The Unicode Consortium announced today that Unicode 7.0 is now available, adding currency symbols for the Russian ruble and Azerbaijani manat, historic scripts and other new symbols. But as reported by MacRumors, the bigger news for iPhone and iPad users is the addition of approximately 250 new emoji icons. Before you get too excited, Apple still has to update iOS to support the new Unicode standard first…
Apple's design guru Jonathan Ive rarely gave any interviews under the Steve Jobs regime. But this are different now, this is Tim Cook's Apple. In another sign of much-welcomed openness signaling that the Cupertino firm has changed its ways when it comes to public relations, it's increasingly making its key executives available to media.
The New York Times just published a must-read interview with Ive, following its extensive profile of Tim Cook yesterday.
The fascinating read touches upon a number of interesting topics dealing with Apple's design process, giving us valuable insight into what it was like to brainstorm products with Steve Jobs watching over your back, especially contrasted to Tim Cook's more relaxed approach which delegates much of Jobs's multi-faceted work to Ive and several new executives...
My headline isn't an exaggeration. The Internet giant last week announced buying satellite imaging company Skybox Imaging for $500 million, which is peanuts, really, when you consider what Skybox does for a living. The company has satellites that circle the orbit of the Earth and take very detailed photographs of the terrain.
On the surface, the acquisition should help keep Google Maps accurate with up-to-date imagery. Google on its part has said the Skybox buy will also help them improve Internet access and disaster relief. So, what does any of this have to do with the iPhone?
Read on...
CloudKit, one of the few platform-enhancing features Apple rolled out at WWDC, had to be created entirely from scratch because the Cupertino firm has failed at buying Parse, a startup that provides much of CloudKit-like functionality.
CloudKit frees up programmers from needing to devote their resources toward building server-side application logic themselves. It does so by providing a common set of APIs for server-based authentication, private and public database, structured and asset storage services and much more.
According to a scoop by The Information, a technology website by former WSJ writer Jessica Lessin, the iPhone maker considered purchasing Parse before Facebook...
Apple can't make up its mind. Just months ago, it pulled all Bitcoin wallet apps from the App Store after enacting a policy against all apps using the virtual currency. Now, it has reversed that decision and is allowing apps based the virtual currency back into the App Store. As reported by The Next Web, at least one app has already made its return to the storefront. Take a look…
Facebook on Monday pushed an update to its iPad client to put more entertainment (and ads) into your hands.
Realizing that seven out of each ten people who use Facebook for iPad played a Facebook-connected game in the past 90 days, Mark Zuckerberg & Co. are now testing a new sidebar within the iPad app, specifically created for entertainment content and game discovery.
The iPad-exclusive section provides game trailers and in-game footage, as well as Trending videos/news articles, social notifications for native Facebook games, as well as those offered on the web, and much more.
Note that this experiment is currently limited to Facebook's iPad users in the United States and there's no word when it could launch globally. Additional tidbits can be found right after the break...
I can't stand any more of Angry Birds. There, I've said it. Still, a lot of fans feel the series hasn't run its course yet so this one should be fun: Finland-based Angry Birds maker Rovio Mobile has now partnered with Hasbro on a new tie-in game. They're calling it Angry Birds Transformers and it's coming real soon to an iOS device near you.
Jump past the fold for full details...
Ahead of iOS 8's public launch this Fall, WebMD today introduced Healthy Target, its own health improvement program for the iPhone that aggregates data from various biometric sensors and makes it understandable and actionable.
It sounds much like HealthKit, Apple's new platform in iOS 8 which gives makers of health/fitness apps and accessories official APIs to store users' performance metrics and health data into a system-wide database accessible by the stock Health app and third-party software...
Handoff, arguably the coolest feature of the upcoming OS X 10.10 Yosemite, may not be available to all Mac users. In case you're not familiar with Handoff, it's part of Continuity, a new feature designed for seamless transitioning between iOS devices and Macs.
"Now your Mac knows the last thing you were doing on your iOS device and vice versa," Apple's Yosemite webpage explains. "So you can start something on one device and instantly pick it up on another."
As noted by a German blog, Handoff relying on short-range Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity is a strong indication that you'll need a relatively new Mac model in order to take advantage of the feature...
According to an Asian source citing “Apple employees” in Hong Kong, Apple's upcoming iPhone 6 will pack in a much improved Retina display boasting Quad HD screen resolution of 2,560-by-1,440 pixels.
This would mark a significant upgrade from both the current four-inch 1,136-by-640 Retina display on the iPhone 5/5s/5c and the rumored 1,704-by-960 pixel resolution screen claimed earlier this month by a reliable blogger...
After posting a five-minute World Cup commercial - basically an ode to soccer, its headphones and the iPhone 5s - Beats on Monday released a shorter version of the "The Game Before The Game" ad.
Titled "Jay Z + Beats by Dre Jungle Remix", it features a remix of "Jungle", a song born out of the collaboration between Jay Z, X Ambassadaros and Jamie N Commons. Check it out after the break and tell us what you think in the comments...
Priceline has announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire online restaurant reservation service and Apple content partner OpenTable. The travel site will be doling out $103 per share in the all cash transaction, which is said to be worth $2.6 billion.
For those unfamiliar with it, OpenTable facilitates restaurant reservations through its website and mobile apps. Apple has long been a proponent of the service, which it reaffirmed in 2012 by integrating it into its digital assistant Siri, as part of the year's iOS 6 update...