Apple may be struggling to finalize deals with record labels ahead of its Beats Music rebranding this summer, but that’s not stopping the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from scrutinizing it for potential antitrust violations, according to a new report.
The reason? Despite currently experiencing an 8 percent drop in its iTunes popularity, Apple’s history as the largest seller of music downloads means it could theoretically abuse its position to put rival companies on the back-foot.
In her songs, Taylor Swift always seems to have the perfect sassy, finger-snapping comeback — and now you can too, courtesy of the new TayText custom keyboard for iOS. Yes, really!
We guess SwiftKey was already taken as a name.
Ron Johnson, a.k.a. the former Apple retail guru who played a key role in launching the Apple Store, has officially launched his new startup.
Called Enjoy Technology, Johnson’s website sells dozens of high-end tech gadgets, including smartphones, laptops, speakers, tablets, and drones — only with the added twist that customers get free home setup from an expert at no extra cost.
Apple Watch has a known issue where it doesn’t exactly play nice with tattoos. For some wearers with dark wrist tattoos the device can’t detect if you have a pulse, but according to Conan O’Brien, it’s not really glitch if Apple can sell you a fix.
So far Apple’s only advice seems to be, “just don’t get wrist tattoos,” but the late-night TV show host has come up with his own hilarious way to fix the TattooGate problem.
Let us introduce you to the Apple Watch Hand:
The next big feature for the iPhone might involve a lot of spitting. Apple is planning to launch new Research Kit studies at WWDC in June that will focus on DNA studies, according to a new report, claiming Apple is collaborating with researchers in the U.S. to create two new apps.
The new apps will be based on ResearchKit, Apple’s software platform that helps scientists and hospitals run medical studies on the iPhone. If successful, the new studies could give many iPhone users their first look at their genetic information by sending a ‘spit-kit’ to an Apple-approved laboratory.
The high-tech “magic wand”-style controller rumored to ship with the refreshed Apple TV this summer may be the culmination of close to a decade’s R&D on the part of Apple.
Is this the “simplest user interface you could imagine” that Steve Jobs told Walter Isaacson about when he claimed he had “finally cracked” the way to build a perfect TV?
If so, we’ve combed through the patents to reveal how it might work.
After confirming that its terminals aren’t currently working with Apple Pay, Home Depot has said it plans to fully support Apple’s mobile payments service after its systems have been upgraded.
Playing music on the Apple Watch is a lovely thing. You can control your iPhone’s Music app using the Apple Watch Music app, choosing playlists and adjusting volume on the fly.
You can even start apps like Spotify or Rdio on your iPhone, then use the Music Glance on your Apple Watch to forward, reverse, pause or play music from these streaming services.
Did you know, however, that you can also send music from your Apple Watch to your Apple TV or any AirPlay-enabled speaker?
Here’s how.
Stealing Angela Ahrendts away from Burberry didn’t come cheap for Apple. The new VP of retail operations quickly became one of the top paid execs at Apple in 2014, and according to a new report, the former Burberry CEO has already become the highest paid woman in the U.S., beating out Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer.
Apple is planning to unveil its big redesign and rebranding of Beats Music this summer at WWDC, but according to a new report citing industry insiders, Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue are having a hard time finalizing deals with major labels.
Emoji have gone from cute little pictograms only teens use, to a near-universal method of expression for all languages in about four years. Instagram has been tracking the use of emoji in posts and noticed an explosion of emoji after Apple added the keyboard to iOS in October 2011.
Today, nearly 60% of all Instagram posts in Finland use emoji, while users in countries like France, U.K., Russia, Italy and U.S.A. include emoji in 40% – 50% of posts. Using a tool called word2vec that reads through text and predicts the context around a given emoji, Instagram’s engineers have combed through millions of posts to decipher the true meaning of emoji.
Here are the most popular emoji and their definitions:
If you’re like us, you’ve been playing the crap out of the amazingly addictive online arena game, Vainglory, since it came out for the iPad and iPhone, ganking enemies from the safety of the bushes, releasing the Kraken, and pushing down the lane to smash the opposing team’s base crystal to win the game.
While the development team at Super Evil Megacorp has released updates in the past, they’ve just dropped the most major update yet: the introduction of a character skin system to customize the look of your heroes as they dash across the map, wreaking havoc and crushing the enemy team.
There are six new heroes with two tiers of customization out in the update today, with a ton more to come.
Here’s how it’s going to work.
An outcry from customers who found that Home Depot no longer accepts Apple Pay resulted from an upgrade to the hardware chain’s in-store payment systems.
Stephen Holmes, Home Depot’s director of corporate communications, told Cult of Mac the problem is not specific to Apple Pay. This means that nobody, including Google Wallet users, can make electronic payments right now because the company is working on its NFC terminals.
“We don’t have the capability to accept [Apple Pay] online, and our NFC is currently inactive as we upgrade our systems,” he said.
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The redesigned Apple TV and its accompanying streaming service are still nowhere to be seen, but Apple beefed up its channel offerings for its little black box today, adding new icons for USA Now and CBS Sports.
The new Apple TV’s channels offer viewers access to on-demand sports, TV shows, and movies to customers in the United States, and Apple’s also added Shomi and Crave TV for users in Canada. Both new channels are available as an over-the-air update and should be showing up on users’ boxes today.
Here’s a look at what you can watch:
If you need more evidence that the luxury Swiss watchmakers are as truly screwed as Jony Ive predicted, look no further than IWC’s laughable answer for keeping up with the Apple Watch.
The luxury watch company is adding a smart sensor called IWC Connect to the strap of its Big Pilot watch, a favorite of horologist collectors including John Mayer. Details on what the fitness sensor can actually do haven’t been revealed, but IWC created a ridiculously dramatic teaser trailer for the new strap that you can watch below:
Good news, Pebble Time backers! Your brand new smartwatch has now entered mass production and is on track to begin shipping later this month. To get you even more excited for its arrival, Pebble is offering a sneak peek at more of the wearable’s new features and some details on what’s to come.
One of the most original features of the Apple Watch is the ability to send your heartbeat to a friend or loved one. With only a small fraction of Watches having shipped, however, early adopters are turning to the Internet to try and find other Apple fans willing to test out the new feature.
I can’t quite work out whether this is depressing, or the perfect hook for a 2015 update of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s You’ve Got Mail.
With its small screen and 0.46-inch thickness, the original iPhone from 2007 looks like an antique these days. Put it next to the Apple Watch, however, and it’s remarkable how similar the two devices look in terms of their design language.
At 0.45 inches, the Apple Watch is ever so slightly thinner, but its rounded edges, color and overall aesthetic certainly appear reminiscent of the first-generation Apple handset, don’t you think?
The iPad has had five consecutive quarters of negative shipment growth, and according to Apple’s supply chain, that’s not changing any time soon!
According to a new report coming out of Asia, Apple’s supply chain manufacturers expect iPad shipments to fall another 20 percent on-year in 2015 — and they’re pinning the blame on the increased demand for plus-sized smartphones.
Rick Smolan, creator of the Day in the Life series, has made a career out of turning complicated ideas into groundbreaking photography books. His latest book is more personal — and equally innovative. It’s a collection of photographs he made in 1977 that seemingly come to life with a smartphone app.
Inside Tracks combines Smolan’s photographs of a woman’s trek across the Australian Outback with a smartphone app that, when pointed at one of the pictures, brings the reader to a corresponding scene from a movie about the epic journey.
“It’s the best book I’ve ever done,” said Smolan, a New York Times best-selling author. “It has done amazingly well, especially for it being self-published. The smartphone feature has fascinated people. It’s an inspiring story with cool technology.”
One of the hundreds of great touches I love about Grand Theft Auto V is the way that it uses in-game smartphones as menus for added realism — giving players the opportunity of sending and receiving messages, taking photos, and managing their contacts in a way that feels real-world authentic.
With the arrival of GTA V on PC, some smart iPhone-using modders have taken this as the basis for a nifty Xcode tweak, which allows the user to control the in-game phone via a real iPhone app.
Check out the video below.
One of the biggest questions surrounding the Apple Watch has been what kind of accessories will be allowed to work with the device. Several third-party companies have already started advertising their own bands and cases, but Apple has yet to introduce any kind of formal guidelines.
Until now.
Like its iPhone counterpart, the new “Made for Apple Watch” program outlines how third-party manufacturers can make their own bands. Here are some of the key takeaways:
Apple has been gearing up to launch a redesigned Apple TV to go with its rumored streaming service, and a new report claims the new black box will also include a redesigned TV remote with a trackpad.
16 hours to make, mere seconds to destroy this huge LEGO model of Darth Vader’s Super Star Destroyer from Return of the Jedi.
If there’s anything more symptomatic of our consumer culture — aside from the iPhone and Apple Watch destruction videos out there — it’s this.
On the bright side, these folks over at Wired filmed their wanton destruction at a whopping 1,000 frames per second so you could see every little smashed brick as this plastic masterpiece hits the ground. All to celebrate Star Wars day.
