Two more banks in the U.K. have hopped on the Apple Pay bandwagon, just in time for the holiday shopping season — with both TSB and Tesco Bank confirming that they now offer Apple Pay support for their payment cards.
As Apple rolls out Siri beyond the iPhone and into shared devices like the iPad and, most recently, Apple TV, Cupertino’s engineers have been working on a way of letting its voice activation technology pick up individual users, and offer them customized options based on their past preferences.
Published today as the patent “User profiling for voice input processing,” the technology would allow Apple to make better use of Siri (and voice recognition in general) as it moves into new fields like home automation and vehicles.
When you pay for premium streaming services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, you don’t want a trip out of the country to mean you have to leave your favorite shows at home. There are a lot of sneaky ways to get around the regional restrictions, but a simple, hassle-free way is Getflix. It’s a single app that keeps you in touch with your content wherever you go, and right now you can get a lifetime subscription for $39–use coupon code “EARLY10” to get additional 10% off.
We all like to carry our gadgets around with us, but there are definitely times when you’ll want to be ultra portable and just take along, say, your iPad mini on vacation. Or, perhaps you want to get some writing done on the airplane:we all know the seat-back tray is way too small for a full laptop.
This ultra-portable Brydge keyboard is a fantastic match for the iPad mini, letting you be a bit more productive than you would without an actual keyboard. It’s designed to match whichever iPad mini you own, turning the whole thing into an adorably small Macbook-like laptop-style tablet.
This post is brought to you by VMware, maker of AirWatch.
Whatever your organization’s mission, synchronizing all your employees’ mobile devices can power up your operations. However, wrangling together an array of phones, tablets and laptops is very tough. Making sure they’re all caught up and in sync with the same software versions and whatnot — let alone sourcing or (gasp) developing the applications your business will run on them — is a lot for a business of any size to take on.
Californium is an upcoming first-person game inspired by science fiction author Philip K. Dick. It seems to be about a writer who “slips” between different realities as his life falls apart.
It looks amazing, and more than a bit creepy. Check it out:
Foursquare is now contributing “business listings data” to Apple Maps. Since the launch of Maps, Apple vowed to collect data from multiple sources to improve the service over time, and is living up to that promise with this new addition.
My iPhone 6 Plus is a battery hog. I routinely get around 12 hours off of one full charge. I carry around external battery packs to make sure I’m not short when it matters.
I’d do pretty much anything to increase the amount of battery I have left at the end of the day, including the following fairly extreme trick.
Your iPhone can now distinguish between a light tap and a hard press thanks to 3D Touch, but the geniuses at a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff called Qeexo have found a way to one-up the iPhone 6s display with some new software that can determine the exact angle of your finger as you tap.
Qeexo’s researchers created ‘FingerAngle’ by using a new algorithm that estimates the direction your finger is pointing along with the angle as it makes contact. FingerAngle also keeps track of the rotation of your finger while it’s making contact.
The new tech could especially useful on small smartwatch touchscreens where pinching and pulling on the display isn’t really practical. Best of all, it doesn’t require any extra hardware and could implemented on Android and iOS with a software update.
Check out the full demo:
A good iPhone case protects your handset from the blunt force of a fall. Then there’s the case that protects the force of your blunts.
The iHit is a case for the iPhone 6 and 6s with a slide out odor-free compartment that can stash up to five pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes. It is the latest evolution of the iHit case, which started with a case for the iPhone 5 that had a spring-loaded chamber for a single joint.
There’s plenty to learn about coding for iOS’s range of products. From Swift to WatchKit to Objective-C, there’s enough to learn to last a lifetime. Thankfully we’ve found a way to get a lifetime of access to iOS & Xcode Developer Training, which normally goes for almost $8,000, for just $79.
American Express has reportedly confirmed that AmEx users in Canada will be able to use Apple Pay this week, beginning Tuesday, November 17.
FaceTime makes it easier to keep in touch with loved ones, no matter where you are. And that’s apparently true even for seals.
Apple’s just gotten to the end of its long and convoluted eBooks antitrust case, and now Germany’s Federal Cartel Office is reportedly investigating the company’s agreement with Amazon for purchasing audiobooks.
Apple and Amazon are said to have a long-term agreement in place for purchasing audio books from Amazon’s Audible company to distribute via the iTunes store. The terms of the deal haven’t been made clear.
If you feel like it’s a matter of time before the iPad and MacBook become one and the same device, similar to the Microsoft Surface, there’s at least one person in the know who will tell you you’re wrong: Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Despite still technically being an Apple employee, Steve Wozniak isn’t known for voicing the Cupertino official line when asked about recent iDevelopments.
Speaking at a recent conference, hosted by enterprise software firm New Relic, Woz chimed in about his thoughts on the Apple ecosystem, Tim Cook’s belief that the iPad Pro could replace your need for a MacBook, and the Apple Watch — which he’s previously expressed his skepticism of.
It’s not exactly a shock to hear that Aaron Sorkin’s notorious box office flop Steve Jobs had another disastrous weekend at the box office. But exactly how poor a weekend it had may be something of a surprise.
A 4-inch iPhone 6c is rapidly becoming the iPhone equivalent to the Sasquatch — something much discussed, but never actually witnessed.
However, according to China’s IHS Technology Research Director Kevin Wang, we should keep faith because this mythical device is really on the way — and will be with customers by the middle of next year.
We’ve written about it previously, but Apple has finally come out and confirmed that its first retail store in Southeast Asia, located in Singapore, will open soon.
What better reason to stay at home and avoid the holiday throngs than with this pair of early deals on lessons in data analytics? These lessons cover Google Analytics and Excel, and both are going for more than 90% off — it doesn’t take a great grip on numbers to know that’s a good deal.
The weekend may be halfway over, but you know what isn’t? The imagination of app developers.
This week’s collection of awesome apps encompasses everything from new web browsers for your iOS device, to a great new music app, to two spectacular games. Check below for our picks of the most noteworthy downloadables of the past seven days.
You won’t regret it for a second!
iPad Pro Diary, Day 2: I have a shameful confession to make. Even though I’ve been using an iPad and iPhone for years, I haven’t really been using them.
I do a few things that haven’t changed for donkeys. I read on the iPad all the time and send the odd email. I play songs on Sonos. I played Kingdom Rush a few times. I watched a Netflix video. That’s about it.
My iPhone I use more, but nothing heavy duty. Messaging, email, photos and maps. The odd phone call.
But now that I’m forcing myself to use the iPad Pro for work — to see if it really is a PC replacement — I’m discovering something unesxpected: That the iOS ecosytem is far deeper, more productive, and better integrated than I knew.
Not only is work easier on the iPad these days, it’s a lot more fun.
Rumor has it that Apple Watch will get an update next year. There is already plenty of speculation about what cool new features Cupertino will add.
Personally, I’m hoping that the new watch will focus on fitness, so I’ve created a mockup concept to show what I’d like to see in the next generation of Apple Watch. I call it the Apple Watch GPS, Nike edition.
This week: can the new iPad Pro really replace your Mac? Apple seems to think so, but we’ve got a Pro in-hand and we’re not so sure. Plus: Apple may soon offer us all a simple way to pay each other; and stick around for another classic El Kahney rant—zombie edition—on an all new Stuff We’re Into.
Our thanks to Harry’s for supporting this episode. Harry’s super-sharp, German-made razors ship free right to your door and for way less than the drugstore razors. Learn more at Harrys.com and save $5 off your first order with code CultCast.
If you’ve had an iPad for at least a couple of years now, you’ve probably noticed one of the major ergonomic issues with it: there’s no perfect way to hold it. You can hold your iPad to use it which always feels just slightly awkward, place it on a table which hunches you over and strains the back of your neck, or put it on your lap and fold your legs up which just feels ridiculous. A Kickstarter project called the Tstand aims to solve this problem.
The Tstand is a new, adjustable tablet stand that can dramatically decrease muscle tension when you’re trying to do something as simple as watch a show on Netflix. The stand has a foldable, clamshell design that can match any viewing angle you need.