Apple

CARROT Weather makes its way to the Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 6, 2015

CARROT Weather, the popular app featuring a robot assistant with a personality and attitude, is now available on the Mac. Like its iOS counterpart, sadistic robots in CARROT Weather's Mac app will taunt you when it’s going to rain while offering some hilariously twisted weather forecasts based on Forecast.io's accurate weather data.

In addition to the new Mac app, CARROT Weather for iOS has been updated with a bevy of new features such as notification forwarding from the Mac app to your iPhone or Apple Watch when you're away from your desk, new radar and satellite maps and a Time Machine feature which lets you check out the weather for any location up to 70 years in the past, or ten years in the future.

Here comes world’s first 6″ 4K AMOLED display with an unprecedented density of 734 PPI

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 6, 2015

Competition in the market for mobile display technology intensified Thursday with news that manufacturer Everdisplay showed off the world's first six-inch AMOLED screen boasting an unprecedented density of 734 pixels per inch.

To put that in context, the iPhone 6 Plus's 5.5-inch full HD screen has a pixel density of 401 pixels per inch (PPI) while the rest of Apple's iPhone lineup has 326 PPI Retina screens.

Outlook’s Apple Watch app updated with replying from your wrist, all-new glance and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 4, 2018

Outlook's Apple Watch has been updated Thursday with the ability to reply to emails directly from your wrist using Siri dictation, emoji or canned responses, among other new features and enhancements.

The new features make the wearable app much more functional than before. Before today, Outlook for Apple Watch only allowed you to see your emails but not reply to or interact with them.

Other changes in Outlook 1.3.5 for iOS include a glance with upcoming appointments and incoming emails, rich notifications that can be interacted with and other tidbits.

Apple confirms 11 million Apple Music signups

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Ending weeks of speculation, Apple on Thursday at last gave us a number: Apple Music has signed up eleven million people for its three-month free trial, one month after the new music service debuted. The number was officially revealed by Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services in a statement to USA Today, who said "We're thrilled with the numbers so far."

Apple’s TestFlight app receives support for native Watch apps and iOS 9’s App Thinning technologies

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 5, 2015

TestFlight, an online service for over-the-air installation and testing of mobile applications that was purchased by Apple last year, in its most recent version 1.2 update has introduced support for testing upcoming iOS 9 features, including native Apple Watch applications with watchOS 2.

In addition, the application has been optimized with support for App Thinning, a set of Apple-provided optimization technologies designed to reduce download sizes of iOS 9 and Apple Watch apps by tailoring app delivery to the capabilities of the user’s particular device.

Apple seeds OS X 10.10.5 beta 3 to developers

Cody Lee ∙ August 5, 2015

Apple on Thursday seeded the third beta of OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 to developers. The software, labeled build 14F25a, is available to all registered Mac developers in the Updates section of the Mac App Store, or as a standalone download from Apple’s dev portal.

Beta 3 of 10.10.5 comes just one week after the second developer beta, suggesting that the software is nearly ready for a public release. The most recent OS X update, 10.10.4, arrived at the end of June with Wi-Fi fixes, and improvements to Mail and Photos apps.

WhatsApp for iPhone receives a dozen new features in latest update

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 9, 2016

Not to be outdone by rival Viber which rolled out animated stickers, location sharing, a brand new keypad and other enhancements in yesterday's refresh, Facebook-owned WhatsApp today pushed a substantial update to its App Store application.

WhatsApp for iPhone now features richer notifications settings with per-chat rules and mute options, a new swipe gesture to mark chats as read or unread, the ability to directly share contacts from the Contacts app and locations from Apple Maps, backups for your videos and much more.

This concept video gives us a good idea why Force Touch iPhones will be a big deal

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 5, 2015

Force Touch parts for Apple's upcoming 'iPhone 6s' and 'iPhone 6s Plus' phones have recently begun shipping in volume.

We even recently got our glimpse into the implementation of a force sensing layer on a leaked iPhone 6s screen. That being said, some people continue to be puzzled as to what benefits, if any, Force Touch would bring to their iPhone experience.

Maximilian Kiener set out to create a nice mockup video which gives us a good idea how pressing an iPhone's screen firmly could be a valuable user interface shortcut.

The next Mac security update will patch a serious privilege-escalation DYLD bug in OS X

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 5, 2015

A “privilege escalation” bug plaguing Apple's OS X desktop operating system will be patched in the next security update that the company is working on as we speak, a company spokesperson said today.

The Guardian newspaper reported that a fix for the dangerous zero-day vulnerability, known as DYLD, will be patched before OS X El Capitan releases for public consumption this fall.

Pei Wei restaurants now accepting Apple Pay at nearly 200 U.S. locations

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 5, 2015

Pei Wei, a restaurant chain in the United States, announced Wednesday that it has begun accepting Apple Pay in all of its nearly 200 locations for customers using iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch.

“Accepting Apple Pay is a win for Pei Wei because it’s convenient and gives our guests the flexibility to use their preferred method of payment,” said Pei Wei CEO Ralph Bower.

Facebook steps up advertising on Instagram

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 5, 2015

Before today, advertising on Instagram was mostly limited as media buyers had had to contact an Instagram sales representative directly. But things have just changed for the better (or worse, depending on your point of view) as Instagram's parent company, Facebook, has officially switched on Instagram's advertising application programming interface (API) to allow brands to buy ad slots on Instagram in a more automated fashion, Business Insider is reporting.

Because there's a lot of pent-up demand for targeted ads on the popular mobile photography service, this major move practically spells an end to Instagram's light ad experience as Instagram is poised to make big bucks by shoving more and more ads down users' throat.

Dr. Dre’s new album to premiere on Apple Music this Thursday

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

Dr. Dre's highly anticipated Compton will premiere on Apple Music this week, says Zane Lowe. The popular DJ and Beats 1 Radio host announced on Twitter this afternoon that the album will stream uncensored and exclusively this Thursday from 6pm to 9pm PDT.

This will be Dre's first new album in more than 15 years, succeeding Chronic 2001, which went sextuple platinum. He announced the record on his Beats 1 show "The Pharmacy" late last week, saying that the music was inspired by the new movie Straight Outta Compton.