Pixelmator, a wonderful image editing app for Mac OS X, just received a major update that introduces some great new features. As well as Retina graphics for the new MacBook Pro, version 2.1 brings iCloud syncing, a new Effects Browser with new effects, OS X Mountain Lion support and more.
Have you ever watched your iPhone attempt to load a webpage with a poor Wi-Fi connection, and wondered why it doesn’t just switch to 3G automatically? In currently iOS releases, your device can’t do that. If you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network, it will only use the Wi-Fi network. But iOS 6 changes that. You’ll soon be able to use “Wi-Fi Plus Cellular” connections, which allows apps to switch to a cellular data connection automatically when Wi-Fi is poor.
Last week, Wired columnist Mat Honan’s digital life was destroyed by hackers who were able to connect to his Apple ID and remotely erase all of the data on his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook.
Apple responded today to Honan via a spokesperson, Natalie Kerris. In a statement to Wired, where Honan posted an account of his experiences, Apple promised to look into how users can protect their data and security better when they need to reset their account passwords.
See that big building right there? It’s part of Apple’s huge new data center over in North Carolina that powers all the iCloud magic that makes your iOS experience possible. Apple’s data center compound is massive. It comes with a 500,000 square foot data center, a 100-acre solar farm, a 4.8-megawatt fuel cell array, and a few other little buildings sprinkled all over.
The little 21,000 square foot building in the picture above is what Apple’s calling a “tactical data center.” No one knows just what it’s supposed to be, and of course Apple’s not going to tell anyone. So Wired jumped in their spy plane to get a closer look, and this is what they found out:
Don’t you just love iCloud and how it seamlessly keeps all of your information synced up, making you feel all warm and light and free? Don’t you just want to marry it, or maybe live inside a nice fluffy iCloud synced world? Maybe not. But now you can, if you move to Melbourne, Australia and buy this gorgeous house that’s shaped like the iCloud logo.
Do you see it? How the structure makes an iCloud shadow there on the pool? Ok, we put that there to help you visiualize it, but seriously, this house looks almost exactly like the iCloud logo, and it’s just as crazy on the inside as the outside.
Apple has issued iWork.com users with a final reminder to warn them that the service will be closed down on July 31. The company states that as of this date, “you will no longer be able to access your documents on the iWork.com public beta site or view them on the web.”
Various iCloud users are reporting that 20th Century Fox movies are now available for re-download via iTunes in the cloud. As Cult of Mac reported mid-March, Universal and Fox studios weren’t able to close a deal with Apple for iCloud availability due to licensing conflicts with HBO.
Universal Studios content was released for iCloud availability soon after, in April. Now it’s Fox Studios’ turn.
In putting together the various features of Mountain Lion, Apple may end up encouraging business and enterprise customers to actually make their Macs less secure instead of ratcheting up security as some key Mountain Lion capabilities are intended to do.
There are a handful of technologies involved, but they center around iCloud and Apple’s requirement that apps sold in the Mac App Store support Apple’s application sandboxing technique.
iTunes Match has expanded its reach in Europe today as Apple brings the music matching service to Hungary and Poland more than 18 months after it made its debut in the United States. The Cupertino company is yet to add these countries to its iTunes Match availability page, but users report that the service is now appearing in iTunes.
Along with today’s launch of iOS 6 Beta 3, Apple has started to roll out iCloud.com email addresses to developers. When iOS users signed up for iCloud in the past they received an email address @me.com. Now that MobileMe has been shut down, Apple is starting to transition over to @iCloud.com email addresses.
I love having my photos on my iPad, but I hate using iPhoto to get them there. To be honest, I just hate iPhoto, along with its more complicated and even more sluggish cousin, Aperture. I use Lightroom, and up until last week I was exporting photos from there into iPhoto just to sync them. Not only was this a headache, but it was a waste of space.
Now, you can tell iTunes to sync any folder of photos to the iPad, but with a little bit of effort things can be made much more elegant. By setting up Lightroom correctly, we can have any changes to our photos mirrored to the iPad at the touch of a button, and the whole process is near-automatic.
Apple’s iWork suite hasn’t been updated since January 2009. To put that in perspective, when the last major version of iWork came out, OS X Leopard was still the most recent version of Apple’s operating system, and Snow Leopard was still eight months away from being announced: OS X Lion and Mountain Lion weren’t even glimmers on the horizon then. The most current iPhone was the iPhone 3G, and the iPad was still a year from being released.
It’s obvious, then, that the iWork suite is way past due for an update. It’s possible, though, that we could see iWork ’12 hit as soon as the end of July, dropping alongside OS X Mountain Lion.
On Monday, Sony Computer Entertainment acquired cloud-based game streaming company Gaikai for around $380 million in a move that is sure to excite fans of the company’s PlayStation devices. If the Japanese company uses its purchase to create a compelling alternative to OnLive, it has the potential to gain a huge advantage over rivals like Microsoft and Nintendo.
The same service could provide an even bigger advantage to Apple. In fact, there are a number of reasons why the Cupertino company should use its ever-increasing cash pile to make Mac and iOS gaming even greater.
Apple unveiled its beta.icloud.com website today after the portal went live briefly a couple months ago. Developers can log into the beta iCloud website now and test out Apple’s two brand new web companion apps for Notes and Reminders. The Find My iPhone web app has also been updated with a new look and slight improvements.
We’ve got a quick walkthrough (including screenshots) of the changes revealed in the iCloud beta website today.
In the last couple of days, Apple killed off MobileMe and is now warning users its killing off another cloud service: the iWork.com Beta, a service Apple launched in 2009 to allow for online editing, downloading and collaborating on documents.
On Sunday, MobileMe will be dead, and anyone who is still using MobileMe and not Apple’s replacement service, iCloud, will be forcibly evicted. That means anyone still using MobileMe either needs to transition to iCloud and/or copy all data stored in their MobileMe accounts to their Mac or PC. Any files stored in MobileMe’s range of services that can’t be converted to iCloud will be deleted. If you opt not to use iCloud, all data in your MobileMe account will be deleted.
Although iCloud offers several advances over MobileMe, there are some MobileMe services that don’t have direct iCloud equivalents. These include MobileMe Galleries for sharing photos and videos, website creation using Apple’s iWeb, and iDisk remote storage and file sharing. File and information sync is available using iCloud, but the functionality is implemented a bit differently than in MobileMe. In addition, users still using Snow Leopard also can’t upgrade to iCloud.
It’s a tricky problem for thousands of users. There isn’t a single online service that delivers quite the same mix of features and functionality that Apple offered with MobileMe, but by combining some apps and services, you can get pretty close to MobileMe’s feature set. We’ve gone through all of the main competitors to try to find the best services for the soon-to-be dispossessed MobileMe subscriber.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7d-AGMMcsQ&feature=player_embedded
It’s hard not to love Louis C.K. Behind his pale ginger flab and profanity-laced stand-up comedy is a guy with a heart of gold: a comic who knows how to temper his masturbation jokes with compassionate commentary on the family and American values. He’s an amazing guy. But he doesn’t have an iPhone.
On a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Louis C.K. explained why, saying that he got rid of his iPhone because he was too immersed in it. “It’s like having a pencil you can $@%!,” Louis C.K. told Kimmel, going on to jokingly express his concerns about geo-location and the Cloud, which he ultimately sees giving us all wafer thin devices that, apparently, will allow you to smear Tom Cruise all over your face.
Hilarious, but Louis C.K. always is. This is a comic at the top of his game. If you haven’t already, buy some tickets to see him on his next tour: he’s cutting out all the middlemen and selling them directly to fans, effectively doing his best to cut out the scalpers and the extortionists like Ticketmaster. This is a guy who deserves your money.
Source: FunkySpaceMonkey
Various reports indicate that Apple is working on a major overhaul of iTunes that it plans to launch later this year. Those reports indicate that the update will be focused on consumer-oriented features like improved app/content discovery, music and media sharing, and greater iCloud integration. There’s also the possibility that Apple might split out some iTunes features into separate apps much like the company has done in iOS – the most recent example being the Podcasts app that it launched earlier this week.
Splitting iTunes into discrete parts is an attractive prospect, particularly for businesses and IT professionals. iTunes has become a bloated hodgepodge of functionality over the years. As a result, IT departments typically face a conundrum about whether to support or even allow employees with iOS devices to use iTunes on workplace computers.
Apple is said to be preparing an iTunes overhaul that will deliver the largest change the online music store has seen since its debut back in 2003. Set to be unveiled by the end of this year, the refresh will reportedly bring better iCloud integration and file-storage for users with multiple iOS devices, as well as new features for sharing music with friends.
The Reno, Nevada City Council today approved a deal that includes $89 million in tax abatements for Apple, representing a 79 percent overall reduction in Apple’s tax burden in the city. The tax breaks apply to county, city and state taxes, and will in part encourage Apple to invest $1 billion in northern Nevada over the next 10 years.
As you’re probably aware, MobileMe shuts down on June 30, and along with it will go hundreds of thousands of users public webpages, photo galleries, and iDisk folders. In an effort to save this data, the Archiveteam has downloaded all of it. That’s a whopping 272 Terabytes, not Gigabytes, of data.
Cloud storage accounts for just 7% of our digital content according to Gartner the industry research firm. Given the ubiquity of cloud services and their ability to sync personal data, photos, documents, and just about everything else with our iPhone, iPads, Mac, PCs, and other devices, that number may sound a bit small. After all, the range of content that iCloud is capable of syncing in Lion and iOS 5 isn’t exactly minor.
Gartner also predicts that the percentage of the average user’s digital property will grow to more than five times that by 2016. At that point, the firm sees most users store more that a third (36%) of their digital content in various clouds. That news isn’t exactly surprising for Apple customers. Apple is making a major push for seamless iCloud integration in Mountain Lion and iOS 6. That said, the firm’s report digital storage does have a few surprises in it. In some ways the report shows that Apple is leading rather than following the personal cloud industry.
Alien Blue, undoubtedly the best third-party Reddit client for iOS, has just received a great new update on the iPhone. In addition to a long list of improvements and optimizations, version 2.6 brings the ability to sort your subreddits into groups, and then sync them via iCloud; Retina subreddit icons, a native Imgur album browser, a native GIF player, and lots more.
We’re super excited for iOS 6. Although it isn’t the complete iOS overhaul many users were hoping for, it does deliver a whole host of new features — like a new Maps app, user interface enhancements, improvements to stock apps, and Siri support on iPad — that we’re certainly looking forward to.
However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that iOS 6 still has some things missing. Things we’ve been waiting for for some time. Here are seven of them.
Amazon is said to be in the final stages of negotiations with record labels over licensing deals that would allow the online retailer to launch a competitor to iTunes Match. It has reportedly reached agreements with Universal Music Group and EMI already, and is now close to wrapping up deals with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Bros. as well.
