake we’ve ever seen, and it probably owes a lot of its beauty to the magic of fondant. It’s a cake even Jony Ive would be proud of. And the Happy Birthday reminder on the screen adds a perfect flourish.

Source: Facebook

Thanks: Grahame

Brett Terpstra, the hardest working nerd on the internet, has come up with yet another super-useful single-serve utility. It’s called Clip Text File, and it grabs the contents of a plain text file and copies it to your clipboard, all without opening the file.

Even though Apple’s headquartered in Cupertino, they’ve got operations all across the globe, and we don’t mean just retail stores. There have been rumors that Apple is opening up an R&D center in Israel, but according to a new rumor, that’s not the only place they’re considering.

Tim Cook recently talked to the mayor of Beijing, Wang Ashun, about the possibility of Apple opening an R&D center in Beijing.