Apple

Add Bluetooth audio to any speaker dock with Pear

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 16, 2016

Doesn't it bother you there's no easy way to send text messages or give someone a buzz while your phone is docked to a music station? Enter Pear, a Kickstarter project by Brendan Kelso which seeks to tackle this unpleasantry with a nice dongle that attaches to your speaker so now you can take your iPhone and browse the web, check email, message people and what not, all the while being able to stream your music via Bluetooth. Unless you have an AirPlay-enabled audio gear or Bluetooth speakers, Pear could be just the gizmo you need...

Retina display supplier Samsung, others settle price fixing suit for $1.12B

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 13, 2012

Apple's key components provider Samsung which supplies, among other items, Retina panels for the new iPad, agreed along with other defendants to settle a price fixing class-action lawsuit for a whopping $1.12 billion.

Samsung has agreed to pay $240 million, AU Optronics will pony up $170 million, Toshiba will pay only $21 million and LG Display will settle for $380 million in damages.

This settlement - the largest consumer class-action price-fixing settlement ever - is in addition to previous settlements from ten manufacturers and prison terms for some executives, The Wall Street Journal reported...

Russian hacker cracks iOS in-app purchasing, no jailbreak required

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 18, 2012

iOS in-app purchasing mechanism which lets you buy digital items in games, upgrade to full versions of apps and purchase additional content, has been cracked by a savvy Russian hacker who posted a proof of concept video, embedded below.

First noticed by Russian blog i-ekb.ru (via 9to5Mac), the hack is credited to Russian developer ZonD80 who runs the conveniently named In-AppStore.com website where he collects donations to support development of the project.

What's special about this method - and potentially devastating to the development community - is that it doesn't require a jailbreak and can be completed in a few simple steps by even the most inexperienced users. UPDATE: contrary to reports that Apple took the proxy site down, developer confirms it's simply under high load and says the info site is being moved to Blogger.

New Food and Drink category now live in the App Store

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

Earlier this month, several iOS developers reported receiving word from Apple that it was adding a new category to the App Store called Food and Drink.

The new section would showcase a number of applications regarding the topic, that previously got lost in the gigantic Lifestyle section. And now it's live...

Nexus 7 has secret ‘smart cover’ magnets Google never mentioned, now what?

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 12, 2012

Google's seven-inch tablet Nexus 7 is starting to crop up at resellers ahead of a mid-July release (yes I want one, too), but the search giant might run into trouble with Apple's lawyers over its embedded magnetic display shut-off feature. A developer posted a video yesterday that doesn't bode well for Asus, the maker of the Google-branded device. As vividly shown in the video included below, the magnetic sensor sits down near the tablet's lower left-hand side. Wanna hear the funny bit?

Greenpeace: Apple’s clean energy policies have significantly improved

Cody Lee ∙ July 12, 2012

Apple has been taking a lot of heat regarding its environmental policies over the past week. This due to the news that the company has recently pulled its products from the EPEAT registry.

But despite the fact that its products will no longer be EPEAT-certified, environmental groups say that Apple's 'green' polices are improving. Greenpeace, in fact, just upped the company's CEI score...

iPad mag The Daily could be shuttered over disappointing subscription sales

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 12, 2012

The Daily, a tablet magazine launched as an iPad exclusive about a year and half ago, my not be around much longer as its parent company, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, could shut it down at a moment's notice due to staggering losses and strong competition from popular social media aggregators like Flipboard (now available on Android as well), News 360 and others. Kat Stoeffel reports for The New York Observer that the media mogul's publishing empire has put The Daily "on watch" as it scrapped its internal news wire and shed staff...

How Apple’s $1 billion iCloud data center almost didn’t get built

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 12, 2012

An interesting feature by Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOM has an insightful look at how Apple's $1 billion data center in North Carolina came to be and how it almost didn’t get built. Luckily, officials were able to work out the deal and boy did it pay off. Because Apple is a powerful company, the iCloud data center gave Catawba County a much needed bargaining chip in convincing others to build their data centers there, too...

iPad mini schematics: ultra-thin body, 19-pin dock connector, 7″ display

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 7, 2016

An alleged iPad mini case mold got leaked out two days ago, showing a smaller dock connector. This morning, a purported schematics depicting an iPad mini has hit the web. According to ThinkiOS (via 9to5Mac), these drawings confirm whispers that the iPad mini will sport a seven-inch display and a brand new 19-pin dock connector instead of the regular 30-pin dock connector.

As a result, all existing peripherals could be potentially rendered obsolete. Another thing to glean from the images: the iPad mini could be really, really thin...

Weaponize your iPhone with Yellow Jacket case that doubles as stun gun

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 12, 2012

Do you have a Taser and if so, is it on you all the time? See, personal safety is a tricky thing. Most people don't carry any kind of pepper spray or an electroshock weapon until they happen to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I've been attacked twice in my life, once as a collateral victim of a silly bar fight and the other time I got robbed and beaten badly as a bonus in a shady suburb in a foreign country. It's an ugly experience I wish to never go through again.

Nonetheless, my Taser is still in my drawer most of the time. I find it inconvenient to have the damn thing on me all the time. But what if your iPhone could double as a 650-Volt stun gun?

New iPhone 5 case molds emerge, indicating thinner design

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 25, 2016

Following claimed iPhone 5 engineering samples unearthed yesterday by GottaBeMobile, KitGuru today followed up with a new set of purported images of, you guessed right, another iPhone 5 engineering sample. Obtained from a "Far East source", the images look fairly consistent to a rumored taller iPhone believed to be coming around October...

Chinese resellers already taking pre-orders for next-gen iPhone

Cody Lee ∙ July 12, 2012

The next-generation iPhone is one of the year's most highly-anticipated smartphone releases. The handset is expected to be one of the line's biggest updates since it was introduced, 5 years ago.

According to a new report, consumer demand for the unreleased device is already bubbling. And some Chinese resellers are taking advantage of the hype, by taking pre-orders for the phone...