Nick Bilton of the New York Times is out with a fantastic piece detailing why Google Glass as we know it has been killed off by the Mountain View based company. Born out of the futuristic Google X lab, the headset was not only plagued by problems, but it was receiving attention from the mass-market that Google just wasn't ready for.
Noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities is out with a report on Friday that's extremely bearish on the state of Apple's iPad. The analyst, who expects Apple to release a new 12.9-inch model in the coming months, says the downward trend of iPad sales to continue, as much as 30 percent in 2015.
Kuo believes iPad shipments will "struggle to top" 45 million units in 2015, which is a 30 percent year over year decline from 2014. The first quarter of the year is said to be particularly bad, with a prediction that shipments will decline 52.7 percent in the first quarter of calendar 2015 to just 10.1 million units.
Apple is bringing several enhancements to emojis in OS X 10.10.3, as placeholder emojis indicate we may see more diverse characters when the update is released to the public in the coming months.
Following word from the Unicode Consortium in March of 2014 that more diverse emojis are coming, there are now multiple versions of the same emoji character under a sub-menu.
Given the beta state of OS X 10.10.3, the menu is currently non-functional, but it does show the selected emoji followed by five instances of the emoji paired with a number one inside a black box, MacRumors first noted. This indicates we may see different skin tones for the "man" emoji and others.
If anyone has been following along over the last few months then you'll probably know that I've been having a bit of a love-in with my iPad mini. After initially suffering the same fate as my other iPads and being all but discarded after the initial novelty wore off, the iPad mini with Retina - now renamed by Apple as the iPad mini 2 - has become my main computer.
And yes, I just called the iPad a computer.
So when I started reading Federico Viticci's iPad Air 2 review, I was already interested to read how he found the switch from an iPad mini to the iPad Air form factor. Turns out he likes it, and I find myself wondering whether my next iPad should be of the larger variety, too. I'm still not convinced, but with the Airs getting thinner and lighter and with ever decreasing bezels, it's something worthy of serious consideration after falling in love with the mini's super portable size.
Making anonymous phone calls that lack Caller ID credentials has always been possible. In fact, many countries have their own specific prefix codes in order to block your phone number from being displayed on a recipient's Caller ID. For the US, that code is *67, but in iOS, there is no easy way to add the prefix to a contact that you wish to call. Call Enhancer is a jailbreak tweak that makes anonymous calling much easier on iOS, and it brings with it one additional key benefit.
Following the inaugural release of the Game of Thrones adventure game series for the iPhone, iPad and Mac back in December, Telltale Games has now released the second installment of the six-episode game.
Titled The Lost Lords, Episode 2 finds House Forrester in disarray, their liege lord and his heir dead and Ironrath occupied by Whitehill soldiers.
Needless to say, the survival of the family depends upon those who are left. Game of Thrones Episode 2: The Lost Lords is available in the App Store, Telltale Store and through Steam.
NCBrowser 8 is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to browse the web via Notification Center in iOS. The most obvious benefit to being able to do this is that the web is now instantly accessible from any app courtesy of the Notification Center pull-down interface. In a nutshell, NCBrowser 8 provides you with pseudo-multitasking ability between an app and the web browser in Notification Center, and it can be customized to your liking via the tweak's preferences.
Looking to save some of the precious moments you find on Instagram? If so, then SaveGram is a jailbreak tweak that you want to try today. It allows you to not only save photos from the people you follow, but also videos as well.
German automobile manufacturer Porsche has become the first car maker to reveal a premium vehicle in a video game.
As reported by AppAdvice, an update to Electronic Arts' Real Racing 3 contains the worldwide reveal of the Porsche Cayman GT4, a sports car with the distinctive mid-engine layout, marking the first time a real car has been unveiled through a mobile game.
Apple is trying very hard to hire engineers away from Tesla Motors, says Elon Musk. Speaking with Bloomberg, the CEO claims that the Cupertino company is gunning hard for his employees, offering them as much as $250K signing bonuses and 60% salary increases.
This is interesting for a few reasons, one being that Apple was recently spotted driving unmarked minivans around the Bay Area with complex rooftop cameras. It's believed the vehicles are either working on a new Street View-like Maps feature, or a driverless system.
SwiftKey, the popular third-party keyboard for the iPhone and iPad, has received a nice refresh today. The new version brings out support for eleven more languages, enables gesture typing on iPads, implements a new picker which provides access to more than 800 emoticons along with emoji predictions, adds the option to accompany each tap of a key with a click sound and other goodies.
Photos for OS X, releasing this Spring, could quietly signal a much welcomed change in direction for Mac development. That is, if Apple decides to let programmers access the same private framework it tapped in constructing the clean and elegant user interface seen in a developer beta of Photos for Mac.
As SixColors pointed out, several prominent developers took to Twitter to share their excitement about the framework Photos for Mac uses, currently available only to Apple. It's called UXKit and appears to be an OS X version of the UIKit framework on iOS.
What does this have to do with you? Read on...