Ozzy Osbourne has admitted to being influenced by The Beatles growing up — so is it any surprise that his band, Black Sabbath, would follow the Fab Four when it comes to dealing with iTunes?
Tech research firm DisplaySearch has published its forecast predictions for 2014 — and among them is the suggest that the next generation iPhone will feature a dramatically larger display.
Are you the kind of person that likes all of their tech to match up, or else someone that just really loves the iOS lock screen? Either way, you may wish to download a new OS X screensaver, which provides the iOS 7 lock screen experience for Mac users.
A group of 64,000 Silicon Valley workers have won the right to pursue a lawsuit against a number of tech companies — including Apple — accused of an “overarching conspiracy” to keep employee pay low through anti-poaching agreements.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let stand an order by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh that will let the workers sue as a group, and pursue what defendants claim could be more than $9 billion of damages.
Wow, this is a surprise. StoryBuilder is a new browser-based web app from… Amazon. It’s a pretty great corkboard app for screenwriters to plan their screenplays, and because it’s browser based you can use it anywhere, on your Mac, iPad or iPhone.
I love wireless gadgets, but sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth. For instance, I’m forever getting dropped connections on my AirPlay speakers, making them more annoying to use than wired speakers, despite the promised convenience. And wireless earbuds seem like an exercise in frustration. I regularly lose even my white Apple EarPods, so imagine how bad it’d be with two separate (and tiny) buds.
Jabra’s new Rox wireless earbuds at least address the last question. How? By adding a wire.
I’m a great example of why backup iPhone batteries don’t really work. I have a stack of the things in all shapes and sizes, and yet where are they when I need them? At home in a gray felt cat house (don’t ask). I just never remember to take the things with me.
Photojojo’s new Power Boost Keychain aims to change that, putting a smallish battery pack and charing cable on a keychain. Now you’ll never leave the thing at home. Or if you do, you’ll be locked out, and you won’t be able to call a locksmith.
According to Tim Cook there is good reason to feel excited about the possibilities offered by Apple’s deal with China Mobile.
Cook — who is currently in Beijing ahead of the iPhone going on sale on the China Mobile network this Friday — said he is “incredibly optimistic” about Apple’s partnership with the world’s largest mobile carrier.
MakeDoc looks like a good bet for otherwise right-thinking folks who find them selves required to supply a Word DOCX file. Being a smart nerd, you undoubtedly write in Markdown, converting to the required format on output. But DOCX isn;t an output option for most iOS text editors. That’s where makeDoc comes in.
Horizon is a great new iPhone app that shoots horizontal video however you hold your phone. It uses the gyroscope and accelerometers inside the iPhone to work out just how you’re holding it, and grabs a proper, level landscape-format shot for you.
Check out the video demo:
Business owner? Stay at home mom? College student? Everyone needs a scanner these days, whether it’s for daily use or the occasional random legal document, Doxie couldn’t be quicker or easier to use.
If you made a New Year’s resolution to go paperless, Doxie will streamline the process, keep your documents organized, and keep you from going insane. And Cult of Mac Deals has the Doxie Go for a limited time for 25% off – just $149!
When you browse the web with mobile Safari, you’ll come across sites that ask you to create a login, and that usually requires a password.
You can save your passwords in mobile Safari automatically, but there are some sites that request passwords not be saved. There’s a workaround, though, if you feel like you should be able to save whatever passwords you darn well please, and it’s buried in the Settings app.
This is the TabHandle, an absurd-looking appendage that sticks to the back of your iPad and adds a spinnable, posable handle/stand to the mini, Air, iPad Fat or Kindle. And while it does look very odd, one touch of it and you’ll love it.
The big intrigue in the tech world today is why Google bought Nest Labs for $3.2 billion and Apple didn’t.
A lot of the speculation is paranoid: Google wants to track everyone offline as well as online, and Nest’s thermostat and smoke alarms give the Googleplex motion sensors right in peoples’ homes.
But wouldn’t Apple be a more natural fit for the home-automation startup? Nest was co-founded by two former Apple staffers, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers. Fadell was one the fathers of the iPod — a key hardware engineer who led the music player’s development over 17 generations. Rogers was one of Fadell’s top lieutenants.
With great design and easy interfaces, Nest’s combination of hardware and internet software services makes its products very Apple-like. And as home automation is poised to take off (thanks largely to the iPhone and iPad), Apple is surely interested in this potentially huge market.
So why didn’t Apple didn’t pick up the company? Maybe it’s because Jony Ive, Apple’s head designer, was responsible for getting Tony Fadell pushed out of Cupertino.
A lot of us were surprised that Apple didn’t even put up a fight to outbid Google for Nest – co-founded by Tony Fadell aka, the Father of the iPod – and its army of smarthome employees. Not only did Google score Nest’s innovative smart-thermostat and smoke detector in the $3.2 billion deal, but in an age where quality talent is getting harder to come by, the company also scooped up 100 ex-Apple employees in the process.
As if we didn’t have enough fat shaming to go around, there’s a new game on the App Store called Plastic Surgery For Barbara, and it’s a doozy.
The idea here is that Barbara (or Barbie, if you will) is overweight. The developers want kids aged 12+ to play a game in which they can assume that fat is ugly, and that the only way to fix a weight problem is through surgery.
“Barbara likes to eat a lot of burgers and chocolates and once she found out that she looks ugly,” says the App Store description. “She can’t make it up with this situation any additional second. And today plastic surgeon is going to make operation on her body and face in order to return cute Barbara’s look.”
So, she’s fat, which means she’s ugly, and she can’t wait any longer. If she just gets surgery, she’ll be “cute” again. Whew.
Gag.
Legítimo — Productivity — Free
Sometimes, it’s a good idea to get something in writing, like if you and your roommate agree to split utilities in exchange for the right to have pizza and Hawaiian shirts on Fridays. Crucial dealings like those are the sorts of things you bring ink and paper in on. But what if you don’t know how to speak Official-Sounding Legal Document?
Legítimo is here to help. You can use it to draw up loan agreements, leases, sales and purchases, and service contracts and even sign them in the app. And everyone gets a copy via e-mail or text.
Also, help me figure out which category that utilities/Pizza Day deal falls under. No reason.
If you’re used to games taking time to explain what they are and how you play them, then Simian Interface may not be for you.
But you should play it anyway, wuss, because you don’t need that much instruction to understand this one. The game leaves it up to you to figure out what it wants and how to do it, but it’s really not that hard to figure out.
And if you put the time in and go along for the short time it takes to play through it, you’ll get a unique, entirely satisfying experience.
The team behind Evomail, a popular third-party mail client for iOS, today released Evomail+, a new version of its app designed for iOS 7. In addition to a beautiful new design, the new release adds a whole host of new features, including customizable gestures, filtering tools, and Dropbox and Box.net integration.
Oh, and like it’s predecessor, it’s completely free.
Samsung wants all the beautiful people to use its phones (and, probably more importantly, to be photographed using them). So how does the South Korean company get its latest, greatest smartphones into the hands of celebrities hooked on iPhones?
One method for getting Samsung gear into the manicured hands of Hollywood’s biggest stars is the company’s White Glove program, which smooths the way for the rich and powerful to make the big switch away from Apple’s shiny gadgets.
Moment has taken high-end, multi-element lens design and brought it to the iPhone. Going up squarely against Olloclip, Moment’s two new lenses promise “no” distortion, minimal chromatic aberration and great build quality. Sounds amazing.
You probably have a regular login password for your Mac, which you type in when installing software or maybe even when you deactivate the screensaver. It’s fairly secure, but there are indeed ways around it.
If a malicious person with physical access to your Mac wants to get at your data, they can simply boot into a different mode, like Recovery Mode, Single User Mode or Verbose Mode. Or, they can boot your Mac using a USB drive and get around the password that way.
Setting a firmware password will add another, lower level of security to your Mac, and will make it so anyone who wants to boot into an alternate mode will need your second password. It’s fairly easy to enable, too.
It’s possible to make a lot of money by writing an iOS app. In fact, the top iOS app makers each gross as much as $90,000 a day from their offerings. Yet despite these success stories, the vast majority of app developers are finding it difficult to make money on the App Store, and the bad news is, it’s only going to get worse, with a new forecast predicting that less than one app in 10,000 will make money by 2018. Woof.
We’ve been waiting for years for Apple to start using Liquidmetal in its products. The company has an exclusive licensing agreement to use the space-age alloy in its products, but until now, the only thing made by Apple of Liquidmetal is the SIM Ejector tool for the iPhone.
That’s not stopping Apple from dreaming about exciting new uses for their T-1000 alloy,, though. New patents from Apple published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office suggest that future pressure sensors, like the home button, could be made of Liquidmetal.
One of the most bizarre games of recent memory is The Binding Of Isaac. Inspired by both The Legend Of Zelda and the Old Testament, The Binding Of Isaac is rogue-like game that follows a deformed naked child as he explores a subterranean world of his own Freudian nightmares to try to escape his insane Christian fundamentalist mother. I told you it was weird, and playing it is even weirder.
The Binding Of Isaac is already available on the Mac, and thanks to a remake/sequel The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth, it may — may! — be coming to the iPad as well.