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Reliable Japanese blog reaffirms Smart Connector, no headphone jack and other iPhone 7 rumors

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

Mac Otakara, a fairly reliable Japanese-language blog, learned from its own sources this morning that the rumors pertaining to some of the more controversial iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus features are in fact true. No headphone jack? You bet! That CAD design rendering supposedly sourced from Apple manufacturer Catcher Technology which gave us a closer look at a trio of suspicious-looking dots on the back of the phone? Yup, that's a Smart Connector! Wait, what?

First Safari Technology Preview update drops

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 24, 2017

Safari Technology Preview, a special version of Apple's desktop browser designed to give developers their first look at upcoming new features and future enhancements, today received the first official update since its release two weeks ago.

The new build packs in a host of fixes and improvements for Safari's layout and rendering engine, CSS, JavaScript, Web APIs, Accessibility, Web Inspector and other facets of the app.

“Hey Siri, is Jon Snow dead?”

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

Ahead of the upcoming April 24 premiere of the sixth season of HBO's popular “Game of Thrones” television show, Siri engineers seem to have updated her database to answer some of the most burning questions asked by fans, the most lingering one being “Is Jon Snow dead?”

Conveniently, Apple's made sure that the personal digital assistant is spoiler-free so you won't get anything out of her pertaining to whether or not the show’s most popular character has perished at the hands of the Night’s Watch.

Snapchat stickers can now move in tandem with objects and people in your videos

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

Snapchat today announced a very cool object-tracking feature that works with live video, in real time.

Now available in Snapchat for Android and coming soon to the company's iPhone application, users can optionally attach a sticker to an object or a person in the frame and Snapchat's algorithm will handle the rest and do all the heavy lifting for you, Engadget reports.

You could add colorful scribbles to your photos and videos before but these were static. By pairing stickers with specific parts of your recording, the Snapchat algorithm can make them move, rotate and change their size to follow the object it's attached to as it moves around the frame.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.