If pangs of jealousy hit you every time developers start waxing poetic about new OS X goodies found in a new beta update, your time has finally come to join in on the fun.
Starting this afternoon Apple has opened up its OS X Mavericks beta testing program to let everyone – not just those slick coding developers – download the latest OS X beta seeds.
Streaming media services that want to sell subscriptions to users of their apps on the iPhone or iPad have to make a deal with the proverbial devil: if they want to sign up customers on an iOS device, they have to give Apple a 30% cut of the sale.
For music subscription services like Rdio and Spotify, where the margins are razor thin, giving up that 30% cut is enough to turn a subscription from a profit to a break-even proposition. So when a company goes this route, it’s easy to assume they are hurting.
By this logic, Beats Music — the new subscription music service launched in January — is hurting.
Back in September, popular Youtuber Lewis Hilsenteger released a hands-on video of what he believed to be the outer shell of the iPad 5. The video exploded on the Internet, and six weeks later when Apple announced the iPad Air, it confirmed the parts were spot-on.
So how does someone get their paws on the parts of one of Apple’s most anticipated gadgets weeks before it’s announced? On this week’s CultCast, Hilsentenger is our guest — and he’s going to tell us exactly how he did it.
Apple’s incoming SVP of Retail, Angela Ahrendts, is one of Cupertino’s most widely anticipated hires in ages. The CEO of popular fashion chain Burberry, Ahrendts is so well-suited to lead Apple’s retail ambitions, and such a powerhouse executive in her own right, that many have wondered if Tim Cook is planning to have her replace him as CEO when he retires.
But when is Ahrendts going to join Apple officially? She was originally expected this month, but it’s now looking like she might push her start until June.
Why? Why else. Money.
Apple is one of several tech giants to enter a voluntary agreement to add a global anti-theft “kill-switch” to their handsets from July 2015.
Other companies on board include Google, HTC, Huawei, Motorola, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung — while carriers have reportedly agreed to help “facilitate these measures.”
Apple’s support of the need for a kill-switch doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. The company added an Activation Lock with iOS 7, designed to make it tougher for thieves to use stolen iOS devices. The feature allows users to remotely locate, lock and wipe their iPhones if they are stolen.
Everyone knows Apple is incredibly profitable, but did you know that the top-earning tech company brings in more money than Hewlett-Packard, Google, Intel and Cisco combined?
That’s according to the San Jose Mercury News’ newly published Silicon Valley 150 list, which ranks 75 tech companies using data from Bloomberg and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Back in the heady days of 1996 — when Apple shares were worth less than the cost of a VHS tape of Independence Day — one of the many awful ideas the company came up with was to latch onto the then-popular trend for theme restaurants, by announcing the debut of Apple Computer cybercafes.
These were supposed to start in Los Angeles, before eventually spreading over the entire world.
Needless to say, they never happened — but if they had done, they may have served pizzas bearing the face of Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs. (Or possibly not, since he wasn’t with the company at the time.)
Either way, if you’ve been waiting for the past two decades to finally have an edible snack in the form of Apple’s late co-founder and CEO, you may want to buy a plane ticket to take you to Papa’s Pizza restaurant in Puerto Rico, where pizza artist Wilhelm Rodriguez can whip you up a pizza pie like the above.
Apple has confirmed that none of its products, including web services like iCloud.com, are vulnerable to the nasty Heartbleed web bug that was recently uncovered.
Heartbleed allows hackers to intercept sensitive traffic and steal information like logins from websites using OpenSSL encryption. So when you visit a website with a little padlock in the address bar and think you’re safe, you maybe aren’t.
We’ve heard multiple reports that Apple will release a larger-screen iPhone 6 (possibly in two different sizes), but who really wants a bigger iPhone with a larger screen anyway? Actually, a lot of people: as much as 40% of prospective smartphone buyers are chomping at the bit for a bigger iPhone.
Apple is reportedly planning on creating an R&D team to develop baseband chips for future iPhone models, according to a new rumor from Digitimes.
Baseband chips, for those who don’t know, are used to control a device’s radio functions related to modulation, signal generation, and more.
If the rumor is to be believed, these chips could debut with the round of iPhone updates following the iPhone 6 — which would mean they could arrive with the iPhone that, by current naming standards, will be called the iPhone 6s.