Yet another member of the original Siri team, Darren Haas, has left Apple. The Information reports that Haas, one of the last remaining team members that came over to Apple in the Siri acquisition, has left the company for General Electric. He'll join Steve D'Aurora, another Siri team member who also left Apple for GE a few weeks ago.
Apple is preparing to completely terminate music downloads in the iTunes Store, reports Digital Music News. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the outlet says an aggressive, two-year timetable to switch completely to streaming music is gaining traction within the company.
Hedging on its claim, the site also says other shutdown plans are being considered, including one that would see the iPhone-maker offer music downloads for another 3-4 years. Regardless, executives have agreed that keeping downloads running forever is no longer on the table.
Old iPods have apparently become the latest craze in the world of collectables. As noted by The Guardian, various Apple-branded MP3 players from the early 2000s are going for insane prices on eBay right now, depending of course on the model and condition.
For example, a factory-sealed third-generation iPod shuffle is listed on the auction site at $999.95, and it has 10 watchers. A fourth-generation U2 edition iPod is priced at just under $7,000. And a new-in-box second-generation iPod classic? A staggering $20,000.
Apple pundit John Gruber who runs the Daring Fireball blog has reportedly learned that the next year's iPhone—which some people think will be marketed as 'iPhone 8' rather than 'iPhone 7s'—may sport an edge-to-edge display that could allow an entirely new form-factor device to have a slightly smaller appearance without sacrificing screen size.
But that's not all: although Gruber did not say this with complete certainty, he's heard “scuttlebutt“ suggesting Apple's somehow managed to integrate Touch ID fingerprint verification, a front-facing camera and other components into the screen itself.
If true, 2017 iPhones should be the most radical departure from the device's design so we may finally live to see the iPhone get rid of its chin and the forehead.
As you know, prior rumors have insisted that Apple's iPhone 7 will arrive outfitted with the iPad Pro's Smart Connector and a dual-speaker setup.
Hope you're ready for some bad news though: design blueprints that surfaced today pour cold water on those rumors, suggesting strongly that the new phones won't have stereo speakers. As for two compelling hardware additions—the Smart Connector and dual-lens cameras—they'll be iPhone 7 Plus-exclusives.
In somewhat surprising news, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo—arguably the most reliable Apple analyst out there—says there'll be one, not two iPhone 7 Plus models. Previous rumors have pointed to three different configurations: a regular 4.7-inch 'iPhone 7', a larger-screened 5.5-inch 'iPhone 7 Plus' and a so-called 'iPhone 7 Pro' with premium hardware features.
According to Kuo's note to clients, a copy of which was obtained by MacRumors, Apple plans to produce a single iPhone 7 Plus model. That 'Plus' edition should be the 'Pro' iPhone you've been waiting for: it'll come outfitted with a dual-lens camera system and have three gigabytes of RAM versus two gigabytes of RAM on the iPhone 6s generation.
Facebook-owned Instagram today announced a major new version of its iPhone app with an overhauled user interface with bigger photos and an updated Home screen app icon.
“Inspired by the previous app icon, the new one represents a simpler camera and the rainbow lives on in gradient form,” explains the company. In addition, they've updated app icons for Layout, Boomerang and Hyperlapse, too.
Instagram is available free of charge on the App Store.
YouTube is getting Google's Material Design refresh pretty soon and it looks pretty neat. Aside from the Upload button being replaced by the upload arrow graphics consistently used across Google's mobile apps, you'll notice a Material Design-inspired search field in the center.
More importantly, YouTube's new looks include the background color on the Channel pages matching the header image, rounded icons in the sidebar, more whitespace around videos in the video player and a few other minor changes.
Chrome users can have an advance look at the upcoming refresh right now. Here's how you can enable Material Design on YouTube ahead of its release, in just a few clicks.
Ukrainian developer MacPaw, the makers of the versatile and powerful CleanMyMac and CleanMyDrive apps, today pushed a major new update for Gemini as a brand new app. For those unfamiliar with it, Gemini is an intelligent duplicate file finder that can help recover tons of storage space on your Mac wasted to duplicate files.
Aside from identifying identical duplicates, Gemini 2 uses a proprietary algorithm to spot similar files that are not 100 percent identical, but can be considered redundant due to little difference between them.
It scans your iTunes and Photos libraries in search of retakes of the same picture or different formats of the same song, and becomes smarter and more precise in automatic selection of duplicates the more you use it.
Voice over IP (VoIP), a technology for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over the Internet, is at the heart of an unbelievable $2.8 billion patent infringement lawsuit that VoIP-Pal, a Bellevue-based company, filed this morning against the iPhone maker.
“We are confident the current good will on both sides will result in a favorable outcome for all parties involved,” said VoIP-Pal CEO Emil Malak in a prepared statement.
Amazon this morning announced a brand new self-service aimed at content producers and storytellers: Video Direct. With it, content makers can upload their videos to the Amazon cloud and decide if they wish to optionally make them available to buy or rent.
Content owners can choose to receive royalties depending on how popular their content is on Amazon based on hours streamed, which will limit their work to Prime members or Instant Video subscribers, or opt to monetize their content with advertising, in which case their videos will be available to all Amazon customers.
Among the plethora of built-in OS X features that help keep your Mac secure is something called File Quarantine, a download validation technology that checks any downloads for known malware when you try to open them.
File Quarantine is also available in compatible applications like Safari, Messages, iChat and Mail that download files from the Internet or receive files from external sources, such as email attachments.
Additionally, OS X blocks compromised versions of web plug-ins from functioning, including Java web apps and Adobe Flash content, to further limit your Mac's exposure to potential zero day exploits.
In this tutorial, we'll discuss how you can make sure that File Quarantine updates are turned on, which will allow your Mac to receive latest malware definitions and information about compromised web plug-ins from Apple.