My favorite Photoshop alternative, Pixelmator, was updated this morning on the Mac App Store with some notable new features, bug fixes and enhancements. Pixelmator 3.5 for Mac, a free update for those who own the app, includes the new Smart Selection and Magnetic Selection tools, a new Retouch extension for Photos which provides a full set of powerful retouching tools, and more.
Sources familiar with the matter told The Financial Times that Apple intends to ramp spending on original content production to the tune of “several hundred million dollars a year”. According to the financial newspaper, Apple was also interested in buying Time Warner last year.
I have a confession to make...
It's become painfully obvious to me, glancing at my purchase history, that I've reached a point in my computing life where I'm now a big iTunes spender. To my astonishment, in the past year or so I've been burning money on apps, media and services at a clip of a hundred bucks each month. That's actually a conservative estimate. Realistically, my iTunes spending is somewhere in the ballpark of $150-$200 per month.
To look at it another way, that's $1,200-$2,400 in annualized services revenue for Apple from this particular customer, excluding my hardware purchases. When this much cash is getting sucked out of my pocket by Apple, I can't help but admit the company must be doing something right when it comes to digital media and services.
I realize $100 per month is a lot of money to burn on digital entertainment. I'm not going to preach on issues of morality here nor will I suggest that everyone should spend that much, or spend anything at all in the iTunes and App Stores.
What I'm getting at is this: despite dropping significant cash on apps, media and services, I've never felt buyer's remorse. Why? Because I'm getting value for my money and, after all, Apple is just a middleman. To put it bluntly, I'd rather spend my hard earned cash to support those who create content for a living than blatantly steal their hard work.
Here's what a $100 spent in Apple's content stores buys me, why I don't think I'm being ripped off and how the sense of satisfaction I get in return makes it all worthwhile for me.
Apple must meet a strict rule that requires foreign retailers to sell at least 30% locally-sourced goods if it wishes to open stores in India, reports Reuters. A change in legislation last year exempted foreign retailers selling high-tech goods from the rule, but a government official told the outlet that Apple's products don't qualify for the category.
Developer AgileBits today released a new version of its popular password manager in the Mac App Store, 1Password for Mac.
Available to existing users at no additional charge, “The Passion Project” update bumps 1Password to version 6.3, bringing out support for an additional three browsers along with an enhanced Large Type feature, which now lives in a draggable window of its own, and a few minor VoiceOver enhancements.
Grab the update for free if you already have the app, or buy 1Password for Mac for $64.99 on the Mac App Store.
Having previously launched in Japan, Australia and New Zealand, beta testing for Pokémon GO kicks off today in the United States as its developer, Niantic Labs, began sending out beta invites this morning to customers who signed up to field-test the work-in-progress game.
In a blog post, Niantic shared a few previously unknown tidbits about the forthcoming mobile game, which is being developed collaboration with The Pokémon Company and will take place in the real world.
After iPhone manufacture Foxconn recently purchased Nokia's feature phone business from Microsoft for a reported $350 million, the Windows maker followed up today with cost-cutting measures which signal its intent to exit the handset business and put an end to the failed Nokia experiment. As part of its “streamlining of smartphone hardware business,” which is corporate talk for layoffs, 1,850 employees will be let go.
Microsoft acquired Nokia's phone business for $7.2 billion two years ago.
In yet another indication that Apple's secretive electric vehicle effort, dubbed Project Titan, isn't just a pipe dream, Reuters said in a report this morning that recent hirings have revealed Apple's interest in exploring the technology behind charging stations for electric vehicles while hinting that it could consider engineering a similar technology.
It's an established fact that Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt owns an iPhone because, you know, it pays to experience what the competition is doing firsthand. In a fireside chat at the Startup Fest Europe in Amsterdam, Netherlands, today with CNBC journalist Julia Chatterley, he publicly admitted for the first time to using both an iPhone 6s and Galaxy S7, teasing the mostly iPhone-totting audience that Samsung's device is better.
Robots are taking over iPhone manufacturer Foxconn: the world's biggest contract fabricator has successfully replaced as many as 60,000 factory workers with sophisticated machines that use artificial intelligence to perform elaborate assembly work more efficiently than humans do, a government official told the South China Morning Post.
Like Windows, macOS makes having apps, documents, folders or server connections launch automatically whenever you log in to your Mac as easy as dragging them to the System Preferences → Users & Groups → Login Items section.
Sometimes, one or more Login Items may cause software problems or prevent your computer from starting up properly.
Rather than remove all of your Login Items permanently, here's how you can temporarily prevent them from opening automatically when you log in, without needing to adjust your settings.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has caused quite a stir among the faithful with yesterday's research note in which he predicted a major redesign for the MacBook Pro. He claims the refresh includes, among other features, an OLED display touch bar replacing the physical function keys, which are located above the keyboard on current machines.
As some have observed insightfully, the rumored OLED bar could actually turn into a way more powerful feature addition than meets the eye.