Year: 2014

ETA lets you easily check driving time to your favorite locations

I often go to the Bay Area, which is about 100 miles from where I live. If you know anything about California traffic, you’ll know that a simple 100-mile trip could take anywhere between an hour and a half and four hours. So, knowing drive times in advance is very important when I’m trying to make it to a show on time.

ETA is a very simple app that lets you check the estimated time of arrival for any location you save in your iPhone. Plus, you can get driving directions through the app as well…

Kendrick Lamar to perform at iTunes Festival SXSW

As first noted by Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, Apple has added Kendrick Lamar to its star list of performers at the upcoming iTunes Festival SXSW next month in Austin, Texas.

Support acts ScHoolboy Q, Isaiah Rashad, Band of Skulls and Capital Cities have also been added to the list of performers.

Lamar, 26, is a popular American hip-hop artist who first gained major attention in 2010, after the release of his fourth mixtape, 'Overly Dedicated'.

The Los Angeles based lyricist also delivered a flawless set during last year's iTunes Festival at London’s historic Roundhouse venue, where more than 400 artists performed in front of more than 430,000 fans, according to MTV...

Google admits Android wasn’t designed to be safe

In the wake of numerous reports that all point to the same conclusion - that malware infestation is running amok on Android - the Internet giant made an unusually open statement through the mouth of its Android lead, Sundar Pichai, who finally admitted that Android wasn't built for security.

"If I had a company dedicated to malware, I would also be targetting Android", Pichai allegedly said to a stunned audience at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. When your own platform lead starts making such frank statements about Android security, it's high time you considered taking these security reports at face value...

God of Light hits iOS: ingenious physics-based puzzlers featuring a ray of light

Playmous has unleashed a brand new iPhone and iPad game that every fan of physic-based puzzlers should download right away.

Now available in the App Store for your iPhone and iPad in exchange for $1.99, God of Light has you playing as Shiny, an extraterrestrial being that uses his unique ability to project light through the darkness. One just has to see this game in action in order to fully appreciate it.

In a nutshell, the player is tasked with directing rays of energy to reach Sources of Light to activate them and bring light back to Shiny's world. It's an insta-buy, if I ever saw one, here's why...

Fortune names Apple its Most Admired Company – for the seventh year in a row

For the past six years, Fortune made Apple its Most Admired Company. Sure enough, the Cupertino, California company has (again) topped the publication's annual Most Admired list, for the seventh year in a row now.

Given that Fortune collects votes from high-ranked executives and analysts in the nation's largest companies, it's safe to say that Apple still shines brightest in the eyes of its peers.

Amazon and Google are respectively #2 and #3, having switched places from their 2012 rankings. Other tech giants are far behind Apple, Amazon and Google. For instance, Samsung registers at #21 and IBM is sixteenth. Facebook? 38th. Microsoft is sitting at the 24th place and Intel is #47...

Clear app free for the next 24 hours, download now

Developer Realmac Software recently addressed user confusion surrounding its Clear and Clear+ to-do apps for the iPhone and iPad by announcing that it will be migrating Clear+ users to Clear for free.

Not only are they doing this to ensure that “as many people as possible can move to Clear” because Clear+ is now defunct, but also due to the fact that Apple doesn’t offer a way to migrate users between copies of an app.

Realmac also added native iPad interface to Clear so now both Clear and Clear+ support all form-factor iOS devices. If I were you, I'd download Clear for free right away...

Documents 5 gets even more powerful with Readdle apps integration

Documents by Readdle is a popular file manager that lets you store music, videos, photos, and more. The company has recently been overhauling their entire line of productivity apps for iOS 7 and this one is no different.

Documents 5 is the completely redesigned version of its predecessor and comes with plenty of new features to make you think twice about which file manager you want to use from now on. Plus, if you have other Readdle apps on your iPad, you can access them from inside Documents…

EU demanding ‘concrete answers’ from Apple and Google regarding in-app purchasing concerns

Reuters is reporting that The European Commission has invited Apple and Google to discuss a flurry of user complaints surrounding in-app purchases. The move follows numerous media reports that center on disgruntled parents who were shocked to find that their children racked up vast credit card bills by making content purchases in free-to-play games.

The Commission is arguing that it's Apple's and Google's responsibility not to misleading consumers. The Commission also called upon greedy app creators to provide "very concrete answers" in respect to in-app purchasing concerns...

Former Apple director: the original iPhone ‘was not a great phone, it was an OK phone’

Believe it or not, Apple's former director has apologized to the owners of the original iPhone because the handset, to paraphrase him, wasn't really that great as Apple would have us believe at the time.

He pointed out that all of the technological pieces used in the original iPhone had been around for some time. Apple simply combined them seamlessly together in such a way that technology took a back seat to user interface, he underscored.

Specifically, he said Apple got its value proposition order the wrong way around in advertising the iPhone as three devices in one - a phone, an iPod and an Internet communicator. “It should have been the reverse”, he said at Mobile World Congress while speaking at a Dolby presentation, because ”having the Internet in your pocket was the most important”...

AT&T flips the switch on LTE in dozen new markets

The United States wireless carrier AT&T has lit up its fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network in twelve new municipalities around the country. The expansion brings AT&T's LTE to an additional 300,000 people, including the 65,000 residents of Bismark, North Dakota.

With this expansion, nearly 280 million people are covered by AT&T's LTE network in more than 500 U.S. markets. More than half of the carrier's postpaid smartphone customers now use a 4G LTE device. The carrier expects its LTE build out to be "essentially complete" by this summer. The full list of AT&T's new LTE coverage follows right after the break...

Sony chief: Apple is ‘missing out’ by updating iPhone just once per year

Apple is 'missing' out by only updating its iPhone once per year, according to Pierre Perron. In an interview at Mobile World Congress this week, Sony's mobile chief and European president offered up some friendly advice to the Cupertino company.

Essentially, Perron feels that because mobile technology advances so fast, a new handset can feel outdated after just a few months. So in order for Apple to meet consumer demand for cutting edge tech, it must update its iPhone hardware more frequently...

NBA updates Game Time app with videos of classic games

With football season over and baseball season still a month away, the US sports world has turned its attention to basketball. The regular NBA season is winding down and a lengthy stretch of playoff games is about to begin.

With that in mind, it's nice to see that the League continues to better its Game Time app. Following a big iOS 7 makeover and All-Star weekend refresh, the app has been updated today with videos of classic games and highlights...