According to Russel Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content at Amazon, publishers involved with the e-book anti-trust federal case told the Seattle-based retailer that unless Amazon agreed to their terms, it would have been barred from releasing e-books on the same day as print on Kindle, the wildly popular e-reader device that Amazon sells.
Grandinetti testified today that this ultimatum to switch to an agency model of publishing, in which the publishers set book pricing, came after the publishing houses made deals with Apple for their then new iBooks e-book service on the iPad.
China is largely known for cheap iPhone knockoffs and fake Apple Stores, and now a Chinese businessman is impersonating Steve Jobs himself. And he isn’t using the late Apple co-founder’s likeness to peddle plastic phone shells on the corner market.
Lei Jun owns Xiaomi, a multi-billion dollar tech company that is commonly referred to as “the Apple of the East” in China. As you can see in the photo above, Lei rocks a black turtleneck and jeans behind an Apple-like presentation at Xiaomi product unveilings. The fact that he’s selling iPhone look-a-likes certainly helps his falsified persona.
Have you tried searching in Messages on the Mac? Well don’t try now unless you want to get really frustrated. Among the app’s other numerous bugs, Messages can tend to suddenly throw a tantrum whenever the search bar is invoked.
Every year Apple holds the iTunes Festival, a month of free concerts with some of the biggest names in music. The shows take place at the Roundhouse in London, and this year’s lineup includes artists like Justin Timberlake, Jessie J, Phoenix, Queens of the Stone Age, Jack Johnson, and Thirty Seconds to Mars.
Today the official iTunes Festival 2013 app got updated with Passbook support, allowing attendees to download tickets straight to their iPhones. So how do you get your hands on a ticket to see your favorite artist for free? As you can imagine, your chances of going to the iTunes Festival are slim. And that’s because Apple doesn’t put the show on for normal music fans in the first place.
Depending on the way you ask Siri for the date of Father’s Day this year, she might give you two completely different answers. A redditor discovered that when you ask Siri, ‘Is Father’s Day this weekend?’ the personal assistant erroneously replies that “Father’s Day is on Friday, June 14th,” even though it most definitely is not.
To make matters more embarrassing Siri answers the questions correctly if you phrase it as “When’s Father’s Day?” On the bright side of things though, you now have an excuse if you forget to buy dad something in time.
Update: Brown’s report has proven to be completely false. AnandTech has posted a lengthy explanation as to why Brown’s report is patently false –
“Apple doesn’t limit cellular data throughput on its devices — there’s both no incentive for them to do so, and any traffic management is better off done in the packet core of the respective network operator rather than on devices. Sideloading tweaked carrier bundles isn’t going to magically increase throughput, either.”
Brown’s original report has since been deleted and he has resigned from his post.
Over the last few years, cellphone carriers have become notorious for throttling iPhone users’ data speeds. Most of the time carriers claim they only throttle users when they’re consuming way too much data, but that actually might not be true at all.
Joseph Brown, the guy who made all the iPhone carrier hacks for Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile has thinks he has proof that AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have all worked with Apple to bake a soft throttle into your iPhone via carrier updates, and there’s nothing your can really do about it.
The square cropped photo has never been more popular thanks to Instagram. There are a lot of benefits to being challenged to shoot within the confines of Instagram’s square — plus square photos make for easier browsing — but a lot of times cropping down to a square cuts out a lot of beautiful shot.
Even though Instagram forces users to upload square pictures, there are lots of ways to get around it. Not only can you post oblong pictures at whichever aspect ratio you want, you can also crop images into circles, triangles, and all sorts of other shapes.
Here’s our guide on how to break out of Instagram’s square:
This just in: your iPhone (and iPad or iPod touch) is a marvel of engineering and does some amazing things, keeping you connected to the rest of the world with its super amazing technology. All that connectivity, though, can come with a price.
Push services are there to let you know when you have stuff to do, or emails to check. It’s pretty handy. However, when you need to conserve your battery, it’s probably time to turn them off. Here’s how, straight from Apple.
We’re spending more and more time on the go with our mobile devices, and watching video on them is becoming increasingly popular. Converting your videos to watch on mobile devices can get a bit unwieldy, though.
Cult of Mac Deals has an offer that will make your day – and converting videos for mobile a breeze…and it won’t cost you a dime.
Thanks to our friends over at Digiarty, we’re able to hook you up with MacX Mobile Video Converter – their new mobile video converting Mac app – for free!
I reviewed the Acase Collatio for iPhone 5 back in May, and I mentioned it was one of the best leather wallet cases I’d tested to date. It looked terrific, its build quality was excellent, and it was nicely priced. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Acase’s leather iPad mini case, then.
Leather case for iPad mini by Acase Category: Cases Works With: iPad mini Price: $39.99
I have to be honest, I’ve had it stashed away in a cupboard for a while. I got it not long after the iPad mini was released, but I had so many cases to review at the time that I ended up forgetting about it. Reviewing the Collatio reminded me it was there, and I’ve been using it on my iPad mini since.
Like the Collatio, the iPad mini case is made entirely of leather, and it has a front cover that folds over to protect your display. When you’re using your device, the front cover doubles as a stand for typing or watching movies.
Magnets inside the front cover wake your iPad when you open it, then put it back to sleep again when you close it. They also ensure the front cover stays closed when you want it to.
The case provides access to all of your iPad mini’s ports, buttons, and cameras, and it comes in black, chestnut, and vintage brown, with a $39.99 price tag.
Following word that Apple’s iAd team is being restructured to allow for tighter integration with iOS 7’s new streaming music feature, iRadio, a new report talks just about how the ads on iRadio are going to work, how Apple’s going to make money on iRadio, and how much Apple’s paying the labels to make it happen.
A few weeks after the 11.03 release the brought iTunes a redesigned MiniPlayer comes iTunes 11.04, an incremental bug-fixing update that fixes a problem that can cause iTunes to quit if you switch between wired and wireless syncing, and an issue where the iTunes Store keeps on asking you to login to your account ad infinitim.
You can grab the update through Software Update or the Mac App Store now.
Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhone and iPad got a great update today, which adds a couple of much needed features.
First, you can now set line spacing for your ebooks between three options: loose, normal and tight. Kindle has allowed you change the margins on e-books for a while, but this new option makes it even easier to change the settings for optimum readability.
A smaller change, but a welcome one, is that you can now highlight long passages that span multiple pages. I rarely use this functionality, but that’s still a level up.
Wearable tech has really started to take off over the last two years thanks in part to fitness trackers like the Nike Fuelband and FitBit. But while those companies are worrying about humans, a new company called Whistle is launching a new fitness tracker specifically for mans best friend.
The Whistle Activity Monitor is a little on-collar device that will track all of your dog’s activities, including rest, walks, playtime, and other activities. It’s kind of like a FitBit for dogs. The device comes with a slick iOS app too that lets you check in on your dogs stats throughout the day no matter where you are.
Sounds kind of crazy to buy a pet its own activity tracker, but when you consider most people only take there dog to the vet once every 3 years, Whistle will probably help you keep your pet in shape and enjoy a couple extra years together.
We told you about Ulysses III when it first hit the Mac App Store back in April, and we called it “the best text editor ever” in our review. And it’s even better with its latest update, which brings a whopping 117 changes based on user feedback.
Apple has been using ideas that originated in the jailbreak community for years. A jailbreak tweak called MobileNotifier enhanced push notifications in iOS 4, and Apple hired the guy who made it and released Notification Center in iOS 5. Jailbreakers were doing multitasking and tethering before Apple too.
Looking ahead at iOS 7, I honestly have no idea what to expect from Apple. Jony Ive has never really been a big fan of skeuomorphism, so flatter and more minimalist graphics wouldn’t surprise me. Some truly innovate ideas for enhancing the iOS experience have arisen in the past year, and I think it would be foolish for Apple to not at least draw inspiration from these three.
The New York Attorney General has called for Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft to invent new ways to curb the ongoing smartphone theft “epidemic.” Eric Schneiderman wants meetings with representatives from all four companies, and he has urged them to “be as innovative in solving this problem as they have been in designing devices that have reshaped how we live.”
Analog for Mac from Realmac Software has today received all of the pretty filters that were introduced with Analog Camera for iPhone last week. It has also been reduced to just $4.99 until Sunday evening.
Apple’s regard for top-notch design means it has always walked the line between tech and aesthetics, but the company’s leap into the world of wearables will be its most high-fashion move yet. Other tech companies, including Samsung, have already trotted out their own smartwatches to beat Apple to market, but even the staunchest supporter of these devices is unlikely to say that they’re Rolex-beaters.
Realistically, the most anyone has been able to say about current wearables like the Nike FuelBand SE is that they are inoffensive. That’s simply not going to be enough if the iWatch is going to be the kind of mass-market product that will finally bring wearables into the mainstream. In addition to its gamut of biotech engineers, Apple has also got the former CEO of fashion house Yves Saint Laurent on its books, who was hired in 2013 for "special projects." More recently, Apple hired a key executive from Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer, following earlier reports that Cupertino had unsuccessfully been trying to poach luxury watchmakers for its wearables debut.
When the iWatch comes, could it be called the iсмотреть instead? Perhaps not, but a new report suggests that Apple has already registered a trademark for iWatch within Russia.
The popular Plex media player that allows users to stream content from their computer to another device is now available on the Apple TV. The new app called PlexConnect is compatible with second- and third-generation devices, and it does not require a jailbreak for installation.
It used to be so easy to remove items from the sidebar of OS X Finder windows. You’d simply click, drag, and poof! The offending item would disappear like a well-heeled Dock icon in search of greater opportunity in the world.
Today, however (and for quite some time, really) you can’t just click and drag the sidebar items away without giving it a little more thought. That’s where this handy keyboard shortcut comes in.
Sure, you could use the right-click (Control-click or two-finger click on a trackpad) to bring up a contextual menu, but where’s the fun in that?
If the next iPhone has LTE, Sprint still wants to offer you an unlimited plan.
A hacked carrier update that has the potential to deliver improved data speeds is now available to iPhone 5 users on Sprint. The modified update, which has previously been made available to devices on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, does not require a jailbroken device — just a Mac or PC with iTunes.
Still using that Ikea wind-up kitchen timer to take your time-lapse videos? Ditch it, because somebody has finally come up with a purpose-made iPhone motion rig that is cheap, fits in your pocket and can do double (triple?) duty as a panoramarator[1], and a passive sound-amplifying iPhone dock.
Shelfy is a new iPhone app which lets you quickly and easily keep a record of the books you have read, and the books you want to read. And unlike apps like Delicious Library, it doesn’t assume that you have a stack of physical paper books to scan: Input is strictly via search, and all the better for it.
Dispatch is the iPhone e-mail client I have been looking for for years. It’s kind of like Drafts for email, only in reverse – the emails come in from pretty much any service you like, then you quickly triage them. Then, you send the results off to another app or service on your iPhone.
