Friday, December 13, 2013
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Tumblr launches new desktop app in the Mac App Store
Tumblr today released a new desktop application for OS X Yosemite in the Mac App Store. Complementing the micro-blogging site’s iOS client, the new app allows users to browse Tumblr, post to their own blogs, and perform various other actions.
The UI is very minimalistic, and goes great with the new design language in Yosemite. The app also takes advantage of a few OS X features such as Full Screen mode, and the Share button—you can post to Tumblr from almost anywhere on your Mac.
Other than that, there’s not much to the application. Sure, full-screen browsing is nice, as is the ability to quickly post things like images, videos and web links. But beyond those two things, it’s essentially a repackaged version of the Tumblr web app.
That won’t be enough to draw in casual users, however, folks who frequent the website will likely benefit from the added capabilities. If you’re interested, you can grab the new Tumblr app from the Mac App Store (requires OS X Yosemite) for free.
iCloud Photos is now available for iOS 8.1 beta users
Ahead of October 20’s public launch of iOS 8.1, Apple has released iCloud Photos to users running the iOS 8.1 beta on their devices. Qualifying accounts will be able to access iCloud Photos to view their iCloud Photo Library on the web through the beta version of iCloud.com.
Reports indicate that iCloud Photos looks and functions much like the stock Photos app on iOS, with the ability to view photos and select them to download to your computer.
Users who don’t yet have iOS 8.1 installed on a device will be prompted to update upon attempting to access iCloud Photos, meaning non-developers won’t receive access until Monday.
iCloud Photos on the web is part of Apple’s plan to offer a system of synchronizing all of a user’s photos amongst all the devices connected to an account, with web access available from any internet-enabled location upon signing in to iCloud.com.
Microsoft launches Skype Qik, its own ephemeral video messaging app
Tuesday, software giant Microsoft launched
a brand new ephemeral messaging app, Skype Qik, in a bid to take on the
likes of Snapchat and other applications in the increasingly crowded
ephemeral messaging space.
“Imagine if you could reinvent the Skype experience, taking into account how messaging, selfies and app culture have changed the way we communicate,” reads the blurb.
The free of charge iPhone app is based on Microsoft’s $100 million acquisition of the mobile video provider Qik three years ago. Microsoft retired the original Qik app soon after, clearing the way for a re-introduction of the reimagined Qik software for iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
As the name suggests, Skype Qik is being promoted through the Skype brand, itself owned by Microsoft. Matter of fact, Qik runs alongside Skype to provide an ongoing form of video chat allowing you to share laughs, and chat with groups of friends.
Qik exists to make video conversations “more spontaneous and fun so you don’t have to wait until your next call to connect with your favorite people,” the team argues. You can swap video messages with an individual content or groups of friends.
Each message automatically disappears after exactly two
weeks and should you need to delete a certain message or clip manually,
Qik lets you do that, too: you can easily erase any video you’ve sent
from the chat, whether it’s been watched or not.
Contact blocking is supported as well, though Microsoft said that the ability to block contacts on Android and Windows Phone will be available on the iPhone ”in the coming months”.
Here’s Skype Qik in action.
“Imagine if you could reinvent the Skype experience, taking into account how messaging, selfies and app culture have changed the way we communicate,” reads the blurb.
The free of charge iPhone app is based on Microsoft’s $100 million acquisition of the mobile video provider Qik three years ago. Microsoft retired the original Qik app soon after, clearing the way for a re-introduction of the reimagined Qik software for iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
As the name suggests, Skype Qik is being promoted through the Skype brand, itself owned by Microsoft. Matter of fact, Qik runs alongside Skype to provide an ongoing form of video chat allowing you to share laughs, and chat with groups of friends.
Qik exists to make video conversations “more spontaneous and fun so you don’t have to wait until your next call to connect with your favorite people,” the team argues. You can swap video messages with an individual content or groups of friends.
Contact blocking is supported as well, though Microsoft said that the ability to block contacts on Android and Windows Phone will be available on the iPhone ”in the coming months”.
Here’s Skype Qik in action.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Macworld/iWorld 2015 canceled, event on indefinite hiatus
Bad news for the Apple community on Tuesday, as news broke that the 2015 Macworld/iWorld Expo has been canceled, and the trade show is going on an indefinite hiatus. IDG made the announcement this morning, thanking the community for “30 amazing years.”
The group didn’t offer up any explanation for its decision to cancel the event, but it’s not hard to guess what happened. Attendance at the annual convention has been on the decline since 2009, when Apple decided to quit attending and host its own media events.
Prior to that, the Cupertino firm used the trade show to unveil major new products, attracting thousands of attendees. In fact, Steve Jobs used the event to make his (and Apple’s) comeback official in 1997, and again to introduce the original iPhone in early 2007.
Here’s the statement on the matter from IDG:
Macworld/iWorld will not take place in 2015 and the show is going on hiatus. The show saw a remarkable 30 year run that changed the technology industry, provided an important forum for Apple developers to bring new companies and products to market, delivered world class professional development to Apple product enthusiasts, and fostered the development of one of the most dynamic professional communities in the tech marketplace.
Our MacIT event, the world’s premiere event for deploying Apple in the enterprise, will continue next year with details to be announced in the coming weeks.
The reports of retailers not supporting Apple Pay have been greatly exaggerated
With Apple Pay set to launch later this month with support from big retailers such as Macy’s, Staples, Disney Store, and many more, there has been some drama building regarding the fact that Apple still has a lot of work to do to convince some big names to get on the Apple Pay bandwagon.
A post on the Daily Dot today exemplifies this, claiming that Pizza Hut, Chipotle, and H&M, Coach, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Sears, Kmart, BP, Starbucks, and more don’t plan on offering support for Apple Pay.
This sure makes for great headlines, but this kind of post usually fails to omit that retailers aren’t against Apple Pay, they’re just not on board with updating their costly point of sale systems.
The reality is that any store allowing contactless (NFC) payments through their point of sale system will effectively support Apple Pay. In essence, Apple Pay is not a program for which you decide or not to participate. Merchants don’t have to agree to specific terms. They don’t have to be approved by Apple. All merchants have to do to provide support for Apple Pay is to have a point of sale system that supports NFC/contactless transactions.
The problem is that most point of sale systems are just old machines that haven’t been futureproofed. But as MacRumors rightfully points out, things will probably change as of October 2015, when merchants that do not offer support for EMV chip card technology may be held responsible in case of fraudulent transactions. It is believed that most merchants will then update their point of sale system to offer support for EMV chip technology and NFC at the same time, but as you can imagine, this transition will take time and money.
At the end of the day, it’s not so much a case of Pizza Hut, Chipotle, and H&M, Coach, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Sears, Kmart, BP, and Starbucks not willing to support Apple Pay. It’s rather a case of all these merchants not willing to invest large amounts of money in updating their point of sale system.
The fact that merchants may bear responsibility for processed fraudulent transactions past October 2015 will certainly be a motivator for them to update their system, but it won’t be a legal requirement.
Contactless transactions are the future of payments, and nothing will change this, but as with all new technologies, it will need some time to roll out. There will be early adopters, and there will be late comers. But saying some retailers just don’t want to commit to Apple Pay is just ridiculous headlines that do not paint an accurate picture of the reality.
Chinese carriers take in 1 million iPhone 6 pre-orders in 6 hours
Pre-orders for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus officially began in China today, and it sounds like sales for the two handsets are doing well thus far. Tencent reports that the country’s three major wireless carriers recorded more than 1 million pre-orders during first 6 hours of availability.
There’s been no word on what sales looked like throughout the rest of the day, and the 1M figure doesn’t include orders taken directly by Apple, or its 6,000 authorized resellers. It also doesn’t account for the 9+ million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus reservations that were made last week.
The new iPhones will launch in China on October 17. Both will support TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, and be offered by China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom across the country. The first two carriers are among the world’s largest, with 800M and 300M subscribers, respectively.
Apple unveiled the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus at an event on September 9, and launched them in several countries 10 days later. After opening weekend, the company announced that it had sold 10 million handsets during the 3-day period, besting its previous record for handset sales.
Video shows how to access hidden settings in Instagram’s Hyperlapse
Instagram’s recently released Hyperlapse app, built for recording time-lapse videos, has received a lot of praise for its UI design and function, but there’s no denying that it’s a bit short on features—or so we thought. Apparently the app has a hidden menu with several options, including 1080P video capturing and more.
The video below is in German, but it’s not hard to get the gist of it. You can access the hidden Hyperlapse “Labs” menu by tapping on the display four times, with four fingers. I was able to confirm this works on my iPhone 6 Plus, although like the user in the clip, it took me a few tries before the menu finally appeared.
Included in the settings are options to change resolution and frame rate, and enable a background save mode. You can also calibrate your camera, tweak sound levels, reset the NUX Flag (not sure what this is), and enable a mode called Hyperlapse EXTREME. I’m not sure what it does, but the name sounds awesome.
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