A member of Apple’s elite industrial design team has just joined GoPro

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

A longtime member of Apple’s closely-knit 19-person elite industrial design team has joined action camera maker GoPro, according to an exclusive report published Wednesday by the former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin's The Information.

The article, hidden behind a paywall, states that Apple designer Danny Coster is now joining GoPro to head up a new hardware design group there as Vice President of Design.

On a somewhat related note, a murky rumor recently alleged that Apple was interested in acquiring GoPro. In a company-wide email today announcing the hire, GoPro said the executive would begin his role by month's end. Coster, who worked for Apple since the early 1990s, was apparently curious to explore the new opportunity at GoPro.

Read More

Kindle Oasis is Amazon’s thinnest and lightest e-reader ever, but costs more than iPad mini 2

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a brand new device, the $290 Kindle Oasis, its eighth-generation Kindle e-reader. Billed as its thinnest and lightest e-redear yet, the Oasis weighs in at just 4.6 ounces and measures a remarkable 3.4 millimeters at its thinnest point, which is less than half the thickness of Apple's iPhone 6s at its smallest point.

Its dual-battery charging system lets you read for months without plugging in if you're using the Oasis with the official charging case. Without the case, the device's built-in battery provides up to two weeks of reading based on 30 minutes usage per day.

Read More

You can now attach Microsoft Office documents to your WhatsApp chats

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

After enabling complete end-to-end encryption for chats and adding support for sending and receiving PDFs and basic text styling, WhatsApp for iPhone in its most recent update brings the ability to attach Microsoft Office documents to your instant exchanges with friends on the service.

Although not mentioned in the official release notes accompanying the 59.1-megabyte app, the change was spotted this morning by the Italian blog iSpazio. This is a useful new feature for users that removes the need to convert Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to the PDF format before attaching them to their WhatsApp conversations.

Read More

Google Calendar can intelligently find time on your schedule to work on your personal goals

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

Yesterday, Google announced a cool new feature to mark the tenth anniversary of its online calendar service: Google Calendar will now scan your calendar intelligently to find the time on your schedule to work on your personal goals.

According to Google, the updated Google Calendar app lets you add a personal goal to your calendar.

These can be things like “run three times a week” or “hit the gym every day except weekend”. After parsing your natural language input, it'll schedule time automatically for you and help you actually stick to it.

Read More

Facebook open-sources a camera design for capturing spherical footage in 3D

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

At its annual developers conference, the F8, which kicked off yesterday, the social networking giant Facebook announced an open-source spherical camera rig design which can shoot 360-degree video in 3D. Dubbed the Facebook Surround 360, the design consists of as many as fourteen wide-angle cameras bolted onto the horizontal ring.

There's also a fish-eye camera on top and two on the bottom for a total of seventeen cameras that are synced with a global shutter mechanism. The accompanying software stitches the individual videos together into one seamless 360-degree footage.

Read More

This phone packs in a 10-core processor, 10-LED camera flash, 3D Touch clone and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

With each passing day, Chinese handset vendors are getting better at their game, producing phones with great technical specifications that often outperform flagship devices from the likes of Samsung, but cost half as much. Take, for example, Meizu, a Chinese consumer electronics company, which has built a new phone with some impressive hardware specifications.

Their new Pro 6 smartphone was just announced this morning: it has the world's first ten-core mobile processor, a 21-megapixel rear camera with a small ring two-tone flash consisting of 10 LEDs, a first for any smartphone, and a clone of Apple's 3D Touch.

Read More

In this game, Steve Jobs was North Korean and started APeX Computers out of a garage

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 16, 2016

Homefront: The Revolution, an upcoming shooter developed by Deep Silver Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver, a division of Austria's Koch Media, is based on an interesting alternative history scenario in which Steve Jobs was North Korean and started APeX Computers out of a garage in the 1970s.

Set in the year 2029 when the United States is occupied by North Korea, the game is full of alternative history stories relating to Apple and comes with a complete timeline of events that detail the creation of the APeX II personal computer, an iPhone-style device called aPhone and other events from 1953 onwards.

Read More

EarthView Walls grabs random wallpapers from Google Earth for your jailbroken iPhone

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 13, 2016

Choosing a wallpaper can be tough, that's why every week we show you a featured wallpaper post in order to help you stay relevant and refreshed.

But if you want more, you might be interested in a new free jailbreak tweak called EarthView Walls, which will grab random wallpapers from Google's Earth view and set them as your device's wallpaper.

We'll walk you through how the tweak works in this review and talk a little about why it could be an optimal solution for you.

Read More

Timeframe: the Apple Watch desk stand that doubles as a case

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 13, 2016

Fellow Apple Watch users, the Timeframe by Ten One Design is a wonderful way to enjoy Night Stand mode while it charges at night.

Moreover, it'll still feel as though your device is well-protected from falls or pets that might like to climb up on your night stand at night because it offers a protective bezel that surrounds all of the delicate parts of the device.

In this review, we'll walk you through our thoughts on the Timeframe.

Read More

This tweak keeps music from resuming after hanging up a call on your iPhone

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated August 5, 2024

Anyone who uses their iPhone to pick up calls, whether they're phone calls or FaceTime calls, knows that when music is playing, iOS will automatically pause the music until the phone call ends. When it does, iOS will resume the song where it left off.

Those who don't like how the music resumes after a phone call really have no way to disable the feature on a stock iPhone; instead, you would have to go back to the app that is playing the music and pause it manually.

A new free jailbreak tweak called PauseAfterCall solves this problem.

Read More

How to remove games you’ve uninstalled or no longer play from Game Center

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 18, 2023

With Game Center, you can play your favorite games with friends who have an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Mac. Game Center is also where your global leaderboards, achievements, challenges, high scores and other data are stored for each Game Center-compatible game you play.

Some people also find this particular feature a major nuisance over being bugged with notifications and invites for the games they no longer have installed on their device.

Thankfully, you can easily remove any game that you no longer play from Game Center with a quick swipe.

Read More