Guide to Mac, iPod, iPad and iPhone news and reviews
As highlighted in a few reports shared in the MacRumors forums, a small but growing number of iPhone 6 Plus owners have reportedly bent their phones after carrying the devices in their pockets just days after launch. In one instance, a new iPhone 6 Plu…
Apple has posted two new ads for the iPhone 6, featuring Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake. The new ads, Huge (above), and Cameras, began airing last night and highlight the larger screens of the new models and the enhanced camera capabilities. [via 9…
Mojang, the Microsoft-owned developer behind hit game Minecraft, has a new game coming to the iPad. And good news! It’ll be getting a price drop across all platforms when it does. Called Scrolls, it’s a hex-tiled collectible card battler, something…
Today in iLounge Deals we’re offering you an exclusive opportunity to pre-order the Karma Go LTE Hotspot for only $99—33{813a954d5e225a1509f22204ece89c855080ce25555f20805f61bed63cbfde3b} off the regular price. The Karma Go puts ultra-fast Wi-Fi in your pocket with an LTE connection to keep all of your devices connected to the Internet wherever you go in the U.S. With Karma, there are no monthly fees or contracts—you simply pay for the data you use, and that data never expires. Not only can you…
From the iPhone to the iPad, immediate reactions are always mixed on new Apple products, as the public struggles to wrap its head around Cupertino’s next bold idea. And so we hear a lot of warrantless criticism until the product…
The LED Lighting Starter Set includes two Smart LED bulbs that can be screwed into any standard light fixture along with Belkin’s new WeMo Link bridge that plugs into a standard wall receptacle, providing connectivity between the bulbs and the Wi-Fi network. Additional bulbs can be purchased separately for $30 each, and the system provides support for up to 50 bulbs on a single WeMo Link. The bulbs produce 800 lumens of output—equivalent…
Judging from Apple’s own App Store data, an awful lot of folks have upgraded to iOS 8 in the first five days! We’ve got all the details on that number, along with a look at the latest pair of Fallon/Timerlake iPhone 6 commercials, and news of an Adobe-Aviary mashup that looks promising for mobile shutterbugs.
Wednesday will mark one week since the arrival of iOS 8, and judging from a pie chart casually posted to Apple’s online Developer portal, nearly half of all iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads are already running the latest and greatest mobile operating system out of Cupertino.
According to Apple, the exact figure is 46 percent — quite an impressive number, considering iOS 8 was only released to the public on September 17, and the App Store data is already two days old, measured on September 21. iOS 7 still takes the lead with 49 percent, while a mere five percent of devices are still running an unspecified “earlier” version of the OS — presumably models that have been jailbroken or are unable to install the later versions.
On the heels of yesterday’s announcement of 10 million iPhone 6 units sold during the first weekend, Apple is turning up the marketing heat with a pair of new television commercials (embedded below) — not that they need any help getting consumers to line up around the block to buy the devices right now.
The new 30-second spots are done in the same style as “Duo” and “Health,” the pair of commercials Apple premiered during the keynote two weeks ago. Featuring the voices of Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and performer Justin Timberlake, “Huge” finds the duo bantering back and forth about whether the new features or the size of the hardware are more important, while “Cameras” puts the emphasis on the new time-lapse mode and image-stabilization features.
Although the built-in iOS Photos app now includes powerful tools for editing images, for years such tasks have fallen to popular third-party solutions like Aviary, which offers a rich API capable of empowering other apps, such as the cloud-based Picturelife. But that may only scratch the surface of what is possible now that Adobe announced the acquisition of Aviary on Monday, and appears to have some ambitious plans to help power a new mobile-centric Creative SDK.
According to Adobe, the purchase of Aviary will help accelerate third-party APIs, allowing developers to browse files stored in Creative Cloud, extract elements from PSD files, access cloud-based image-editing services, and much more. A separate blog post offering insight on the deal promises “a whole set of updates and new apps” that will be launched at the company’s annual Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles on October 6, with even more great things to come in the months ahead.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
We had our family summer holiday in France this year and although I have plenty of French words stored in my head (thanks to my grammar drilling French teacher Miss Chettle), my pronunciation is terrible. In fact, it’s a bit like watching one of those comedy movies where someone totally out of their depth tries […]
The iOS 8 update went smoothly for most users, but like every software update there are sometimes bothers, hangups, and difficulties that arise for a subset of users. One frustrating issue that is impacting some iPhone and iPad users are recurrent wire…
Oh, Beats — we hardly knew ya. For a while there it looked as though Apple would use the Beats streaming music service as its own entity, preferring to keep its own brand attached to iTunes Radio. But that’s no longer the case (if it ever was), according to a new report from TechCrunch. Indeed, only a couple of months after acquiring the service in May, Apple is reportedly getting ready to shut it down.
“Many engineers from Beats Music have already been moved off the product and onto other projects at Apple, including iTunes,” the report says. “It’s not clear when exactly Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre’s music service will be shut down or what Apple will do with streaming, but every source with knowledge of the situation that we talked to agreed Apple plans to sunset the Beats Music brand.”
These sources allegedly include “several prominent employees at Apple and Beats.” It’s been thought that Apple acquired Beats for a head start into iTunes music streaming since the day rumors of the buyout first leaked, but recent events seemed to conflict with that initial assessment. After all, Apple recently created a dedicated Beats channel for Apple TV, and it notably added Beats as a “Made By Apple” app.
But some of the signs were there already; indeed, TechCrunch points out that the absence of Beats as a preinstalled app on the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus served as a red flag. It’s also unclear how this move will affect the headphone side of the business, which Apple has been promoting in its retail stores and via a new dedicated subhead on the online store.
[UPDATE] Not so fast. According to recode.net, the TechCrunch report is in error. Their article states, “Tom Neumayr, Apple’s PR rep, says the TechCrunch story is ‘not true’ but wouldn’t go beyond that.” It’s speculated that Beats Music may simply be rebranded.
Follow this article’s writer, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.
If all that hullabaloo about record numbers of preorders and crowded Apple stores didn’t tip you off, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are selling quite well. How well? According to a press release sent out by the company this morning, customers acquired more than 10 million of the devices over the weekend. Yes, that’s a record.
“Sales for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus exceeded our expectations for the launch weekend, and we couldn’t be happier,” Apple CEO Tim Cook says in the press release. “We would like to thank all of our customers for making this our best launch ever, shattering all previous sell-through records by a large margin.”
Indeed, those numbers could have been higher if the two devices’ release weren’t slightly tainted by the low availability we’ve come to expect from Apple launches over the last couple of years. Cook referred to this unfortunate (but somehow enviable) state of affairs in the release.
“While our team managed the manufacturing ramp better than ever before, we could have sold many more iPhones with greater supply and we are working hard to fill orders as quickly as possible,” Cook says. The limited availability issues most strongly affect the iPhone 6 Plus, which is listed as not shipping for three to four weeks across the Apple Online Store.
Still, that’s an impressive launch weekend for the Cupertino company, especially considering that the iPhone 5s and 5c together “only” reached 9 million sales during the same timeframe. As usual, Apple didn’t provide a breakdown on the sales for each of the devices; we’ll likely have to wait until the quarterly earnings call in in October before we learn those numbers.
Follow this article’s writer, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.
A new report from TechCrunch reveals that Apple may be planning to shut down its Beats Music subscription service. Citing “five sources, including several prominent employees at Apple and Beats,” the report notes that a number of engineers from the Beats Music team have already been moved to other projects at Apple such as iTunes. Although it remains unclear when this is expected to happen, all sources point to Apple planning to discontinue…
Western Digital’s My Passport portable hard drives have all been appealingly small and ready to take pretty much anywhere — except that they’ve depended on a computer for connectivity and power. Made entirely from plastic, My Passport Wireless ($180-$220) preserves the same compact design but is capable of fully wireless operation. A six-hour rechargeable battery and 802.11n MIMO Wi-Fi enable the 1TB or 2TB hard disk to stream media content to up…
Apple has issued an update to the Mail app for OS X Yosemite, which aims to fix some issues which caused the Mail application incapable of composing an email message. Apple recommends that all users of OS X Yosemite Developer Preview and OS X Yosemite Public Beta install the update, though if you don’t use … Read More
Several research and analytics firms have reported that iOS 8 adoption has reached 30{813a954d5e225a1509f22204ece89c855080ce25555f20805f61bed63cbfde3b} following the first weekend of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sales, based on in-app analytics reported by Fiksu, Mixpanel, Appsee, and Chitika. While this number is up from the estimated 15{813a954d5e225a1509f22204ece89c855080ce25555f20805f61bed63cbfde3b} adoption following the initial iOS 8 public release last week, it still falls short of the almost 50{813a954d5e225a1509f22204ece89c855080ce25555f20805f61bed63cbfde3b} of users that had updated to iOS 7 by this time last year. The higher adoption…
iOS 8 is a fantastic update for most iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users with tons of excellent additions, feature enhancements, and great changes. Sure, some users are resistant to change and there may be some annoyances, but for the most part iOS 8 adds so many positives that it’s hard to imagine going backwards. … Read More
