The demand for 4G LTE connectivity has never been higher, and companies are pulling all the tricks out the bag to try to fulfil the high demand. Last night, Sprint announced that it has turned on high-speed 4G LTE data in 22 new locations. The announcement was made in a single press release on the U.S. carrier’s website.
Paper for iPad creator FiftyThree has today announced that it has secured $15 million in funding to build a suite of “mobile tools for creativity.” It’s quite an achievement for an app startup, particularly one that isn’t a smash-hit game, but if FiftyThree’s upcoming apps are anywhere near as successful as Paper, the investment will surely pay off.
Chatology is a brand new tool for searching Messages on the Mac without the headaches. If you’ve been experiencing bugs, random crashes, and a lack of search functionality in Apple’s chat software, then this new app is for you.
Adobe has today made its complete Creative Cloud suite available to all as it migrates to a compulsory subscription-only model. It’s been a controversial move that a lot of Adobe users aren’t happy with, but as of today, the only way to use Adobe’s apps is to bite the bullet and sign up to the $50 per month plan.
Steve Jobs at Apple iPad Event Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Eddy Cue is at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in lower Manhattan testifying in the Department of Justice’s e-books antitrust case, and he’s been sharing more information on the work that went into developing iBooks prior to its launch in 2010.
Cue reveled that Steve Jobs, then Apple’s CEO, chose to give away a free copy of Winnie-the-Pooh not just because he liked the book, but because its colorful illustrations showcased the capabilities of digital e-books in the iBooks app.
With the iPhone 5S shaping up to be pretty much an identical device to last year’s iPhone 5 except a marginally faster processor and (fingers crossed!) some cool new fingerprint sensor technology, eyes are on the so-called “budget iPhone” as 2013’s new hotness.
Although the ‘budget iPhone’ will address the mid-market, it’s still an exciting device, rumored to be the first iPhone to come in an iPod-palette of colors. Otherwise, though, we don’t know a lot about what it looks like.
Far East case makers might, though. MGM Corporation, an Asian casemaker, has posted a first look at a case for the budget iPhone. It doesn’t show much, except that the budget iPhone is about 2mm thicker than the iPhone 5, and has rounded corners instead of the iPhone 5’s square shape.
I play the street life
Because there’s no place I can go
Street life
It’s the only life I know
Street life
And there’s a thousand cards to play
Street life
Until you play your life away
So go the lyrics to Randy Crawford’s fantastic Street Life, which is not — as far as I know — the official song of AT&T and Goal Zero’s new “collabo” Street Charge.
Street Charge is a new scheme which will see AT&T deploying solar charging stations throughout New York City.
In October of last year, Apple underwent an executive shake-up that saw Scott Forstall’s head rolling down the Cupertino aisles and Jony Ive being put in charge of both software and hardware design in Apple… but his title, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, never changed.
Now that iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks have been unveiled, Apple has apparently formalized Jony Ive’s new role, giving him a new title, Senior Vice President, Design. The smouldering look on Jony’s pretty face is the same as it ever was, though.
iTunes Radio won’t just be available on your iOS devices, but also on your Apple TV, according to a new beta release now available to registered developers. The update also adds some other minor features, and makes improvements to Home Sharing to make it more reliable.
This is probably the front assembly of the iPhone 5S. Sadly, it looks pretty much the same as the iPhone 5, which is to be expected: the iPhone 5S is anticipated to be an incremental release over the iPhone 5, sharing the same look as the previous generation device just like the iPhone 4S and iPhone 3GS before it.
So nothing to be excited about? It’s hard to tell, but we have yet to see the home button array for the iPhone 5S, and that’s where rumor has all the new hardware in the next-gen iPhone going: namely, a fingerprint sensor under the home button which lets you lock out anyone who isn’t you… or who has cut off your finger.
As we continue to look at some tips for the new OS X beta this week, remember that OS X Mavericks isn’t a final version—it’s meant to be used by developers to ensure that their software will work with Apple’s latest and greatest.
With that disclaimer in mind, let’s continue.
If you need to use Java for any reason on your Mac, and you install OS X Mavericks beta on it, you’ll be sad when you try and run that Java-reliant bit of software.
For me, it was setting up the Minecraft server for my kid after I installed the beta last night to take a look at things. When I went to run it in Terminal, I got an error, saying there was no Java installed. So, even though I’d had Java installed in Mac OS X Mountain Lion, the Mavericks install seems to have taken Java off my Mac. No worries; it was kind of an easy fix.
IOS Fonts is the most concisely-named website of the day. It shows you all the fonts available on your iOS device, lets you search them and even preview your chosen text in them. I love it… and yet I’m struggling to find any practical use for it.
Hands up anyone who knows what a light meter is? You at the back… speak up… No, it’s not a way to tell how much electricity you use to illuminate your home. Fine, I’ll tell you: it’s what we used to use to measure light and set the exposure on our cameras, back before they were so good at doing it themselves.
Oddly enough, this weekend I found myself in need of one. And then what do I see in my inbox? The Lumu, a light meter for the iPhone.
PhotoStation 2.0 brings layer support to the powerful but unintuitive photo editing app. Now you can use bezier clipping paths to adjust and fine-tune your image selections on multiple layers, letting you make edits that you usually expect to do on the desktop.
Remember the Unibody MacBook, so called because it was milled from a single chunk of aluminum? Now that most of Apple’s products are made that way, you never hear the term “Unibody” any more – it’s like cars: you only write “16-valve”, “ABS” or “fuel injection”on the back when you’re showing off something new.
It’s time, then, for a new construction method, and the new “trashcan” Mac Pro has one. It’s called Impact Extrusion, and it is super cool.
Clipless is not a foot retention system for bicycle pedals. Or rather, it is, but this version isn’t – it just has the same name. Today’s clipless is instead a magnetic gizmo that sticks your iPhone to your clothes… Or anything else.
Mailbox, the wondrous new email client for iOS that lets you manage your emails as they come in, has just gotten another update. Now you can use Mailbox on your iPad in the portrait orientation, instead of the landscape-only mode that was previously the only option on the bigger iOS devices.
Brad Smith wants to encourage developers to explore the final frontier: making apps for Apple TV.
Smith, director of engineering at RadiumOne, spoke at AltWWDC about facing the challenges for this new territory.
“I like to think of it as the forgotten iOS device,” Smith said, showing a slide of Tom Dickson, who has blended every device from the Cupertino company — with the exception of the Apple TV.
If you send friends a lot of pictures via iMessages, you’ll love this new little feature in the iOS 7 Messages app that makes it easier to find old photos you’ve sent friends.
To view all the files that you’ve ever sent someone from your iPhone you can tap the new folder icon at the bottom of a photo preview screen and you’ll get a list of all the files the two of you have sent to each other. No more hunting through chat logs to find that funny pic your friend sent you that you forgot to save.
Shazam released version 6.1 of its iOS today on the App Store. The new version comes with a special feature called ‘Pulse’ that can be used to discover new music that is trending on Shazam’s charts.
Included in the big update is a new look for the tab bar, better chart updates, improved Friends page loading, and of course some bug fixes. The new version is available on both iPhone and iPad in the App Store for free.
Apple’s iOS platform has continued to be the top platform for users who actually like to buy stuff via their smartphone, says a new study from Forrester. Consumers with iOS devices are 30% more likely to buy something via their device, than Android users.
Even though iOS is where more of the money is at, Android isn’t getting ignored by U.S. companies. Forrester’s study also reported that 96% of ebusiness professionals surveyed for the study plan to launch a native or hybrid Android app by the end of 2013, while 99% said they plan to do the same for iOS.
As you may know, Apple released the first beta for its upcoming iOS 7 this past week, after an announcement at WWDC just prior.
We’ll take you through some lesser known features with our tips for a bit, giving you a sneak peek into the workings of the newest system to hit the iPhone. Be aware, however, that as this is beta software, any of these features and tips could change before iOS 7 hits the streets this coming fall. In addition, be sure that you’re not using a beta iOS 7 on an iPhone you need to get work done on–Apple has provided it without guarantee for developers to start working with, not for you to use on any mission critical tasks.
That said, let’s check out Mail, the built-in app for checking and sending your email from Apple. One of the biggest things I’ve always wished for in the previous app is a way to mark all the messages in my inbox as read in one fell swoop.
It looks like, in iOS 7 beta, anyway, that you can do just that. Here’s how.
Google Reader’s execution date is set for June 30th, so the team at Digg has been busy working on build a replacement as fast as possible. Digg Reader isn’t ready to go quite yet, but the company has started testing its new app and announced that it will be ready to go live on June 26th.
Digg posted an update on its progress to replacing Google Reader this morning and stated that the team’s initial launch goals are to satisfy power-users with easy onboarding from Google Reader, a clean reading experience, and useful mobile apps.
Here’s what Digg had to say on its site about the upcoming launch:
With all the new changes coming to iOS 7 there are still a ton of little details to discover while Apple continues to put the finishing touches on it. While iOS 7 does feature a completely revamped UI, its the little changes that make everything really come together.
One redditor put together this handy info graphic that compares some of the smallest iOS 7 UI elements with their iOS 6 counterparts.
Skype for iOS and Skype for Machas been updated today with support for a new feature: video messaging. But don’t think video chat. Skype’s new video messaging is all about recording brief, meaningful moments and sending them to other Skype users, not as a stream, but as a self-contained message that will reach them, even if they aren’t online.