News - page 743

Apple is developing technology that would combine a cylindrical device and possibly smart clothing to provide blind and deaf people tactile or auditory signals to navigate their environments.

According to a patent application filed by Apple today, the device would map the environment with sensor data and provide feedback. For the blind, the device could sync with an iPhone to provide spoken feedback to the blind. For the deaf, vibrating signals could be delivered to a wearable, such as a shirt or the Apple Watch.

Synth One just launched. It’s a new synth app for the iPad, but it’s also a big deal. Why? Because it is free, open-source, and built by volunteer musicians and programmers. Stay with me here. Synth One isn’t out typical hideous open-source bloatfest of an app. It’s beautifully designed, sounds great, is easy to use, and is above all fun.

The first window air conditioning unit with HomeKit launched this spring, and now GE has followed up with several more that can cool larger areas.

When people think of home automation, they generally think of whole-house systems. But that’s overkill in cooler climes. These single-room window AC units can be controlled by an iPhone app from anywhere.

Dropping your $1000 iPhone X can be a costly and traumatic experience, but a clever student in Germany may have found the perfect solution: built-in airbags.

Philip Frenzel, a student from Aalen University in Germany, invented a new form of smartphone protection called the AD Case. Instead of using actual airbags though, AD Case packs built-in sensors that detect when a phone is dropping and then deploys eight springs that actively dampen the fall.

Prepare to be amazed:

AT&T customers might start noticing that their monthly bills just got a little bit more expensive.

In a move to raise some more cash after spending $85.4 billion to buy Time Warner, AT&T has increased the price of its customer service fees. The increase itself is pretty small, but when applied to AT&T’s entire customer base, it could help the telecommunications carrier bring in an extra $800 million in revenue this year.

The superb Death Road to Canada is about to get even better. A madcap mix of randomly-generated zombie survival RPG, action game, and text-based interactive fiction game, this bonkers title is one of my favorite iOS games out there.

One of the things that makes it so good? The fact that its developers have released a constant stream of updates since its launch in March 2017. Far from simple bug fixes, these updates have given player a slew of new content to put them through their paces. Here’s what the latest “Gizzard” update adds to the formula:

A Paris fashion designer, known for quirky clothing and accessories that catch eyes, uses scrap material to keep prying eyes from using webcams to spy.

Arthur Lhermitte makes webcam covers from leather offcut from his patterns. The tiny dots of leather stick to laptop webcams and smartphone cameras with a micro-suction tape that leaves no residue on the lens.

Some believe Facebook is already using our smartphones to hear our private conversations. That’s not true, but the social network is certainly considering it.

Facebook has applied for a new patent that describes a method of tapping into our microphones to listen to our reactions to TV ads. It’s just as invasive as it sounds.

Apple has confirmed that it plans to block iTunes and App Store payment information changes on old versions of iOS, OS X, and Apple TV Software.

As of June 30, those with really old devices could have trouble making purchases when their existing payment information expires. Apple says the change is to “ensure your financial data is protected when you make purchases.”

Celebrate July Fourth with a juicy burger from TGI Fridays and get 20 percent off your order with Apple Pay.

Simply place your order through the TGI Fridays app for iOS, enter the promo code, and use Apple Pay to complete your purchase. The offer is valid until July 8.

Are you a computer history nerd? Want to hear 32-year-old Steve Jobs ruminating after the future of computing, or Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talk phone phreaking and the birth of the Apple II?

If so, you’ll almost certainly be happy to hear about an amazing new archive of classic computer industry footage which just emerged online. Created in the 1980s by the U.K.’s BBC public broadcasting company, the footage comes from something called The Computer Literacy Project, aimed at inspiring a generation of people to code.

You might soon be able to team up with friends on PlayStation 4 when playing Fortnite on rival consoles.

Sony has finally said that it is exploring the possibilities of a cross-play “solution” that it hopes will make everyone happy. Microsoft and Nintendo are already allowing gamers to play together, regardless of the device they’re using.

Apple is reportedly set to add another OLED display producer for the iPhone, helping Apple reduce its reliance on current OLED manufacturer Samsung.

For extra displays, Apple will turn to South Korean company LG Display, which will initially supply between 2-4 million screens. While this is a small number by Apple’s standards, it will work to ramp up its capacity to produce more in the future.

Apple still hasn’t revealed exactly how it plans to make its original video content available to customers.

However, a new report suggests that Apple may take a page out of Amazon’s playbook by launching a single Amazon Prime-style subscription package, compiling Apple Music, a magazine subscription service, and its original TV shows into one.

Living in America, it’s sometimes easy to forget the FIFA World Cup is going on now in Russia. Soccer isn’t one of the Big Four U.S. sports. Heck, most Americans don’t even call it by the right name.

But the fact that new downloads of the Fox Sports Go app grew 950 percent during the first week of the World Cup shows there are vast numbers of people living in this country watching the matches on their phones or tablets.

The Trump administration is headed for a trade war with China, and there’s danger that Apple will get caught in the middle.

That said, the tariffs on Chinese imports going into effect in July won’t affect the iPhone or iPad. However, these devices could easily be part of a later round, which President Trump promises will be 10x bigger.

Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre have been ordered by a court to pay over $25 million to their former business partner Steven Lamar.

The legal battle between the two parties has been going on since 2014 when Iovine and Dre first sued Lamar for falsely advertising that he was a co-founder of Beats. Now a jury has ruled in favor of Lamar’s claim that he should receive more royalties from the company’s headphone sales.

Artists share a bond with their sketchbooks and the company Longo Case thought the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, tools of the modern artists, needed a little help connecting.

The company launched a case that had the spiral wire binding of an analog sketch paper pad. It has a leather, understated back and front cover for protection, taut elastic loops to secure the pencil and a back with pop-out panels to create a kind of tabletop easel.

There was enough of a love connection with the sketch case for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro that Longo Case has one in the works for the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro.

The legal war between Apple and Samsung is finally over.

After waging war against each other in the courtroom for over seven years, the two sides have finally agreed to a settlement that will end all remaining claims and counterclaims.

Edge-to-edge phone screens are all the rage, so it’s not surprising that people want them in tablets too.  A artist shows what the iPad Pro would look like if the screen bezels were considerably reduced.  

His concept device also includes other improvements, including better cameras, Face ID, and a faster processor.

The next big thing from Samsung is nearly here.

Samsung sent the press invites to its next big launch event today where the company will likely reveal its new Galaxy Note 9 smartphone. The event is set up to give Samsung a jump on Apple’s 2018 iPhone lineup that will likely be unveiled the month after.

Truth: Every wireless musical gadget has to have its publicity photos shot in a park. Never mind that the user/model is wearing headphones, isolated from their idyllic surroundings, and likely struggling to read their iPhone display in the hot sun. The Jammy is no different. It’s a 17-inch-long practice guitar that can not only be taken to the park, but splits in two for carrying on planes.

The advertising regulatory body in the UK ruled that Apple can say that the  iPhone X takes “studio-quality portraits.”

An ad for this smartphone promised “Radically new cameras with Portrait Lighting. Studio-quality portraits. Without the studio.” However, this brought two complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The federal government has awarded Apple a patent for iPhone users to transfer data by bumping together handsets.

If this sounds familiar, it is because bump transfers for both iOS and Android have been possible through apps, most notably an app called Bump that debuted in 2008.

Wisconsin will be the site of a new display factory built by Apple manufacturer Foxconn — but local residents will be paying for it.

According to a new report, Wisconsin residents will be coughing up an extra $1 billion on top of the existing $3 billion package of subsidies to attract Foxconn to the area. This “sweetener” will come out of public funds, and will leave the state “on the hook” for 40 percent of the public bonds which finance local expenses should the project flop.