News - page 940

If you’re a decent person (we’ll assume you are since you’re a Cult of Mac reader), you don’t leave your old TV on the sidewalk when it’s outlived its usefulness. The same consideration for your neighbors and the environment should extend to your old Apple TV.

Whether you’re abandoning your old Apple TV to upgrade, replace a busted unit or to give up TV entirely (yeah right), the Cult of Mac buyback program will make sure you get the most money possible. Even better-known companies like Gazelle and Walmart can’t offer as much, and you’ll be making sure your dated or defunct device ends up in the right place.

Apple’s culture of secrecy was responsible for the departure of Chris Lattner, the company’s former head of developer tools and the creator of programming language Swift, claims a new report.

Lattner recently left Apple for Tesla — with friends putting the move down to the ongoing conflict between wanting to create open-source tools and Apple’s tendency to not want to publicly discuss anything.

Apple’s plan to make the modern TV experience all about apps has just gotten a big boost, with Apple upping the size limit of tvOS apps from 200MB to 4GB.

For those keeping track at home, it’s a whopping 20x the original size limit — and means that Apple TV apps can now be as big as the ones developers can submit for iOS.

Apple may find itself at the center of a new antitrust lawsuit after the U.S. appeals court ruled that the App Store’s “walled garden” could be monopolizing the market for iOS apps.

What the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling takes issue with is the fact that iOS apps can only be downloaded from the App Store, and not from elsewhere — thereby adding up to a potential monopoly.

You’ll find tons of hardware in this week’s roundup of best Apple deals. If you’re looking for a MacBook or an iPhone, this is a good time to pick up one on the cheap.

Apple seeded two new beta builds to developers today, bringing a host of bug fixes and improvements to iOS 10.2.1 and macOS 10.12.3.

The new builds come just three days after Apple dropped its first batch of betas for 2017. Registered developers can now download iOS 10.2.1 beta 4 and macOS 10.12.3 beta 4 from Apple’s developer portal to take advantage of all the new features.

Apple’s rumored plans to launch three different-size iPads this spring has fans a bit confused as to why creating a new 10.5-inch model is a good idea. But according to Dan Provost, the co-founder of Studio Neat, it actually wouldn’t be crazy for Apple to change the screen size when you look at the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

The U.S. Department of Transportation revealed that it has established a new advisory committee that will make recommendations in the field of automation.

Apple’s VP of environment and policy, Lisa Jackson, will be one of the committee’s 25 members that will work on some of the most important issues facing transportation, including self-driving cars.

If you thought Black Mirror had the market cornered on stories about the dark side of technology, you’d better think again!

Netflix just released the official trailer for a new movie called iBoy and, as its name implies, there’s a certain tech connection. Check it out below:

The design team behind the original iPhone’s software reunited to celebrate its 10th anniversary this week.

Imran Chaudhri, who still works at Apple, posted the photo above on Instagram. He’s pictured alongside Freddy Anzures, Bas Ording, Marcel Van Os, Steve Lemay and Mike Matas.

Apple may be releasing its biggest iPhone refresh since 2014 this year, but Samsung isn’t taking the news lying down.

Instead, it’s apparently planning to unveil foldable smartphones in the third quarter of 2017, according to sources familiar with its plans.

Move over The Crown and Stranger Things! Apple is planning to enter the original TV shows and movies market, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal claims Apple has been in talks with “veteran producers” over the past few months about buying the rights to existing shows, and has also told them that it has plans to create its own programming — although those efforts are still in the early stages.

Apple has started selling a new FDA-approved blood glucose monitoring kit on its online store, created by the health startup One Drop.

Costing $99.95, the device comprises a Bluetooth-enabled blood glucose meter, 100 test strips, carry case, and a chrome lancing device — which we’re helpfully told was based on a Marc Jacobs lipstick design.

Apple’s revenues generated from the iOS ecosystem will surpass $1 trillion sometime this year, according to one analyst.

By mid-2017, the company is forecast to have sold a whopping 1.2 billion iPhones, while collective sales of all iOS devices will surpass 1.75 billion units.

Former Apple VP Tony Fadell has dispelled the popular rumor that Apple had two rival teams working on different user interfaces for the first prototype iPhone.

Video of two prototype operating system builds for the original iPhone surfaced this week as Apple celebrated the iPhone’s 10th anniversary. One of the UIs proposed adopted the iPod’s click wheel interface and, according to Fadell, it actually worked really well.

There was just one problem: It sucked at making calls.

Next time someone poses for a selfie with their fingers held up in a peace sign, maybe tell them to leave it at a smile.

An ordinary photo of the universal sign of goodwill might be enough for a thief to copy a fingerprint, thanks to the high quality of digital photos these days. And since Touch ID and similar technologies turn fingerprints into keys that unlock our devices and the data we keep in them, that’s cause for concern.

Great photographers often employee great assistants. Ansel Adams hired master darkroom technicians who printed to his exact specifications, and the lush lighting in an Annie Leibovitz portrait is typically achieved by trusted assistants who understand her vision.

Adobe is working to bring photographers of all levels a valued assistant — and the voice of that assistant may sound familiar.

A video produced by Adobe Research shows a man giving voice commands to an iPad to crop a photo and prepare it to post on Facebook. The voice coming from the iPad sounds like Siri as it repeats the photographer’s commands.

Cupertino has been soaked with rain the last few days which has made construction on Apple’s spaceship campus messy work in the latest drone video showing the headquarter’s progress.

Smaller structures are starting to take shape inside the infinite loop, while construction of the solar roof is about 65% complete. The first of hundreds of large trees have finally brought in as landscaping continues on the property. Crews have nearly finished burying the main tunnel to the parking lots which are now starting to be used.

Check out all the details:

The battle between Apple and Tesla to attract top talent revved up to a new level this week after another key employee for the iPhone-maker defected to Elon Musk’s auto company.

Matt Casebolt, who made key contributions to the design of the original MacBook Air, has reportedly left the company to work as an engineer for Tesla.

A couple of ex-Apple engineers released an app that turned the iPad into a drawing tablet and the reviews, especially from artists, were positive. One even said “life-changing” while others saw only a couple of limitations that could easily be worked around.

The creators of Astropad were concerned that there was even one limitation. On Wednesday, it launched what it hopes is a tool with no limits, Astropad Studio, a subscription-based version of the app for professional creatives who use the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil as their go-to tools.

Apple calls iOS “the world’s most advanced mobile operating system,” but it was almost the world’s worst.

Before deciding on the icon-based user interface we know and love today, Apple designed an awful prototype UI that was based on the iPod’s software and controlled with a virtual click-wheel. Check it out in the video below.

Apple says it has no plans to manufacture high-tech servers in the USA, despite a recent report claiming the iPhone-maker applied for permission to do “high-tech manufacturing” at its site in Mesa, Arizona.

The Mesa center was previously the home of Apple’s ex-sapphire supplier that went bankrupt in 2014. Instead of seeking permission to manufacture on the site, Apple clarified that it is actually just applying to renew the original Foreign Trade-Zone status of the location that brings some big tax benefits.

Pokémon fans in China may have to go without hit mobile game Pokémon GO after it was deemed too dangerous for approval.

The government is working to evaluate potential security risks, but it looks like the world’s biggest smartphone gaming market will miss out on one of the world’s biggest smartphone games.

Sorry Android, it seems that iOS got the better gifts this Christmas!

According to the latest Kantar Worldpanel ComTech sales figures, iOS gained market share at Android’s expense in the United States, United Kingdom, France and elsewhere.

In the U.S., this marked the sixth consecutive quarterly decline for Android, while Apple grew 6.4 percent year-on-year.

Apple is beginning to catch up with demand for the LG UltraFine 5K Display, causing shipping times to drop significantly in the U.S.

Earlier this week, new orders for the $974 screen were scheduled to ship in two to four weeks, but as of this morning, that estimate has been cut to just three to five business days.