Every once in a while an app comes along that looks – at first glance – to be just like every other app in its category. Then, when you take it for a spin, it blows you away. Tayasui Sketches is such an app. It’s a painting and drawing app for the iPad, and it does just what you’d expect: multiple brushes, colors and a few control gestures. But when you use it the slick feel, high level of polish and great results will win you over.
Remember when it seemed like some special future high-tech magic to edit video in the web-browser? Now it’s almost as mundane as composing an e-mail inside Safari. But Pics.io is about to let you edit RAW photos in the browser. The site is currently in private alpha testing, but the promise is of fast online RAW editing on your iPad.
Having a hard time connecting to the Internet on your Three smartphone this morning? You’re not the only one. The British carrier has confirmed that it is currently suffering a glitch that is affecting data services across the whole of the U.K., but it promises it is working to fix it.
Pixter is an interesting idea, although one which is – possibly – doomed. Here’s the elevator pitch: Pixter is a for-pay Instagram.
Cables: I love what they do – keeping my beloved gadgets juiced and full of delicious data – but — unlike a playful kitten — I hate their tangled mess. Perhaps the perfect charger cable is here at last though: It’s the curly phone-style Lightning cable from Japanese company Sanwa.
Eye-Fi’s new Mobi cards are designed to work better with iOS and Android apps, making wireless transfers from your camera to your iDevice much easier. The iOS app has been updated, too, bringing support for the iPhone 5’s larger screen, just 8 months after it was launched. This, combined with the crappy non-native OS X app shows that Eye-Fi is getting really serious about Apple gear.
By now, the only folks worried they don’t have enough choices when buying a new pair of Bluetooth headphones must be the same folks who worry that this place doesn’t have enough of a beer selection.
The newest newcomer (Bluetooth headphones, not beer) is Outdoor Tech’s spartan-looking Tuis, which we’re assuming means “Bluetooth” in Esperanto.
When Google announced the shut down of Google Reader this past March, Feedly stepped up, promising to create its own Reader-like system for other third party RSS apps to connect to, and thereby lessen the impact of Google’s industry-standard takedown.
In a blog post today, Feedly announced the next step of its plan to rule the RSS landscape with the support of several third party RSS apps, including Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader. I use Reeder on a daily basis on both my Mac and my iPad (which continues to be free until Google Reader actually shuts down its service as of July 1).
DataMan was one of the first iPhone data trackers when it debuted back in 2010, after AT&T 86ed the utopian guarantee of unlimited data.
This new iteration, DataMan Next, is much prettier, but essentially does the same thing: It tracks your data usage and warns you before you spend money needlessly on data overage charges; it can even predict whether you’ll end up going over your monthly allowance. And today, it’s free.
The iOS developer behind Home Remind has published a blog post about the Facebook apps for iPhone, iPad and Facebook Messenger. He says that according to his testing, the Facebook apps consume way more CPU time than is strictly necessary. Excessive CPU time can lead to battery drain.
The developer used Apple’s own Mac-based app, Instruments, to look at what was running on his iPhone, and found that his Facebook app was activating, doing something for ten seconds, then going back to sleep. It did this all day long during his test. He tested the Messenger app and the Facebook iPad app, and found the same pattern.
If that’s the case, the Facebook app is never truly going to sleep and then terminating like a good app. As a result, it’s using up CPU time, and a lot of your battery.
Want T&A beamed directly into your eyeball? The first porn app has come to Google Glass and it’s named after what it shows you: “Tits & Glass.”
The FitBit Flex is a $99 rubber band you wear around your wrist to track how many steps you’ve taken every day. It connects via Bluetooth to your iPhone, or through a dongle to your Mac. If you are utterly sedentary, it’s a fantastic gadget that may very well encourage you to make some slight adjustments to your lifestyle before your heart explodes in front of your computer desk one day. If you are already even lightly active, though, the FitBit Flex is a puzzle of a product that seems fetishistically focussed on how much you walk while utterly ignoring how much you bike, swim or even run.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s case against Apple has gotten underway in New York. The DOJ has accused Apple of colluding with publishers to raise the price on eBooks.
To start the trial off, the DOJ has released an 81-page slide deck containing its opening statements against Apple. The trial is expected to run for about three weeks, and both sides gave their opening arguments today.
The DOJ’s 81-page document includes a number of email between Apple execs, as well as sections of Walter Isaacon”s biography of Steve Jobs.
You can search through the DOJ’s opening arguments after the break:
Battery life, it’s the bane of every iPhone user’s existence, right? It’s hard to tell, really, reading the internet, which specific steps to take to make sure your battery is working at its most efficient, giving you the longest life without compromising performance.
One of the most misunderstood areas of managing battery life may just be the brightness settings. Here’s what Apple has to say about it.
Google just released Chrome 27 for iOS. The big update for Google’s third-party browser for iOS should have faster page reloading speeds as well as improved voice search.
Google included voice search in its Google Now app for iOS, but the conversational search tools are now being packed directly into Chrome as well. The update also gives Chrome the ability to speak search results back to you so you pretty much never have to look at your screen again if you don’t want to.
Here are the full release notes:
WordPress just released a new update for its iOS app that is sure to make WordPress bloggers happy. The new app features a overhauled UI that makes it easier and faster to blog from your iPhone than before.
The new update ditches the single pane view for a multi-pane view that users can swipe between to access different areas of the app (kind of like the Facebook and Rdio apps). WordPress also added a shortcut to the sidebar to make posting faster, there are also new translations for Russian, Danish, and Korean, improved Tumblr importing, and bug fixes.
Here are the full release notes:
It’s not very often where you can get training on one of the most essential – and complete – software suites on the planet, especially at a savings of 88% off of the regular price!
Well, that’s what you’ll be getting with this Cult of Mac Deals offer. The Adobe CS6 Training Bundle will help you unleash your creativity in a way unlike before – and all for just $99!
AgileBits, creators of the popular 1Password tool for Mac and iOS, have today announced that 1Password 4 for Mac has entered beta. The release comes six months after 1Password 4 came to iOS, and you can get your hands on the early release by joining the AgileBits Beta Family.
Ever since Tim Cook ousted Scott Forstall last year, the Apple CEO has preached a lot about how collaboration within Apple is one of the most important aspects of the company’s culture.
Speaking at a reunion for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Tim Cook outlined what kind of attributes he looks for in employees and what it takes to be a great collaborator.
Here’s what Cook had to say about collaboration:
Google has just updated their official Drive app for iOS, making it easier to navigate between documents and collaborate with others upon them. Not only can you now comment upon Google Drive documents within the app, you can quickly swipe through images.
You probably already know the Macintosh Portable, Apple’s first Mac laptop released for $7,300 in 1989, which looked and weighed about as much as a small suitcase full of dark matter. No joke: you could ship an entire crate of MacBook Airs inside of one.
But can you believe that there was an even bigger, more unwieldy Mac laptop that preceded it? It wasn’t an official Cupertino joint, to be sure, but meet the Walkmac: a 1987 modded Mac SE with a working LCD screen and a battery pack.
Google Play will overtake the App Store’s recently celebrated 50 billion downloads and become the most popular app platform in the world within months, according to a new report from Distimo. Driven by popular devices from Samsung, Google Play is currently seeing over 500 million more app downloads per month.
Apple has released a new WWDC 2013 companion app for iOS, which is designed to give developers the opportunity to follow the event each day. Designed for both attendees and those who cannot make it, the app offers a WWDC schedule, the latest news, daily session videos for registered developers, and more.
PopCap has today confirmed the release date for the much-anticipated Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time, which will be exclusive to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The company has also released an awesome new launch trailer that teases some of the new plants and new worlds.
Starting up your Mac each day may seem a simple thing, right? Just press the power key on your keyboard or main Mac unit, hear the Mac chime, and then get to work, right?
Sometimes, though, you might want to boot a Windows partition with Boot Camp, or start up from a network volume. Heck, you might even want to start from a completely different OS X disk.
In that case, use the following keyboard shortcuts to do so.
