Apple Inc. - page 28

You can’t choose between Android and iOS without taking Google Play and the App Store into account. They’re the largest mobile marketplaces on the planet, and they both have their strengths and weaknesses — especially when it comes to control.

Apple has strict App Store guidelines, and every title is tested by a human before being approved. In comparison, Google is happy to let most things fly — so long as it’s not offensive or harmful — which gives us access to things like emulators and file downloaders that aren’t available on other platforms.

But is “open” really better, and could Apple benefit from loosening its grip on the App Store?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over that very question.

Android’s massive lead in market share is translating into a staggering number of app downloads, with Google Play serving 85 percent more apps than the App Store during the second quarter of 2015. But despite that, iOS is holding onto a significant lead where it matters most — in revenue.

Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.

 The thick Icelandic fog lifted and Austin Mann saw an otherworldly glacier emerge. Photography is a way for Mann, a Christian and a professional travel photographer, to worship god, and this was the kind of scene that spoke to him.

But to get the shot, he would have to leave his camera gear in the car for a climb on all fours down a rocky cliff. Mann put his new iPhone 6 Plus in his pocket and scrambled down to make the picture.

The shot, taken using the iPhone’s panorama mode, was among the most prominent photos featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” marketing campaign, a promotional blitz that began in the spring with billboards, giant banners stretched across the sides of buildings, and advertising on television and in magazines.

Sometimes the future is a fuzzy picture. This was literally true when looking at a 0.3-megapixel image produced by one of the first consumer digital cameras, Apple’s doomed QuickTake.

 Launched in 1994, the QuickTake didn’t exactly take off. The bulky behemoth looked like a pair of binoculars. There was no preview screen, so when your camera was full — after just eight pictures at the highest resolution — you had to plug the gadget into your Mac to look at your photos.

Enlarged beyond the size of a postage stamp, the pictures weren’t very sharp. Photographers scoffed that digital files would never record the detail of film.

After three models and three years of modest sales, the QuickTake was scrapped in 1997 along with other non-computer products when Steve Jobs returned to the company.

Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.

Brendan Ó Sé aimed his iPhone camera, composed on screen the wavy painted lines on a Copenhagen street and snapped the photo as four people entered the frame from different directions.

For reasons Ó Sé cannot explain, he titled the photo, God will send a sign. When he does, be prepared.

Not long after, Ó Sé received widespread attention for the photo after it was selected by Apple to be part of its “Shot on iPhone 6” advertising campaign. There were billboards in several countries, magazine ads, an international award and interview requests.

Ó Sé was not prepared. He was kind of floored.

That Apple logo on your iPhone sure is pretty, but it doesn’t do a whole lot other than remind you who made your phone in case you forget. It’s kind of lazy that way, really.

But a recently published patent suggests that Apple might put that shiny bobble to use in future models of its hardware.

According to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, his team is on top of the recent removal of Home Sharing from the iOS 8.4 update.

Cue tweeted that we can expect the feature, which lets you share music across Home Sharing-enabled Apple devices on the same network, will return in iOS 9.

In 1987, Apple created a video set in 1997 that was all about how much better the world was with all of the amazing Apple products the company was going to create. Almost 20 years later, some of the predictions in this ’80s-tastic fantasy film are true, and some are laughably (and thankfully) absent from current hardware.

Check out the video below, but brace yourself for some really bad jokes.

Taylor Swift’s bold rant against Apple over royalties continues to echo in the ears of photographers.

A quick recap . . . Swift used her Tumblr page to chide Apple for initially not paying musicians during the trial period of the new Apple Music. Then a music photographer in England called her a hypocrite because the contract her people force editorial photographers to sign before shows says Swift has the right to use those photos for free to promote her brand.

Apple backed down, but the good publicity-bad publicity for Swift has photographers and photo editors taking second looks at the contracts of other musical acts.

Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.

Brad Mangin’s friends gave him a good ribbing as “the last photographer on the planet” to carry a flip phone. They all had iPhones and couldn’t believe it took him so long to not only own one but discover the picture quality of the phone’s camera.

 
Laughter would turn to admiration in less than a year’s time. Mangin would go on to use his first iPhone to produce a robust baseball essay for Sports Illustrated and get a book deal with his iPhone pictures.

If you’re one of the people out there who haven’t taken the plunge on an Apple Watch, you’re not alone. While Apple’s latest wearable has gotten a ton of press and sold really well, a lot of the rank and file out there might think it’s a toy, or only for rich folks.

In fact, says journalist Morgan Housel over at Time, most people throughout history have pretty predictable responses to new things.

He has a list of reactions to new innovative inventions, each of which are reactions we’ve all heard (or had) when the Apple Watch (or the iPad, or the iPhone) was launched.

In a few years, “Sorry, I don’t have any cash on me” may no longer be a good enough excuse to give that chronically money-strapped friend when they come around asking to borrow a few bucks.

That’s because a newly released Apple patent suggests that the iPhone maker may be getting into the person-to-person payment game in future versions of its hardware.

Apple has no shortage of products and gadgets to show off lately. The company recently released the Apple Watch, its music streaming platform came out this week, and we’re closing in on the reveal of the next iPhone.

But late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has a line on another daring product from Apple, and he revealed it in a bit on his show on Tuesday. It involves customers just giving Apple money for no real reason.

You can check out the full gag in the video below.

For my car, I have an anti-theft device called the Club. It is a telescoping device that hooks on each side of the steering wheel and locks in place with a key. Can it be broken? Probably, but the idea is to present a time-consuming obstacle to the thief who relies on speed.

For my MacBook Pro, I have the Blade by Maclocks. The Blade sits inside a bracket that affixes to the bottom of my computer. The Blade folds out from the bracket, providing a slot in which I can attach a lock tethered to a cable.

It is most secure when you loop the cable through an anchored object, like a pole or, in the case of one coffee shop from which I like to work, a table support that is bolted to the floor.

This week, Apple lost its appeal on the antitrust case that the federal government and several state attorneys general filed on it concerning price fixing on ebooks. And now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for the company to pay up.

The green states in the map below were listed as plaintiffs on the class-action lawsuit, which means that if you live in one of them and have bought anything from iBooks, you may be entitled to a cut of the settlement.

According to Apple’s own Apple Services, Stores, and iCloud status page, several important services are experiencing slow downs and possible outages.

iCloud Backup, Documents in the Cloud, iMessage, and Photos are all showing yellow, as are Mail Drop, iCloud Drive, and iWork for iCloud beta.

If you’re experiencing issues in these areas, it’s not you; it’s Apple.

One of Ireland’s largest newspapers told readers Tuesday morning not to expect any photos of Taylor Swift performing during her two sold-out concerts in Dublin.

The Irish Times passed on photographing her shows because of a restrictive contract Swift’s people ask shooters to sign. The contract gives the photographer a “one-time-only” use on the photos yet allows Swift unlimited rights to use the images for publicity and promotion.

Such contracts by entertainment figures are nothing new, except Swift famously called out Apple for initially withholding royalties to musicians during the free three-month trial period of the new Apple Music service.

Parents looking to keep their creative kids busy this summer might want to look into Apple Camp, a free, three-day workshop at select Apple retail stores.

As in previous years, sessions will occur throughout July and August and will guide campers ages 8 to 12 through one of two cool projects.

You can call it customer loyalty, brand stickiness, or whatever other terms the cool marketing kids are using these days, but it all means the same thing in this case: Apple is doing a better job than Samsung of retaining customers and winning over new ones.

This is according to a report from RBC Capital Markets, which polled Apple and Samsung customers about their current and future purchases.

Geography doesn’t have to get in the way of the band coming together.

A startup company by the name of Soundtrap Monday rolled out what it calls the first online music and audio recording studio, allowing musicians to collaborate remotely in real time using any operating system.

It will likely directly compete with Garageband, Apple’s popular software used to create music and podcasts that first launched in 2004.

Apple is gearing up to introduce its smarthome platform HomeKit alongside the launch of iOS 9 this fall. It will let users control smart devices like lights, door locks, and thermostats from their phones. You’ll also be able to issue voice commands to digital assistant Siri, and the company has updated the list of things you can say to get things done around your house.

But when we looked at the list of commands, we noticed that Apple is making some strange assumptions about how people might be using the new automation features. Here are some of the examples Apple gives and why they have us scratching our heads.

Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.

There was a divorce, financial setback and hurt when the father she finally met had little interest in building a relationship. Cielo de la Paz needed just one small sign to remind her happier days lie ahead.

 She would get her sign — a billboard no less — and when she saw it for the first time, it gave her a much-needed feeling of triumph.

The 39-year-old single mother had a photo selected by Apple for its “Shot on iPhone 6” campaign that has now been seen in outdoor ads in 24 countries. The picture was made after a rain storm. It is of de la Paz’s reflected self in a puddle with fallen leaves floating to form a frame around her silhouette. She is holding a red umbrella.

One is a cult-like organization which bilks its (often celebrity) followers out of huge amounts of money, while intimidating people who dare to speak out against its dangers. The other is Scientology.

Or at least that’s the parallel drawn by Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney, who claimed to see similarities between Apple and the L. Ron Hubbard-founded religion during a recent screening of his Steve Jobs documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.

Your Apple Watch band contains some cutting-edge fabrication technology that could extend into other fashion accessories, according to a patent filing released today.

The patent describes an ingenious method for molding “woven fibers” into any desired shape and securing them without stitching.

Tesla Motors is the smartest company in the world, according to MIT Tech Review’s latest survey of the brainiest corporations. Apple, which was not on last year’s list returns at number 16, beating out other firms like ride-sharing company Uber and smartbulb-maker Philips. MIT cites the newly released Apple Watch and touchless payment method Apple Pay as its reasons for inclusion, saying that these two products “set the pace for competitors.”

You can see the full list of smartiespants in the table below.