Apple names a new and noteworthy app each week as its App of the Week. This week, it’s Simplebot’s Rise Alarm Clock, a universal alarm clock that’s getting quite a bit of buzz in the tech sector.
Let’s face it, alarm clocks are a dime nickel a dozen, so it’s ironic to see one hit the top spot on the App Store. The app evokes another big buzz app, Clear: it’s well-designed, looks great, and works with simple swipes and taps; what’s not to love?
In the ongoing antitrust case regarding e-book price fixing, the presiding judge has denied Apple’s plea for mercy over the Department of Justice’s ruling proposal. The DoJ found Apple guilty of conspiring with publishers to raise prices on e-books with the iBookstore, and Apple continues to plead not guilty despite the fact that all of the publishers have settled outside of court.
The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) has ruled in favor of Apple today by finding Samsung guilty of patent infringement in two cases. This marks the ITC’s final ruling from the original complaint Apple filed against Samsung back in 2011, reports FOSS Patents. Apple won a decisive victory against Samsung last year that involved over a half billion dollars in damages, and President Obama recently vetoed a sales ban on older Apple products that the ITC had awarded Samsung.
KeyMe is a New York-based startup that has released an iPhone app for storing and and securely sharing digital copies of physical keys. Yes, you read that right. Instead of going completely digital and abandoning the concept of a traditional lock and key altogether, KeyMe is blending the analog with the digital.
The app stores pictures you take on your iPhone of your key, and in the event of a lockout, the digital copy can be given to a locksmith.
Getting into the psyche of any major historical figure is a difficult task, especially when you’ve never even met them, so to sympathize with Steve Jobs’ dick-ish behavior for his role in JOBS, Ashton Kutchers says he thought of Steve as kind of like a great football coach.
During an appearance on The Colbert Report, Kutcher says he can totally relate to why Steve Jobs berated people, because his high school football coach/uncle used to throw temper tantrums to make the team better too.
Kutcher told Colbert that he also thinks the way Steve sought love and appreciation from people was by obsessing about making perfect products for them, so that kind of justified being an asshole to people.
Here’s the full interview:
Remember Twitter’s #music app for the iPhone? No? Well you’re not alone. The app has only been around since April and it has already faded into the App Store’s deep recess of obscurity. It hasn’t stayed on any of the top charts while apps like Spotify and Rdio continue to gain in popularity.
But Twitter isn’t giving up just yet. Today an update was released to #music that brings more tools for discovering music, including the ability to scan an iPhone’s music library.
Take a moment and breathe. That’s what new, meditative space building sim rymdkapsel wants us to do. The concept here is to create and expand a space station (rymdkapsel means “space capsule” in Swedish), defending against waves of ever tougher alien spaceships. The goal is to survive as long as possible, reaching up to four monolith structures.
The game itself–originally released on Sony’s PlayStation Vita handheld–is hypnotic, slow-paced, and calming. There’s a strange sense of joy and peace that descends as players build their space station using Tetris-shaped block pieces, sending Pong-shaped minions to build new corridors, gather resources, research the monoliths, and take up arms to defend against the incoming waves of alien shooter ships.
Looks like the venerable video game company is looking to get in on some of GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons action with Taito’s own arcade-music mashup iOS game, Groove Coaster Zero.
The two companies have just announced a new collaboration in which Groove Coaster Zero gets original and remixed background music from breakout hit Puzzle & Dragons as playable levels in Groove Coaster Zero. In addition, Puzzle & Dragons will get some special Groove Coaster Zero-themed dungeons along with classic Space Invader characters. That’s a mouthful, but super exciting, and it’s coming August 12.
2013 is, so far, what might be considered a year of regrouping for Apple. The company has seen huge success in the PC, smartphone and tablet markets, but it’s also pushed those about as far as they can go: Incremental improvements, not revolutions, are what we can expect for the Mac, iPhone and iPad from here on out. Meanwhile, the next big thing — the iWatch, the iTV, whatever — is still on the horizon.
To outsiders, it looks like Apple has stalled. Far from it. You only need to look at the changes Apple is making with iOS 7 to see that Cupertino isn’t standing still, and the company has signalled that it is committed to the future of OS X for at least the next 10 years. That said, all the products Apple is set to announce next month — the iPhone 5S, the iPhone 5C, the iPad mini 2 and the iPad 5 — are just sequels to what it’s already done.
People are getting impatient for the next major Apple revolution. And it’s not just outsiders. A new report suggests that Apple’s own board of directors is “deeply concerned” about Cupertino’s perceived slackening in the pace of innovation.
Adding textured filters to your photos: RAD!
Adding pre-made textured filters to your photos? Lame.
That’s why you need to make your own filters right now, and Geri Centonze from iPhoneLife is here to tell you how.
With a new story concerning the extraordinary lengths the U.S. Government is seemingly taking to spy on its citizens’ digital lives hitting the news every day now, President Obama met Apple CEO Tim Cook and a number of other tech executives to discuss government surveillance.
Inkflow 3.0 adds an amazing new feature to the vector-based sketching app: InkPort. Inkport lets you import your paper sketches from the real world and turn them into editable vector art, just using the iPad’s camera.
We’ve known for a long, long time that the fifth-generation iPad would borrow the iPad mini’s design cues and have thinner bezels on the side for a more streamlined form factor. Heck, iLounge’s Jeremy Horowitz said as much as early as January of this year, claiming that the iPad 5 would be “a lot smaller than one would guess is possible” with “virtually no left or right bezels.”
For months now, we’ve seen parts leak out of Asia confirming that report, including cases, rear shells, and more. Today, we have leaked images of the front panel and digitizer. And yup! Look, Ma! No bezels.
We’re probably about a month and a half away from the debut of the next iPhone, which means it’s about the time when we historically see deals on the latest model hitting the big boxes as they look to clear inventory. And right on cue, here comes Best Buy, with an aggressive offer on the iPhone. But there are bigger discounts than just that, including some sweet deals on select MacBook Pros.
If you liked my how-to on rolling your own ImageMagick-based OS X Services using shell scripts, you’re going to love OptiPNG. It’s another command line utility that can be used to shrink PNGs without losing any quality.
Would you like a Leica, but don’t-a like-a the price tag? You could do what I did, and buy a $70 Leica strap for your cheap-ass $1,300 camera. Or you could buy this cute Leica-inspired SD card holder. Price: a mere $185.
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Grain, light leaks, color shifts, low contrast caused by lens flare—these are all familiar Instagrammatical filters which mimic the limits of film. And ironically, they were all considered Bad Things when people actually shot with film.
Now we try to avoid digital noise just as we add back fake analog noise (grain). But what about native digital glitches? There is—as you have no doubt predicted—an app for that. It’s called Glitché.
If you use Pinboard (and if you don’t, you should), then you might also consider using a Mac app to save and browse all those achieved bookmarks. Which brings us to Shiori, a very plain-yet-pretty iOS 7-inspired Mac app for your Pinboard.
The Ukrainian folks behind the iblazr, a little four-LED accessory flash that plugs into an iDevice’s 3.5mm jack, have almost doubled their $50K Kickstarter goal and now offer something new: a diffuser, included free with the flash.
This is something we don’t see often enough: outside-the-box thinking applied to sports armbands for the iPhone. Digifit—an outfit we’ve covered before that makes fitness tracking devices and software—took the tired old bicep-hugging armband and slid it all the way down to the forearm; presto, no more yoga poses just to see your lap times.
Just like the Disney theme parks, the new Disney Animation iPad app is saddled with a heavy price for admission—but reveals a vast trove of wonder once inside.
For $14, the app makes an immense amount of material available—almost two gigs worth—from Disney’s digitally and traditionally animated titles.
The Roku iOS app got another update today. In addition to the previous “Play on Roku” feature which let users stream music and static images to the set top media box, the company has now added the ability to stream video directly from the iOS app as well.
In a market that includes Apple TV and Google’s nascent Chromecast technology, Roku is making some positive steps to stay relevant.
iOS 7 is a radical departure from anything Apple has done design wise, but OS X Mavericks largely still looks like the Mac operating system we all know and love. Much of the leather and linen has been removed in Mavericks, but the OS hasn’t been fundamentally redesigned like iOS.
A designer from the U.K. named Stu Crew sent us his “Ivericks” concept for OS X that blends the design language of iOS 7 with the desktop. “In order to visualise the new style on a Mac screen I recreated several elements and applied them to several programs,” said Crew. “Created to explore the idea of an updated OS X, this is just a update of looks with a few new functions taken from both the iPhone and iPad.”
Parts for Apple’s rumored low-cost iPhone, recently dubbed the ‘iPhone 5C’, have been trickling out of the supply chain overseas for the past few months. We’ve seen nearly all facets of the upcoming device, including a slew of bright colors Apple is considering for the plastic back.
China has been historically known as the homeland for cheap Apple knockoffs, and the unreleased iPhone 5C is no exception. Thanks to the wealth of leaked parts that are floating around, you can buy a hollow iPhone 5C right now for 98 Chinese Yuan.
Popular music video platform Vevo is working on its own channel for the Apple TV, according to a new report from AdAge. The channel will offer free access to premium music videos 24-7, and Vevo will likely use ads to make money. Vevo already offers a free iOS app that plays short ads between videos.
On the Apple TV, Vevo will probably create an experience akin to Vevo TV, the company’s free, round-the-clock internet station that shows music videos and is supported by ads.
Because the Apple TV doesn’t have an open SDK for developers, Apple has to reach out to content makers specifically. More channels have been added to the Apple TV in recent months from the likes of HBO and ESPN.
Source: AdAge